THU 6/23We love belly dancers like the desert loves rain. Lucky for us, “Splash: Summer SMoCA Nights,” on Thursday, June 23, at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts, quenches our thirst on both fronts — metaphorically speaking. Along with performances by electronic duo Peachcake and DJ Maji, the Gamil Zarah…
Edna Mode may have stolen the show as the snooty seamstress to the superheroes in The Incredibles, but the next time Batman chills at the Batcave, dahling, he just might be sporting a Mark Newport knitted sweater. For the past two years, Newport has been knitting superhero costumes — including…
THU 16 There’s a secret cove in Fat Cats, a room like a big cave, covered in mirrors, with disco balls twinkling off the black-and-white art-deco walls and plush black leather seats. The downtown neighborhood biker bar at 915 Grand Avenue is mostly known for its billiards and beer, but…
SAT 6/18Valley metal band Eroticide believes the fastest way to a woman’s heart is through her ribcage. The band swears that “God made love to kill all of us” in the lyrics to their song “Cyanide Orgasm.” Now Eroticide comes to spew its views while mutilating female mannequins and bludgeoning…
WED 6/22Carpetbag Brigade finds fire fascinating, and not in a Beavis-and-Butt-head, preteen-pyro kind of way. The members of the “physical theater company” will emulate the flames of the 2002 fires that ravaged northern Arizona in an acrobatic, stilt-walking production called Mudfire, showing Wednesday, June 22, at the Paper Heart, 750…
Matt Brown’s house is filled with painted doors, boxes of spray paint, secondhand canvases, paintings propped up in corners, and palettes crusted with layers of coagulated colors. He says a lot of cool new Tempe artists drop by just to hang out and paint. “It’s my house, but it’s also…
If there were windows in Joe’s Grotto, they’d be steamed up tonight. Almost 400 people are packed into the small Phoenix club, fanning themselves with magazines and ordering extra ice with every drink. The crowd’s getting restless, jockeying for position near the stage and chatting away excitedly. Proprietor Joe Grotto…
THU 9 We might finally see that “Dancing Queen” pop-up we never knew we always wanted when ABBA showcases its homemade books at . . . oh, wait, wrong ABBA. This ABBA acronym stands for “A Buncha Book Artists,” an Arizona State University student book-builder collective that creates original handmade…
THU 6/9Now that the old school’s all grown up, and seminal rap group Sugar Hill Gang is doing festival tours with unlikely matches like Lisa Lisa and Stevie B., Scribble magazine must look to urban culture once again to find the next innovator in underground hip-hop. On Thursday, June 9,…
SAT 6/11 During opening day for the Mesa Miners, one of eight teams in the brand-spanking-new Golden Baseball League, 3,500 spectators turned prospectors waved makeshift pickaxes made out of foam fingers and aluminum cans to celebrate a historic win. It was mass hysteria! Pure bedlam! Okay, maybe the pickax thing…
6/10-6/12Michaleen Kringle describes the “Big Boys & Their Toys” Arizona Men’s Expo, which she’s co-organizing with founder Gary Glava, as “family-friendly.” Right. We know better. As if any self-respecting man’s man could peel his eyes and attention away from more than 200 exhibitions of SUVs, luxury cars, speedboats, motorcycles, sports…
What do you call a guy who’s old enough to remember “when Andre the Giant was skinny,” but still puts on stage makeup and sings in a heavy-metal band? Prophet, of course. He’s the ringleader of local “carnimetal” band St. Madness. And he’s stoked because he and his bandmates –…
FRI 6/3Dear Cubicle Drone,We are pleased with your interest in The Raethier Corp and our latest event, Corposition, at 6 p.m. Friday, June 3, at Lumbre Metal Gallery, 925 Grand Avenue. Robert Kilman, a cog in our collective art machine, has reviewed your vitals and determined your “current condition of…
FRI 6/3Kick the ball! Kick some ass! In this heat, they’ll never last! That’s what we’re hoping, at least, when the Vancouver Whitecaps come down from cooler climates to take on our own Arizona Heatwave in the Women’s United Soccer League’s Western Division. The game, which takes place Friday, June…
6/3-6/4Most of us can’t chalk up our blunders to “all the drugs we did in the ’60s.” Deadheads under the age of 50 have had to acknowledge that “acid” today is more strychnine than LSD, and since their parents did all the good drugs, they have no excuse for the…
Jerry Springer wishes he could get into the Arizona Fetish Prom. After all, there’s going to be enough subculture action going on that he’d have material for his show for the next 10 years. But unless Springer springs for a leather g-string, he’d look really out of place. “We’re going…
SUN 5/29Kneebody isn’t lacking in credibility, not with the L.A.-based, instrumental jazz-rock fusion quintet’s collective résumé that sports gigs with Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and jazz trumpet luminary Dave Douglas. Yet even with academic credentials from New York’s prestigious Eastman School of Music for four of Kneebody’s five members (the…
5/27-5/30One thing’s for sure about the ongoing NHL lockout: Neither the owners nor the players at the heart of this ridiculous impasse will ever be mistaken for Mensa members. And while the sporting public at large has responded to the impasse with a collective yawn, that whimpering in the corner…
5/28-8/21How are Happy Meals marketed? The cynics and curmudgeons among us might scream, “Animated movies!” Fortunately, though, no cheap hamburgers are associated with Bob Sabiston’s new film, Grasshopper. Its inspiration was a random interview in a park with a complete stranger. When asked a lame question about astrology, “he just…
The dead aren’t the only ones lying around the graves at Pioneer and Military Memorial Park. On a sunny Tuesday morning, there is clear evidence that someone has been hanging out near the headstones during the night: An uneaten bagel sits atop the grave of a Civil War veteran, a…
FRI 5/20Way back in the late ’80s when college radio was actually a living, breathing entity, many a dorm room in these United States was filled with the smart-ass humor and sublimely amateurish pop-punk of Philadelphia’s Dead Milkmen. Such heartfelt songs like “Punk Rock Girl,” “Bitchin’ Camaro,” and “The Thing…
SAT 5/21And now, ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to announce a one-night-only event filled with murder, mayhem, and all that jazz! A soiree celebrating the red-hot moving picture Chicago hits the stage at 9 p.m. Saturday, May 21, at the Pumphouse II, 4132 East McDowell, a secluded night crawl…
