Something Gold, Something New

Fri 4/2 First Friday visitors will schlep about longer than usual this week, thanks to the debut of the Gold Spot Transitional Bar & Gallery, where the spirit of “carpe diem” holds court. Fancy an oil-on-canvas by one of the seven or eight featured artists? Buy it while you’re there…

This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks

Thursday, March 25 Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and Kate Bornstein is from somewhere else entirely — Fargo. The author and performance artist, who “identifies herself as neither a man nor a woman,” was born male and raised as a boy. After undergoing gender reassignment surgery, Bornstein…

Get Me to the Church One Time

Internet, Schminternet. Bonnie the Matchmaker says the best way to meet your one true love is by exploiting her peculiar talent for tying people’s knots. Miss Wills, who disdains online dating services (her Web site, bonniethematchmaker.com, doesn’t provide hookups), is responsible for hundreds of marriages — so who are you…

In a Blind Pig’s Eye

It’s been a little while — several months, at least — since I’ve seen a play performed as gracefully as Black Theatre Troupe’s production of The Sty of the Blind Pig. The four actors assembled to bring this dramedy to life are the only real reason to consider seeing Phillip…

Suth’n Comfort

The Ladykillers is the second film in as many years made by Joel and Ethan Coen to fill space between pet projects that seem to run off leash; it’s their time-killer, if you will. But even their recent paychecks reflect the brothers’ restlessness: Their movies have grown more manic and…

Air Supply

3/26-3/28 The Fifth Dimension said it best in its 1967 hit “Up, Up and Away”: “The world is a better place” . . . from a beautiful hot air balloon. Nearly 40 years later, that magnificently cheesy tune (resist humming the melody within striking distance of anyone with a bat)…

Row With the Flow

Sat 3/27 The water levels of the Verde River, which snakes through the town of Camp Verde, about an hour and a half north of downtown Phoenix, fluctuate like the psyche of a bipolar schizophrenic. Yet the Verde River Canoe Challenge has steadily built a loyal base of participants from…

Papa Tried

Jersey Girl, the sixth film by writer-director Kevin Smith, is the least Kevin Smith-y film he’s ever made, which will be welcome news to those exhausted by Smith’s everlasting obsession with his dick, fart jokes and stack of comic books; and bad news to those enamored of Smith’s everlasting obsession…

High on the Hawg

At one of Arizona Bike Week’s vendor booths, sandwiched between tables hawking everything from Screamin’ Eagle performance parts to leather-fringed halters, Beverly Allgood will pass out fliers for Vintages, a planned northeast Scottsdale resort community designed for the new breed of biker — or what she calls the “upscale motorcycle…

Lush for Life

3/26-3/28 One night of agave-fueled tequila or two days of refreshing suds? Hell, why choose just one when you can satisfy your thirsty liver with both? A true champion of the people would head to the Desert Botanical Garden, 1201 North Galvin Parkway, on Friday, March 26, for the second…

Power Play

3/26–4/11 There’s nothing a contemptuous incumbent politician fears more than a huddled mass eager to learn from Brutus’ mistakes after seeing a modern interpretation of Julius Caesar. Whether it’s timely election-year fodder, or merely a lesson in how not to execute a coup d’état, the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Julius…

Dubious Degas

The ads running in Phoenix’s local media couldn’t be more straightforward, and seemingly guileless. Beneath a photo of one of the art world’s most popular icons, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, is the title of the exhibition now on display until May 30 at the Phoenix Art Museum, “Degas in Bronze.”…

Lit Parade

Love it or hate it, Arizona is home for most of us because wherever we came from wasn’t as (take your pick) warm, cheap or brimming with opportunity. But this state is more than a concrete Shangri-la of swimming pools, tract housing and upstart businesses. “Archaeology, zoology, geology, biology, botany…

Walk and Roll

SAT 3/20The kids at the New Foundation in Scottsdale have a lot on their minds: substance abuse, depression, and a roof that could crumble in the middle of a session. While its therapists and counselors work on the emotional problems, the foundation hopes its third annual “Lark in the Park”…

Boogie Night

FRI 3/19Ah, spring — when the poppies bloom and the pheromones swirl at downtown’s Alwun House. The 21st annual Exotic Art Show sends the kids to bed early one last night, this Friday, March 19, when the Exotic Dance Ball closes out the monthlong art show. The adults-only party might…

Breast in Show

Oh dear. Angelina Jolie’s made another bad film. Is it too soon to give up on her yet? There’s no denying that Angelina’s sexy as hell. The tattoos, the knife collection, the exhibitionist streak, the bisexual vibe she gives off . . . totally hot, no question. Given her work…

This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks

Thursday, March 18Our enthusiasm for cultural outings is directly proportional to the amount of free food involved. We become the most passionate of patrons this Thursday, March 18, when the Scottsdale Gallery Association partners with the Scottsdale Culinary Festival to put a tasteful twist on the city’s weekly ArtWalk. While…

Personal Space

3/18-3/27″Friendship, not technology, is the only thing capable of showing us the enormity of the world,” Steven Dietz says of his play Lonely Planet. In this cleverly written, almost absurdist work, friends Jody and Carl (a map store owner and a pathological liar with a penchant for collecting chairs) face…

Pink Persecution

While the war against gay marriage wails in the background, a traveling exhibition titled “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, 1933-1945” has settled in at Burton Barr Central Library. It’s the first in a series of exhibitions from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about the non-Jewish groups persecuted by the Nazis…

Forget Me Not

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which a man has recollections of a soured relationship erased from his brain, may be the most romantic movie in recent memory, if you will pardon the unforgivable pun. Written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry, it’s about many things –…

Root for the Stars

A comedian, a poet and a clown walk into a bar. Stop us if you’ve heard this one . . . Tony Vicich, a comedy coach with the Tempe Improv, is banking on the chance that you haven’t. And there is no punch line: The quirky combination of characters is…