The J-TAC (Stephenville, Tex.), Vol. 173, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 12, 2007 Page: 5 of 16
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Entertainment
April 12,2007
THE J-TAC
Page 5
Larry Joe Taylor music festival nurtured
by Tarleton Texas music fans for 19 years
By ASHLEY COOPER
Special to The J-TAC
When the curtain rises on Larry Joe Tay-
lor's 19th annual Texas Music Festival and
Coors Light Chili cook-off next week, Tar-
leton State University students shotild take
a bow.
The young country music fans attend-
ing college in Stephenville have nurtured
the festival since its inception 19 years
ago. And they've followed the festival as it
bounced from Mingus to Thurber to Possum
Kingdom and Glen Rose before landing at
Taylor's Melody Mountain Ranch north of
Stephenville.
Veteran country music writer and sing-
er/songwriter Jeff Prince, who has followed
the festival for almost two decades, said Tar-
leton students were the first to jump on the
band wagon.
"They fueled the fire and turned it into
the mammoth festival that it is today/' said
Prince, a staff writer for Fort Worth Weekly.
By today's standards, the concert was
sparsely attended in the early years-and
many of its earliest boosters came from Tar-
leton.
"It was like and oasis in*the middle of
the desert/7 Prince said c>f,festival's distinc-
tive artist lineup.
The festival founder says Tarleton stu-
dents are always welcome at the festival
even though it now draws a much wider au-
dience. ■
"There's' always been involvement from
Tarleton students and I have always wanted
them to come/' Taylor said. "In recent years,
the genre of Texas Country music has grown
immensely and has had a lot to do with the
growing crowd at the festival."
Festival goers this year will notice some
changes. The acoustic stage has been relo-
cated so sound from the main stage does not
drown out the acoustic artists. A new stage
for up and coming artists has been added.
Some of this year's artists includes: Matt
'Hills Have Eyes II' falls
short of expectations
By KATY THOMPSON
Staff Photographer
When 'The Hills Have Eyes" came out last
year, offering a good old-fashioned atomic-ener-
gy- induced, superhuman-nuclear-fallout-freaks-
on-a-rampage movie, I was intrigued... this genre,
once popular in the 1950s-1970s had been almost
deads Wes Craven, a longstanding leader in the
for a good movie.*
However, the movie focused on mindless vio-
r lence typical to movies in the "Saw" and "Hostel"
vein. The movie lacked a coherent plot, cross-
ing into the "House of 1000 Corpses" and "Texas
. Chainsaw Massacre" vein of horror for its own
sake. The movie did well at the box office, but
mainly because of its shock factor. This could not
' be used to give its sequel an edge, so several key
fans of horror were hoping that the sequel would
develop into an actual horror movie, where the
.J original had failed. Instead, it followed after the
■ wondrous epic "Snakes on a Plane," where cdl
development is given up in the sake of provid-
ing interesting or gratuitous violence. The differ-
ence here is that the movie lacks purpose, whereas
"Snakes on a Plane" had a serious cult following
and Samuel L. Jackson.
Apparently the writers underestimated the
audience's need for a coherent plot, as there is none
* aside from the desire of the people stuck in the
middle of the Yuma flats with a horde of superhu-
man mutant freaks living in the mines all around
them to get away and perhaps stay alive. There
is no real development of characters, whether they
are the freaks or their victims-made up of National
Guardsmen-but instead a brief smattering of ran-
' dom information that tends to be used merely as
Courtesy: MCT Campus
"Hills Have Eyes II" delivered in gore, but
lacked in plot and character devleopment.
,a plot device for later ridiculous, developments.
That brings us to the development of the film,
which expects the audience to suspend disbelief
to forget the rest of the movie, save the previous
five minutes for the actions of the characters to
make enough sense to keep, the viewer from go-
ing insane.
The body count is not astounding, and the
modes of death generally leave a lot to be de-
sired. There are only so many times in a film
that you can beat someone over the head with
a rock and have them die before it becomes a bit
of a bore. The mindless, random violence adds a
little bit of spice to the movie as. there is a gratu-
itous rape, torso with hanging entrails, severed
limbs, exploding heads, naked woman giving
birth to a freak baby and even someone being
blown up with dynamite.
All-in-all, the film fails to call to the general
audience and fails to inspire or intrigue cult fol-
lowers of the genre. Instead, it leaves viewers
wishing they had spent their money watching
"300" again.
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Martindale, Delbert McClinton, Randy Rogers,
Bonnie Bishop, Micky & the Motorcars, Reck-
less Kelly, Los Lonely Boys and Brandon Rhy-
der.
The festival is set for April 17-21.One, two
and three-day tickets are on sale now at Ste-
phenville businesses such as Signs & Designs,
The College Store and Green Acres Rental.
One-day tickets are $20, two-day tickets $26,
and three-day tickets $34, Cash only will be
accepted at tliese locations. Four and five-day
tickets are already sold out. Tickets also are
available to purchase online'at http://www.lar-
ryjoetaylor.com or by phone at 254-968-8505.
Tickets may also be bought at the gate but the
prices increase; one-day tickets are $23, two-
day are $31, and three-day are $40. .
Courtesy: texa9gat0rfest.com
Acts such as Micky & the Motorcars will be
headlining Larry Joe Taylor music festival.
Tarleton improv strives
to entertain audience
By MANDI
ROBERTS
Staff Writer
At four o'clock each
Wednesday afternoon, the old
plush chairs and the creak-
ing wooden floor of Tarleton's
Workshop Theatre transforms
into the scene of a comedy club.
For an hour, that stage's produc-
tion dissolves into a hit-and-
miss routine reminiscent of the
. television, show, Who's Line is
it Anyway? I say dissolved be-
cause this week's performance
utilized the basest of humanity's
humor in almost every segment:
jokes clinging to the backbone
of sexual allusions.
Tarleton Improv is a weekly
performance, now in its twelfth
year, whose goal is to build ex-
perience for actors, a troupe of
eight Tarleton theatre -majors
(this year, that includes one Tar-
leton theatre alum) as they learn
to "think on their feet, and to
respond to what they hear," ac-
cording to Associate Professor
of Fine Arts Mark Holtorf.
It also strives to entertain.
This week, 44 students filled
the plush chairs tobe entertained
by what unfolded. After being
warned that the humor would
"hopefully touch you in places
that shouldn't be touched,"
Holtrof became a darker-haired
Drew Carey sitting behind a
table with his bell as the actors
performed crowd-interactive
games such as "Should Have
Said," and explained to us how
a drunk and stoned Stone-Age
man created the idea of the
Easter Bunny "One Word At A
Time."
A few jokes went right. I
personally enjoyed a skit en-
titled "Airplane Training Day/'
where a pilot taught his trainee,
after the plane had a severe loss
in altitude, that pilots always
blame everything on turbulence.
After "the pilot's PA announce-
ment assures "there is nothing
to worry about, we just hit some
leftover clouds from Hurricane
Katrina/' the audience focus is
moved to a terrorist passenger
encouraging his trainee to be
confident when he announces
he has a bomb. As the amateur
stuttered his news to the other
passengers, the more experi-
enced terrorist shouted, "Sorry,
this is his first, day!" A flight at-
tendant-in-training tackled him
and a doctor on board then had
her medical assistant check the
injured terrorist's vitals, calmly
whispering a supportive, "No
don't use the scalpel, just check
his pulse."
Unfortunately, many more
jokes fell unprocessed by the
audience. The segment entitled
Scorrs
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"Insurgency" had to be stopped
early because the audience did
not understand what the point
of the segment was supposed to
be.
"We try new jokes every
week," Holtorf said, "Some are
funny and some fail horribly.
Our content is decided by what
can bring the most spontaneity
and crowd-interaction to the act
as possible."
This week the group tried a
skit about the worst pain, chosen
by the audience, someone could
feel where the audience could
change the scene by shouting
out new pieces of information
the actors'had to work, into the
plot. The audience chose "hem-
orrhoids after being kicked in
the balls/' and by the end of the
segment, the skit had sunk into a
vulgar love scenario as the audi-
ence shouted out various sexual
fantasies. The crowd interaction
continued as they decided that
the topic of a short Shakespear-
ean verse play should be about
"sharing a sexually transmitted
disease," and cheered as one ac-
tress bounced out in a revealing
low-cut shirt to play^a seductive
Dutch-airhead role.
Though previous years'
Tarleton, improv entertainers
played off of sexual innuendo,
this group, at many times, al-
lowed their show to dive into
the realm of some of Comedy
Central's most blunt comedians,
causing alum actor Devan Du-
ree to comment from the stage,
"This is a horny crowd!"
Putting the harsh raunchi-
ness, which can be acceptable in
the comedy club setting, aside, I
unfortunately found little other
substance to elevate the show to
high quality entertainment. The
content changes weekly, and is
often based off of what is pleas-
ing the audience at the time; but
for this week's performance, I
would compare it to one of the
few Who's Line is it Anyway?
episodes that I would turn off.
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The J-TAC (Stephenville, Tex.), Vol. 173, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 12, 2007, newspaper, April 12, 2007; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth142154/m1/5/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Tarleton State University.