Although I played with the idea of reading this summer, I just don’t think it’s going to work out. I know it’s what all my friends are doing; right about now, I bet every one of them is scanning the new-release tables at brightly lit bookstores, measuring up one brightly…
This week in Phoenix New Times, Laurie Notaro tells us what she really thinks about some high falutin’ culinary trends. Turns out the Eugene, Oregon-based author returns to her hometown of Phoenix when she gets the chance, and heads straight to Rosita’s. Or Mrs. White’s. Anyplace they don’t serve nettles. Here…
All right. It’s high time someone stood up and said something, and no one else seems to be making a move, so here I go. For the second time in a week, I’ve seen nettles on a menu. Nettles. This is what I know about nettles: They invaded my front…
The moment I walked through the front door, arriving home from my sewing class, I saw it. There was no mistaking it, and I immediately felt the flush of anxiety rush up from my stomach and swallow my head in a fiery gulp. On the side of the box, in…
After living in Phoenix for more than 30 years, I wanted some rain. I figured I was owed some rain. So when my husband was accepted into the graduate program at the University of Oregon in Eugene, I almost ran there. I made him accept the school’s offer, our new…
Best Alternative Rock Beat Angels They may look and play like it, but the Beat Angels aren’t really under the illusion that it’s still 1979. They just don’t think rock ‘n’ roll has gotten any better since then. “The way we look at it, there’s this certain spirit that was…
The unofficial bio for the Chimeras has all the stereotypical ingredients of a rock ‘n’ roll miniseries: alcoholism, drug addiction and rehab, chronic depression and suicide. It’s not a happy tale, but after nearly four years in development, the plot line finally seems to be aligning with what the band…
… And Who Could Forget About These Great Hits? (The Ten Best Albums of 1995) 1. P.J. Harvey To Bring You My Love (Island) Britain’s Gen-X version of Patti Smith gets gruff and bluesy on her latest set of psyche-aerobics. It’s not exactly easy listening–first-person songs about drowning one’s children…
Melissa Etheridge Your Little Secret (Island) What’s almost better than a box of sugar cereal with a prize at the bottom? Melissa Etheridge’s new disc, with cute and clever liner notes that double as an interactive puzzle! Anyone who buys Your Little Secret might as well take full and immediate…
Green Day Insomniac (Sire) I admit it: I was a punk rocker in the early ’80s. I had my shoulder dislocated in the pit at a Dead Kennedys concert; I sipped out of the same longneck Bud as Exene Cervenka in the sweaty aftermath of an X show; and I…
I first came to Phoenix in late September, and I had three days to find a place to live before returning back East to get my stuff and move out here permanently. I stayed with my friend, Wes, the only person in town I knew, in his apartment on University…
Violent Femmes vocalist Gordon Gano is smoking something in a fancy hotel room somewhere in Cincinnati. His drags are too long for a cigarette, and it can’t be a pipe. Not enough sucking noises. One deep, long, exaggerated whoosh. “It’s a cigaaaar,” Gano breathes passionately. He’s sucking on an Ashton,…
