Submitted for your consideration: the worst sushi I’ve had since I made the mistake of walking into a Todai many years back. Sushi that makes Trader Joe’s prepackaged California rolls seem like the food of the gods. Sushi so repulsive that it’d make Pope John Paul II sit up on…
For my chedda, the most creative cats and kittens in P-town’s clubland belong to this city’s Goth-trance underworld. The playas and playettes of the hip-hop scene may dress fly, and the Scottsdale party people may look like they stepped out of a catalogue for Abercrombie and Bee-ahtch, but they don’t…
We need some new rules here on the Ponderosa, and the first one is that for every bad meal I have to endure, my belly deserves to be placated with a satisfying one. Truly, last week’s trek to Armadillo Grill was so hideous that I should be pampered like a…
It’s the witching hour at Sadisco, and the bisexual Brittany Murphy and I are watching a Victorian snuff-play done to throbbing industrial music that sounds like rusty steel grinding against broken glass. One by one, women dressed like Heather Graham’s whore buddies in From Hell are chased onto center stage…
Is it possible to predict a lousy dining experience as soon as you enter a chow house, without a peek at the bill of fare? You betcha. For instance, if the teenage hostess is on her cell phone calling her boyfriend, or the waitstaff’s forced to wear suspenders adorned with…
Harvard prez Larry Summers has been excoriated in the past few months by feminists, fellow academics, and the politically correct for suggesting that innate differences in guys and dolls might help explain why there aren’t more ladies present in the upper echelons of science and math. You know, the old…
Some chicks just hate to see a man enjoying himself. And Jett, the PHX’s bisexual Rachel Bilson, is one of those. The other day, I’m lounging in my New Times office, feet up, halfway through a box of peanut-butter Girl Scout cookies, crumbs all over my shirt, when the bizzatch…
A lot of what’s appealing about greater Phoenix falls into the classic can’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover category. I don’t mean the lusher parts of Scottsdale or the desert vistas out by Carefree. I mean just tooling about the city, parts of which, let’s be honest, can be less than enchanting. Ours is not…
“Jeez, Jett, try not to pull a Dale Earnhardt on our ass!” I croak as the PHX’s sultry, bi-lovin’ speed-demoness skids around a corner toward the alt-music nightspot Modified Arts near Seventh Street and Roosevelt. “Plus there’s po-po all around, and I’ve got an open bottle of Stoli in my…
Ah, the smell of chocolate and meat! Two great tastes that taste great together. Okay, maybe not. Still, this is what my olfactory nerves deal with each time I enter Chandler’s 4-week-old Shabu Fondue, a hip, nightclubby eatery that looks like it belongs catty-cornered from Stingray Sushi in Scottsdale. Instead,…
“No matter what happens here tonight, Kreme, we ain’t knockin’ boots,” declares my sometimes Sapphic, sometimes stick-happy sidekick, Jett, as we’re parking the Impala near Club Chameleon, the PHX’s premier palace of swing. “So don’t get any ideas!” “Hell, girl, you can keep ’em on,” I smirk as we head…
God, I could go for a pint of Stella Artois, or “wife-beater,” as it’s sometimes referred to in merry ol’ England. I’m in a black-and-white box of an eatery, surrounded by photos of Cornish tin miners, reading a biography of Hermann Goering. Halfway through my midday meal, it hits me…
Jason Rudolph Peña, 26, is the PHX’s kick-back Gustav Klimt. The soft-spoken iconoclast is known for his live paintings of ethereal women with large, dreamy eyes. Like Klimt’s women, Peña’s are idealized creatures, highly feminine and unobtainable. He’s exhibited at monOrchid, Thought Crime, Amsterdam, and House Studios, and has a…
It’s midnight at Sadisco’s monthly ball of glorious, gutter depravity, and the debauch is in full swing. Some industrial joint is screeching from the speakers, and the TVs are screening the grisly serial-killer pic Saw. There’s trash on the floor and bloodstains on the checkerboard pattern pasted all over Jugheads,…
Some bastards have all the bloody luck. Say, a year ago today, you signed a lease or bought a residence near 70th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale. Then you wake up one morning to discover that not only does the cul-de-sac there boast Sushi on Shea, but the Great…
What’s up with all the freakin’ rain in this town? Sure, I’ll be singin’ another tune come August, but I didn’t move to the middle of the desert to live in Seattle south. Now I know why everyone in the Pacific Northwest does heroin. Damn, if I have to spend…
Might there be some redemption for what I like to call the swill on and around Mill? As I mentioned in my recent write-up of Mucho Gusto Taqueria and Mexican Bistro, just west of Mill Avenue on University Drive (“Taste Magnet,” January 20), Mill Avenue generally holds as much fascination…
Right now, Hank III, son of Hank Jr. and grandson of legendary country music badass Hank Williams Sr., resembles an XY version of that hirsute ghost in the horror flick The Ring. Long, dark brown hair hides his clean-shaven face as he works his fingers furiously over a red electric…
I have the funny feeling Mike Tyson knows something I don’t. Other than how to land a right cross that’ll knock a 230-pound boxer on his ass. See, I’ve started compiling a little list of the places where I’ve spotted snapshots of the former world heavyweight champ around town, and…
Y’all are gonna think I’m crazier than Houston plucking his eyeball out in that London hotel room, but I’m here to spit the truth like Twista, Jesus, Buddha and Kanye West, and that truth is: Most strip clubs bite big, hairy camel balls. Now, no one loves lookin’ at nekkid…
Does Phoenix really need another steak house? That’s what pops to mind considering the recent arrival of the swank, upscale Donovan’s near 32nd Street and Camelback. I mean, if there’s anything you can say definitively about Phoenix, other than the temperature of the sidewalk in August, it’s that we’re one…
I reckon my cheeks are redder than Elmo’s ass, the cheeks closest to my grill-piece, that is. It’s a Saturday night at Tempe’s colossal, 28,000-square-foot Graham Central Station (www.grahamcentralstationtempe.com), the four-in-one nightclub that includes the karaoke bar Alley Cats, a Top 40 dance hall called South Beach, an ’80s room…
