I have heard so many stories about Carolyn Sawyer’s earthy, manipulative personality that I expect to meet a Janis Joplin-like middle-aged hippie who could charm the birds right down from the trees. Instead, for about half an hour, I sit in a lawyer’s office staring at a silent woman with…
Green Egg on His Face This verse, attributed to one Dale Connelly, was aired on Minnesota Public Radio–ostensibly to provide a means for parents to explain Fellate-Gate to their tots. With sincere apologies to Dr. Seuss (a man who should have been president), the Flash recounts it here: The Bubba…
Every election year, dozens of special interest groups quiz candidates for public office. Questionnaires flow in from groups as diverse as the Christian Coalition, the Sierra Club and the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home Owners. Campaigns are hell. Amid boring chores like stuffing envelopes, circulating petitions, nailing up campaign signs…
A good friend of mine, Mickey Spillane Jr., sent me a pitch for a novel, perhaps a screenplay. I told him it was too improbable, that stuff like this couldn’t happen outside of trash fiction. But he claims it’s all true. Says he heard it from some guy called Starr,…
In 1974, Robert Towne was seething on the lot where his most famous script, Chinatown, was being shot. When I interviewed him at the time, he was appalled at director Roman Polanski’s heavy hand, particularly Polanski’s ending where Evelyn Mulwray, the Faye Dunaway character, gets killed. Twenty-three years later, I…
Public-address announcer Jeff Munn skitters down the stairs to his press-box seat high above Sun Devil Stadium. His heart still pounds after his frenzied drive from downtown Phoenix, where 30 minutes earlier he finished announcing the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game that had gone 12 innings. Munn slips out of his…
Sex, Lies & More Lies There’s a canker on the presidency–and the Flash has been besieged by loyal readers who pine for a cure. The Flash suggests a Congressional resolution requiring President Clinton to drop his trousers around his ankles and shuffle about the streets of Georgetown, pleading for forgiveness…
A new state audit confirms the same old ills at the Arizona Board of Medical Examiners. BOMEX, created to protect the public from dangerous doctors, suffers from a weak spine and a lack of guts when it comes to disciplining its own. The question now facing lawmakers and the agency’s…
While several reporters listened in on a news conference call, Lisa Allen, spokeswoman for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, broke the law: “Good afternoon, this is Lisa Allen with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday, the third of September at about 12:45. . . . Today, charges were filed against Sean…
As Arizona’s utilities grapple with the problems of deregulation, the chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission is trying to get more regulation of one power company–and it’s drawn him a slap from the governor. In a July letter, ACC chair Jim Irvin asked Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to…
No Mere Mr. Nice Guy The article on Travis Lee (“St. Travis at the Bat,” Michael Kiefer, September 3) was awesome. I never knew how “nice” a guy Travis was. I had seen him play many games, but had only seen the baseball player side of Travis, not the man…
Bill Clinton won here in 1996, but two years later Arizona remains a one-party state–Republican. In this election year, the Arizona Democrats are pluckily predicting victory. “You’re gonna have a lot more Democrats to kick around, come November,” chirps the party’s state chairman Mark Fleisher of the statewide offices he…
It’s a little bit disappointing. I was half-expecting and half-hoping to find a place jammed with strobe-lighted rooms full of writhing, entangled naked bodies. Instead, I find an ordinary house on a residential street in Tempe. I knock on the door, and it’s opened by a young man with long,…
The story is the kind no one wants to believe, but everyone hears about. In June, an ASU student accused a Tempe police officer of the worst kind of betrayal of his badge, the worst kind of violation of another person. Alvin Yellowhair says Officer John Ferrin dragged him out…
In the art galleries and studios of Havana this summer, “ASU” has been the word on just about every artist’s lips. They aren’t parsing it out in three crisp syllables, says a recent visitor to Cuba. They’re exhaling it in a whoosh that sounds like a sneeze: Ah-soo! Ah-soo! Ah-soo!…
Almost two years after Sheriff Joe Arpaio cleared his detention officers of wrongdoing in the death of inmate Scott Norberg, the prospect of county employees facing criminal prosecution has been revived. Norberg family attorney Mike Manning filed a motion on Friday charging that Maricopa County and the sheriff’s office deliberately…
Beverly and Edward McMillen wanted to help the Lord. As members of North Phoenix Baptist Church, one of the Valley’s largest Southern Baptist congregations, the McMillens took their pastor’s advice and began investing their life savings with the Baptist Foundation of Arizona (BFA) as early as 1989. The way the…
Steve Watkinson, 46, longtime General Legal Counsel to New Times, Inc., died Monday, September 7, 1998, at his home in Phoenix. Steve was a partner at the law firm of Gust Rosenfeld in Phoenix. He is survived by his wife Pat, his daughter Carson and his son Matthew. A visitation…
Like Beverly McMillen, former BFA investor Annette Earl also got her life savings back last month. Earl says BFA informed her that someone had purchased her note late in the afternoon of August 5–shortly after a New Times article detailing her plight began to be distributed in newsstands (“I Was…
“So, buddy,” the guy sitting next to me at a Phoenix bar asked me one night in mid-1994, “you really think I could have done something like they say I did? You think I murdered the bastard?” I looked at him and rolled my eyes, as if to say, you…
By now, Arizona Republicans have chosen either Tom McGovern or John Kaites as their candidate for attorney general in November’s election. Either way, John Kaites’ political star has fallen. If McGovern won, the deed is done. If, by some twist of wacky Arizona electoral fate, Kaites pulled this thing off…
Slammer Time Sheriff Joe Arpaio is willing to lock up everyone and anyone so he can show numbers and justify building a new jail (“Paying the Price,” Tony Ortega, August 27). However, there isn’t enough money to feed, house and clothe those people now. They are considered guilty until proven…
