cold comfort Downtown Cooldown: The City of Tempe hosts this way-cool extravaganza, featuring a fresh fall of July snow, a parade starring Otto the Talking Police Car, interactive games, train rides, entertainment and more. It's slated for 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, July 27, centered on the intersection of Sixth...
thursday august 15 Continental Indoor Soccer League All-Star Game: Phoenix and its on-hiatus CISL franchise, the Arizona Sandsharks, are hosts of this year's bash, the second annual. Tatu, Sandshark Donny Gaillard, Dale Ervine and other league stars are scheduled to take the field at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, August 15, at...
slime wave Mighty Mud Mania XXI: The 1996 edition of this detergent-challenging festival is slated for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, July 19, at Chaparral Park, 5401 North Hayden in Scottsdale; registration precedes at 8. The main event is the "Original Mud Obstacle Course," in which children ages 7...
New Times staff members once again swept the highest honors handed out by the Arizona Press Club. Staff writer John Dougherty was named the 1995 Virg Hill Journalist of the Year for the third time in four years. Kathleen Ingley of the Arizona Republic/Phoenix Gazette was first runner-up; New Times...
at the fair Kid Stuff at Maricopa County Fair: On Monday, April 29; Tuesday, April 30; and Wednesday, May 1, kids can buy magic tickets to this year's fair, which starts Thursday, April 25, and continues through Sunday, May 5. Called "Pay-One-Price" passes and priced at $19.95, they're good for...
strings attached "Musical Marionettes": Clotilde Otranto conducts Phoenix Symphony in this meshing of orchestral works and puppetry, the final entry in the ensemble's Family Concert Series. Puppeteers Bob and Judy Brown put string beings through their paces in sequences titled "Clown Alley," "Petting Zoo," "Fright Night" and "Future Tense," which...
thursday august 1 The Grapes of Wrath: Frank Galati won a Tony Award for his adaptation of John Steinbeck's landmark novel about the Joad family's flight from the Dust Bowl's devastation to the broken promise of golden California, land of milk, honey and barbarism. The Phoenix-based Actors Group presents Galati's...
good character Ronald McDonald: The burger-chain spokesjester clowns around with his public on Thursday, July 11, at Ocotillo Branch Library, 102 West Southern (call 262-6694); on Monday, July 15, at Glendale City Council Chambers, 5850 West Glendale Avenue (930-3437); and on Tuesday, July 16, at Yucca Branch Library, 5648 North...
at the fair Kid Stuff at Maricopa County Fair: The fair continues through Sunday, May 5, and includes daily fun like midway rides and games, livestock and agriculture competitions and exhibitions, farm tours featuring a "maternity ward" of animal newborns, and vegetable-bowling and pickle-eating contests. For general information, see Pic...
The first band I ever went to see in the Valley was Dead Hot Workshop. I could relate to the name. It was last year, on a Friday night in mid-July. I had just moved here from Alaska and promptly discovered that hangovers are even worse when you are dehydrated...
thursday august 8 Jimmy Eat World: And the world--or, at least, our little corner of it--apparently likes the taste of Jimmy. "Flying off the shelves" may be an exaggeration regarding the status of the Valley alterna-pop band's major-label debut, Static Prevails (Capitol), but "moving briskly" seems fair; see the story...
thursday july 18 Kim Abeles: The work of this talented Californian gives new meaning to the term "environmental art." Best known for her "smog" series--which utilizes man's pollutants to comment on mankind's folly--Abeles is also adept at assemblage, drawing and welding, and her creations are generally knockouts whether they're bite-size...
thursday july 11 Nico-Icon: Director Susanne Ofteringer's documentary tells tales on the late, Berlin-born Nico (real name: Christa Paffgen), model, actress, Teutonic chanteuse, Andy Warhol cohort, short-lived Velvet Undergrounder and, in the bitter end, a star-crossed junkie who embodied the Velvets' tune "Black Angel's Death Song." The unrated film's run...
Say You Ain't Slow, Joe So you're part of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's public relations dream team and you want to make up for the inmates-burying-the-dead blunder. What do you do? Book the Crime Avenger and his new book, America's Toughest Sheriff, on a national television show where savvy guests trade...
thursday july 25 Smokin' Grooves Tour 1996: Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, comprising Rita and Bob Marley's kids Ziggy, Sharon, Cedella and Stephen, are first among equals on this fine bill, produced by Dan Aykroyd's House of Blues, the same entity responsible for the upcoming House of Blues Tour...
thursday july 4 Fabulous Phoenix Fourth featuring the Mavericks, and Junior Brown: Two healthy doses of fine, neotraditionalist country--Raul Malo's Florida-based Mavs and Texas' bodacious Brown--are on tap at this 11th annual blowout on the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol, 17th Avenue and Washington. Mandy Barnett shares the main...
thursday june 27 Lysistrata: Mike Fenlason's Mercury Theater, dedicated to producing classic works with a contemporary spin, takes a vaudevillian approach to one of the all-time classics, Aristophanes' wonderful antiwar comedy. Written more than two millenniums ago, and rarely matched for pure wit in the ensuing span, Lysistrata is about...
thursday march 28 An Inspector Calls: Critic Harvey S.Karsten described Royal National Theatre's touring production of J.B. Priestley's thriller as "Mad Max meets Masterpiece Theatre." The Tony Award winner, a noir-inspired mystery set in Edwardian England, centers on a snobbish British family and itsmembers' indirect complicity in the suicide of...
So I'm in Eastside Records a few days back looking for old Devo albums (don't ask why), and I spot this stack of small, black handbills someone has placed at the bottom of the racks amid a smattering of other fliers for rock shows and raves. The bills in question...
Best Alternative Rock Beat Angels They may look and play like it, but the Beat Angels aren't really under the illusion that it's still 1979. They just don't think rock 'n' roll has gotten any better since then. "The way we look at it, there's this certain spirit that was...
It's a balmy night in June 1995. Petty felon Thomas Glen Campbell slouches in the cab of a borrowed pickup truck north of Casa Grande. As he puffs on a cigarette, a helicopter drones low overhead. He gets spooked. He has no driver's license, there's a warrant out for his...
Her name was Holly Golightly--not the Audrey Hepburn character in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but the Hollywood hooker who lived at the same hotel as the Beat Angels last October, when the Phoenix fivesome was in L.A. to finish recording its debut album, Unhappy Hour. "The Sunset Palms is a cheesy,...
