The Dirty on Nik Richie, Post-it Note Ninjas, and SCA-Gate — All Within This Owl’s Talons

Seems CIG offered up-and-coming musicians the opportunity to get signed by a record label. For a fee, of course. If the act couldn't get signed, they were supposed to receive a refund. But various artists who did business with CIG are dissatisfied with the service they received. Montana hip-hop artist RBIZ called CIG — and its hip-hop-oriented subsidiary Rapvibe — the "biggest scam in the world," and he remembered Karamian's pitch specifically.

"He has everybody believing he had all these connections within the record industry and that something would happen for your band if you signed up," RBIZ rapped to this raven. "It was all bullshit."

Courtesy of Scottsdale Police Department

The Dirty's Hooman Karamian, a.k.a. Nik Richie, in his DUI mug shot from earlier this year.

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More About

• Randy Pullen
• Hooman Karamian
• Terry Goddard
• U.S. Republican Party Politics
• U.S. Politics

RBIZ is but one of several former CIG clients who're pissed at Karamian, but when The Bird asked Karamian about his work as Corbin Grimes, he chuckled, saying, "This is so funny . . . The saddest part about this is that I'm the biggest supporter of New Times."

Karamian's flacks, who were still on the phone listening in, quickly shut down the interview and ended the call. This toucan gives Karamian props for copping to his real identity earlier this year, when he was exposed as having pleaded guilty to DUI and had to do a few days in Tent City. So why is Karamian afraid of his other alter ego, Corbin Grimes? That's what The Bird wants to know.

STICKER REBELLION

Off with their heads! This Bird's ready for a revolution against the government and the corporations who're jamming their Orwellian worldview right down his gullet, making him long for the days of loppin' off the noggin of King Louis XVI via the dreaded guillotine.

Hey, a beaker can daydream, can't he? And that's what this avian does every time he's cruising down the 51, only to have to jam on the brakes as his T-Bird rolls by the photo-enforcement cameras set up along the freeway to catch speeders doing 10 miles or more over the limit.

The tall devices look like storks with big heads and no wings, and as this warbler passes them, he imagines a special guillotine rigged up just for these cameras, ready to decapitate these newfangled instruments of oppression, which the Arizona Department of Public Safety is installing higgledy-piggledy all over the place.

But as The Bird recently discovered by reading the local Libertarian news site FreedomsPhoenix.com, some low-tech rebels have come up with an even more ingenious way of rendering the photo-enforcement units impotent, if only briefly: Post-it notes. Seems there's been a rash of Post-it note attacks, in which the yellow sticky things are used to block the cameras' lenses.

DPS spokesman Lieutenant James Warriner confirmed that Post-it note ninjas are at work, with at least five incidents taking place recently on State Route 51, Interstate 10, and Loop 101. DPS has an investigator assigned to catch the plucky roadside rebels, though the department isn't sure what the Post-it note perps would be prosecuted for, if and when they're nabbed.

"It is considered vandalism," stated Warriner. "I think [we're] trying to figure out with the county attorney exactly what they can charge them with."

The Bird bets Andy Thomas has jumped right on it, which would give Candy bunches of other chickenshit cases he can take all the way to jury trials. And lose. At taxpayer expense.

That is, how could the authorities make any vandalism charge, um, stick? After all, there's no permanent damage done to the cameras. All DPS has to do is peel the Post-its off. It ain't like someone is spray-painting the camera lenses black, or (dare to dream) bashing them in with baseball bats.

Warriner said the DPS might have to stake out the cameras' locations. Perhaps even install hidden cameras to watch the devices. That's right, cameras to watch the cameras.

DPS says it has no choice. These photo enforcement cameras are raking in beaucoup bucks for the budget-challenged state. If you're nabbed by one of them, it's a $165 fine, plus a 10 percent surcharge for the Clean Elections Fund, which makes for a total of about $181 and change.

And they wonder why people hate these things. The Bird says: Long live the sticker rebellion! DPS should just be glad we don't get that camera-guillotine a-goin'.

SCA-GATE, CONTINUED

The SCA-gate ball is now squarely in Attorney General Terry Goddard's court. As you'll recall from a recent Bird item ("Arpaio's Watergate," November 11), this ornery owl broke the news that Goddard was looking into a complaint concerning the $105,000 contribution that the Sheriff's Command Association donated to the Arizona Republican Party.

See, Sheriff's Office Captain Joel Fox, the MCSO's version of Watergate's G. Gordon Liddy, wrote two checks to the Arizona Republican Party totaling the $105K. State party chairman Randy Pullen used the lion's share of that moolah to pay for attack ads against county attorney hopeful Tim Nelson and Sheriff Joe Arpaio's election rival, Dan Saban.

Thing is, the shadowy SCA never revealed its donor list to Pullen, as required by state law. So Pullen ended up having to return the funds to the SCA. By then, of course, the ads had long been paid for. The source of the cash remains a mystery, as does the question of whether the funds were illegally earmarked beforehand for use by Pullen in the county attorney and sheriff races. Pullen has denied this was the case.