Tom Petty occupies a strange place in our collective psyche. Because of his notable collaborations with respected rock elders like Bob Dylan, George Harrison and the late Del Shannon, we tend to view him as a rookie instead of the 20-year veteran that he is. When he and the Heartbreakers…
If the word “mambo” conjures up anything at all in an age when the most popular forms of dance are “line” and “slam,” it is probably some kind of slightly silly, Ricky Ricardoesque vision. There might be a couple of ladies wearing hats made of fresh fruit bumping and grinding…
Etienne’s Different Pointe of View, Pointe Hilton at Tapatio Cliffs, 11111 North Seventh Street, Phoenix, 863-0912. Brunch hours: Sunday, 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. For flower shops, it’s Valentine’s Day. For airlines, it’s the day before Thanksgiving. For department stores, it’s the day after Christmas. And for restaurants, it’s Mother’s…
Brunch Tips: The Valley’s high number of world-class resorts makes this one of the country’s great brunch sites. If Etienne’s is booked for Mother’s Day, here are some first-rate alternatives that combine magnificent settings with magnificent fare: Terrace Dining Room (Phoenician resort, 941-8200): Maybe the Valley’s most lavish spread, and…
Director Henry Hathaway’s 1947 Kiss of Death isn’t necessarily a great crime movie, but it has remained in our collective movie memory for two reasons: Richard Widmark and New York City. The film was shot entirely on location, a practice that’s now de rigueur, but was unusual enough at the…
Jim Carroll’s book The Basketball Diaries isn’t about basketball, it’s about how the diarist, a Catholic high school kid growing up in Manhattan, happened to quit basketball. It’s an autobiographical work, supposedly the real diary Carroll kept during the mid-Sixties, when he changed from an aspiring poet and star of…
Destiny Turns On the Radio is the unfortunate title of a small, strange, rather agreeable comic fantasy set in Las Vegas. The title cosmic force, personified by Quentin Tarantino as a flashy hipster with a shit-eating grin, finds Julian (Dylan McDermott), an escaped convict, wandering in the Nevada desert and…
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: A friend of mine recounted this weird tale of a recent Saturday-night meal at a lively north central Southwestern-food hot spot. Between the appetizer and entree courses, a dazed dog wandered in from the street, staggered over to my friend’s group’s table and collapsed by its…
Everybody loves chili with beans–sure thing! And everybody loves legendary country supergroup Alabama–I know you’re all with me on that! But what if you wanna combine your love of both in some kind of symbiotic power coupling? Sure, you could heat up a can of Hormel and throw on your…
Geraldo Rivera: GG, why do you feel the need to defecate onstage? GG Allin: My body is the rock ‘n’ roll temple and my flesh, blood and bodily fluids are a communion to the people whether they like it or not. I’m not out to please anybody; my rock ‘n’…
Democracy’s a funny thing. It can define civilizations. It can liberate minds and unleash souls. It can prompt unending, impenetrable gibberish from bespectacled poli-sci students. And it can kill a rock band. Music groups adhering to egalitarian ideals are breakups waiting to happen. Dictators–benevolent, malevolent and all points in between–seem…
Glenn Frey Solo Collection (MCA) How much water can one ex-Eagle tread? Prior to all of last year’s Eagles reunion by-products, Frey released a Greatest Hits–Live album. Now here comes its studio equivalent, minus all the Eagles stuff on which Frey’s dead ass and reputation still coast. For an entire…
There’s not a bat in sight in the world premiäre of Arizona Theatre Company’s compelling new version of Dracula, currently stalking Herberger Theater Center. But bats are about the only thing missing from Steven Dietz’s faithful rendition of Bram Stoker’s 1897 tale of horror. ATC commissioned Dietz, author of this…
Plane Embarrassing Phoenix’s daily papers printed big color photos of America West Airlines’ new Boeing 757 last week. The garish jet has “Arizona” emblazoned on its side, along with a painting of an unfurled state flag. According to the glowing press reports, the plane is meant as a “thank you”…
Colorado River rafting guides are used to navigating through and around whirlpools and “keeper holes,” the kind of white-water hydraulic effects that can suck a boat down and hold it underwater. Right now they are finding themselves swamped in the wake of the U.S. Coast Guard’s decision to take away…
Dick George stuck his television set in a storage room a few years ago and started taking his own pictures. As a longtime employee of the Phoenix Zoo–he’s now its publications manager–his eye and his heart naturally are connected to Papago Park, where the zoo is located. So it makes…
Flush with millions of dollars of surplus tax revenue, Tempe will soon place a $70 million bet that developers will flock to its long-sought Rio Salado project. It’s a wager Tempe taxpayers will have no say in. Most city councilmembers, led by Mayor Neil Giuliano, are so confident that taxpayers…
On-the-spot burial permits! Software that can spit out automatic death certificates, with 2,000 causes of death to choose from! This is what technology is bringing to the modern mortuary, and for the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, it’s not a moment too soon. The energy spent chasing down…
When State Senate President John Greene gaveled the death of a bill extending government health benefits to at least 150,000 poor Arizonans, debate did not end. If anything, it intensified. Opponents remained convinced the bill was nothing more than an expansion of the welfare state, exactly the kind of big-government…
Flying Crane, 730 East Brown, Mesa, 835-6073. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Monday through Thursday, 5 to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 8:30 p.m. For a guy who used to believe that onion rings, jelly doughnuts, pizza and corned beef made up…
Thomas Jefferson was a great American statesman–probably the greatest–and Nick Nolte is a superb American movie star. What a shame that the collaboration of these two estimable men–Nolte plays Jefferson in Jefferson in Paris, the new movie by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory–is so utterly dull. About the…
Frequent moviegoers tend to develop pretty sharp instincts about what to see and what to avoid, and they’re often right. As soon as one sees that a feature vehicle has been made for a popular sketch character from Saturday Night Live, the review starts writing itself in one’s head–“What’s funny…
