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...
On Saturday, April 18, Brad Singer was in Tucson. The owner of the Zia Record Exchange chain had driven down for the annual Tucson music awards club crawl, universally known as the TAMMIES. Although he was a bit run-down from a persistent cold, Singer knew that he needed to be...
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...
Lights Out Tony Ortega's refreshingly sober and objective investigation into the "Phoenix Lights" was in the best journalistic tradition--confronting the differences between what we would like to believe versus what the facts show ("The Hack and the Quack," March 5). Unfortunately, the other Valley media are listening more to their...
Joe Valiente, 27, professional rapper, takes a long hit from a short joint and peels back a window curtain in the rear lounge of his luxury tour bus. Ten feet away, on a grimy sidewalk in downtown El Paso, a line forms along the brick edifice of Club 101. Whooosh...
Club 411? Try Club 9-1-1 "Pimp 'n' Ho night" was the advertised theme at Club 411 in Tempe on May 17. "Bust a Cap night" was more like it. Here's the haps, culled from Tempe PD reports and witness accounts. Shortly before closing, patron Troy Ware--presumably dressed as a pimp,...
thursday may 14 Can you handle cowboy charm first thing in the morning? My hat's off to you, pardner. You'll probably want to check out Marshall Trimble at the Scottsdale Mayor and City Council Breakfast. The "Will Rogers of Arizona" spins yarns following a continental breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Thursday,...
thursday april 23 Food and music--Ida Guillory has mastered both, which means she's mastered at least two of the best things in this life. Better known as Queen Ida of Queen Ida and the Zydeco Band, the Grammy Award-winning accordionist holds a Creole cooking demonstration and buffet dinner at 6...
thursday april 30 The title character of The Tale of Teeka is a goose--Maurice, the narrator of Michel Marc Bouchard's children's play, presented by the French-Canadian troupe Les Deux Mondes, tells the tragic story of his relationship with the bird. The play, presented in association with the Governor's Call to...
thursday may 7 One of the state's largest amateur sporting events, the 1998 Arizona Special Olympics Summer Games showcases the athletic prowess of some 2,000 developmentally disabled adults and children in a variety of Olympic-style competitions, held on Arizona State University campus in Tempe, mostly in and around Sun Angel...
Faieza Alyas was fixing her husband, Amir, breakfast of lentil soup and crackers when she learned that the Phoenix police considered them criminals. The day--Monday, September 29, 1997--had started typically for the Iraq-born couple and their two sons, Christian, 15, and Brandon, 11. The north Phoenix family arose early, with...
Thursday April 9 Cross-dressing, gender ambiguity, unrequited sexual longings--in case anyone supposed that these were new concerns of the theater, proof to the contrary is offered by Twelfth Night; or What You Will (the only subtitle Shakespeare ever provided for one of his plays). Southwest Shakespeare Company concludes its season...
thursday april 16 "You guys got baseball now!" says Tom Paxton, by phone, of the Valley. "I'll have to remember to do some baseball songs. I've got one called 'My Favorite Spring' that I'll have to do." Paxton, the legendary Pete Seeger protege best known, perhaps, for "Goin' to the...
ObaChine, Biltmore Fashion Park, 24th Street and Camelback, Phoenix, 955-9653. Hours: Lunch, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., seven days a week; Dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 11 p.m. Americans are obsessed with race. We're obsessed with ethnicity. We're obsessed with gender. But...
thursday march 12 "Spiritscapes": Cynthia Woody Gallery, 4151 North Marshall Way in Scottsdale, presents this display of the collage-style works of Benedictine monk turned artist Jerome Tupa. "If you've ever contemplated the lay of the land," remarks the artist, "this exhibit talks to the lay of the spirit, produced in...
