“Mexico sucks!” Under normal barroom conditions — particularly in a southern-Arizona beer joint heavily populated with Hispanics — them’s fightin’ words. But as the anti-nationalist proclamation echoes through Tucson’s Wildcat House on a recent Sunday afternoon, them’s more like wrestlin’ words. “Butt-biting midgets,” “masked Mexican wrestlers,” “marauding mat maidens.” For…

He may not know a Coquille St. Jacques from a Jumbo Jack, but self-styled “Mill Avenue Food Critic” Dennnis (that’s how he spells it) Skolnick knows what he likes: a free lunch. But four years after he first began dispensing dining tips to tourists walking along Tempe’s main drag, the…

With its crude lettering, sloppy punctuation and juvenile doggerel, the ramshackle signage looks like something you’d expect to see outside Spanky and Alfalfa’s clubhouse, not in the front yard of a home in the heart of one of the Valley’s more exclusive neighborhoods. But for more than three weeks now,…

In the words of Ebonics-spouting female horndog Clarissa Jenkins, “Necessity be da mutha of invenshun, baby. Know what ah’m sayin’?” Thanks to DJ Steve Tingle, father of this comic creation, fans of the Valley’s premier trash-talkin’ radio floozy know only too well. Just ask anyone who’s ever tuned in to…

The legal equivalent of a catfight between two hookers battling over the same turf was the last thing on Tempe pizzeria owner Domenick Montanile’s mind when he distributed fliers advertising an upcoming “Pimp & Ho” costume party at his restaurant several weeks ago. But that’s pretty much what happened when…

If He Only Had a Brain Called onstage to accept the “Key to Munchkinland” during a June performance of The Wizard of Oz starring Mickey Rooney and Jo Anne Worley, Phoenix Mayor Skip Rimsza told a Grady Gammage Auditorium audience: “Politicians and actors do have something in common — we…

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE 9s TURNED TO 0s? Former governor Ev Mecham told us he was “spending a quiet evening at home.” Rose Mofford, Mecham’s successor, hung up on us. Onetime glitter-rock night owl Angela Bowie slept through the whole thing. And in Tempe, the Suicide Hotline was reportedly…

Size does matter. Or at least it does to painter John Cerney, creator of the Rushmorean rug rat seen daily by thousands of westward-bound I-10 travelers. “As long as I’ve been painting, I’ve always been interested in making things bigger and bigger,” says Cerney, who operates a commercial mural studio…

Ma and Pa Kettle, they ain’t. And forget any resemblance to those “American Gothic” sourpussed sod-busters, too. In fact, better check all those citified notions about farm life when you enter Kathleen and Arnott Duncan’s pick-it-yourself veggie patch and petting zoo in Goodyear. Part of an actual organic farm providing…

For a ceremony eulogizing “Tish Tanner” (née Garry Mangum), the trash-talkin’ male comedienne who brightened up Valley drag revues since RuPaul was a boy, the final gathering was a remarkably staid affair. Unless you count the spangly costumes, array of wigs, piles of costume jewelry and trays of makeup artfully…

HELEN HESTENES, OWNER AND CURATOR of the Icehouse, can find raw material for creative inspiration in just about anything. Take breast cancer, for instance. Eager to explore the artistic aspects of the disease, Hestenes once invited the public to participate in an installation called “The Invisible Woman.” An interactive exhibition,…

Power outages! Food shortages! Computer chaos! With all the potential horrors of Y2K looming just around the millennium, it would be hard to think of a worse imaginable time for someone to try to introduce a new calendar. Or at least that would be the conventional wisdom — a school…

Asked to sum up eBay in one sentence, a longtime dealer pal of mine deadpans, “Barnum was right.” To test his theory — that the eBay community is made up of a bunch of suckers who’ll bid on anything — I recently decided to auction off a slew of gag…

Attention, online shoppers! Welcome to eBay, your one-stop shopping headquarters for everything you never knew you needed. An international flea market to some, a global Dumpster to others, this behavioral-research head-scratcher has produced some of the wackiest human-interest stories of the year. In recent months, Internet shopaholics have vicariously thrilled…

A former pastry chef at a tony Valley bistro met a violent death on the morning of Sunday, June 27. Twenty-six-year-old Dion Ybarra was killed instantly when a 14-year-old in a stolen minivan smashed into him, hurling him from his vehicle. But angry friends and former co-workers at Christopher &…

Near drownings. Spousal abuse. Carjackings in progress. Most people would agree that angst-ridden 911 calls represent the height of hysteria. But tragedy aside, longtime Valley emergency operator Beth Compton claims a lot of that 911 hysteria is, well, distressingly funny. The result is Did You Say An Alligator?, a self-published…

Mention Lake Havasu City, and most people will pounce on the hamlet’s hellacious heat, a triple-digit mind-roaster that frequently tops out the nation’s thermometer. Either that, or London Bridge, the imported British landmark that spans a portion of the boat-studded waterway weaving through the western Arizona lakeside community. But George…

Lynette Bibbee’s museum of maudlin art is not a pretty picture. In one strategically placed lithograph titled “No Dogs Allowed,” a wide-eyed waif and his equally optically overendowed poodle soulfully dare the viewer to look away. Avert your eyes to the print next to it, this one identified as “The…

“Keane paintings are my friends,” gushed actress Joan Crawford. An art critic from the New York Times checked in with a far different opinion, characterizing the couple’s work as “the very definition of tasteless hack work.” Eye or nay, there was no denying that artists Walter and Margaret Keane had…

Improper food storage! Clogged sinks! Insect residue! Tagging along with county restaurant health inspectors, KTVK-TV Channel 3’s crack news team regularly brings viewers horrifying footage of what’s really going on in Valley galleys. But right under its own nose, the station’s kitchen-cam crew has somehow missed what appears to be…

The main branch of the Phoenix Public Library was recently forced to rid its collection of more than 2,000 books–all of them dirty. But before hollering “censorship,” gentle reader, be advised that the villain of this particular piece isn’t a cultural bluenose. The real culprit? The unknown vandal who’s believed…