For all their amazing traits, there is a single-mindedness to dogs that is especially enviable. Their owners may lurch from one obsession to another in search of happiness and fulfillment, but something as simple as food, a toy or a morning walk can take members of the canine set to…
Thursday, September 18 You know the summer’s truly over when Scottsdale Center for the Arts launches its new season. Starting off the busy schedule is an appearance by writer John Edgar Wideman, whose lecture is part of the Solo Voices series, presented in conjunction with Arizona State University’s Center for…
There’s something queer happening at the happiest place on Earth. For the last several years, on a specifically designated day, more than 100,000 gays and lesbians have descended on Walt Disney World in Orlando, and, on a separate date, thousands more have gathered at Disneyland in Anaheim, for Gay Day…
9/18-9/20 It is fitting that September marks not only the opening of an inspiring exhibition in Scottsdale, but also the month that Frida Kahlo endured a horrific accident. In 1925, Kahlo woke up with a disabled body she hadn’t counted on and would have to live with for the rest…
Sat 9/20 You support them with every paycheck, but how well do you really know them? Public lands, we mean. This Saturday, September 20, is National Public Lands Day; from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., take the kids to meet your other legacy — the United States’ wide-open spaces –…
9/19-4/18 They may not be as fleet-footed as frogs or as flashy as, say, fireflies, but turtles — unhurried and self-contained — have charms all their own. Starting this Friday, September 19, a world-première exhibition at the Mesa Southwest Museum takes a long look under the shell. Through specimens living…
9/20-1/4 Artist Sloane McFarland has one foot in the art world and one foot in the real estate world. One must wonder what his closet looks like: equal parts smock and yellow blazer? Regardless, he is being talked about as one of the most exciting artists in Arizona. A third-generation…
9/19-10/5 In one play, a gay man is found tied to a fencepost after 18 blows from the butt of a handgun killed him. In the other, a young woman’s uncle teaches her to drive, and then sexually abuses her. Both plays — The Laramie Project and How I Learned…
Just when you thought it was safe to watch a reality TV show or two, television producers and former Phoenicians Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have revamped the format of America’s favorite cheeseball genre. In the duo’s Joe Schmoe Show, which airs Tuesdays on cable’s Spike TV network, the gimmick…
If appearance counts for anything, the art scene in Phoenix is thriving. Literally thousands of people make their way from gallery to gallery the first Friday of each month, flooding Roosevelt Street and Grand Avenue. The interest of locals has been echoed nationally, even drawing notice in Art in America…
Phoenix Theatre’s excellent production of Chicago is both a pleasant entertainment and a shrewd example of this 83-year-old company’s talent for mounting crowd-pleasing retreads. Director/choreographer Michael Barnard has borrowed from Chicago’s original 1975 staging and from the recent film version, and jazzed it up with some swell tricks of his…
Tidy little Montecarlo, Georgia, which is the setting for Jonathan Lynn’s The Fighting Temptations, is a perfect movie fantasy town. At the picturesque train station, the ticket agent will call you a taxi or serve you a plate of Southern fried chicken. The house band at the local nightclub is…
If life is a shit sandwich, coach Devlyn Steele can teach you how to serve it on a silver platter. Steele has refined the art of life coaching, a pop-psych practice in which clients get props from a hyper-organized counselor who knows more about how to live than the rest…
Admit it. The moment you hear the name ABBA, or see it in print, a jangly bit of one of the band’s hit songs begins playing in your head. Maybe you hear the chugging intro to “Waterloo.” Or the a cappella choral bridge from “Super Trouper.” Probably it’s the piano…
When Nicolas Cage plays still and sullen — a man possessed by self-loathing and melancholy in Adaptation, say, or the landlocked angel in City of Angels — he comes off as drowsy. He disappears into those roles like a head plopped in a fluffy pillow, and it doesn’t quite suit…
God bless Johnny Depp. For the second time this year, the man has almost single-handedly redeemed an action movie that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the pack. Introduced right up front in Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico, he’s first seen dressed up like Prince in purple glasses…
Most will deny it, but inside every grown man lurks a hypersensitive adolescent girl. Allow me to tell you all about mine and to share some of my poetry . . . Whoa! Relax. Put away that gun. Just seeking to emphasize that in the case of director Catherine Hardwicke’s…
Edible clothing is always in good taste. And this Thursday evening, it’s elevated to an art form, as a dress fashioned from gumdrops hits the auction block at Artlink’s Third Annual Wearable Art Auction. When the folks developing the Phoenix Family Museum enlisted the talents of six Valley children, ages…
Mexico’s Fourth of July is September 16, commemorating the day in 1810 when Miguel Hidalgo incited the revolutionary war against Spain. Hidalgo was executed a year later, but his cry of “Mexicanos, Viva Mexico” still sounds at Fiestas Patrias celebrations. Revelry typically includes music, dancing, food, and an El Grito…
9/13-1/4 For as long as civilizations have existed, artists have shined a telling light on the social and political issues at play in their homelands. In Mexico, the folk artist has long filled the role of social commentator, documenting the struggle of a resilient people in overcoming adversity and achieving…
Sat 9/13 The name you’re given at birth can go a long way toward charting your course in life. Take the case of “Grapple Girl,” a young woman whose handle instantly ruled out any career involving ladylike comportment. Who needs manners, however, when the trilogy of martial arts, a fenced-in…
9/13-10/4 Taking the concept of a core curriculum to extremes, creepy Mrs. Gorf turns her pupils into apples. The wacky Wayside School — where the 30 classrooms were accidentally stacked vertically rather than built side-by-side — inspires a slew of such tall tales, and Childsplay Theatre Company brings them to…
