The most obnoxious man alive suddenly, for a rare moment, is calm and contemplative. "I don't know," says Howard Stern, his familiar voice unfamiliarly soft. "I don't know why." Those are words Howard Stern doesn't say very often. He, after all, knows everything, and he'll remind you of that on...
So you gotta ask yourself--here are two bands, both clones of the Boogie Knights, who are managed by the BK's firm, Perfect World, and use the same keyboard samples, play the same song selections (what's the fascination with "Copacabana" anyway?) and buy their wigs from the same thrift shops. So...
There's nothing worse than bad Shakespeare. A successful mounting of any of the Bard's plays requires confident acting and a director and cast with a detailed knowledge of the material. Nevertheless, a pair of local stages have been overtaken by comedies of error that provide abundant laughs--both intentional and otherwise--at...
I would never argue that macrame is the most exciting of art forms. Or that buckets of bleached seashells are something to get excited about. Or that slabs of driftwood should take your breath away. That is, I would never have argued in favor of twine, shells and wood until...
On the outside, Craig Browning seems like a normal person, perhaps much like you or me. He has many friends, plays bass in a punk-rock band called Slugger, holds down a steady job in construction and has a good, firm handshake. But Craig Browning is different from you and me...
Two band names have crumpled the brows of daily newspaper editors more than any others this decade. One is the Butthole Surfers. The other, Cherry Poppin' Daddies. In the first case, the cause of consternation is clear: No way can the word "butthole" appear in a mainstream newspaper, let alone...
Breakfast, Fred Green style: "Take a whole bag--stem, buds, seeds, everything--and cook it with a block of butter until it all burns down. Then you put the butter in the freezer and later, when you spread the butter on a piece of toast, you don't waste any of the goods."...
Ask anyone who knows me; I am a romantic. When I awake with the rising of the sun and venture out to pick up the newspaper from its resting place on the front lawn--wherever my careless paper boy has tossed it with his usual wanton indifference--I will instinctively take time...
It's the final night for the Equinox, an underground punk club crammed into a central Phoenix office space, and Xs mark the spot. About 120 punkers have gathered to pay their last respects to the venue, listening as the local Christian hard-core band Overcome grinds away in a back corner...
If you love to be enraged by art like Phoenix Art Museum's recent exhibit about the American flag or the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, you really should head over to Mercury Theater in Mesa to catch the granddaddy of all in-your-face concupiscence, Aristophanes' ribald comedy Lysistrata. In this play, the...
Lombardi's Restaurant at Arizona Center is deserted at 3:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, but David chooses a table off to the side, just to be safe. And while he doesn't normally drink at lunch, he's already fortified himself with a Royal and Seven. He glances around, picks up a blue...
'The sign posted on the door of Tempe Arts Center warns that the center's current ceramics exhibit, "Master's Touch: Akio Takamori," contains images of adult themes. What it doesn't tell you, however, is that the work within is a poetic paean to the myth and magic that have always surrounded...
In 1968, Johnny Cash's Live At San Quentin cut "A Boy Named Sue" became the first song in Top 40 history to have a cuss word (bitch) bleeped out on the air. Fair enough--while bad words go over big with shackled audiences, no one expected the Man in Black to...
It was May 21, and the Valley was in mourning. The Phoenix Suns had just been eliminated from the NBA playoffs by the Houston Rockets after a roller-coaster, seven-game series. To many, the loss was especially bitter, because they feared it would be superstar Charles Barkley's final game in uniform...
Nothing like it has ever occurred in Arizona. Last Thursday, Judge Stanley Goodfarb stood in a courtroom, stripped of the familiar comfort he usually takes from his black robes. Ushered before the Arizona Supreme Court in the civilian clothes of the accused, Goodfarb stood charged with making racist comments and...
Michael Diamond runs the Beastie Boys' empire, a very small empire: a label, distributed through Capitol Records, with Luscious Jackson and DJ Hurricane and, of course, the Beasties; X-Large, a clothing store in New York specializing in very ugly clothes that the b-boys pay phat dollars for; and a 30,000-circulation...
Tried earlier this year for pruning her spouse's privates with a carving knife, Lorena Bobbitt was found not guilty by reason of insanity. But thanks to a just-released porno docudrama inspired by the case, it's husband John Wayne Bobbitt who's not exactly playing with, ahem, a full dick. "Now, for...
TELLURIDE--John Simon, the New York magazine critic known for his spiteful reviews, is in top form. He has just finished an interview in which he said that the only thing that's bearable for him on television these days are the O.J. Simpson hearings. "That's because I can't wait to see...
He goes by the name of Mr. Manson. He's the lead singer of Marilyn Manson, a Florida-based shock-rock act. Mr. Manson has tattoos, piercings, a startling pair of eyes and discolored, misshapen teeth. His songs are rhythmic rants against anything even approaching societal norms. He'll sometimes perform those songs wearing...
The Rule Dave Alt faced the prisoner at Madison Street Jail. "You made a mistake, dude, a big, big mistake," Alt told Jimmy Lee Luman in the fall of 1993. "You won't beat her. Not in your dreams. You might beat the system. But she's gonna haunt you until the...
This New York theatre season will be remembered as the year of the penises. The age of the gay play has arrived with a vengeance, and with an unprecedented display of genitalia. With five gay plays currently playing on New York stages, it is clear that repressing one's behavior is...
In January 1993, James Elmer McPheeters was sentenced to six lifetimes in prison for sexual exploitation of a minor. McPheeters owned a collection of 30 dirty magazines, two videos and a deck of obscene playing cards, all depicting children in a sexual context, and each of those items earned him...
