The ladies from the Tempe-based indie-rock trio Juicy Newt are hard to deter. Since 2003 – and despite limited prior experience with their chosen instruments – they’ve been plowing forth with gleeful determination. According to their Web site, the band is driven by a desire for “world domination through rock…
There are thousands of idiotic ways to die, but drowning in the desert? Pretty dumb. As a corollary, there must be a million better names for a body of water situated in a sub-basement of hell than Lake Pleasant. But the nomenclature’s not as wacked as it seems, ’cause our…
So you’re at a club on a Friday night. Live bands, DJs, hot babes, and drinks galore. But don’t forget the bladders. All of them ready to explode as you wait in an endless line with other bloated bellies. It’s just not a club night without the anticipation of the…
If our nights and days at Night & Day have taught us anything, it’s don’t ask comics about comedy. A few members of Mommy Hit Daddy addressed our questions about form and theory, and we’ve chosen to let their responses remain a beautiful and unlitigated mystery. So we asked why…
Excepting the Rocky series – blah! – we think underdog movies rule. Seabiscuit, Hoop Dreams, The Karate Kid, The Breakfast Club, The Bad News Bears, Dodgeball, The Shawshank Redemption . . . Obviously, then, our palates are primed for Bottle Shock, a fresh indie that sounds like a cross between…
D.L. Hughley could patent his Checklist to Guaranteed Comedy Fame, yet he’s somehow fallen short of Chris Rock-caliber cachet. Survivor of troubled formative years? Hughley’s a former Bloods gang member. Acclaimed television personality? He was the original ComicView host before tackling both Premium Blend and Def Comedy Jam. Successful big-screen…
You took Mom and Dad to South Pacific. You took your niece and nephew to Kung Fu Panda. And, now, you’ve had it up to here with Family-Friendly Entertainment. You want raw, you want raunch, you want adult. A burgeoning gang of actors who dabble in that tricky (but transcendent,…
They say that those who can’t do, teach. Local artist Sarah Kriehn couldn’t disagree more. She taught elementary art for over 20 years, then retired and started a solo printmaking career. According to Kriehn, it’s not that teachers aren’t talented. The problem is that they just don’t have enough time…
Growing up, passing clouds were a parade of endless characters and rocket ships were built from cardboard. Sarah Lowry, Madeline ffitch, and Donna Sellinger keep that spirit of imagination alive with their traveling theater group, The Missoula Oblongata. The three collaborate to script a play of seemingly outlandish ideas and…
Somewhere between Middle Ages Germany and now, we managed to transform a simple word for flying through the air on a rope (swanken) into a bebop-and-scat subculture whose adherents strut around mouthing hepcat jive and snapping their fingers a lot. But hey, it’s cool. It’s swank, baby – especially on…
High fashion in the Phoenix area is still associated with statements like, “Why, yes, I did get this at Macy’s.” In this town, you’re more likely to be judged by the overall hue and breadth of your tan than for your taste in Balenciaga footwear. This may change some when…
Singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins defies a cut-and-dried definition. Influenced by everybody from the Violent Femmes and James Taylor to contemporaries like the Indigo Girls (whose co-founder, Amy Ray, attended Clarkston High School in Georgia with Mullins), the folk rocker maintains a homey pop vibe throughout his albums but doesn’t feel compelled…
What’s that noise? If it sounds like anarchy in the PC, it’s probably the wondrous effectual whirlpool of Valley circuit bender The Coitus. Using “instruments” such as old Atari gaming systems, Casio keyboards, and Commodore computers in combination with modified kids’ toys, synthcarts, and homemade sound contraptions, The Coitus calls…
The former Traveling Wilbury is on a roll these days — in addition to reuniting his pre-fame band Mudcrutch for a much-appreciated CD, he has found a growing number of younger fans during his current tour. According to reports, a large number of 20-somethings have flocked to his shows alongside…
Millar (Wanted, Kick Ass) and Harris (Ex Machina, Iron Man) unveil their hot new collaboration, about regular G.I. Joes who are imbued with superpowers in order to save an alternate-reality United States. Wed., Aug. 20, 1-4 p.m., 2008…
Once upon a time, rock ’n’ roll was about bad dudes singing about bad shit, and it was very, very bad for you. One of my formative images was punk progenitor Iggy Pop stage-diving onto a field of shattered glass. The dude rose slowly, like a demon out of ooze,…
Weston’s life was as sensual as his photographs.
Walk into an art gallery on a First Friday and you’ll see people with drinks in their hands, chatting and laughing — not noticing they just knocked a painting with their elbow. But the crowds at a contemporary art show at, say, the Museum of Modern Art in New York,…
On the surface, Pineapple Express offers precisely what it advertises: a roll-’em-up, smoke-’em-up, blow-’em-up bromantic comedy from the freaks and geeks who have made Judd Apatow’s brand of stunted-man yuks a global franchise. Once more, Seth Rogen’s red-rimmed, half-shut eyes peek out from beneath his tousled Jewfro, which sits atop…
Even as the first girders were laid in the mid-1960s, something about the World Trade Center — that twin-pronged erection jutting from the loins of Western commerce — inspired fantasies of lustful conquest. As James Marsh’s documentary Man on Wire tells it, a mischievous French teenager was sitting in a…
Imagine, if you will, a pasty, bespectacled string bean draped in an American flag, an Olympic medal tugging at his pencil neck, all backed by John Williams’ orchestral swells and the impassioned cheers of thousands. Yes, friends, this is the moment: America has just taken home the gold in professional…
Neal Green remembers when downtown Phoenix spilled into neighborhoods filled with hundred-year-old adobe houses surrounded by acres of land. He remembers groves of towering trees and the thrill of nighttime drives through the Papago Mountains and seeing downtown’s lit-up neon signs as you crossed into Phoenix from Scottsdale. “It always…
