From its humble beginnings in the South Bronx to “Rappers Delight” to Run-DMC, N.W.A and beyond, hip-hop has proved to be the most vital and progressive music form of the past 20 years, with enough staying power to rival even rock ‘n’ roll’s lengthy reign. Like rock, rap struck terror…
Rock ‘n’ roll often breeds absurdity. Artists who won’t play a show unless the backstage M&Ms are the right color or drummers whose hobby is hotel-room demolition. By comparison, Jonathan Richman seems remarkable. The man is urbane, civil, polite on the phone. “Hey, there,” chirps someone in smiley tones suitable…
It’s 4 a.m. Sirens blare, drums are launching off into some crazed atavistic groove and a surging curl of writhing, painted modern primitives snakes toward the stage. A butt-naked bald girl is pelting the audience with chunks of fruit and vegetables. A chunk of melon hits me. There’s lots of…
So Let’s Do Lunch, Mr. Nixon Raena Honan’s a self-described conservative Christian Republican who counts among her most-treasured possessions a photograph of herself flanked by U.S. Senator Jon Kyl and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. So why can’t she get an audience with Mr. Rightward Republican himself, Governor J. Fife Symington…
By now, everyone knows that Governor J. Fife Symington III has legislative approval to remodel his offices, which inhabit the top two floors of the state’s Executive Tower. The $1.7 million project has drawn criticism from the usual suspects–particularly the media–who are complaining that the rehab is far too lavish,…
Jerry Millison was overcome with anguish on the afternoon of May 12. “He wondered for a second just how screwed up he had to be before someone would help him,” a friend of Millison’s recalls. Millison, 41, had a history of mental illness, substance abuse and three suicide attempts. The…
“It’s a new day,” Phoenix Police Department 911 operator Tracy Lorenzano tells millions of people listening to National Public Radio’s popular, magazine-style news show, All Things Considered. In a five-minute piece that aired last month, Lorenzano is giving a day-in-the-life account of an emergency police dispatcher’s work in the Valley…
Texaz Grill, 6003 North 16th Street, Phoenix, 248-7827. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday, noon to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m. What’s in a name? Plenty. Yes, it’s true that a rose by any other…
“Billy Crystal? I crap bigger than that.” So remarked the ever-gracious Jack Palance while accepting an Oscar for City Slickers, a film Crystal had written and produced. The thing is, Palance was right–but at least in City Slickers, the disparity between the two men had made some comic sense. In…
If Rocco DeVilliers hadn’t been speeding through Missouri a few years ago, he probably wouldn’t be screening his film Pure Race for the European film market at Cannes. The 25-year-old Tempe resident co-scripted, produced, directed and edited the low-budget indie, played a small role in it and did “probably 90…
China Gate, 3033 West Peoria Avenue, Phoenix, 944-1982. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. When I plunk down six bucks to see a new Woody Allen…
Homage to Catalonia: What’s the best restaurant in town? Who knows? Tell me your tastes, and I could probably rattle off two dozen potential candidates. What’s my favorite restaurant? That’s a little easier. Depending on my mood, I could draw up several short lists. And Marquesa would be on all…
It’s not only beer that has made Milwaukee famous; the city that the Chamber of Commerce has dubbed “A Great Place on a Great Lake” can also claim Laverne & Shirley, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Spanic Boys. Of course, each of those big three exports bears certain elements of unreality:…
There’s a line toward the beginning of Melissa Etheridge’s song “Come to My Window” that goes, “I would dial the numbers just to listen to your breath.” It may not be the most memorable phrase in music history, but it tells you everything you need to know about the writer’s…
Do you know who the late Vivian Stanshall was? I didn’t, either, until I got a job working a 50-year-old switchboard in the Gralyn Hotel in Washington, D.C., and moved into a tiny room in the rear corner of the building. This was about 12 years ago. My space–which once…
Flashes, 5-25 Proof: Fife’s Off His Gourd Someone sent in this photo, and even though we don’t know what the occasion was, The Flash believes it’s worth 1,000 words. We do know the picture shows our esteemed governor, J. Fife Symington III, with a bunch of vegetables. There are some…
Last fall, when the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System awarded contracts to companies that would provide health-care services to the state’s poor, there were winners and losers–just as there are in any bidding process. It was the way AHCCCS picked the winners and losers, however, that raised eyebrows. The…
At first glance, Lionel Dela Rosa’s lawsuit against Scottsdale Memorial Health Systems seems like just another ho-hum discrimination case filed by a grumpy former employee. But it isn’t. It is really about whether a Vietnam veteran’s sometimes disturbing behavior justifies workplace harassment by co-workers. Dela Rosa, a 60-year-old Hispanic Vietnam…
Language and the abstract thinking that makes it happen are foremost among the characteristics that make humans human. But linguists, anthropologists and psychologists cannot agree on the moment in man’s evolution when that characteristic appeared, or why. Last week, in an article published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences,…
The middle-aged clerk at the sundry shop touches her brown, feathered hair, gazing appreciatively at the bodies pushing into the main exhibit hall at Phoenix Civic Plaza for the National Rifle Association convention. “Lotta men in town, inn’t there?” Well, yeah. Lotta guys wearing tee shirts with slogans like “Political…
Seen from the street, the Valley’s most fabled restaurant doesn’t look like much, just a boxy, Pepto Bismol-colored building badly in need of a paint job. The only decoration is the sad-looking awning over the front door, an entrance that doesn’t get used much, anyway. On the roof is the…
The title The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, but Came Down a Mountain suggests all sorts of possibilities, starting with a documentary about Sir Edmund Hillary. The movie that hides behind the title, however, is a charming, tall-tale comedy spun with sly, cheeky ease and flashes of visual grace…
