If a part-time Maricopa County judge has his way, chronic shoplifter Rhonda Mecham will have a much harder time satisfying her confessed “habit” in the future. That’s because of an unusual sentencing provision that pro tem Superior Court Judge Joel Thompson says he designed to notify area retailers about Mecham’s…
“It looks like no man’s land here,” says Alisa Gray as she peers through the razor-wire fence at 21st Avenue south of McDowell Road. On one side of the street, storage tanks for an asphalt plant drip and percolate; I-10 whizzes overhead, held up by giant pillars. Beneath the expressway:…
The man in the Mazda RX-7 pulled over to the side of the road and waited. For almost 14 years, John Carpenter had prayed this day wouldn’t come. It was about 6 a.m. on June 1, 1992, in the south Los Angeles suburb of Carson. Carpenter, then 63, had been…
Bob Emerick sat down recently for a heart-to-heart with his 11-year-old daughter, Leslie. “She really wanted to know why I am leaving Arizona,” says Emerick, former director of the now-defunct sex-offender treatment and assessment program at Phoenix Memorial Hospital. “I told her, ‘You know what I do. Part of my…
On January 14, 1990, at about 12:50 a.m., someone bombed Carl Ritter’s car in the driveway of his Tempe home. “It sounded like someone had fired a double-barrel shotgun,” Ritter says. “It woke up the entire neighborhood; people were starting to come out of their houses.” The rear wheels of…
Richard Lessner, the Arizona Republic editorial writer who inflamed Hurricane Andrew survivors in Florida when his victim-bashing column was reprinted there, has resigned under fire. Lessner walked out on Tuesday rather than accept a demotion to religion writer, a position he held when he joined the Republic in 1981, Lessner…
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The best if you were selling tickets; the worst if you were buying them. And now, only one question remains. Will film historians of the future refer to this as “The Heaven’s Gate Decade,” “The Ishtar Decade,” or…
How can land in boring, bland downtown be more valuable than prime sites like the Esplanade at 24th Street and Camelback? Is it just that City Hall doesn’t know how to cut a decent deal? That’s the impression given by the prices the city is paying for land for the…
Before Bruce Willis enters the room, a studio publicist announces that Mr. Willis will not discuss anything pertaining to his ex-TV series, Moonlighting, or his personal life. Hmmm. Okay. So, um, Bruce . . . whaddaya think of those Voyager photos of Neptune? Fortunately, the sole job qualification of studio…
When word leaks out that you’re going to be interviewing Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, the stars of Lethal Weapon and its new sequel, called (what else?) Lethal Weapon 2, you can count on getting two reactions. Reaction No. 1 (from females of all ages): “MEL GIBSON?!? Oh, my God!…
If there is a normal career path for Academy Award-winning actresses, Geena Davis certainly isn’t following it. Prior to being Oscarized in March for her performance in The Accidental Tourist as a dog trainer at the Meow Bow Animal Hospital who is in love with a reluctant travel writer, Davis’…
“How much difference is there between `gosh darn’ and `God damn’?” asks D.C. Martin, Grand Canyon College’s chairman of religious studies. “Is it the spelling of the words, or is there a technical difference between the two?” Those were some of the questions that prompted Martin to teach a class…
For those who have never sampled the weird delights of Ed Wood’s filmmaking, the auteur’s entire “legitimate” (that is, pre-porno) feature canon is available on video. Any of his movies are worth a look for connaisieurs of the bizarre, although only two–Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer…
If the life of filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr., were fiction, set down more or less as Wood’s cronies tell it, it would be hailed as the great Hollywood satire. It would seem like a creation of Nathaniel West, had he survived until the Fifties, or of Tom Robbins, had…
