DIVERSIONS

HOT TICKET



Time is wasting. If you haven’t seen the “Folk Art + ” exhibit at the Barry Whistler Gallery, you have only a few minutes left to do so. The show is a textural landscape of naive art, mingling works by both trained and untrained artists to dizzying effect. Lots of good stuff by folks like The Texas Kid, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver, Carl Nash and Frank Jones, among others. See it before January 4. 2909-A Canton Street. 939-0242.

DOUBLE OR NOTHING

MUSIC Maybe Smokin’ Joe Kubek learned intensity while he played guitar in bluesmaster Freddie King’s band. Maybe he learned it backing R&B singers, such as regional powerhouses Al “TNT” Braggs,Charlie Robinson and Ernie Johnson. Wherever it came from, Kubek got folks’ attention when he teamed his playing power with guitarist/singer Bnois King. King, a Louisiana native, was known inDallas as a consummate jazz guitarist. Hisspecialty was challenging, George Benson-stylemusic, mixed with enough blues to keep thingsinteresting. Collaboration has wrought a newforcefulness from both musicians. King hasbecome more ebullient on stage, playing withless complexity but more heat, and Kubek isjust plain deadly. Recently they recorded theirdebut CD Steppin’ Out Texas Style, a 10-songcollection on the Bullseye/Rounder label, butas always the best way to experience themis live, -Tim Schuller

Huatulco: The New Kid on the Beach



GETAWAY Like aging beauties, some Mexican super- resorts seem to lose their charm as the years roll by. Witness the concrete monotony of Cancun, the seediness of Acapulco, the tourist mania of Puerto Vallarta. Before any of that happens to the Pacific Coast’s newest hot spot, you may want to tell your travel agent to “get me to Huatulco.”

Located east of Acapulco and south of Oaxaca, near the southern end of the Sierra Madre mountains, Huatulco (Waa-tool-coe) encompasses nine bays. Only three of them as yet bear signs of civilization, and at one, Tangolunda, you’ll find the only full-service hotel in town. The 346-room Sheraton (800-325-3535) sparkles with cleanliness, air conditioning that really works (an increasing rarity in Mexico) and a genuinely helpful staff. From there you can launch into a frenzy of athletic activity-tennis, golf, swimming, aerobics, fishing and snorkel-ing. Or you can catch a boat to a deserted beach, embark on day trips to Oaxaca, Puerto Angel or Puerto Escondido, or simply luxuriate in room service and daily siestas.

How to get there: From Dallas takeDelta, American or one of the manyairlines offering service to Mexico City;then fly Mexicans or Aero Mexico toHuatulco. -Derro Evans



A Kinder and Gentler Aerobics Class



FITNESS If you’re searching for a way to a healthier brain and body in the New Year, Yogarobics may be your answer. Larry Lane’s Yogarobics class begins with calm and progresses through flowing, staccato, chaotic and lyrical movements and finally returns to calm. In all, it takes two hours to make this progression, but when it’s finished, students feel centered and revitalized.

“It’s about body, mind and spirit,’1 Lane says of his class, which has been evolving for four years. He draws from his varied background in theater, dance, yoga, tai chi and breath work to create each class from scratch. Students say the variation is endless-no two classes are exactly alike.

Lane, 37, began to teach aerobics after a career as a dancer in musical theater, but found it unbalanced. He decided to develop a class that combines the basic yoga positions with the movements of tai chi and the aerobic qualities of dance.

His class is far from the norm-he thinks high-tech aerobics shoes promote injuries and recommends working barefoot. And don’t expect the pounding pop rhythms common to the industry. Lane may opt for tinkling and swirling Eastern-influenced sounds or the music of Broadway.

Lane believes what he does is integral to the “new fitness” of the ’90s. This new fitness, he says, willbanish the pounding, grunting, hard edgeof aerobics and embrace the body andmind through moderation. For class info,call Goodbody’s, Lovers Lane at InwoodRd., 351-9931. -Sally Giddens

Shwaying to the Beat of a Different Drummer



HOME The New Year offers a clean slate. It prompts us to clean out the back of the closet and the bottom of the fridge, to get right with God, the universe and our physical trainer.

Iris Kinney can help you get your home right with the cosmos.

Slapping the calming shades of forest green and aubergine on your walls is simply not enough. We’re talking about the structure and content of your rooms. The way your home is arranged may mean you’re letting your wealth go out the back door and your love life go down the toilet.

The ancient Chinese, although they didn’t have flush toilets, knew this, and were able to counter poor home sites and unfortunate interior plans with the art of Feng Shui (pronounced “fong shway”).

On one level, Feng Shui shares the goal of good interior design-’to make the home beautiful and harmonious and make you feel good in it,” as Iris puts it. It “aligns your surroundings to the pulse of the earth,” to the cosmic life force of ch’i that, as the Chinese conceived it, swirls through the planet and animates all places and beings.

For a Feng Shui session, Iris and her secretary arrive at your door with your personal astrological chart (prepared in advance), a compass and a ba-gua, a traditional eight-sided diagram with sectors assigned to directions, aspects of life, colors and elements.

By aligning the ba-gua to north in each room and considering your personality as symbolized in the astrological chart, Iris analyzes what is missing or incorrect in the space and, by inference, your life. Then she advises you how to rearrange objects and add others to maximize positive energy and eliminate the negative. A flowing creek or fountain is positive; dripping faucets are negative.

In my house, the wealth sector in every room was empty. (Yep.) The fame sector in one held a gloomy engraving of an old courthouse in a thunderstorm. (Bad PR.) The bedroom window which aligns exactly with the bathroom door was in a direct path past the bed to the toilet. (Iris said this was endangering my love life and firmly shut the door.)Inexpensive solutions wereproposed and spots were marked withcolored sticky notes. Then Iris left mewith a certificate proclaiming my domicileto be in keeping with the principles of Feng Shui once I completed the changes.

In a year, I’ve done about two-thirds. Anew mirror on the inappropriatebathroom door supposedly sends thenegative energy back out like aboomerang and looks nice, too. And atany rate, I haven’t flushed any relationships lately. To reach Iris Kinney, call herat 416-4296. (Her fees vary depending onthe number of rooms.) -Julie Ryan



MODERN CLASSICS



HOME Sleek and sinuous or cubistically angular, these pieces look like they came from the Jetsons’ living room. The style is known as 20th-century modern and it’s currently the hottest trend in home furnishings. Two local stores, Collage “twentieth Century Classics (3017 Routh St.) and Zero to Sixty (2809 Main), now specialize In It, selling such items as egg and bird-cage chairs, marshmallow sofas and kidney tables to an audience increasingly Interested in original icons from our most recent past. At Collage, proprietor Wlodek Malowanczyk groups modern glassware with his collection of ’50s furniture. Antonio Garza and Jo Fetterman, owners of Zero to Sixty, organized the First Annual Dallas Modernism Show at Trammell Crow Center last year, mixing their pieces with elaborate armolu, bronzes and French antiques. This could be the way the future looks because, as Garza says, “the real antiques-Queen Anne or Louis XV- are simply not available or affordable. Modernism is here, It’s American and It’s still available as signed originals.” -Mary Brown Malouf



Shown, clockwise from upper left: Barcelona chair, (850, from Collage; glassware (from $250 to $450) Collage; Barcelona chair, $850, Zero to Sixty; orange French cone chair, $3,500, Zero to Sixty; webbed chairs, $175 each, Collage; wire ashtray table, $75, Zero to Sixty; figurines, $l,750 each, Zero to Sixty; lamp, $255, Zero to Sixty; teal egg chair, $2,750, Zero to Sixty.

ART



Jesus Boutista Moroles Gets Small

His classmates at High School may remember him as “Jesse” Morales, the soft-spoken Hispanic kid who graduated in the top 10 percent of his class of ’69. Now, at 41, he Is Jesus Bautista Moroles, whose abstract sculptures stand in museurns around the world. Including the Smithsonian and the Dallas Museum of Art.

This month Adams-Middleton Gallery is featuring, along with work by Robert Moth-erwell, an exhibition of Moroles’ small granite sculptures. oles were surprised to learn that “small” was even in his vocabulary. “Well,” he says, “people have been asking for affordable pieces, so we’ve put together this show. A person can get ’starter pieces’ for between $3,500 and $35,000.”

His compound at Rockport, on the Texas coast, employs 20 workers and houses himself and his parents, brother and sister-who also work for him. He Is the largest employer In that small fishing town. He says the property, with the work area where the gigantic monuments are sculpted, the large warehouse, the offices and the living quarters, costs only a fraction of what such space would cost In New York.

Ten years ago Moroles was living in a one-room studio in a tombstone factory In Waxahachie, Texas. That was before he became so big he had to get small. The Adams-Middleton Gallery Is located at 3000 Maple, where1 the exhibit will be up through Jan. 31.

-Tom Dodge

Ten Years After

THEATER Rudy Eastman started the Jubilee Theater in Fort Worth in 1981 while still teaching in Fort Worth schools. In the summer of 1990 he quit the grind of history classes, but the past still dogs him in his theater. To celebrate the beginning of a second decade he’s reaching back-as he often has-into black history. The musical revue called Harlem Blues “bridges the gap between what was rural Delta blues that later became jazz,” he says. It’s a tribute to W.C. Handy, with music direction by longtime Eastman collaborator Joe Rogers and choreography by Gina Greene.



It’s hard to describe how a Jubilee show coalesces from an idea into opening night. “It’s one of those things that the rehearsal process will evolve it into something else” Eastman says about Harlem Blues. Something else is indeed what the Metroplex’s longest-running black theater has to offer, year in and year out. Harlem Blues opens Friday, January 10 and runs through Sunday, February 16. Fri. and Sat. curtains are at 8:15 p.m., and Sat. and Sun. matinees are at 3:15. Tickets are $5-$12. For more information call (817) 535-0168.

-Michael Pellecchia

Shoe Phones and More



URBAN LIFE The sign under the green, paint-spattered mannequin reads, “Even if you’re dead, this will nail the guy who did it.” Spy Supply’s new combination of Mace and paint, “Dye Witness,” sprays a lime-colored chemical that sticks for seven days.

“That’s how the police caught the ’Friendly Rapist,’ ” says Spy Supply’s anonymous owner, whose gadgets are designed for the ’90s generation of “do-it-yourself spies.

In better times, private investigators did the “dirty work.” “But with the economy the way it is,” he says, “you can do it yourself for a whole lot less.”

New Age custody suits and family squabbles require unique information-gathering contraptions. A bug sewn into the stomach of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle doll records ex-spouse visitations and weekend plans. Attache cases used for transport-ing valuable documents or payoffs can zap a nefarious business partner or mugger with 40,000 volts. When hooked under a car, tiny transmitters will track wayward teenagers. Sound amplifiers, like the one in the movie Conversation, give swimming pool whispers and secluded lunches a whole new dimension.

A single incident shows that the store has a following. One night after closing, a big Chrysler with diplomatic plates pulled up. Two men flashing State Department I.D. cards asked tobuy voice changers for the two Middle Eastern “spooks” in the car.

Anyone trying to tap into their conversations now will hear Donald Duck talking backward underwater. Spy Supply, 13237-B Montfort and 603 Munger, Suite 203 in the West End.

-Liz Gordon