Barely Legal Amend the institution: Thank you for your insightful article regarding Father Dale Fushek (“Cross to Bare,” Robert Nelson, February 24). My guess is there are many more victims of Father Dale’s out there who may never come forward. When is the Diocese of Phoenix going to start helping…
“No matter what happens here tonight, Kreme, we ain’t knockin’ boots,” declares my sometimes Sapphic, sometimes stick-happy sidekick, Jett, as we’re parking the Impala near Club Chameleon, the PHX’s premier palace of swing. “So don’t get any ideas!” “Hell, girl, you can keep ’em on,” I smirk as we head…
God, I could go for a pint of Stella Artois, or “wife-beater,” as it’s sometimes referred to in merry ol’ England. I’m in a black-and-white box of an eatery, surrounded by photos of Cornish tin miners, reading a biography of Hermann Goering. Halfway through my midday meal, it hits me…
FRI 3/4 Last fall, renowned African-American choreographer Alonzo King took up residence at the White Oak Plantation in Yulee, Florida, where Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Dance Studio hosts artists for the development of new works. Apparently, the stay did King some good. His San Francisco-based LINES Ballet, founded in 1982, shows off…
SUN 3/6 The revolution will be televised — if, that is, you happen to be at Thought Crime, 1019 North Central, on Sunday, March 6, for the Anarchist Library’s screening of the documentary The Fourth World War. Organizer Phil Freedom describes the 78-minute video as “riot porn,” since it features…
SAT 3/5 If your pooch’s flabby paunch is starting to rival your beer gut, it’s time to get that mutt some exercise. Take a hike with your canine companion on Saturday, March 5, when local no-kill animal organizations Paw Placement and For the Luv of Dogz, along with the Canine…
FRI 3/4 Phoenix hasn’t exactly been a hotbed of the gothic club scene. For one thing, it’s too sunny here (honest, it is!) for any “vampire” to survive; and for another, it’s too damn hot to wear black all the time — not to mention the fact that the Valley…
I’m pacing outside the Chicago Cubs clubhouse at their winter training facility, Fitch Park in Mesa, at about 8 a.m. Beyond the foyer is a gaggle of Chicago beat writers who cover baseball’s only remaining “cursed” team. You know, the middle-aged, flabby guys who look like they’ve never touched second…
For a day and a half, hundreds of local activists will try to shape a small corner of Arizona State University into the world they wished existed. For many who attend Local to Global Justice’s Teach-In this weekend, that vision includes driving cars powered on pure vegetable oil and eating…
If you want to know what Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is all about, it’s pretty easy to sum up. It starts with a big fight, as a group of local villagers plays capture-the-flag in the branches of a large tree. Then there’s a brief stretch of plot, as the head…
The Pacifier, starring the human battering ram Vin Diesel as a Navy SEAL ordered to protect five kids from baddies out to steal their dead dad’s invention, was written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, two members of the defunct MTV comedy troupe The State. Lennon, however, is best…
Come this time next year, The Jacket may well occupy the slot in movie discourse that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does now — that of the film that coulda-shoulda-woulda gotten more Oscar nominations if only it hadn’t come out so early in the year and been forgotten by…
The novel Be Cool, written by Elmore Leonard in 1999 while the ink was still wet on the publisher’s advance, existed only because the beloved writer of seedy thrillers and Westerns knew it was guaranteed gold — the sequel to the 1991 hit novel Get Shorty that, in 1995, became…
Hot on the heels of fellow house-music visionary Bad Boy Bill’s visit to the ‘Nix, former tag-team collaborator and equally influential house producer Richard “Humpty” Vission is hitting town to get y’all’s asses shaking on the floor at Next on Wednesday, March 9. Humpty’s been tooling with the tables since…
Long before they entrenched themselves in a spat rivaling the East Coast/West Coast rivalry of Biggie and Tupac, former Smiths front man Morrissey and fellow sad sot Robert Smith of The Cure somehow produced an offspring, a sullen young’un named Jamie Stewart. Details are sketchy as to how said progeny…
The rumors about ska’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Rude Boys have kept reinventing it again and again, and ska’s last incarnation, “the third wave,” saw its horns and tempo mixed with punk’s sound and drive, as exemplified by bands like the Voodoo Glow Skulls and MU330. Purists often deride…
The Swedish cats in Mando Diao have spent a long time with their British Invasion albums. On Bring ‘Em In, their debut salvo, their Beatles-meets-Yardbirds take on Brit pop combined an uncanny gift for melody with a fuzzed-out twin guitar attack. This time, the influences are more diverse, but the…
Tom Russell is best known as a hip cowboy/country singer-songwriter, and he’s always interesting in that capacity. But this new disc is something else entirely — it’s Russell’s odd, brilliant introduction and homage to the deviant geniuses who made life interesting in the last two-thirds of the 20th century. There’s…
In the language of analog recording, “wow” and “flutter” were terms used to describe the distortion common to the recording process. The title of The Kills’ second album is obviously ironic, because the duo’s powerful, stripped-down sound is built on a foundation of fuzz, feedback and distortion. Hotel, a highly…
In recent years, James Murphy has undeniably helped direct the hipster strata of New York music. DFA, the label that he produces with partner Tim Goldsworthy, is the Neptunes of indieland, lending guidance and technical savvy to a who’s who of exploratory bands, from the Rapture to Black Dice to…
My friend Billy used to always wear a button that said “Who Cares” on the collar of his jacket, until “some bitch” stole it off of him at a dive bar near our neighborhood. Billy was pissed, not because he’d lost some expression of apathy he was aiming at the…
The Wu-Tang Clan shouldn’t still exist. In an industry where today’s rap superstar becomes tomorrow’s MC Hammer, nine Staten Island MCs pulled off the impossible. They outlasted the three great pitfalls of modern hip-hop: ego battles, gang violence and, most important, irrelevance. Rappers worldwide would be wise to learn from…
