Dr. Richard Ireland has been many things in his time. Nightclub mind reader. Psychic sleuth. Hollywood seer. Corpse. On this particular day, however, the “Godfather of Psychics” is merely late. En route to an interview, the self-described “Phoenix Oracle” somehow fails to foresee that the car he is riding in…
Everybody knows that Arizona’s failure to establish a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday has cost the state millions of bucks in convention revenue. Ironically, the mass murder of nine people in a Buddhist temple west of Phoenix earlier this month apparently has had little effect on a Buddhist convention scheduled…
Need a copy of Intro to Modem Lit? Look no further than Valleycat, Phoenix Public Library’s latest shelf-help acquisition. An offshoot of the computer card catalogues that popped up in several branches of Phoenix Public Library last winter, the Valleycat system allows computer owners to gain access to library listings…
We’ve heard that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But God only knows why Channel 12 head cheese C.E. “Pep” Cooney would taketh such a cheap shot at Patti Kirkpatrick. Last week, the general manager of KPNX-TV rescinded an Employee of the Month award that station employees had…
One Saturday evening a few weeks ago, a dozen parishioners filed into the Hellenic Orthodox Church of Saint Nectarios, a tiny house of worship located in the backyard of an East Phoenix home. Once inside the stucco structure, the devout bowed their heads in preparation for a special prayer ritual…
Thanks to the airport-style security popping up in one of the Valley’s supermarket chains, the act of purchasing pickle loaf is now only slightly less daunting than boarding an Israeli jet. You know those security walkways like the ones used to detect weapons at airports and courthouses? Well, folks, welcome…
Right now, there’s an X-rated spectacle that’s unquestionably the hottest show in town. Not surprisingly, the show attracts the usual panting suckers. But the reason it’s so steamy has more to do with a thermometer than overheated glands. Curious? No sweat. Fork over twin sawbucks and drive into what is…
Never mind a car in every garage and a chicken in every microwave. Where in these United States is the couch-potato Utopia that has a videocassette recorder in virtually each and every home? Incredibly, the answer is Flagstaff. That’s what Arbitron, the national rating service that is one of the…
Old joke: After he gets pulled over for speeding, a guy tries to talk his way out of the ticket by telling the traffic cop that he’s almost home. The cop doesn’t buy it. “Don’t you realize that most accidents occur within five miles of the home?” he asks as…
You unenlightened souls probably took one look at the new McDowell Arch at 16th Street (imagine driving under a picket fence), shook your heads and muttered, “This is the limit.” But when it comes to the cutting edge, the McDowell curio can’t hold a candle to what the country’s Next…
Thinking of driving through Mesa with a dildo on the front seat of your car? Think again. Mesa sculptor William Jakimow recently learned that lesson the hard way. While returning from an East Valley ceramics studio several weeks ago, the 41-year-old artist made the mistake of hauling along a footlong…
Forget about those two front teeth. Back in the early Sixties, little Billy saw a TV commercial and immediately knew what he wanted for Christmas: King Zor, the Fighting Dinosaur. While primitive by today’s standards, the black-and-white commercial got the job done. Filmed from low camera angles to make the…
ACTION HIGHWAY “Action! Chases! Danger!” Speed traps, collapsing bridges and head-on collisions made this battery-operated racetrack more fun than your average Sunday drive. Drive-by shootings and homicidal hitchhikers not included. MYSTERY DATE “When you open the door, will your date be a dream (sigh!)–or a dud (groan!)?” Juvenile jezebels vie…
Turn on your TV at 9 o’clock next Tuesday morning. You’ve got your Sally Jessy Raphael. You’ve got your Regis and Kathie Lee. And over on Channel 45, you’ve got your Tom Tabback. Who? Actually, the big question may be: What? You see, The Tom Tabback Show is a talk…
Grassy knoll. Warren Commission. Zapruder footage. Hard to believe, but my generation’s buzz words are now another generation’s U.S. History assignment. And some people evidently haven’t been paying as much attention to their homework as they should have. Or so I discovered after I recently agreed to play the chauffeur…
Did Jim Morrison meet his maker in a Paris bathtub in 1971? Or did the rock star really learn of a top-secret plan to kill him, causing him to fake his own death and forcing him to hide out in a Spanish monastery, where he actually died of natural causes…
Where else would Hollywood go to shoot a movie titled The Vagrant? Phoenix, the setting for enough downbeat titles to program an all-existential film festival, is again playing host to makers of movieland magic and/or muck. The Vagrant came to town last week. Production trucks, lights, cameras, actors–even a few…
Onetime child actor Butch Patrick, best known to three generations of TV viewers as little Eddie Munster, thoughtfully examines an old publicity photo. Taken some 25 years ago, the shot features Patrick in a typical Munsteresque pose of the period: Decked out in wolfboy makeup and clad in his trademark…
Forget love at first sight. Get ready for marriage on first date! “It seemed like a fun idea at the time,” chuckles Phoenix deejay Danny Bonaduce. “Of course, my fiancee back in Philadelphia wasn’t too thrilled about it.” The erstwhile smartass of The Partridge Family recently married a woman he’d…
“Laissez les bon temps rouler!” Translation? “Let the good times roll!”–which just happens to be the official motto of Fat Tuesday, a New Orleans-style bar and restaurant in Tempe that promises customers a virtual Mardi Gras on Mill. But for the past three years, the Atlanta-based chain has unwittingly been…
From coast to coast, from playground to barroom, an enfeebled whine rings out across the land. All together now: “I’ve fallen . . . and I can’t get up!” Yes, once again America has fallen for a line. “It’s the big joke around here,” reports an insider at Channel 12,…
It’s 1983. Armed with reams of national publicity spawned by his much-imitated “Men of Arizona State” beefcake calendar, ASU grad Todd Headlee floats into Hollywood and almost immediately sells his tale to the movies. The opportunity of a lifetime? Not for Headlee, who, despite “associate producer” billing, is banned from…
