It’s been a while since we devoted ink/digital pixels to NunZilla, the punk-rock darlings of New Times cover-story fame (“Bad Habits,” April 5, 2007, Niki D’Andrea) and the group that infamously pulled one of the most-documented punk-rock charades this town has even seen (“More Bad Habits,” August 2, 2007, Niki…
Calling all bros, duders, and anyone who’s ever puked for sport: The World Series of Beer Pong is coming to Tempe. This, being the perfect opportunity to prove your ultimate bro-ness, is what you went to college for. So round up your best drunkard pals and enter your team for…
What can you expect from Ubiquity Records artist and badass producer John Beltran’s first-ever performance out this way? Everything. You see, one never knows where a Beltran cut will meander. Some tunes lean toward a quiet-storm chill-out factor inspired by Radiohead’s Nigel Godrich and even some New Age elements. Others,…
How do you tell someone that you found the girl you just broke up with dead along the railroad tracks? Was the breakup clean? If not, someone’s gonna be asking questions, right? Time to hit the road? With tons of punk-rock credibility under his belt from publications ranging from in-your-face…
Writer’s block has you in a chokehold, and you spend many a night writhing naked on the kitchen floor, awaiting some flare of inspiration. The ceiling lights shine down on you like football-stadium floodlights, and for the pity of the gods, you put on a spectacular show of self-flagellation, perfected…
Though we hate to generalize, we must in the case of those bodice-ripping potboilers called suspense novels. Generally speaking, they suck. Ours is not a time of giants like Greene, Hammett, Cain, and du Maurier. It’s an age of runts like Ludlum, Koontz, Follett, and Perry. Blah. As a writer,…
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country, said Roman poet Horace. However, if you’re more comfortable watching Stripes than enlisting, you might try Tempe Paintball as the remedy for your bloodlust. Every Thursday and Tuesday from noon to 9 p.m.,…
Worried that the New Times Summer of Sound: Experimental/Eclectic show is no bang for your five bucks? Then let us break it down for you: Black Carl: White kids playing super-awesome and authentic soul/funk. Andrew Jackson Jihad: Once before a gig at a family bookstore, lead singer Sean Bonnette nearly…
Say “pool party” to any woman and you’ll notice a slight quickening of the pulse as her underarms begin to moisten. Ever since middle school, when pool parties suddenly turned from games of Marco Polo to contests of puberty’s progress, those words enter into a woman’s neurotic mind and get…
We’re all about covering the scene, if you will, so does that make us scenesters? We hope not, because we totally want to attend the weekly Punk Nite at Q-Lounge, whose MySpace page proudly proclaims, “Scenesters need not apply.” Sun., July 20, 7 p.m., 2008…
Work headaches, traffic snarls, unresolved personal issues. If you’re like us, you’ve got Yang coming out of your butt, so maybe it’s time we all took a long, cleansing breath and headed to Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art for Yin Friday. SMoCA’s Yin event is, not shockingly, the opposite of…
Cute Is What We Aim For is likely the perfect 21st century pop band. Almost purpose-built for short attention span marketing campaigns, the four gents in CIWWAF focus so heavily on pop sheen, hooks, and scene-ster touchstones that it’s often difficult to figure out just what the sum of the…
When we told our dog about Lappy Hour, a monthly networking and adoption opportunity for canines and their humans, all he wanted to know was if there’d be any bitches there. Geez, Mr. Bisquit, evolve already. New Times caught up with Lappy Hour founder Vickie Rudd, who’s a bit more…
While parents have predictably freaked out over the social menace imposed in turn by the blues, jazz, secular R&B, rock and roll, heavy metal, rap, and techno, they never seemed to bat an eyelash over Steely Dan. In fact, they seemed to dig the band more than anyone. And it’s…
Other comedians may react to the times by humorously observing the ways in which men and women differ. Eddie Izzard, however, creates time itself. Witness firsthand when the actor/comic brings his Stripped tour to the Orpheum Theater. During the show, Izzard may chat with dinosaurs, rewrite the Scriptures, or give…
The scents of stale Old Style and white guy hang in the air. You just heard someone, for the third time today, singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in a Harry Caray-like fashion. Some dude named Ronnie “Woo Woo” is standing outside of Chase Field chirping some inaudible…
The Paper Heart is gone, but the art of the defunct venue lives on at this event, a reception for the “Heartfelt: The Paper Heart Alumni Show” exhibit. Displaying artists include Michele Bledsoe, Richard Bledsoe, Jeff Falk, Denise Fleisch, Jimi Girdner, Steve Gompf, JA Jurewicz, Annie Lopez, Natascha Payton, Greg…
Coco Mitchell’s “Off the Runway: Behind the Scenes at Chado Ralph Rucci” talk: Tuesday, July 15, at Phoenix Art Museum By Clay McNear Coco Mitchell is 48. She’s a model. This doesn’t compute. Mitchell freely gives her age on her Web site (Coco Mitchell). She’s twice as old as your…
In the 1930s, in what can only be considered the first official culinary performance art piece, Mexican émigré painters Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varos passed off tiny tapioca pearls dyed with squid ink as caviar to their surrealist buddies. In 1992, photographer Sandy Skoglund immortalized Britney Spears’ favorite comfort food…
Hollywood’s Endless Superhero Summer rolls on with the arrival of Hellboy II: The Golden Army from Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro. But before this review goes any further, I must confess — head hanging low in shame — that I haven’t read a comic book since I was 12…
At the top, let’s be clear about one thing: Journey to the Center of the Earth is more a demo reel than a narrative feature. It’s a decent, if overly familiar and yawningly obvious compendium of look-at-me moments intended to show off the latest and greatest in stereo 3D filmmaking,…
Upon playing Atari’s new horror/puzzle game Alone in the Dark — the newest and most hyped in the increasingly limp franchise — you immediately realize there are far more terrifying experiences out there than this astonishing failure. Like actually being alone in the dark. Seriously: Take your video game controller…
