College is in session once again, and once again I’m moved to offer some advice on the topic. Your college years, of course, are extremely important. Some say your course for life is set at the university level. Never again will you have such opportunity to test your beliefs or…
BRENDA CAYMEN had known for a long time, with some part of her mind, that Rob Roemhildt was going to die. It is the sort of brutal fact that 35-year-olds are forced to accept about their best friends these days, when their best friends have AIDS. What she hadn’t expected…
Once again, on Sunday night, there was the irate face of J. Fife Symington III. The governor’s moistened lips were pursed with aristocratic disdain. I thought that was just fine. After all, any governor worth his salt should come equipped with a certain aristocratic demeanor. In politics, appearances are everything…
The level of fear has risen. I don’t think anyone realizes just how seriously. The murders of the Buddhist monks on August 10 have changed the climate of this city. The other day I saw a housewife call out to two workers hired by the city to do a repair…
Mike Tyson’s lifelong criminal tendencies have overtaken him. His life has become the classic cautionary tale of the talented young man who zoomed to the pinnacle of the brutal sport of boxing at the unprecedented age of 20, achieving wealth beyond his ability to comprehend–or to handle. The incredible physical…
Dr. Richard Ireland has been many things in his time. Nightclub mind reader. Psychic sleuth. Hollywood seer. Corpse. On this particular day, however, the “Godfather of Psychics” is merely late. En route to an interview, the self-described “Phoenix Oracle” somehow fails to foresee that the car he is riding in…
Tim Miller grew up in Whittier, California, the hometown of Richard Nixon. He became an activist early. In 1974, still in high school, he wrote a letter to the then-President saying, “As a son of Whittier, I am ashamed and I hope you will leave office.” “That he actually did…
When my friend at the Phoenix Art Museum told me I could make an extra $50 posing as a museumgoer for a documentary on the museum’s newly mounted Yoruban art exhibit, I didn’t believe her. “Seriously,” I asked, “50 bucks to pretend I’m going through the exhibit?” “Yep,” she said,…
While ex-governor Bruce Babbitt is still harboring dreams of being a world leader, his wife Hattie is already leading. And if there’s any doubt about it, ask Fidel Castro. The Cuban government–the last outpost of communism in this hemisphere–has portrayed Hattie Babbitt as a dupe of the CIA, accusing her…
“I thought I had all the answers, and I don’t know shit,” Richard Horwitz is saying. He is hunched up in a chair in a tiny room for visitors at the Madison Street Jail, his feet in their prison-issue flip-flops braced against the edge of a tabletop. He is wearing…
They sit there in growing awe. The silence of the darkened theatre is broken frequently by applause. It is billed simply as “A Tribute to Jodie Foster.” They do this for one film legend every year here at the Telluride Film Festival. Often it is for some dead actor from…
I watched as they unloaded the shooting victims from the ambulance. One after another they were gently lowered to the pavement and then pushed quickly through the emergency-room doors. The victims were indistinguishable on the gurneys with tubes feeding into their veins and pressure bags cloaking their limbs. You could…
Imagine a garbage dump the size of a small lake. Into its great belly would tumble not only common household waste, but asbestos, petroleum-contaminated soils, pesticide containers and the sludge from sewage-treatment plants. By the time its useful life was over, this landfill would contain enough refuse to fill 93…
Everybody knows that Arizona’s failure to establish a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday has cost the state millions of bucks in convention revenue. Ironically, the mass murder of nine people in a Buddhist temple west of Phoenix earlier this month apparently has had little effect on a Buddhist convention scheduled…
For seven years, Beverly Lemieux donned her blue waitress uniform and slung hash at a Smitty’s restaurant in north Phoenix. Lemieux enjoyed the give and take with her customers at the popular supermarket eatery near Seventh Street and Cave Creek Road. She operated in the lovable-wise-guy manner of waitresses everywhere…
Joanna Wray didn’t have anything to do one night in October 1987, so she tagged along with a friend to hear a seminar given by Wade Bruce Cook, lecturer, writer and self-professed real estate wizard. For several months Wray had listened to her friend rattle on and on about Cook’s…
Someone ought to send 90-year-old Sarah Mandell the Savings and Loan trading-card set. Mandell is that little old lady from Hollywood who recently grabbed Charlie Keating by his lapels and shook him for all she used to be worth. The Savings and Loan trading- card set is the brain child…
Is there nothing a roving NFL franchise won’t do to drum up cash and improve a sagging image in its newest hometown? Naaah, but get this: The Phoenix Cardinals are turning ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium and the town of Tempe into a veritable combat zone this Saturday, August 17, for…
Phoenix builder Bob Gosnell once again is embroiled in a controversial hotel project–this time on the beachfront in Los Angeles. Gosnell Builders claims it’s owed millions of dollars by the owner of the Park Hyatt luxury hotel under construction on Santa Monica Beach. However, several months after the Phoenix firm…
We’ve heard that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But God only knows why Channel 12 head cheese C.E. “Pep” Cooney would taketh such a cheap shot at Patti Kirkpatrick. Last week, the general manager of KPNX-TV rescinded an Employee of the Month award that station employees had…
Need a copy of Intro to Modem Lit? Look no further than Valleycat, Phoenix Public Library’s latest shelf-help acquisition. An offshoot of the computer card catalogues that popped up in several branches of Phoenix Public Library last winter, the Valleycat system allows computer owners to gain access to library listings…
“Should we assume there are violent criminals on the loose?” asked the woman reporter from Channel 12. This is what you might call a “sound bite” question. It is not designed to obtain information but merely to elicit an answer that will sound important on television. They are comparable to…
