His appearance in the courtroom was a shock. We all remembered him as belligerent and fearless during the impeachment trial of Evan Mecham. In those days, state Senator Jesus “Chuy” Higuera brandished a microphone in his hand as though it were the Sword of Damocles. Through sheer ferocity, Higuera was…
We are too hard on Dan Quayle. We should accept the heir to the Pulliam fortune for what he is rather than fret about his becoming president. Detractors say Quayle is more suited to becoming president of the Paradise Valley Country Club than moving into the White House. What’s wrong…
Claude Olney achieved the American Dream–the acquisition of vast wealth without a whole lot of labor–by turning his underachieving son into a gold mine. Almost everybody has seen Olney’s “infomercial,” a thirty-minute television commercial with 1970s sitcom star John Ritter. And almost everybody knows somebody who owns Olney’s best-selling video,…
How does a debt-ridden electric company with some of the highest rates in the nation and a long rap sheet of safety violations transform itself into one of the country’s top utilities? Officials at Arizona Public Service Company have the answer: Issue a press release. APS President and CEO Mark…
Thinking of driving through Mesa with a dildo on the front seat of your car? Think again. Mesa sculptor William Jakimow recently learned that lesson the hard way. While returning from an East Valley ceramics studio several weeks ago, the 41-year-old artist made the mistake of hauling along a footlong…
Sometime this month Bob Dylan–the Sixties’ most celebrated songwriter and cultural icon–turns 50. His liner notes to Biograph, Dylan’s musical auto-anthology, say he was born Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941. But what appears to be Dylan’s passport inside his recently released Bootleg Series–Volumes 1-3 suggests otherwise: The blue-eyed Robert…
Terry Goddard feature It is easy to get in touch with Terry Goddard these days. If you phone him, he phones you right back. If you ask to meet with him, he easily finds the time. When you arrive at the high-rise office on Central Avenue where he practices law,…
What’s left to say? They were awful. Who else could I be talking about except the Phoenix Suns? There are times when a ball club meets defeat and you can take consolation in saying the players tried their best. Not this time. The Suns dogged it through all four games…
A fable for modern times: Once upon a time, in a city not far away, a most remarkable thing took place. In this city, there was a very large plot of open ground that had been used for years as a school for the children of Native Americans. It was…
One Mother’s Day a few years back, Mom and I were waxing nostalgic about what a delightful child I had been and how lucky she was to produce me in only one out of three tries. Actually, Mom wasn’t reminiscing so much as rolling her eyes skyward and making rude…
My wife’s question at the dinner table gave me pause. Like everyone else, we’d been discussing the outrageous events swirling around state Superintendent of Public Instruction C. Diane Bishop. The police had been summoned on April 21 to a downtown condominium by neighbors who reported a bloodied and battered woman…
Mayor Paul Johnson thinks he may have found a new way to keep spring training alive in the Valley while enabling Phoenix to score its own major league baseball team–all with one swing of the fiscal bat. While the Arizona State Legislature ponders a proposal to levy a quarter-cent sales…
Kenneth Thompson couldn’t help but hear the taunts when he walked down Buckeye Road, past the windowless social clubs with signs that read “No One Under 21 Allowed,” past the vacant lots where men gathered beneath the Arizona ash trees and warmed their hands over fires in barrels. He heard…
ACTION HIGHWAY “Action! Chases! Danger!” Speed traps, collapsing bridges and head-on collisions made this battery-operated racetrack more fun than your average Sunday drive. Drive-by shootings and homicidal hitchhikers not included. MYSTERY DATE “When you open the door, will your date be a dream (sigh!)–or a dud (groan!)?” Juvenile jezebels vie…
Forget about those two front teeth. Back in the early Sixties, little Billy saw a TV commercial and immediately knew what he wanted for Christmas: King Zor, the Fighting Dinosaur. While primitive by today’s standards, the black-and-white commercial got the job done. Filmed from low camera angles to make the…
Since July 1989, the City of Phoenix has spent about $35,000 on bottled water for its employees. If our tap water is safe to drink–and there’s no evidence that it isn’t–how do city workers rate so much of the fancy stuff? That’s approximately the question Thelda Williams asked at a…
It’s easy for adults to rationalize their most self-destructive weaknesses in the company of other adults. But throw a kid into the picture and the process becomes damn near impossible. “What did you do in school today?” I asked my five-year-old son one recent afternoon, expecting to get the usual…
Don’t get me wrong. Don’t sit there and assume I’m astonished that the Phoenix Suns pay Tom Chambers $2,060,000 a year for halfheartedly bouncing and throwing a round ball. I’m not astonished by a salary that makes Chambers the most overpaid man in all of professional sports. I am amazed,…
The white Acura pulled into my driveway and slammed to a halt. David Ramras, the lawyer, leaped from behind the wheel. “Here’s the tape,” Ramras said. “You’re going to be surprised how good this fight turned out to be.” Ramras, an extremely knowledgeable sports fan, was talking about the championship…
Second of a series You might say that Ambrose McCree is obsessed with the beating handed out to Rodney King by the Los Angeles police. A retired California truck driver, McCree spent March 14 at the Los Angeles City Council’s open forum investigation of the videotaped assault. “I just, I…
Charlie Humme spends his Wednesdays handing out flowers to passersby beneath the wood-slat hood that covers part of Heritage Square. Not just because he’s a nice guy, which he seems to be. And not just because he’s a purveyor of pesticide-free herbs at the city’s Farmers Market. “I love the…
Phoenix’s curbside recycling project is a smash hit–with the public, that is. It may well be the most popular conservation program yet launched by Phoenix City Hall, judging by the response from the 10,000 homes selected to participate. The experimental program seemed to have a little bit of everything going…
