Hayworth Hoo-Ha

Is Congressman J.D. Hayworth a boob or an anti-Semite? This rascally warbler knows there’s beaucoup evidence of the former, from J.D.’s days of almost starting fistfights on the House floor and reading lame-o Top 10 lists into the Congressional Record, to his embroilment in the Jack Abramoff scandal or his…

Bad Carbs

Why do Mexicans forget about great beers like Tecate, Negra Modelo, and Bohemia and start drinking swill like Bud Light when they come to the United States? I always remember John Steinbeck’s immortal line — “Ah, Bohemia beer and the Pyramid of the Sun; entire civilizations have created less” —…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, August 17, 2006

Memorial Daze A necessary reminder: I can’t believe the ignorance of New Times readers like Conner Young regarding what happened to us on September 11, 2001 (“Shameless Exploitation,” Letters, August 10). To say that we don’t need another memorial to the people who died on that day at the World…

The Frisby Legacy

When the most famous evangelist in Arizona history died last year, his will decreed that his estate be split evenly among his five sons. But there was practically nothing left to split. Neal Frisby — the guy on TV in the ’80s, preaching the Gospel “from Phoenix, Arizona, under the…

Batmen Forever

I’m chillaxing at the bar in the revamped and newly het-friendly lez club known as The Biz, formerly Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness, which up until recently mostly served the mulletcore of the PHX’s lesbian community. Beside me is a phatty who, despite her roundness, is good enough to do. Except that…

Race, Sex, and Other Trivial Matters

My July 20 column advising Enamorada Gabacha to improve her relationship with the Mexican who invaded her heart by giving him “an old-school blowjob” drew many letters — starting with Gabacha in Love herself: Well of course I thought of a good old-school blowjob, silly. How do you think I…

Borrowed Time

Twenty-five very sweaty people stand facing themselves in a mirror, pushing their heads into their knees. Because this is Bikram yoga, the room is hot — easily 115 degrees, hotter than the July morning outside the central Phoenix studio. The room smells faintly of feet. The teacher, Brooke Sterling, moves…

Toy Box Killing

Last week, a Maricopa County grand jury indicted former Phoenix resident Eric Natzel on two counts of felony child abuse in the brutal August 2005 death of his 2-year-old daughter Abbey. Police in Michigan arrested the 27-year-old Natzel and are holding him in lieu of $500,000 bond at the Lenawee…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, August 10, 2006

Pros and Neo-Cons Shameless exploitation: I guess I wasn’t surprised when neo-con author Ann Coulter was blasted for her views on the shameless exploitation of the 9/11 tragedy carried out by some of the relatives of those killed. Whenever you speak the un-PC truth in this country, the “thought police,”…

Hi, My Name Is Ryan

Ryan Avery staggers through the Trunk Space in downtown Phoenix, sweaty, smelly, and spent. For the past several minutes, the 19-year-old front man for the thrash-punk foursome Fathers Day has transformed his flabby, 5-foot-11, 230-pound frame into a frenetic pinball of cherubic fury, including rolling, crawling, and jumping around the…

Monument Valley

Last week, this park-lovin’ pigeon decided to take advantage of P-town’s “cold snap” of highs in the 90s and flap down to Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza, right across from the Arizona State Capitol, for a summer stroll through that public promenade filled with monuments both large and small, both moving…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, August 3, 2006

Soul Good Fryer power: I simply can’t get over an institution like Stacy’s soul food closing (“The Last Meal,” The Bird, July 27). I’ve eaten there once a week for at least five years. I will truly miss the place. And while I’m on the subject, why is it that…

Cinema Paradoxical

The last two movies I attended were rated R. Sitting around me were Mexican families with very young children. Why do Mexicans bring their 8-year-old kids to see a movie like Hostel? Do Mexican parents just not give a shit, or can they not afford a baby-sitter? Plus, the Mexicans…

Fear Factor

The Phoenix homicide detective reaches the crime scene just after 8 p.m. on December 12. A woman has been shot to death behind a warehouse at 40th Street and Southern Avenue, about five minutes by foot from the busy intersection. Her body is splayed on the concrete driveway between the…

The Last Meal

This ravenous raven has been wing-deep in tears since it learned that its all-time favorite eatery — Stacy’s, at 1153 East Jefferson Street — was being forced to leave its home of seven years, de-nested on far too short notice. Owned and operated by chef Stacy Phipps and family, the…

Scammer From the Slammer

Chandler freelance writer Randy Harrington triggered a foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy in the anti-immigration movement earlier this month when he published a bombshell story revealing that Mexican government officials are supposedly providing substantial aid to Mexican citizens seeking to illegally enter the United States. “The Mexican Consulate is briefing illegal aliens, and…

Letters From the Issue of Thursday, July 27, 2006

Candy Nobody Wants Coward of the county: Funny column by The Bird on Andy Thomas. I can’t believe this guy was cowering inside his office under armed guards during the peaceful pro-illegal-immigration march (“Candy Thomas,” July 20). He’s truly clueless about the people he hates. I still can’t believe he’s…

Think Pink

Tricky T’s on the tables at Camus this Sunday, dropping tracks as diverse as Damian Marley, Devo, Nine Inch Nails, and old-school Michael Jackson, while mixologist extraordinaire Carson Quinn prepares another one of his amaretto-infused Carson City Martinis for your 300-pound Paul Wall of the PHX. Yep, it’s the Lord’s…

Absentee Ballad

The Mexican presidential elections have been a freaking mess. I voted for the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón, who almost everyone agrees won the election. But the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador is making a mess out of this by claiming electoral fraud. Does the Mexican have an opinion of Mexican…

War & Peacenik

When Ann Marie Tate was a little girl, she wrote a story that her mother, three decades later, recalls precisely. Chien Johnson says her daughter described finding a ring on a sidewalk. The ring, Ann Marie told her mom, had magical properties. It could make wishes come true. Ann Marie’s…

Candy Thomas

Great Knights of Columbus, this carping canary can barely believe the scuttlebutt whispered in its ear-hole by a well-placed source in the offices of the Maricopa County Attorney, somebody The Bird will hereafter call Deep Beak! According to Deep Beak, our tough-talkin’ County Attorney Andy Thomas should be renamed Candy…

No Power for the Powerless

Try getting through one summer day of 100-degree-plus weather in Phoenix with no electricity. It would be beyond miserable and quickly become a matter of life and death. Last summer more than two dozen homeless people fell dead on the streets of Phoenix during a July heat wave. For most…