Courting Disaster is Jackalope Ranch’s weekly column of dating horror stories, observations, how-tos, and more by Katie Johnson. Names of ex-boyfriends, past hookups, and bad blind dates have been changed to protect the guilty. My first kiss was with a porn star. Let’s back up. He wasn’t a porn star…
Now in its second year, PhotoTapas is taking over our state for the month of February, offering a nice diverse sampling from the Arizona photo community. This year, the series is being overseen by Art Intersection in Gilbert, but events also will be held in Tucson and across the metro…
Great minds may think alike, but creatives ones are doing the community one better by teaming up to deliver more of what makes Grand Avenue so, well, grand…
We’ve entered an age in which people have no idea how old they are. Fifty-year-olds lament, “I still feel 30 in my mind,” and sometimes dress like it. Some 30-year-olds may cling to the destructive habits of their 20s, but plenty more march dutifully into full-on family-and-career–building mode, perhaps acting…
Art may not be more important than human lives. But on the list of things that mean something to human lives, across centuries, it ranks pretty high. That’s what’s so compelling about the story of the Monuments Men, a group of people from 13 nations who volunteered to protect cultural…
Consider the Lego, the toy of contradiction. With one — well, with hundreds of them — you can build anything: houses, airplanes, house-airplanes. You can even build something that will change the world, as Larry Page and Sergey Brin did in 1996 when they housed the server for their new…
“Goodbye, Facebook; goodbye iPhone; hello, Saint Vladimir’s,” groans drop-out Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) when she and her best friend, Lissa (Lucy Fry), are dragged back to the titular school they ditched when they ran away to live normal-ish lives in Portland. Despite their year outside the gates, human culture remains…
It’s a little sad that Colin Farrell has outgrown roles that require him to wear raggedy sweaters and say things like “For fook’s sake!” It had to happen, though. Farrell has always made a terrific bad boy, but he clearly knows he couldn’t be a scamp forever, and he seems…
It’s rare that ASU’s men’s basketball team has a true star, but it’s fair to say that the Sun Devils have one this year in point guard Jahii Carson. In the last two decades, only three Sun Devils (James Harden, Ike Diogu, and Eddie House) have been selected in the…
Welcome Diner quickly won over the hearts of folks searching for comfort food in downtown Phoenix. It has a little something for everyone: Meat eaters love the burgers, and vegans found a little slice of heaven with fried avocado po’boys. Plus, the restaurant is adorable — you really haven’t experienced…
Phoenix’s arty set let out a collective squeal when news broke in mid-January that Sara Cochran, former modern and contemporary art curator at Phoenix Art Museum, would take a new curatorial position in the Valley as Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s associate director.Cochran will make her first public appearance in…
Almost exactly one year ago, the Harlem Globetrotters paid a visit to US Airways Center, bringing with them their zany, high-flying brand of exhibition basketball. Concessions were sold, people were entertained, and for a brief moment there was a basketball team in Phoenix worth watching, even if (spoiler alert) the…
A little friendly competition? We’ll drink to that.The Fifth Annual Devour Phoenix Bartending Competition returns Sunday, February 9. This year’s lineup of drink-making daredevils will be broken up into two rounds. In the first round, it’s Evan Gibbs of Maizie’s Café versus Matt Tobey of District American Kitchen & Wine…
Weekend-long film challenges have become popular as a way for local filmmakers to maximize their creativity under pressure. Director Travis Mills leveled up and, with his Running Wild Films team, spent each week of 2013 creating a short film, all of which are featured in the 52 Films/52 Weeks Festival…
Jay Pharoah started on Saturday Night Live as the one of the youngest cast members and four seasons in he’s hit his stride. The stand-up and comic impressionist swings through the Valley on Friday.The Chesapeake, Virginia, native started his performer life in school and community theater productions but it was…
The Musical Instrument Museum is celebrating the sights and, most importantly, the sounds of Carnival with a two-day excursion into the traditional arts of the Caribbean. Throughout the day, guests can enjoy dance performances by Bella Q Dance Studio and Grupo Folklórico I’naru as well as musical performances by Caribbean…
The Southwest is moving east as Chinese Week returns once again to downtown Phoenix. As always, the highlight of this community-based celebration is the Chinese Culture and Cuisine Festival, a three-day immersion into the sights, sounds, history, and flavor of Chinese culture.Here, guests can enjoy volleyball tournaments, a mahjong booth,…
When you listen to Mind Over Matter, the new album from Young the Giant, it is impossible not to notice the different energy coursing through the band’s collective vein. With his throaty cries, frontman Sameer Gadhia sounds as if he’s expelling personal demons, and Mind undeniably is more propulsive than…
It’s been more than a decade since The X-Files went off the air, and we still want to believe. If you do, too, look no further than the 23rd annual International UFO Conference, which returns to the Valley this week.The five-day event brings together speakers and experts in the field…
Imagine being among the first group of people to have ever seen The Taming of the Shrew. Your friends scoff at you having gone to see some weird play nobody’s ever heard of, but you know you’ve seen something special. “I don’t know man,” you say. “I have a feeling…
Fitting: An art space named for the part of the brain responsible for attention, planning, and motivation hosts a science-based gallery show.“Pseudo Science” opens at Frontal Lobe Gallery, featuring mixed media and performance art that reflects or gives artists’ inperpretations of scientific exploration, though not necessarily true-to-life scientific depictions. Artists…
Brelby Theatre Company specializes in cool yet nonreproducible experiences — plays you’re unlikely to have seen before or see again soon. Be a Good Little Widow, through Saturday, February 22, comes from prolific seriocomic writer Bekah Brunstetter (Switched at Birth), whose works touch on implied time travel, extreme natural phenomena,…
