Girl’s Best Buddy

More than 40 years ago, Buddy Stubbs won the Daytona 100 and finished his motorcycle racing career. And he’s still got a way with the ladies. On Thursday, June 9, Stubbs and his Arizona Harley-Davidson dealership in north Phoenix host the Buddy Stubbs Ladies’ Night, yet another indicator of women…

Man Show

6/10-6/12Michaleen Kringle describes the “Big Boys & Their Toys” Arizona Men’s Expo, which she’s co-organizing with founder Gary Glava, as “family-friendly.” Right. We know better. As if any self-respecting man’s man could peel his eyes and attention away from more than 200 exhibitions of SUVs, luxury cars, speedboats, motorcycles, sports…

Eureka!

SAT 6/11 During opening day for the Mesa Miners, one of eight teams in the brand-spanking-new Golden Baseball League, 3,500 spectators turned prospectors waved makeshift pickaxes made out of foam fingers and aluminum cans to celebrate a historic win. It was mass hysteria! Pure bedlam! Okay, maybe the pickax thing…

Dope Flows

THU 6/9Now that the old school’s all grown up, and seminal rap group Sugar Hill Gang is doing festival tours with unlikely matches like Lisa Lisa and Stevie B., Scribble magazine must look to urban culture once again to find the next innovator in underground hip-hop. On Thursday, June 9,…

Amor Latin Feel

SAT 6/11Can you imagine a more popular four-hour television show than Univision’s Sábado Gigante? Now, picture a live version of the program that honors the best entertainers in Latino/Latina arts. Saturday, June 11, will be a good night to set the VCR, because the Seventh Annual International Las Palmas de…

This Week’s Day-by-day Picks

THU 9 We might finally see that “Dancing Queen” pop-up we never knew we always wanted when ABBA showcases its homemade books at . . . oh, wait, wrong ABBA. This ABBA acronym stands for “A Buncha Book Artists,” an Arizona State University student book-builder collective that creates original handmade…

Water World

Mercifully, the work in “Water, Water Everywhere” stays clear of the obvious themes you would expect to see in an exhibition in the desert about water. There isn’t a single piece in this group exhibition of artists from around the world that settles for the simple “water equals life” concept…

Kool Off With Kool Jazz

Local jazz favorite Jazzola plays on Friday nights. Saturday night features The Cueball Hamilton Duo. On balmy nights, you can enjoy the outside terrace or escape the heat inside the Bistro. Sample Kokopelli’s large selection of Arizona-grown wines – great with a “nosh” plate of cheese, nuts, fruit, chocolate, olives,…

Local Spa Guide

Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa 2400 East Missouri Avenue, 602-381-7632 www.arizonabiltmore.com/spa Centre for Well-Being at the Phoenician 6000 East Camelback Road, 480-423-2582 www.centreforwellbeing.com CopperWynd Resort & Club 13225 North Eagle Ridge Drive, Fountain Hills, 480-333-1900 www.slh.com Four Seasons Spa 10600 East Crescent Moon Drive, Scottsdale, 480-513-5145 www.fourseasons.com/scottsdale Golden Door Spa…

This Week’s Day-by-day Picks

THU 2 If you can get past Devil Doll’s (a.k.a. Cleveland-born Colleen Duffy’s) Sherilynn Fenn/”A Songstress Named Desire”/sell-your-soul-for-a-night-with-her good looks, you’ll have time to take a picture, too! But you’ll also hear a voice and a sound so smooth — smoother than Blue Velvet, in fact, the cinematic dreamscape one…

The Great Indoors

I’d like to meet the jerk-off who decided that founding a city in the middle of the desert was a good idea. I’ve been gunning for this guy (because it has to have been a man — no woman would be stupid enough to set up housekeeping inside a kiln)…

Cold Plunge

Short of submerging yourself in a vat of ice, home remedies for keeping body heat at bay are sparse. So let the experts soothe your scorched skin this summer. Swanky spa treatments, while a bit more pricey than a pound of crushed cubes, are the perfect solution for cooling every…

After Midnight

Talk about the heat of the night. The prevailing wisdom here in the Valley has long been that come 2 a.m., when bartenders turn off the taps and drop-kick drunks out the door, our banging burg transforms into a ghost town. It’s doubly so in summertime, as even the most…

Summer Clubbin’

When I migrated here from New York, I hadn’t counted on how near impossible it would be to put a band together and keep it focused during the hot summer months. Even the lamest justifications for missing rehearsals, from the persistent “Uhh, I spaced it, man” to the truly wretched…

Out of the (Ice) Box

One does not have to be relegated to an indoor air-conditioned environment to escape the sweltering summer heat. Here are some cold and dark out-of-the-box activities that will get you outdoors and away from that thermostat-controlled milieu. Ice Ice Blocking Need a method for turning the summer into a winter…

Long, Strange Trips

No matter how many summer vacations you plan or how well you plan them, a moment comes when you realize that you will never sword-fight with Lord of the Rings fans in Kazakhstan or reach that tiny island off the north coast of Australia where the school shuts down for…

Excess Hollywood

By our count, there are but two sequels waiting to have oil rubbed on their backs this summer — one featuring an evil lord named Vader, the other featuring an evil lord named Schneider — so the season has that going for it, which is nice. But in lieu of…

Sweet Relief

Sometimes, a drippy blue-raspberry Otter Pop just isn’t enough. Instead of inciting brain freeze from a pathetic Popsicle this summer, refine your palate. From simple shaved ice to gourmet gelato, there’s something to satisfy every type of sweet tooth and stave off the sweats. If you’re bored with Baskin-Robbins, and…

No Sweat

This summer will be my first in Phoenix, a simple statement that seems to come with a built-in drum roll. Say it to anyone in the Valley, and you’ll get a suitably dramatic response: The heat is like sticking your head in an oven. Or living in a blow-dryer. Or,…

Idol Cafe

Last Wednesday night, while the rest of America was watching Bo and Carrie duke it out in the final hour of American Idol, I was watching a room full of singers on a different stage. And thinking that maybe I’ve been watching too much television lately, because Phoenix Theatre’s production…

Broke, But Not Broken

There was no reason to expect much from Cinderella Man, Ron Howard’s biography of boxer James Braddock, who in the summer of 1935 became the most unlikely heavyweight champion in the history of boxing. After all, it’s a true tale whose outcome has been predetermined; surely there could be no…

One for the Girls

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a flawed movie born of a flawed novel, but let this be clear: Girls will eat it up with a spoon. It features three young stars, indulges in rampant romantic fantasy, drips with teary-eyed sentimentality, and pays a heapload of lip service to…