Photo of the Week: Week of April 30th

Here's your photo of the week courtesy of Lauren Herbst, a photography student at UNT. 

Photo of the Week: Week of April 23rd

This photo was taken on the streets of Denton, TX with an iPhone4 using the ProHDR app.

It was taken by Dionne Hartnett. You can view more of her work here or on her FLICKR. 

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The Idea Channel recently posited a question about Instagram (and phone photography in general). Watch their video below and let us know what you think in the comments. 

Interview with NV Cupcakes

They re the winner of UNT s Cake Decorating Contest and have received awards in March 2012 for Taste of North Texas and April 2012 for Best of Denton. They re NV Cupcakes and they re taking Denton by sugar storm.

Located in Corinth since November 2010, NV Cupcakes are soon to open their Denton location at the corner of McKinney and Austin Street.

While a spot on the square is absolutely desirable, Van and Ngoc are more stoked about their presence east of the square where shop-side parking is always guaranteed, so you can transfer your cupcakes to your car with ease. Their cupcakes are contained in trademark chocolate brown boxes: People see the brown boxes and they know what s coming, says Van with a grin.

Van and Ngoc began their endeavors with cupcakes through birthday parties among friends word spread about their delicious little treats, and a few parties on the weekend soon turned into making up to 500 cupcakes every weekend for parties, weddings, and other occasions. We have to agree with Van when she says that cupcakes are awesome because they are convenient and you have choices. Mmm, mmm. Many choices, indeed.

Sisters Van and Ngoc Nguyen are UNT graduates (Go Mean Green!) and are two incredibly skilled cupcake craftswomen. Their cupcakes are super fluffy and made with real buttercream frosting. Van and Ngoc make them in small batches to control the quality, and all ingredients are fresh-- you can even find chunks of fruit in some recipes. They feature unique flavors like Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti, New York Cheesecake (yes, it involves graham cracker crumbs), and seasonal flavors of Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint.

Here s some awesome news:
NV Cupcakes will have a booth at the Arts and Jazz Festival, which begins TODAY! Van and Ngoc will be selling their fabulous cupcakes and lemonade. So delicious! So cute! You won t be able to pass up these heavenly morsels.

NV Cupcakes' Denton location will open in early May at 118 East McKinney Street, Denton, TX 76201. More photographs can be found below.

Overview of 2012 Denton Annual Citizen Report

Saturday saw many mailboxes stuffed with the City of Denton s annual citizen update, Denton Moving Forward. In this neat little ~6 x 12 fold-out, lots of interesting information about city-related milestones that occurred in 2011 (as well as a few things that are set to happen in the years to come) was compiled together. As far as we know, this pamphlet went out to every City of Denton Utilities member. For those of you who either didn t receive a copy or accidentally threw it out along with your Bed Bath and Beyond mailer, we ve compiled a list of the eight things that stood out to us as interesting. Read below and if we missed something that you found interesting, let us know in the comments.

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1. Remember when Rayzor Ranch was going to be a Southlake Town Center-style shopping center and be comprised of all sorts of interesting shops and maybe a movie theatre or something? Well guess what. We re moving even further away from the initial vision and installing another big box store next to the Wal-Mart and Sam s Club that have been sitting there for a while. That s right, folks, soon, you ll be able to buy boring clothing and housewares from...Kohl s on University.

2. The City of Denton has a Youtube channel featuring videos with DPL s Library Larry and newsbreaks from Denton TV. It s bested only by the ex-pat Eli Gemini s Youtube channel.

3. Denton is going to be making quite a few bike-friendly changes in the immediate future. The cover of Denton Moving Forward is even covered in sharrows. You can read the newly adopted Bike Plan here. There you can see how Denton plans on reducing traffic accidents, creating more cycling-related facilities such as Querencia and gradually turning Denton into a bike sports destination over the next ten years.

4. The Denia Recreation Center in South Denton has a 35 black-light mural in their gymnasium that you need 3D glasses to see. Yes, this is for real. We ve never really thought of Pink Floyd s The Wall as good workout music, but when you ve got a black light 3D mural near you, what other choice do you have?

5. The grand re-opening for the Golden Triangle Mall is actually expected to happen in 2012. Apparently construction has already begun, but we re unsure as to what exactly has been changed at this point.

6. Thanks to a grant from Think Green Waste Management, Keep Denton Beautiful will be installing solar-powered trash and recycling receptacles around Fry Street. They should be perfect receptacles for that post-Lou s-binger vomit.

7. In addition to the awesome selection of ebooks that the Denton Public Library has already added to their selection, the DPL is also making a move towards RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology for checking books back in and out in an extremely-timely fashion.

8. North Lakes Park is making a move to be more friendly to the blind and other visually impaired by adding in things such as tactile bricks.

Notable Absences from the pamphlet:

DCTA changes made in the past year. (A-Train anybody?)
Construction on Fry St. (when the heck is that supposed to be finished and what type of retail will we see there?)
Business moving in a north-eastern direction from the square (NV Cupcakes, Oak Street Drafthouse)

Photo of the Week: Week of April 9th

Here's your photo of the week, courtesy of Harrison Jacobs:

This photo was shot using a Kodak disposable camera in Costa Rica during spring break.

Do you have a recent photo that you're particularly fond of? Email it to us at Molly@wedentondoit.com and share!

REVIEW: When People Lead (Play)

Here's another piece from Chris over at Stage Directions. We always enjoy reading his heady, thoughtful musings on theatre and the like. In this one, Chris goes to check out a play at Art Six and winds up ruminating on the importance of truth in art, connecting the play to the recent This American Life episode, "Retraction." Read through and let us know what you think. 

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Alan Bounville in WHEN PEOPLE LEAD

On Sunday night, I went up to Art 6 in Denton to work on the musical I am writing with a couple of the owners of the shop. I didn’t expect to run into a production happening in the back room but when I arrived, there was something being set up in the back room. Beginning Spring Break is always a challenge, I almost always end up wasting the time and not completing the stack of tasks that I have set for myself. One of the tasks was to have a new blog post and the week wasn’t looking like it was going to bring anything my way. Then, a couple of things happened; Mike Daisey, the revered monologuist cum activist was deposed from his throne by his own hand and I found myself as the member of a small audience sitting in on WHEN PEOPLE LEAD. Alan Bounville wrote the play from a collection of interviews and claimed “verbatim” theatre in that respect. He is involved in a movement called Into The Light which supports people sharing their stories regarding the LGBTQ movement and Bounville is walking across the country sharing his story and trying to build awareness for the struggle for equal rights. Pushing a large cart with a rainbow flag, he began his walk in Seattle and came through Denton on Sunday with little promotion around his production. The play itself is a loose narrative that shares interviews and his own experience as “local color.” Bounville is first an activist and his acting showed commitment if little depth. There were a couple of the monologues, mostly from older men who participated in actions years ago that were quite moving; the story of one man caring for his dying partner and trying to find an apartment was the highlight of the evening for me. I can’t characterize the piece as anything but agitprop, there was a moment when video from a die-in in Grand Central played behind Bounville shouting “Civil Rights Now!!” repeatedly that perfectly captured the essence of the piece. Within the stories, the undercurrent of activism was never far below the surface. While I understand, and fully support, the quest for rights that many LGBTQ people struggle for daily, as a straight audience member, I felt out of place. Many of the issues that Bounville talked about and showed in performance were so specifically tailored to a queer audience that I felt like an oppressor sitting in the audience. I had planned to talk to him after the show but many of the audience (7 in all) were talking to him about their own experiences and I didn’t feel that my “talk to me about your process” had a place in the discussion. Bounville wore his activist flag on his sleeve and bragged about his own hunger strikes and familial problems within the wider context of the struggle. The art was sublimated to his own experience.

“Why is this a problem?” you might ask. 

It isn’t, for Bounville. Would be my answer. For Bounville. 

Now to the larger issue. I have been listening to This American Life since at least 1997 and have missed very few episodes. Running, cycling or working around the house, TAL has been the soundtrack of a good portion of my life. I also listen to Studio 360 and the episode about Nikola Tesla was the first time that I hear of Mike Daisey. The story that he told in that episode was compelling and laced with historical details. History aside, I never thought about the veracity of his points; history is falsifiable not subjective (arguably) and so the stories he told were not something I spent a lot of time thinking about. Then, sometime last week, I heard about the retraction episode. Newspapers, magazines and websites are where I have encountered retractions, TAL didn’t seem like the kind of place where a retraction makes sense. Then I did some research into the story. If you haven’t followed the story here it is, in brief. 

Mike Daisey, one day, decided to look deeply into where his favorite devices come from when he saw some pictures on a website that were found on an iPhone that had been taken in the factory where they were made. He booked a trip to China and spent some time in and around the Foxconn plant where many Apple devices are built. He painted a bleak picture of overwork, underage workers, unsafe working conditions, repetitive motion injuries, illegal unions and a police state-style surveillance system set up in the factor. Foxconn, you may remember, was where there were a number of suicides by workers in the recent past. Daisey and his interpreter, Cathy Lee, went all around Shenzhen talking to “hundreds” of workers to corroborate the story that Daisey was sure was there. He created a monologue called “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” which had an amazing impact for a solo performer. Daisey put himself front and center (as in all of his shows) and was suddenly the poster child for Apple abuse, not nearly as salacious as it sounds. He even had part of his show broadcast on TAL in January and it seemed like things couldn’t get better for him. Then the debunking began. Between January and last week, reporters from all over the NPR universe found problems with Daisey’s account, billed at the Public Theatre as “non-fiction”. It was fiction. Lots of it. Moments that killed on stage were completely fabricated and Daisey was called to the carpet by Ira Glass on the Retraction Episode in a public and painful way. I don’t need to talk about the history of fabricated stories, if you have been paying attention they are all over the place. I’m not interested in jumping on the Daisey bashing bandwagon, what I am interested in is posing a question. Daisey said that his work in the theatre, fabricated or not, was effective and he stood by what he called the strongest work he had ever done. Lying, in the theatre, wasn’t an issue because the theatre is concerned with creating real, human moments. The emotional narrative that Daisey continues to tell, though in slightly altered form, is acceptable and good because he understood that his experiences in China did not add up to what he thinks of as a powerful show. 

Reduced: As long as you create a strong, satisfying emotional narrative, regardless of whether you bill it as non-fiction or fiction, you have succeeded. What does this say for other performers who present something close to truth? With this story in my head, Bounville’s performance caused questions of the “verbatim” quality of his work. Was it really verbatim? Did it matter? 

I talked last night with Brad McEntire about what he thought, as a solo performer, about the issue. Hopefully in the next installment we will have some of his thoughts about it. I think what came from the discussion last night that really stuck with me is that Daisey has become more of an activist and less of a playwright of late. His work has taken on a victim mentality, a holier than thou mentality that can clearly be understood by looking at some of his more recent work. I watched a video on Slate.com that showed an audience member leaving (along with a large group) and pouring water on Daisey’s papers. His response, indignation, is telling. He called on the audience member to explain himself and when he didn’t, he read into the man’s motivations for injuring him in such a personal way. Interesting to hear him on the other side of the table. 

Listening to the retraction, one of the most powerful and painful moments was when Daisey came back into the studio after recording some other moments of the show and tried to point out that some of the experiences he had were real. Glass pointedly said “I don’t believe you, I can’t believe you.” Now, I don’t believe in the willing suspension of disbelief. I believe in something called “the blend” which I will not go into here. Belief in a performer and story are intertwined in my mind. If the performer doesn’t believe it, I don’t believe it. If I am supposed to be listening to something that is purported to be true and it isn’t, I don’t believe it. It doesn’t change the truth of the issue (global labor struggle) but it does affect my view of the performer/writer as a reliable narrator. If one is unreliable, doubt is cast. 

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So that is the question. Does it matter? I’m conflicted about it. Surely when one agrees to be held to the highest journalistic standard, as Daisey did in having his work presented on TAL, it does matter. In the theatre, I don’t know that it does. I always go in to a performance with the expectation of at least someartistic license. In an academic lecture or news conference, not so much. 

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More reviews and interviews of this caliber can be found at his blog.

Photo of the Week: Week of April 2nd

Here's your photo of the week, courtesy of Lauren Hensens. 

Here's what Lauren had to say about her photo: 

"This photo was shot in a pine forest right outside of Lake Sharon. I often walk the trails over there (camera always in hand) and came upon this couch one evening! I love this area, I have many wonderful memories here. Its very different from most of North Texas' scenery. There is also a creek running through the clearing. Sadly, I have heard rumors that they plan to tear down the woods."

Shot with: Canon EOS Rebel T2i, EF-S 18-55mm IS Lens, 1/200, f/3.5"

Check out more of Lauren's work here. 

Do you have a recent photo that you're particularly fond of? Email it to us at Molly@wedentondoit.com and share!

20 Facts (and a few opinions) about Oak St. Draft House

Denton is in a sort of bar renaissance at the moment. 2011 brought us Paschall and right around the corner (not to mention down the street) was Oak Street Draft House (full name Oak St. Drafthouse and Cocktail Parlor). So far both have proven to be popular establishments. The latter has been open since the beginning of March. We've learned quite a few things about the Oak St. Drafthouse during that time. Below are a few of those things. 

Inside Oak St. Drafthouse.                                                               

1. The Oak Street Draft House & Cocktail Parlor features 48 beers on tap.
2. Half of those are from Texas: Deep Ellum, Franconia, Rahr, Live Oak out of ATX, Shiner, No Label out of Katy, Southern Star out of Conroe, and a few from Houston. The rest are all high-end rarities. 
3. A third of the beers rotate seasonally.
4. The thought behind the place seems enormous and subdued all at once. John Williams, the owner of this fine establishment, certainly has an eye for comfort and aesthetics.
5. The place used to be the late vintage clothing store Time Bandits. Nostalgia alert: may evoke a bittersweet sentiment.
6. If you’re keen on things anachronistic, you’ll like this place. It’s like going back to a time you only know through books.
7. The walls and mantles are decked with creepy photos, fascinating photos, lovely photos, family photos, old men in top hats photos, sports teams photos, old cowboys photos....
8. With the trophies, barber chair, tractor stools, and cozy lounge space, the OSDH&CP has a very masculine tone to it...
9. While number 8 is very true, one could also say the place is feminine, as well, with curvy, ornate sofas covered in velvet and floral patterns, and soft colors all around.
10. The house (dare I say home?) has gardens in the front, and inside are wood floors and high ceilings.
11. John had a buddy of his blow and shape beautiful and unique glass handles instead of using large tap handles with perhaps, say, the brew name-- and instead of the usual, and downright unappealing little black tap handles.
12. They use small glass tap handles as to not hide the bartender from the patrons, and to keep that open feel, which compliments the rest of the house's atmosphere fantastically.
13. THEY HAVE A PATIO LIKE YOU NEVA SEEN IN DENTON. Trust me, it’s huge.
14. Inside is non-smoking.
15. Bring your own food and have a picnic on the patio. 
16. They have both evening happy hour specials from 4-7pm daily and late night specials from 9-11pm. 
17. It has the potential to have some great outdoor concerts/events. 
18. It’s just off the square and nearby the Industrial Street developments-- new restaurants, favorite restaurants, new apartments.
19. The OSDH&CP puts on honky tonk/bluegrass Sunday Fundays with the best mimosas and bloody marys around.
20. People now have a reason to travel eastward on Oak St. past the square. 

What do you think is the best about the Oak Street Draft House & Cocktail Parlor?

Photo of the Week: Week of March 12th

Here's your photo of the week, courtesy of Alec Gates on Flickr. Do you have a recent photo you might think would qualify for photo of the week? Email it to us at Molly@wedentondoit.com and share!

This photo was taken with a Canon 60D body, Bower fisheye 8mm f/3.5 lens, a Sunpak 522 flash and a dude with flaired nostrils. 

Review: Avenue Q - Music Theatre of Denton

Below is an in-depth review of Avenue Q originally written by Christopher David Taylor of Stage Directions that he was kind enough to share with us. More reviews and interviews of this caliber can be found at his blog. We'll hopefully see more from him soon. 

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When I was a kid growing up in South-Central Montana, just a stone’s throw from Colorado and the creators of “South Park”, I dreamt of a world where the profane, perverse baby voice that I practiced in the parking lot of the local IGA would someday find a voice. Then, as now, the idea of a child or childlike object spouting the darker aspects of humanity was at once funny and disturbing to passersby. I got some very strange looks from the old ladies walking in to do their shopping as my little baby voice spouted out things that would make my physics teacher, who had just spent a summer on board a NOAA vessel, blush. As things progressed and I became more and more interested in the theatre as an art form, I noticed that certain things were becoming acceptable; things that were unthinkable in the isolated upper midwest were finding a foothold in far off New York City. 

“Avenue Q,” first produced in 2003, captured the spirit of a depressed and newly vulnerable nation. Puppets were racist, misogynist, serial masturbators who had degrees and fully realized sex lives. The foil for humanity, the puppet, was a safe avenue for the expression of the darker feelings that had lain under the surface and were boiling up, finally, in the face of a growing war on terror and the erosion of civil liberties under the Bush administration. This all may seem to be high-flown rhetoric, but “Avenue Q” found an audience in NYC that craved an outlet. If puppets are calling each other racist and saying it is ok, if the childhood dreams of Sesame Street and people coexisting with Muppets could be a reality, wouldn’t it be more fun if they were more like us? 
Music Theatre of Denton secured the Regional Premier for Amateur Production rights, Theatre Three is producing the musical in the coming months, and MTD found their audience opening night with an almost packed house. This production doesn’t suffer on the technical side. The set and lighting both serve their parts in this production and it is easy to imagine the apartments on any street peopled by both puppets and humans. Puppets, rented, are present and as raunchy as expected; some of the puppets even seem to be channeling their professional lineage by sounding as close to the Broadway production as possible. Trekkie, voiced by Ted Minette, is perhaps most guilty of cribbing from the cast recording. Perverted and lively, hearing what amounts to character theft come from the mouth of a puppet may be a sort of homage to the original production, in this case it comes across as what the majority of the performers in this production do: present a reasonable facsimile of what many in the audience had already seen in NYC. 

For some audience members, this isn’t a problem. For me, the shining performances came from actors that created their own versions of the characters. Kate Monster, voiced sweetly by Nikki Cloer, is perhaps the most genuine of the puppet characters. Cloer’s puppet voice was spot on, her face, while not distracting from her big, pink persona, was interesting to watch as the emotions of the character were played out. Not so with her love interest Princeton. Voiced by Matt Purvis, Princeton was flat and emotionless. The highs and lows of the character were seemingly vacant from Purvis’ face and it was difficult to focus on the story when the performer so clearly wasn’t present. As disappointing as this was, the lack of character was more than made up for in two of the human characters. Olivia Emile, playing the equivalent of an Asian Jim Crow, was fantastic. Her portrayal of Christmas Eve, the harpy wife of the average Brian (played by Eric Ryan), Emile played with the careful balance between forcing a stereotype and finding something in her character that was redeemable. Numbers like “The More You Ruv Someone” and “It Sucks To Be Me” were well served by Emile’s powerful voice. She was joined in this regard by Erica Cole (Gary Coleman) and Kelsey Macke (Lucy The Slut). All three of these performers raised the level of the show from mediocre to good, anytime one of them was onstage, the energy of the production jumped to a new level. Cole’s “You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)" channeled the recently passed Etta James and Whitney Houston both. As Gary Coleman, Cole was clearly enjoying herself and she was perhaps the most comedic of the human characters. Macke positively exuded sexuality, as much as a puppet can, and made her number one of the highlights of the first act. 

One of the other standout puppet performances came from Chris Jordan as Rod, the sexually repressed, closeted gay puppet. Jordan clearly loved performing and it made his character one that I kept hoping would come back on stage. Following closely behind, the Bad Idea Bears bear mention. Travis Turek and Anna Marie Boyd were hilarious as the...bad angels that Princeton has on his shoulders.  

Jordan’s love for the opportunity to portray a character in “Avenue Q” is one of the elements that makes community theatre so appealing when it comes to avocational actors. Rather than looking at the performance as a step to something much bigger, each of these actors had the opportunity to step outside of their daily grind and transport themselves and the audience to a place where a puppet can say “Fuck you!!” and the things that a large majority of the audience would never utter are heard in full volume from the stage. 
Director, Bill Kirkley, did an admirable job with his cast, moments were just long enough and the flow of the production never slowed. Perhaps one moment that should be mentioned, passing hats during “The Money Song” completely pulled the audience out of the production. Lights were brought up and while the actors were singing and dancing (if choreographer Stephanie Felton’s work could be called dancing), the audience was digging in purses and wallets to fill the hats coming around.

Overall, this production will not disappoint the avid fan of “Avenue Q” (I saw at least two T-shirts from the London production walking around), neither will it disappoint a complete nube (in which category I will admit to being). The strength of the show comes in the script and in the shining moments that are brought to you by the letters S-c-h-a-d-e-n-f-r-e-u-d-e. Taking comfort in the suffering of others, be they puppets or your-fellow- man adequately states the purpose of this musical. You won’t suffer if you see this production, you may just not come away with all the comfort the writers would like.  

“Avenue Q” continues it’s run through 11 March. Tickets are going fast, reserve yours at here.