Sat 10/25 For all of you Peeping and would-be Peeping Toms, The Roosevelt Historic District is offering the perfect way to peep without getting slapped with jail time. TourFest, a guided tour of more than 20 houses, lofts and businesses, allows a rare view into buildings that date back to...
For most Arizona bands, the arc they can expect their careers to take is not unlike that of the Sciannas. Take a bunch of transplanted musicians, in this case Connecticut-bred brothers Fran and Dan Scianna, and thrust them into a mystifying music scene where it takes months, even years, to...
5/24-5/31 Summer is a ripe peach, juice dripping off our elbows. At Schnepf Family Farms in Queen Creek, the trees bow low with fruit so junior pickers can reach the branches, in time for Grandma's Baking Day. Sign up your son or daughter for this tasty event that has kids...
Rusty Chiles is halfway through executing a left turn on the corner of Seventh Street and Ash in Tempe when he and his buddy Slipnode, riding shotgun in Chiles' white Nissan Altima, experience a simultaneous "onosecond" -- cyberspeak for that split second in time between decision and consequence when you...
Thursday, September 4 If you still haven't had a chance to see Phoenix Art Museum's exhibition "Sculpture in Silk: Costumes From Japan's Noh Theater," Thursday, September 4, is the perfect time. That's when Janet Baker, the museum's curator of Asian art, gives 30-minute ArtBreaks talks at noon and 7 p.m...
Thursday, June 5 Tucson-born comedian Pablo Francisco, best known as one-third of The Three Amigos (with fellow funnymen Freddy Soto and Carlos Mencia), hits the road for a one-man tour coming to the Tempe Improv this weekend. While he's already got plenty of fans from years of performing in the...
About 15 minutes into their set at the new Marquee Theatre in Tempe last Tuesday, Idaho guitar ambassadors Built to Spill blasted into "The Plan," a bombastic, subtly melodic rocker. As 700 fans or so looked on, lead singer and ax man Doug Martsch sang the lyric, "The plan means...
5/1-5/11 The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks, a powerful Japanese folktale turned children's play, begins when a cruel lord captures a Mandarin duck because he covets his exquisite plumage. When a kitchen servant sees that the enforced captivity is destroying the bird's beauty, she frees him, causing the evil lord...
8/7-9/13 ASU's Art Museum is popping an attitude. Anchored by Andy Warhol's famous "lipstick-and-peroxide" screenprint of Mao Tse-tung, a sharp-witted exhibition honoring American Pop Art also features Robert Rauschenberg's flattened cardboard-box birds and Robert Indiana's snarky screenprints (in After Mississippi, words encircling a state map read: "Just As in the...
Thursday, August 28 Phoenix has its very own live version of The Gong Show: Beat the Buzzer at the Paper Heart Gallery on Thursday, August 28, and the last Thursday of every month. Much like that late, great '70s game show, there's a lineup of performers trying to outdo each...
Sat 4/26 "...My father had a foot in each country, where the mud on each boot caked the same, and the dirt sifted the same through each hand. And the earth had but one scent, and as far as he could see . . . the vista was unbroken."So begins...
Fri 4/11 The pursuit of peace has inspired thoughts poetic -- "We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels; we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds" (Anton Chekhov) and pragmatic: "I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace...
Sat 5/3 Hide your heaps -- Bigfoot's a-thundering this way. Be there! Be there! Be there! -- on Saturday, May 3, at 7 p.m. as Gravedigger, Bounty Hunter, Maximum Destruction, Scarlet Bandit, Monster Mutt and more roar into town for the Coors Monster Truck and Jet Car Jam at Firebird...
Thursday, May 1 Film Forward, a new film series at Madstone Theaters, offers the freshest batch of independent films to hit the Valley since the Phoenix Film Festival. Featuring two debut movies every two weeks starting Thursday, May 1, the series offers the only chance to see these films locally...
"Freedom is just chaos, with better lighting." Even if one agrees with writer Alan Dean Foster's assertion, there's hardly cause for complaint. Liberty, bedlam, and the ever-flattering rocket's red glare -- sounds like a party to us. This Friday, July 4, a score of civic celebrations light up the Valley...
With a star-studded roster including George Clinton, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, India.Arie, Kansas, Naughty by Nature, Billy Bob Thornton, and the Village People, it's either a benefit concert or a Sweeps Week episode of The Simpsons. This weekend, it's the former, as Off the Hook Productions sponsors a concert benefiting...
Roger Clyne says if there's no music scene in Phoenix today, it may be partially his fault. Clyne led the sensationally quirky Refreshments in the mid-'90s at the zenith of what some locals refer to as the "Mill Avenue conspiracy," when talented jangle-pop musicians ruled the bars of Tempe. "Everybody...
Dwarfed behind the computer monitor at station 37, 12-year-old Mitchell Swift barks out commands to his fellow Counter-Strike players like a Gulf War II commander trash-talking his troops. "No camping, bitch!" he yells at the screen to the character represented by his older brother Josh's friend Jesse, who's sitting just...
My favorite nickname for breasts is "begonias." My least favorite is "pimples." Rounding out my top 10 are "umlauts," "sweater puffs," "kettle drums," "ottomans," "waldos," "earmuffs," "eggplants," "angelfood," "Mrs. Doubtfires," "thingamajigs," "squirt guns," "milk shakes," "mushmelons," "schooners," "jiggly bits," "floats" and, although it has lost some luster with overuse, "hooters."...
Thursday, March 27 Seductive silver-screen siren Mae West is the obsession at the heart of Dirty Blonde, the latest production from Arizona Theatre Company, which begins previews with an 8 p.m. show on Thursday, March 27. Snippets of the Hollywood bombshell's career are interspersed with the tale of a budding...
No, I haven't seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The premise rankles my sensibilities way too much (really, a chick is dried up and desperate because she isn't married by 30?). Even though the public at large seems to love it, I have to keep in mind that this is...
Colorado's reigning kings of Americana are amping up the sound that prompted Denver Post readers to vote them the state's "best alt-country band." According to Rainville front man John Common, the group is "heading into an indie-rock-inspired kind of gritty rock 'n' roll territory." Common promises a preview of the...
