Look, Ma, No Hands! Provoked by a heady blend of overwhelming demand and genetic tendencies toward shameless self-promotion, the Flash is pleased to turn this weekly column space over to excerpts from the “Daily Flash: A Reader’s Guide to the Arizona Republic.” The Daily Flash appears exclusively at www.phoenixnewtimes.com Tuesday…
Balkanization While online looking for an article, I not unintentionally arrived at New Times. My purpose was to take a quick look at what’s really happening in the desert and move on. Instead I wound up reading Michael Lacey’s entire story on Pavle Milic (“To Serb With Love,” June 3),…
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight/Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane. –Bob Dylan A couple of prostitutes step off the dimly lit street into the splash of white light. Their dark bodies appear as things long past the point of retrieval, their faces…
Before she burned her rear while sitting on a toilet in the kindergarten rest room, before she discovered that children were being forced to stand in the sun as a form of discipline, Nerina Kagan, an offbeat, highly credentialed music teacher from Connecticut, figured she’d found her niche teaching hip-hop…
Looking over my county government’s plan to destroy the warehouse district south of downtown Phoenix, I wonder if the schizophrenic crackheads who roam there at night came up with the concept. A jail, a morgue and a parking garage. Maricopa County intends to build this loathsome trinity on the fresh…
A gale roaring up the side of Roden Crater, blasting construction grit and sand into the gray-bearded face of artist James Turrell, is making it tough for him to describe the serenity he envisions for this old volcano northeast of Flagstaff. He retreats a few paces down a cindery embankment…
The singer bursts onto the scene from the back of the dance floor. As she struts toward the stage, her movements incorporate a kind of odd, sinless swagger, as innocent as a young girl’s first goodnight kiss. Her entrance is, nonetheless, full of sassy, pop-star self-certainty. She wears flared blue-jean…
They arrived from the Netherlands in a small cardboard box. Two bottles and a one-page disclaimer, cushioned by Styrofoam peanuts sticky from leaked chemicals. One bottle was filled with small white crystal pellets and marked “Kalium Hydroxide.” The other contained a clear liquid and was labeled “Gamma Butyrolactone.” The skull-and-crossbones…
In March, Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy Steve Barnes came forward with damning news: several of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies, Barnes said, had reported to the FBI that they and others had been ordered to surveil Arpaio’s political enemies. If Arpaio did order such surveillance, it could result in his being…
Stay Out of the Kitchen Former governor J. Fife Symington III lost an appeal this month. The decision won’t send him to prison, but it will keep Symington from doing KP in the kitchen of one of the Valley’s best restaurants, Barmouche at 3131 East Camelback. Symington recently asked Barmouche…
After a long Memorial Day of food and drinks, post 1170 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars seems sleepy and slow when we arrive. Not for long, though. If Wanda the bartender hadn’t gotten in the middle of things after the war hero and ex-boxer slapped me across the face,…
Ethnic Flood Thank you so much for penning the poignant story on my interesting friend Pavle Milic (“To Serb With Love,” Michael Lacey, June 3). His fragmented and diverse roots have sculpted him into a talented and passionate person, especially sensitive to the ethnocentric nature of Americans. His future writings…
After two days of lectures, product pitches and apocalyptic rhetoric, it is time for a panel of self-proclaimed Y2K experts to take questions from the audience. The crowd, gathered here for the Y2K Summit and Town Hall Meeting at Phoenix First Assembly Church, doesn’t disappoint. One gentleman wants to know…
As the cruise missiles fell in her Belgrade neighborhood, one woman’s writing floated her spirit with the buoyancy of hope. Maritza Yosimlevic longed that her short stories might give pleasure, a desire that exceeded her fear of death. “I must leave now. The air-raid sirens are going off. The bombers…
Using heat and pressure, more heat and pressure than one can imagine, a 3,150-ton factory press turns solid cylinders of pure aluminum into long, thin rails. The shiny rails exit the enormous machine looking wet and molten, like they might be gooey to the touch. Alexco Tooling Manager Greg Fraley,…
Vicente Gurrola’s shattered body lay by the roadside on 35th Avenue as a white Toyota pickup sped away shortly after 1 a.m. on Sunday, May 16. His back broken, the 33-year-old landscaper died on the street before rescue workers arrived. His body was sent to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s…
The troubled Arizona Board of Medical Examiners has again shut the public out of information about the state’s MDs, this time blaming a change in the law meant to provide more disclosure. BOMEX staff has stopped telling the public about the allegations faced by a doctor under investigation. The board…
Soldiers of Fortune Public Campaign, the D.C. interest group that brought Arizona last fall’s successful “Clean Elections” initiative, has released a list of the biggest gun lovers in Congress–elected representatives who sock away the most cash from the gun lobby. Why is the Flash not surprised to see J.D. Hayworth…
Most Arizonans have never heard of Doug Norton, but we all owe him our thanks. For more than two decades, Norton has served us as state auditor general, watching over many facets of government in Arizona: state agencies, counties, universities and community colleges. This is a tremendous task. Norton had…
River Dance Regarding John Dougherty’s “A Fortune Runs Through It” of May 20–am I just idealistic and naive? Am I naive enough to be confused by why we continue to build lakes in the desert? Am I so idealistic that I don’t understand why we can’t reduce our use of…
The September 3, 1998, issue of the Spanish-language newspaper Prensa Hispana made Phoenix residents Ivan Reyna and Greg McCain look like the luckiest people on the planet. An article chronicled how Reyna and McCain had been selected as the winners of a contest sponsored by Telemundo 64, Compass Travel, Coors…
Mary C.’s husband bought her a computer for Mother’s Day. She’s interested in the Internet, but for now she’ll get her feet wet by playing solitaire. Mary would like to show her 8-year-old daughter, Hope, how to use the machine someday, if Arizona child-welfare authorities would only let her. Mary…
