4/8-4/29 It’s not easy being a queen; just ask Doug Loynd. “There’s pain involved in being in drag,” says the 41-year-old actor. “Makeup takes two hours, breasts are heavy, earrings pinch, and heels hurt.” The transvestite toil is worth it, however, as Loynd has a shot at fame as one…
Sahara is a stunning piece of work — stunningly inept, stunningly incoherent, stunningly awful in every single way imaginable. How this didn’t go directly to video or cable or airplane or bootleg is unfathomable. Actually, that’s not entirely true. It gets a proper blockbuster theatrical release through Paramount Pictures because…
I’ve written many thousands of words about my most beloved gadget, the GameBoy. And, of course, the GameBoy Advance. Tiny machines that let me play video games on the go. I could play golf while standing in line at the supermarket, play Tetris at the bank, and Zelda on the…
Dale Chihuly: Before Dale Chihuly became the godfather of art glass, he worked as a commercial fisherman to earn money for grad school. He brings this memory of the world beneath the waves to the glass works on exhibit at Phoenix’s premier contemporary art gallery. Eight undulating pieces that look…
Does the world really need a new film from Woody Allen every single year? Yes, he is one of America’s great auteurs. Yes, he’s responsible for some very fine movies, many of them comedies (Annie Hall), several of them tragedies (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Another Woman), and some hovering in that…
THU 31 Who knew it would take 25 self-proclaimed “idiots” to end an 86-year-old curse? Or that it would take almost eight years to get the Boston Red Sox to visit Bank One Ballpark? Anchored by former Arizona Diamondback and 2001 World Series co-MVP Curt Schilling, the world champs make…
Note to young hipsters who want to claim famed underground filmmaker George Kuchar as their own: You’re 40 years too late. Although Kuchar is hotter than ever with disaffected young film fans, his oeuvre of oddball movies actually belongs to your parents — assuming your parents are the sort of…
“He’s the exact same guy after 25 years,” I exclaim to my old college buddy, Aaron, who’s in town visiting, as well as to my 74-year-old stepdad, Nick. “What’d you expect?” says Nick, as we all crowd around my television and watch a DVD of my old band, Roach Motel…
Ed Dominguez, 38, painter, Phoenix booster, refugee from architecture and from San Juan, Puerto Rico, his birthplace. His large-format paintings of nuns have made brides of Christ hotter than ever, and his newest series is designed to do the same for our downtown skyscrapers. Jump high or stay home: San…
If nothing else, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, co-directed with Frank Miller (and Quentin Tarantino, for a few seconds), will be remembered as the most faithful comic-book adaptation ever put on film (or high-def video, anyway). Rodriguez uses Miller’s hyper-noir serial, published over a 10-year period, as storyboards for the movie…
Give Dan Harris, the writer/director of Imaginary Heroes, plenty of credit for boldness and ambition. Not many kids fresh out of Columbia University would have the wherewithal to tackle a complex family-crisis drama with four or five different kinds of trouble running through it and half a dozen crucial minor…
Troy Glaus knows a thing or two about comebacks. After all, the new Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman was part of one of the greatest turnarounds in World Series history when he helped the Anaheim Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) avoid elimination during Game 6 of the 2002…
At last year’s Arizona Central Pride Festival, the guy in the hemp shorts and the hot-pink feather boa didn’t get to finish his fantastically ludicrous karaoke cover of “Like a Virgin.” A big rainstorm cut his performance short, just as he was simulating butt-flossing with said boa. It’s rained on…
4/1-4/10 A souvenir shop in Dearborn, Michigan, once sold a rubber stamp that read, “People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it’s safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.” Obviously, the quotation predates the modern motorcycle frenzy of the middle-aged. In the 1960s, riding a motorcycle…
SUN 4/3 Break out the gloves and fly your uncle down from Saskatchewan: Hockey is back. Witness some serious slap shots as the Phoenix Adult Hockey Association plays every Sunday night at the Arcadia Ice Arena, 3853 East Thomas Road. Old pros, wanna-be stars and enthusiasts take to the ice…
TUE 4/5 To all the wanna-bes who love sushi and Bruce Lee, but whose best kung fu moves are limited to wax on and wax off, Tokyo Tuesdays are for you. Leave the coveted Enter the Dragon box set at home and karate-chop your way to Ra Sushi Bar Restaurant,…
FRI 4/1 Get your ears spanked when the thick whip of verbal science comes crashing down Friday, April 1, at the PHiX gallery, 1113 Grand Avenue. A group of 15 Valley poets congregate to stir your minds and souls while laying down their collective abilities of articulation for the first…
THU 24 While it’s been said that Thomas Gibbons’ “provocative and fearless drama” Permanent Collection does a lot of preaching to the choir, we hear that these are the salad days for religious symbolism, anyway, so why not? The play, produced by the Arizona Theatre Company in its Southwest premi’re…
The last good punk rock that came from Los Angeles was probably in the early to mid-1980s. Those were the days. The Angry Samoans, Black Flag, X, The Germs, Fear, and so many other greats. Then Social Distortion and Bad Religion won the lottery and it was all downhill from…
Whenever I find myself trapped in a theater with another lousy production of another dreary play or musical, I always turn to my friend the playbill. I’ve destroyed my eyesight peering into the dark at these marvels of bad syntax and questionable grammar, but it’s been worth it. Because playbills…
I’ve been watching anime for the past couple of days, and there isn’t enough aspirin (or Chivas Regal) in the world to relieve my pain. For those fortunate enough not to know, anime is a term used to describe a type of highly stylized Japanese animation in which drawings of…
It must have been Molly that finally set me off. I mean, with her warm, brownish hair and those loving eyes, well, she just reminded me of someone I left behind in New York. Sophie. Who used to live in my building. She, too, had the same color hair, and…
