When I asked a friend of mine, a devoted Disney-head, if he wanted to join me for a screening of Pocahontas, to my surprise, he declined, muttering, “I don’t know about that movie. It looks a little PC for my taste.” For several reasons, his being one, I think that…
The third of Warner Bros.’ Wagnerian Batman films has arrived–it could have been titled Die Fledermaus, Part III. Batman Forever has a new director and a new star in the title role, and before we launch into a debate about their comparative merits, we would probably do well to remember…
Franco’s Trattoria, 8120 North Hayden, Scottsdale, 948-6655. Hours: Dinner, Tuesday through Saturday, 5 p.m. to close. There are more Italian restaurants in the Valley than any other ethnic type, at all points of the price scale. At the upper end, I don’t think any of them is better than Franco’s…
It’s a breezy night at Club Rio in Tempe. The courtyard in the back is framed with lazy, swaying palms. A stage is set up at the east side of the patio. In front of the stage, there’s a large, ornate fountain gurgling water on itself. Behind the stage are…
You wanna talk influential bands? It’s gonna be a short conversation. What band has done more than KISS to influence everyone who’s anyone today–from Nirvana to Garth Brooks to the Gin Blossoms? That’s right, all none of ’em! KISS is legendary, this we know. And Gene Simmons knows it, too;…
It’s a given: Most Americans know ca-ca about ska. To date, we’ve only sent one record with a skanking beat into the Top 5–Little Millie Small’s squeaky-sweet ode to her pubescent licking stick, “My Boy Lollipop”–and that was way back in 1964! Despite its impressive chart showing, “Lollipop” was largely…
Don’t Tread on Us Jerry Colangelo isn’t the only one gorging himself at the public trough that will fund the downtown baseball stadium. Private property owners are chowing down, too. Most landowners in the 22-acre stadium site have agreed to sell to the county–after putting up a good fight. One…
Will Jerry Colangelo and the Arizona Diamondbacks struggle to make a buck in their new, taxpayer-financed stadium? Or will they turn a huge profit right out of the gate? The answer from Colangelo is both. It all depends on whom he’s telling. When he was convincing the Maricopa County Board…
In 1952, Ron and Carolyn Warner pulled together $1,400 and bought a burned-out grocery store at 26th Street and Osborn Road. Together the young 20-somethings shoveled out the soot and the trash, and in its place opened Warner’s Furniture and Interiors. In the early days, they sold just about everything…
After six months of nausea and pain, and a battery of tests, Sherrian Beagle was finally on her way to the hospital to have her gallbladder removed. Then she learned that her insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona, had decided she didn’t need the surgery and wouldn’t…
They played one song at Phil Girardin’s memorial service last week. “Everybody hurts,” the R.E.M. vocalist droned over and over in the small chapel at a Peoria funeral home. Girardin committed suicide by drug overdose June 8, one week after New Times told his story in a special report (“Mental…
A dove settles on Loreen Bustardi’s head. Happens all the time, says Bustardi, not to worry. The bird figures Bustardi is its mate. Sometimes, it lays eggs in her hair. Bustardi usually doesn’t know about the eggs until she changes position. The eggs aren’t fertile, so it’s not a loss…
Mexican Temptation: It was Oscar Wilde who said that he could resist everything except temptation. Me, too. That’s why I find myself constantly drawn to the restaurants at the beautiful Scottsdale Princess Resort. It’s impossible to eat here and not have a good time. Foodies know that the featured dining…
“Herkermer Homolka; hi, hello.” So says Tim Curry’s character in Congo, introducing himself with admirable alliteration. Herkermer is a Rumanian fortune hunter obsessed with finding the mines of King Solomon, and his eyes gleam as he makes assertions like, “Thees korilla has seen de Lost Ceety of Zeenj!” Wrapping words…
The Valley Art Third Annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival starts this week in Tempe. In the first two selections, the themes of homosexuality and lesbianism, while important, are not the main subject. One is a stark feminist passion play about the religious oppression of women, and the other is…
In 1918, the orphaned teenager Riyo leaves Japan for Hawaii and an arranged marriage. She knows her new husband Matsuji only from a letter, in which he calls himself a sugar-cane farmer and addresses a romantic haiku to her, and from his photograph–the grinning, good-looking face of a 20-year-old. When…
My wife, Paola, and I rarely get to dine out together. Since we spend the vast majority of our time in the restaurant, that’s where we dine most often. But when we do dine away from the restaurant, we don’t go to critique. Rather, we always search out a place…
Because we refer to television as “the vast wasteland,” we don’t put much stock in music made by its inhabitants. Plenty of TV personalities have fashioned disastrous singing careers for themselves, but few have ever tried to branch out into instrumental music. In the Fifties, Jackie Gleason parlayed his enormous…
Techno composer Moby is a hypocrite, but he’s the first to admit it. “Everything I do is contradiction, and it’s laden with hypocrisy,” says the vegan and environmentalist. Moby, a.k.a. Richard Melville Hall, speaks out against a number of issues, including toxic waste and cattle ranching. Pretty much everything about…
Remember that old rallying cry of the record industry in the Eighties: “Home taping is killing music”? Well, Mesa’s No Name Maddox has administered the last fatal blow to music as we knew and loved her with this frightening, homemade porridge of samples, synthesizers and psychotics. “D.I.Y.–fuck the great God…
A couple of things really pissed me off when I turned 50: It wasn’t enough that my junk mail started to include weekly solicitations to join AARP, I had to buy glasses from the drugstore to read them. If that didn’t make you smile, you probably won’t enjoy Ivan Menchell’s…
Boy, Is Fife’s Face Red Governor J. Fife Symington III occasionally loosens his tie and invites the Capitol press corps up to his office for an informal audience. A Fifester-side chat, if you will. The Flash wasn’t invited to the May 26 confab, but was told it went like this:…
