Goldwater Uncut

It’s one of those yarns that reeks of cigarette butts, aftershave and spilt whiskey. The sort of titillating anecdote graying, well-connected boozehounds might swap while swilling whiskey sours at Durant’s, El Chorro or the Pink Pony. Here’s the short version: Back when he was Bird-dogger in Chief, John F. Kennedy…

Head Rolls Finally

For 14 months, Valley Metro Rail sat on complaints that its top construction manager repeatedly pressured contractors to hire a particular engineering firm. On Monday, October 16, after hearing from an independent ethics panel convened after New Times questioned the complaints, Valley Metro Rail fired the manager. Director of Design…

Beyond the Pale

Whenever I hear people whistling at each other across the street to communicate, it hardly ever seems to be a gabacho, African-American, or Asian — it’s always a Mexican. Is it illegal in Mexico to yell out words too loudly, and whistling is a loophole in the law? Or does…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, October 19, 2006

Bad Rap Hip-hop lite: I remember when rappers were bad, like Tupac and N.W.A (that’s Niggas With Attitude). An ex-con named Suge Knight produced a lot of these thugs out of a label called Death Row Records. You see where I’m goin’ here. Rap was gangsta. No little chicks allowed,…

Mesa Muttonhead

God bless state Representative Russell “White Pride” Pearce. Yep, this nutty nightingale must give thanks a month before Turkey Day for this bumblefuck’s outing himself as a wanna-be skinhead, first by longing for the days of the 1950s-era deportation program “Operation Wetback,” then sealing his image as a racist redneck…

McCain Shame

These days, with the GOP in free-fall and America’s 51st state (better known as Iraq) a bloody neocon nightmare, who’s waiting in the wings polishing his halo and patting down his white horse? Well, AZ’s own Senator John McCain, who expects to dispatch Democrat dragon-lady Hillary Clinton in the 2008…

Deal Breaker

Congressman Rick Renzi was poised to push congressional legislation involving a former business partner’s land — but says that he washed his hands of the deal after a lobbyist questioned their ties. In a 45-minute telephone interview with New Times about the land proposal, Renzi sounded frequently irritated and sometimes…

A Salute to the Working Man

How can you explain the disparity between Japan and Mexico? Japan is a nation a fraction the size of Mexico, with zero natural resources, suffered a devastating war of four years that included two atom bombs, yet has reached the highest in educational achievements, technological advancements and economic power. Then…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, October 12, 2006

In-Depth Coverage All that, and it’s a free paper, too: Your last two New Times covers have been off-the-hook cool (“Paradise Found,” September 28, and “Hard Body,” October 11)! The one on your best-of issue was so sexy. It really made you understand how Eve was able to tempt Adam…

Super Star Search

If you were a 13-year-old local gangsta rap prodigy suddenly blowing up all over the place, you’d need all the trappings of instant success just to maintain credibility that you weren’t fronting, that you were in the game to stay. For starters, you’d need a crew of people like so…

Hard Body

At 7:30 on a Tuesday morning, it’s pretty quiet at Elwood Bodyworks. There’s still half an hour before the workday begins at the south Scottsdale body shop, and a lone mechanic is moving around the garage near a car that is at once hideous and charming. At first glance, this…

Shrine Whine

Oh, how the worm’s turned on the AZ 9/11 Memorial since this early bird first tweeted on the subject way before the freakin’ thing was ever completed. See, this jaundiced blue jay was the first to jawbone about how the shrine — which resembles a humongo steel Funyun perched over…

Dead Man Talkin’

“You know, prison and the death penalty, they may not deter a guy from a life of crime,” Robert Comer writes, “but I promise you this. Sentence a guy to one year of dealing with anti-death penalty fanatics and the courts will cause a guy to turn over a new…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, October 5, 2006

Living in Sin Now the sky only sags: Regarding your feature on Satan’s Angel, or whatever her name is (“Hell’s Belle,” Benjamin Leatherman, September 28), what has the world come to when New Times considers it a cover story to profile an aging stripper? I remember when New Times only…

In for a Bean, in for a Burrito

I got a bumper sticker at a street fair in Mexico that was a play on the “Hecho en México” export logo with the eagle graphic. Mine is the same but says, “Hecho un Mendigo.” My Mexican friends think it’s funny. Problem is, we can’t really explain the joke to…

Hell’s Belle

Cecelia Walker has a hot pair of breasts, literally. As the thumping congas of Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice” pump from the Paper Heart’s loudspeakers, the scantily clad 62-year-old burlesque dancer stands onstage at the downtown Phoenix performance venue, preparing to light her size 42D boobs on fire. Walker, who’s known by…

Career Death

Keep your mouth shut, keep your job, keep your career. That’s the lesson officers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety can take from the case of a rookie who was fired after a supervisor spiked one of his tickets. Brent Wyatt, an ex-West Virginian with a military haircut and…

Making Babies

I have a stupid, unemployed, 16-year-old gang-bangin’ cousin who already dropped out of school, and I’m pretty sure most Mexicans are related to somebody who fits that description. About eight months ago, he knocked up a girl around his age, so last week I was dragged to their extremely festive…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, September 28, 2006

Borne Again In the other guy’s shoes: I enjoyed the cartoon story by Jim Mahfood and Stephen Lemons (“The Passion of El Cristo,” September 14), maybe because I spent 20 years on the west side of town in an area that was 95 percent Mexican. I met a gentle migrant…

Da Mayor’s Debacle

The Bird’s been crowin’ like a rooster after an all-nighter in the henhouse over the spanking Scottsdale voters gave the pro-Proposition 401 crowd on September 12. The absurd anti-lap-dance law bit the canvas like a bum boxer, with 52 percent of the electorate essentially telling Mayor Mary Manross and the…

Border Cross

I am a gabacho who is dating a spicy little seorita. We’re going to Mexico so I can meet her father and his side of the family. I’m a rather alto y flaco fellow, and I wasn’t blessed with the dark complexion Mexicans enjoy. I speak some Spanish, but what…