Minority Report

In a town where the four men’s professional sports franchises get mad love, the so-called “lower-tier” teams get the shaft, even when they’re hoisting championship banners. Just look at the Phoenix Mercury. Though the Phoenix RoadRunners of the ECHL have yet to add a playoff appearance to their résumé, the…

Original Zen

True, the Shaolin Temple-inspired Wu-Tang Clan “ain’t nothing to fuck wit’,” but GZA, the RZA, Raekwon the Chef, and the rest don’t have nothing on the Shaolin Warriors. These cats from China’s Buddhist Monastery represent with flowing martial arts moves fused with ancient Far Eastern spirituality. Sat., Oct. 20, 7…

Southwestern Comfort

One thing that doesn’t make sense to us is why bands choose to perform in our nuclear town during the summer. So we bow before the folks running the SoCo (Southern Comfort) Music Experience, who must know what’s up (or maybe they’re just hopped up on the fine whiskey brew),…

Rock Rocks

In a culture where kiddy games like kickball and dodgeball have infiltrated the adult leisure sect — what would Jung say about the parallel between low IQs and our collective unconscious, hmm? — we’re surprised that the Rock Paper Scissors Tournament is just now making its debut into our conscious…

Hmm, What Rhymes With Pervert?

Knowing the pervs who read Night & Day, we betcha you’ll keep reading when we tell you that we’ve found something that serves up “mental foreplay and verbal intercourse.” If you’ve made it this far, told you so. Now, we should tell you about this unique spot, huh? Well, it’s…

Let’s Do Launch

Watch the Valley’s best oarsmen and women row row row their boats at a prime marina spot during the Hot Head Regatta. The men’s, women’s, and mixed rowing event of the year features competitors treading water on a three-mile course at Town Lake. Sat., Oct. 20, 7 a.m.-noon, 2007…

Changing of the Cards

There’s beauty and goodness in the world when the Arizona Cardinals can find a franchise that’s in roughly the same leaky boat. Though the Carolina Panthers (three playoff appearances in the team’s 12-year history) aren’t the model of futility like the Cards, they’re definitely a squad whose immediate future ain’t…

Planet Peelander

Besides three insane “Japanese action comic punk” rockers riffing in a straight-ahead, garage band style, what else can one expect from NYC-based Peelander-Z? Well, during last year’s dual shows at Modified Arts and Trunk Space, they tore up both joints with Jackass-style maneuvers, like human bowling, which actually looked like…

Hipster Heaven

In the few short months that the Ruby Room has been open, it’s hosted killer DJs (Djentrification, Pablo Luna), bands (Colorstore, Power of Positive Thinking), and nightly lounge shindigs with beer and spirits. So, we thought, is there anything it hasn’t done? Uh, not now, especially when the hipster automotive…

Hump Day

Vats of mini-chimis. Free domestic canned brews. Chicks wrestling in pudding, to the delight of hygienically challenged individuals. Sounds like an Apache Junction special recipe, or the perfect concoction for yet another Doggy Style party. Though it may be tough to trump last spring’s shindig, we’re confident that Doggy Style…

The Hunt for Redman October

There’ve been quite a few rappers from the early-´90s heyday that have plunged into hip-hop’s purgatory, and for various reasons. Keith Murray was banished from the Def Jam label after choking an employee. Chicago ganja-rap ensemble Crucial Conflict never sobered up from their marijuana anthem, “Hay.” And, one of our…

Mystery, Arizona

We’ll start out this Phoenix Coyotes piece with some promises. First, we won’t slam last year’s playoff-missing squad for its lack of fire. Next, we won’t declare that the gambling addictions — er, alleged addictions — of Rick Tocchet and Wayne Gretzky’s wifey, Janet Jones, were a contributing factor to…

Drunken Chaos

During last year’s “Chaos Theory 7” exhibit, we observed two things: Man, that was some stinkin’ good art, and, man, those were some stinkin’ drunk fools. This year’s “Chaos Theory 8” arts blowout on Friday, October 5, at Legend City, 521 West Van Buren Street, will feature kickass work by…

Russ to Judgment

Texas-based artist Russ Havard is a “landscape painter,” a tired label that normally induces pretentious sneers, but his style is truly the cat’s pajamas, because dude captures depressed and rustic scenes using watercolor and gouache on ill-shaped wood panels. From 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, October 4, the work of…

Rio Grand

Thanks to the City of Phoenix peeps, the five-mile stretch of the Salt River southwest of downtown ain’t an effing dump no more. On Saturday, October 6, take a 3.5-mile cycling jaunt along the dolled-up Rio Salado Habitat Project riparian area during the Tour de Rio Bike Ride. The ride…

A Street Fair Named Desire

The supersweet yet sometimes unpredictable textile-and-homemade-artist-goods scene is going through some changes one mo’ gin. The Collectively Operated Local Artists Boutique (C.O.L.A.B.) is closing up shop at the anti.space building and setting up a bigger and better space at 901 North Fifth Street under the Conspire moniker, marking the group’s…

Foot Ox

There’s a reason the acoustic, singer-songwriter band Foot Ox has been dubbed “broken folk.” Actually, there are more than a dozen instrumental reasons, as project frontman Teague Cullen not only wields a finely tuned guitar and a distinguishable set of vocal chords, but successfully gigs on far-ranging instruments such as…

Haunted Cologne/ Archbishop Jason Polland

About the only thing that Frances Lopez, a.k.a. Miss Franberry, a.k.a. founder of Fizzle Promotions, a.k.a. one of downtown’s hottest young promoters/musicians hadn’t accomplished was starting her own record label to showcase all the local bands she books at venues like Modified Arts and Trunk Space. With the August 2007…

The Traitor Bowl

There are a couple of intriguing plot lines for the Arizona Cardinals going into their home clash with the Pittsburgh Steelers. For the length of one U.S. presidential term, Cards’ head coach Ken Whisenhunt drew Xs and Os in the Steel City as offensive coordinator. Russ Grimm, the Cards’ assistant…

Hood Ride

Wanna see folks rolling in phat 6-4s, tricked-out sub-compacts, and bangin’ modified wheels? Then peep the inaugural Latin Festival Lowrider & Euro Car Show. Music by Brown Boy and the appropriately named Chingo Bling rounds out the slammin’ shindig. Sun., Sept. 30, noon, 2007…

´Scuse Me While I Piss the Skyy

We won’t pretend to claim that ASU is the Harvard of the West. On the contrary, we wouldn’t be surprised if pulse-taking docs reside inside the school’s cavernous admission quarters. You fog the mirror, you’re in. Thus the need to dedicate additional wordage for the Mill Avenue Fall Crawl. Though…

Bloody Ear Candy

Not since, well, ever, has a band like San Diego-based quintet Upsilon Acrux seamlessly married the spontaneity and energy of freeform jazz with the abstract and angular rhythms of progressive rock. Often described as “brutal prog,” the group jams in a style that is both spontaneous and tightly composed. (Think…