There was nary a nose ring in site at last night's A Way With Words event at Lakewood Theater. The grammar geeks filed in cheerfully, dressed in springtime pastels and pausing just long enough to order Malbec doubles at the bar.

Yes! A Way With Words Comes to Dallas was the hyper-liberal's version of a gawdamn rock show, and someone there probably had a Hemingway tattoo. Now, let's crowd surf through the night's highlights.

My Eyes!
NPR celebs Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett did some awkwardly bookish dancing to Cameo's "Word Up." Which was more painful to watch than the original video, featuring lead singer Larry Ernest Blackmon in a red leather codpiece.

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ArtLoveMagic

From left; ArtLoveMagic's Michael Lagocki, Justin Nygren and David Rodriguez.

The 10 to 15 artists and musicians who performed at ArtLoveMagic's first "REACH" event in 2007 wasn't exactly what co-founder David Rodriguez had in mind.

"Since ArtLoveMagic started I had the vision of Underground in my head," Rodriguez says of the grandiose interactive art experience that returns this weekend. "It started with one or two musicians and some poets. It was successful but I really wanted to see the formula work on a larger scale with more of a variety of talent to exhibit, a little bit louder, a little bit crazier."

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Isabelle Ten, July 2011, Denise Prince

Denise Prince's current collection of photographs sprung from four years of psychoanalysis. It was in the final two when the work became strangely experimental, compulsive and packed tight with neurosis.

The show, now completed, hangs on CentralTrak's back gallery wall, as one part of the new group exhibition That Mortal Coil. Tonight, you can hear the meaning behind the work, which gives a reformative view of fashion adverts modeled by corpses and disfigured women -- but not from the artist herself. That wouldn't do. Prince's analyst, Charles Merward, will run the "couch session" while Prince sits present and captive, but silent.

"My goal is to try and help viewers encounter what Denise sees and encounters through her photographs, like a telescope." Says Merward. "We're kind of like a Penn and Teller act."

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This could be you at Strokers on Saturday!

William Shatner is back as a special Dallas Comic Con guest -- just another excuse for you to dive into three days comic book digging, celebrity appearances and costume one-upmanship. There's also a fundraiser at a biker bar, a beer pong battle suitable for straight-edgers, and one downright exciting day of art. Brace yourself, and set your phasers to stunning, because it's The Weekend.

Share this list with your gang and click on event titles for more information. I'll see you out there. (I'll be the one serenading Shatner.)

Thursday 5.16
Experimental Live Couch Session Art Discussion at CentralTrak -- This is one of the oddest and most intriguing art projects of ...ever, maybe? Photographer Denise Prince spent several years putting together her "Missoni" collection, currently on display at CentralTrak. It's intriguing work that deconstructs a fashion campaign through unconventional muses, including one dressed up human corpse. A-aa-a-nd here's where things get weird: Rather than presenting her own artist talk, she's flying in her analyst, Charles Merward, from Los Angeles to give a live couch session regarding the work. She'll sit silently as it occurs.

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The audience that packed into last night's Found Footage Festival at Texas Theatre learned some important lessons. The most haunting stemmed from a video segment regarding the management practices of various open sores, where crudely edited television hosts materialized out of an abscessed toe, or spun a terrifying game of chance called "Wheel of Wounds." The collective gut-vice clamped tighter during an instructional video teaching masturbation techniques to people with learning disabilities. The female-centric version was titled "Fingertips."

Squeamish discomfort is why the audience showed up. They came to watch as the Found Footage Festival's creators and hosts, Letterman segment producer Nick Prueher and The Onion headline writer Joe Pickett, present ill-fated VCR fillers like these. Best friends since elementary school, the pair ransacks thrift stores, dumpsters and other areas with elevated staph infection potential searching for slivers of VHS history.

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While last year Art Con doled out speakers for RZN8, this year's seed event -- which raises money and awareness for the annual party -- gets more visually freaky. The gang just announced that the June 8 event, MOUNTED, will be all taxidermy-themed.

Participating MOUNTED artists have been issued wall plaques for their "trophies," and many are already at work attempting to capture the visually appealing elements of postmortem sculpture. We won't know what experimental methods they utilize until the big reveal at 7 p.m., auction night, at Life in Deep Ellum.

These seed projects are necessities for the organization, which has raised more than $200,000 dollars for local art-rooted nonprofits since starting in 2005. The cash raised on June 8 will be used to orchestrate the main happening, which drops later in 2013. They're also hype-builders. At MOUNTED, this year's Con-designated beneficiary will be announced.

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(Wait through the ad. It's worth it)

Well, now you're awake. That was just one snippet from tonight's Found Footage Festival at Texas Theatre.

Add another work week to the body count and get ready for a three-finger pour of not-office. Unstuffy art pops up all over Dallas on Saturday; Texas Theatre airs out the old VHS attic Thursday, then flips to 35-mm for a Wrath of Khan weekend; and humanitarian/hero Temple Grandin speaks at the Dallas Museum of Art on Friday. Yes! It's the weekend you worked for.

Click the event titles for more information and share this list with your fellow cultural spelunkers. I'll see you out there. (I'll be the one mask-dancing with the elderly.)

Thursday 5.9
Found Footage Festival -- Swoon over the VHS heyday with the fellas from Found Footage Festival at Texas Theatre. It's going to get a little weird when Joe and Nick launch in, showing off the most peculiar snippets from the low-distribution era, and that's precisely why you're going. They've been owning this game for nine years strong and never disappoint.

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Photo by Jamie Laughlin

The giant neon cowboy peeking over Stemmons Highway and Walnut Hill Lane has gestured folks into Centennial Fine Wine and Spirits since it was welded in 1958. The Big Tex-inspired sign, standing 50 feet tall, exists as a vestige of a past era and a symbol of the resilient Texas chain, which maintained for 76 years before filing for bankruptcy at the start of 2013.

But Neon Tex is more than just a tall drink of roadside liquor advertising. He's a symbol of regional tenacity. And he recently got a Hollywood makeover, thanks to cable TV's most ambitious network and a locally bred screenwriter who wanted his hometown to shine.

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Photo by Jennifer Medina

A high school principal flashing his junk in front of his students would be a debacle for Dallas ISD. But for School Class, it's just third period.

Nestled at 1222 W. Davis, in a little storefront next door to The Kessler Theater, School Class is a new experiment (and experience) in adult education. It's the brainchild of returning resident John Neel, and its faculty isn't made up of your usual teachers waxing on and on about the three Rs. Instead, Neel has turned to the community for our collective betterment. Anyone can pitch a course with an online teacher application,- so offerings range from pop culture to puppeteering. On Saturday the classroom was filled with the expected youth hipster sect but also with potential scholars in their 40s and 50s.

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Photo credit: Mali Azima

He's served as the DMA's first Senior Curator of Contemporary Art since moving here in 2009, and now Jeffrey Grove gets a bump via another fancy title. The Dallas Museum of Art announced this morning that Grove is the institution's new Senior Curator of Special Projects & Research. That's a big deal, because until now that job hadn't existed.

In fact, it's the second coolest title Grove has ever had. The first being Founding Curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. -- but that was a lifetime and many business cards ago.

This freshly created role will stretch out Grove's duties to include exploring new "research initiatives and the development of collaborations with living artists." He'll continue organizing special exhibitions, like his upcoming survey on installation artist Jim Hodges (it drops October, 2013), but will also find ways to thoroughly round-out those conversations by including the artists' own voices and perspectives -- giving added context to the DMA's already dense collection of modern art as well as new, internationally collaborative exhibitions.

It all vibes well with Maxwell Anderson's mission. He's been a champion for international partnering and increased arts communication since taking office a year and a half ago. Add on that Grove's passion to give voice to artists is well-known around Dallas and you can consider this a win-win. I'd also wager it's a predictive sign of future curatorial expansions.

Grove currently has three exhibitions in the works: There's his joint-organized Jim Hodges survey in October 2013 (partnered with Olga Viso of the Walker); an Isa Genzken retrospective (co-organized with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art) set to unveil in September, 2014; And a sexy show featuring works on film, paper and painting by Michaël Borremans, which was co-organized with the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels. We'll get that last one in March of 2015.