Beaming In

Every year, when days start to stay colder and darker for longer and longer, a little part of us goes ignorant caveman and wants to magic away the end of the world with a brilliant flame. Artificial light is comforting, practical, and very pretty, and the winter holiday season’s the…

Plaid Tidings

We love our local authors, partly because they can’t skip us on tour. Outlander series scribe Diana Gabaldon joins fans for a buffet launch party in the Grand Ballroom of the Arizona Biltmore. Hot-off-the-presses The Scottish Prisoner — a crossover reunion of characters Jamie Fraser and Lord John Grey –…

Th [sic] Sense on Ice: God Bless Us, Every One

I like to think that after a night of being raunchy and transgressive, the sketch writer/performers of Th [sic] Sense troupe curl up by the fireside in Grammy’s old quilt with some hot cocoa and fluffy kittens to read old fairy tales. And it makes them feel naughty.  Curtains has…

Bitch, Please

The Paradox of Choice isn’t just a geek-hot book by Barry Schwartz; it’s why decision-making hurts. So many terrific options, you can’t choose what to pass up — because of soul-crushing regret. So do you streamline your wardrobe, find a restaurant with two menu items, or embrace the glorious mess?…

All Misanthropy

Guy fed up with phonies and frivolity falls for cute, phony, frivolous gal. We’ve got so many of that T-shirt, we’re surprised Molière’s stage comedy The Misanthrope wasn’t about a musician from its 17th-century get-go. As it is, playwright Lauren Marshall painstakingly re-translated the French text several years back, preserving…

Actors Theatre’s Next Fall — Not Their Last, We Hope

Okay, so it was on the Cracked website, but nevertheless, science is discovering that reason is as specious and arbitrary as anything else created by the human mind. It’s a set of rules we pulled out of our asses to be able to win arguments, because winning arguments is a…

Kim Porter’s Munched at Space 55: Life’s Surveillance Cam

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity (friends’ bookcase and a head cold) to sit down and read John Irving’s Until I Find You — which should be more popular, given its “everything but bears” score on this grid. What happens to the book’s hero wound up happening to…

Mr. Marmalade Is the Best Bad Friend Ever

When we were around 13 or 15 years old, we frequently and solemnly swore that whatever else happened, we’d remember what it was like to be a kid. We knew adults who remembered and we knew those who apparently didn’t, and we’d sooner die than grow up to be the…

The Neighborhood Improv Is a Place to Laugh ‘Til You Fall Over

It’s disillusioning but, ultimately, reassuring to learn that improv comedy has structure and rules and stuff like that (for its performers). The reassuring part comes when you realize that 1) “solid improv experience” is not an oxymoron and 2) dedicated application of technique makes for reliable craziness (also not an…

Mama’s Family at The Rock, and Other Weekend Shenanigans

Somewhere in the universe, there’s always going to be someone whose idea of contributing to society is transcribing the dialogue of old sitcoms and posting it online. Without such people, it’d be an even rarer thing to be able to walk into a bar and see live re-creations of episodes…