The management of the movie house confiscated my cell phone at a screening of Sex Drive last week. “But I’m with the press,” I explained to the security guard who was frisking me. “I’m here to review this thing.” “Doesn’t matter,” he said as he passed a metal detector between…
To anyone who didn’t grow up here, the Coliseum probably looks like another of Phoenix’s outdated, oddly shaped architectural mishaps. A stack of giant Pringles chips surrounded by tattered outbuildings and acres of parking lot, perhaps. Or a saddle. A layer cake that’s fallen. Look at it with some detachment,…
What’s bilingual and is surrounded by four plays, one musical, mariachi performances, art exhibits, a book signing with local glitter queen Kathy Cano-Murillo, and can be enjoyed while eating enchiladas? How about the Cultural Coalition’s La Calaca Cabaret, which will present a celebration of music, dance, poetry, and theater to…
To describe what makes Mark Schultz’s Everything Will Be Different such a magnificent piece of writing is to give away the tricks that are at the very core of its achievement. To simply detail its plot is to diminish this unique and perverse little play’s dark power. Fortunately, its Stray…
A girl needs a sofa. A guy wants to gripe about his bitchy boss. Another fellow wants to rent an apartment with a stranger who likes teacup poodles and sleeps during the day. Will these people meet? If so, will they fall in love? Or will they just end up…
I spoke recently to a college journalism class on the subject of critical thinking. “You mean,” a student asked after I was done blabbing about synthesis and evaluation, “that you can find beauty in anything based on what its intention was?” “Yes,” I said, and launched into a description of…
It’s getting harder to pull off that old argument about Phoenix not having any culture, especially when the arts season here is so significant that it rates its own kickoff celebration. Phoenix Art Museum’s Urban Affair is being called “the Valley’s premier urban living event,” and that, as they say,…
There’s no preaching in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, A Parable, which is set in a Catholic boys’ school in 1964. Its story concerns that ages-old tradition of priests molesting little boys, but its aim is to address not the various horrors of that issue, but rather the difference between what…
In Jason Hill’s Phoenix, the sun never sets. His paintings of the city — a vibrant Valley National Bank framed by a glowing sky; a dazzling Financial Center with a jet jauntily speeding past — are thousand-watt, high-color beacons that send the same, simple, not-so-subliminal message: Phoenix is cool. Come…
by Robrt L. Pela This is a watercolor of the blue bowl I mix cake batter in. The painting is by my spouse, Mr. Grossman, who’s good at everything he does because he’s a Jew. The bowl was a wedding gift to my mother in 1946. It turns up in…
by Robrt L. Pela Okay, seriously. This is just gross. I actually really like liver, but please don’t serve it to me in a loaf. This one is from Money-Saving Main Dishes, a book I come back to again and again for a good laugh. Among my favorites are Curry-Chicken…
It was only a matter of time before someone wrote a play about the mess the Catholic Church has gotten itself into the past several years. When it debuted on Broadway in 2004, Doubt, A Parable was whispered about as a theatrical inevitability, and its author, Bronx-born screenwriter John Patrick…
I had a subscription to TV Guide when I was a kid, and I remember looking forward each September to the magazine’s annual Fall Preview issue, in which the editors devoted a page to each of the new season’s network shows. Shows like Mr. T and Tina always sounded better…
by Robrt L. Pela Okay, it’s not really in my cupboard. It’s hanging on my wall. But, seriously, would you want me to use a 70-year-old bundt pan as anything other than an adornment? This piece reminds me, every day, of how much I love the guy who invented Teflon…
by Robrt L. Pela I can’t stop staring at the cover of Plain and Fancy Desserts, which I found at an antique store in Cleveland last year. There’s some kind of conspiracy going on here. I think Nabisco is involved. And I love how this big, white, gelatined dessert is…
A local day-labor center is about to close, bowing to the pressures of anti-immigration advocates. The immigrants who rely on the center for their crummy incomes fight to keep the facility open. When one of the workers gets arrested, all hell breaks loose. Sound plausible? Los Illegals is a ripped-from-the-headlines…
Biltmore Fashion Park used to be so full of itself. Once, about 10 years ago, I went there to buy a wedding band, and no one would wait on me. I visited each of the mall’s jewelry shops, as well as the jewelry counters in two department stores, and none…
At first glance, Allison Manch’s work looks quaint, maybe a little fussy. Her delicate, hand-embroidered handkerchiefs recall a prettier era, before someone thought to invent Kleenex; back when no gentleman or lady left home without a clean, pressed hanky tucked into pocket or purse. But a closer look at Manch’s…
by Robrt L. Pela Mr. Grossman couldn’t resist it. And who can blame him? A tin of Spotted Dick (a traditional English steamed dessert containing currants, typically served either with custard or butter and brown sugar) is an hilarious thing, at least if you’re an American. And so he bought…
by Robrt L. Pela There’s this beautiful little grocery across the street from my house in downtown Phoenix where I go from time to time when I feel like being ignored by dark-haired 22-year-old men who’d rather be doing something other than working in a boutique-y market. I stop there…
Something hilarious happens within the first few minutes of Chyro Arts’ Dearly Departed: A woman, played by Jacqueline Gaston, reads a wickedly amusing letter to her husband, who suddenly falls over in a dead heap just after she finishes. It’s a moment that’s shocking and witty and holds a good…
by Robrt L. Pela I keep getting up from where I’m sitting to go look at the tablecloth our friend Ruth Beautmont brought over last night. Ruth (a former Floradora girl) knows that Mr. Grossman has a thing for old linens, and when I phoned last night to say, “We’re…
