6/3-6/4Most of us can’t chalk up our blunders to “all the drugs we did in the ’60s.” Deadheads under the age of 50 have had to acknowledge that “acid” today is more strychnine than LSD, and since their parents did all the good drugs, they have no excuse for the…
FRI 6/3Kick the ball! Kick some ass! In this heat, they’ll never last! That’s what we’re hoping, at least, when the Vancouver Whitecaps come down from cooler climates to take on our own Arizona Heatwave in the Women’s United Soccer League’s Western Division. The game, which takes place Friday, June…
FRI 6/3Dear Cubicle Drone,We are pleased with your interest in The Raethier Corp and our latest event, Corposition, at 6 p.m. Friday, June 3, at Lumbre Metal Gallery, 925 Grand Avenue. Robert Kilman, a cog in our collective art machine, has reviewed your vitals and determined your “current condition of…
FRI 6/3Andrew Lockwood discovered he wasn’t the performer he fancied himself as part of the local bands Velveteen Dream and the Heartgraves. “When the Heartgraves disintegrated, I decided I needed to go in another direction,” Lockwood says, “and to very specifically stop trying to rock. Rocking is for people who…
Spoken Here By Mark Abley Mariner, $14 Schlepping Through the Alps By Sam Apple Ballantine, $23.95 Wrong About Japan By Peter Carey Knopf, $17.95 The 8:55 to Baghdad By Andrew Eames Overlook, $24.95 You Can’t Get There From Here By Gayle Forman Rodale, $23.95 A Continent for the Taking By…
The swamp cooler: water + electric fan = cool air. It’s a device as minimal as the desert landscape itself, and it entered American popular culture right here in Arizona. It’s as key to the classic Phoenix tableau as saguaros, ranch houses and retirees. Swampers are about leaving the door…
Deborah Butterfield makes horse statues, but don’t hold it against her. Her horses are not the ones of civic monuments, rendered in elegant marble and carrying some dead white war hero. Nor are they the romantic bronze beasts of flaring nostrils and lush manes cranked out by mediocre Western artists…
Like it or not, guns are as American as Happy Meals and maxed-out credit cards, so making them the theme of a group exhibition invites all kinds of timely and biting cultural criticism. The pieces in “The Gun Show: No Background Check Required” at reZurrection Gallery in Tempe are mixed…
“HOME: Native People in the Southwest”: The Heard ends a yearlong celebration of its 75th anniversary by opening a huge new gallery that houses a larger and improved exhibition of Southwestern Native American art. The new exhibition organizes 2,000 objects by tribe instead of type, includes maps of each tribe’s…
In front of a movie theater, far, far away, a family sits and waits. Dad is chatting with some cyber buddies, and Mom is reading. She reaches over and smoothes the hair of her youngest, who’s playing a video game on her cell phone. Nearby, her two oldest enact a…
Adam Sandler cast as a former pro quarterback — that laughable setup is about the only funny thing about this pointless, witless remake of The Longest Yard, which wasn’t intended to be taken as a comedy in 1974 and won’t be mistaken for one in its latest incarnation. (It was…
It’s fair to say that Madagascar, directed by one man who made Antz and another who used to work on Ren & Stimpy, is virtually plot-free — nothing more, really, than a scene or two from The Great Escape cut and pasted into an episode of Survivor. Its threadbare story…
If it’s been a while since you’ve seen a great work of art, perhaps you’ve forgotten what it feels like: It feels euphoric. At least, that’s the glorious, heel-kickin’ boost that resulted after a screening of Look at Me, by French writer/director/actress/superhero Agnès Jaoui. There was euphoria — and jubilation…
Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a thoroughly professional, frequently spectacular piece of muckraking. But any American who hopes to watch this portrait of unfettered corporate greed, cynical power-lust, and outrageous deception without going postal about an hour into the thing would do well to bring…
The dead aren’t the only ones lying around the graves at Pioneer and Military Memorial Park. On a sunny Tuesday morning, there is clear evidence that someone has been hanging out near the headstones during the night: An uneaten bagel sits atop the grave of a Civil War veteran, a…
“Basically, I’m a very shy person,” says performance artist Trish JusTrish (pictured). “Now the joke is that because I’m terrible at one-on-one relationships, I have my intimate relationships on the stage.” On Thursday, May 26, and Friday, May 27, the “Home” event celebrates JusTrish’s birthday with the audience for the…
5/28-8/21How are Happy Meals marketed? The cynics and curmudgeons among us might scream, “Animated movies!” Fortunately, though, no cheap hamburgers are associated with Bob Sabiston’s new film, Grasshopper. Its inspiration was a random interview in a park with a complete stranger. When asked a lame question about astrology, “he just…
5/27-5/30One thing’s for sure about the ongoing NHL lockout: Neither the owners nor the players at the heart of this ridiculous impasse will ever be mistaken for Mensa members. And while the sporting public at large has responded to the impasse with a collective yawn, that whimpering in the corner…
SAT 5/28You are an MFA candidate. Tuition is sky-high. A 5,000-word short story is due tomorrow. A stack of rejection letters from highbrow publications is piled on the desk. You marinate in your own filth for days. Your partner hates you. And the frequent diarrhea. Oh, the shitty end. You…
SUN 5/29Kneebody isn’t lacking in credibility, not with the L.A.-based, instrumental jazz-rock fusion quintet’s collective résumé that sports gigs with Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and jazz trumpet luminary Dave Douglas. Yet even with academic credentials from New York’s prestigious Eastman School of Music for four of Kneebody’s five members (the…
THU 26 Girlie shows never get old, even if the girlies do. Such is the appeal of Terry Earp’s play Have Tassels, Will Travel, based on the life of legendary burlesque performer CeCe Walker, a.k.a. “Satan’s Angel: The Devil’s Mistress.” Walker herself, long since retired from her days of twirling…
THU 19 Try as you may, you can’t have a social life through osmosis, introvert. But you can celebrate plant life on Thursday, May 19, by visiting Objects Gallery at Biltmore Fashion Park, 24th Street and Camelback, where Craig Pearson and Potheads International host “Tropical.” The event kicks off a…
