FLASHES

Woman’s in Tuition
“Would you deny this beautiful, bright-eyed child a future education?”
That’s the question 200 acquaintances of Valley Art Theatre owner Krista Griffin have been wrestling with recently. Each of them received a flier requesting a $25 donation to put the Tempe moviehouse magnate through another semester of college.

“Who better to promote your dreams and your goals but yourself?” asks Griffin, who hopes to collect $3,000 before May Day so she can continue extension courses at Prescott College. “I’ve always been a generous person when I had money–and I used to have lots of it. Now I have none.”

Explaining that her eyebrow-raising fund raiser is intended to spoof “Save the Children”-type campaigns (a childhood photo of Griffin adorns the flier), the 30-something education major claims response to her pitch has been “overwhelmingly favorable.” As of last weekend, she’d raked in nearly $2,000.

Although contributors (including such notables as Dan Harkins, Hans Olson, Mary McCann and Bob Fenster) have found the campaign “hilarious,” Griffin confesses that not everyone has been amused. One family member deemed the project “really brazen.” “I realized I might offend a real small minority,” admits the future grade-school teacher. “But I really don’t care if some people don’t appreciate who I am. I think I’m really special. And so fuck ’em.”

Hey, now that’s the college spirit!

Wet and Sticky
If paradise is the land of milk and honey, Paradise Valley must be the land of bottled water and honey.

Reports filter in about strange goings-on at two houses near Tatum Boulevard and Lincoln Drive, where the Queen of Saudi Arabia continues her recovery from spinal surgery, performed in November at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The royal entourage, which is renting the homes for a reported $20,000 per month each, has apparently filled a garage–floor to ceiling–with five-gallon cans of honey. The garage at the other house is equally full of Evian bottled water.

Memo Random Strokes
Before going to work for Governor Fife Symington, Chuck Coughlin waxed poetic about garbage as chief PR flack for Waste Management Incorporated. He’s still talking trash. Coughlin wrote the now-infamous “day of reckoning” memo, which calls for retaliation against state legislators and officials who don’t happen to share the Fifester’s grand vision.

Its Nixonian overtones notwithstanding, Coughlin’s April 13 missive to the governor is notable more for obsequiousness than for ominousness. This guy sucks up like a turbocharged Shop-Vac. A few featured fawnings:

“Again, you kept your promise to voters: you delivered a $200 million tax cut. . . .”

“Your leadership in supporting charter schools . . . will go far to reform the system.”

“Your prediction was right; the Leadership’s plan did not succeed because the caucuses split. . . .”

“Your personal lobbying effort at the close turned the tables for a huge victory.”

“You need to become better friends with Rusty Bowers; he is smart, articulate, and an original thinker. You guys should get along well.”

“Overall, it’s been a good session, Governor. Get some rest, Happy Easter. Just as you predicted, the loons surfaced just in time.”

The Flash has got to hand it to the Fifester. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s loons.

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