Sober (Beauty Bar): The term “special guest” gets thrown around a lot, especially in regard to DJ nights. I mean, if your main draw is from Sachse, how “special” is that? I’m sure DJ Sachse can drive down 78 again next week, don’t you think?

Luckily that’s not the case here. DJ Expo comes to sunny Dallas from even sunnier LA and has been part of the beloved Root Down weekly party since the mid-2000′s. Root Down has hosted everyone from People Under The Stairs to Peanut Butter Wolf to a recent appearance by Adrian Younge.

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Photographer Subhankar Banerjee uses two formats for the photos included in the exhibit Where I Live I Hope To Know at the Amon Carter Museum. One is a snapshot rectangle, just off square, which captures deliberately banal images of overlooked bushes and dusty New Mexico landscapes with little style or romancing. The second format is a long, strained panoramic. Despite their stretched wide presence on the wall, these photos do not communicate an expansive sense, rather the effect is to focus and crop down. An image of the top of a dead pinion tree, populated by the small speck of a falcon perched on the craggy branches, feels microscopically focused, as much about the tree top as the rest of the tree that has been left out of the image. The effect is further emphasized by a few panoramic images that are hung diagonally on the wall, the shape of the photo dictated by the jarring, off balance thrust of a fallen tree trunk, while the installation still references the linearity of the image’s horizon line.

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In a long and fascinating story in the Star-Telegram, Gaile Robinson tracks the history of a sculptural bust in the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum. The piece was spotted by Nazi art hunter, Robert Edsel (profiled here), who found a photograph in Italy that showed the work being removed from the Altausee salt mine, where Adolf Hitler had stored the art he planned for a massive museum project.

That discovery sent off the kind of red flag that keeps museum directors awake at night in cold sweats. If it was discovered that the piece was stolen by the Nazis, the Kimbell would be liable for compensating the descendants of the victims.

Did the Kimbell get off the hook? Find out.

The Texas Ballet Theater has announced its new season, which will feature the debuts of Ben Stevenson’s Giselle and Dracula, as well as the new Portraits Ballet Festival, which will close the season with two weekends of dance featuring six short works.

Also of note, the Texas Ballet Theater has switched up how they will use the region’s venues this year. Last year the ballet company performed their entire season in both the Bass Performance Hall and the Winspear Opera House. This year, the Winspear will only see the company’s annual Nutcracker performance. Giselle and Dracula will be performed only at Bass Hall, and, intriguingly, the festival will take place at the Wyly Theater. Here’s the full release on the season.

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On KERA, Jerome Weeks reports on Miroslav Penkov, a University of North Texas professor and writer whose debut stories have been well received. Penkov’s own story contains some unexpected international twists. English is not his native language, and he says becoming a writer in Bulgaria was considered impossible, so he moved to America. That move has played a epart in defining the writer’s fiction, which blends his experiences of America with a distinctively eastern European sensibility:

In East of the West, Penkov’s stories range from low-key, lyrical realism to the out-and-out mythic and dream-like. The author he’s most often happily compared to is Gary Shteyngart (Super Sad True Love Story). But Shteyngart has a more antic and vaudevillian spirit. As brilliant as he is, Shteyngart can betray a need to keep the reader entertained at all costs — it leaks through like flop sweat. In contrast, Penkov’s humor is often laced with a gentle melancholy, a sense of loss. He has that characteristic Eastern European fatalism that can flip between nostalgic acceptance and hilarious absurdism.

If you were a fan of Bridesmaids, you’ll love this Thursday’s giveaway. Imagine mixing together a floozy, a lesbian, an ugly sidekick, an overly religious cousin, and a pot smoking sister all in the same room while they avoid the obligation of an overdone Tennessee wedding reception. Hilarity must ensue, which is why you want to win our pair of tickets to the Contemporary Theater of Dallas’ production of Alan Ball’s Five Women Wearing the Same Dress. To get your hands on them all you have to do is answer the question in the form below: Alan Ball has written two feature films. Which one did not win an Academy Award? We’ll pick a winner after 3pm.

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Disaster movies usual find their roots in some great social anxiety, and Transformers offers two: world domination by machines and an alien invasion that will enslave mankind. Perhaps you could add a third anxiety to the Transformers storyline. Late in the film, during the final epic showdown between Opitimus Prime and Sentinel Prime, Sentinel chides his opponent and former pupil, “On our planet we were gods!” He wants to be godlike again on earth, and we turn white in anticipation ..read more

“The Death of Sound and Images” (J&J’s Pizza): Featuring “one-off audio and visual experiments” from Small Talk, Jugglehustle, and a band with a name so offensive, that even censoring it wouldn’t blunt its potency. So I just won’t. Look it up; you’ll be rightfully appalled. The offending group includes local artists Nevada Hill and circuit-bender Darcy Neal, along with visuals from Austin’s David Price.

Singles Going Steady (Rubber Gloves): Tonight’s guest is Steven Rodriguez.

Image: Detail from Nevada Hill’s “Mass” Series. Courtesy of Nevada HIll.

Check out this piece over on Glasstire by Betsy Lewis, who takes in the pop-up retail shop that crash landed recently at Goss-Michael Foundation’s already busy gallery in the Design District. The wears are by British fashion house Mother of Pearl, which is run by Maia Norman. Not ringing a bell? Lewis explains that Norman is artist Damien Hirst’s partner, and then land’s this zinger:

Can a press release’s defining of a creative director by whom she is shagging be a good sign?

Ouch. But that’s not the last of it:

You can wear ugly clothes sort-of designed by Damien Hirst’s baby momma! You are so lucky! Remember buying that Peter Max t-shirt at Dillard’s in Plano in 1986? I know I do! And this is even better since these clothes cost hundreds of dollars! Thank you, Goss-Michael Foundation, for taking me back to the Dillard’s in Plano in 1986!

Needless to say, check out the entire smirk-inducing piece.

Image courtesy of the Goss-Michael Foundation