When you are young, you need your father. When you are old, you need your sons. –Vietnamese proverb This much about Loi Nguyen’s last hours may be recounted with reasonable certainty: The 17-year-old awoke on September 24 at his parents’ home near 19th Avenue and Dunlap in Phoenix. It was…
Rockin’ at the Open The Flash hauled a friend from San Francisco to the Phoenix Open. This pal had never been to a golf tournament and scoffed at the notion of watching wealthy men smack little balls around a manicured lawn. The visitor’s disdain for the game sounded remarkably like…
Mad Scientology About the only thing your reporter did right in the article about the Church of Scientology (“Picket Fencing,” Tony Ortega, January 21) was correctly position himself and New Times amongst the shameful ranks of yellow journalism. Your vicious article against my church is simply another clustering of lies…
‘Twas I, row 12, seat 12, surrounded by 12-, 4- and 14-year-olds, their overanimated parents, and the occasional beery-eyed guerrilla who–while handling some comparatively waifish girlfriend–took to crowing things like “Stone Cold sucks, so sit your candy asses down,” and “Blow me, Bad-Ass Billy Gunn.” Banners and signs posting quick…
Hear the snarling and snapping and growling coming from the normally tranquil town of Fountain Hills? Get ready. The great dog-park debate has hit the Valley. So far, the dogs of Fountain Hills have exhibited model behavior. It’s the people who are foaming at the mouth, turning a simple concept…
“I am getting more and more impressed by your publicity machine,” a diner tells Jason Rose as he sits down at Nixon’s. Rose grins and makes the slightest bow of his head, as if acknowledging a hand clap of applause. Nixon’s, a kind of Planet Hollywood for political junkies started…
Ask Angela Bowie which of her ex-husband’s albums is her favorite and–assuming she answers–she’ll probably name David Bowie’s second disc, a 1970 effort titled The Man Who Sold the World. But two decades after the couple parted, the Godmother of Glam isn’t as much interested in peddling the planet as…
Dr. Craig Hiller sighed heavily, then picked up his cell phone to tell his wife he was about to be taken to jail. The physician, who is fighting to keep his medical license after problems with sexual misconduct and drinking, showed up impeccably turned-out in a blue suit for a…
After church services on a steamy Sunday afternoon last May, Najib Savaya tried through an interpreter to put his plight into perspective. “I am not a dishonest liar guy,” said the soft-spoken Iraqi-born man, leaning up against a wall at northeast Phoenix’s Chaldean Catholic Church. “I never have trouble. I…
Show Us the Money Kudos to Amy Silverman for her column on John McCain (Wonk, January 14). The “Keating Coddler” has lined his pockets nicely after a 51U2-year stay at the “Hanoi Hilton” with a current net worth of $8 million. Do we really pay our senators that well? I…
We Read Jon So You Don’t Have To Arizona’s second-favorite senator, Jon Kyl, has been keeping a diary of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for his grandchildren–because, as we all know, there’s nothing kids like more than hearing gramps tell stories about blowjobs. In the journalistic coup of the…
At 11:20 a fairly well-dressed booze-hound came staggering out of a bootleg-whiskey joint on Fourth Street. It was a Friday night in mid-July and the humid heat was like a wave of steaming black syrup confronting the boozehound. He walked into it and bounced off and braced himself to make…
Now that the confetti has settled, let’s be honest about one thing. We haven’t come such a long way, baby. Earlier this month, Arizona made history by swearing in women to the top five elected offices in the state. Big deal. I’m sick of the calls from my East Coast…
Law of the Land Amy Silverman and Patti Epler deserve praise for a well-laid out argument (“The Law of the Land,” January 7), though the motivations behind the activities of lobbyists are sadly unreported. It is far too easy to stereotype your enemy, thus leaving you with an ill-defined foe…
There are rocks. Then, in jewelry lingo, there are rocks–those glittering gems of high fashion and net worth. Yet the rock that jewelry maker Clare Yares has just picked out of a crate at Rockazona, an annual swap meet of rock hounds and geezers in the desert west of Phoenix,…
Residents of a quiet south Scottsdale neighborhood received an unusual present the day after Christmas. In their mailboxes, homeowners found a flier with a picture of one of their neighbors. THE FACE OF RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY “Your neighbor Jeff Jacobsen is not all that he seems. When he’s not stirring up…
Milking MLK Day Sometimes, but not often, it’s possible to believe that Phoenix really is a major American city with character and class. The Flash was reminded of that while sitting in the audience last Friday night at the city’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. For 12 years, the…
Last June, as exhausted U S West workers in Arizona and 13 other states toiled under mandatory 70-hour work weeks, three retiring big shots at the company’s Denver headquarters reaped $45.1 million in cash severance payments. U S West CEO Richard McCormick got $24.5 million. Chief financial officer Michael Glinsky…
In Washington, D.C., the Democrats are bleating about the politics of personal destruction. But here in Arizona, some Democrats are doing a pretty good imitation of Ken Starr. Last week, a three-inch stack of paperwork hit my desk, the result of a local Democrat’s opposition research into one of his…
As any idiot knows, the Native Americans were swindled when settlers continuously encroached upon their land, disregarding the fact that the Indians were there first. After years of fighting, killing and displacing the Indians, the government allotted reservations for the Indians to call their own. Gee, how altruistic. Of course,…
It’s early morning at the “Jungle in the Desert,” the Combat Railfans’ annual New Year’s bash, which unfolds along the track southwest of Phoenix. Bacardi Carty, a founder of the fanatical Phoenix-based group, opens a beer for breakfast, the start of a routine day in camp for a Combat Railfan…
On March 9, 1984, Michael LaVar Cooley woke up from brain surgery to what he thought was his doctor’s crude attempt at a bedside joke. Cooley’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Fred Christensen, confessed he’d just mistakenly operated on the wrong side of Cooley’s brain. It would be necessary to operate the next…
