Coury Turczyn

Okay. So the only way to really pull this scenario off without being seriously distasteful is to make it a dark social comedy, not unlike its French inspiration, The Dinner Game by Francis Veber. Right? Turn the tables and reveal ...

Last weekend, at the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, Metro Pulse picked up three 2010 AltWeekly Awards. These awards are especially important to us because they honor the best writing and reporting from alt weeklies across the ...

As the name indicates, MoogFest is intended as a celebration of synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog and his technological achievements in electronic music. Which brings us to the headliners for this little shindig: Thievery Corporation, Massive Attack, and MGMT.

More than ever before, summer movies are all about the money—and watching the interstudio combat at boxofficemojo.com has become more fun than watching the movies themselves. But let us pause now amid the financial carnage to congratulate two champions of ...

George Barris and his brother Sam pretty much invented the business of customizing cars, back in 1940s Los Angeles. Nowadays, it’s an industry unto itself, as well as mass entertainment on all too many cable TV shows. But Barris still ...

For her first full-length CD—co-produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, of all people—Janelle Monáe’s chosen to create a science-fiction concept album about robots, inspired by Fritz Lang’s silent epic Metropolis. It’s completely over the top—but in creative ways.

John Mayer may be our most unique living Knoxvillian who’s yet unknown by other Knoxvillians. He’s been a falcon hacker, a theme park designer, an animator, a mailman, and a comic strip artist, among many other occupations. This summer, a ...

Jerry Bruckheimer wields unlimited power to make any movie he wants, and that typically means one with a big chase scene, several explosions, and a wisecracking hero. From this unremarkable aesthetic, he has captivated a nation and accumulated unimaginable wealth. ...

Neil Young’s best performances can be blissful (“Like a Hurricane”) or harrowing (almost anything from Tonight’s the Night or On the Beach), and a few songs have become so deeply ingrained that they resist commentary (“Cinnamon Girl”). He’s been on ...

Just try to get a parking space on a Saturday at McKay, then prepare yourself to enter the Old Media Thunderdome as combatants vie for deals on books, CDs, DVDs, and video games.

While his Southern-style flavors are huge, his restaurant location for RouXbarb is what you’d call “intimate.”

The Tomato Head is the all-time winningest Best of Knoxville champion, scooping up multiple awards every year we’ve run the contest since 1996. And with good reason: Owners Mahasti Vafaie and Scott Partin are setting the bar for local businesses.

Naples also offers the kind of Italian restaurant atmosphere that you usually only see in movies set in Italian restaurants.

Surely, you think, this Knoxville institution must have occupied its Gay Street address since the turn of the century. (The previous one.) Mast General Store is as Knoxvillian as the Dogwood Arts Festival, or Market Square, or the Sunsphere.

Who knew that Knoxville by way of Nama would become such an innovator in the sushi arts?

We’re going to assume you’re just being polite, voting for the site that was hosting this very same readers’ poll.

In the field of cupcake experimentation, it’s difficult to resist Magpies.

The challengers are multiplying, but Calhoun's stays on top.

With its world-class studio, its Round-Rug concert series, and its Glowing Bowl food service, the Glowing Body yoga studio has very quickly become a community fixture, drawing the yoga faithful from all over town to the Happy Holler environs.

Taste of Thai is not fancy, chic, or expensive. But its flavors are the most sophisticated in town.

There can be no substitute—Marble Slab Creamery is the place.

No, Gatlinburg is not in Knoxville. But we just can’t compete!

f there’s one hair salon that put Knoxville on the beauty map, it’s Frank and Belinda Gambuzza’s Salon Visage and its ever-growing number of locations and services. Innovative without being too chi-chi, it’s the go-to salon for Knoxvillians who want ...

Oh, dear. How the once-slavish fans turn on you once you completely reject them (after one short year) in order to further a dubious career built on acting like a self-entitled dork with few actual results on the playing field.

In January, longtime local radio and music figure Seva David Ball embarked on his most unusual assignment as an audio professional: to rescue the earliest recordings of one his personal heroes before they disintegrated from an onslaught of mold and ...

Last year was lousy for the motorcycle industry. Sales took a steep plunge after the economy cratered and people started spending less and less on leisure-time activities or hobbies. Although East Tennessee is a motorcycling haven, it's not immune to ...

It is with no small displeasure that we must announce the departure of staff writer Chris Barrett. But we're also happy to announce that Jesse Fox Mayshark is returning to the fold.

For anyone who’s been paying attention to current events, the motorcycle industry has had an incredibly difficult year. According to Webbikeworld.com’s compilation of motorcycle sales stats for the U.S. in the third quarter, “...motorcycle sales totaled just 434,370 so far ...

We’re proud to announce that Metro Pulse theater critic Kieron Barry has been named a Norman Mailer Fellow, an award granted by the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, which was established after Mailer’s death in 2007 to recognize and assist emerging, ...

Riding a motorcycle is generally an escape—from your worries, from your bills, from whatever you left behind after hitting the starter button. But lately, it’s been getting harder to avoid bad news about the economic downturn and how it’s affecting ...

We are not talking now of summer evenings. We are talking of what may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see numerous rarely screened—and rare in most other terms—films that include the words, voice, or visage of one James Agee. From ...

Last month, we ran an online survey asking you to vote for your favorite local bartenders. Who are Knoxville’s best pourers of alcoholic libations? Here are the results.

In Frank Cagle’s column last week [“Strong Message,” Frank Talk], he wrote that Speaker Kent Williams had donated money to legislative candidate Pat Marsh from his Speaker’s PAC. The paperwork for the Speaker’s PAC is still being prepared. The money ...

Every rider is convinced that there is one magical motorcycle in this world that will bring ultimate satisfaction. And it’s usually just outside of our reach—too rare, too expensive, or too dangerous to actually own. But we keep our eyes ...

As much as we like putting together Handlebars, we’d like your help to make it an even better monthly read. And we’ve got a couple of options for you.

As motorcycle enthusiasts, we usually stay focused on the idealized aspects of the sport: freedom of the open road, kinship with other riders, and a sense of individuality in an increasingly homogenized world. And then there’s our appreciation for all ...

West Knoxvillian and internationally known animator Joel Trussell has made music videos for acts like Morcheeba and Jakob Dylan, but his most recent gig is also his biggest to date: a video for Portland, Ore., group the Gossip, visualizing a ...

So, do you like having a free monthly motorcycle magazine that focuses on the huge variety of riding and riders in the East Tennessee region? That’s what we’ve been hoping. When we took on Handlebars back in January, there was ...

Q: How did Sapceman come to life? A (Taylor): Obviously, we take Sapceman straight from the original source (and the Sapceman serial that ran along with newsreels from 1933-1949, including the classic Sapceman vs. the Nazis episode “Sapcetime for Hitler”), ...

Q: What do you find appealing/fulfilling about this medium as opposed to the usual art-school options? A:The greatest appeal for me is the accessibility of the medium. From my own experience engaging comics at a relatively early age, I can ...

Q: Are there any comic artists who are particularly important to you? A: Early on I was a big fan of the big superhero comics, particularly Jim Lee and his work on X-Men. But this kind of work draws much ...

A man approached two police officers in the Old City and told them he was beaten and robbed on June 22 at about 3 p.m. at the Greyhound Bus station nearby. The man said he was just hanging out at ...

The right name and URL can make the difference between an Internet hit or a quickly forgotten miss. When TJ McNamara and Scott Scheinbaum wrestled with what to call their online bartering site, they went through hundreds of names—“and out ...

The idea came to him during Super Bowl XLII—Giants-Patriots—and just wouldn’t go away. Thomas “TJ” McNamara had settled into the living room of his plush suburban home in far West Knoxville to watch the game with about 30 of his ...

When E.W. Scripps purchased Metro Pulse in June of 2007, the reaction among longtime readers was decidedly unfavorable. Which is easy to understand since the combination of a large, national media corporation and a local, independent paper that often chided ...

With the exception of graphic design by Vancouver-based MetaLab, Tradingo.com is a made-in-Knoxville product. Here are the local developers who helped put the site together

I’m still getting used to being on two wheels myself. After being out of the saddle for many years, I succumbed to the habit of so many middle-aged guys: Buying the dream bike you couldn’t afford when you were young. ...

The alternate universe of Maryville increases its cool-stuff-to-do quotient tenfold this weekend with the inaugural Smoky Mountain Dragon’s Breath Brewers Jam. A fund-raiser for the non-profit Smoky Mountain Animal Care Foundation (SMACF), the brew fest is set for Saturday, June ...

All other things being equal, I prefer pop R&B to neo-soul. So when I heard that neo-soul diva Chrisette Michele had sold out on her second album, Epiphany, I was cautiously optimistic. Her first effort, I Am, from 2007, was ...

Knoxville expat (and former Metro Pulse sales rep) Louise Mosrie moved to Nashville a while back to focus on her singer/songwriter dreams, but it was in the Texas Hill Country last week that she found the limelight.