With the possible exception of the Empire State Building in King Kong, it’s doubtful there could be a stronger phallic symbol anywhere in movies than the submarine: an oblong shape that dives into the depths, is loaded with scurrying seamen and is eager to discharge itself. Small wonder that the…
Eat, Drink and Deduct: A few weeks ago, at income-tax time, I wrote a column about restaurant owners lobbying Congress to restore 100 percent tax deductibility to business-related meals. Currently, businesses can write off only 50 percent of the cost of business meals. Naturally, restaurant owners, who figure to serve…
Instead of the usual rambling nonsense on how I wasted my weekend (though this one did involve garlic, a mood ring, nausea, high-speed travel, and a fat, squirrelesque employee at a convenience store in Cottonwood with a pulsating red scar on his forehead), let’s head straight into what really matters:…
A few years back, Chris Mars played drums in a band that prided itself on having one of the nastiest reputations in rock. Drunk, sloppy, crude, unprofessional, even impolite–the Replacements pretty much cornered the market on undesirable adjectives. So what would you expect Chris Mars to be like? Obnoxious? Uncultured?…
Steve Gorman, drummer for the Black Crowes, remembers the first time he realized his band was no longer the new kid on the block. “Two years ago,” he recalls, “I was sitting at my brother’s house in Baltimore and he puts on MTV. The veejay goes, ‘After the break, we’ll…
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant America West Arena May 10, 1995 “This can’t be a Led Zeppelin show. I feel so safe.” So remarked an ASU teacher’s assistant sitting next to me, and he was right–it wasn’t a Led Zeppelin show. It was a night of the oldies! And for…
You don’t build the City of Tomorrow in a day. In fact, not even in 25 years, as it turns out, but Paolo Soleri’s vision of Arcosanti has not wavered since he first broke ground for his “urban laboratory” at the basalt cliffs near Cordes Junction in 1970. The beautiful,…
Flashes, 5-18 Look Who’s Not Talking Last week, U.S. Senator John McCain was yapping about Janet Reno and Waco to that bastion of Gotham liberalism, The New Yorker. Which must have reporters at the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette scratching their heads. The Snowy Haired Senator won’t talk to their…
High above downtown Phoenix, Ulysses Sanchez sits in a borrowed office in an executive tower with a window that looks out on another executive tower. He’s nestled in a chair that’s not really his behind a desk with someone else’s name on it, surrounded by the believers. Like Sanchez, these…
Thanks to the recent surge in the economy, plain ol’ white paper is turning to gold. And the unprecedented demand for it seems to have taken the state bureaucracy by surprise, costing Arizona more than half a million dollars. When the economy began to turn a little more than a…
Bryan Gilliam knows that crime doesn’t pay; the 20-year-old is serving a five-year sentence for car theft. Now he may be learning that truthfulness doesn’t pay, either. While incarcerated at Fort Grant, a minimum-security prison near Safford, Gilliam took training to become a legal assistant. That, combined with the fact…
Eight years ago, nearly 1,000 west-side residents crowded into the Maryvale High School auditorium to accuse doctors from the Arizona Department of Health Services of ignoring what they saw as an alarming leukemia rate among Maryvale’s children. The 1987 meeting was held on a muggy July night. It was a…
Jawad Hashim raises his chin slightly, looking directly into the video camera recording his statement. Droves of lawyers hover. They all want to know just what Hashim did with several tens of millions of Arab dollars that disappeared more than a decade ago. It’s not the first time Hashim–a 57-year-old…
Lon’s at the Hermosa, Hermosa Inn, 5532 North Palo Cristi, Paradise Valley, 955-7878. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Monday through Saturday, 6 to 10 p.m. Valley hotels and resorts know they can’t do much about marketing their rooms to locals. It doesn’t take a…
John Sayles has been making movies for quite a while now, but making them less as a director and more as a screenwriter who directs. His interests are impressively wide, his plots are imaginative, his characters often complex, his dialogue pungent and funny. But his films, though never inept, are…
It’s understandable that Eldridge Cleaver would consider Panther “a travesty.” Cleaver, who in the ’60s was minister of information for the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, is a character in director Mario Van Peebles’ new film, and he doesn’t come off especially well. He’s presented as a hothead who can’t…
Those who squawked about Philadelphia’s depiction of the unwavering support shown to a gay man by his affluent family really will be put out by The Sum of Us. This little Australian film is about the unconditional love of a father for his gay son. Harry (Jack Thompson) is a…
Duke’s Place, 7210 East First Avenue, Scottsdale, 970-4484. Hours: Lunch, Tuesday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Tuesday through Sunday, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Remember the movie The Crying Game? It was basically a formula flick: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. But the…
The loins of Ellis Marsalis are certainly no slouch in the siring-of-jazz-prodigies department. The respected New Orleans pianist is father to a fantastically talented brood of jazzmen–trumpet virtuoso Wynton, drummer Jason, producer/trombonist Delfeayo and first-born Branford. That last event occurred almost 35 years ago, and in that amount of time,…
You’re Dead Hot Workshop. You’re a hometown hit in Tempe. The locals consider you the Valley’s next prime music export. You’ve recently signed a major-label deal and you’re starting out on an extended tour designed to introduce yourself to the great American masses. That’s you, a day and a half…
If you saw Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, you may have some insight into the final offering of the season by Actors Theatre of Phoenix, now playing in Stage West at Herberger Theater Center. In that 1960 film, Olivier portrays Archie Rice, a vaudeville song-and- dance man down on his…
Last weekend, in the chilly confines of Mesa Amphitheatre, an actor entreated us: “Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.” Not to worry. After suffering through a season of Shakespearean mediocrity, Phoenix audiences should welcome a robust rendition of Shakespeare’s most mature historical drama, The Life of King Henry…
