Valuing Your Feedback

Dear Gabachos: You love us, you really love us! Mere moments after the Senate allowed an amnesty bill to collapse like the pesos value, ustedes bombarded the Mexican with typo-heavy valentines. To commemorate Americas latest amnesic spell regarding its immigrants and assimilation (previous examples include the Chinese Exclusion Act, the…

Rusty’s World

This brazen buzzard found out firsthand just how much he’s despised by car-peddler Rusty Childress’ confederates while crashing (in disguise) one of the wing-nutty gabfests Childress holds every Thursday night at his Phoenix KIA dealership. Assembled anti-immigrationists spent a whole half an hour ranting and scheming about this blushing bird-of-paradise…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, July 12, 2007

SHOP TALK Greenes odyssey: Great story on Sam Greene’s big adventure (“The Wheel World,” Michele Laudig, July 5). The fact that he worked for 20 years with no luck (well, he made $200 from his writing) makes his recent success with American Body Shop so much more appealing. It’s not…

Charmed

Outside the entrance of ASU’s old gym on a warm Saturday in May, hundreds of teenage girls stand in full prom get-ups, chattering, shrieking, and hugging in the way only adolescent girls should. It’s a windy day and the girls fidget with their hair and poofy dresses while they wait…

More dope PHX graff…

In my ongoing attempt to spotlight what noteworthy PHX graff I can find out on those much-buffed streets, here are a few snaps I shot this Sunday while driving around. One is definitely from the SOS crew, the others I have no idea about, so feel free to school me…

Larry Flynt and Tera Patrick at Hustler Hollywood 7/7/07

Yours truly with rocker Evan Seinfeld and the hella-hot Tera Patrick… Porn mogul and First Amendment defender Larry Flynt has long been my personal hero. Technically, he’s also my old boss, as I used to write for Hustler back in the day, though I’ve only talked to him while interviewing…

Au revoir, Chez Nous…

The Chez’s beauties: Gyana (left); Naima (right); and Amina Uben (center), mother of both. It’s been such a hectic week with the Fourth and all, that I haven’t had a chance to blog about the last night at Chez Nous, the 40-plus year-old drinking parlor at Indian School Rd. and…

Gay girls gone wild: Bill O’Reilly’s lesbian fantasies.

Unrelated to the following, an actual pink firearm that I found at www.jimsgunsupply.com. A national underground movement of pink pistol packin’ lesbos runnin’ around, attacking het doods, and forcibly “indoctrinating” straight chicks into the lesbian lifestyle? As Paris Hilton would say, “That’s hot.” Sadly, it’s not true, though when I…

Mix Until Thoroughly Blended

I welcome the inclusion of a nice, big scoop of chopped habañeros in the bland casserole that is America. I must admit, however, it gave me pause the other day when I saw an all-too-typical familia of recent arrivals at Kmart: mom, pop and four kids less than 5 years…

The Wheel World

People are getting restless. The oppressive late-afternoon sun is glaring down on the parking lot outside Desert Body & Custom in Chandler, and about 50 onlookers — many of them in wheelchairs — are gathered, waiting for the body shop owner to stop fidgeting with a shoddy microphone. He’s standing…

Redneck Touchdown

They’re partyin’ in the trailer parks. Pass out the free Skoal and Old Milwaukee. The knuckledragger Know Nothings, wing-nut nativists, white supremacists, and toothless beaner-bashers won the day as hopes for a Congressional compromise on comprehensive immigration reform were trounced in the U.S. Senate. “Down in Flames! Amen and Halaluya!”…

Drinking Games

Robert Stempkowski knows restaurants. He’s been a bartender, a server, and a manager. He’s kept the plates coming at the Valley’s hot spots (Richardson’s) and way-too-posh spots (Mary Elaine’s). As a freelance critic, he’s eaten some of the best food metropolitan Phoenix has to offer, and undoubtedly some of the…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, July 5, 2007

STICKIN TO JOE Our own Idi Amin: Unbelievable! Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s now asking the city of Phoenix for public records on travel (“Bird Alert,” Stephen Lemons, June 28) when he’s refused time and again to turn over public records to New Times — despite a state law requiring him to…

Lights out at Chez Nous.

The last drink pours Saturday… Phoenix’ll be a lot less cool for the next couple of months, and I ain’t talkin’ about the friggin’ heat island. This Saturday, the venerable soul lounge Chez Nous pours its final cocktail after 40-plus years in the drink-slingin’ biz. The Chez’s been forced out…

Bird Alert

Sheriff Nickel Bag Joe Arpaio’s a regular investigatin’ fool these days, pokin’ his bulbous, veiny snout into light rail, Maricopa County community colleges, Attorney General Terry Goddard’s bidness, and now, Phoenix city government’s travel reimbursements. At the beginning of this month, the Sheriff put in a public records request to…

Burning Sensation

Billy Shields is a heavyweight in every sense of the word. He’s a strapping firefighter who personifies the Irish charm that goes with the stereotype. He’s also big politically. For the past nine years, he’s run the United Phoenix Firefighters Association, widely regarded as the most powerful union in the…