Blogs

By Joseph Golfen

Surrounded by autographed guitars and gold records, twelve aspiring rock legends took up their plastic axes in Hard Rock Cafe to compete in the Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Rocks the Hard Rock contest. With a chance to fly to Boston and meet Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler (not to mention scoring his Red Wing Motorcycle) on the line, these video game virtuosos tried to out-rock the competition in the newest version of the popular rhythm-based video game.

See more shots from the Guitar Hero: Aerosmith competition in our slideshow.

Guitar Hero debuted in November of 2005, introducing the concept of musical instrument-shaped peripherals to the home console market. Since then Guitar Hero has had multiple sequels including the latest version Guitar Hero: Aerosmith featuring numerous tracks from Aerosmith’s catalog.

“We’ve had a really good response from the contest,” says Adam Hughes, who hosted Sunday’s event and has traveled around the country with the tour. Phoenix is stop 14 on the 15 city tour. “People usually pick a favorite person and just cheer them on the whole night. Sometimes people cheer loudest for the people who get up there and have never played before, which is really cool.”

Players seemed loose despite the prestigious prize they were vying for. No one tried to complain that the controllers weren’t calibrated correctly or that the song selection was unfair. Most people smiled cheerful as they fell behind a superior opponent, usually taking the opportunity to showboat a little in hopes of landing the crowd favorite prize.

The plastic guitars were tossed around in true rock 'n' roll fashion, with players raising them behind their heads, resting them on their shoulders like violins and holding them high in the air as the songs reached their fevered crescendo.

More

By P.J. Standlee

By day Tristan Moriuchi plugs in numbers and counts beans as an ordinary accountant in Phoenix. At night he has a different job. It doesn’t pay much—in fact it doesn’t pay at all—but it’s all worth it knowing that he’s helping others while protecting the Republic as a Clone Trooper for the 501st Legion’s local Dune Sea Garrison.

Joel Cranson AKA Macen Hyde - see more Imperial costumes in our Star Wars slideshow.

Likewise, Joel Cranson, a mild-mannered upholsterer in Tempe, switches personas to a Jedi warrior by the name of Macen Hyde (self-created) for the 501st sister organization, the Rebel Legion. And Scott Chana, normally a flight instructor in northern Phoenix, moonlights as the raspy voiced, gun-wielding bounty hunter better known as Boba Fett.

Each of these people has one thing in common: they love Star Wars so much that they are willing to pay large amounts of money to create highly detailed costumes in order to wear them in the sweltering heat to raise money for charity.

This weekend, members of the Dune Sea Garrison and the Rebel Legion came together at the Tempe Harkins Cinema Capri to help raise money for the Phoenix Children’s Hospital while promoting the new Star Wars animated movie Clone Wars.

Children, their parents, and movie attendants alike were shocked and amazed to see characters such as Darth Vader eat popcorn and force choke fans, Yoda gave high fives, and others such as Boba Fett, Jedis, Clone and Storm Troopers, Tie and X-wing Pilots, Tusken Raiders posed for pictures with fans for a $5 donation.

The 501st Legion, which is an international fan-based costuming organization consisting of mostly bad-guy characters from the Star Wars movies, often appears in parades, fund raisers and special events to raise money for charities; which means this evil alliance is actually doing some good. Shhh! Don't tell them.

Moriuchi, who joined the 501st Legion last year, said that without the charity aspect to the organization, it would just be playing dress up.

More

By Wynter Holden

It's minutes before midnight on Friday night and I'm packed so tightly against a skinny brunette in a hip-hugging black dress that I can practically feel the outline of her thong against my thigh. The room pulses with energy. The evening's long-awaited final act begins exactly as the clock chimes 12. The crowd erupts in a climax of a scream, and I'm caught in a torrent of sweaty young bodies elbowing towards the stage at the back of the room.

I'm standing in the Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, in a sea of mainly young teenage girls hungry for Stephenie Meyer’s new young adult vampire romance Breaking Dawn; the fourth installment of the popular Twilight series. (Of course, I haven't actually read the books. Luckily, I managed to drag along my good friend "Magic," a 33-year-old divorcee whose niece got him hooked on the series.)

Teens are lining up to make theme T-shirts and get red sequined "love bites" pasted on their necks. There's even a blood drive on site (kudos to Changing Hands for thinking of that clever and conscientious book tie-in) with 17 more people in line waiting to get pricked.

More

By Joseph Golfen

The Sets in Tempe is not the first place that pops into my mind when I think of sexy, dancing girls. Usually when I think about this strip mall venue, I remember the story one of my friends told my about shattering his nose, via head butt, in a punk show mosh pit. So I was surprised when my girlfriend and I took our seats for Romantasy Cabaret’s “Opulent Dreams” show and found the Sets’ modest interior redone with satin drapes around the stage and a floor filled with round tables for VIPs complete with candles and cocktail service.

See more from the cabaret in our slideshow.

We waited for the show to begin. And we waited some more. Nearly forty minutes later the show finally began. This drawn out pace would continue for the rest of the production.

But the audience seemed really excited for the show to begin despite all the waiting around, whistling and cheering as the entire cast of the show came out to take a bow with heavy metal crunching behind them. The crowd was mostly made up of small groups of women, who clutched their colorful drinks with both hands and started expectantly at the stage. There was a smattering of men in the audience, mostly accompanied by wives or girlfriends, but they too cheered as the crew made its way onto the stage.

One of them seated behind whispered to his buddy, “I better see some T&A or I’m gonna be pissed.”

That guy was gone by the start of the second act.

Those that came to the cabaret looking for a raunchy strip show were probably disappointed by the old-school chorus girls who opened the show. It was obvious from this first act that this show was meant to be more fun than full-frontal.

More

2012: The Odyssey: 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 18 and 19, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 20, at East West Exchange

By Clay McNear

December 21, 2012.

12/21/12.

The End Date.

Whatever.

While I’m sure I’ll have mixed feelings if the Apocalypse really does go down on the Winter Solstice in 2012 – I won’t get to see the playoffs! I won’t have to pay my mortgage! – I’ll be royally pissed if nothing at all happens. I’m one of those Luddites who left the house at 11:59 on 12-31-99, just in case the electric stove achieved consciousness at the stroke of Y2K and decided to terminate me. While I was relieved that I wasn’t beheaded by flying oven shrapnel, I was kind of disappointed that, you know, something didn’t go kablooey.

My prediction for December 21, 2012, is that nothing at all happens. It’ll be just another shitty day in the life of humanity.

Here’s where Sharron Rose and I part ways. The co-producer of the quasi-documentary film 2012: The Odyssey views the end of the world as a once-in-a-deathtime opportunity. Her film provides, as one reviewer it, a “positive look at Armageddon.”

Before we get to the upside of annihilation, let’s examine this Armageddon hooey. New Age Chicken Littles assure us that the end is nigh based on two central “facts”: 1) the “Long Count” of the Mayan calendar, which begins with the Mayans’ calculation of Genesis at 3,114 B.C., screeches to a halt on December 21, 2012; 2) the next Galactic Alignment, an every-26,000-years phenomenon in which the plane of our solar system lines up with that of the Milky Way, is set for . . . yep, you guessed it. The nuttiest of nutballs theorize that this convergence will cause the Sun and planets to begin a cosmic freefall into the massive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

More

Coco Mitchell's "Off the Runway: Behind the Scenes at Chado Ralph Rucci" talk: Tuesday, July 15, at Phoenix Art Museum

By Clay McNear

Coco Mitchell is 48. She's a model. This doesn't compute.

Mitchell freely gives her age on her Web site (Coco Mitchell). She's twice as old as your standard-issue dessicated diva, yet she continues to prowl the runways for Bill Blass and Chado Ralph Rucci. Further, she looks really, really fine doing it.

You'd think this would be cause for stoning by her fellow fashionistas -- or at least some old-fashioned shunning -- but everybody seems to love Coco. She's a throwback to a vanished age in which sophistication was a tangible thing, like an exquisite fabric rustling against your thigh. She's also the only person we can think of who is simultaneously foxy -- as in, Foxy Brown foxy -- and elegant a la Audrey Hepburn.

Thinking about elegance got me thinking: Who are our new standard-bearers of refinement? I went poking around on the Web and finally landed on a site called Art & Style Magazine Online. Here are their picks for "United States Most Elegant Stars," which sound about right, meaning yecch:

Naomi Watts, Charlize Theron, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liv Tyler, Renee Zellweger, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Garner, and Nicole Kidman.

Zeta-Jones came close, but her frequent filmic missteps and willing decision to mate with Michael Douglas doomed her in the end. As for the rest, I wouldn't trust one of 'em to walk my dog, much less refrain from making a scene at an important business function.

Coco Mitchell, bless her graceful heart, makes an entrance, as you'll see if you attend her talk at Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with PAM's "Chado Ralph Rucci" exhibit. She's perfectly positioned herself for a transition from runway to executive suite, so there's probably no one better to cast a light on the inner workings of the fashion industry, from front row to loading dock.

Should be educational. Plus, she's hot.

Coco Mitchell's "Off the Runway: Behind the Scenes at Chado Ralph Rucci" talk is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 15, at Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 North Central Avenue. Admission is free. Call 602-257-1880 or go to Phoenix Art Museum.

Max and the Marginalized: Tuesday, July 15, at Modified Arts

By Clay McNear

Max Bernstein, Jon Ryggy, and Dave Watrous -- the musicians who comprise the political-punk band Max and the Marginalized -- will be shocked by what I'm about to do.

What's that, you ask? Lump them in with Vanilla Ice and Hannah Montana. And Insane Clown Posse and the Brady Kids. And MC Hammer and the whole motley crew of '80s hair-metal bands.

Why, you ask? Hey, if you write and record a song a week, post it for download as part of your aesthetic oeuvre, and utilize that process as a way to get attention, it's a gimmick, dudes, and there's a razor-thin line separating you from a Max Factor dirtbag like Marilyn Manson.

One of Max and the Marginalized's weekly songs "Weeknights at Six"

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Some pretty fucking great rock 'n' roll moments have come out of gimmickry. Gene Simmons' serpentine tongue. Angus Young's schoolboy knickers. Devo's lamp-shade chapeaus. The New York Dolls flopping around on stage like a bunch of department-store dummies. Iggy Pop flinging himself into a field of shattered glass. Screamin' Jay Hawkins rising from his coffin like a screeching banshee. Spinal Tap's volume-to-11 amps.

Nothing remotely so memorable has come out of the Max and the Marginalized camp thus far, but then, the L.A. band's only been with us for 30-something songs -- and weeks. Their best quality is a bludgeoning topicality that, on the inverse, is often used more as a club than a carrot. Their least-appealing trait is a shrillness that they, the converted, blast out to the pagan unwashed. Here's an example from their personal MySpace manifesto:

"In a time when there is more of a need for people to sing about political and social change than ever, bands singing about their little eight-foot-wide social circles multiply like rats. We write and record a song once a week about something happening at the moment, post if for people to hear and share and move on to the next song and topic. There are political bands that will write a song about the war and coyly cross their fingers and hope that it goes on long enough for their song to still be relevant enough to make the charts at their album's street date. That is fucking nonsense. Songs about now should be heard now."

Reactions to the above: 1) Conversion never works that way, guys. 2) That last line -- "Songs about now should be heard now" -- is perfect. Next time, you should leave it at that.

More

PJ Standlee

They are six-feet tall, made of super vacuum-formed solid aluminum and boast six 250 mm woofers, a 250 mm midrange speaker and a state-of-the-art 165 mm tweeter. They’re called "Muon," and they just might be the best sounding speakers money can buy – if you have $140,000 to spend on a pair speakers.

Muon, a very high-end pair of speakers that cost $140,000, was on display on July 10 at Jerry’s Video and Audio in North Scottsdale.

On July 10, a crowd of lucky audiophiles filled Jerry’s Video and Audio store in north Scottsdale to listen to a pair of Muon speakers made by United Kingdom-based KEF. Potential Buyers with the wherewithal to withstand the price shock had better act fast: only 100 pairs were made, 44 of which have been sold, and in September, KEF plans to raise the price to $165,000 because of rising prices in gas and raw materials.

More

The 4th Dimension: 7 p.m. Saturday, July 5, at Space 55 Theatre

By Clay McNear

David Lynch, blecch. He’s the Alan Rudolph of cinematic subversion, and here’s how much I dislike him: I’d rather writhe through a Rudolph triple-bill of The Moderns, Choose Me, and Trouble in Mind before seeing Eraserhead again.

Serendipitously, I’ve found someone who not only agrees with me on the Lynch-sucks point, but sports a mysterious nom de guerre (The Vocabulariast) and writes for a Web site (moviecynics.com) that pretty much sums up my artistic Weltanschauung.

I stumbled upon The Vocabulariast while scouting reviews of a 2006 flick titled The 4th Dimension, which No Festival Required is bringing to town for a screening. Dimension’s a trippy, nonlinear, black-and-white tale about a moody loner who finds Albert Einstein’s Unified Field Theory journal and gets all tangled up in time – Einstein’s would-be fourth dimension.

Reportedly made for about $75,000, 4D’s one of those movies that’s pregnant with symbolism (the protagonist is a clock repairman named Jack Emitni, which is “in time” spelled backward). Its genre can best be described as “festival/arthouse.” Gushing critics, who we imagine puffing pipes and wearing jackets with arm patches, have name-dropped Kafka, Darren Aronofsky, Lewis Carroll, and, of course, David Lynch.

After bitch-slapping Lynch, The Vocabulariast goes on the praise The 4th Dimension, an expanded short film co-directed and -written by Tom Mattera and Dave Mazzoni. The following excerpts from the moviecynics.com review tell you just about everything you need to determine if 4D is for you:

More

Mark Mothersbaugh’s “Beautiful Mutants” reception: 6 p.m. to midnight Friday, July 4, at Perihelion Arts

By Clay McNear

Mark Mothersbaugh lives a symmetrical life of wild extremes.

Consider:

• He’s was born and still lives in Akron, Ohio – all-American birthplace of the rubber tire, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the soap-box derby – but made his name as frontman for the band Devo, which posited that mankind was digressing as a species.

• Mothersbaugh and Devo spooked the old folks with ditties like “Whip It” and “Mongoloid,” but Mark is nowadays best known as a soundtrack specialist for kiddy/tween fare like Clifford the Big Red Dog, Crash Bandicoot, and Herbie: Fully Loaded.

• The man who scored the flicks How to Eat Fried Worms and Popeye’s Voyage: The Quest for Pappy owns an honorary doctorate from Kent State University.

• Mothersbaugh is an accomplished visual artist who’s legally blind.

See? Symmetry.

More

By Joseph Golfen

Jerryd Bayless was in a tough spot. Two towering players blocked his path, but the Phoenix native was determined to take it to the hoop. He swerved between the two giants, jumped and seemingly flew toward the backboard. Gracefully juggling the ball from hand to hand to avoid the outstretched limbs of his opponents, he then gently rolled the ball into the net.

It was one of many amazing shots made by Bayless and 23 other high school athletes participating in the first Boost Mobile Elite 24 Hoops Classic, a high school all star game played in Harlem’s Rucker Park.

Now you can see the shot for yourself courtesy of a new documentary released just this weekend. Gunnin’ for that #1 Spot is the latest cinematic work from Adam Yauch who started directing independent films before forming a little rap group now famously known as The Beastie Boys and shooting many of the group’s more memorable videos.

“I thought it would be interesting to look at these players,” Yauch added. “It was amazing given the history of the Rucker."

This year’s first round pick for the Indiana Pacers, Jarryd Bayless was one of eight players selected to be featured in Gunnin’.

More