Late bloomers hold a special place in our hearts. They represent perseverance, new directions, and second acts. Such is the story of Long John Hunter, a Texas bluesman who didn’t “make it” until he was 66 years old, when Alligator Records turned him into a star — outside of the…

Comedian Charlie Murphy will forever be remembered as the man whose “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” sketch on Chappelle’s Show colored the world with that immortal catchphrase, “I’m Rick James, bitch!” And even though it seemed damn near impossible, back in 2004, to avoid hearing one of your co-workers or…

Say, what do ya get if you cross a pig with a coin dealer? Nothing. There are some things even a pig won’t do! Hey, how do you know a coin dealer has gone on vacation? He has chairs on top of his house! So, what kind of horse is…

Welcome to the NBA’s doldrums. The buzz of All-Star festivities has worn off, and it’s not quite the season’s home stretch, when the jockeying for high seeding in the Western Conference playoffs reaches a fever pitch. Plus, it’s March, when baseball saturates our desert air and high-stakes hoops of the…

We have one heckuva sports hangover. If the college bowl season was akin to draining cocktails at happy hour, and the golf tournament was killing a bottle of wine at dinner, then Super Bowl week was like closing down the bar with a gratuitous round of shots. After a two-month…

You think nature’s beautiful and all, but you view its attendant peace and quiet as a bit overrated. You see hiking as fun, but you always thought it was missing something — like drums, perhaps. Damn, if it isn’t your lucky day, because Leslee Jo Klinsky’s Drum Arizona Hiking Group…

More than a billion people watched world-class guitarist Tommy Emmanuel perform at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. One of the finest finger-picking guitarists alive, the 52-year-old Emmanuel was selected to represent his native Australia, where he’s pretty much a national hero. But here, he enjoys…

More than a billion people watched world-class guitarist Tommy Emmanuel perform at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. One of the finest finger-picking guitarists alive, the 52-year-old Emmanuel was selected to represent his native Australia, where he’s pretty much a national hero. But here, he enjoys…

To his credit, when George C. Wolfe wrote The Colored Museum in 1986, the Tony Award-winning playwright created a timeless satire about the struggles of black Americans. To society’s discredit, plays like Wolfe’s still need to be staged a full generation later as we try to shatter black stereotypes. “When…

As an excuse to get loaded with half a million of your closest polo-shirted friends and at least one major airline executive, you can’t get much better than the FBR Open. The PGA Tour’s fifth-oldest and highest-attended tournament pops the cork on its weeklong drunkfest on Monday, January 28. The…

Tyler Perry may be the biggest one-man media empire you might never have heard of. His movies (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Why Did I Get Married?) have debuted at No. 1 at the box office, he recently closed a $200 million TV deal with TBS, and no less…

If you waded through the flood of NBA preseason predictions, you probably found a handful of adventurous pundits who envisioned the Phoenix Suns and Chicago Bulls throwing down in the NBA Finals. Sorry, but we don’t see the Bulls living up to their end of the bargain, so this is…

Ever wonder how hot Lieutenant Uhura (circa ’67, of course) would look on the big screen? Thought so. As if the nerd gods were listening, the divine Nichelle Nichols and the rest of the original Enterprise gang have finally been delivered to us in remastered, high-def glory in the form…

Fun fact No. 1: Iceland was recently named the fourth-happiest nation on Earth. Fun fact No. 2: Some Icelanders, descended from Vikings and Norsemen, still believe in elves or are unwilling to rule out their existence. It makes perfect sense, then, that Icelanders are making some of the most adventurous…

Seems most folks around here still haven’t wrapped their heads around the notion of graffiti as art. In a land where the sand-colored wall is the signature contribution to design, graf’s considered little more than blight. So props to the Phoenix Art Museum for seeing the writing on the wall…

In Big Fish, author Daniel Wallace used tall tales to help a son search for the father he barely knew. In The Watermelon King, he utilized the stories of a town’s residents to help uncover the truth about his mother’s death. And in Wallace’s just-released fourth novel, Mr. Sebastian and…

Ever wonder what saucy Scottish superchef Gordon Ramsay’s really like? You know, when the cameras are off? Can the abusive, F-bomb-dropping, egomaniacal host of Hell’s Kitchen truly be that much of a mean-spirited ass in real life? If there’s one dude in the Valley who would know, it’s Scottsdale’s Brad…

Baseball’s trade deadline came and went 10 days ago without the Arizona Diamondbacks lifting a finger. Was this decision lazy or savvy — i.e., keeping the core intact? For our money, we applaud you, general manager Josh Byrnes, because, to us, it looks like a commitment to win this year…

When it stands alone, Honeytribe sounds like the name of any forgettable jam band playing in Your Town on a Sunday night. But stick the words “Devon Allman’s” in front and suddenly there’s cause for a plug. And though Devon Allman is a minor satellite in the Allman-centric Southern-rock universe,…

It’s hard to imagine the delicate arrangements and understated instrumentation of Portland chamber-pop collective Eskimo & Sons providing the soundtrack to a summertime house party. But there they are, barnstorming the West at such storied venues as Ian’s House in Long Beach, 445 Hampshire Street in San Francisco, and K-House…