If you thirst for time travel, shuffling through the ages will probably be complicated, cost-prohibitive, or random if you heed H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Back to the Future, or Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Don’t get too down about it, though. The Arizona Renaissance Festival celebrates 25 years of…

National Geographic, the official journal of the National Geographic Society, was once the king of dentists’ waiting rooms and dusty school libraries. Lucky for it and us, now the publication’s stunning visuals rock TV, the internet, and a live lecture series that brings the people behind the adventures to the…

Larry the Cable Guy has been branded on everything from potato chips to barbecue sauces. Our favorite is the Git-R-Done monster truck. While its connection with the folksy funnyman is unlicensed, the simply stated catchphrase represents driver Mitch Tulachka’s appetite for destruction. Git-R-Done and an entire roster of motor-beasts descend…

Beyoncé will hold court at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show as the planet’s preeminent pop star. And up until a few weeks ago, we would’ve assumed members of her former group, Destiny’s Child, would spend the day noshing on seven-layer dip like the rest of us. But, the pop…

Bay Area rappers Trunk Boiz hit YouTube platinum with their ode to the swagged out bicycles of Oakland, “Scraper Bike.” The Mill Avenue Bike Parade has just as much love for decorated bicycles (scraper-style or otherwise), folks riding in costumes, and even plain ol’ cruisers. That’s why the parade’s organizers…

Absentmindedly leaving your wallet at home is common enough, but heading outdoors without pants? If you’re down with this year’s No Pants Light Rail Ride Sunday, January 13, that’s your story and you’re sticking to it. The skivvy-centric mass transit tradition is in its fifth year, thanks to the efforts…

Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to retreat back to all of the hobbies and habits that would be too hard to explain to those not-with-it relatives. The aptly named Taiyou Con hits the Valley of the Sun on Friday, January 4, to gather Japanese pop culture fans…

The Valley of the Sun conjures up images of palm trees, golf courses, and seemingly endless asphalt. But Brazilian-based Mexican artist Héctor Zamora hit the outskirts of town to gain a greater understanding of the intersection of modern life with the native environment in preparation for his current exhibition “Architecture…

Predictions of the end times are always a tricky undertaking. Everyone from Nostradamus to Bible-thumping yahoos have whiffed out. Reacting to such prognostications, though, is much easier: Go live it up. The newish multimedia art collective Insatiable Strange does just that with a sci-fi- and eschatologically-themed exhibition opening Friday, December…

While Mayanist scholars dispute whether December 21, the last day of a 5125-year cycle of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, is a harbinger of any world-ending cosmic event, it would be a deliciously ironic upending of the holiday season. Those plunderers of VHS-trapped gems of awfulness, Everything is Terrible!, are…

It’s a given that any beloved pop culture property probably will take a spin (successfully or not) on Broadway. The Addams Family, the creepy, kooky clan that achieved mass appeal with a mid-’60s TV show that became syndication gold, hit the Great White Way in 2010 and land in Tempe…

With Christmas just weeks away, we imagine that Jolly ol’ Saint Nick is feeling the pressure of his workshop pushed to its limits. Kris Kringle then has a good reason to slip away to join the festive mob of merry-makers that will gather for Santarchy on Saturday, December 8. The…

Most of us know about Festivus from the Seinfeld episode where the celebration “for the rest of us” is the favored way to celebrate the holidays without the pressures of commercialism or specific religious beliefs. The folks of Get Your PHX and the Phoenix Public Market give the festivities a…

If the barrage of holiday commercials insisting that diamonds are forever and that true love is best expressed with a luxury car festooned with an oversize bow have you down, you might want to spend some quality time with Tyler Durden. The anti-hero portrayed by Brad Pitt is the flipside…

Our holiday weather doesn’t get all that frightful, but even without snow the Valley’s premier winter wonderland experience, ZooLights, keeps things delightful. Catch the latest twist on the festive illumination of the Phoenix Zoo starting Thursday, November 22. This year, the “Music in Motion” light show dazzles the senses with…

The short film isn’t just a fun-sized snack to whet your appetite for a feature-length meal. It can be the expertly delivered one-inch punch that’s powerful all on its own. The 2012 Filmstock Film Festival puts up its dukes to maximize the mini-movies on Thursday, November 15. Since 2009, the…

Paleolithic dieting (or noshing on animal protein and edible plants that would have been available to prehistoric man) has caught fire in the past few years. Whether you’ve joined the craze or not, you can further kick it old school by catching the hit one-man show Defending the Caveman on…

Halloween is over, but if you’re still looking for chills and thrills, you might head over to Biltmore Fashion Park. The posh-leaning shopping center might not seem like the spot for suspense-seekers, but its weekly Movies in the Park features Rear Window, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best, on Friday, November…

It’s the time of year where people’s allegiance to that overgrown orange squash reaches a fever pitch. The Great Pumpkin Festival brings together those Linuses yearning for an old school fall shindig on Thursday, October 25. If a hayride doesn’t put you in the mood, there’s the Amazing Hay Bale…

ASU Homecoming is this week, and amidst the jocks, cheerleader types, and party animals, you’ll find studious folks itching to join the festivities. If your immediate reaction to Mitt Romney singling out Big Bird for extinction was “WTF?!,” find your flock at the second annual Arizona PBS Nerd Walk. PBS’s…

While flower power idealism changed the world in the 1960s, that’s not to say that hippies have had it easy since. The Last of the Haussmans is a humorous exploration of what happens when those funky chickens of the counterculture come home to roost in reality. Recorded from the stages…

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dropped the ultimate gem — “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — but what about those thrill-seekers who relish being creeped out and love all things that go bump in the night? Well, Phoenix FearCON is right up their dark alley. Locally…