People & Places

We'll admit to being influenced by repeated viewings of Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox on Blu-Ray, but still, we swear we've seen the mythic "Tempe Fox" prancing around the Broadmor neighborhood. He's usually spotted just out of the corner of our eye, always leading to the distinct possibility that we're imagining him completely. But forget reason — of all Arizona's fabled creatures (chupacabra, hoof-man, the Bigfoot in the Apache/Sitgreaves Forest), the fox seems the friendliest (not to mention most plausible). His bushy tail catches the eye, but he's quickly gone before you can whip out your camera phone. It sounds crazy, but we've even heard of one intrepid photographer who snapped off a couple shots, only to have the mysterious fox not show up in the pictures at all. A spirit vision, perhaps? The best part of this "legend," of course, is that it's absolutely true. The old neighborhoods near the ASU Tempe campus really have become home in recent years to several foxes. Residents theorize that they feed on roof rats and hang out near the George Ditch off College Avenue and 14th Street. Tempe officials confirm they're there, and no one knows how it happened. We're glad to know the Tempe Fox is real. (And that we're not crazy!)

Know any good jokes about Arizona State University? The folks in Hollywood certainly do, as Tinsel Town has dispensed a few zingers at ASU's expense over the years, all of which have been dead-on and absolutely hilarious. After all, there's plenty about the school to poke fun at, including its oft-ridiculed status as one of America's top party schools and its student body's reputation for preferring slamming beers to hitting the books. For instance, 30 Rock's resident blowhard Jack Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin) stated in a 2010 episode that "a parent is the one person who thinks their [kids are] smart, even when they go to Arizona State." Zing. Such a diss was child's play to the sort of lampooning that took place last fall when Daniel Tosh filmed an entire episode of his popular Comedy Central show at ASU.

In 2012, Frank Ocean made waves by coming out on his Tumblr page, gently shattering the glass ceiling in the notoriously homophobic circles of hip-hop and R&B. But he did more than that with the song "Thinking Bout You." He finally let the rest of the country know that it doesn't rain much here. "It usually doesn't rain in Southern California / Much like Arizona / My eyes don't shed tears/ But, boy, they bawl when I'm thinking 'bout you," Ocean sings with achingly gorgeous tone. In all seriousness, Channel Orange, Ocean's full-length, major label debut is one of the year's finest, and "Thinking Bout You," which effortlessly recalls the perfection of Prince and D'Angelo, is one of the record's most affecting moments. With a cracked falsetto, Ocean croons, "Do you think about me still? Or do you not think so far ahead? 'Cause I've been thinking about forever." It's crushing, a moment of pure soul-rending, and even if Arizona feels like a default rhyme, it's nice to be a part of such an astonishing pop song.

Coming up with a decent band name has never required particular brilliance. Just ask the "greats" — The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Smashing Pumpkins. But in the Internet age, there seems to be some sort of "WTF band name" arms race, with bands like fun., oOoOO, Snake! Snake! Snakes!, and Friends all competing to cram in enough punctuation and inscrutable capitalization to make it impossible to find the band in any given search engine. North Dakota — the Tempe-based trio of Michelle Blades, Mo Neuharth, and Emily Hobeheidar — don't have a hard moniker to spell, but it's still tough to find their web presence without a little Facebooking first. The geographical connections to the Midwest aren't made explicit on the trio's debut (there's a song called "Fargo," but also one called "China/Japan") but like their namesake state — so close to Canada that it's almost there — they blur the lines between borders and sounds, toeing the line between righteous indie rock and riot grrl screeds.

The Compound Grill — the music hall/eatery/bar launched by the people behind the annual The McDowell Mountain Music Festival (and the site of the festival since 2010) — may have closed, but there's good news: Its owners plan to continue the festival, which unites indie rockers, local bands, and some of the granola-crunchiest jam bands this side of Bonnaroo for three days of sun and noodling guitar solos. Bully for them — beyond the fact that the festival has hosted bands like Ozomatli, The Flaming Lips, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Fields, and The Carolina Chocolate Drops, it's maintained a spirit of community activism, donating to charities like Ear Candy and institutions like Phoenix Children's Hospital.

Local First Arizona, R Entertainment, and the Phoenix Art Museum hit another hit run with this year's perfectly executed Devoured Culinary Classic. More than 40 of the Valley's best chefs and restaurants filled the museum's grassy courtyard with tiny plate after tiny plate of bite-size signature dishes, unique takes on classic morsels, and colorful exotic ingredients. St. Francis introduced us to velvety glacier lettuce in its unforgettable Farmers Market Salad, Beckett's Table scored major crowd points for its adorable cans of salty pork and beans, and The District Kitchen wowed us with its impressive display of pastel cotton candy, caramel cashews, and beautiful summer spinach salad. The event was packed full of foodies of all ages (including a few wee little foodies in giant strollers) and everyone left stuffed. This event quickly has become one of the most anticipated food events of the year.

Whether you're looking for killer sushi, an eyeful of traditional artwork and ikebana floral arrangements, or a cold pint of Kirin, Matsuri has you covered.

The fall of 2011 saw an explosion of Latino festivals, dances, dramas, comedies, and improv performances in Phoenix. And at a time when funding for the arts is declining and support for the local Latino community is hardly widespread, hundreds of artists came together to celebrate — and to fight.

Each year during the past five years, more than 100 local artists line Sunnyslope's Central Avenue between Dunlap and the canal during a weekend in October and April for a change-of-pace art festival.

More than 45 local crafters let their hands rest and machines cool down long enough to set up booths, talk shop, and sell their goods during the annual Crafeteria. The event, hosted by Frances, plays by one rule: Everything must be 100 percent handmade.

In October 2011, Maker Bench Tempe, Roosevelt Row, Make Magazine, and Craft magazine brought science, art, and engineering together on Roosevelt Row. Throughout the day, local and national crafters showcased their creations, demonstrated their skills, and celebrated all things DIY.

Cindy and Gary Iverson aren't afraid of a little fresh ink. Cindy's an artist who specializes in mixed media and paper arts. Gary's a chemical engineer. And together, they've owned and operated The Paper Studio, where they've made paper and printed stationery for online sales.

Yaple Park is one of the smallest historic neighborhoods in Phoenix, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in charm. One of our favorite things about the area, which is bordered by Third and Seventh avenues to the east and west, and Minneoza and Turney avenues to the north and south, is its proximity to the shopping and restaurants in the Melrose on Seventh neighborhood.

Alison King knows a thing or three (okay, probably more like hundreds — if not thousands — of facts) about the Valley's status as a Midcentury Modern mecca. Apart from compiling binders of info about architects such as Ralph Haver and Al Beadle, whose buildings and influence can be seen all over town, and blogging to serve local mod obsessives like herself, King leads an annual spring tour that takes enthusiasts to explore neighborhoods rife with architectural eye candy. Arcadia, Sunnyslope, and Marion Estates all have been featured neighborhoods in the past incarnations of the tour, which sells out well in advance year after year.

There's a big reason why a "for sale" sign isn't planted in front of The Icehouse right now — and that reason is Peter Conley. The 50-year-old tirelessly has attempted over the past year to swat away the dark clouds that formed over the iconic downtown Phoenix arts venue, which was in danger of closing because of unpaid property taxes owed to Maricopa County. Conley, the director of the nonprofit organization overseeing the Icehouse, began teaming with such local creatives as painter Hugo Medina to stage fundraisers to help alleviate the financial burden. A few artsy endeavors also have sprung up at the property in recent months, including the new Quiet Mind Tea & No Frills Coffee Bar and secondhand store/junk shop Urbane Recycler. The historic arts complex, which originally opened in 1910 as Constable Ice Storage, also has hosted film screenings by Steve Weiss' No Festival Required, after-hours parties promoted by Quincy Ross, and epic group shows featuring the works of dozens of locals. Needless to say, Conley and his cohorts are continuing to keep the Icehouse cool, and — more importantly — open for business.

Two identical rotundas share a grassy midtown lot with W.A. Sarmiento's 19-story, Googie-style Phoenix Financial Center. Should you ever be offered the chance to peek into either, we have two words for you: Take it.

You're bound to spot the cake-like structure just off Interstate 202 and 48th Street if you look carefully around the bend. Sitting on the top of a hill, the house has one of the best views of the Valley — and a colorful backstory to boot. It was built in 1929 by an Italian immigrant and sold in the '30s to cattle baron E.A. Tovrea for his wife, Della. The estate was passed down through the Tovrea family, wrapped up in one of Arizona's most sensational murder trials, and ultimately left to collect dust. It's a historical oddity in the middle of the city. Thanks in large part to John Driggs, a retired politician and historic preservation champion, it was reopened this year for small tours and volunteer hours in its iconic Carraro Cactus Gardens. Future plans include availability for private parties and, yes, maybe even weddings. The city just needs to work on some piping and fix a few exterior lights first.

In 1539, a Franciscan friar named Marcos from Italy led a scouting party from Mexico's interior through Arizona and into New Mexico, where he later claimed to have seen the prosperous land of Cibola. Along the way, he visited what is now the Valley and, the story goes, scratched a short inscription on a rock that, translated into English, says: "Fr. Marcos of Nice crowned all of New Mexico at his expense, 1539."

The inscription, first seen in the 1920s, is located on a hill just south of the parking lot at the Pima Canyon entrance to Phoenix's South Mountain Park. Iron security bars were put there long ago to protect it. Researchers say it's a fake, forged no earlier than 1850 and likely much later. One big clue: The phrase "New Mexico" didn't come into use until the late 1500s. And historians believe Marcos' route didn't pass through South Mountain or anywhere else near Phoenix. The etching's an apt symbol for Marcos de Niza, disgraced as one of the biggest liars in the New World. Researchers argue over whether Marcos promoted the idea that Cibola was loaded with gold, but apparently he did, because early the next year, the Spanish launched a massive expedition to the area led by Spanish conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. When no gold was found, Marcos was lambasted by Coronado's soldiers. And now the priest from Nice has a high school named after him in Tempe, not too far from where he didn't scratch his name on a rock, while on his way to a land of gold that didn't exist.

You'll have to do some extreme trespassing to get into the abandoned Phoenix Trotting Park racetrack in Goodyear, but the view is pretty fantastic. The doomsday-looking structure has sat untouched (by contractors and restoration experts) for decades, but there have been plenty of parties and graffiti trips by brave and risky individuals since the doors closed. The track was built for almost $10 million in the early 1960s and opened as a gambling spot for horse race fiends in 1965. But poor attendance numbers and bad business shut the park down after two and a half seasons. The outer structure remains visible from Interstate 10 just past Goodyear and is noted for its Star Wars-like, megalithic architecture. But the frame has yet to be purchased, and no plans for a renovated track are on the books, so unless you have a risky mission in mind, it'll be a while before you get to see the inside.

It's hard to top downtown Gilbert's charm, and Liberty Market, housed in a circa-1935 grocery store, might be the most charmed building on the block. The breakfast and lunch joint had us at the omelets, but the quaint touches extend to the bathrooms. There are five separate units, each complete with its own vibe, music, and look. Our favorites? There's the awesome men's room (with hot rod memorabilia and good looking pin-ups), the Italian room (complete with a Vespa tire), and an oceanside room, because staring at a serene sea makes us feel so nice about . . . well, you know.

Dry cleaners? Check. Grocery run? Done. Mani-pedi? Finished. In a Valley full of meh-tastic strip malls, shopping becomes a boring, forumulaic exercise in driving from place to nondescript place.

That noise you hear when you walk into Alterations and Creations may sound like an elderly man quietly coughing after having fallen to the ground, but look down and you'll come face-to-face with Batman. No, not Christian Bale dressed in a cape and mask, but a pint-size puffball of black and brown fur. Batman is always hanging out in the small storefront located on the street level of the Roosevelt Apartments complex, and he loves attention. But the coolest thing about Batman is "It's a Pomeranian, dude!"

If you're in the need to get some dry cleaning or alterations done, you can do that too. The folks at Alterations and Creations can turn around both in less than a week if needed, and they do a solid job.

Every time you see one of those TV commercials with the hungry kittens and sad, neglected puppies, you want to throw yourself into traffic. Right? Well, don't. Instead, do something to help those unhappy animals by volunteering at the Arizona Animal Welfare League. There, you'll be involved in virtually all aspects of helping four-legged friends to find a home — everything from adoption counseling to dog-walking to keeping up the AAWL grounds. Not much of a cat person? Don't really like dogs? You can work with birds, rabbits, rodents, and reptiles, instead. AAWL offers various volunteer training programs that will help you help them find homes for strays that might otherwise be put to death. Talk about a worthy cause.

A trio on Craigslist looking for a dog to have sex with found a match earlier this year, with a guy offering up his male golden shepherd mix to complete the foursome. Unfortunately, for the three humans in the deal — Shane Walker, Sarah Walker, and Robert Aucker — the guy offering up the dog was an undercover detective with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. The trio's plan, according to the Sheriff's Office, was to use Craigslist to find the dog to "fornicate" with the woman, while her husband and friend watched. The detective eventually was also offered the "opportunity to join in on the act," although it's not clear exactly what his role would have been. At the time, Sheriff Joe Arpaio exclaimed, "People who do this for enjoyment are a different breed, that's for certain." The three humans in the busted foursome all eventually pleaded guilty to bestiality charges.

With themes of self-loathing, loneliness, and longing, the music of Manchester's gloomiest, The Smiths, is already comic (in an absurdist, depressing way), but it took the good folks at SpazDog Press to gather up a slew of indie comics' finest, like Foo!, Sam Laggren, Kayla Cagan, Tara Abbamondi, and New Times' own Brad Dwyer, to put pen to page and illustrate the melodrama for two volumes of Unite and Take Over: Stories Inspired by the Songs of The Smiths. The morose croon of Morrissey inspires everything from psycho-sexual slapstick to violent, vintage Image-style splatter-fests. Recognizing a readily apparent connection between the post-punk mythos of The Smiths and the intimacy of the black-and-white page, Unite speaks to the alt-pop nerds as easily as the comic book guys — turns out, they're the same kids anyway.

Channel 5, KPHO, has a history chasing the mythical creature known as the chupacabra, but there seems to be another animal obsession going on at the TV news station — cats. KPHO's the only news outlet where you can find stories such as "Does cat behavior change with the seasons?" or "Hidden household cat poison." Then there was the time a local man filmed his house cat giving a high-five to a bobcat — and KPHO went on location to tell it like it is. In a story the KPHO anchor said "we just have to share," the TV station's coverage of high-fiving cats is absolutely incredible: three different videos about the high-five on the station's website, on-location reporting, an interview with the homeowner — and the homeowner's re-enactment — and the "backstory." And that's just one of the cat tales from the station's archive. Little does KPHO know, it's the dogs that rule, and the cats that drool.

Michelle Ponce and Damian Jim are local artists who have a long history of collaboration on small works and projects. And when the two connected over the concept of a stapled art zine, they knew they'd started something that could last a while.

This year, they launched Ziindi, a full-color quarterly zine dedicated to showcasing work by contemporary indigenous artists and providing a connection within the community. The first 16-page issue is full of work by local and regional artists, including ARMZ, Averian Chee, Jeff Slim, Shamie Encinas, Damian Jim, Bahe Whitethorne Jr., Jeremy Arviso, and Thomas Greyeyes.

"Plenty of native artists travel back to the rez, and they share their artwork here, but a zine is great way to offer something that will last a little longer to kids on the rez and in the city. We hope it'll be something they can take with them and something that will inspire their own work."

The group of ladies responsible for PoolBoy Magazine — a local hipster porn rag — joined forces as "cuntributors" in 2009 to create "an independent adult lifestyle magazine for badass women," and though they haven't printed an edition in a year or so, they've kept us plenty satisfied through their blog and Twitter feed. Here, in twitpics, dirty puns, and 140 characters, the founders update us on their latest male candidates (including Hump Day Hunks on Wednesdays), their roadtrip promotions, their thoughts on Mommy Porn, and the best penises of the 2012 Olympics. The ladies say they'll be publishing a second issue of PoolBoy sometime this fall, which, if we're lucky, will include a similar glossy collection of good-looking (but also normal) 20- and 30-somethings who meet the "PoolBoy" requirements. And if we know anything about how to keep track of their latest updates, releases, and, yes, pool parties, we'll be glued to their Twitter feed for the release date.

Thanks to the photo-sharing application Instragram, we can see through the lens of Phoenix photographer Alyssa Aragon. The 24-year-old has an endless stream of local images — late-night parties and concerts, street art, architecture, and portraits of this city's well-known creatives — that keeps us busily scrolling through her everyday routine. Aragon started taking photos a few years ago for her friend's custom car shop, Kreepin Kustumz, and started bringing her camera to late-night events she had on her calendar, including weekly DJ nights at downtown's Bar Smith and Tempe's Yucca Tap Room. Her photography venture, New.Era.Gone, provides a fresh look at this town, and through Instagram, we can see them all in real time.

If you happen to be someone who buys into the oft-mentioned crackpot prediction that the end of civilization as we know it is less than three months hence, December 21 will be a dark day indeed. Although most experts have dismissed the notion that the impending end of the Mayans' Long Count calendar means the end of days, you're likely busy hustling your angsty ass off making sure there's enough non-perishable food and ammunition stocked up. As the National Geographic reality show Doomsday Preppers indicates, you're far from the only soul who's hurriedly planning ahead for whatever havoc potential Armageddon might unleash. Local comedian and performance artist Kevin Patterson has been documenting his own preparations via his hilarious WordPress blog "How to Get Ready for the Apocalypse" to provide a satirical chronicle of his preparations for doomsday and beyond. While his entries are written in tonuge-in-cheek fashion, Patterson claims honestly to believe in the prophecy and fills the blog with genuine survival tips mixed in with the jokes. Such knowledge includes instructions for a solar oven, plants and animals that are edible (such as cacti and gophers), where to seek shelter, and which particular songs would be appropriate to listen to as death rains down from the skies, including Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself." We suggest adding some REM to that list, Kevin.

Pretty much every historic neighborhood has some kind of website or newsletter (or both), detailing the history of the 'hood and notifying denizens about upcoming yard sales and kiddy parades. But The Joan D'Arc Crusader is about a west-side street that is neither historic nor likely to play host to any home tours — and yet we can't stop reading it. It's a homespun, genuinely affectionate tribute to a 50-year-old neighborhood, full of neighbors' favorite remembrances of Joan De Arc Avenue, the final street built in 1961 in the Surrey Heights subdivision near 19th Avenue and Thunderbird. Photographs, editorials, and essays about Mad magazine — who could ask for more from a neighborhood newsletter?

Sure, a hefty chunk of our desert population gets by on board shorts and flip-flops. But fashion in Phoenix is much more than that. Case in point: Style Tutor. At the helm of the burgeoning fashion blog are Kristy Roschke and Jennifer Woolsey — teachers by day and a two-person fashion authority by night.

Dominic Armato may be the kind of person who writes his personal blog's "about" page in the third person, but we can forgive him this minor atrocity because the rest of his blog is just that good. He checks all the boxes of a quality food blog: terrific photos, insightful commentary, and a nose for seeking out dishes and restaurants that might be off the radar for most. Though he posts only about once a month, the entries are uniformly meaty, extensive, and well researched. It's great credit to a food blog when reading it makes you feel famished.

Calling it "a Latin Pitchfork" (as some have done) doesn't really convey exactly what makes Club Fonograma, a Phoenix-based Ibero-American pop culture site, so special. Carlos Reyes, an occasional contributor to New Times' music section, mans a staff of volunteer bloggers and critics to shine on a light on the vibrant, pulsing sounds of Spanish-language pop, indie rock, and electro. Comparing the site to Pitchfork only works on superficial levels (it sure is pretty) — as Club Fonograma draws a thick black line connecting the sounds of Latin "nowness," like Juan Cireol, Arcangel, and Linda Miranda, with similarly fresh non-Latin acts (dubbed, lovingly, "outsiders" by the site) like Danny Brown, Azealia Banks, and M.I.A. With a crisp aesthetic and even crisper writing, Club Fonograma deserves more than a quick Pitchfork comparison.

We suppose it's not entirely fair to single out Pavle Milic — frontman at most every local foodie's favorite restaurant, FnB — for this award. But it is true that he's the one who asked the question. It was such a simple question. Or so it seemed. Then again, here at Best of Phoenix, we know better than anyone that there are no simple questions — or answers — when it comes to naming favorites.

Milic's status update: Mama just moved here from New York and is requesting shrimp fried rice for lunch, so who makes the best in town??

Let's just say that, as it turns out, Phoenix foodies take their fried rice very seriously. This topic got hotter than the June day Milic posted it. By the end of the debate, there were 92 comments on that status update, many restaurant suggestions, and several arguments — including over the finer points of New York fried rice versus Hong Kong fried rice versus Los Angeles fried rice versus San Francisco fried rice. (We're not kidding.)Even after Milic announced that he'd taken his mom to Jade Palace in Scottsdale (she liked it), the debate continued with several more dozen comments and a couple of figurative fist fights. In the end, chef Charleen Badman, who co-owns FnB with Milic, made her own phenomenal version of shrimp fried rice for a late-night supper at the restaurant — and finally shut everyone up.

Even Wes Anderson couldn't make this stuff up. But if he made commercials, we'd like to think they would be exactly like Chompie's founders Lovey & Lou Borenstein's heartwarmingly odd videos. The four-part series features the charming pair in their '70s-era Phoenix home talking about how they have made their marriage work, their journey from New York to the Valley of the Sun, the lack of bagels here, and, of course, the story of Chompie's. From Lovey's stone-cold good looks to Lou's infectious laugh, the adorable videos gave us a whole new appreciation for the New York-style delicatessen, and they also made us really, really want a room full of wolves. And maybe an egg cream.

When the Old Town Scottsdale Oregano's bailed on its original home and moved into the long-abandoned building that once housed an extravagant bar called Sugar Daddy's, we were a little shocked. But not as shocked as we were when we opened the paper and saw the ad campaign for their new location — which just happened to be a stone's throw away from Scottsdale's infamous smut hut, Zorba's. The ad proclaimed exactly that — "It's just a short walk to Zorba's (now open at Scottsdale Road and Earll!)." Because who doesn't need a little lube or a steamy video after an adventurous meal at Oregano's?

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's influential novel The Great Gatsby, the titular gentleman is a stylish bon vivant with a mysterious nature and penchant for partying. Sounds a lot like another Gatsby we happen to know, specifically this 42-year-old photographer and scenester who fittingly drew his nickname from the book's most infamous character. Case in point: Dapper is shy about revealing his real name or too many details about his enigmatic past. He's dropped hints about having been involved with the nightlife world but won't drop dime on the full details. But while we're unfamiliar with the cat's history, his particular tastes are well known. When he's out and about, Dapper is usually just that, preferring to adorn himself with hip or throwback apparel, ranging from classic Panama straw hats or Salvatore Ferragamo loafers to fly Ben Davis work shirts. He also tends toward stylish accessories, like or the dark green 1969 Cadillac Coupe de Ville he pilots around town. On various nights throughout the week, Dapper likely can be found quaffing cocktails with his glamorous gal P.K. Peck at any of a number of trendy gatherings, popular club events, or down-low dance events taking place after hours. Regardless of where you might see him, the affable and loquacious Dapper is always up for chatting about such topics as 1930s film or his taste for Lagavulin 16-year-old single malt scotch. You stay classy, Dapper.

Most of the Facebook pages devoted to the Phoenix arts scene are given over to promotions of upcoming events and a whole ton of inner-circle schmoozing. But the Phoenix Remodernists page is somehow different. Interesting discussion actually takes place here, among a varied crowd of artists, art fans, and collectors. Sure, there are the usual plugs for an exhibit or two, but there's also a lot of insight into what the art crowd is actually up to when it's not plowing through another First Friday. One can find more than just gossip and dissension among the daily posts on this page, a sort of clearinghouse and message board for creative types who want input on what they're working on and how they're feeling about it. Check them out.

The Phoenix arts district, often noted for its growing mural project, saw a fresh coat of paint on the corner of 16th Street and Windsor Avenue in late December. Painter El Mac came back to town to lend an anonymous portrait and his signature to the street's newest gallery, Por Vida.

More than 25 years ago, Lisa Sette opened the doors of her contemporary art gallery in Scottsdale. She had just finished studying art history and photography at ASU and says she wanted to find a way to be surrounded by art while providing a space and service for artists to showcase their work. Today, she represents 36 artists from around the country, including Arizona-based Matthew Moore, Mayme Kratz, Julianne Swartz, Enrique Chagoya, Angela Ellsworth, James Turrell, Rachel Bess, and Anthony Velasquez. This group is Sette's passion and focus, and her serene, well-lit gallery provides a beautiful stage for each artist's work and for her loyal following and local community to come visit, incorporating and celebrating all that's best about an art gallery. No wonder she's survived for so long, while others have come and gone. Brava.

Since it opened in 1929, the Heard Museum has been a wealth of Native American history, stories, and artwork that have shaped this city and community. Here, you can find century-old Katsina dolls and archives of traditional baskets, as well as small- and large-scale paintings, sculptures, jewelry, and clothing created by members of Native tribes throughout the country. If your taste is more contemporary, check out the museum's Berlin Gallery, where you can see (and purchase on the spot!) work by local and national artists who often stop in for lectures and meet-and-greets. This year, the museum's director packed her bags for New Mexico, leaving the future — and legacy — of the museum in the hands of its board, which is now in the middle of a search to find a leader who respects the museum's past while pushing the boundaries of Native art in contemporary culture. Sounds like a tall order to us; we hope it's filled wisely.

A couple of years back, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art hosted a lecture. That's not unusual — museums do that kind of thing all the time. But this was a particularly inspiring speech, one we've remembered. Adam Lerner, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, came to town to talk about his unconventional approach to audience development. This has included a series called Mixed Taste that brought together disparate interests — imagine, for example, a lecture that combines the topics of absinthe and Arctic ice caps. Or video art and migratory birds. People in Colorado flocked to the programs and stayed to see the art.

If you're lucky enough to catch a ride with one of the artists who frequent the graffiti tunnels in Phoenix, you'll want to pack a few extra cans of paint. In the tunnels (often dried-out drainage tunnels), you'll find years of graffiti history by names such as MAC, SUCH, KAPER, SWIFT, and FICE. These are their practice grounds, their history books, and their means of communication with other artists who stop through town looking for a creative outlet. There's no map on the books or list of access points hidden on some online forum. It takes a long-timer to know where these spots are and a smooth talker to be able to get a tour.

Behind just about every stop sign in Tempe is a sticky collection of hellos, goodbyes, and markings of "So and so was here." This is no slapdash affair. Sticker art has been around for decades, but many trace slap sticking, sticker tagging, or creating art on stickers, name tags, and post office labels and sticking them around town to the early '90s and an artist named Shepard Fairey. Fairey made a sticker with a bold face of wrestler Andre the Giant. He printed thousands, stuck them all over the streets, and mailed them to other artists around the world.

Tempe's Mill Avenue and Scottsdale's Marshall Way are college kid hangouts, late-night watering holes, and shopping meccas for anyone in the market for ASU apparel or a collection of cowboy art. But this year, the two main drags became canvases for artists, thanks to Kirstin Van Cleef and Maja Aurora of Scottsdale and Tempe's public art programs. In 2010, Van Cleef launched IN FLUX, a program that filled vacant storefronts with art installations and gave everyone a brighter view of the economic downturn. This year, Van Cleef called Aurora, who brought Mill Avenue on board. The two streets are now home to works by Logan Bellew, Craig Randich, Peter Bugg, Christina Mesiti, and Mary Neubauer and Todd Ingalls. These artists, through site-specific installations with tiny budgets, are connecting the communities between scenes that are much stronger together.

If you catch an elevator ride to the top of any building in downtown Phoenix, look toward South Mountain. There, you might be able to make out three words in bold, chunky letters: Right to Remain.

It's located on the north side of First Studio, the former KPHO TV-5 studios, and it's a big, arty hunk of nostalgia for those of us who grew up here. The Wallace and Ladmo Show mural depicts Wall-boy mugging alongside his longtime sidekick Ladmo, who's wearing his signature T-shirt tie and pulling a classic Ladmo face. They're flanking local legend Pat McMahon, who's in Gerald drag circa 1969, and the whole thing, which takes up nearly the entire width of the ancient building, is a sight that may cause Phoenicians of a certain age to drive into a lamppost the first time they see it. Created by artists Nomas, Casebeer, and Jenny Ignaszewski, it's a gorgeous tribute to the longest-running children's TV show in American broadcast history.

KAPER's a household name in the local graffiti scene. If you pay any attention to light poles, alley walls, underground tunnels or train cars around Phoenix (or spend a few minutes on Flickr), you're guaranteed to see his signature, loose-styled typography.

We are grateful to both coffee and Ted Decker — they allow us to appreciate good artwork in the morning. Decker's an independent art consultant, and when he's not planning the next exhibition of the Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art, helping an emerging artist fund his or her show with the help of a grant, or scouting artwork for a number of his clients, he's at Echo Coffee in Scottsdale, where from February to May of this year, he brought the works of Phoenix-based artists Carolyn Lavender, Daniel Funkhouser, Karolina Sussland, and 10 other artists from the United States, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan to the caffeinated public.

Art Intersection is home to countless local "pherds" (photography nerds, as they call themselves) who don't mind the drive to Gilbert to see quality work. The 7,000-square-foot space is dedicated to photography and photography education under executive director Alan Fitzgerald and local photographer/art instructor Carol Panaro-Smith.

If you missed this year's Art Detour, there's no need to lament the missed opportunity to people-watch while riding one of the rented London-style double-decker buses that carted around local art fans (complete with a portrait or two of the Queen herself). But you should be giving yourself a swift kick in the shins for missing out on this year's showcase by 3CarPileUp.

The local art scene was abuzz last March when Robert Booker, executive director of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, defaced a piece of art at a gallery in downtown Phoenix during Art Detour weekend.

Between the well-jogged paths of Roosevelt and Grand is Arizona's first television station — and one of the coolest galleries in town. First Studio was built in 1949, but long after its days as a studio, the building on First Avenue is now home to a number of artists and monthly exhibitions. In the past year, the space has seen work by ASU photography students, an Art Detour show with artwork by Eric Iwerson, Casebeer, Nomas, Charles Darr and Colton Brock, and a farewell (only for now, we hope) show for local painter Jenny Ignaszewski.

So you stayed in to avoid the bongos, fire-breathers, and curfew-cutters on First Friday. No judgment here. But there's a well-known local secret to catching up on what you missed: Third Friday.

In January, three DC Super 3 planes were given contemporary facelifts by How & Nosm, Nunca, and Retna, a C45 was stenciled and painted by Faile, a Lockheed VC 140 Jetstar was given a shiny political treatment by Andrew Schoultz, a C97 cockpit was covered with work by Saner, and more than 30 nose cones were painted by international artists such as Richard Prince, Lee Quinones, Kenny Scharf, Aiko, Futura, Peter Dayton, JJ Veronis, Mare, Tara McPherson, Crash, Daze, Ron English, Erik Foss, Tristan Eaton, Lisa Lebofsky, Mark Ryden, Walter Robinson, Judith Supine, Ryan Wallace, Jameson Ellis, Mark Kostabi, Eric White, and Arizona-based artists Colin Chillag, Daniel Martin Diaz, Randy Slack, El Mac, Dave Quan, and Hector Ruiz.

These names are as big in the contemporary art work as their canvases. The artists spent weeks attempting to transport, visualize, and ultimately transform discarded aircraft pieces under the careful eyes of curators Eric Firestone and Carlo McCormick. It's a tough — if not impossible — show to sell; the planes are huge and not operational, the nose cones won't fit through most standard doors, and the most anyone could take home was a flyer and a few Instagram photos.The Space Museum agreed to host the show for a few more months past its official closing date in May, but there are no solid buyers lined up for the larger-than-life contemporary art canvases, which means they'll likely return to the Tucson desert boneyard in which they were found and perhaps live to see another reincarnation.

Buddy Stubbs isn't your ordinary hawg lover. Unlike your average weekend warrior, the local motorcycle aficionado has been sucking down exhaust fumes and riding steel steeds pretty much since reportedly being born in the back room of his parents' Harley Davidson shop. The septugenarian chopper fiend was raised around two-wheelers, began riding one at only 10 years of age, and went on to have a championship motorcycle career before opening his Cave Creek dealership in 1966. In addition to riding bikes for most of his life, Stubbs has spent decades accumulating arguably one of the biggest and best cycle collections in the entire Southwest. And he's more than happy to show 'em off to the public. Each Friday night, as well as the last Saturday afternoon of every month, guided tours are led through the 3,000-square-foot garage housing his treasure trove of more than a hundred vintage rides. Naturally, the collection is dominated by a meticulously maintained selection of Harleys that run the gamut of much of the company's 109-year history. Some of the gems include a cherry version of a circa-1918 Model J, a rare 1926 Peashooter racer, and a 1942 olive drab military-grade WLA from the era of World War II. Antiques and classics from around the world that were built by such iconic and throwback motorcycle manufacturers as Peugeot, Francis-Barnett, Indian, and Triumph also are featured around the place and are sure to get any gearhead's motor running. And if they have some serious cash squirreled away (we're talking $10,000 or more), most of the bikes are for sale.

Pop quiz, hot shot: What's the only major Civil War battle ever to be fought in Arizona? If you're drawing a blank on the answer (it was the Battle of Picacho Peak, by the way), consider spending an afternoon boning up on your history at the Arizona Military Museum.

John W. Edwards has never met an action figure he didn't like. Or didn't want to immediately buy, for that matter. The 54-year-old's sprawling collection of more than 13,000 figures and toys, all of which are housed in a cavernous location at Desert Ridge Marketplace, is evidence of this. Edwards, who grew up wanting to be an astronaut, has been accumulating out-of-this-world playthings since childhood, and his haul includes toys from every geek-friendly franchise imaginable. The rooms and halls are filled from floor to ceiling with mint-on-card figures from Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, and Doctor Who, as well as mannequins sporting screen-worn costumes from Stargate and Caprica. And that's just the first floor. Upstairs is a twisting maze of racks containing plastic representations of sports heroes and rock 'n' roll icons, as well as numerous G.I. Joe dolls. More than just a gigantic nerdatorium and museum, the Arizona Pop Culture Experience is an example of the joys of a second childhood, as well as a massive monument to one man's various obsessions. For instance, Edwards apparently is a die-hard DC Comics supporter, as superheroes like Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash widely outnumber their Marvel counterparts on the walls and inside a case filled with custom figures. We're sure Superman would approve.

For most locals, Memorial Day weekend is a time to bust out bikinis and board shorts, fire up the grill, and dive into the nearest pool. For geeks of the Valley, however, it's a time to dust off costumes inspired by superheroes and dive headfirst into the pop culture extravaganza known as Phoenix Comicon. For four days, the Phoenix Convention Center becomes ground zero for diehard devotees seeking to celebrate any and all aspects of geekdom, be it anime, science fiction, horror flicks, fantasy worlds, or video games. Oh, and there's also enough comic book-related content to satisfy any follower of the sequential art form. Phoenix Comicon's popularity keeps growing each year, blowing up faster than Apache Chief after chanting his magic phrase, as evidenced by the record-setting crowd of 32,127 who attended this year. The cavernous exhibition hall, which featured more than 800 vendors and artists, doubled in size. And there were twice as many geek-oriented panels, seminars, workshops, and discussions devoted to topics ranging from cosplay to getting into the sci-fi writing game. Then there were the special guests, who included some of the biggest nerd icons ever. For instance, this year's edition offered an appearance by William "Captain Kirk" Shatner, DC illustration god George Perez, and Preacher creator Garth Ennis. And that was just on Saturday. We can't wait to see what they come up with next year.

Phoenix's downtown art scene is alive with unique and colorful characters, whether it's a homeless artist adorned in aluminum pull-tab chain mail or some punker sporting a multicolored Mohawk. None of these freaky folk, however, is as memorable as Don Roth. After all, it's hard to forget an encounter with a septuagenarian spoken-word artist who's known to many as Space-Alien Donald and refers to himself as "the world's oldest gay Canadian rapper." A regular at such eclectic art establishments as Space 55 (natch) or his own funky venue Funny World, the spacey septuagenarian has a yen for performing eccentric and humorous beat poetry set to warbling keyboard beats. And he usually does it while wielding a plastic lightsaber and wearing a rainbow hat and a silver lamé sarong. Roth possesses a lifelong fascination with outer space after spending decades as a technician in the radio astronomy lab at UC-Berkeley, and that obsession bleeds over into his performance art pieces, which typically concern intergalactic affairs. Needless to say, the eccentric artist crowd populating downtown has embraced him as one of its own.

Video-gaming isn't just an ordinary hobby for Melissa Kaylor. In fact, it's a ginormous obsession for the 25-year-old Tempe resident, who spends practically all her waking hours either wielding a control pad or engaging in gaming-related pursuits in many different forms. As her alter ego, Mel the Office Gamer girl, Kaylor produces a YouTube series profiling obscure old-school titles, crafts cutesy plastic "pixel art" of iconic characters like Yoshi and Sonic the Hedgehog, and blogs about the gaming scene in the Valley. And in the past year alone, Kaylor has also helped organize a Nintendo-related art show at Bookmans in Mesa and participated in a nationwide 24-hour gaming marathon last fall to help raise money for the Children's Miracle Network. So devoted is Kaylor to gaming that she managed to keep up her playing habits even after suffering a fractured pinky last year. Now that's hardcore.

Hardcore Star Trek geeks can be an obsessive lot, to say the least. Fanatic followers of the final frontier regularly spend thousands of dollars collecting Trek-related merchandise, devote hours to creating screen-accurate costuming, or exhaustively translate great works of Earthen literature into Klingon. Valley resident — and lifelong Trekker — Andrew Atwood, on the other hand, chose another route for showing off his obsession: He had one of the most recognizable symbols of the Star Trek universe painted onto the side of his CenPho auto repair business. Several years ago, the local gearhead integrated the triangular sigil of the Klingons (the noble warrior race that served as longtime foes for Captain James T. Kirk and the USS Enterprise) into the logo of his garage, which services European imports and sports cars. It also bears more than a passing resemblance to the iconic logo of Mercedes-Benz, one of the makes the shop handles. Atwood, who has watched Star Trek since childhood and is adorned with a pair of tattoos inspired by the show, also has a copy of a Klingon-English dictionary at the shop on the off-chance that a wayward Bird of Prey might cruise by to get its laser guns repaired.

Whenever the members of the Arizona Cacophony Society don crazy costumes and stage one of their events, three things are guaranteed to ensue: drinking, hilarity, and mass amounts of chaos (pretty much in that order). These masters of madcap mischief organize four outrageous outings throughout the year that are open to the public and boast hundreds of participants. Each essentially is a massive bar crawl or boozefest where nutty outfits (not to mention a sense of humor) are the norm.

Local pub Rúla Búla is a stomping ground for all manner of colorful characters, including beer-swilling frat cats, devotees of Irish culture, and the usual Mill Avenue party crowd. And according to local author Kevin Hearne, it's also the preferred hangout of a 2,100-year-old druid named Atticus O'Sullivan, or at least it is in the pages of his bestselling urban fantasy novels. In the canon of Hearne's teen-oriented Iron Druid Chronicles, which depict an alternate universe version of the Valley in which supernatural beings like werewolves and demons are real, O'Sullivan is an immortal warrior-monk who possesses flaming red hair and a pair of mystical swords called Fragarach and Mortalltach. When he isn't working at his fictional Tempe occult shop Third Eye Books and Herbs or fighting demons or Celtic gods, the acerbic and quick-witted antagonist downs pints, feasts on fish and chips, and flirts with cute waitresses (one of whom reportedly is a witch) at Rúla Búla. Hearne, who was born and raised in Arizona, fills each Iron Druid tome (now at six books and counting) with plenty of humor and wry observations about Arizona life. We especially dig the fact he chose to set his series entirely in the Valley.

By anyone's measure, Priya Anjali Rai is in the midst of a successful acting career. The 34-year-old East Indian starlet has been featured in dozens of movies, had her picture splashed across the pages of glossy magazines, won a major award for her talents, and has countless fans across the globe. Not bad for an ASU dropout.

Longtime Valley residents have loved homegrown photographer Bob Carey for years, but in 2012, the rest of the world met him — and fell in love, too. Carey first donned a tutu for a self-portrait in 2002 at the behest of Ballet Arizona, but sometime after his wife Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer, The Tutu Project took on a name and a mission: raising money for breast cancer research. And then Bob-Carey-in-a-tutu went viral on the Internet. Maybe it was the void left by the beleaguered Susan G. Komen organization; most likely, it was the image of a burly 50-something dude in a pink tutu posing everywhere from a football field to Times Square that captured the world's attention, landing him on television shows from here to Australia. In any case, we all waited impatiently for Carey's book (full disclosure: New Times contributor Kathleen Vanesian wrote the introduction) to be released this fall, in conjunction with a show at Mesa Arts Center that runs through December 2. Bob, you are too-too much — and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Ballet Arizona has had a "ballet under the stars" program for years. We've been, and it's lovely.

Before you try a few new moves, you'll want to take some notes from the pros. And while the footwork choreographed by Lisa Starry for her Scorpius Dance Theatre might be a little much to take to the club, every step, bend, lift, and stretch performed by her dancers would be guaranteed to get you a double take — given you can pull 'em off. Starry founded Scorpius Dance in 1999, and ever since, her troupe of sexy, humorous, and kick-ass dancers has taken to countless stages in productions including A Vampire Tale, Catwalk, and this year's much-anticipated Kick-A, a local spin-off of the nationally acclaimed Carnival: Choreographers Ball, in which Starry found the "Best in the West" for Scorpius' first-ever choreographer showcase. Scorpius moves with a collective — and, yes, contemporary — emotion, grace, and magnetism that you'd be lucky to come across (or practice yourself) on a dance floor.

Anyone convinced that classical music is all stuffy musicians in starched white collars needs to investigate the Downtown Chamber Series, a concert series that features highly skilled musicians of all ages interpreting the music of composers like minimalist Steve Reich and Beethoven in unexpected places, like downtown art space The Icehouse, restaurant/multi-purpose venue The Duce, and the Phoenix Art Museum. The sounds are strange and exciting, and the musicians bring an edgy spirit to the classical material that rivals the noisemakers at Trunk Space and can be as heavy as anything going on in the Nile Basement.

Sometimes sipping a stiff drink and taking in a movie is the best way to unwind. Lucky for cinephiles and cocktail enthusiasts (and those who fall into both categories) FilmBar lives up to its compound moniker.

Reclining seats. Swing-over tray. Waitstaff that comes when you push a button. Going out to a movie has never seemed so civilized. AMC renovated and re-opened this theater in August 2011, and the experience is now first-class. Each time at the Dine-In Theater, we felt almost giddy for the first few minutes in our ultra-cushy recliner, and when we got our first cocktail, we giggled out loud. After a lifetime of cheap-to-middlin' movie seats, munching on popcorn and Milk Duds while sipping a Coke we shouldn't have upsized, we find the novelty of being served real food and alcoholic beverages — in a real glass! — very appealing. Another cool thing: Some of the 14 theaters are only for adults over 21 — nixing the possibility that we'll have to see someone take their 6-year-old to the new Saw flick. As the lights dim and the feature presentation begins, we raise a White Russian to AMC.

 The last time we took the kids to a movie, we had to take out a second mortgage on the house first. Next time, we figure, it'll be time to sell the second car. Just getting in the door of a first-run theater is a ridiculous prospect — let alone the situation at the snack bar. Which is why we are so grateful to Michael Pollack. Not only does the guy own just about every strip mall in the East Valley (really, people, where would Phoenix be without the strip mall?), he graciously houses the best budget theater in town in one of them. The selection is good (you'll catch the films that have just left the big movie houses) and best of all, movies are $3 — $2 on Tuesdays. Sure, the snack bar is still pricey, but Pollack's got such a crazy collection of movie memorabilia for your family to gawk at that the sensory overload will knock the appetite right out of 'em. The air-conditioning blasts, just like at the fancy joints, and no one will try to up-sell you on your bag of popcorn. Now that's luxury.

Susan Claassen's performance in A Conversation with Edith Head, Actors Theatre's one-woman show about the world's most famous Hollywood costume designer, was the one to beat last season. In this pleasant, quietly entertaining homage to Head, which Claassen co-wrote with Head's biographer, Paddy Calisto, Claassen-as-Head dished about Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn ("She was awful, with that long, skinny neck!"), Hedy Lamarr (who ate constantly, even during fittings), and Bing Crosby (who hated clothes that made him look silly) and allowed us to forget that the renowned designer died in 1981. She prompted the audience with trivia questions and struck poses Edith Head was known for, placing a manicured hand on a hip she repeatedly jutted out into the audience. Claassen moved effortlessly from scripted storytelling to ad libs aimed at her audience, and even those of us not obsessed with the Late Late Show were able to enjoy this warm, witty performance by a fine actress.

iTheatre Collaborative's production of Race was a stunner, thanks in good part to a striking and memorable lead performance by Mike Traylor. Race, a triptych of short acts about lawyers who consider taking on a controversial rape case involving a billionaire, offers a typically Mametian setup. But Traylor's performance was anything but typical. As an embittered black man and a successful lawyer, he delivered a polemic on racism and commentary on the amorality of the legal profession with an amped-up intensity that allowed us to simultaneously hate and admire his character — a tough sell for even as estimable an actor as Mr. Traylor.

Shakespeare's R & J offers the bare bones of Romeo and Juliet (interspersed with other Shakespearean verse) in Joe Calarco's passionate play about four Catholic school boys who read aloud from a banned copy of the bard's most famous tragedy. In a chilly attic that doubles as Verona, these repressed, rep-tie-wearing lads honor an old Shakespearean tradition of males playing female roles as they create an evening's entertainment that's all subtext. And every moment of that subtext was cleverly outlined for even the most illiterate among us, thanks to the finesse and insight of director Damon Dering in last season's production of this difficult, complex piece of theater. It's a rough-and-tumble play that grafts comedy onto a tragic love story and asks that we watch both what these boys are doing with Old Will and what reading his love story is doing for them. And Dering made it all look so easy — and entertained us, besides.

Last season, he (and his Actors Theatre) brought us Geoffrey Nauffts's Tony-nominated and controversial paean to atheism, Next Fall. He brought Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's Hunter Gatherers (about a dinner party at which an animal sacrifice kicks off the evening, followed by sex, violence, wrestling, and dancing). And while so many other theaters were dusting off Gypsy and West Side Story for the umpteenth time, he brought us a stunning Time Stands Still, Donald Margulies' finest play in years. Weiner and company take risks where other companies won't, and for that (and for the bravery that led to Weiner booking this season's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, starring Ron May), we salute him.

Having completed a successful 12th season (which included a beyond-the-grave visit from Federico García Lorca and a play about Frida Kahlo, culminating in a New Works series of staged readings), Teatro Bravo is going strong. The company, co-founded by playwright Guillermo Reyes, has produced plays in English or Spanish for more than a decade — plays that offer a complex portrait of the Latino and Latin American populations of Arizona. Its upcoming season is sure to offer another cultural boon to Phoenix — as if the company's mission to employ and develop the talents of Latino actors, directors, playwrights, and designers weren't enough.

Local performers Bill Binder, Jose Gonzalez, Jacque Arend, Sam Haldiman, Nina Miller, Mack Duncan, Shane Shannon, and Tommy Schaeffer own and operate a theater collective they insist isn't theirs.

Mere days before this venerable company throws open the doors on its brand-new downtown theater facility, we're happy to remind them and you that Black Theatre Troupe has been pleasing and enlightening local audiences for years.

As if it weren't enough that this thought-provoking and well-tuned community troupe brought us a stunner in David Mamet's Race last winter, Christopher Haines and company also launched a unique series of drama workshops aimed at boosting the self-esteem of Arizona teenagers at a local homeless shelter. The iPlay curriculum, developed by Haines himself, since has taught dozens of at-risk teens about acting, improvisation, and performance. That, combined with a stunning season finale (up-and-coming dramatist Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries) convinced us that good theater and good deeds deserve some kind of recognition.

We almost lost them last year, and that would have been a shrieking nightmare from Hell. Because Actors Theatre has brought us decades of consistently high-quality professional theater from Stage West at the Herberger Theater Center. Just this past season, artistic director Matthew Weiner and company brought us Susan Claassen's dead-on impersonation of the famous Hollywood costume designer in A Conversation with Edith Head, followed quickly by Geoffrey Nauffts' Next Fall, and a staging of Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still that local theater fans were counting among the company's best productions, ever. So forgive us while we hoot and holler with joy that Actors Theatre was able to scrape together the financial means to stay with us for another year — and, hopefully, beyond.

It's entirely possible that Damon Dering and David Weiss could have wound up somewhere other than Phoenix, in which case our city would be a lot less colorful, theater-wise. This trio of thespian talents has, for more than 10 years now, brought us a long list of avant-garde theater — camp musicals like Batboy! and top-shelf dramas like Spring Awakening. Upcoming productions include David Nehl's Great American Trailer Park Musical, which we know Dering and friends will make as memorable and thought-provoking as their many colorful past productions.

If we love to take kids — ours and other people's — to Childsplay, it's not just because we know that Little Johnny and Little Janey will leave with a nice, tidy morals lesson, but because we'll have a good time there, as well. This 36-year-old professional theater company has long offered history and even math and grammar lessons (Schoolhouse Rock, anyone?), always folded into shows professionally presented by an amazing troupe that includes actors Jon Gentry, Debra K. Stevens, and the marvelous Katie McFadzen, and playwrights like Dwayne Hartford (author of The Imaginators and Rock the Presidents).

So, you're looking for a place to hold your kid's birthday party that won't also make you want to slit your own wrists before you get to the cake-cutting part. Ta-da! Time to consider Great Arizona Puppet Theater. Once you do, you'll discover why the word "great" appears in their title, because this neat nonprofit (in business since 1983!) thrills young audiences with old-timey entertainment that still delights. Ancient fairy tales get a once-over, as do twice-told Native American stories with morals about why it's great to live in the desert. The theater offers summer puppet classes for kids — one more reason to add them to your child's "to do" list!

In the chilly, dark room at the back of this wonderful downtown building, in a space normally reserved for play rehearsals for Herberger residents Arizona Theater Company and Actors Theater, daytime magic sometimes happens. Lunch Time Theater is a going thing at 12:10 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in the recently renamed Kax Stage. Showcasing the work of young, emerging theater companies, Lunch Time Theater offers up one-act plays lasting 30 to 45 minutes, to which daytime playgoers can bring a lunch or pre-order one from Lunch Time's own caterer. Tickets are a measly $6 apiece, not including lunch, and the short plays and musicals are top-notch stuff from seldom-seen, smaller local troupes. (Last season's schedule included work from the Improbable Theatre Company and popular Theatre Artists Studio.) Most shows offer an evening preview performance of each show on the Monday night of opening week, too.

With his new play, The Color of Stars, Dwayne Hartford gave kids and grownups alike some fulfilling, provocative entertainment. With this emotional and vibrant drama, set in rural America during World War II, Hartford, the playwright in residence for Tempe's Childsplay theater, commented on our contemporary attitudes about wartime America with literate dialogue and sad, sometimes confused characters. Characters spoke of "Krauts" and "Japs" without tidy apologies tacked on by the playwright, who trusted that his audience, no matter its age, would find the morals lesson in an engaging story about loyalty and war and the love of a good family.

She used to be "ours," but then actress Kathy Fitzgerald left the Valley for New York and the Great White Way, and became — thanks to a long string of major successes including Wicked, 9 to 5, and the original company of a little thing called The Producers — "Broadway's Kathy Fitzgerald." Still, we were briefly able, earlier this year, to reclaim her when she came home to star in Phoenix Theatre's production of Gypsy. She played Mama Rose and, from the moment she made her entrance from the back of the house, carrying a Chihuahua and rasping a holler at her kids, took that old theater archetype — a woman whose made-up life was further rewritten in stories told by her daughter, Gypsy Rose Lee — and made her entirely real. Even if she weren't our hometown gal made good and a real-life Broadway star, it would have been impossible not to be knocked over by Kathy Fitzgerald's magnificent Mama Rose.

This year, D. Scott Withers did the near-impossible: He gave some real depth to one of musical theater's most famously underwritten roles. Herbie, the love interest of Mama Rose in Arthur Laurents' Gypsy, is as one-dimensional as supporting roles get — perhaps because he's an apocryphal character who replaces the real-life Rose's many lesbian lovers. Whatever the reason, Herbie is a snooze — so long as he's not being played by Withers, who truly brought the guy to life in Phoenix Theatre's production of the famous tuner in March. Withers' big exit scene packed a wallop each night, and it may have been the only time that all eyes weren't on the marvelous Kathy Fitzgerald as his gal pal, Mama Rose.

Martin McDonagh's notorious The Pillowman, about a writer of fables whose stories typically involve the sadistic murder of children, is a tough play to sell. The story, about the ways in which art informs our lives, focuses on a pair of brothers, one of them demented because he was tortured by his parents as a child. Listening to Michal recount that torture requires a performer both willing and able to play idiocy and rage with compassion and light humor. Travis Russell, who played Michal in Desert Stages Theatre's production, whipped in and out of dark comedy and frank tragedy with impressive ease.

No one was surprised when Nearly Naked Theatre, arguably our most radical company, announced a production of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's Spring Awakening this time last year. But the fact that they were collaborating with Phoenix Theatre, inarguably the Valley's most conventional Equity house, was something of a shocker. This Tony-winning rock musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind's controversial 19th-century German play is precisely the type of sexy stuff that put Nearly Naked on the map, but it's a far cry from the tamer, more family-friendly fare that PT typically presents. Yet the august company made no attempt to tame Sheik and Sater's steamy story about the sexual awakening of a group of teenagers in a small German village. The show was tacked on as a bonus for PT's season subscribers — a wise marketing move, one that may bring a younger, hipper audience to the 92-year-old playhouse, which has been inching toward more adventurous material (Nine, Avenue Q) these past few seasons.

It just didn't seem entirely like Christmas last year, because iTheatre's holiday cabaret went missing. For the first time in many years, we didn't have musical theater maestro Jeff Kennedy (that's Dr. Jeff Kennedy, for anyone who cares about his Ph.D.) and his band of merry Xmas elves to look forward to. Let's hope that Kennedy and company's hiatus is a one-shot deal, because we like nothing more in December of each year than to cozy up to one of the nightclub tables set up for this fun annual production, sipping a cocktail and listening to some of the Valley's most engaging vocalists deliver little-known, holiday-themed tunes.

You won't find a website or Hello Merch profile for Acetic House, the Tempe-based imprint responsible for releases by Otro Mundo, Marshstepper, Avon Ladies, and more, as well as a swelling library of chap books, poetry, and private press collections of literary ephemera. It's hard to keep up with Acetic House, especially given the subversive, stubborn reluctance of its proprietors to promote and otherwise push its wares on fans. While other labels create memes encouraging (or badgering) active support, Acetic House operates on the fringes and in the shadows. You can find it — but you have to know where to look, a refreshing rarity in an over-exposed, every-detail-on-display indie rock world.

If the quality of any institution of higher learning is measured by the achievements of its alumni, then the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences arguably is the best sound school in Arizona, and probably the entire United States, for that matter. Since first opening in Tempe more than 25 years ago, this high-fidelity Hogwarts has produced audio wizards and recording engineers who have racked up a slew of Grammies and more than 300 gold albums. For instance, graduate Robert Anderson engineered CeCe Peniston's 1991 mega-hit "Finally," and fellow alum Ethan Willoughby collaborated with Justin Timberlake on the pop star's first two discs. Meanwhile, Chad Carlson took home a golden gramophone for his work on Taylor Swift's You Belong with Me. Ditto with Moka Nagatini, who co-recorded Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. The secret to CRAS' successful alumni is largely its close working relationships between faculty and students, bleeding-edge technology, and ample amounts of state-of-the-art recording facilities available at both of its campuses. Training is split between two intense, 15-week sessions at each location, where experienced instructors like audio recording/production expert Mark Brisbane, a former protégé of Hollywood soundtrack czar Hans Zimmer, help polish burgeoning engineers until they're golden — literally.

Rob Wegner has spent a good chunk of his life perched behind the mixers at dance clubs. So much so that the 48-year-old says that DJ booths have practically become his second home. ("I've even slept in a few of 'em," he jokes.) Wegner's a 30-year veteran of the local nightlife circuit who's gigged at infamous clubs both past (Sanctuary, Zazoo) and present (Axis/Radius, Narcisse), accumulated some serious turntable experience, and amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the DJ game. So it isn't surprising that he's spent the past decade educating embryonic mixmasters in the classrooms of Scottsdale Community College. In 2001, Wegner helped launch the nation's first DJ classes at an accredited public institution, and he has taught many a would-be wax-worker the art and science of spinning up the hits. But forget about learning the proper fist-pumping for your set or how to choose killer shades for promotional photos, as Wegner and a cadre of other local turntablists (including Steven "Tranzit" Chung and "Ruthless" Ramsey Higgins) instead lay down the true fundamentals of DJing. Through five distinct courses, basics like song selection, beat-matching, and blending are covered, moving on to scratching, vinyl manipulation, performance techniques, and other next-level shit. As for coming up with the perfect DJ nickname, that's on your own time, bub.

Hip-hop culture is nothing if not chameleonic, having constantly evolved and reinvented itself over the past 40 years. But no matter how much it's changed, hip-hop essentially boils down to four basic elements: MCing, b-boy dancing, turntablism, and graffiti artistry. And at Cyphers, you can get schooled in each and every one of 'em. Since opening in January, proprietors Danny "Scooby" Morales and Edson "House" Magaña (both are veterans of the dance collective Furious Styles Crew) have instructed Valley youths in the aforementioned urban art forms, as well as providing studio space in which to practice their burgeoning talents. While Morales and Magaña oversee most of the dance workshops — ranging from b-boy basics to the fancier footwork of krumping and jerkin' — various local turntablists, MCs, and graf crews are brought in to teach classes. But in addition to learning can control and spray technique from Mario "Durok" Alvarez or how to scratch a record from DJ Reflekshin, students are taught respect for each other and their art form, as well as the history involved. After all, there's more to becoming an MC than just learning how to spit fresh rhymes. It's like the godhead KRS-One once said, "Rap is something that you do, hip-hop is something that you live."

The predictability of FM hip-hop stations is much bemoaned (yeah, we need to hear that Rihanna/Drake collab one more time), but the staff at Power 98.3 have achieved a delicate balance: blasting out the hits that Top 40 listeners want to hear along with daring programming like Magic City Radio in the mornings (featuring Latino rap superstar MC Magic, minus his vocoder) and Power Mix on weekends, when DJ Class, M2, and DJ Tyger go old-school on-air, mixing modern hip-hop standards with classics and deep cuts. It's the sort of soundtrack you might hear at a killer club (but you can listen to in your underwear) and the kind of live, fresh content that is so sorely lacking from commercial radio.

Simply put, KWSS is the last man standing. When X103.9 (formerly and still colloquially referred to as "The Edge") evacuated the FM dial, it left many listeners wondering where to turn for alternative rock programming. More than a few found their way over to KWSS, a low-power free-for-all station. You can hear the station pretty much anywhere within Loop 101 (the station broadcasts at 100 watts, the max allowed by a low-power station, as mandated by the FCC). While the station shines most during its specialty shows — The Morning Infidelity, Erratic Radio!, Mostly Vinyl, Driving with Gass — the station's wildly random rotation will veer from Phoenix darlings like Mergence and Snake! Snake! Snakes! to national acts like Cage the Elephant or vintage college radio fare like The Church. You might not always like what you get, but you're frequently surprised, something Valley listeners long had given up on.

The Valley's radio dial is cluttered with a glut of megawatt stations broadcasting timeless rock 'n' roll hits and AOR chart-toppers from yesteryear. Here's the rub: None of these stations can hold a candle to KCDX. Despite boasting million-dollar promotion budgets, superstar jocks like Alice Cooper, and bumper stickers on half the cars in the Valley, classic-rock powerhouses like KDKB or KSLX pale in comparison to this automated radio station run out of Florence that covers only 60 percent of the Valley. Why? Per the wishes of enigmatic station owner Ted Tucker, KCDX offers neither DJs nor commercials to annoy listeners. Rather, the station airs a near-continuous stream of tracks unheard elsewhere in local terrestrial radio. Tucker programmed his station with a format similar to the free-form radio stations popular in the 1960s, when the song selection was not beholden to singles or the whims of advertisers. Instead, huge amounts of deep album cuts and rarities from some of the most influential artists in rock 'n' roll history — including the likes of Nick Lowe, Lee Michaels, and Gary U.S. Bonds — are hewn from Tucker's vast music collection and mixed in with chart-toppers from such hitmakers as Average White Band and Elton John. Keep on rocking, Ted. We'll be listening.

Make all the jokes you want about old folks going to bed early, but Arizona Gold KAZG 1440 AM does stop transmitting at sundown, handing over the reins to Korean gospel radio. But the daytimer station comes back with the morning sun, cranking out doo-wop, soul, pop, surf, and rock hits from the '50s and '60s. There's just something about hearing Jan and Dean with a touch of amplitude modulation hiss that feels great, and the 14-in-a-row playlist doesn't hurt, either. You might hear a couple of repeats, but it still beats the commercials and ever-encroaching "new music" that dominates the other side of the dial. The classics have a place on the radio, you know, as does, um, Korean gospel.

Let's make it official: There's a high-water mark for good radio in Phoenix, and that's when a song is so good you turn the key in the car and sit there waiting for it to finish. It's rare — it's hot here, after all — but that's the kind of music KJZZ plays at night in between the NPR market reports and BBC news updates, the kind of music that makes you stop for a second, that forces your attention. It can be catchy, like the Indian blues of Donald Harrison, or it could be something still and moving, like Oscar Peterson's take on Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood." It's this kind of programming we love KJZZ for — not to mention the solid five hours of killer blues on Sunday night — and it's this kind of programming we wish they gave us more of, the kind of sounds worth sitting in the sweat box for.

Longtime Phoenicians may raise an eyebrow when you tell them you're jamming the new Black Keys single on KUKQ, but forgive them their suspicion. The old KUKQ — which spent time on the AM and FM dial — went off the air in 1996, but this year former and current staffers of the dearly departed X103.9 and Sandusky Radio banded together to launch an online homage to the original, flying the rebel flag of freedom from FCC and Clear Channel mandates high. The programming, which ranges from pop-punk to underground rap to EDM and local specialty shows, doesn't stick to the kind of playlists and rules that bind the FM dial. It takes a little smartphone savvy to bring the station with you in the car, but if the doomsayers proclaiming the end of terrestrial radio are right, a familiar name in the vast world of Internet radio can't hurt.

When X103.9 morphed into the adult contemporary My Phoenix Music, the question on everyone's mind was what would happen to Craven Moorehead — the longtime punk jock who made The SkaPunk Show (in all its time slots and incarnations) a standard on the station since taking over the show's reins from Larry Mac in 1997. Moorehead took to the Net, first hosting SkaPunk Radio on his own site before teaming with KUKQ's Internet stream. Moorehead's familiar voice — friendly but not afraid to take potshots at disposable pop — and punk taste may be missed on the FM dial, but he's brought a sense of professionalism and levity to the world of Internet radio. Plus, he can swear whenever he feels like it.

The name Jonathan L is a familiar one to anyone who's paid attention to the history of the Arizona FM dial. A longtime radio presenter, writer, and promoter of all things cool, L. is most famous for his stints at KUPD, KUKQ, and KMFA. L. broadcasts from Berlin these days, but it was a high priority for him to get his latest show, The Lopsided World of L, on the FM band in Phoenix. The show airs at 10 p.m. every weeknight on KWSS, and you're as likely to hear some strange German industrial grind as you are classic tracks by L's pal Frank Black of The Pixies (L. provides some DJ narration on Black's latest disc, as Grand Duchy). It's not a Phoenix-centered show, but hearing that voice on the dial is certainly a nostalgic treat (that comes bearing brand new musical gifts).

With morning radio shows dropping like flies, it's nice to know that we still have the antics of 98 KUPD's Holmberg's Morning Sickness to get us through our weekday mornings. The Morning Sickness crew has been going strong and keeping Valley folks tuned in for more than a decade by bashing everyone from politicians, local mattress spokeswomen, Olympic athletes, and every race, gender, and sexual orientation on the planet. Absolutely no one is safe from the never tactful host John Holmberg and his sidekick Brady Bogan. Even the show's producer, Dick Toledo, takes a verbal beating from these guys! This radio show isn't for the easily offended or for those of you lacking a slightly twisted sense of humor, but if you can handle a good laugh at the expense of other people's feelings, then by all means, tune in from 5:30 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday.

We love John "Johnny D." Dixon's other program, the Sunday night free-form excursion Mostly Vinyl, but his Monday night show, Totally Jazzed, takes the cake, as Dixon digs deep into his trove of Blue Note, Impulse, and rarities from Arizona's own jazzy past. Dixon's not afraid to get far out, balancing the smooth sounds with some of the farthest-out stuff you're likely to hear on a station other than New Jersey's WFMU. It recalls the kind of stories we've heard about Dixon on long-gone alternative station The Zone, when he'd play freaky jams in the midnight hour. The only difference (beyond the time slot)? He doesn't have to pray the station owners aren't listening.

In 2008, Arizona Republic columnist Dan Bickley had the dubious honor of getting his ass handed to him by Phoenix Mercury captain Diana Taurasi in a lopsided game of HORSE. While the acerbic sports scribe might be wanting when it comes to athletic prowess, we're willing to wager that he would've wiped the floor with the WNBA star had it been a sports trivia contest. Bickley's a know-it-all wiseacre who's got the gift of gab as well as the ability to break down the intricacies of the sporting world. (His insights into last year's enraging NBA lockout were quite astute.) Ditto for his co-host Mike Jurecki, a football aficionado who has his finger on the pulse of the NFL and plenty of dish on the Arizona Cardinals. Each weekday during afternoon drive time, the pair gathers around a hot mic to casually shoot the shit with each other as well as with first-time callers/longtime listeners eager to join in the conversation.

Easy call here, and we're not just talking about the National Public Radio component of this top-drawer outfit. Steve Goldstein, who hosts the locally produced Here and Now for an hour on weekdays starting at 11 a.m., does a heck of a job, bringing on topical guests from all walks of life (disbarred ex-County Attorney Andrew Thomas one day, a New Times reporter the next). And the local morning news team does a great job, as well. But, of course, we are slaves to the daily news shows All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and BBC Newshour, if only to avoid the screamers and shouters who dominate the airwaves both locally and nationally these days.

We previously honored this veteran Phoenix journalist's longtime 9 p.m. co-anchor, John Hook, and now it's Lake's turn in our spotlight for three simple reasons: consistency, a natural curiosity, and a direct and concise way of explaining things. And she's on Fox News, no less, a network known to squishy liberal types for slanting the news to fits its preordained political point of view. Lake knows the Valley, having been a TV "personality" here for going on two decades. We wish that her employer would unshackle her for more projects, like the half-hour special she wrote and anchored a few years ago on landmine removal efforts in Cambodia. We can't remember the Phoenix connection to the mini-documentary, but Lake did a great job on it, so what the hell.

The true stars of the TV news biz often are those whose faces we rarely see on-screen — the camera people, editors, and, yes, folks who produce what passes locally for "investigative" journalism. Our winner, who universally is known in media circles as "Z," is outstanding at what he does, which is to identify, organize, and execute some pretty in-depth yarns for local public consumption. He has been over at Channel 5 for well more than a decade, which in that line of work equates to about a century. Zermeno knows this Valley and this state like few other journalists, and is as comfortable working with "talent" (on-camera reporters, especially the usually excellent Morgan Loew) in a desert outpost on the border as he is on Phoenix's often-mean streets. Z's stories stand tall in a TV market not known for producing many riveting exposés, and for this we applaud him.

We miss J.W. Brown, a fine longtime journalist turned PIO who ably represented the county judicial system as its spokesman before (sadly) getting on the wrong side of certain powers that be at the courthouse. But the pair left behind, Funari and Arra, also are top-notch and accessible. Funari is an exceptionally pleasant gent who would rather chat about his beloved Philadelphia Eagles than about the high-profile case of the moment, which is fine with us. Arra is a vocal diehard Arizona Wildcat, no easy task in this ASU-dominated neck of the woods.

Though it seems long ago, it's been just a few years since the great Arizona Cardinals quarterback came within one play of leading the formerly pathetic local franchise to a Super Bowl win. One year (and another concussion or two) later, he finally retired from the game that brought him fame and fortune. With Kurt's departure, it seemed we'd seen the last of wife Brenda, one of the more visible and chatty football spouses around. But the Warners, who are the parents of seven children, have given new meaning to the old saw "giving back" to the community. Besides Kurt's slightly askew appearance on Dancing with the Stars and a new autobiography by Brenda (One Call Away), the couple has continued unabated with charitable work here and around the nation. Their foundation, First Things First, has helped dozens of Valley kids and families financially and, to hear them tell it, spiritually (it's a "Christian-based" charity). The couple have built homes with Habitat for Humanity, nail by nail. We desperately miss Kurt as a player, and the Cards miss him even more. But he and Brenda seem to be everywhere doing good works. For this, we call them all-stars.

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and, well, gay sheriffs. Paul Babeu seemed well on his way to a seat in the U.S. Congress earlier this year when a story in these very pages about his purported threats against his Mexican-born lover derailed that dream, most likely forever. It was one of those stories that really was better than fiction. Babeu had been a one-trick pony (or stallion, as he may like to think) up until that point, a ubiquitous national talking head on the bad things that illegal immigrants continue to mean for God-fearing Americans and the rest of us schlubs. Now he's stuck — if voters re-elect him in November — as the Pinal County sheriff. As for Orozco, what he wants most is for his ex to "pony up" a lot of money in a pending lawsuit. Just another Arizona love story gone awry.

They're known as Team Awesome: a crew of young people from different walks of life, brought together by a burning motivation to end an ongoing campaign in Arizona to criminalize their existence.

Anyone who remembers (and really, how could anyone forget?) Jan Brewer's brain fart heard 'round the world during a live televised debate during the 2010 Arizona gubernatorial race must have been impressed with how surefooted our governor was during a TV interview in August at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Why, she didn't hesitate for a moment in offering her endorsement to — Barack Obama. Seriously, doesn't that woman have a handler? Or a giant hook, maybe a gong nearby? No, no, there she was, offering a big grin and a complete sentence — all about how confident she is that Obama will secure our borders and do our country proud. Later, Brewer told reporters she had been tired. Um, okay. Let's hope she rests up before she has to make any important decisions. Or speak in public again.

Randy Parraz pulled off what most political pundits in the Valley believed was impossible: leading a successful recall against Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, one of the most powerful — and feared — politicians in Arizona.

It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong. Suffice it to say that disbarred former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas is not that man. Or a man at all, unless you wanna call him a "baby-man." After he was stripped of his law license by a three-person disciplinary panel of the Arizona Supreme Court, did Thomas cowboy up, admit his wrongdoing, and ask for forgiveness from the law profession and the public? Hell, no. Instead, he kept right on defending the actions that got him in trouble from jump — the witch hunts, the ginned-up RICO lawsuit, the false criminal charges against public officials, including Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe. And adding insult to his fraudulent legal machinations, Thomas has gone on to compare himself to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, St. Thomas More, and, of all people, Sheriff Buford Pusser of Walking Tall fame. Gee, care for some Camembert with that whine, Andy? And while you're at it, here's a match to light that Hindenburg-size head you've got on your shoulders. We're lookin' forward to our next visit to Walmart, with Thomas as a greeter telling folks, "You know, I used to be a lawyer."

No matter how old you get, some people still want to treat you like a child for your entire life. Take Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, for example, who's still preaching the evils of the marihuana. He presses for parents to drug-test their children — especially around the stoner holiday of "4/20" — and asked the county to "opt out" of the state's medical marijuana program, which was approved by the state's voters. On other issues, it's Monty's way or the highway. He issued a warning to anyone filming porno flicks in Arizona that they may be guilty of prostitution. On one occasion, we found him at a religious rally that was billed as a protest against the mandated funding of contraception in employer healthcare plans. Montgomery never actually followed through on trying to get the county out of the state's medical marijuana program, and he hasn't prosecuted porn actors on prostitution charges, but c'mon, man, nobody likes a buzzkill either.

Save for when rock-ribbed Republican Rick Romley's been Maricopa County Attorney, those in charge of the county attorney's office have been either political hacks, ideologues, weenies, or all three. In any case, there's one man we'd like to see in the catbird seat, fightin' Irishman Tom Ryan, the Chandler attorney best known for exposing the plot to run Olivia Cortes as a sham candidate in the recall election that removed state Senate President Russell Pearce from office. Like a one-man Irish Republican Army, Ryan takes no prisoners in the courtroom, as was revealed when he put Cortes and many of those involved in this nasty plot on the stand in a complaint he handled pro bono along with Mesa attorney H. Micheal Wright. When Ryan aimed his subpoenas at the ringleaders of the Cortes affair, Cortes suddenly withdrew as a candidate, allowing state Senator Jerry Lewis to prevail over Pearce. Can you imagine what would happen if we had an county attorney with stones like Ryan? Corrupt politicos would be wetting their britches in fear. Which is why likely it won't happen. But we can dream, can't we?

If you're a wackjob surrounded by other wackjobs, are you still a wackjob? The answer is "yes," but in the case of Mesa's Red Mountain Tea Party, there's also strength in collective insanity. Indeed, this noxious collection of geriatric birthers, right-wing extremists, and bigots has become the place in the East Valley for Republican candidates and officeholders to peddle their ideological wares. Congressional candidates, state legislators, U.S. Senators, you name it — if they're from this state and there's an R beside their name, they've probably made a pilgrimage to speak before this collection of hateful grandpas and grannies who think President Obama is a communist from Kenya, racial profiling is a myth, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio walks on water. Yep, there are more nuts here than a Brach's bridge mix, and yet, still, the Republicans come to shuck and jive on the RMTP's stage, because, sadly for us, old crazy white people vote more than the young, the sane, and the brown.

We're gonna miss Sylvia Allen, the state senator from Snowflake who has never been shy about sharing the fact that she's as dumb as a bag of hammers and as bigoted as her disgraced mentor, recalled ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce. Whether it was inviting an anti-Mexican bigot like Glenn Spencer to speak before the Senate Border Security Committee she chaired or famously declaring that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, she always gave us great material, like the way Governor Jan Brewer helps out the writers of The Daily Show. But all good things must come to an end. As of 2012, Allen finds herself in a competitive district and has chickened out of a bid for re-election. Now whose stupid moves will we lambaste? Whose prejudice will we scorn and mock? Thankfully, here in Sand Land, there's always another tinfoil-hat-wearin' politico comin' around the corner, but, sigh, not one who so strongly resembles the cranky bus driver lady character from South Park.

We still don't feel sorry for Olivia Cortes, the hapless Mesa retiree who allowed her name and face to be used in a sinister plot to split the vote in last year's recall in Legislative District 18. That plot was foiled due to the efforts of Chandler attorney Tom Ryan and others who worked tirelessly to expose her as a plant by the campaign of former state Senate President Russell Pearce. Some say she was just being used by pro-Pearce stalwarts, but she let herself be used, just as a shill is used by a card shark. She deserves her infamy and, oddly, a measure of thanks. If she had not been so obviously clueless, the con might have succeeded. But she is and it didn't, and for that, Olivia, we say, gracias for being such a tonta grande ("colossal idiot").

If you need a reason not to pay your taxes, look no further than the Federal Bureau of Incompetence, um, we mean, Investigation, and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice. The most recent manifestation of federal laziness followed the Gilbert massacre, committed by neo-Nazi J.T. Ready. Ready killed four innocents and himself on May 2, after which the FBI told the media that it had an open investigation on Ready. Um, really? So why no action on the two-ton swastika-licker's holding migrants hostage and zip-tying them in the desert? What were you guys waiting for, an engraved invite?Whether it's the DOJ's ditching the criminal investigation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio or the FBI's supposed probe into a right-wing extremist such as Ready, these law enforcement agencies move with the speed of glaciers. Too bad people sometimes end up six feet under while the feds sit on their hands doing diddly about the wrongdoing taking place under their nostrils.

Former state Senate President Russell Pearce wouldn't know the truth if it got down on all fours and French-kissed his big toe. Pearce lied about why he was fired as head of the Arizona Motor Vehicles Division in the '90s (he claims he did nothing wrong, which is wrong), lied about Senate Bill 1070 — saying it's the reason crime is down in Phoenix (it's not), lied about why he lost the recall, insisting it was all a liberal plot (tell it to conservative GOPer and now state Senator Jerry Lewis, the guy who beat him), and lied about his own Mormon religion, claiming that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was okay with SB 1070, in spite of the immigrant-friendly, church-supported Utah Compact. Is there anything Pearce won't lie about? Let's see. There's his name, which is mud, because — you guessed it — he lies so dang much.

Remember when women in politics fought for the rights of their fellow females, birth control rights, abortion rights, equal pay, and all the rest? These days, there seem to be more and more of the pre-Bella Abzug types around, determined to put their sisters back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. One of these throwbacks locally is state Representative Debbie Lesko, Republican from Legislative District 9. A tool of the good ol' boy corporate shills at the American Legislative Exchange Council, Lesko might vote to repeal the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution if given the chance. Lesko was the primary pusher of an anti-contraception bill that allows religious employers the right to deny their employees insurance that covers birth control. Birth control? What is this, the early '60s? Lesko's bill was killed in the state Senate the first time around, only to be revived, passed, and signed by Governor Jan Brewer, another antediluvian hack eager to roll back women's rights to the caveman days. Maybe then Lesko would have a rock to write on as large as the one in her head.

For those cynical Democrats who've argued that the recall of ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce only resulted in a Republican replacing a Republican, check out the way state Senator Jerry Lewis, the GOPer who beat Pearce in that contest, voted when it came to state Representative Debbie Lesko's anti-contraception bill, which allowed religious employers to deny their employees insurance that covered contraception: He voted against it, twice. If Lewis had never set foot in the Senate, the end result would have been the same. But the same could be said of every Democratic "nay." And Lewis is not a D. He's an R, and a highly religious member of the Mormon Church to boot. No, the recall did matter, and Lewis' profile in courage on the Lesko bill is just one reason why.

First-term GOP Congressman "Baby Ben" Quayle looks like a punk and acts like a punk. What else can you say about a onetime writer for the R-rated Dirty Scottsdale website who opts to jump districts and run against a fellow R because that's easier than running against a Democrat in a competitive district? That's what happened earlier this year when Baby Ben jumped from Congressional District 9, where he would've faced a pitched battle in the general election against a D. So the wussy kinda-sorta conservative skipped over to CD 6, where Congressman David Schweikert already was set to run. So much for party solidarity. Quayle's a rich weenie daddy's boy who never had a tough day in his life.

Does Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox deserve a massive $1 million payday for being targeted by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and disgraced, disbarred Maricopa County Attorney Andy Thomas? True, Wilcox was wrongly charged by the pair, though she escaped the handcuffs and the perp walk endured by her colleague, Supervisor Don Stapley. But all the charges were dropped and, other than the stress placed on her, Wilcox came out unscathed and a heroine to her community. If the money were Arpaio's, it wouldn't stick in our craw, but her moolah is coming from the public trough, so in our craw it sticks. The green is legally hers to pocket. We can't dispute that. But since she's cashed in on a situation that negatively affected all county residents, may we suggest she put the money toward some charitable effort, and not one that enriches her in some way? If so, all will sing her praises. Otherwise, the title "money grubber" will stick to her like Velcro, whether or not it's a fair rap.

The world knows no crassness like disgraced ex-state Senator Russell Pearce, with his three pensions, his Fiesta Bowl freebies, and the sham candidacy of Olivia Cortes. His buddies in the state Legislature aren't much better, truth be told. This year, Pearce cronies state Senators Andy Biggs, Steve Smith, and others conspired to have the state of Arizona reimburse Pearce for the $260,000 he spent losing the historic recall election forced upon him. Ultimately, the plan backfired, with an incensed public phoning legislators to tell them what scum-suckers they were for even suggesting that Pearce garner dime one of the public cash after being booted from office by that self-same public. Biggs, Smith, and Pearce have no apologies and no shame for their attempt to gouge the taxpayers. Which shows you what they're all about. Like you didn't know already.

The mud was a-slinging in this year's mayoral election in Tempe, in one of the dirtiest — and closest — municipal elections in recent years. In one corner, there was Mark Mitchell, a Tempe councilman and son of former Congressman and Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell. In the other corner, there was Michael Monti, whose father founded Monti's La Casa Vieja restaurant on Mill Avenue. Neither side was quite polite in the election, but Monti definitely delivered the slimier slime. It started with both sides attacking the other's business backgrounds, before Monti made a stink over Mitchell being arrested at a Mill Avenue bar — in 1993. As the election neared, someone just happened to accuse Mitchell of sexual misconduct — which was supposed to have occurred in 1983 — although Monti denied having anything to do with it. Despite the sliming, Mitchell hung on and since has been sworn in as the new mayor of Tempe.

In February, burglary suspect Jairo Contreras escaped from a jail run by the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff" in America, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Contreras must have thought about this one for weeks — he hopped in a laundry cart and got wheeled out. Contreras was just about to be released from the jail on work furlough, but decided to be carted out instead. Arpaio informed the public about this two weeks after the fact, as the Sheriff's Office said it used "cell phone technology" to track down Contreras at his girlfriend's house in Sante Fe. As the U.S. Marshal's Office informed New Times after Contreras' arrest, the MCSO literally had nothing to do with tracking down Contreras, and "cell phone technology" turned out to be as real as unicorns. On the plus side, it was one of the first times that dirty laundry actually left the Sheriff's Office, even though an escaping inmate went along with it.

America's most corrupt sheriff is now 80 years old, has been in power for two decades, and is telling the same lame pink underwear jokes that he's been telling since Bill Clinton was president. What the hell is the matter with Sand Land, and particularly with this county? Two words: snow birds. Though it's highly likely many of them are breaking the law by voting in two states, Arizona's racist alter kockers still dominate county politics, and they love their fellow senior citizen, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Which is why we're considering high-tailing it should Arpaio be re-elected to an unprecedented sixth term. After all, neither Joe nor the blue-haired meanies who've made him the King of Maricopa County can live forever. Once Joe or enough of his followers take a dirt nap, we'll consider returning. Assuming, of course, that these hateful geezers don't outlive us.

It was Shakespeare's tragic Hamlet who wondered whether it was nobler to suffer quietly or better to take up arms. But when it comes to being dignified on ASU's main campus, the brainiest of the student body — instead of gawking at the scantily clad bodies of coeds — take to the quiet confines of the Noble Science and Engineering Library. Located near the north end of the university's grounds, the three-floor library houses nearly half a million volumes grouped by topics including chemistry, geology, and physics, as well as a collection of more than 200,000 maps. In addition to the educational materials is a sequestered stillness where they can be absorbed and enjoyed. Shush away and brush up on your organic compounds in peace.

Many times a day in this country (and many more times worldwide), someone feels the sting of two needles pierce his or her skin, followed by a hair-raising, five-second jolt of electricity. Taser weapons are in use by more than 16,000 police departments in more than 100 countries, and they've changed the business of policing at a fundamental level. Cops reduce injuries to themselves by choosing to "tase" someone rather than getting into a fight, and sometimes a suspect who might have ended up shot rides the lightning for a few seconds instead.

There are more than 700,000 insect specimens, representing at least 25 orders, 390 families, 4,000 genera, 10,000 species, and 1,240 subspecies on the Arizona State University campus. And if your skin's not already crawling, curators Dr. Nico Franz and Dr. Sangmi Lee and their students gladly will give you a tour.

The truth is out there. And those in pursuit of answers need search no further than the annual International UFO Congress. No longer are its sci-fi topics of convo confined to Fox, Mulder, and your crackpot uncle who totally saw the Phoenix Lights. These days, skeptics and scientists gather to learn about ancient civilizations, archeology, UFOlogy, and paranormal phenomena from guest speakers and an accompanying film festival. The next festival is scheduled from February 27 to March 3, 2013.

Although Ms. Frizzle and her school bus of inquisitive students would fit right in roaming through the Arizona Science Center on a field trip, grownups should note that the museum features much more than basic kid-size bites of knowledge. And every First Friday, they can leave the little ones with the sitter, as the museum's doors open for Adult's Night Out, a kid-free evening of science and socializing. Prep your brain for some scientific stimulation by way of a lecture on an engrossing topic (past ones include the future of space exploration and art's role in collective, societal knowledge), an IMAX film screening, and self-guided tours of the museum.

Up until earlier this year, zombies were nothing more than a popular — if overused — thematic device in movies like 28 Days Later and such television shows as The Walking Dead. Then all these freakazoid drug addicts began turning into insane, flesh-biting cannibals after sniffing bath salts, which caused us to wonder if somehow the undead could actually stagger out of the fictional realm and into the real world. Needless to say, we plan to be ready with a shotgun in hand in case a herd of hungry brain-munchers comes crashing through our front door.

If there's one thing all generations agree on, it's that the best education happens when you're having a wonderful time, completely unaware that you're learning stuff. Each display in the Musical Instrument Museum magically senses when you and your headphones approach and plays the appropriate video and audio. You don't have to do anything, and a brilliant floor plan keeps it from getting confusing. The gorgeous building's full of entertaining performances and demonstrations, hands-on experiences, a top-notch café, and a dollop of celebrity worship, not to mention more than 15,000 instruments from hundreds of cultures — feasts for all five senses, and something for everyone.

Whenever Elizabeth Meriwether's Heddatron is produced, the biggest of the play's challenges is coming up with five robots that, among other things, perform the opening scene of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. As well as finessing time and budget constraints, Stray Cat Theatre had to reach out from their own weird little community to the weird little robotics community. Designers Tim Gerrits and AJ Hernandez and a crew of plucky remote-control operators made it happen. The mecha actors were all classy, but our favorite was Aunt Julie-Bot, who is invited to sit down, bumps into a chair several times, and finally replies, "No, thank you." Nailed it!

ASU Ph.D. candidate Courtney Brown's re-creation (thanks to fossils, CT scans, and 3D printing) of a Corythosaurus dinosaur skull and nasal passages, with a mechanical larynx that performers blow into to approximate the sound the animal made, is pretty cool just to think about. Once you've pulled up the video and listened to the prehistoric-style cries, though, your mind will be entirely blown. Brown has beaucoup other advanced musical projects on her plate — like her Weimar-influenced electronic cabaret act that's "designed so that the performer will fail" — but keep an eye out for when the little guy will be bellowing in public again this academic year.

Performance art per se has enjoyed isolated heydays on the Phoenix culture scene, and a new wave is cresting thanks to some genuinely experimental organizations, including Matthew Watkins' Orange Theatre Group. With cameras, microphones, and computers getting smaller and more affordable all the time, technology plays a vital role in sucking Orange's audiences in and then disturbing and disorienting them, as intended. Whether actors appear to be digging graves, peeing in toilets, chugging cough syrup, or writhing on the floor crooning Europop, the media tracks reveal perspectives and amplify secrets that add layers to the live performance, creating something that's hauntingly thought-provoking — and surprisingly beautiful.

The researchers and scholars involved with the Meteorite Vault at Arizona State University have a Chicken Little complex. Sure, we've all claimed the sky's falling on our worst days and when we've had a little too much doomsday punch, but these academics have the rocks to prove it. In 1960, ASU purchased more than 700 meteorite samples from amateur meteorite hunter H.H. Nininger. Since, the collection has grown to more than 10,000 samples from more than 1,650 meteorite falls around the world, including a rare Martian meteorite that fell in southern Morocco in 2011 (the first Martian fall in 50 years). The Center for Meteorite Studies is now the world's largest university-based meteorite collection, hosting important data used by geological and space-oriented scientists around the world. And as soon as they brush up the collection and reopen to the public, they're promising to put on a real rock show.

Phoenix-based neon artist is not a career for the faint of anything. In the summertime, it's more than 120 degrees in Sue Meyers' studio. She's not running the A/C and she says a swamp cooler won't cut it because during the day, she's using 1,800-degree flames to mold, craft, and twist glass tubes that she'll fit and light to create neon signs and sculptures for businesses and "vintage" art fiends around the country. Meyers says she's been fascinated by neon since she was a kid and would go with her mom on trips to Las Vegas. In the early '90s, she took a neon class, and later ditched her commercial design gig to pursue what she knows is a temperamental industry full-time. Today, she's fighting the growing popularity of LED, not to mention the dangers of molding glass and working with neon in pure form, but she'll assure you that while her process is anything but cool, her product is exactly that. See a video of Meyers' work.

There's a buzz in the science community these days. Led by Dr. Gro Amdam, a team of scientists based mostly at Arizona State University recently published its cool findings — that older bees actually can reverse brain aging when they do work normally done by their younger comrades. The team also discovered a physical change in proteins in the bees' little brains — including one protein also found in humans that can help protect against dementia. So, you ask, how does any of this relate to us two-legged types? Well, down the road, researchers might be able to create a drug that can help folks maintain brain function. Genius!

Aaron Voigt is a cat with a penchant for the past — specifically the 1950s. He occasionally styles his black hair into a pompadour worthy of Buddy Holly himself and bombs around on a vintage beach cruiser, and his workshop is adorned with tiki heads and filled with the distortion-filled strains of surf rock. Voigt's fondness for the Eisenhower era also is illustrated in the retro-futuristic look of his handmade robot creations, which resemble the snazzy Space Age automatons seen in sci-fi flicks of that period, right down to the myriad dials, gears, and colorful bulbs adorning box-like chests and heads. Many of the Mesa artist's works are rectangular in nature, owing to the fact that Voigt usually fashions each robot's body from square-shaped steel tubing. After welding the pieces together, he adds various voltmeters, springs, knobs from vintage appliances, and discarded antiques to give each 'bot its own personality. "I'm also trying to mimic the old tin toys of the 1950s," Voigt says. "So if I can find something that just looks right and mount it so it looks believable as a robot component, or it adds to the robot look, I'll use it." He often spends entire days in his workshop cranking out dozens of pieces, which has led to a cramped and cluttered situation where a few of his own creations, which can get fairly heavy, have fallen off shelves and conked him on the foot. So much for Isaac Asimov's law about robots being verboten from causing harm to humans.

First-year psych students love spouting off about that dusty old Jungian theory concerning mankind's penchant for duality. (You know, that whole thing about our supposed yin-yang nature or potential for both good and evil.) Well, they'd probably have an effin' field day analyzing some of the disparate flicks featured every year at the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival. Imaginative fables of impossible feats and futuristic stories of hope are mixed with twisted tales of bloodthirsty abominations and terrifying deeds to make up the lineup of feature-length movies and short films of 30 minutes or less that screen at the annual event, which operates in conjunction with the Phoenix Film Festival. Now in its eighth year, it dispenses both cerebral sci-fi thrills and ghastly horror film chills that send your psyche into overdrive.

As any local cinema buff can tell you, Arizona has been a popular destination for film crews since the 1930s. It's due in part to our state's abundance of harsh desert terrain, which has proved an ideal setting for hundreds of Westerns. Ditto for science fiction flicks, particularly post-apocalyptic yarns like Planet of the Apes — both the original and its execrable 2001 remake — or tales involving barren desert planets. (That doesn't include Return of the Jedi, because it was shot just across the border from Yuma in California.) Other non-desert settings in Arizona have been seen in sci-fi films, including Starman, Star Trek: First Contact, and our personal favorite, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. The zany 1989 time-travel comedy was largely lensed in the Valley, which stood in for San Dimas, California. Watching the film is a cinematic tour though such local landmarks as Golfland Sunsplash in Mesa, Metrocenter, and the Ralph Haver-designed Coronado High School in Scottsdale. (A few of the locations are sadly no longer in existence, such as Metro's iconic basement ice-skating rink, below the food court.) We still get a chuckle whenever we drive past the Circle K at Hardy Drive and Southern Avenue in Tempe — the location where Bill and Ted meet their future selves — and invoke the memorable line from the same scene: "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K."

Robert F. Kennedy once famously waxed: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'" The optimistic sentiment, paraphrased from George Bernard Shaw, is something likely shared by the slew of speculative-fiction scribes who attend and appear at LepreCon each year. While most of the geekazoid gatherings and conventions taking place around the Valley each year include science fiction and fantasy content, such topics take a larger focus at this event, particularly literary renditions of worlds that never were. As such, the lineup of special guests at LepreCon, which has been around since 1974, has included award-winners like Elizabeth Bear and Darrell K. Sweet. Meanwhile, hundreds of panels and events are held, featuring info on getting into the sci-fi book biz, discussions about the metaphors involved with aliens, public readings, and the possibilities of getting fan fiction published. Hey, it worked for that chick who wrote 50 Shades of Grey, which started out as a piece of Twilight fanfic.

When artist David Therrien first purchased this 9,000-square-foot warehouse south of downtown Phoenix in 1999, it was in disarray. Formerly the home of Arizona Testing Labs — which examined and analyzed crime evidence for the Phoenix Police Department, as well as water and soil samples — the building contained broken equipment, trash, and a few homeless folks. "Back then, the old St. Vincent DePaul was across the street, so when I got the building, there were people and their stuff everywhere," Therrien says. "It wouldn't be fair to describe them as squatters, since squatters tend to fix up a place a little. It took me a few months to get things to where I wanted." Eventually, Therrien transformed his own personal laboratory, conducting all sorts of artistic experiments and helping incubate culture. Initially dubbed ChemLab (and currently known as OP-Tic), it became legendary for hosting intimate photography shows and ginormous installation pieces, as well as sound-generating equipment and quirky technology-based events in which man battled machines. One of the more recent artistic experiments happened in February, when Therrien featured a stunning exhibition of large-scale paintings by Yuko Yabuki, a bizarre butoh performance by CoCo Katsura, and noise art from Noncommunication. And the results of this latest arts experiment? Stunning, to say the least.

It was pitched to the world as one of the grandest scientific ventures of all time, but ultimately wound up being nothing more than a titanic joke mired in scandal. In 1991, the much-ballyhooed biological experiment known as Biosphere 2 was launched outside Tucson, sealing eight people inside a $200 million self-contained, glass-enclosed airtight habitat that essentially was a 7.2-million-cubic-foot terrarium stocked with flora and fauna. It was hoped they could grow their own food, maintain the environment, and live in harmony. Too bad it was a disappointment on nearly every level. Animals started dying off, the air became unbreathable because of an overabundance of carbon dioxide, infighting developed, and everyone became malnourished. By the time they were released two years later, the organization that built and ran the place was revealed as a New Age cult and its so-called scientific findings were deemed bunkum. In the two decades since, Biosphere 2 was bought by Columbia University and later sold to the U of A (its current owner), both of which gave it a modicum of respectability as a biological and climate-research facility. Basically, it's an ant farm on steroids that's become an interesting footnote in Arizona history.

Security is phenomenally tight at both of the sprawling high-tech facilities owned by Orbital Sciences Corporation in the East Valley. It's so tight that even Tom Cruise in full-on Mission: Impossible mode couldn't penetrate either of its buildings. Given the sort of top-secret stuff being designed and built inside, such security is to be expected. As the company's name portends, the technicians and engineers of Orbital Sciences create rockets, missiles, and other flame-spewing space projectiles for NASA and the Department of Defense, as well as a number of satellites. Inside the clean rooms at the Launch Systems Group building in Chandler, workers assemble the Taurus XL and rockets from the Minotaur series, both of which are used to launch satellites beyond the atmosphere. Over in Gilbert, OSC's Space Systems Group assembles orbiting devices that do everything from analyze the polar ice caps to facilitate worldwide communications. Per the Orbital Sciences' website, the company's currently hiring but requires an extensive background check. Better make sure you take care of those traffic tickets.

It's hard not to feel awestruck when gazing up at the 103-foot Titan II missile that's housed underground at this submerged former nuclear silo in southern Arizona. Truth be told, had things gone differentially during the Cold War, neither we nor the rocket (nor many like it) would be around right now. Thankfully, World War III never happened and the silo never got to fulfill its intended purpose. Instead, it became a tourist attraction after being decommissioned by the U.S. government in 1982. It's the only museum of its kind in the nation, as each of the 32 other Titan II launch facilities around America has been destroyed, sold to private interests, or turned into condos. Visitors can descend more than 140 feet to explore the adjacent command bunker, where a simulated launch sequence is run during tours and one can get an up-close view of the inert weapon of mass destruction.

As each year passes, British billionaire Richard Branson seems to be inching closer to making his dreams of providing jaunts beyond the stratosphere a full-fledged reality. According to the website for his space tourism company Virgin Galactic, however, booking a ticket aboard a sub-orbital vehicle like the VSS Enterprise is expected to cost a hefty $200,000 per person. In other words, zooming well beyond the Kármán line, the sky-high boundary where the atmosphere ends and the rest of the universe begins, is likely going to be well beyond the means of your average person. Those seeking a more frugal foray into the final frontier (albeit of the faux variety) oughta consider an excursion to the Challenger Space Center. Besides housing a collection of space-related exhibits, astronaut ephemera, and monuments to the shuttle program (RIP), the Peoria attraction allows patrons to play the role of astronaut for a couple of hours. You can serve as a member of a flight crew manning a high-tech nerve center that mimics NASA command and control facilities or hop inside the "Earth Space Transit Module" for a simulated voyage to mockups of either a Martian colony or the International Space Station. It's nowhere near the same as actually slipping past the surly bonds of gravity and admittedly requires plenty of imagination to fully enjoy the experience. Then again, stretching the imagination is what led mankind to consider traveling into the cosmos in the first place.

When members of the International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto to dwarf planet status in 2006, we practically heard Percival Lowell spinning in his grave all the way up in Flagstaff. That's because the mathematician and astronomer dedicated the last decade of his life to helping lay the groundwork for the discovery of Pluto, which took place in 1930 at the Northern Arizona star-gazing facility he founded that bears his name. A wealthy Boston socialite who had an affinity for the wonder of the cosmos, he ventured to our neck of the woods in 1894 due to the wealth of clear skies and a lack of light pollution. After building Lowell Observatory, he used the Alvan Clark Telescope to survey Mars, a planet the eccentric millionaire was particularly obsessed with. Although he might've been completely bonkers when he confidently (and quite erroneously) declared there were canals crisscrossing the Martian surface, Lowell was definitely on the money about was the existence of an object orbiting the sun out beyond Neptune and Uranus. Dubbing it "Planet X," Lowell relentlessly searched the skies for it right up until his death in 1916. While, sadly, he never completed this particular quest, Lowell paved the way for his fellow astronomer Clyde Tombaugh to zero in on Pluto 14 years later at the observatory. Some guys have all the luck.

The planets and extraterrestrial phenomena of outer space don't seem as far away anymore, thanks to the wonders of technology and the speed of the Internet. These days, wanna-be astronomers or those interested in seeing what's out there in the cosmos can easily log on to the Slooh Space Camera or similar online skywatching sites and watch both lunar and solar eclipses, as well as witness asteroids and other cosmic detritus zoom through our corner of the galaxy. But as convenient as such laptop cyber-stargazing can be, it isn't as interesting as attending one of the East Valley Astronomy Club's star parties. After all, all those twinkling stars are best seen in the great outdoors, which harks back to something Plato once stated many moons ago: "Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." And on a number of occasions each month, the 200-odd astronomy enthusiasts who make up the club, which has been scanning the skies since 1987, gaze into heavens using such heavy-duty telescopes as the Takahashi Epsilon-210 Astrograph at the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch in Gilbert or other rural locations around the East Valley. As they aim their high-caliber optics toward the void, members of the public are invited to squint through the viewfinder at the cosmic bodies populating our own solar system or at far-flung nebulae. If only they'd let us bring out our boombox and blast Holst's The Planets during such sky-watching sessions.

Author and Valley resident Michael Stackpole is a hero to nerds nationwide, likely because he's amassed a slew of achievements that some geeks only wish they could accomplish in their lifetimes. Over the past 35 years, he's designed critically acclaimed tabletop RPGs (Storm Haven, City Book I) and PC games (Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Edition), written popular novels in the BattleTech series, and appeared on the New York Times bestseller list multiple times. In the 1990s, George Lucas let him dabble in the Star Wars literary universe, allowing Stackpole to create some of the more iconic characters in the saga's history. Oh, and an asteroid was even named in his honor in 2008. Kinda makes your so-called feat of finally beating Diablo III seem a little weak by comparison, bro.

Upon first glance, Lance Greathouse looks like a fairly straitlaced guy. He's got a wife, two kids, a suburban home, and a sedate day job as a dental laser technician. Brewing inside the 52-year-old's head, however, are visions of twisted creatures, lethal-looking contraptions, and frightening fire-breathing monsters. Mind you, Greathouse isn't insane but is instead an imaginative cat, and such conjurings are merely inspirations for the kooky contraptions he's been building in his backyard workshop for years. "I come out here when I'm not working and try to think of the wildest stuff I can create," he says. So far, the tinkerer, gearhead, and DIY diehard has constructed robotic scorpions, mechanized skeletons, and wheeled vehicles with fearsome appearances. (A few even starred on TV programs like BattleBots and Robot Wars.)

Without a doubt, modern medicine has come a long way since the long-forgotten era when doctors routinely gave bloodlettings or used such fantastically useless devices as electro-magnetic machines to treat ailments. For an illustration of this fact, look no further than the lobby of Phoenix Baptist Hospital, which features a unique and unusual museum of medical history. A pair of floor-to-ceiling glass cases located just inside the front door contains an expansive collection of antique doctor's tools, pharmaceutical and apothecary throwbacks, vintage medical ephemera, and other curiosities from a bygone age. Many shelves chronicle the various drugs, liniments, and tonics that physicians prescribed (many of which are in their original packaging), as well as old-timey pill bottles and numerous products containing opium. Curated by retired Valley gastroenterologist Robert Kravetz, who started accumulating the collection in 1971, the museum also includes many examples of medical practice like an ornate leech jar from Victorian England. If the prospect of having a vile blood-sucker attached to your flesh isn't scary enough, be sure to check out such cringe-inducing things as the large brass anal dilators (ouch) or the turn-of-the-century bone saw (double ouch). It's a great way to pass the time while you're waiting to see the doctor. Just be glad he won't be holding the business end of a leech in your direction.

Today, if you are exposed to nerve gas — like the sarin used in the notorious 1995 Tokyo subway attacks — the best that anyone can do for you is administer a cocktail of drugs that may keep your heart beating long enough for the gas to wear off on its own. The drugs themselves are dangerous, and they do not stop any of the damage that nerve gas causes. But researchers at Mor Lab at ASU are working to change all that using genetically engineered plants and a blender that would look more at home at a Jamba Juice than in a laboratory.

Arizona has more pools per capita than anywhere in America. Given our weather, that's not really a shocker. What might be shocking is that some of the stuff that grows in your pool if you don't clean it might actually end up saving humanity.

While Arizona's frequent haboobs, blazing summers, and year-round dryness can be a challenge for residents, it's also the perfect weather for testing equipment we one day hope to send into space. NASA's Desert Research and Technology Studies (D-RATS) team descends on the Arizona desert every summer to put new space-exploration technology and principles through the torture of an Arizona summer. While they are in the desert, the D-RATS team perform a variety of simulated space missions.

Researchers at ASU helped throw the Mars Odyssey orbiter into space way back in 2001. One of the major pieces of equipment they are responsible for was the THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System). The THEMIS is much more than a super-expensive digital camera. It's a super-expensive digital camera that can take pictures of the infrared spectrum.

For those who say Arizona has no history, Todd Bostwick would like a word with you. The senior research archeologist at PaleoWest Archaeology and executive director of the Verde Valley Archaeology Center in Camp Verde, Bostwick has been working in the field for more than 40 years. So he's got some history — including multiple degrees and a résumé that is, no joke, 12 pages long. How does a guy acquire such an extensive portfolio in a field that would drive the not-so-meticulous insane? Well, unlike most of us, Bostwick has had a passion for his current field since childhood. Long before the days of Indiana Jones, Bostwick was digging up century-old toys he found in the yard of his parents' Nevada home.

We hope to never suffer any cerebral damage in our lifetime, but we do know the right guy for the job, if the worst happens. (Come to think of it, we should probably write down his name and tape it to the fridge in case of said damage.) Dr. Robert Spetzler is director of the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital, where he and his team lead the nation in the number of brain surgeries performed and brain surgeons trained. A celebrity in the medical world, Dr. Spetzler specializes in aneurysms, skull base tumors, and other brain malformations and has operated on nearly 6,000 brain aneurysms in his career, which is more than anyone else in the world.

If you've ever tried to plant something in Phoenix, you've probably realized it takes a little more than "just add water" to get something to grow (or, harder yet, survive). Luckily, there are teaching professionals like Carol Stuttard to help you contrary Marys get your gardens up and growing. Among her credentials (which include certified desert landscape garderer at the Desert Botanical Garden and president of the Scottsdale Community Garden Club), Stuttard is a Maricopa County master gardener.

Finding a good public school can be a challenge, but it can be especially challenging if your child stays up late watching reruns of Bill Nye the Science Guy and Dexter's Laboratory. If your child has been bitten by the science bug, it might be prudent to enroll him or her in a high school that has science in the name.

TiVo and other DVR technology has been a boon for couch potatoes. Gone are the days when humanity was actually forced to watch commercials or plan their lives around watching specific shows at specific times. But DVRs have one serious drawback: If you are watching something live and it goes to commercials, what do you do while you wait for your show to come back on?

Animal testing is generally a concept that raises the hackles of animal lovers everywhere. However, some testing doesn't just help people; it also helps our canine friends. Researchers at TGen are busy collecting thousands of samples from dogs who have developed cancer in the hopes of figuring out exactly which genetic factors lead to cancer.

Internationally acclaimed artist James Turrell isn't easy to find. He's often completing commissions for his sky spaces for private collectors, museums, and public establishments around the country. But Turrell, who's based in Arizona, recently spent a long time on the Arizona State University Campus in Tempe envisioning his latest project. Off of Rural Road, just behind the light-rail stop, is a (still-unnamed, as of press time) installation. Turrell enlisted local architect Will Bruder to help him build a public skyspace that allows viewers to see the sky through a well-lit frame. The concept is hard to describe, but if you step inside any of Turrell's structures and view his lit experiments, you'll understand his fascination with natural light (and you'll never again see the sky as just blue). He finds ways to play with light paths and the changing colors of the sky to create spaces including Knight Rise at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and his very mysterious (and not yet open to the public) project inside of Roden Crater.

This year, the Gladiator, Bull Flat, Elwood, and Sunflower fires burned more than 3,000 acres throughout Arizona, and no one was watching more closely than Dr. Stephen Pyne. Pyne's spent 15 years as a wildland firefighter and now is an expert on the history and management of fire, which he teaches at Arizona State University. He also recognizes the irony in his name and what he loves to do — chase, study, and write about fires. Pyne grew up in Phoenix. He went to Brophy Prep and left right after graduation to join the forest fire crew at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; he says he returned for 15 seasons between studying at Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin and completing MacArthur, Fulbright, and two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships.

We aren't giving this guy the nod for best weather guy simply because he's got the most awesome name we've heard for a weatherman in the desert. Ken Waters has a cool title, too: warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Phoenix. He collects and interprets data from satellites and radar that allows him to predict when the next haboob is rolling into town. Waters studied weather for years before taking this job; he also served in the U.S. Air Force as a "weather officer." See a video of Waters in action.

We've been a state for a full 100 years now, which means it's high time we stop to take a look back at our roots. This fall and winter, the Arizona State Museum of Anthropology will host "Digging Arizona," an exhibit that will give a glimpse into the anthropological research and history of the state over the past 140 years, from Arizona's indigenous communities to the development of the state's major academic institutions. On the 50th anniversary of the ASU Department of Anthropology (now called the School of Human Evolution and Social Change) the exhibit will examine the impact of anthropology in the state and the contributions made by researchers to the Valley's cultural landscape. We dig!

Here in Phoenix, we may live with extreme heat and monsoon storms — but since pretty much forever, Arizonans have been able to cling to the fact that at least we don't live in a place that has earthquakes. That is, until now. A study conducted by ASU researchers at the School of Earth and Space Exploration using EarthScope data revealed nearly 1,000 quakes over a three-year period from April 2007 through November 2010. Thankfully, most of the seismic activity — 91 percent, in fact — consists of "microquakes," which register magnitudes of 2.0 or below and are not usually felt by humans. While several hundred earthquakes per year may seem high, lead researcher Jeffrey Lockridge points out that most of the state had never been seismically monitored before this, making his the first comprehensive earthquake catalog for the state. Pardon us if we feel a little shaky after that news.

Students at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine-Phoenix get hands-on training with state-of-the-art, computer-controlled mannequins. These mannequins are programmed to behave like real people and give students the chance to learn within a stressful scenario. IVs can be started, drugs administered, and vitals checked all without actually needing to stick a needle in a real person. All this training happens in simulation rooms designed to look and feel like an actual emergency room, operating theater, or labor and delivery room. Instructors observe the learning chaos through slightly creepy one-way glass.

You don't have to be a believer, a Freemason, or even well-versed in ancient cultures to get swept up in the multi-layered history and archeo-astronomy surrounding the 33rd parallel north latitude. According to legend, Phoenix, which sits at a latitude of 33 degrees and 43 minutes, lies within the influence of the "dragon energy" of this imaginary line around the Earth. In this theory, a "researcher" named Gary A. David chronicles the numerous civilizations all over the world that sit along the parallel. From the Hohokams to the ancient city of Babylon, David believes the 33rd parallel cities demonstrate the mysterious and pervasive connections between Masonic lore, UFOs, and, yes, our own Valley of the Sun.

Within the walls of a building near the Scottsdale Air Park, Max More, CEO of ALCOR Life Extension Foundation, keeps a watchful eye over his "patients." Here, about 100 bodies or body parts (namely, heads) sit in liquid nitrogen and wait for the time when they're brought back to life.