Ira Glass has a story to tell you. Actually, he has lifetimes’ worth of stories to tell you. And there are a lot of people who enjoy hearing them. Beginning on Chicago’s public radio outlet in late 1995, This American Life is now heard on more than 350 stations. The…

Over the course of the coming months, ASU Public Events, in its 1999-2000 season, is presenting the A3 program, as in Asia, Arizona, and the Arts. This celebration of the large Asian-American community here in the western United States and the ever-growing population of international students at the university features…

Hal Holbrook has enjoyed the career that all actors dream of having. Since the 1940s, he has worked continuously onstage, in movies and on television. His acting has received numerous honors including Tonys, Obies, and five Emmy awards. His film work stretches from ’60s kitsch classics like Wild in the…

Deep within the halls of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., is a grand room known as the Statuary Hall. All 50 states have contributed sculptures of “distinguished persons” to represent great moments from their history. Most of these contributions are brass or marble statues of a bunch of dead…

All this millennium talk of recent days is nothing new to Al Stewart. His 1989 song “Last Days of the Century” pointed to the event better than 10 years ahead of time. The lyric to that song included many hallmarks of Stewart’s writing style: literary, cinematic and historical elements that…

As a puppeteer, political satirist, performance artist and even as host to a long-running Saturday morning kid’s science show, Paul Zaloom puts the most unusual things to work for his art. He’s a guy who lets nothing go to waste. In his shows he animates tossed away toys, tools, appliances,…

Amazing. For six years (an eternity in TV time), there was a hilarious, loud, wild, entertaining and educational show on TV every Saturday morning. Beakman’s World was a completely unique experience. These folks were getting away with actual creativity right under the network’s noses! Think Mr. Wizard filtered through Pee-wee’s…

Putting together a new theater company with a performance space to call your own in the Phoenix area is an exercise in frustration. No one is in a better position to attest to this truism than Michael Alessandro, head honcho and guiding force for Feast of Fools Theatre. In the…

Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh, Here I am at Camp Granada. Camp is very entertaining, And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining. . . . That classical tune you were just involuntarily singing was Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.” The lyrics, however, were from the pen and…

That corner of Civic Center Plaza next to the Scottsdale Center for the Arts has been under construction forever. But now, where once there stood a discount movie theater, is the Gerard L. Cafesjian Pavilion of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s no coincidence that opening day falls on…

It was 1986 when four women joined forces in New York to perform a cappella music of the medieval era. Naming themselves after an unsigned document, dated around A.D. 1200, describing musical practices at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Anonymous 4 seemed unlikely to attain popular success. Considering that their…

Wes Martin is a guy who does not subscribe to the commonly held belief that culture in the Valley stops at the Black Canyon freeway. As a 10-year veteran director and performer with Theatreworks, he has seen productions as diversified as The Music Man, Pippin and Marat/Sade all do great…

Hang around long enough, and just about everything has a chance to be polished up for another shot at the spotlight. It was about 50 years ago when big-band music faded from the public’s fancy. The current revival of all things “swing” has brought several bands to prominence, including the…

Once upon a time, when the world was different, there were such things as pockets of popularity and regional stars. Contemporary radio and the monolithic record companies have made that concept a memory, but as recently as the mid-Seventies, Phoenix had its very own local hero in the person of…

Spike Jones died in 1965, but his orchestrations, which included sneezing, belching in tune, controlled hiccups and asthmatic wheezing, have not been forgotten. The guy who introduced such musical instruments as car horns, cannons, doorbells, water-filled balloons, anvils and flushing toilets will be paid homage this Saturday at the Sundome…

Just what do these guys think they are doing? That’s the question that Penn & Teller bring to mind. Is it comedy, magic or performance art? Are they there to entertain or to make fools of the crowd? Are they cheerful hustlers or maybe agents of some dark force? If…

With apologies to James Brown, Henry Rollins is truly the hardest-working man in show business. The guy has never met a spare moment that he couldn’t fill–between recording and tours with the Rollins Band, he heads up the 2.13.61 publishing house, and has released some dozen of his own books…

Whirling dervishes? That’s one of those phrases that has somehow entered the language even though most folks have no idea of its meaning. The first thing that pops into your mind could be that destructive cartoon character Tasmanian Devil, or perhaps Grateful Dead fans twirling away at some outdoor concert…

The new album Step Inside This House has Lyle Lovett singing a love song to his home state of Texas, or at least to many of the Lone Star State’s finest songwriters. A two-CD set of cover versions of songs by many well-known and not-so-well-known iconoclastic songsmiths from that musically…