Giant saguaros–vegetable pillars rising over the Sonoran Desert. You might see them as admired brethren. Like us, they can be poetic, grotesque and wacky. Like us, they stand upright, seemingly alien survivors on the parched landscape. But, of course, looks are deceiving. Without canals and freon and air conditioning, we…
It is not difficult, during the time of day normally categorized as “Happy Hour,” to view a stand of saguaros silhouetted by the setting sun and assign those plants supernatural features. Saguaros are naturally spooky–tall, thorny, touchdown-signaling water tanks. The plant’s lore is accordingly rich, and its symbolic power is…
Dan Quayle, move over. Jeff Cohen wants to talk about the real “media elite”–big business, whose scions, he says, are engaged more in cover-ups than in coverage. Cohen, executive director and founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a New York-based media-watch organization created in 1986, will speak Tuesday…
Football coach Wayne “Chief” Hall is spinning a yarn about his friend, onetime Arizona State University quarterback great Dennis Sproul. In the mid-1970s, Hall–a former ASU assistant under head coach Frank Kush–had convinced Sproul, a California high school all-American, to become a Sun Devil. He and Sproul became close during…
An Arizona man captured by a flying saucer as six witnesses look on? Surely, the 1975 UFO abduction of Snowflake woodcutter Travis Walton had to be the most incredible event in the annals of UFOdom. Either that or the most elaborate variation on the old “my dog ate my homework”…
After suffering through ten years of what he calls an “ongoing vendetta” by former Phoenix police chief Ruben Ortega and other powerful law enforcement officials, Pat Cantelme has fired a $1 million countershot. Cantelme, president of the Phoenix Firefighters Union and a frequent political foe of Ortega’s, last week filed…
Max Dunlap’s chair was squeaking. He signaled to the courtroom bailiff, who immediately came over and squirted WD-40 into the wheels. Then Dunlap, impeccably dressed, sat down again. You could see the whites come up on his knuckles as he gripped the chair’s arms. It was 9:12 on the morning…
MDRV leave ecrb until Rubin confirms all changes. thanks, cj February 22 noon MDNM @body:The page-one headline in the Arizona Republic was a doozie: “Two held in kidnap-maiming plot. Ring threatened to cut off boy’s arms. More arrests likely.” The February 21, 1992, story described how FBI agents had arrested…
You can smell the pheromones, palpably sense the rut vibes, feel the radioactive burn of eye contact. One thousand single people, male and female, circle the fountains at Concord Place for Lynda Johncock’s Singles Networking Party, a pre-Valentine’s Day bash. Lynda is president of Arizona’s Most Eligible Singles Directory, a…
Go ahead–throw away your life. When you do, it’s a cinch John Hoffman will be around to pick up the pieces. “Americans are so dumb, they waste so much, that a clear-headed individual who practices a little common sense can make a killing,” says Hoffman, a mental-health counselor who spends…
One Sunday last October, when the Reverend Tommy Barnett passed the plate to boost an anti-abortion initiative, he failed to follow the letter of the law. The First Assembly of God Church minister did not keep track of the individual donors so their names and other information could be reported…
The shameless selling and shilling of Shaquille O’Neal by the NBA is the clearest indication of panic I have yet seen by the men who run professional sports. Phineas Taylor Barnum at the peak of his promotional powers did not blow as many horns nor crash as many cymbals to…
I’m having breakfast in the cafeteria on the main floor of the Maricopa County Courthouse. Since I’m going to the Suns game that night, I’m sitting there checking the box scores of the previous night’s NBA games in USA Today. Al Sitter, for 20 years an investigative reporter for the…
Mention the words “savings and loan failure,” and most people think about the Charles Keatings of the world, the crooks and highfliers who knowingly bilked the poor depositors and left the federal government with an estimated $500 billion tab. But for every out-and-out thief, there were perhaps nine or ten…
If one of King Lear’s daughters ever made it to Phoenix, she’d probably be an attorney for the state. It was Lear who said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” Lear’s problems were over his kingdom. But closer to home, a 53-year-old grandmother…
Last summer, Don Engler of Schuff Steel took a proposal to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community for a machine that reduces the volume of garbage by 90 percent. The process, “destructive distillation,” can transform even medical waste and discarded tires into a sterile charcoal and a volatile gas that…
Chuck Daly, who won two NBA titles with the Detroit Pistons, once said he always felt he had a three-day contract written in ice. On the other hand, his players were wealthy young men with long-term contracts worth millions of dollars. “But sometimes you’ve got to scream at them,” Daly…
Before the trial is over, defense attorney Murray Miller must convince the jury that the guilty man is not Max Dunlap but a sinister, alcohol-deranged lawyer named Neal Roberts. All of this will take more than three months in the courtroom of Judge Norman Hall. Prosecuting attorneys Fred Newton and…
A little boy rings a hand bell; the school day begins. Uniformed children assemble in a classroom. They sit in neat rows, the smallest ones in front. A life-size statue of Jesus stands at the front of the room, palms raised. The principal stands at the rear of the room…
While Scottsdale Mayor Herb Drinkwater boldly led the fight to keep Tiffany’s Cabaret from opening its second “gentlemen’s club” in the former Windmill Theater, a partnership that includes the mayor’s son, Mark Drinkwater, may have been negotiating to buy the same property to open its own topless club. The latest…
Freshly returned from a vacation in Mexico two weeks ago, Governor J. Fife Symington III summoned reporters to an airport news conference to confirm that his once-extensive real estate holdings are wiped out. The governor, who had campaigned for office on his business prowess, estimated that he lost between $10…
A man called and asked if I wanted an exclusive interview with Max Dunlap. The conditions were unusual. I would meet with Dunlap, but I was not to tell anyone that he had talked to me. This was in 1990, during the waning days of Bob Corbin’s reign as Arizona’s…
