7/2/2008

The MCB closes its season in high Bolshoi style.
By Leonard Eureka

Metropolitan Classical Ballet always manages a quality show despite its shoestring budget. Latest example: the season-closing program in Bass Performance Hall last weekend, with a bevy of guest dancers augmenting company regulars in a dancefest second to none seen this year. There were bumps and bruises along the way to be sure, but the overall effect was “Wow!” The meat of the evening was a revival of co-artistic director Paul Mejia’s “Romeo and Juliet,” set to the Tchaikovsky Fantasy Overture and seamlessly danced by Olga Pavlova and Yevgeni Anfinogenov. Pavlova’s gentle lyricism and inner warmth are wonderfully suited to the... (read more...)

It’s Not Nice to Fool the Taxpayers
By BETTY BRINK

It was apparently the best-kept secret in town. The Tarrant County College District announced yesterday that it has bought the RadioShack compound for $238 million for its downtown campus, suddenly abandoning more than half of its grandiose and controversial plans to build what one critic had called a "Taj Mahal on the Trinity" east of the Tarrant County courthouse, near the site where Fort Worth was founded. But college spokeswoman Donna Darovich said the RadioShack purchase has been under consideration since 2006 and actually in negotiations since October 2007. Still, during that same period, and amid roiling controversy, a... (read more...)

Little Mikey’s Big Adventure
By Eric Griffey and Jeff Prince

Ever since his election in 2003, Mayor Mike Moncrief rarely if ever speaks to Fort Worth Weekly writers. So when the Fort Worth Cats handed out Moncrief bobble-head dolls earlier this month, we took advantage of the opportunity and convinced Little Mikey to spend some quality time with us. Wanting to make it up to us for all the unreturned phone calls, he took us out for a night on the town. Scroll through the pictures and follow the captions of Little Mikey’s big... (read more...)

Cagigal’s magical gold-plated special
By Jeff Prince

Some guys are so predictable you can set your watch by them. For instance, go to Los Alamos Café most any afternoon around 2 and you’ll find Frank Cagigal sitting at the lunch counter, wearing jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes, watching Hawaii Five-0 reruns, and giving everyone a hard time -- the owners, the cooks, other customers, and especially the waitress, Norma. I’ve been a regular customer at Los Alamos for 20 years and have seen Cagigal’s butt planted at that lunch counter a million times. One of his typical verbal jousts with Norma goes something like this: “Norma, quit talking on the phone so loud.” “I’m taking an... (read more...)

A Willie nice house - Online Exclusive!
By JEFF PRINCE

Willie Nelson: An Epic Life covers the singer’s life from conception to now, and it especially resonates while discussing his years in Fort Worth, where he lived in the 1950s. The book mentions two of his former home addresses, and so, for a goof, I drove by the houses to see where Willie used to live when he was a struggling radio disk jockey, door-to-door salesman, musician, and Sunday School teacher. Both houses are on the South Side of town, near Loop 820 and McCart Avenue. The first one I stopped at was on Sharondale Street, a small frame house with vinyl siding in a weary neighborhood that’s slowly crumbling under the... (read more...)

Mad Splatter
By JEFF PRINCE

Fort Worth artist Scott Gentling lived up to his reputation as the local art scene’s Mad Hatter during an April 5 reception at The Studio, his private art house on the city’s West Side. Needing a photograph of the reclusive artist to accompany my story on his commission to paint a new portrait of Amon G. Carter, I wrangled an invitation to the reception, marking the unveiling of a new exhibit, “The Gentlings: A Retrospective” featuring a series of astounding watercolors of Texas birds, plus various portraits, and Aztec scenes painted by Scott and his late twin brother Stuart, who died two years ago. Coincidentally, I had... (read more...)