The inventor of the granddaddy of all word games was a man by the name of Butts. Maybe that’s why hard-core Scrabble aficionados have such a healthy respect for double entendres–and particularly those that cross triple-word squares. “Nice rack,” mutters one player as he looks over a fellow player’s shoulder…

Legendary as it is, the Sunday brunch at El Chorro Lodge has never come close to the culinary excess of the Valley’s more sumptuous spreads. Gluttonous brunchers looking for piles of boiled shrimp, roast beef carving stations and elaborate dessert buffets lavishly displayed around six-foot ice swans have always had…

Ask Angela Bowie which of her ex-husband’s albums is her favorite and–assuming she answers–she’ll probably name David Bowie’s second disc, a 1970 effort titled The Man Who Sold the World. But two decades after the couple parted, the Godmother of Glam isn’t as much interested in peddling the planet as…

Teacher, teacher, I declare–I see Monica Lewinsky’s underwear! Actually, the panties in question don’t belong to Lewinsky; they’re owned by drag queen Celia Putty, a performer at Wink’s, a Valley gay bar. But that doesn’t stop 30 Glendale Community College students and their instructor from roaring as the “semen”-caked intern…

How do you feed a hungry man? If that ravenous fellow happens to be six-foot-one and weighs nearly 400 pounds, you don’t try to cash in on a dinner special offered by The Vine, an east Phoenix saloon. Not that Phoenix salesman Wayne Craig, the diner in question, has much…

John Geraghty wasn’t born in a barn. Not that he minds living in a studio apartment whose exterior looks exactly like one. “It’s kind of a kick,” says Geraghty of the 1960s global-themed apartment complex he’s called home for the last few months. After all, in the cookie-cutter world of…

“Live by the mascara wand, die by the mascara wand.” If that’s not the official motto of a new Valley business catering to the cosmetology needs of the dead, it’s probably because the founders haven’t thought of it already. “Whether you’re alive or whether you’re gone, you have to wear…

Get Dave Kleespies talking about his job and you’re listening to a driven man. On second thought, make that a “pedaled” man. A What’s My Line? panel-stumper just waiting to happen, the Ahwatukee kiddie-car craftsman operates a high-end restoration service, catering to collectors of juvenile pedal-powered jalopies dating back long…

In Attack of the 70-Foot Courtesy Lady, he immortalized a high-rise-size hausfrau who wipes out an entire city with her “patent leather purveyors of death.” In What I Did to “Psycho,” he presented a revisionist version of the Hitchcock classic in which, dressed as all the characters in the movie…

“Seinfeld/Sinatra Death Link Exclusive! “TV shows don’t kill people . . . but final episodes sure do!” That’s the shocking claim from experts who insist that legendary entertainer Frank Sinatra’s fatal heart attack was actually a result of the Final Episode Curse–a bizarre jinx that strikes a death blow whenever…

While thumbing through a recent issue of the Arizona American-Italian Club newsletter, would-be member Donna Guida had to laugh. In a recurring column titled “There’s an Old Italian Proverb” appeared the maxim Profumo senza arrosto non mi va! Translation? “The aroma without the roast is not for me.” And that’s…

Liz Renay was never married to the mob–but the former gangland party girl insists her professional prospects were certainly marred by it. “It sure knocked the hell out of my career when I went to Terminal Island,” says the Mesa-born headline grabber of the late ’50s and early ’60s. “I…

Nobody’s ever going to mistake a night’s stay at Bisbee’s Shady Dell for a room at the Ritz. There are no mints on the pillow, and forget about daily maid service. If you want to make a call, you’ve got to use a phone in the laundry room that serves…

Ever since the first Neanderthal scrawled on a cave wall and the second Neanderthal cribbed his style, artists have been “borrowing” from one another. But when it comes to literally lifting a fellow visionary’s work, Valley artist Erastes Cinaedi is the man to beat. For the past eight months, the…

“So, come in and meet the kids!” Ushering visitors into the dimly lighted family room of his Phoenix home, proud papa Shad Kvetko points toward the apples of his eye–an instant family he acquired from an out-of-state side-show operator. Clustered together atop a glass display are Kvetko’s five little monsters,…

He subscribes to the National Enquirer, lives for tabloid TV and trawls the Internet for wire-service reports of horrific crime. And last fall, Ryan McNamara’s sensation-fueled jag finally spiraled toward its inevitable conclusion. Reeling from the lurid imagery that bombarded him daily, the 19-year-old Arizona State University student could no…

To some foodies, this idiosyncratic chef is the populist Wolfgang Puck–a charming kitchen magician who, whether stuffing fans or providing annual Thanksgiving dinners to the needy, is a candidate for culinary sainthood. To others, however, he’s the surly Pizza Nazi–a single-minded megalomaniac whose bullheaded brand of “my way or the…

Bestiality! Incest! Torture! Golden showers! All things considered, the job just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “As if that were not enough, the money sucks!” gripes the ex-phone-sex operator, a woman whose daily workload resembled a verbal version of Marv Albert’s datebook. While her complaints are reminiscent…

At first, the beat-to-hell Tempe tract home doesn’t look like the epicenter of anything. Except, maybe, the white-trash universe. The neglected desert landscaping has long since returned to the Earth, leaving behind an unsightly collage of gravel, dirt and tar-paper shards. In the center of the lawn stands a greasy…

It’s the teen vengeance fantasy du jour: Scorned by mean-spirited classmates for being “different,” a high school misfit flees Arizona for the more tolerant environs of Southern California, blossoms, then finally returns for the 10-year reunion in a triumphant blaze of fashion fabulosity that sets the student body on its…

Leopard skins, tikis, martinis. In its day, Scottsdale’s Safari resort was the big bwana of Valley luxe. Under the hotel’s imposing porte-cochere, valets dodged lethal tail fins as they struggled to keep up with an endless stream of late-model gas guzzlers. In the resort’s continental-style restaurant, fashionably dressed guests oohed…

Nearly 30 years after “weird” Mr. Green moved away, people who live in Cheri Stalmann’s Central Corridor neighborhood are still intrigued by the strange Cold War legacy he left in the backyard of the house where he once lived. “It’s really not much to see,” says Stalmann almost apologetically as…