“Can I rub your tummy for luck?” asks the gorgeous dime-piece before me in the lounge of the James Hotel’s J Bar in Scottsdale, her smooth skin the color of Ghirardelli chocolate. As her hands are already caressing my abdominal protuberance, I figure it’s best to reply in the affirmative…
I’m fairly skeptical about the concept of some sort of cosmic justice, whether it be a benevolent graybeard on a throne up in heaven, or something less silly, like the notion of karma. After all, not enough bad things happen to the right people. If my idea of karma were…
No such thing as bad publicity? Tell that weak sauce to Jodi Upton, owner of the hip-hop club CBNC (short for Coyote Bay Night Club) at Scottsdale’s Papago Plaza, which has been hurtin’ ever since former Arizona State Sun Devils football player Brandon Falkner caught a fatal bullet in the…
Like most foodies, I’m fond of almost all ethnic cuisines, and I’m always heartened to hear of another attempting a toe-hold in greater Phoenix. Indeed, upon learning of one, my first instinct is to pull on my socks and head out the door quicker than Pope Benedict XVI can sputter…
If you’re fresh to P-town, and know the lay of the cit-tay about as well as Ashlee Simpson knows how to hold a musical note, then let Professor Kreme school your ignorant ass on the chillest spot in the PHX, the Zona’s world-renowned lounge paradise Chez Nous, at 675 West…
I may pique the interest of Michael Jackson fans by saying so, but who knew that the, uh, cojónes of young calves would make such a mouth-watering appetizer? Not me, as I must admit to never partaking of this well-known Western delicacy before stopping by the reopened and revitalized Stockyards…
Submitted for your consideration: the worst sushi I’ve had since I made the mistake of walking into a Todai many years back. Sushi that makes Trader Joe’s prepackaged California rolls seem like the food of the gods. Sushi so repulsive that it’d make Pope John Paul II sit up on…
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…
We need some new rules here on the Ponderosa, and the first one is that for every bad meal I have to endure, my belly deserves to be placated with a satisfying one. Truly, last week’s trek to Armadillo Grill was so hideous that I should be pampered like a…
It’s the witching hour at Sadisco, and the bisexual Brittany Murphy and I are watching a Victorian snuff-play done to throbbing industrial music that sounds like rusty steel grinding against broken glass. One by one, women dressed like Heather Graham’s whore buddies in From Hell are chased onto center stage…
Is it possible to predict a lousy dining experience as soon as you enter a chow house, without a peek at the bill of fare? You betcha. For instance, if the teenage hostess is on her cell phone calling her boyfriend, or the waitstaff’s forced to wear suspenders adorned with…
Harvard prez Larry Summers has been excoriated in the past few months by feminists, fellow academics, and the politically correct for suggesting that innate differences in guys and dolls might help explain why there aren’t more ladies present in the upper echelons of science and math. You know, the old…
Some chicks just hate to see a man enjoying himself. And Jett, the PHX’s bisexual Rachel Bilson, is one of those. The other day, I’m lounging in my New Times office, feet up, halfway through a box of peanut-butter Girl Scout cookies, crumbs all over my shirt, when the bizzatch…
A lot of what’s appealing about greater Phoenix falls into the classic can’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover category. I don’t mean the lusher parts of Scottsdale or the desert vistas out by Carefree. I mean just tooling about the city, parts of which, let’s be honest, can be less than enchanting. Ours is not…
“Jeez, Jett, try not to pull a Dale Earnhardt on our ass!” I croak as the PHX’s sultry, bi-lovin’ speed-demoness skids around a corner toward the alt-music nightspot Modified Arts near Seventh Street and Roosevelt. “Plus there’s po-po all around, and I’ve got an open bottle of Stoli in my…
Ah, the smell of chocolate and meat! Two great tastes that taste great together. Okay, maybe not. Still, this is what my olfactory nerves deal with each time I enter Chandler’s 4-week-old Shabu Fondue, a hip, nightclubby eatery that looks like it belongs catty-cornered from Stingray Sushi in Scottsdale. Instead,…
“No matter what happens here tonight, Kreme, we ain’t knockin’ boots,” declares my sometimes Sapphic, sometimes stick-happy sidekick, Jett, as we’re parking the Impala near Club Chameleon, the PHX’s premier palace of swing. “So don’t get any ideas!” “Hell, girl, you can keep ’em on,” I smirk as we head…
God, I could go for a pint of Stella Artois, or “wife-beater,” as it’s sometimes referred to in merry ol’ England. I’m in a black-and-white box of an eatery, surrounded by photos of Cornish tin miners, reading a biography of Hermann Goering. Halfway through my midday meal, it hits me…
Jason Rudolph Peña, 26, is the PHX’s kick-back Gustav Klimt. The soft-spoken iconoclast is known for his live paintings of ethereal women with large, dreamy eyes. Like Klimt’s women, Peña’s are idealized creatures, highly feminine and unobtainable. He’s exhibited at monOrchid, Thought Crime, Amsterdam, and House Studios, and has a…
It’s midnight at Sadisco’s monthly ball of glorious, gutter depravity, and the debauch is in full swing. Some industrial joint is screeching from the speakers, and the TVs are screening the grisly serial-killer pic Saw. There’s trash on the floor and bloodstains on the checkerboard pattern pasted all over Jugheads,…
Some bastards have all the bloody luck. Say, a year ago today, you signed a lease or bought a residence near 70th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale. Then you wake up one morning to discover that not only does the cul-de-sac there boast Sushi on Shea, but the Great…
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…
