Attention, online shoppers! Welcome to eBay, your one-stop shopping headquarters for everything you never knew you needed. An international flea market to some, a global Dumpster to others, this behavioral-research head-scratcher has produced some of the wackiest human-interest stories of the year. In recent months, Internet shopaholics have vicariously thrilled…
Asked to sum up eBay in one sentence, a longtime dealer pal of mine deadpans, “Barnum was right.” To test his theory — that the eBay community is made up of a bunch of suckers who’ll bid on anything — I recently decided to auction off a slew of gag…
Glen Gaddie wants you to know this: He is not his brother’s keeper. As the head of the Burke Basic School, a charter school that opened in Mesa on Monday, he wants you to know this, too: His new school has nothing to do with the one his brother, Reed…
A New Times special report examining the lives of the people employed by maquiladora factories along the border in Mexico has won two prestigious national awards. “Bordering on Exploitation,” by John Dougherty and David Holthouse, was published in July 1998. The report won first place in the Special Section or…
So I was standing outside an adult bookstore Monday morning during rush hour, when I noticed a peculiar similarity among the men exiting the establishment: Their tucked chins, sidelong glances and skittish hustling mimicked that of a puppy that had just been caught soiling the carpet. Like a voice in…
United States Senator John McCain spent last weekend in Arizona, vacationing with his family. The news shocked me because I can’t recall the last time the guy actually showed his face in his home state. The rest of the country was interested because McCain skipped the Iowa straw poll. An…
It’s the Media Violence, Stupid That tap dancing you hear coming from the west is the frenzied footwork of United States Senator John McCain, who started a big presidential campaign swing through California on Monday — and found himself staring down the barrel of a subject he’d rather not discuss:…
No one ever demands to know how many Rolling Stones were present for a session to qualify it as a Stones recording. As long as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are present, the litmus test is passed. Yet many of the songs that are considered quintessential Stones tracks are missing…
The Phoenix Zoo spared no expense when it came to trying to save the life of Ruby the elephant — or so it appeared. Last fall, zoo officials determined that Ruby’s unborn calf had died, and that her own life was in danger. She needed emergency surgery. Ruby, an Asian…
A summer morning in Salome, 107 miles west of Phoenix. The day starts cool and impossibly bright. No place on earth is brighter. The heat comes later, but soon enough. Early in the afternoon the horizon begins to shake under the immense sun, and by 3 o’clock, it’s a boiling…
The Arizona Corporation Commission has ordered the Baptist Foundation of Arizona (BFA) and affiliated companies Arizona Southern Baptist New Church Ventures and Christian Financial Partners Inc. to cease “offering and selling securities in violation of the Securities Act of Arizona.” The section of the law cited by the commission is…
I wondered what $100 million in terra-forming looks like up close, so last Wednesday I walked around the newly filled Tempe Town Lake. It was late morning. The sun was high and cruel. Thirty minutes from the car found me at the far east end of the lake, bouncing deliriously…
Brad Bird, the adapter/director of the warmhearted animated feature The Iron Giant, made his name with edgier fare: He created TV’s Family Dog, and worked on such series as The Simpsons, The Critic and King of the Hill. On a recent visit to Phoenix, he explained his contribution to the…
The pinball symphony of 400 slot machines morphs into the thump and wail of a Yavapai-Apache drum circle as I leave the dim, eau d’ashtray interior of the Cliff Castle Casino and step 30 yards to a bull-riding ring, site of the sixth annual Verde Valley Powwow. I smell burning…
The Victim Sheriff Joe Arpaio stood on the front porch of his home, grinning, patiently waiting for a television news team to begin yet another interview. The 67-year-old sheriff rehearsed the lines he uses to buff his image as the self-proclaimed “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” He reminisced about his federal Drug…
The governor’s Growing Smarter Commission is visiting a dozen cities in Arizona this summer, offering free cookies and drinks and a 13-page draft report that could shape the future of the state. By the time the road show ends next week, more than 1,000 people will have attended at least…
In 1986, when the city of Phoenix entered into an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to re-dedicate a 1,365-acre tract of federal land as a city park, housing developments were only starting to seep across Bell Road, farther and farther into north Phoenix. “We were thinking of a…
The city of Phoenix has created a monster, and his name is Steve Cohn. In the past three months, Cohn — the managing director of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Phoenix, best known for his opposition to the taxpayer-funded Marriott high-rise slated to go up near his business –…
Someone once said of Gram Parsons that “his sadness was like his image.” That he “should have played the blues.” Had he been born a poor black sharecropper’s son, he probably would have. Instead, Parsons, born Cecil Ingram Connor, was a trust-fund baby, part of a wealthy Southern family replete…
Buck Showalter sat alone on the dugout bench at the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, legs crossed, one palm atop a baseball bat he leaned on as if it were a cane. He watched the Texas Rangers take batting practice and thought “how lonely this job is sometimes,” or so he…
Dr. Ronald Castro stood in a courtroom April 8 and pointed sharply at the woman to his right. “If Lucia is allowed to go free, and if she should relapse,” Castro told Superior Court Judge Michael McVey, “I fear that the first indication of her relapse may be a bullet…
Trib Tickling Last year, when the Tribune dedicated one day’s paper to the clichéd question, “Why don’t you publish more good news?” Trib reporters tore their hair out and some were so embarrassed that they quit. The paper was mocked coast to coast. But that wasn’t enough to keep the…
