There were 15 of them standing together in the sun. In the dust and dirt, penned up yet blas about the situation, nowhere to go. The flies were taking advantage of this, landing on their noses and clustering about their eyes. But those eyes–gleaming black eight balls of calm and…
Another Arizona Export The giant sucking sound from out Yuma way is federal funds being flushed on behalf of the 125 powerful farmers who make up the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District. Federal largess has reached such absurd proportions that agencies now are fining each other. The U.S. Environmental Protection…
A judge has thwarted the latest effort to derail construction of a major league baseball stadium in downtown Phoenix. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey S. Cates on Monday dismissed two lawsuits that tried to give county voters a voice in whether they should be taxed to build the stadium…
It could have been a pep rally. But rather than “Go Team,” the placards said things like “Big Classes, Little Learning” and “Your Kids Deserve Better.” And instead of being carried by the cheerleading squad, they were brandished by teachers, More than 200 teachers picketed outside the Phoenix Union High…
Sometimes, Debbie McQueen wonders if people could possibly understand what she’s gone through. The isolation. The struggles. The heartache of being the mother of chemically sensitive boys. There was the time a family vacation soured when Jason McQueen had a seizure at Sea World. Another incident involved Michael, Jason’s brother,…
Lying in her bed last April, frail and small, Yvonne Camenos knew she had only weeks to live. Yet she was not embittered. She seemed content in the knowledge that she had fought for as long as she could. So as her mind replayed her struggle against ovarian cancer, she…
Iowa Cafe, 5606 East McKellips, Mesa, 985-2022. Hours: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Breakfast and Lunch, Saturday, 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; Sunday, 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Think of the three most popular types of ethnic restaurants in town. They’re from countries…
Early in Last of the Dogmen, Barbara Hershey and Tom Berenger are exploring the Montana wilderness when she tumbles down a bank to the edge of a cliff. He goes to help her and takes a spill himself. The two are clinging to a rope tied to Berenger’s horse, so…
The title of young director Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects refers, of course, to a famous laugh line in Casablanca: Police prefect Claude Rains has just witnessed Humphrey Bogart shooting a Nazi bigwig. Instead of having Bogie arrested, Rains turns to his subordinate and deadpans, “Major Strasser has been shot…
For Whom the Bell Tolls: The trip back from northern Arizona to the Valley along I-17 may satisfy your longings for scenery, but it doesn’t offer much hope for tamping down hunger pangs. There’s the wonderful Rock Springs Cafe, at exit 242 by Black Canyon City. But by that point,…
In Luis Buuel’s Belle de Jour, Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, a young Parisian housewife. Her husband is a rich, great-looking doctor (Jean Sorel) who adores her, and toward whom she is frigid. She drifts into an afternoon job as an upscale prostitute in a swanky brothel, where she finds fulfillment,…
Oriental Gourmet, 322 East Camelback, Phoenix, 285-0353. Hours: Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Six years ago, when I first came to town, I asked a friend who’d been living here since 1974 for some pointers. Where’s a good neighborhood…
In a pop perfect world, there would be some deep, cosmic rationale behind every band name. In reality, knowing that Buffalo Springfield is a brand of lawn mower doesn’t yield much in the way of brilliant insight. Since most of the really cool titles–like the Temptations and the Heartbreakers–have already…
It happened quickly. On August 27, KUKQ-AM program director, Valley alternative radio veteran and longtime indie music maven Jonathan L. announced on his weekly Virgin Vinyl program that he was leaving the station, “effective almost immediately.” He made good on his word the next morning, passing the torch to music…
CIGNA: Class, Action The tightwads at CIGNA Healthcare face further legal troubles stemming from their practice of hiding discounts for hospital services from CIGNA customers. Last March, the firm signed a state Department of Insurance consent decree admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to pay $127,000 in restitution to several hundred…
Like Abigail Van Buren, Joyce Brothers and Xaviera Hollander, Dr. Crime Lab wants to help. He wants to utilize his expertise, his know-how in the world of wrongdoing and advise you, the law-abiding citizen, the potential victim. The only difference between Abby or Dr. Joyce and Dr. Crime Lab is…
Grunting, straining and sweating like a couple of pro wrestlers, a young couple on the dance floor valiantly struggles to master a difficult back-flip maneuver. But the tricky move eventually reaches an impasse when the woman is stranded upside down on her partner’s hunched-over form, leaving the pair looking like…
They’ve swilled Coca-Cola with aspirin. Smoked banana peels. Licked toads. Over the years, thrill seekers have tried just about everything in their misguided guest for forbidden–if completely legal–kicks. And now–in an effort to experience “euphoric stimulation,” “increased sexual sensations” and a “fantastically light headed, tingly happy-happy buzz”–many thrill-starved hedonists are…
You’re tuned to the most substantial, most intelligent, hippest television broadcasting available today. You’re one of the lucky three million people in the nation who gets the Independent Film Channel, which airs domestic and foreign nonstudio cinema, uncut and commercial-free. You’re watching the works of Fellini, Truffaut, Kubrick, art-house staples,…
A nasty fight may be brewing over the redrawing of county supervisor districts–and which of the current supervisors will take the political fallout from the major-league baseball stadium vote. In February 1994, supervisors voted 3-1 to impose a countywide quarter-cent sales tax to fund construction of the major-league baseball stadium…
For all of her 53 years, Donna Goodale has threaded horses and mules through nearly impassable thickets of scrub oak and manzanita behind the tiny hamlet of Top of the World, Arizona, 75 miles east of Phoenix on U.S. Route 60. Goodale is a solid-framed woman with curly blond hair…
The big summer studio releases of 1995 cost millions to make. Some low-budget films play at selected art houses. Then there is the no-budget film like The Brothers McMullen. Brothers cost only $20,000 to make, which is less than one wet second of Waterworld. It was filmed mostly on weekends…
