Suntans, once the gift of Mother Nature and now a commodity purveyed under tanning lamps all over town, are about to be placed on a par with some kinds of drugs. Just as prescriptions for Valium are recorded by the corner pharmacist, the number of suntans a person can purchase…
Mo Udall may be the only Arizona politician, aside from the retrograde Bob Stump, who isn’t scrambling to define himself as an environmentalist these days. What with Earth Day, an “environmental” president and unprecedented public support, almost every politician is going about in environmentalist drag. Small wonder why. The New…
J. Fife Symington III grew up on a 500-acre estate in the blue-blood Maryland hunt country. There were neighbors with names like S. Bonsal White Jr. and Benjamin Howell Griswold IV. Symington went to Harvard. His father went to Princeton. The family owned a steel mill. Symington is a man…
Perhaps the most dramatic revelations to come out of the huge savings and loan disaster will come during the trial of Charles Keating. That trial, which will be heard here in Phoenix before U.S. District Court Judge Richard Bilby, still is probably a year away. But now the possibility of…
It seemed my son was just starting to get the hang of having a sister when he said, “Hey, dad. When Jessica gets a little older, I’m going to buy her a Barbie doll!” He promptly shattered the illusion by adding, “And then we can play `Barbie versus Godzilla’!” The…
James Devine picks up an empty Silver Bullet near the curb of a downtown Phoenix street. It’s 7:30 on an early-April morning. He crushes the can with his boot, and tosses it into his large plastic sack. The bag is almost filled from the previous afternoon’s work, but there’s always…
Doug Lynch was the best and the brightest that the ROTC program at Arizona State University had to offer in the early 1980s. For four consecutive semesters ending with the spring of 1984, he won election as the military program’s “outstanding cadet” and maintained its highest grade point average. Lynch’s…
This April Fools’ Day, Diana Wiley watched Tyrone Childs fall on his knees and collapse in a dusty, littered backyard in Ajo, Arizona. She remembers thinking the pistol that Pima County sheriff’s deputy Mark Penner fired at her lover must have had fake bullets. Why else would the .45- caliber…
Sometime back in 1960, a full decade before Earth Day I, a Texas-bred hausfrau rolled out of her bed in Hawaii, donned one of her trademark muumuus (which she fashioned from old shower curtains or cast-off bedspreads), parked herself in front of her typewriter and forever changed the way America…
Phoenix Councilmember Howard Adams has a thing about snakes, at least snakes in art. And when artist Luis Jimenez proposed to greet visitors arriving at Sky Harbor Airport with a gigantic image of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent of Aztec mythology, Adams practically had a meltdown. Adams didn’t care what the…
The Arizona Legislature has been widely criticized for not getting much done this session on important issues. Lawmakers have been meeting since January, seemingly with little positive result. What, people ask, are they doing down there? The best way to follow the action at the state house is by reading…
I’d forgotten the sheer madhouse excitement of it all. At the time, it was both energizing and frightful. Governor Evan Mecham electrified the entire state as he took us on a wild, memorable ride through a firestorm of his own creation. During Mecham’s brief period on the stage, which ended…
You’re Rose Mofford, a governor who’s become bored with her job. With eight months more to serve, you’ve become detached and disinterested. Through your own listless and inept performance, you’ve turned yourself into nothing more than a public freeloader. If you do any work for your $75,000-a-year salary, there’s no…
They’re not kidding when they call it “the miracle of birth.” In addition to the obvious astonishments, it’s a miracle that any woman who’s experienced the agony once could ever suffer enough memory loss to say, “Yeah! I’d like to do that again!!!” It’s a miracle that new fathers readily…
If the guard at Desert Mountain didn’t know Bob Bacon, he wouldn’t be letting us in; he’d be calling the cops. Bacon is a sleepy-eyed, unreconstructed longhair whose curly black locks dangle halfway down the lapels of his black leather jacket. He’s not a biker, but he burned out two…
I used to love writing letters. But that was before writing became my job. Nowadays, I can’t jot down so much as a “Dear Edna” without feeling like I should be getting a paycheck for it. Even if I’m absolutely nuts about Edna. And, of course, when you don’t write…
Lobbyist Alfredo Gutierrez still winces when he remembers the dark, dark days ten years ago when the United States government tried to sabotage its own census. At least that’s how Gutierrez, then a state legislator, looked at increased raids by federal immigration agents against undocumented Hispanic workers in Phoenix. Despite…
“YOU DIRTY HOG!” Eyzie Miles slashed at Bo Bodell with a kitchen knife. “Go wash yourself before you handle me,” she flared . . . In her heart, though, Eyzie knew that Bo would come back for her. But she never dreamed that when he did return, he would find…
A sampling of sleaze from your defunct corner newsstand: Strip for Murder, by Richard S. Prather (Gold Medal, 1956) “I cupped the glass in my hand and aimed it at Garlic’s face like a small bazooka. He was just about to swing at me, so hot he’d undoubtedly forgotten where…
If you live in Phoenix and have cable, the strangest thing on your TV isn’t MTV’s game show, those wild Trinity Broadcasting people, Married . . . With Children or even the Bill Close Report. It’s not the shopping channel, Nick at Night or that Cajun guy who overdoes it…
Max Hawkins, the Svengali of Arizona politics, is certain Evan Mecham will be the next governor of Arizona. “It was like a Greek tragedy when the legislature impeached the little guy,” Hawkins says. “And now it’s going to be a Homeric victory when the voters return Evan to office. “You’re…
Sam Steiger is moving faster than anyone expected. As a result, things have changed dramatically. In the race for governor, the balance of power has shifted. Almost without anyone noticing, Steiger has emerged as a front-runner. At first there was a question whether Steiger could be taken seriously. Now that…
