I'm a 60-year-old Chicano and proud. Why do young Chicanos keep imitating blacks? They dress like blacks, talk like blacks, listen to black music, and hang with blacks. Aren't they proud of their own culture? Why don't they embrace Hispanic ways and learn about Hispanic history? Say It Loud! I'm...
On Tuesday afternoon, January 16, an old man walked into the administrative office of a small charter school on the high desert plains north of Prescott. He was skinny, with floppy jowls that made him look like the Bitter Beer Face man of the old Keystone ads. But other than...
See, chicks are hot even without their skin! So I got up really early this a.m. to hang out with a bunch of stiffs -- specifically the mannequin-like corpses of Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds 3, on exhibit at the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix through May 28. By now,...
Coming soon to a chick's loo near you... As Ray Davies sang so long ago, "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/ It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world..." And indeed, some in the Valley's pre-op community are determined to pee standing up at Anderson's Fifth...
From its wink-wink, nudge-nudge, movie-within-a-movie opening through to its boldfaced quoting of such classic Hollywood farces as The Lady Eve and His Girl Friday, Nancy Meyers' The Holiday wants us to know that it's different from the kind of rom-com pablum that fills the multiplexes these days. And it is...
As you read this, the National Security Agency has probably been monitoring your phone calls, while the Department of Homeland Security peruses your e-mail, and agents from the Central Intelligence Agency torture detainees in the War on Terror. A decade ago, long before 9/11, terrifyingly Orwellian-style occurrences such as these...
Talk about The Crying Game! For the past month, Scottsdale club owner Tom Anderson of Anderson's Fifth Estate and local "diversity activist" Michele De Lafreniere have been engaged in an epic donnybrook of penile proportions. Seems De Lafreniere has been kickin' up a shit storm after being tossed out of...
If Superman Returns attempted to resurrect the Man of Steel as mythic hero, the season's other Superman movie wants to disabuse us of any such childish illusions. Glamorously adult, Hollywoodland purports to part the veil on the circumstances by which George Reeves, the actor who embodied the superhero on '50s...
The lowest point in the relationship between federal immigration agents and Arizona state troopers was the changing of locks and the can of tuna fish. The incident began last year after Dan Kelly, a civilian investigator for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, learned that Phoenix resident Carmen Tolle had...
Feed (TLA) Remember the old jokes about "What's grosser than gross"? The makers of Feed do, as they prove in the first 10 minutes -- one-upping their opening scene featuring a voluntary victim of cannibalism by bringing in a guy who gets nekkid and shoves cheeseburgers down the throat of...
It's no secret that documentaries have finally gained some currency in the American media. With the help of Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and a very cold bunch of penguins, docs have increased their audiences by railing against injustices, exposing political and corporate malfeasance, and inviting us into hidden worlds. Naked...
Pros and Neo-Cons Shameless exploitation: I guess I wasn't surprised when neo-con author Ann Coulter was blasted for her views on the shameless exploitation of the 9/11 tragedy carried out by some of the relatives of those killed. Whenever you speak the un-PC truth in this country, the "thought police,"...
Great Knights of Columbus, this carping canary can barely believe the scuttlebutt whispered in its ear-hole by a well-placed source in the offices of the Maricopa County Attorney, somebody The Bird will hereafter call Deep Beak! According to Deep Beak, our tough-talkin' County Attorney Andy Thomas should be renamed Candy...
How often do you get to peep porno at a city attorney's office? This pervy pelican's referring to Mesa City Attorney Debbie Sphincter's (uh, Spinner's) office, where the top prosecutor keeps alleged lewd e-mails on file. See, Mesa coppers were sending these un-PC missives to each other until an internal...
If the Iliad were brand-new -- if it were one of this summer's beach-reading blockbusters -- it wouldn't be a swashbuckling saga of siege, slave girls, and slaughter. That stuff might be in there, sure, but just as adornments to the main bit, which would be Homer yakking about how...
If you plan to see The Libertine, an artful and brooding period piece about a scandalously debauched earl of the English Restoration, a few words of advice before you leave: Take a peek at the sun. Drink in some fresh air. Consider bidding goodbye to the majority of the color...
The warm glow of candlelight suffuses the Wrigley Mansion's grand living room, as George Gershwin's ghost tickles the ivories of an ancient Steinway, belting out the dulcet tones of "Rhapsody in Blue." Seems Gershwin was a guest of chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. back in the day, and recorded...
Something really cool came across my desk the other day. It was a package from a killer Detroit rock band called The Hard Lessons, who'll kick out the jams at Hollywood Alley in Mesa on March 24. According to their bio, the band members ditched their teaching jobs for the...
Gary Sedlacek is awakened by someone pounding on a side door to his home in downtown Phoenix's historic Coronado District. It's about 5:30 on a dark, drizzly morning, February 19, 2005. At the door is Shawn Drake, Sedlacek's 29-year-old neighbor from a few doors down on North Richland Street. Drake...
With a name like Prime, a movie had better be about something more than an older woman digging on a younger man, much to the disapproval of the younger man's mom. It ought to be about, oh, I dunno, math or something -- like Pi or Proof or even Primer,...
I used to think I was a big Howard Stern fan, but that was before I met Alice Rubio. For the past 10 years -- the entire time Stern has been on the Phoenix airwaves -- Rubio has tuned in to his show, every day, all morning, with rapt attention...
The two girls are all over each other on the big purple couch, writhing, eyes locked in a passionate lip-synch to No Doubt's "Underneath It All." A crowd's in the doorway, giggling as the girls lose their shirts and bottoms, and end up rolling around together in nothing but their...
