On a crowded bus in Buenos Aires, a gaggle of teenage girls huddle in the back, giggling and gossiping as teenage girls everywhere do. Their exuberant youth was too much for a cynic in his early 20s, who stood clutching a pole in the aisle. He couldn't resist baiting the...
When Tucson musician Rainer Ptacek died at the age of 46 on November 12, 1997, he left behind more than a wife and kids and an international community of grieving friends and fans. Rainer -- stricken by an abrupt seizure one February morning in 1996 while riding his bicycle to...
Summer comes with the cultural expectation that the farther you travel, the better the art gets. Mexico City, New York, Europe and Asia prove that equation. But cultural tourism in Phoenix's west side remains a mystifying exception.That's partly why "Three Generations of Great Masters of Mexican Painting," at ASU West,...
The early evening has left the McDonald's lobby somewhat vacant. A few patrons are finishing their meals while others are working on a post-meal ice cream cone. A customer comes into the restaurant and approaches Admir Lejlic, the first assistant manager. The customer is complaining about the lack of attention...
Gumbo loves slamming pud jazz wanna-bes and goo-heavy R&B warblers. But my insensitive editor stubbornly refuses to allot me an extra page for diatribes on, say, how stupid it is to categorize Sade as jazz. Gumbo has, however, been granted an additional 17 syllables, used below to convey a haiku...
In the wee hours of June 17, 1972, G. Gordon Liddy slipped into his bedroom and undressed quietly in the dark, hoping not to wake his wife, Frances. "Is that you?" Frances asked, as Liddy would recall years later in his autobiography, Will. "Yes." ". . . Anything wrong?" "There...
Cheri Jarvis raced to the emergency room, afraid. "When I arrived at the hospital, I did not even recognize my son. He was covered in blood and his head was swollen and his nose was everywhere on his face. He had so much blood caked on his teeth and mouth...
Cyber Nemeses Sheriff Joke Arpaio has a new arch enemy -- a Web site, www.arpaio.com. Its raison d'etre? Ridicule of the Crime Avenger. A home page introduction informs surfers: "This site is dedicated to the men and women of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office whom [sic] have been victimized by...
On game day, Randy Johnson's face has more sharp angles than a Picasso painting. He's built like the Fahrvergnugen man, sticklike arms and legs attached to a big triangle of a chest. He walks to the mound with a bouncing, stiff-legged, redneck gait. He puts his glove to his face,...
A rusty sign reading "Cactus Garage" marks the only remnant of what was once Cactus, Arizona. Make that one of two remnants. Eighty-year-old desert rat Larry Jany is the oldest resident of Cactus, which sprang up as a stagecoach stop between Cave Creek and Phoenix. When Jany moved here 50...
"You know, the negative stuff we're not really talking about," says an MCA Records PR flack prior to connecting me with Tommy Lee. "We are primarily focusing on Methods of Mayhem; the shows, the new record, Tommy and what he's worked for this record and what he's been through as...
More than halfway through what he hoped would be a long career in the military, an Arizona Air National Guard member we'll call Joe is struggling to decide whether to take a mandatory shot he believes could endanger his health. The Pentagon says Joe and the other 2.4 million members...
Book Notes: A new restaurant guidebook should be hitting the stores any time now: 100 Best Restaurants in Arizona, 2000-2001, by Harry and Trudy Plate (Kelton Publishing, $9.95). The guide has appeared biennially since 1977. The current edition should make a decent stocking stuffer, if you're interested in an undemanding...
So you say that you're born to run, blinded by the light and more than just a little bit on fire to read more about The Boss? That until you make that human touch with other fans there'll be a darkness on your edge of town? Here, then, are 10...
The young man at the end of the pew is a professional car thief. Law enforcement also recognizes him as a cocaine user and a drug peddler. Yet here he sits in church, a child of God as much as you or your neighbor. He accepted Jesus while locked up...
Attention, online shoppers! Welcome to eBay, your one-stop shopping headquarters for everything you never knew you needed. An international flea market to some, a global Dumpster to others, this behavioral-research head-scratcher has produced some of the wackiest human-interest stories of the year. In recent months, Internet shopaholics have vicariously thrilled...
YOUR DEATH IS WHAT THE LAW CALLS SECOND-DEGREE MURDER AND IT IS AN INJUSTICE. CHILDREN INITIATED INTO GANGS ARE PRE-MEDITATING MURDER, BY CARRYING GUNS WITH INTENT TO FIRE THEM AT GROUPS OF PEOPLE. HOW CAN WE CONTINUE TO CONDONE THIS PROBLEM OF OUR TIMES? THE GANGS, THEY ARE A MALADY...
Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord. And do not touch what is unclean. --2 Corinthians 6:17 I am alone on a stage in the back of a vast, lavish ballroom, overlooking a panorama of modern Christian soldiers, seated in groups of 10 around white-clothed...
The most frequently repeated joke about the '60s was that if you could remember it, you weren't there. Along those lines, the morning after the overwhelming spectacle that was the New Times Music Awards Showcase, the hazy cloud of amnesia that fills my head might be my only solid proof...
For more than two years, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office withheld a videotape that contains key evidence in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by a paraplegic, Richard Post, whose single night strapped to a restraint chair in Madison Street Jail in 1996 caused him permanent neck damage. When the sheriff's office...
The Arizona Board of Medical Examiners (BOMEX) plans to ask legislators for more power and more secrecy, despite harsh criticism at a joint legislative hearing last week. BOMEX's proposed legislation would enable the director, at the board's discretion, to dismiss complaints, resolve cases in mediation and deny licenses. BOMEX also...
There are rocks. Then, in jewelry lingo, there are rocks--those glittering gems of high fashion and net worth. Yet the rock that jewelry maker Clare Yares has just picked out of a crate at Rockazona, an annual swap meet of rock hounds and geezers in the desert west of Phoenix,...
