Green Fairy Tales There is life here: I moved to Phoenix from California — the Bay Area — and I had all the usual regrets about moving from the big city to the not-so-big city. You know, Phoenix at first blush just seems like a ghost town, despite the fact…
Spring is coming, and buds now speckle the granite gray woods of southeastern Pennsylvania with forest green. The sun is shining, the melting snow is glaring. It’s all so bright that Ray Krone needs sunglasses. He’d like some Oakleys. Something functional but stylish to go with the new hair and…
Here’s the lowdown on one of the latest scams to put local taxpayer money into the pockets of billion-dollar corporations. This is a tale that starts 33 years ago in a small town in Missouri and will hopefully end on May 17 when Mesa voters cast their ballots in the…
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…
Critical Mass The power of negative thinking: I just wanted to say that Robrt L. Pela’s column on bad Shakespeare (“Much Ado About Nothing,” April 7) was the funniest thing I’ve read in ages. I couldn’t agree more, and I know that he will catch flak from the local theater…
In February 1997, self-styled businessman Emmanuel Agyeman boarded a bus in Carson City, Nevada. His destination was the central Arizona town of Eloy, which sits between Phoenix and Tucson. It was Agyeman’s first visit to the Grand Canyon State, but it was hardly a vacation. Earlier, immigration authorities had picked…
Now let me get this straight. It’s okay for a pharmacist to refuse to fill a medical doctor’s prescription for a morning-after pill on religious grounds. But there is no way the very same pharmacist should be required to put cold pills containing pseudoephedrine — the key ingredient for trailer-trash…
SNOW BUSINESS Commerce in church: “Sacred Hypocrisy” is a well-written column with a most poignant ending (John Dougherty, March 31). But you seem to miss the point that this is a sacred area — in effect, a church — for Native Americans. The fact that the Snowbowl ski area covers…
The Arizona Legislature has the rare opportunity this session to strike a powerful blow to the heart of the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist cult that has dominated life in the isolated communities north of the Grand Canyon for more than 70 years. Lawmakers are debating legislation that would allow the state…
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…
READERS PEARCED OFF Founding Fathers would quake: I just read your article titled “Religious Wrong” (John Dougherty, March 17). I have to say that I have never been so offended by a piece of writing. It contains outright hatred for those who are trying to stand up for what they…
Looking at him, you’d never know. The cocaine, the heroin, the meth, the whiskey. The days on end with no sleep, just one big roll after another, from one bar to the next with the pager going off at all hours and the hours themselves without meaning — time flies…
I consider myself an environmentalist. And I’ve long been a strong supporter of Native American rights. But in recent days I have become outraged over the astounding hypocrisy of both groups in their opposition to a proposal that would allow for a relatively small expansion of the Arizona Snowbowl. The…
Earlier this month, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association commandeered the National Press Club for a “media briefing.” Reporters from publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal showed up en masse. The news of the day on March 11 was the filing of a mammoth lawsuit…
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…
SEX AND THE CITY Perversion, plus a buffet!: My wife and I have wintered in the Valley for many years, and we often read New Times for the informative articles. But this past week, I was shocked and appalled to discover that you sent one of your writers to one…
It’s 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, and Christian Brower steps over the doggy gate into his office, adjusts the shutters on the window facing the front yard of his home on a quiet residential street in Gilbert, and gets to work. Sitting down in front of his computer, Brower pulls…
To get up and running with what the best vloggers and podcasters are putting out — without putting yourself out — it’s best to start by installing a pair of free programs that do all the work of searching and downloading for you. Start with a “podcatching” client, like iPodder…
What Would Jesus Write? Bunch of martyrs: I just wanted to say that Charles Pyeatte’s rant in last week’s Letters column (“The Passion of the Priest,” March 10) was more of the same tired-ass Christian/Catholic/law enforcement rhetoric that we have all heard a million times. Quit milking the Jesus thing,…
“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…
Three years ago, Bill Tonnesen self-published a book announcing his plans to become one of the top modern artists in the world. The undisputed giants of the field were Richard Serra and James Turrell, he wrote. “Then I thought, there would be me.” At the time, Tonnesen wasn’t just little-known…
Mesa Republican Representative Russell Pearce, co-chairman of the powerful Arizona House Appropriations Committee, is launching a pitched assault on the First Amendment to the Constitution. Pearce, a member of the Salt Lake City-based Mormon Church, put language in this year’s state budget bill to eliminate funding for campus publications in…
