Ma and Pa Kettle, they ain’t. And forget any resemblance to those “American Gothic” sourpussed sod-busters, too. In fact, better check all those citified notions about farm life when you enter Kathleen and Arnott Duncan’s pick-it-yourself veggie patch and petting zoo in Goodyear. Part of an actual organic farm providing…
Size does matter. Or at least it does to painter John Cerney, creator of the Rushmorean rug rat seen daily by thousands of westward-bound I-10 travelers. “As long as I’ve been painting, I’ve always been interested in making things bigger and bigger,” says Cerney, who operates a commercial mural studio…
Telephone Tom migrated to Bisbee in April 1979. Of course, back then he wasn’t known as Telephone Tom, he was simply Tom Wheeler, a phone company worker who’d arranged a transfer from Phoenix to Cochise County because he was fed up with traffic and crowds and crime and sprawl. He…
A Teamster’s strike that began two months ago in Tolleson is poised to go nationwide after a long-awaited federal labor report substantiated union claims that Fry’s grocery store owners violated labor laws. The report by the general counsel’s office of the National Labor Relations Board was released last week. In…
Can’t Buy Love L’Affaire Steve just won’t go away. The Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday that Texas A&M University had rejected $10,000 the Arizona Republic had sent to the university in an attempt to purchase penance for an editorial cartoon that offended Texans in general and Aggies in particular. The…
To: Voas From: Holthouse Re: Severe setbacks with Governor Hull in London story. Cheers from England, chief, and bad news: I’m afraid rioting in the streets, too many shots of absinthe, a lobster-electrocuting device known as the Crustastun, and other factors too numerous and bizarre to detail here have prevented…
John McCain released his medical records over the weekend, and now we know all about our senior senator’s skin cancer (cured), colon polyps (benign) and prostate (slightly enlarged, but normal for a 63-year-old). We even know that in 1980 McCain’s doctors spotted a “herpetic lesion” on his genitals — and…
A judge has sided with the Phoenix-based Hypercom Corporation against an ex-employee who claimed the company bought her silence after a top executive raped her. Superior Court Judge Edward Burke issued his 17-page ruling November 22 after a two-day hearing in the case. New Times published a story on the…
The contracts were in the mail. And that was bad news for Phoenix officials and volunteers struggling to organize a massive downtown turn-of-the-century celebration that hopes to attract more than 100,000 revelers into the city’s resurgent central core for an evening of partying, dancing, music and awe beneath an unprecedented…
New Mexico record producer and piano player Norman Petty jotted some advice for his pals Buddy Holly and the Crickets in the summer of 1957. The red-hot band was about to embark on its first trip to New York City, and road warrior Petty felt obliged to help. In a…
A kid limps up and offers his palm. He wears a black Misfits tour shirt and Marine fatigues, glittery combat boots and a teal-colored mess of hair. Framed by the hazy hues of Mill Avenue on a Friday night, he seems an antagonistic juxtaposition to the street’s sugary chain-store harmony…
Lorraine DeJongh Gamble wheels her husband of almost one year into the Lakes Club in Sun City. “Good evening, Commander,” the maitre d’ greets Edward Gamble, who sits ramrod straight in his chair, nattily attired in a bola tie and blue blazer. “And happy birthday to you, sir.” Actually, Gamble’s…
Ethically Challenged True Flashophiles are aware that the “Daily Flash: A Reader’s Guide to the Arizona Republic” each day (attitude permitting) chronicles the foibles of that ponderous publication on the New Times Web site (www.phoenixnewtimes.com). Readers of the Daily Flash know that this Pulsing Strobe has been going off on…
She says she still feels like a leper, showing off the wounds where the worms popped out. “They were all over me,” says recent parasite host Barbara Carroll, 42. “I could see them, moving beneath my skin. I could feel them.” The memory sends Carroll into shivers of disgust. She…
Maryanne Your First, Your Last, Your Everything (Contingency) It was almost a decade ago when Dave Slutes sang the fateful lines, “Consistency’s a virtue/Except when it’s abused.” Back then, of course, he was one-fourth of Tucson’s much-loved Sidewinders (later Sand Rubies). For several years the group’s signature “desert-rock sound” –…
When Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association collapsed in 1989, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain’s political career nearly went with it. McCain, the country learned, was one of five senators who had met with federal regulators at Keating’s behest. Although the senators insisted there was no quid pro quo,…
Senator John McCain doesn’t get high ratings from the League of Conservation Voters or the Sierra Club, but he and environmentalists have worked together for years to limit noise over the Grand Canyon. Concern about canyon overflights began in the mid-’80s as a debate over safety, but once that matter…
Here is a breakdown of the top 50 contributors to Senator John McCain’s 1998 senate campaign and his current presidential campaign. The gifts were made by employees of the firms, their relatives, the companies’ political action committees and, when the information was available, their lobbyists. This list also briefly highlights…
For a ceremony eulogizing “Tish Tanner” (née Garry Mangum), the trash-talkin’ male comedienne who brightened up Valley drag revues since RuPaul was a boy, the final gathering was a remarkably staid affair. Unless you count the spangly costumes, array of wigs, piles of costume jewelry and trays of makeup artfully…
They worship trees, you know. A Minneapolis attorney from a conservative think tank has convinced loggers in northern Minnesota to file suit against Forest Guardians, a Santa Fe-based environmental group, for allegedly influencing the U.S. Forest Service into making logging decisions based on the religion of “Deep Ecology.” In October,…
A Journalistic Wilding First Outside magazine took it to task for not being “hippy” enough for the writer’s taste, insinuating that Center for Biological Diversity director Kieran Suckling had somehow sold out because he was drawing a $20,000-a-year salary. Now the New Yorker magazine denounces the Tucson environmental group for…
His ass twitching like a pair of brained salmon in a black leather sack, Ricky Martin ascended into view, gyrating upon the hood of a silver drop-top Mustang. The 11-year-old girl in the seat to my left commenced caterwauling. “Rick-eeeeee!” She would repeat this exultation approximately 2,269 times last Thursday…
