Screw Willy Wonka. Colin Redding is our very own chocolate wizard, a man with his own candy factory who's willing to make a 40-foot dildo out of chocolate (although he'd rather not). He's even pulling a Wonka by sneaking golden tickets into chocolate bars sold at Changing Hands Bookstore (ticket...
Less than an hour into our survey of the sprawling Scottsdale party palace Barcelona, and already Jett's bent over with a black gent's teeth in her pretty posterior. And sadly, that black gent ain't me. It's tamer than it sounds. The ambisexual Giselle of the PHX still has her jeans...
The Aristocrats may be the most foul-mouthed movie of the summer, but Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo is the foulest in deed, actually depicting some of the nigh-unspeakable acts that are merely hypothetically talked about in the former film. It's been a while since we've seen a big-time gross-out comedy, and...
Girl-on-Girl Reaction Curious no longer: Your thesis on bi-curious women is something I've always observed, but I've never seen anything written about it before in the press ("The Vagina Dialogues," Sarah Fenske, September 15). The fact is, women are almost always more attracted to other women's bodies than to men's...
Fundamentalist Mormon polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border are steeling themselves against law enforcement agencies coming at them from several fronts. Formidable eight-foot walls -- built from blocks, wood and steel, and occasionally mounted with surveillance cameras -- are under construction around the homes of many of the followers of Warren...
If Vince Vaughn puts any effort into what he's doing, it doesn't show, which is perhaps one of the benefits of always appearing to be hung over. The man probably has to check the bags under his eyes at the airport, and he's about as in shape as a toddler's...
Anita Watson was overwhelmed July 19, after a nine-person jury awarded her and her family $28 million, at the conclusion of a civil trial in downtown Phoenix. But it wasn't like she was thinking about how to spend her share of the money. "I kept thinking about my mom and...
You would have thought cops were raiding the stronghold of Pablo Escobar. Early on a warm August morning, 38 Phoenix cops, many in black fatigues with automatic weapons, stormed the home of Daniel Watkins, looking for drugs. Instead, after three hours of dissecting the house in northeast Phoenix, all they...
I love hate mail. Next to the envelope that arrives at my home each week filled with what screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz once called "the most restful shade of green," getting hate mail is the best part of my job. I'm nuts for letters written by angry actors whose work I've...
It ain't easy being the Jay-Z and Beyoncé of the nightlife scene here in the PHX. For real, goin' out every week, gettin' our drink on, and sliding up on some of the finest squirrels you've ever seen may look like a sweet deal, but once in a while, the...
Tommy Lee's first tattoo was of Mighty Mouse, a small, gaudy rendering of the pocket-size superhero bursting through a bass drum with sticks in his hands. Back in his early 20s, Lee identified with the cartoon underdog because he was one himself: With scrawny ostrich legs set against a pile...
For my chedda, the most creative cats and kittens in P-town's clubland belong to this city's Goth-trance underworld. The playas and playettes of the hip-hop scene may dress fly, and the Scottsdale party people may look like they stepped out of a catalogue for Abercrombie and Bee-ahtch, but they don't...
There are punk rock bands, and then there are PUNK ROCK bands. Out of New York City comes Endangered Feces. Now, I gotta admit, I've known their singer, Jay Levitz, for quite some time. In fact, when I first met him, he was the roadie for one of my favorite...
About one week out of major abdomen surgery, it starts. Not the pain, or my clock-watching hours of when I could take my next pain pill. No, that would have been easy. A week after they gutted me like a pig, Nick, my visiting 74-year-old stepdad, starts in with the...
What's up with all the freakin' rain in this town? Sure, I'll be singin' another tune come August, but I didn't move to the middle of the desert to live in Seattle south. Now I know why everyone in the Pacific Northwest does heroin. Damn, if I have to spend...
"Dude," says the kid with both his ears pierced, "it's so obvious you are gay. Why not just come out and say it, you fag? I won't judge you!" I look at this guy who has turned up at Phoenix's notorious rip-off of the New York City Motherfucker Party, and...
The most shocking thing about Kinsey, the first film from writer-director Bill Condon since 1998's Gods and Monsters, is how shocking it actually is. Within the confines of a standard biopic (A Beautiful Dirty Mind, you might call it), Condon refuses to play it straight -- which is only appropriate,...
Dear Marshall, It's me, Brendan. I thought since Stan hasn't been around for a few years now, you might appreciate hearing some feedback from a fan about your new album, Encore. Don't worry, I'm not really pissed off that you haven't answered any of my previous correspondence. I just figure...
Imagine it's a weekday morning, and you're at a trade conference in Finland. You're sleepy, maybe a little jet-lagged, as you prepare for the next speaker. He's a representative from the World Trade Organization, and he has come to talk to you about "The Future of Textiles." First, he presents...
Lenny Aviles and his girlfriend Lulu Saldana slipped away from his mother's west Phoenix home on the early evening of June 23, 1999. The longtime couple wanted to shop at Sam's Club before Lulu went home to Rio Grande, Texas, the next day. Lenny stepped outside to tell his mother,...
Chauvinism is funny. Misogyny is a laugh riot. And Robert Dubac, author and star of The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?, is pretty darn amusing, too. The show, which ran for months in Chicago, Cleveland and Boston, and has occupied the Herberger Stage West for most of the summer, recounts the...
The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits. What's not to love about a list of characters that includes "Sylvia Stickles," "Marge the Neuter," "Fat Fuck Frank," "Cow Patty" and "Tire Lick Boy"? The soundtrack, too, bears comic fruit, with...
