It’s six o’clock on a Friday evening, and Dennis Chiesa hasn’t seen a customer in his record shop for more than three hours. The cozy little store, Tracks in Wax, is nestled in an aging strip mall between a hair salon and a psychic, just south of Camelback Road on…
Loan company AHELA
The Mexican is currently inside a trunk trying to sneak back into the United States after the Christmas holiday. Meanwhile, here are some oldies-but-goldies: A friend of mine calls Mexicans “wabs” but, being a menso, doesn’t even know what it means — except that it’s not P.C. What’s it mean?…
Letters to the editor
Talk about The Crying Game! For the past month, Scottsdale club owner Tom Anderson of Anderson’s Fifth Estate and local “diversity activist” Michele De Lafreniere have been engaged in an epic donnybrook of penile proportions. Seems De Lafreniere has been kickin’ up a shit storm after being tossed out of…
Can someone cue Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself,” please? This is so amazingly retarded that I couldn’t leave it alone. According this dumbass website, today is Global Orgasm Day, wherein everyone on Earth’s supposed to have an orgasm, think about world peace, and somehow make the world a better place…
Enter Flynt, and the crowd roars, “Lar-ry, Lar-ry!” A spontaneous chant, full of the sort of her0-worship normally reserved for the likes of Jerry Springer or Howard Stern: “Lar-ry, Lar-ry!” That’s how the 200 men and women attending the grand opening of Tempe’s brand-spankin’ new Hustler Hollywood store last night…
It’s been obvious to The Bird for a long time that Sheriff Joe Arpaio despises New Times. Why else would he violate the Arizona public records law by keeping documents about pertinent activities to taxpayers hidden from the public? Why else would he deny New Times writers access to his…
The man in the black shirt with large white letters that read “IMPEACH AND IMPRISON” stands out in the blue-collar bowling alley like someone shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. It’s December 8, and the patrons of AMF Deer Valley Lanes know Jason Tunay and his inflammatory tee shirts well…
I’m a Spanish-language student struggling with tenses and the gender of nouns. The other day, some friends and I were discussing street slang, and the word verga (penis) came up (no pun intended). It occurred to me that the definitive symbol of masculinity ends in the feminine “-a.” What’s up…
It’s been obvious to The Bird for a long time that Sheriff Joe Arpaio despises New Times. Why else would he violate the Arizona public records law by keeping documents about pertinent activities to taxpayers hidden from the public? Why else would he deny New Times writers access to his…
What, Phil Worry? Mayor McGruff: You make some very good points regarding the crime rate in Maricopa County (“Murder City,” The Bird, Stephen Lemons, December 14). I agree that it’s a laugh that Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon goes around scoffing at the crime statistics showing Phoenix is a dangerous place…
Carol Davidson is an Arcadia housewife, a grandmother, a missionary’s mom, and until recently, someone who spent every Wednesday night practicing with the church choir. But she is also, as she puts it, a gutsy broad. And that’s where the trouble at Valley Cathedral began. She didn’t go looking to…
www.ashestoportraits.com Dead Ringer: Er, for Paul Giamatti’s Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, perhaps? I’m not sure what’s creepier about this Ashes to Portraits website, the fact that they’re actually mixing human cremains (i.e., cremated remains) into oil-based paint and using it to depict a lost loved one, or the site’s…
Katt Sandwich: from left, the booful Lena Smith, Katt “Money Mike” Williams, and the stunning Vivian Ware of UrbanAz.com. So Luenell, how is Borat in the sack? The Black Sinatra: Wanna hear a few bars of “Sweet Child O’ Mine”? If Jesse Jackson had been on hand for Katt Williams’…
Polyg Pope Warren Jeffs, Prez of the FLDS Jane Doe is big news today. She’s the gal, now 20, who’s pointing the finger in what’s sure to be the most significant polygamist prosecution case in a generation. Prosecutors in Washington County, Utah allege that polyg pope Warren Jeffs, head of…
It’s been two years since the city of Phoenix’s chief financial officer jumped to his death from atop his moving Mercedes on East Camelback Road. To this day, mention of 55-year-old Kevin Keogh’s highly publicized leap on the afternoon of December 8, 2004, raises the question, “What could that poor…
Some time ago, New Times got a letter from an inmate in Florence named James Stites, who is serving a six-year prison sentence for attempting to molest a child. Stites was writing about his cellmate at the time, the infamous diddling doctor Brian Finkel, who was sentenced in January 2004…
The number of Arizona children who died last year in unexpected and tragic ways rose sharply, according to a new report from the state department of health. Many significant areas, from suicide to drowning, also showed troubling increases. The report, compiled annually by a team of volunteer doctors, psychologists and…
It seems that whenever Chicano professors want to show off their mexicanidad, they wear a guayabera. In fact, I saw a picture of you in the Los Angeles Times donning the shirt, along with Dickies pants and Converse All Stars. How trite and bourgeois! You go to a cafe or…
Death and the Maidens Give ’em Hellen: While I do not harbor full confidence that, with their current musical output, the Sisters Duponte are peddling “the future of Phoenix death metal,” kudos to the two young ladies for creating heavy music in a male-dominated genre, especially at such a young…
Has it occurred to anyone besides this tweeter that Phoenix may now be better known for serial killers than saguaros? Leaping lapwings, last week P-town news was all about alleged multiple murderers, whether it was serial shooter suspect Dale Hausner tryin’ to OD on antihistamines and other over-the-counter meds, or…
