Upon receiving an Emmy Award for her work on Cheers in 1991, actress Kirstie Alley jolted audiences with the highly unorthodox conclusion to what was otherwise a standard-issue acceptance speech. Eyes narrowing into sly slits, the actress grinned wickedly at the audience, then gave special thanks to her husband, Parker…
LAS VEGAS–Gazing out a second-story window of the intimate “boutique” hotel that bears her name, Debbie Reynolds, best known for her role in 1957’s Tammy and the Bachelor, surveys the once-familiar landscape that’s rapidly being transformed into some sort of whacked-out theme park for gamblers. “This town has really changed,”…
Q: Where does a 500-pound gorilla sit? A: Anywhere he wants. If, however, you happen to own a far more lightweight simian, your primate’s seating opportunities are considerably more limited. Or so Phoenix businessman Ric Adams discovered when he disguised his pet ape as a baby and smuggled the animal…
Few human physical acts capture the imagination or wrench the emotions like branding, the “kiss of fire.” –Fakir Musafar in Body Play magazine Some like it hot–red-hot. Like, for instance, Jennifer Saunders, a 20-year-old “modern primitive” who doesn’t mind making contact with small pieces of metal heated to nearly 2,000…
George Golden is not now and never was a fan of rock n’ roll music. And, at the age of 79, it’s a virtual certainty that he will not soon convert. But in early March 1957, the 40ish Golden was singing a considerably different tune. A phenomenon named Elvis Presley…
“Domestic or imported?” That’s a question that local Coca-Cola drinkers are facing with increasing regularity in small madre y padre Mexican restaurants around the Valley as they’re offered a choice of two varieties of Coke when they order that beverage with their meals. One choice is a domestic Coke, the…
More than a decade ago, a Valley woman got religion when she spotted the face of Jesus Christ on a tortilla. Several years ago, throngs of awe-stricken rubberneckers flocked to East Van Buren to gawk at a yucca branch that many believed to be an apparition of the Virgin Mary…
Phoenix bus driver Charles Spencer is a driven man. And for the past four years, in his spare time, that drive has led him to spend hundreds of hours searching for the treasure rumored to be hidden in the fabled Superstition Mountains. But unlike thousands of hapless treasure hunters who…
Late last year, it was an outraged Native American versus Squaw Peak. Earlier this year, it was an African American who claimed that Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport’s Terminal Four contained subliminal endorsement for the Ku Klux Klan. And the unlikely scene of the Valley’s latest p.c. controversy? A grade-school…
An Arizona man captured by a flying saucer as six witnesses look on? Surely, the 1975 UFO abduction of Snowflake woodcutter Travis Walton had to be the most incredible event in the annals of UFOdom. Either that or the most elaborate variation on the old “my dog ate my homework”…
Go ahead–throw away your life. When you do, it’s a cinch John Hoffman will be around to pick up the pieces. “Americans are so dumb, they waste so much, that a clear-headed individual who practices a little common sense can make a killing,” says Hoffman, a mental-health counselor who spends…
Pssst! Wanna buy some dirty pictures? About 1,400 of em? Actually, dirty pictures were the last things on the minds of George Hall and Bob Martinique as they browsed through a Prescott antique store one weekend last October. But upon learning that the two men were photography buffs interested in…
One day last October, Robin Asaki spent the better part of an afternoon frantically racing around Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport looking for an air-sickness bag. Not just any air-sickness bag, mind you. The bag had to be unused, which was understandable enough. Not so understandably, the bag also had…
In a city where gossip columns are as scintillating as Christmas newsletters, one column is a breath of pure nitrous oxide. It’s dishy. It’s swishy. And, to borrow one turn of phrase that recently brightened its pages, “it couldn’t be more fun than if it rained martoonies!” It’s also disturbing,…
What’s the flashiest automotive accessory to hit the road since mirror-plated mud-flap vixens? Just take a quick spin around the Metrocenter cruising district any weekend night and the answer quickly becomes apparent to even the dimmest bulb: car neon. Thanks to neon tubing hidden underneath the cars’ bodies, the vehicles…
The movie The Silence of the Lambs pulled out all the stops to portray that film’s serial killer as the sickest villain ever to grace the screen. The filmmakers inserted a close-up that drove home the point for even the most jaded moviegoer. Wincing, disbelieving audiences gasped in unison as…
“From the time he’s an infant, the average person is brought up to believe that all bugs are bad and that we should annihilate em all immediately,” says antipesticide activist Debbie McQueen. “The truth is that there’s a purpose for every bug in the world–whether we like it or not.”…
Quick! Name one thing that costs exactly the same today as when it was introduced more than 30 years ago. Here’s a clue: It’s as much a part of the American motel room as the Gideon Bible, the seascape bolted over the bed and the ubiquitous “sanitary” strip that testifies…
Vaseline on her teeth provides a smooth-sliding smile. Her breasts are routinely taped to achieve a Barbie doll’s bustline. A light coat of spray adhesive applied to her derriäre ensures that there will be no unsightly wrinkles when she promenades through the swimsuit competition. When it comes to cosmetic wizardry,…
Antony and Cleopatra! Romeo and Juliet! Liz and Larry! In the grand tradition of those legendary lovers comes a newsome twosome determined to add their own names to that romantic roster. Meet Paula Grecco and Michael Modzelewski, the Valley newlyweds who dare to ask the question, “Can a Playboy bunny…
What price faded glory? Plenty. This summer, a recession-plagued public has shaken its collective head in disbelief over the jaw-dropping sums paid for a couple of well-publicized pop-culture artifacts. Several weeks ago, when 1946 Oscar winner Harold Russell put his statuette for The Best Years of Our Lives on the…
“What? Me matriculate?” Or so Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman might ask when he–along with a hundred other objets d’art from the 40-year-old humor magazine–takes center stage at a monthlong public hanging at Arizona State University beginning Tuesday (September 8). Titled “Humor in a Jugular Vein: The Art, Artists…
