It’s a fine Tuesday night in the Zona, and Saddam Hussein’s chrome-dome, um, brother-in-law Sheik Samir Hussein is getting his ass beat down by a big-assed Catholic priest in a dog collar known as Father Punishment. The shirtless Sheik had come into the rasslin’ ring at The Sets in Tempe,…
I’m no urban planner, and Lord knows I have no inclination to be one. But whenever I hear my fellow diehard metropolitans talking up the Holy Grail of downtown dwelling — something that seems to happen like clockwork every First Friday — I inevitably shake my head in disbelief. I’ll…
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout: The Zona finally starts jackin’ its game up to the minimum of what’s expected from 21st-century party people by extending the drink curfew until 2 a.m. It’s like the end of friggin’ Prohibition, yo! Granted, it’s not like Gotham where you can slam back…
I’ve always wanted to summer in Baghdad, and now at last I can. No, silly, I’m not joining the Army National Guard. I may be the size of John Candy, but this is no rerun of Stripes on basic cable. Rather, my imaginary journey to the banks of the Tigris…
Nineteenth-century journalist, poet and author Charles Pierre Monselet once stated that “a true gastronome should always be ready to eat, just as a soldier should always be ready to fight.” How right you were, Chuckles, but of course, it doesn’t hurt if the cuisine in question happens to be the…
From the street, Tempe’s Palo Verde Lounge looks like the sort of janky, pale brick building that might house a meth lab, a massage parlor, or a drop spot where the mob boys stash shipments of disco doughnuts. The only outward signs of drink-slingin’ taking place are a neon Bud…
One dilemma I face as a restaurant reviewer is how long of a grace period I should allow an infant establishment before writing about its fare. Some of my pals in the eatin’ biz assert that a newbie grub shack should be ready from jump, while others say that the…
Having spent my formative years in the Land Time Forgot (i.e., the South), soul food is as dear to me as pasta is to the Italians. How fortuitous, then, is my current place of employment, which so happens to be smack dab in the soul food section of town. Right…
Before I dive into this week’s review, I should take a moment to reply to some of the correspondence I receive on a regular basis. To the female admirers who deluge me nonstop with perfumed hankies and declarations of undying love, please see my secretary for an application to my…
Looking like a cross between Jet Li and the Hives’ Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, pimped out like his bandmates in a regal purple tux and a Green Hornet-style black mask, and twisting and shaking as if Benny Hinn had just laid hands on him and filled him with the Spirit, Russell…
A colleague of mine left me a copy of a certain publication the other day with the attached note, “Well, I guess someone feels threatened.” The someone in this case was a fellow food scribbler whose surname rhymes with “Puke-cannon.” I’d never bothered to pick up the rag in question,…
So the L-word Mila Kunis and I are kicking it with drinks and smokes in that intimate Seventh Street cabaret Wink’s, enjoying drag diva Barbra Seville’s Early Show-Girlie Show on a recent Sunday eve, when Seville returns to the stage from one of her many costume changes for a little…
Burgs like Snottsdale and Parasite Valley may get all the kudos when it comes to living arrangements, but were I run out of central Phoenix on a rail and forced to choose, I’d take that toddlin’ town of Chandler over either one of those two swells-zones. Here, as in all…
If it seems like the Jettster and I have been playing Mister and Mizz Humptyvision of late, going out a lot in the middle of the week, blame Yahweh, yo. This monsoon season’s playing havoc with our sched. And for whatever reason, for the past week or so, Wednesday’s been…
Descending from Pinnacle Peak the other day, after a repast at Sassi, the new, resort-like restaurant fashioned to resemble an Italian villa, the initial stanza of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan rang in my noggin. You know the lines, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/a stately pleasure dome decree . . . “…
A plush, blue-lit chapel of sin, with a black square bar for an altar: That’s Scottsdale’s Next on the inside. Slanted wood beams give the illusion of a church’s peaked ceiling. Arty pics of nude chicks line the walls, and equally hot waitresses keep the booze flowing like the Colorado…
Those of you old enough to have lived through any part of the Cold War — or to have suffered through a political conversation with a devout Libertarian — will be familiar with the oft-repeated mantra that capitalism is the most efficient system on earth, unlike communism, which is grossly…
I’m perched on a stool at The Merc Bar, a bucket of vodka-Red Bull before me, with the superstylin’ sounds of Britain’s Groove Armada pulsing through the stereo, and — if I get any more relaxed — Mary-Kate Olsen’s bony butt could knock me over by bumping into me. Jett’s…
I was in Tempe last week, sitting in a cafe and flipping through my recent purchase from a nearby bookshop of a rare copy of Valentine Penrose’s The Bloody Countess: The Atrocities of Erzsebet Bathory, when a bizarre desire took hold of me. Those of you familiar with this 16th-century…
So I was over at Mikey’s the other day, doing bong hits and watching episode after episode of Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which makes a lot more sense once the sinsemilla turns the reasoning center of your brain to oatmeal. Mikey had Tivo’d a mess of them, and…
I’m all alone in the ‘Zona this Saturday night. Jett’s jetted off to NYC for a little vay-cay, leaving me by my lonesome in P-town. (Sigh.) Never thought I’d admit to missing 116 pounds of bitchy lipsticker, but I reckon I do. Thought I’d stay home, sip Hennessy, and play…
One of the joys of writing a weekly column for New Times is that I’m pretty much given carte blanche to cut through the ca-ca that other news outlets lay on with a trowel. Take, for example, the current coverage of former president Ronald Reagan’s demise: the tearful remembrances, the…
