EVEN IF THE Paradise Valley police had done their job, a jury may never have convicted pro football player Marcus Cotton of raping an ASU co-ed. As in almost all acquaintance" or date" rape cases, this one may have come down to a courtroom match between two people: The woman...
The most erotic image I have seen on the stages of Phoenix can be ogled at Playwright's Workshop Theatre on Seventh Street. The time is the present; the place is a federal prison. The setting is a spare, clean prison cell illuminated by a single industrial lamp that hangs over...
Flag Bashing Government funding for the arts is essential to the support of emerging artists; exhibitions and performances for the public; arts education; fostering creative expression as a chronicle of our times; and for this country to take its place as the most prosperous nation in the world, not only...
Christina the Lawyer expected there would be chilly nights. But not like this. It was, to put it bluntly, ridiculously cold. So now she is on the telephone, calling me from frigid Michigan, seeking a decent way out. Christina the Lawyer had enrolled in a class at the famous Ox-Bow...
When a hospital technician attached a gizmo onto Sam's penis to measure his responses to sexually explicit photographs, it is unlikely that he was terribly surprised. After all, 12-year-old Sam has undergone various types of "sex therapy" for half of his life. His mother molested him when he was 3...
As she described her third suicide attempt in ten days, Debbie Townsend didn't leave out many details. Struck with "an overwhelming desire to be dead," she pulled a sheet from her narrow bed. She hung it over the door leading to her bathroom and climbed on a desk chair she...
The movie The Silence of the Lambs pulled out all the stops to portray that film's serial killer as the sickest villain ever to grace the screen. The filmmakers inserted a close-up that drove home the point for even the most jaded moviegoer. Wincing, disbelieving audiences gasped in unison as...
The 18-year-old turned on his tape recorder and spoke from the heart. "There's more out there than the anger and violence you see," he said. "There's beauty, there's love, there's happiness and there's joy. You need to go out and find it. And you better hold onto it tight, man,...
Don't expect any clowns at the Jim Rose Circus. Ninjas with machetes, maybe, but no clowns. Trained poodles? Try maggots and scorpions. And, in lieu of a tightrope walker, look for the guy who balances a running lawn mower on his lip while dodging vegetables. Ringling Bros., this ain't. "We're...
You can't miss the funky, Thirties motor court next to Shep's Liquor on Main Street in downtown Cottonwood. Hallucinogenic folk art on its front porch makes your head swirl and throb, like a recurrent acid flashback. Someone has turned the first four units into an artist's studio, but often, there's...
Green Jello may be the absolute worst band ever to sign a recording deal. And that may be too generous. The lead singer can't sing. The band can't play. And what's worse, the Green Jello song list is an utterly inane collection of insipid, sophomoric, neonovelty songs based on the...
It is 1969, the year of Woodstock, a man on the moon, the miracle Mets and Chappaquiddick. Two middle-aged buddies turn on a tape recorder and discuss their favorite subject--women and how to snag them. The conversation is ostensibly an "interview" for a Los Angeles singles magazine. John Carpenter is...
To guitarist Dave Alvin, the Pleasure Barons mean a brush with a deadly, communicable disease. "During the first Pleasure Barons tour in 1989, I drank out of somebody else's beer bottle at an after party," Alvin says from Village Recorders, where he is working on his next solo recording. "Next...
There is nothing this newspaper would like more than to celebrate the downfall of Dave Pratt. Over the years, New Times has feuded gloriously with Pratt, the KUPD-FM morning man who has ruled local rock radio for what seems like forever. One Wednesday, when Pratt encouraged listeners to deposit stacks...
Joe Arpaio's Tent City, where the sheriff sends overflow from the Madison Street Jail, is the most colorful local encampment since the last Grateful Dead show. Sure, the prisoners get a littly chilly at night. And fine, June afternoons get a tad warm. But this is one county that will...
Jim Rose was born and raised in Phoenix. Now he hammers nails into his nose and eats light bulbs for a living. Simple coincidence? Cause and effect? Maybe a little of both. Rose is the ringleader, the boss, the master of scarimonies of the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, a group...
Something was terribly wrong with her son, and Marci Johnson didn't need a mother's intuition to know it. Although 10-year-old Michael is deaf, he had always been a lively, cheerful boy, fond of baseball and swimming. For the past few months, however, he had grown sullen and withdrawn, frequently collapsing...
Brian Flatgard is loose and goofy, wearing an earnest grin and a backward baseball cap over hair that free falls to his shoulders. He lifts a hand-bound book of poems as he steps to the microphone and lets fly: "Thanksgiving yum yum," he reads in an accent as flat as...
Brian Flatgard is loose and goofy, wearing an earnest grin and a backward baseball cap over hair that free falls to his shoulders. He lifts a hand-bound book of poems as he steps to the microphone and lets fly: "Thanksgiving yum yum," he reads in an accent as flat as...
Michael Swartz is one of those teens to whom parents of other kids point and bemoan, "Why can't you be like him?" Swartz, vice president of the student body at Barry Goldwater High School, was having what he calls "a really great" senior year. Until, that is, he became known...
Sandi Smith had everything a career woman could want, including, at least until very recently, a penis. Born as a male, Sandi hasn't been in a men's room in two years. Her physical appearance is that of an early-middle-aged businesswoman. Throughout her transformation, she has continued to financially support her...
The road dips into rocky washes, winds through forests of saguaros and climbs up a windswept hill to a toppled wooden cross that marks the entrance to Father George Bredemann's twenty-acre kingdom. Father George spent practically every weekend at his "Castle." Nestled a few miles south of U.S. 60-89, the...
