Jim Adkins grins and looks up from his Pilsner while perched on a stool at a local brew pub. "Seriously, the last four months have been the best time of my life." Anyone familiar with the life and times of the 22-year-old singer/guitarist for Tempe-based Jimmy Eat World wouldn't be...
thursday october 22 Coming at a time of growing curiosity and concern about the nature of the Valley's own emerging urban sprawl, ASU's Western Humanities conference will present a spectrum of bright talk about the cultures of cities, "Cities on the Edge," which will view city culture through the varied...
thursday september 24 How often can you mention the Dalai Lama and the Beastie Boys in the same sentence? The lads take a break from fighting for their right to party in order to help out in the fight for the rights of the Lama's 'hood in Free Tibet, a...
thursday july 16 That least egotistical species of actors--puppeteers--convenes in Tempe for the Pacific Southwest Regional Puppeteers of America Festival, from Thursday, July 16, through Sunday, July 19, at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, 60 East Fifth Street. The weekend, which includes public performances, educators' workshops and such prestigious guests...
"Shoeshine" Joe House, guitarist for Tempe funk-rockers Polliwog, looks like a cross between Medusa and a billy goat. He's got enough shocking red hair in all the right places to make the comparison stick. He says exactly one word--"vagina"--during a 90-minute interview, and even that doesn't come easy. Slumped against...
He's been up close and personal with Cher's rear end, escorted Johnny Rotten around the Valley and entertained Fats Domino in his New Orleans living room. Yet Charles Levy--the man who single-handedly turned an anonymous roadside tavern into a hub of cutting-edge music, and manages Gloritone, the Valley's best chance...
thursday july 2 Veteran actor John Ratzenberger is best known as the know-it-all Cliff on Cheers. He's less well-known as the father of a kid with diabetes, a vigorous activist in raising money for research into a cure for that condition, and an avid motorcyclist. Ratzenberger, now on Harley-Davidson's cross-country...
thursday june 25 The vast screens and marrow-shaking sound systems of IMAX Theatres have been put to use taking armchair travelers to the wreck of the Titanic and to the Great Barrier Reef, up Everest and over the Grand Canyon, into space stations and beaver lodges--in short, to places we...
"I'm here every day," the guy says. "Well, every day except Sunday. Sunday is for family and God." The guy is Mexican, handsome, in his 30s, with a mustache and a smile like sunlight. He has a taco stand on Van Buren near 17th Avenue. The stand has been there...
thursday august 27 The soul sisters of the '70s trio LaBelle--Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Patti LaBelle--looked like they'd just beamed down from the planet Mongo in the "Lady Marmalade" days, but weren't they great days? Twenty-odd years later, the solo LaBelle (real name: Patricia Holt) still has the pipes--an...
thursday september 3 The art show of heretofore unseen works titled "The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss" is, for those of us who adore the late doctor's mad and wise poetic and artistic vision, far more seductive than Andrew Wyeth's Helga stuff. Wilde-Meyer hosts the show, which includes "secret images...
thursday august 6 "Arizona" and "ice hockey" aren't exactly terms that go together like a horse and carriage, so perhaps to raise consciousness about the chilly sport here in the land of dry heat, the Phoenix Coyotes present the second annual Power Play Tour, which kicks off from 4 to...
thursday august 20 The three one-acts that compose The Silent Accord of Transience: The Aluminum Can Man Trilogy detail the encounters of Al, who makes his living collecting aluminum cans, with three different women. The Unlikely Theater Company presents this work, by Victoria Safriet, in its main-stage venue for the...
Something about Seinfeld unifies people. Just about everybody you meet can carry on a conversation about a favorite episode or two. Sending out your own holiday greetings may remind you of Elaine's X-rated Christmas cards; losing your car in a parking garage may bring to mind that episode. The weirdness...
Many bibliophiles regard chains like Bookstar, Borders and Barnes & Noble as the Great Satan. They are put off by the supermarketlike layout, the uninspired service and the rows and rows given over to romance and self-help dreck--and even more, one suspects, to the lack of quaint atmosphere. If you...
Campus Rumpus Since the article in the May 7 issue by Amy Silverman about my book, Policies of Deceit in Our Public Schools and Colleges, sold a few copies, I want to express my appreciation for your publishing the article ("Junior College Confidential"), complete with a telephone number. I found...
Lib's Ribs, 2545 North 32nd Street, Phoenix, 508-8220. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. When you come from a tightknit religious family in New York, as I did, you have two options growing up. You can...
Written Off I have compiled a list of sexual phrases and words of profanity found in the April 23, 1998, issue of New Times. I'm not an uptight, far-right suburbanite. Simply a well-rounded 30-something who, by all accounts, can handle just about anything in print. But this, this blatant, profane...
On Art Hamilton's first day in the Arizona House of Representatives, as he tells the story, the speaker of the House, Stan Akers, looked straight at him, leaned to his microphone, and started whistling "Dixie" over the House sound system. Hamilton was watching from the gallery, not from the floor...
Thursday March 26 Arizona Opera concludes its 27th season with Tosca, Puccini's convoluted work of 1900, based on Sardou's play La Tosca, about intrigue and backstabbing and political fugitives in 17th-century Rome. The title character is a singer who, while trying to help her artist boyfriend Cavarodossi, is tricked repeatedly...
Friend or UFO? Great article ("The Hack and the Quack," Tony Ortega, March 5). As an amateur astronomer (no, I didn't have my telescope out that night, unfortunately) and an electrical engineer, I appreciate a journalist who consults experts in the field of science and engineering. When I first started...
Marina flips open a Styrofoam box and holds it up. Inside are three pieces of California Roll and a red slab of tuna. She curls her mouth into a slack smile. "Sushi's good when you're high." Free sushi, even. Half an hour ago, Marina says, some lady came out of...
