“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…
Joe Arpaio became Maricopa County sheriff in 1992 by taking advantage of dissatisfaction over Tom Agnos. The former sheriff had botched a murder investigation, and paid out $4 million in settlements to wrongly arrested suspects. Last week, it was Arpaio who found himself paying big bucks to settle a botched…
A Running Joke The news just keeps getting worse for Sheriff Joke Arpaio. Besides the $8.25 million settlement with the Norberg family over Scott Norberg’s death, the Crime Avenger is still the subject of several criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. Meanwhile, his deputies are in revolt over internal affairs pogroms…
Don’t cry for John McCain. The senator would have you believe that he’s too much the maverick. That his support of campaign-finance reform has cost him any small chance he ever had at becoming your next president. That the very system he wants to destroy will destroy him first, preventing…
The ancient art of palmistry has origins in India and was later popularized in Europe by Marie Anne Norman, a fortuneteller in Napoleon’s court. The idea behind palmistry is that the lines in the hand are more reflective of neurology than the actual mechanics of closing the hand. If you…
Lobbying and Weaving It seems that every time you write a story about tax breaks to business, you mislead the public regarding the benefit to individual businesses. This is the first time I’ve written to you about this issue, although it is by no means the first time I have…
