Sat 10/25 It’s the State Fair’s most gripping entertainment — hands-down. On Saturday, October 25, “the Super Bowl of Arm Wrestling” — i.e. Armwrestling USA’s United States Championships — pits competitors from across the country against feisty fairgoers wanting to elbow their way into the action. The culmination of a…
Sat 10/18 Hunched over your Cheerios in the morning, staring at the 2 percent milk, ever find yourself thinking, “I could build a boat out of this here milk carton . . .”? Us neither. But some brainiac in Seattle did, and the city now hosts an annual milk carton…
10/10-10/12 Joe Rogan thinks he’s funny, though you may not know it from his poker-faced persona as host of NBC’s Fear Factor. Rogan, who formerly appeared in the sitcom NewsRadio alongside Phil Hartman and Andy Dick, and is now a rookie host of The Man Show on Comedy Central, professes…
Afros and dreadlocks and conks and weaves, relaxer and straightener and perm endpapers and picks, cornrows and braids and beads . . . all of these styles, products and elements of African-American hair are examined and analyzed through the prism of art in the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s latest…
Phoenix Body Positive, an HIV and AIDS research and resource center, is presenting “HIV Through the Eyes of Parents,” an art exhibition of collaborative pieces by artists and family members affected by HIV and AIDS. It opens at downtown’s APS Gallery on Monday, September 29. For the project, which Body…
No one can ever accuse Abe Ruthless of being highbrow. The 25-year-old former front man for punk rock misanthropes Slash City Daggers, current Fuck You Ups singer and guitarist and freshly christened solo artist is no art rocker. Ruthless bears all the pretty scars of a young manhood spent in…
There’s something queer happening at the happiest place on Earth. For the last several years, on a specifically designated day, more than 100,000 gays and lesbians have descended on Walt Disney World in Orlando, and, on a separate date, thousands more have gathered at Disneyland in Anaheim, for Gay Day…
9/10-9/14 A librarian’s search takes him far beyond the card catalogue in Underneath the Lintel, the off-Broadway hit being co-produced by ASU West’s Department of Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance and the Valley’s new nonprofit iTheatre Collaborative. Hailed as “a wonderful metaphor for life’s meaning,” Glen Berger’s play tracks an obsessed…
8/31-9/1 “I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun rise,” Valley comic and impresario Jimmy Danelli says. “When the sun comes up in the morning, I’ll be wearing my sunglasses.” Danelli, host of the Funniest Person in the Valley comedy series, is talking about his upcoming stint MCing…
Sat 8/30 Impact Zone Wrestling, the state’s only full-service training school for professional wrestlers, celebrates its first anniversary at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday, August 30, with a full card of local wrestlers at its Phoenix facility. For $8, fans can check out the next generation of pro wrestling heroes, who…
8/27-9/19 On Wednesday, August 27, the planet Mars will be closer to the Earth — 56 million kilometers — than it has been in some 60,000 years; Neanderthals were the last to observe Mars in such proximity, according to NASA. It’s obviously an appropriate date for the opening of “See…
Sun 8/24 This weekend is World Wrestling Entertainment’s latest installment of the SummerSlam pay-per-view event. One of WWE’s biggest annual mega-bouts, it features wrestlers from both RAW and SmackDown!. But for around the price of a pay-per-view purchase, you can roll on down to America West Arena and experience it…
It was 1979, a hair’s breadth away from a quarter of a century ago, when the lowrider movement took root in Phoenix, one of the largest Chicano metropolises in the United States. Originally, in Southern California during the ’50s and ’60s, the inches-off-the-ground, candy-colored, slow-rolling hoopties were a socially defiant…
Revisit the history of the Valley’s music scene, and in those annals you’ll find an anomaly: In 1996, four youngsters, barely in their teens, self-released (with a little help from the ‘rents) an eponymous debut, Chronic Future, which propelled them onto local radio and eventually to national prominence in the…
8/7, 8/9 Last year, with her debut book The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club, Valley humorist Laurie Notaro hit the New York Times best-seller list right about the same time her long-running column for the Arizona Republic was unceremoniously canceled. Much of the book, and its just-released follow-up, Autobiography of a…
Aderelict-looking Toucan Sam clutches a wad of money in one wing, a paper-bag-wrapped liquor bottle in the other. Behind him Cap’n Crunch and Lucky the Leprechaun (of Lucky Charms fame) are in a purple convertible lowrider; Crunch is riding shotgun, firing a semi-automatic handgun at a Keebler elf and that…
Sun 8/3 Praise the Lord and pass the Jack and dirty women — you’re guaranteed a hoe-down when the Reverend comes to town. The Reverend Horton Heat, Texas’ most debauched theologian and rockabilly evangelist, is hitting Tempe’s Marquee Theatre, 730 North Mill, on August 3 (on a Sunday nonetheless, so…
Tue 7/29 “It’s a grudge match,” asserts boxer Leslie Sonnenklar. “She’s going down in 48 seconds flat.” Sonnenklar is being facetious in predicting the outcome of her first non-kickboxing bout, but when she goes up against Chrystal Proctor on Tuesday, July 29, she won’t be in the ring to read…
Sat 7/19 For those who need more spontaneity in their nightlife, the promoters of Inkblotch are throwing up a staggering slate of DJs and hip-hop talent for an all-night, all-ages bash to open a new club in Phoenix — but they’re not saying where. Inkblotch’s Mike Stanton says the secret…
Mon 7/21 “I hadn’t really thought about doing thrillers for adults,” says best-selling children’s author R.L. Stine. He’s speaking of his new book, The Sitter, a creepy summer read aimed at the twentysomething set that grew up reading Stine’s Goosebumps series. “I thought maybe I’d try to grow with my…
Sat 7/12 “The only way I can sum it up is: a freakers’ ball with bands,” E Bomb guitarist Eddie Lopez says of Planet Sex, the third installment in his band’s series of risqué parties featuring the burlesque ladies of Lezbosagogo, Cut Throat Freak Show, body latex painting, bands and…
Of its many owners, surely the strangest person to purchase Phoenix’s first skyscraper, the Westward Ho hotel, was Roger Rudin, a fundamentalist preacher who briefly took over the building with a business partner in the late 1970s. Only after his death in 1998 was it revealed in New Times that…
