Twenty years ago last April, I strapped on a backpack, called my dog, walked out the door of my parents’ northern Virginia home and set my course west. Bear and I hiked a couple of miles down to Interstate 66 and hitched the first of dozens of rides that would…
Mentally Challenged System failure: I would like to thank Paul Rubin for his tragic story about the horrible fate of the Aviles family (“Blood on Their Hands,” October 14). Arizona has failed seriously mentally ill adults for more than 20 years now, and it scares me to think how many…
It was Timothy Braswell’s 13th birthday, and the candles on his pistachio-flavored ice cream cake had already burned halfway down to the white and green frosting. With a noisemaker in one hand and a silver-and-red party hat on her head, Timothy’s mom, Gloria, was growing more and more annoyed as…
Ever since yours truly arrived in the Zona, nearly everyone in P-town’s clubland has had the Black and Tan on their lips. And, no I don’t mean a pint of Guiness and Bass! I’m referring to the not-so-secret speakeasy, which has hosted bi-weekly Sodom-and-Gomorrah-esque after-hours par-tays, reportedly with underage cuties,…
Clods and Monsters Kedwards offers no solution:Great story on the presidential election. (“Raging Bull,” Michael Lacey, October 7). I work in politics, and I’m going insane right now. I can’t wait until this election’s over. My view is that the world is better off without Saddam and his sons running…
Richard Ellison, founder and president of Help Ministries, says his organization is doing the Lord’s work. In a message on the Mesa-based group’s Web site, Ellison says the 28-year-old ministry is “a voice in a hurting world, but more than a voice, a committed group of people ready to make…
Let’s face it, Joe Arpaio’s going to win re-election November 2 to his fourth term as Maricopa County sheriff. He has no serious opposition. But that doesn’t mean a legal tornado isn’t swirling around the self-proclaimed ” toughest sheriff in America,” who’s more aptly the meanest/dumbest sheriff in America. Only…
The celly chimed the other day, and at the other end is my man Gentleman Jules Demetrius, the P-town Picasso whose artwork we first told you about during a visit the Jettster and I paid to the Thursday night Blunt Club at Boston’s in Tempe (“Beats ‘n’ Blunts,” March 25)…
RAGING BULL$%#* We’re in a real quandary: Thank you Michael Lacey for the lucid objectivity in your article on the presidential candidates (“Raging Bull,” October 7). I registered as a Democrat in the Kennedy years when I was admiring their battle against organized crime and work on civil rights. With…
With less then three weeks before the general election, I have serious doubts that whatever “official” results the Maricopa County Elections Department posts will be an accurate reflection of what voters intended. After a week of investigating the department’s mishandling of last month’s controversial recount in the District 20 state…
Lenny Aviles and his girlfriend Lulu Saldana slipped away from his mother’s west Phoenix home on the early evening of June 23, 1999. The longtime couple wanted to shop at Sam’s Club before Lulu went home to Rio Grande, Texas, the next day. Lenny stepped outside to tell his mother,…
Outlaw Joe Wails The magnitude of the evil: Thanks for putting it all together for me. As I read one John Dougherty column after another on Joe Arpaio, I was having trouble getting a handle on the magnitude of the evil. New Times editor Rick Barrs has summed it all…
Looking like the nation’s homeliest eagle scout, John Kerry snapped off a salute and announced to his convention, “Reporting for duty.” George W. Bush had already embraced “Mission Accomplished” on an aircraft carrier flight deck in his après-combat flight suit. With each of these two nimrods trying to convince me…
Arizona State University President Michael Crow’s acting more like Dean Vernon Wormer all the time. Sighing and shaking his head like the Animal House character at the antics of his campus charges, I can almost hear him bellowing: “Looks like somebody forgot that there’s a ban on alcoholic beverages! You’ve…
I’ve got a dreadful message for thousands of young men and women trapped in the horrors of fundamentalist Mormon polygamy in a handful of remote and desolate towns north of the Grand Canyon along the Arizona-Utah border. Governor Janet Napolitano — the rising Democratic starlet who deftly portrays herself as…
King John Today, a baseball tax; tomorrow, the world: Kudos to John Dougherty for his superb column about the second dictator ousted this year — Jerry Colangelo (“Please, It’s About Time!” September 9). Like Saddam Hussein, Jerry exemplifies arrogance to the highest degree, and he has the characteristics of a…
Notorious former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates must have 50 IQ points on Joe Arpaio. Don’t get me wrong, Gates was just as tyrannical as the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America.” He ran the LAPD as a paramilitary force. The police chief who spawned the L.A. riots — and…
It’s barely noon on a Tuesday, and Bob Judd is wearing lipstick. And a sarong. That might seem awfully dressy for a guy who works at home, but it makes sense when you learn that Judd is the Web master (actually, he prefers the title “misteress”) for www.thecockettes.org, an official…
Phoenix is at a crossroads in its history. No major city in the country has such an unprecedented opportunity to boldly create a 21st-century urban landscape that capitalizes on the revolutionary technology driving the modern economy while embracing its own unique geographic character. It is the merger of both place…
Prêt-à-Porter Ranch It’s a sausage fest in Old Town Scottsdale on this Thursday night. And the J-grrl and I are at Martini Ranch, beholding a sea of horny, white and mostly male faces. I haven’t seen this many ofays since the last time the Boston Celtics won the NBA championship…
Downtown Buzz Quibbles and bits: I enjoyed your review titled “Finding Nemo” (Stephen Lemons, September 9), and not for the reasons you might suspect. I’m a total foodie and an avid believer in downtown Phoenix and its forthcoming renaissance. Believe it or not, it’s coming. As an aside, I do…
“NOTHING is over until WE decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? HELL, NO!” — John “Bluto” Blutarsky, National Lampoon’s Animal House, 1978 Bluto doesn’t live here anymore. And that goes for Otter, D-Day and Flounder, too. In fact, they aren’t even welcome in these…
