Friends of the Library sets book sale for Feb. 24-25
Friends of the Metropolitan Library System will host a book-buying extravaganza Saturday and Sunday, where thousands of patrons come out annually to check out the low prices on hundreds of thousands of donated books. With the sale’s proceeds, Friends is able to fulfill grants requested by the local Metropolitan Library System. Throughout the years, Friends…
‘Much Ado,’ indeed
One of the Bard’s most beloved romantic comedies, “Much Ado About Nothing” tells the story of two couples, one comprised of marriage-averse Benedick and Beatrice, the other of all-too-eager young lovers Claudio and Hero. Through the meddling of others, both sets are duped in different ways. Timothy Berg plays blowhard bachelor-for-life Benedick. His initial pomposity…
A Cat in Paris
Dino, the tabby at the center of “A Cat in Paris,” brings new meaning to the term “cat burglar.” He purrs his way between a petty thief on the job and a little girl at home, befriending both and inadvertently tying their disparate worlds. That occurs after the two-bit bandit gives Dino a fenced, fish-shaped…
Knights of Malice
While “Knights of Malice” is not the best effort from local director Mickey Reece and his version of the Mercury Theatre players, it carries the most distinctive opening: that of the “Star Wars” crawl. Turns out, there’s a reason for the Jedi-rific reference, but I leave that for audiences to discover when the film debuts…
Smag 7: Trucks to teacups
3 Tequilas315 S. Broadway, Edmond 216-0500 <br> Taking over the spot of former El Parian, 3 Tequilas isn’t wasting any time on heating up the casa with your favorite Mexi-dishes. Enjoy white cheese dip to start, followed by its super fajita nachos. Want something different? Try the fish tacos that are made with mahi mahi.…
Bagging the bean
“I drank diet cola like a fiend for years,” Steve Howard said. Before he eventually stopped, the Norman resident was drinking a pair of 2-liter bottles every day. That’s the approximate caffeine content equivalent of 10 cups of coffee. “I just made up my mind to quit and did it,” Howard said. “Not easy, but…
Bite Size: 2-22-12
Need extra encouragement? Tomorrow, Nova is hosting a karaoke night with all tips from the singers benefiting Allied Arts. Buster’s at 5501 N. May. Reckless Kelly provided live music and Mustang Brewery sponsored a local beer tasting to go along with food and free games. Go try the mountain of nachos, Philly steak roll or…
Statuesque
Rex Linn, actor (TV’s “CSI: Miami”) If they don’t give the Academy Award to [Best Actress nominee] Viola Davis for “The Help,” they should not give that award out. She was phenomenal. If any young actor asks me what’s the best thing they could see other than an acting class, I would tell them to…
Lumpy’s Sports Bar and Grill
At Lumpy’s, owner Chris Cochrane and business partner Richard Phillips are the first to say that its food is just as important as the drinks made behind the bar. In their attempt to emphasize the food, Cochrane and Phillips focus on high-quality ingredients. Put the tie away; this is not high-end dining. You don’t need…
The Red Cup
I’m a big fan of meat. Beef and chicken, sure — those are easy. But I like almost every kind of fish, fowl and game. They taste good. That is my criteria for eating. Here’s a flow chart: Does this taste good? If yes, keep eating. If no, stop eating. Pretty simple, yeah? I can…
Linked in
Those crazy kids at ACM@UCO are always at it, what with their Bricktown music school, fancy recordin’ machines and whatnot. They’ve started so darn many bands, the school set up LiveLink, a spring concert series with at least five bands playing its Performance Lab. Five dates are scheduled through May 4, starting Friday. Check out…
Breeding Ground
The latest star in the making looks to be Noah Crawford, a 17-year-old Oklahoma City resident who just landed a leading role on a new Nickelodeon series, “How to Rock.” Crawford will play a techie keyboardist, a role that will allow him to show his physical-comedy chops. “[Noah] started [acting] when he was 6 and…
Grand theft … Zumba?
But state Rep. William Fourkiller thinks outside the box. The Stilwell Democrat is proposing to place a tax on so-called violent video games. His measure, House Bill 2696, seeks a 1 percent tax on the sales of all video games rated “teen,” “mature,” or “adult only,” by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. That revenue, in…
What is life
In that spirit, it’s worth noting that the first bill passed by the Oklahoma state Senate this session wasted no time diving into the so-called culture war. By a 34-8 vote, the Senate passed a measure Feb. 15 stating that life begins at conception. Senate Bill 1433 ensures that fetuses have the same full rights…
God beats labor
As if the Capitol crowd can’t get enough of that old-time religion during the springtime revival known as the legislative session — what with legislative prayer breakfasts, a newly formed prayer caucus and efforts to promulgate Christian creed — some fervent wordsmiths have constructed a state motto to help clarify our identity: “Oklahoma — In…
Hip to be ’Square
At its inception, Foursquare provoked questions like “But what’s it for?” and “Why do my points matter?” from the non-social-media masses; the hyper-connected felt a collective bond of confusion and embraced the new and somewhat stalker-y app with glee. Using the most basic reward system out there — acknowledgment — the app slowly began to…
Branded
Red Dirt artist Brandon Jenkins grew up knowing music would be how he made his unique stamp on the world. Even still, his family encouraged the Tulsa native to attend college. Somewhat reluctantly, he enrolled at Oklahoma State University. “It turned out to be a pretty good choice,” Jenkins said. “I found a pretty good…
The color of law
“We were not allowed to sit with our classmates,” Fisher said in an interview recorded before her death in 1995 at the age of 71. “They moved all the white students to the first three rows. They left three or four blank rows. Then behind that last row, a large wooden chair with a big…
Evolving debate
If enacted, it would require the state Board of Education to assist teachers and administrators in promoting “critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning.” It also allows the use of supplemental textbooks and instruction materials “to…
Let it Wride
Five years later, they found one. After rapidly and relatively assimilating into U.S. culture, the duo discovered Persian rap in 2006. Soon, Nima T and Arash, aka The Wriders, were born. Now with more than half a decade of music under their belt, the cousins have been working relentlessly to make it in America, through…
Limit mercury
I recently passed a billboard west of Portland Avenue on Interstate 40 advertising treatment for brain tumors. When there are enough people in Oklahoma with brain tumors to warrant a huge billboard, there must be environmental causes. Surely we can do a better job of preventing previously uncommon and deadly diseases that so many of…
Lawn games
Bicentennial Park, located west of Walker Avenue between City Hall and the Civic Center Music Hall, is home to several memorials and statues commemorating historic individuals including Wiley Post and Stanley Draper, and events such as the state centennial. In January, the city’s Downtown Design Review Committee (DDRC) was presented with a plan to make…
Seeking subversion
Oklahoma City pastor Robin Meyers said he believes his sixth book, “The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus,” will reach his broadest audience yet. While he previously tried to make the case for progressive Christianity, this new work takes a somewhat different approach. “This book is meant to continue that conversation, but make…
Know ‘Doubt’
Can you ever truly know a person? That is the question pressed in a new production of John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt,” winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. Shanley adapted his play into the 2008 Oscar-nominated film starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. The stage production takes…
The heat is on
Heat isn’t my thing. If I could fast-forward through summer, I would. The thought of that palpitating and near-delirious stretch of 100-plus-degree weather never gets any less uncomfortable for me. But the thought of working out in a sauna-type environment slowly began to appeal to me the further I got in my personal journey through…
Invention Convention set for Feb. 28
Each year, the event is presented by inventor Julian Taylor, who holds more than 100 patented inventions, and former elementary teacher Betty Wright. From entries created by students from kindergarten through grade 12, winners are determined by a panel of more than 30 judges, including volunteers from Tinker Air Force Base and patent officers. left…
War of the Arrows
So consider it high praise that “War of the Arrows” offers an experience decidedly different. While far from the first arrow-based film, this South Korean effort is arguably the classiest and most exciting in memory. Set in the early 17th century, “War” deals with the Manchu empire at large, and the bonds of a family…
The Deadly Spawn: Millennium Edition
In this New Jersey-lensed low-budgeter, a meteor (or something like it) crashing into the woods unleashes an alien menace in the single most hideously decorated house in film history, where the tables, walls and chairs are painted Pepto-Bismol pink. Among the seemingly infinite family members inside the multistory home are a monster-obsessed kid (Charles George…
Rabies
Without spoiling a thing, “Rabies” takes place almost entirely in a trap-laden forest currently populated by the following characters:• a young woman caught in a hole, and her brother who desperately tries to get her out;• a loving couple of forestry rangers and their beloved German shepherd;• four young tennis players — two guys, two…
‘Immortal’ engagement
One of my memories that is most dear includes the blasting of “Bad” and dancing around the kitchen while baking cookies with my mother. While I’m aware that everyone has their own opinions on the King of Pop, I always have been and always will be a fan. So when I heard about Cirque du…
Ocean Heaven / 1911
Namely, your body starts to fail you. No longer are you as quick, nimble and flexible as in your prime. What’s an action hero to do? If you’re Jackie Chan and Jet Li — age 57 and 48, respectively — you start turning more and more to dramas. Coincidentally (or not), both martial-arts superstars have…
Mad Detective
Welcome to “Mad Detective,” where the adjective in the title is an understatement. He and the “Bad Lieutenant” would get along swimmingly. And this is merely the prologue! In this huge Hong Kong hit from 2007 — now on a Blu-ray/DVD combo worth important from the UK’s Eureka! “Masters of Cinema” label — it’s explained that…
Remembering Anthony Shadid
That easy laughter made me underestimate him. Later, when we were both studying journalism at colleges out of state, we met up two or three times for beers over Christmas break. I remember being surprised and impressed by his passion in discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This guy is going places, I thought to myself. And…
Baba Yaga
Based upon the erotic comics of Guido Crepax, the film focuses on Valentina (Isabelle De Funès), a nudie-art photographer/pixie who’s almost run over late one night by a mysterious, black-veiled older woman (Carroll Baker, “Giant,” “The Carpetbaggers”), who claims their meeting is preordained, steals a garter clip for the day and warns her not to…
Exploring ambiguity
One of the biggest stories of Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Shadid’s life is the one he never wrote. In March 2002, while covering the increasing violence in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Shadid was shot in the left shoulder. The bullet damaged some of his vertebrae before exiting his right shoulder, and instead of turning…
Our man in Baghdad
By the time this story goes to print, Anthony Shadid will be gone again from his work in Washington, D.C. — back to Baghdad, chasing after a story of his own. But the 1986 Heritage Hall graduate and now man-about-the-Middle East was at home earlier this month in the D.C. area for a brief rest…
‘A little bit unreal’
As a fellow reporter, Said al-Ghazali, struggled to help him, Shadid wrote later in the Columbia Journalism Review that his thoughts flew to his wife and daughter, and of how useless words are when facing what could be one’s final moment. “In the anarchy of emotions and impulses that ensued, I could only come up…
Anthony Shadid reported dead in Syria
Times photographer Tyler Hicks reportedly carried Shadid’s body back into Turkey from Syria, where they had been gathering information for a week. The pair had not disclosed their assignment to the Syrian government, which maintains strict control on the activity of journalists within their borders. Hicks reportedly performed CPR for half an hour in an…
Royal Baths — Better Luck Next Life
The two comprise Brooklyn’s Royal Baths, and their second record, “Better Luck Next Life,” shows an impressive self-assuredness, conviction and carefully crafted sound that seems only common among the calculating acts from New York these days (see: Sleigh Bells, Body Language). They’re also savage and unafraid of dissonant guitar noises, something they probably learned from…
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
It should have. Had I seen it before now, it handily would have made my list of 2011’s top 10 films. It matters not that “Elite Squad: The Enemy Within” is a sequel to a 2007 film I’m not certain I knew existed; director/co-writer José Padilha’s work is powerful and extraordinary on its own. The…
Massenat wins school board seat
In the election for the District 4 seat, Patrick Gaines received about 26 percent of the vote with 425 votes, while Crystal Hodges got around 19 percent, or 316 votes. Massenat will be sworn in Monday. “We look forward to working with Laura as we continue to improve our school district,” said Karl Springer, OKCPS…
