It’s now illegal not to visit or send a message to your old Chinese parents on a routine basis. Some people think the new law is ridiculous. Really? If you’re going to protest a Chinese law, get your priorities straightened out. A culture that traditionally respects, honors, and cares for…
About a week ago, several Facebook friends started linking to Simone Rovellini’s supercut video of exploding Disney princesses. No big whoop, we thought — people dick with animation all the time. Well, Rovellini’s “Exploding Actresses” Tumblr has now been active since June 16, with plenty of classic live-action kapows as…
There are Internet cat stories, and then there are Internet cat stories. Big cat = big story. The last time any human was aware of a jaguar north of the U.S.-Mexico border was 2009, when a series of total fuckups by allegedly well-intentioned people led to the death of Macho…
It’s no Nancy-Grace-in-a-parking-lot level of suspense, but the fine Wisconsin judicial system has determined the fate of Gerard Streator, who might have gotten away with al fresco furniture-humpin’ last fall if an off-duty cop hadn’t been walking past at the time and seen the thrusting. Officer Ryan Edwards initially thought…
The setup: The 1992 film Sister Act was the perfect storm of Motown girl-group revival, a dream cast including Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith, and Kathy Najimy, and a feel-good story that made Catholics and the sketchy denizens of Reno, Nevada, both seem a bit nicer than they probably are. It…
Since our solar system itself is part of the Milky Way galaxy, you are technically viewing it when you see a toaster waffle, your own thumb, or dog poop on the street. But we usually think of it as that pretty, cloudy white streak of light in the night sky,…
If you’re single and more or less looking, there’s the total stranger, who isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and then there’s the adorable person you know and are too shy to approach. Or you could really use some 411 on whether that person is also officially single. (This kind of…
We guess it’s no weirder than suggesting that fake hairy legs will deter sexual predators. A lot of courage, creativity, and just plain hair went into this WTF online sensation: a jacket made of human chest hair that took four designers 200 hours to craft and is priced at £2,499…
The setup: Damn Yankees is a zippy, popular 1955 musical about a rabid baseball fan, Joe Boyd, who says he’d sell his soul for a long-ball hitter for his beloved Washington Senators team. Satan, badly disguised as a guy named Mr. Applegate (and it’s taken me my whole life to…
Like Queen Elizabeth II, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has been running in London since 1952. Some monarchs held on to their, ah, seats longer, but no other show’s graced the same boards for 25,000 performances and counting. Richard Attenborough’s share in the production, in which he acted at its West…
The 1970s are popular in a way they haven’t been since the first time around. (Back in the ’70s, the ’70s were everywhere you looked.) Is it cause or effect that Sister Act the stage musical is set in that synthetic, lapel-spanning era? Either way, the sense of nostalgic innocence…
The setup: Cheaters’ short Broadway run in 1978 put then 22-year-old playwright Michael Jacobs in the record books as the youngest documented author to open a show on the Great White Way. Jacobs went on to run a couple of the most popular TV shows of the following decade: Charles…
Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, presented by Peoria’s Arizona Broadway Theatre through Sunday, June 23, is a musical with a dark side. Parents will want to accompany their children (12 and older) even though it’s a mashup of characters like Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Jack, Jack’s cow, some princes who…
The “play within a play” is a familiar tradition in both drama and films. In fact, when Hamlet says “the play’s the thing,” it’s that sneaky internal play he’s talking about. But if you’re looking not to catch the conscience of the king but instead to laugh your hiney off,…
DRIVE-THRU by Katie Johnson “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?” I’m 7 years old and I’m kneeling behind a low wooden chest in my parent’s cookie-cutter home in Ahwatukee. My stepfather, Jim, is on the floor with me. Hunched over in wilted work clothes, he studies a nonexistent…
If you can’t stand the heat — get in the kitchen. On Thursday, June 13, at 6 p.m. at the Lounge at Crescent Ballroom, Chow Bella writers are warming up for summer with “Fried,” an evening of true stories. Admission is free; food and drink will be available for sale…
The setup: Side Show, with music by Dreamgirls’ Henry Krieger, was not a Broadway hit upon its 1997 debut. The play about the fame of Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins who made it out of the freaks’ tent (but not too far) in the 1930s, is generally referred to…
If you could have dinner with anyone — well, he’s probably either dead or imaginary. (We get that. We dined with a real, live person yesterday.) Some of our most popular dead people are presidents, and not just folding green ones. Abraham Lincoln is timeless, and nobody can shut up…
The setup: Jon Klein wrote “picaresque” antihero-buddy-comedy T Bone N Weasel more than 20 years ago. It became a made-for-TNT film starring Gregory Hines and Christopher Lloyd in 1992 and continues to be a popular show at offbeat regional and community theaters. Currently, iTheatre Collaborative is presenting the rarely-seen-in-Arizona play…
Downtown Phoenix on weekdays is inconvenient for you, and you’ve never experienced the Herberger’s Lunch Time Theater program. The end of your torture’s in sight: Most Lunch Time shows present an evening preview.D’Amore Productions’ Wonderful, Wicked, Wacky Women stars Dolores D’Amore Goldsmith, who’s delighted audiences with productions like Why Is…
“Luster Kaboom’s FunHouse” summer installation at Scottsdale Civic Center Library is an eye-popping, interactive environment inspired by the excess of carnivals. (It also makes tangible the rapturous anticipation we felt about library visits when we were young nerds.) Former Valley resident Kaboom, who has cartooned for New Times’ Jackalope Ranch…
The setup: The only 20th-century book for young readers that’s sold more copies than Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time is Charlotte’s Web. Childsplay’s current production of John Glore’s stage version of Wrinkle is a great introduction to L’Engle’s Time Quartet/Quintet/Murry-O’Keefe series for those who might not have read the…
