A&E
Soundscraper
Sending Vegas’ Dirty Panties to Japan
May 29th, 2013
Local label SquidHat Records is harnessing the crowd-funding power of Indiegogo to put homegrown all-girl punk band The Dirty Panties on a plane to the Land of the Rising Sun. Read more »
Music
Gang Activity
How a Seattle insurance agent turned a motorcycle club into a rock band
May 29th, 2013
Like a good neighbor, Brent Amaker processes claims in his State Farm office in West Seattle. Working in the insurance industry isn’t the most glamorous way for a musician to pay the bills—especially when by night he leads an art-rocked old-school country band called The Rodeo, which sounds like Johnny Cash trapped in the violent universe of a ’70s spaghetti western movie soundtrack. Read more »
Stage
The Deification of Michael Jackson
Will Cirque du Soleil’s Michael Jackson ONE take celebrity idolatry to un-Vegas-like levels?
May 29th, 2013
Sin City is succumbing to a saint … or so it seems. Read more »
Concert Review: Kendrick Lamar
May 24th, 2013
"He said one day I'd be on tour," Kendrick Lamar recounts about his uncle in the big hit "Money Trees," and boy, was he right. The Compton-bred rapper had scores of people in line around the third floor of the Cosmopolitan Wednesday awaiting his Boulevard Pool performance. Read more »
Movies
Fast and Fantastic
The sixth times the charm for this frenzied car-chase franchise
May 24th, 2013
Fast & Furious 6, which surely maxed out Universal’s tank-top budget for the year, and sustains its joyful, unpretentious ridiculousness so perfectly that I secretly hoped the “6” meant “hours long,” ends with a disclaimer, the sort of legalese that typically arrives at the tail end of the closing credits. To paraphrase: On the way out of this theater, should you get the urge to drive your tank into traffic across a towering bridge in Spain, or feel the need to race a Dodge Charger down a runway and bring down a military transport with harpoons, Universal Pictures will not be held responsible. Read more »
Movies
'The Hangover Part III' is Forgettable
The trilogy that spawned a thousand bachelor parties has lost steam with its final installment
May 24th, 2013
Slow, sentimental and somewhat sedated, the third Hangover movie isn’t so much exhausted of outrageous “Oh no, they didn’t!” ideas as it is spent of energy. And they knew it, too. The only raunchy moment is stuffed into the closing credits, a “we forgot to do that” afterthought. Read more »
Showstopper
Retitled '80s Show' Improves but Should Adjust Mockery Quotient
May 21st, 2013
Hand me my dictionary … Let’s see … “Determined.” Adjective. See “Sirc Michaels.” Read more »
Movies
Third Time’s the Charm
The Hangover’s hilarious Ken Jeong opens up about the Tao of Chow
May 21st, 2013
Not many people can say that jumping naked out of the trunk of a car changed their life forever. Even fewer people can claim that they jumped naked out of the trunk of a car onto Bradley Cooper’s face. And yet for Ken Jeong, whose breakout role in The Hangover series (the anticipated third and final installment of which hits theaters May 24) as the flamboyant, drug-addled gangster Leslie Chow has earned him a not-so-cult following as the funniest character actor in Hollywood—both of these things are true. Read more »
Reading
SPF 50 Shades of Good Writing
Put your e-reader in your beach bag—the summer book season is full of hot, familiar hits and free of cheesy S&M romances
May 21st, 2013
Summer is right around the corner, which means bookstore shelves will be crowded with the usual mix of serious fiction and lightweight entertainment. The next few months will bring readers some hotly anticipated sequels, a number of auspicious literary debuts, three new James Patterson novels with a combined print run of more than 2 million copies, and a showdown between Dan Brown and Khaled Hosseini that will make the 2013 best-seller list look a whole lot like 2003. Read more »
