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,...
Craig Willbanks wants you to know that John McCain--former prisoner of war, current senator, White House aspirant--is a traitor, a liar and a wimp. Willbanks and McCain have never met. The senator probably has never heard of this hunched-over, soft-spoken fellow who served two tours of duty in Vietnam as...
It's early morning at the "Jungle in the Desert," the Combat Railfans' annual New Year's bash, which unfolds along the track southwest of Phoenix. Bacardi Carty, a founder of the fanatical Phoenix-based group, opens a beer for breakfast, the start of a routine day in camp for a Combat Railfan...
Giving Moods While Arizonans debate the idea of getting big money out of state political campaigns, four Arizonans have been giving big money to federal campaigns. The quartet made the new list of political fat cats put out by Mother Jones magazine--the MoJo 400. Altogether, the foursome accounted for $172,109...
Last week, state treasurer Tony West got caught in the Web when the dailies reported he was pimping his corporation commission campaign on his state-sponsored treasurer's office Internet site. The offending statement--"Treasurer West is running for election to the Corporation Commission this year. Click here to visit his campaign web...
Something about Seinfeld unifies people. Just about everybody you meet can carry on a conversation about a favorite episode or two. Sending out your own holiday greetings may remind you of Elaine's X-rated Christmas cards; losing your car in a parking garage may bring to mind that episode. The weirdness...
Shift change, San Ramon Industrial Park. Nogales, Sonora. Tuesday, 4:59 p.m. She wants out, the short, pretty girl in the short, pretty sundress. Out of this factory, out of this city, out of this grind her life has become. Right now, though, just out of this factory will do. Forty...
Jade Palace, 9160 East Shea, Scottsdale, 391-0607. Hours: Lunch and Dinner, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Ethnic-food fans generally fall into two broad categories. There are the squeamish folks for whom a little authenticity goes a long way. On those rare occasions when they seek an...
The old man who sold paintings of cats in Balboa Park entered San Diego's Mercy Hospital on March 9, 1993. He was dying of congestive heart failure, the result of a heart attack that he'd suffered weeks earlier. Although he was only 61, his years in the park had prematurely...
