NO KINGS ROW

This morning The Wife and I participated in No Kings II: The Sequel.

A few images:

Our location was 35th Avenue and Bell in Phoenix; hardly a stronghold of rabid liberalism, but the turnout was excellent, running from the northeast corner of 35th to way past the Arby's, and as with the protest we attended in June--though perhaps more so--the response from passing vehicles was overwhelmingly positive. For every passerby who flipped us the bird, or gave us a thumbs-down, or stopped to rev their engine and blast exhaust at us--and there were a few of each--there were ten or twenty supportive horn honks and thumbs-up.

There was, of course, a big white pickup displaying a variety of pro-Trump flags that roared past us several times, would-be menacingly. And another truck pulled up so that the young men inside could shout at us "get a job!" and "you're all ret*rded!" After hearing this, we all realized the error of ways, dropped our signs and went home.

Since I understand that frogs are currently a symbol of the resistance, I drew my Ed Emberly frog--one of the very few things I know how to draw; I'm not as gifted an artist as Our President--on my sign, but there was a much better frog sign:

My favorite sign, however, read "MY 6x GREAT GRANDFATHER WINTERED AT VALLEY FORGE: NO KINGS THEN...NO KINGS NOW." Near this guy sat his Mom, whose sign was identical, except it said "MY 5x GRANDFATHER...".

Keep resisting!

BESTWORLD

The July/August issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands...

...includes the 2024 edition of "Best of the Valley." Your Humble Narrator is proud to have once again been among the authors. As always, I invite you to read it carefully and see if you can guess which eleven entries were elegantly composed by me.

CASING THE JOINT

It was a bucket list moment for Your Humble Narrator this past week; I was given a ride on the Oscar Mayer Frankmobile!

The vehicle was formerly known, of course, as the Wienermobile; it's been redubbed to showcase the company's All-Beef Franks. Predictably, I found considerable squealing online that the name change is somehow "woke," calls to stop buying Oscar Mayer products, etc.

Anyway, Frankmobile pilots extraordinaire Ann and Allie were most congenial, telling tales of Ridin' the Dog from Madison, Wisconsin to Jacksonville, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico! From here in Phoenix, they were off to new adventures in Huntington Beach, California.

They even presented me with my very own whistle!

I think these two should be the stars of a Gen-Z-era anthology TV road series, a la Martin Milner and George Maharis in Route 66. Maybe it could be called 'Kraut 66?

BEETLEMANIA

 This is Billy the Beetle:

And this is how I came to meet Billy and some of his exoskeletoned pals last week:

One Sunday afternoon last November I was driving through Phoenix with my cell phone in my hand. I doubt I'll get much sympathy when I tell you that I suddenly noticed a police officer on a motorcycle with his lights flashing in my rearview mirrors. I spit out an expletive and pulled over.

"Important call?" the cop asked drily, when he walked up to the car.

"Not important enough, I'm guessing," I said with a sigh.

He explained to me that it's now illegal to have a cell phone in your hand, on or off, while you're driving, unless you're calling 9-1-1. There was no such urgency to my call; embarrassingly, I was taking the opportunity of a boring drive home to catch up with a friend back east. I was sufficiently chastened that I hoped the cop might let me go with a warning, but it was not to be; he wrote me a ticket and encouraged me to get a hands-free device.

What can I say? As the Brits put it, "It's a fair cop." I was totally guilty. If my kid was doing it, I'd be furious, so I could hardly make excuses for doing it myself. I resolved then and there to put my cell phone down while I'm driving, and to pull over if I had to make a call, and I've stuck to it. So I guess it's a just and effective law.

This didn't mean, of course, that I wanted to pay the fine of over two hundred bucks, so I looked into taking an online traffic class. Trying to enroll in the CHEAP EASY FAST Arizona Defensive Driving video course, I soon found that all three of the titular adjectives were questionable. Between the tuition and various other fees, the course came to an amount remarkably close to the amount of the fine. Not so cheap, then. But I didn't want a conviction, even a no-points conviction, on my record, so I signed up anyway.

Turns out that by law, the course has to be at least four hours long. So the claim that it's "fast" is based on the fact that it's as fast as is legally allowed. And easy? Well, the multiple-choice quiz questions are easy enough as long as you listen carefully to the video segments, but if you fail to catch a tidbit of information that's asked and guess wrong, you have to watch the whole segment over again from the beginning, and some of the segments are more than ten minutes long. So for me, the class, which after weeks of procrastination I finally took a week or so ago, lasted well over four hours, alas.

What I didn't expect in all this, is that the course would be hosted by bugs.

Not Bugs Bunny; bugs. As in insects. Billy, who appears to be a purple stag beetle with mandibles rising over his head like Viking horns, is the courteous, slightly stuffy host. His cohosts are Larry the Locust, a sensualist who thinks mainly of his stomach...

...and Beatrice, or possibly Bee-Atrice, the Honeybee...

As they explain, who better to teach us about driving safety then the hapless creatures who regularly splat into our windshields? And teach they do, in comprehensive, sometimes repetitive detail and at a leisurely pace; it led me to the suspicion at times that they were vamping to fill up the four hours. There's a surprisingly philosophical deep dive into the psychology of driving, as when they note that road rage can result when our "belief system is challenged," as well as of the physical impacts of poor driving, as when they note that anger management reduces the chance of a heart attack by 44%.

This unhurried atmosphere also allows for rich character development and interpersonal dynamics between the bugs. For instance, when Billy reproves Larry for his tardiness and self-indulgence, Beatrice challenges him for unfair self-pity. Maybe it's just me, but I thought I detected a hint of sexual tension between Billy and Beatrice.

Even with all of this, however, Billy, Larry and Beatrice are not sufficient to fill the time requirement all by themselves. Much of their role is introducing video segments on safe driving sourced from all over the place, especially YouTube. At least one came from England; a likable young Brit calculates the kinetic energy of two vehicles at different speeds.

There's candor, too, as when Scottsdale-based lawyer Robert Gruler of the R&R law firm discusses how commonly Arizona police officers hand out the charge of Criminal Speeding: "It's ridiculous, but they do it." The effect of this jumble of information offered in a jumble of formats and presided over by arthropods was deeply weird. It was also, I must sheepishly admit, informative and thought-provoking.

At one point Billy and his pals note that as we age, our senses and reaction times lose their sharpness. When I looked up the life spans of the stag beetle (1-2 years) the locust and the honeybee (both under a year) it gave this lesson an extra poignancy, especially considering that you have to have your learner's permit for at least six months.

E PLURIBIS YUM

The cover story in the January/February issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands...

...is "Eatin' in the USA," in which you learn where you can get a signature dish from all fifty states without leaving the Valley. Your Humble Narrator is proud to have been one of the authors; see if you can guess the ten states I covered. Hint: I wasn't assigned my beloved home state of Pennsylvania, but I did get to do one of its neighbors, with a dish also relished in my home town of Erie.

SHOWERS AND BLADES

Happy Psycho Day everybody!

That's right, December 11 (at two-forty-three p.m.) is the day when, according to the opening titles, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho begins, right here in Phoenix, Arizona...

Saturday before last was, by Phoenix standards, pretty rainy. Your Humble Narrator was driving home up I-17 and listening to Reel Music, the movie music show on KBAQ...

...which was devoted that evening to scores from Hitchcock flicks. So there I was, listening to Bernard Herrmann's great theme from Psycho, with my windshield wipers keeping time, and it occurred to me that this was likely as close as I would ever get to knowing what it felt like to be Janet Leigh...

GOIN' TO THE CANDIDATES' NON-DEBATE

Earlier this week the candidates for Governor of Arizona appeared onstage at the Herberger Theater Center in downtown Phoenix. But they didn't appear together.

Arizona Secretary of State and Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs and former Fox 10 anchor and 45-endorsed Republican candidate Kari Lake were both presented at a "Town Hall" event, connected to the National Conference of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Hobbs has declined to publicly debate or engage with Lake, which kept the main body of the event dull, but led to a bit of striking political theatre in its opening minutes.

Sitting in one of two armchairs, the moderator, Univision's León Krauze, announced that he would interview the candidates separately, and that the format, which both sides had agreed to, would not include questions from the audience. Not exactly a town hall, but whatever (I wasn't recording and had no way to take notes, by the way, so I'm relying on memory for these quotes). He cautioned the audience to be respectful of both candidates on pain of expulsion, and then, after some remarks from USHCC bigwigs... there was an uncomfortable pause. Krauze turned to a corner of the front row and said "Ms. Lake, will you go to your agreed-upon area backstage?"

Lake rose from a seat, resplendent in purple, saying that she would like a chance to be onstage with Hobbs. Krauze gently but firmly reminded her that she had agreed to the terms of the event, and would she please go. All wounded innocence, she kept up the resistance for a while. Krauze even offered to let her go first, but of course she wasn't about to let herself be the opening act; she departed, to applause, with an entourage in her wake. The stunt was effective--she painted Hobbs as chicken.

Krauze then left the stage, came back, and repeated his opening speech almost word for word. This time Hobbs came out from the opposite wing, took the seat opposite him and started answering his questions. It was the first time I had ever heard her speak outside of her campaign commercials, and I felt bad for her. She gave sensible mainstream answers about immigration, education, water conservation and abortion rights, but in a diffident, almost apologetic manner. She seemed less like a candidate and more like a nervous staffer pressed into service in a spin room.

Toward the end of her time, Hobbs was asked if her lifetime in Arizona had given her an appreciation of any particular aspect of Hispanic culture here. She seemed caught off guard by the question, and haltingly talked about how much she enjoys spending time with the family of a Hispanic in-law. Listening to her ramble, I was whispering to myself "hard work...strong family...hard work...strong family..." Finally she got there, noting that she admired the community's "family values and hard work," but it was the kind of softball question that an Arizona candidate ought to be able to riff on endlessly (and sincerely) without effort.

After Hobbs was excused to polite applause, Lake was invited out, and swept onstage like she owned the place, while three or four people in the row in front of me gave her a standing ovation. She responded smoothly and confidently to the questions, making frequent direct eye contact with the audience. She was every inch a broadcast veteran, with an impressive command of the rhetorical skills at which Hobbs was at best adequate.

She complained again about Hobbs refusing to debate her, calling her "a coward" and saying that she had also taken a pass on debating her Democratic primary opponent, former Nogales mayor and Obama staffer Marco Lopez, who Lake conceded is a "smart guy"; she said that if Hobbs had debated him he'd be onstage instead of Hobbs, and she fretted that Hobbs had "denied the people of Arizona" this. It didn't seem to occur to Lake that if she was right on this point, Hobbs had clearly chosen the better strategy in her run against Lopez, since she did win the primary.

As to the issues, Lake spoke in a folksy, easygoing way about the usual incendiary Fox News talking points, claiming that she would, for instance, declare an "invasion" at the southern border in "the first hour" of her administration, not only mobilizing the Arizona National Guard but bringing in troops from Texas and Florida. Asked if Joe Biden was the legitimate President of the United States, she shrugged and said "he's sitting in the White House"; Krauze was having none of this attempt to punt and pressed her, so she said that "the election was corrupt" and that no, in her opinion his presidency was illegitimate.

On to the main course: When Krauze asked her, as a "hypothetical which sadly isn't so hypothetical" case, whether a 12-year-old who was raped by a family member should be able to get an abortion, she tried briefly to dodge the question, but when pressed admitted that she thought such a victim should be able to get an abortion "if she wants one." She quickly added that such cases were extremely rare, and went on to say that her opponent believes in late-term abortion up to the point of birth "and after." She did not cite any information as to whether late-term abortions are more or less common than pregnancies caused by rape of the underaged, or suggest how the exceptions she apparently believes in to the abortion ban would be provided for legally.

In terms of presentational polish, there can be no denying that Lake is much the more capable and media-savvy candidate. It's very probable this is indeed the reason that Hobbs prefers not to spar with her face-to-face. But listening to Lake talk, it overwhelmingly seemed to me--and there were clearly many people in that audience who felt differently--that she was both condescendingly phony and, well...guano-esquely unbalanced (politically and socially speaking, that is).

Hobbs may feel that she's no match for Lake in a public forum, and if so she's probably right, and it unfortunately hands Lake a stick with which to beat her. But Hobbs is also quite justified, I think, in feeling that "debating" this person, allowing herself to be heckled and interrupted by a slick, experienced media professional who's also a political nutjob, is unworthy of her time.

At one point, Lake noted that pro-abortion activists all had "the luxury of being born." Listening to Lake for twenty minutes, I admit that I was less certain that being born was a luxury.

FESTIES

The 18th edition of Phoenix Film Festival...

...and the simultaneous International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival...

...kick off Thursday. Check out my preview, online at Phoenix Magazine.

WHY YOU SOV

Ever heard of "SOV Horror?" Until quite recently, I had not. It stands for "Shot-on-video horror," and refers to the gruesome, tawdry, very low-budget shockers that tended to clutter the shelves of video rental stores back in the '80s and '90s.

I was unaware that fandom of this mostly disreputable class of flicks was a thing, despite the fact that I appear (very briefly) in such a movie, one that I'm told is now well-regarded as a classic of the kind, and that I also made a (very minor) contribution to its script. The opus in question is Writer's Block: Truth or Dare 2; Playing for Keeps.

It isn't really a sequel. The convoluted title comes from the movie's vague relationship to Tim Ritter's Truth or Dare, a popular SOV gorefest made in Florida in 1986. Ritter's opus is watched obsessively by Elliot (Jeffrey C. Hawkins), the psycho killer in Writer's Block, but otherwise the movie, directed and co-written by my friend Chris LaMont, is free-standing.

The hero of Writer's Block is Jack (Joey Michitsch), a young horror novelist suffering from the title affliction. Under the opening titles, you can see Your Humble Narrator as "The Woodcutter," the title character in the movie-within-the-movie based on one of Jack's books, plodding along with an axe, in not very frightening pursuit of three lovely young ladies in bikini tops and jean shorts, out for a "midnight skinny dip." This may arguably give me the distinction of being the most obscure (and least scary) masked, axe-wielding maniac in horror movie history.

When "cut" is called on the set of the movie-within-the-movie, my pal Dave Gofstein also appears, as the assistant director who offers the cast and crew pizza. As I recall, Dave's line was more important than mine, as it was a product placement for Peter Piper. Despite the woodsy setting, these scenes were shot in central Phoenix, at Whitfill Nurseries on Glendale Avenue near 8th Street.

LaMont had also asked me, along with several other local writers, to do some work on the script. A few lines of my dialogue may be heard in the very last scene of the movie.

I had hardly thought about Writer's Block in the 27 years or so since it was made. I certainly had no idea that it had a following on VHS. But apparently it does, and now it's been released, for the first time, on DVD from SOVHorror. It was fun to hear LaMont's amusing, self-deprecating audio commentary, reminding me, for instance, that the crew blew out the power at the nursery the night we shot there. Also among the "Special Features" is a "Director's Cut," presenting the flick entirely in black and white. This was how I watched it, and it truly did look better that way.

Along with Dave, it was a jolt to see other old friends from the Phoenix-area theatre, like Jeff Hawkins, John King, Kevin Cleere and the dear, late Tim Reader, turn up in the crowded cast. It's a cliche, but I can't help it: Were we ever really that young? Somebody seems to have taken a blade to The Woodcutter's head of hair.

PARTY HOPPING

Happy September everybody!

Check out, on Phoenix Magazine online, some hard-hitting reportage by Your Humble Narrator about the odd political signage from my part of town...

...regarding the race for Moon Valley Justice of the Peace. Also, check out the September issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands...

...for the "Love Your Downtown" cover story (page 66, or here), to which Your Humble Narrator also contributed; I got to cover the glamorous downtowns of Glendale, Peoria, Wickenburg and (online only) the Southwest Valley communities of Avondale, Goodyear and Buckeye.

ALL FOR THE BEST

One of the most unimportant casualties of the pandemic, by far, has been my "Four Corners" restaurant column in Phoenix Magazine. But Your Humble Narrator did get to contribute some half-dozen or so items to the magazine's 2020 "Best of the Valley" issue, now on the stands...

See if you can tell which ones I wrote!

A CLEAR & DANGEROUS PRESENT

Your Humble Narrator was taking a lunchtime hike in Papago Park when I came across this in the trail…

Seemed ominous. I didn’t open it.

LORD OF THE RINGS

OK, now it’s my turn to tell my version of the story about that time I met Muhammad Ali:

This was at a soup kitchen in South Phoenix somewhere, I don’t remember when exactly, but it would have been in the late ‘90s or very early 2000s, when I was at New Times. It was late on a Friday afternoon, and I think it was around the holidays, as Ali was there to put in some volunteer work and promote the place.

He showed up right on time, got out of the limo, hobbled over to the surprisingly few media people who had shown up, smiled, shook our hands, and mock-punched at a few of us, including me. Then we followed him into the kitchen, where he was adorned in an apron and toque, and started serving diners.

Lots of people have better stories about Ali than this fleeting encounter, especially here  in the Valley where he became such a public part of the community (some years later I glanced up while walking across a parking lot and saw the words “HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHAMP” sky-written over Paradise Valley). And my take-away from it isn’t anything special, either: Simply that the man had charisma. Even limited by his illness—he didn’t speak at that event, at least not while I was within earshot of him—he had a riveting presence.

Inconsequential as this meeting was to anyone else, however, it meant something to me, because even though I’ve never been a boxing fan, I had been a fan of Ali since childhood. I vividly remember the early ‘70s, when Ali’s bouts with Joe Frazier were talked about constantly, and the boys I went to school with in mostly white and heavily racist rural Pennsylvania, undoubtedly following what their dads told them, rooted for Frazier, because Ali was seen as uppity. I always preferred Ali, however, because he was funny. I was terribly disappointed when he lost the “Fight of the Century” in ’71, and my classmates crowed triumphantly.

Lots of people are also far better equipped than I am to discuss Ali as athlete, activist and man. But in ensuing decades, during which he became one of the most widely admired people in the world—one of the few people toward whom the Irony Generation seemed willing to show some reverence—I have also wondered at times if it’s Ali we have to thank for the culture of “trash-talk” and braggadocio that in recent years has largely replaced modesty and civility as the ideal in sportsmanship, and now other spheres, notably the political.

Ali’s boastful riffs are in the ancient Plautine tradition of the Miles Gloriosus, the Braggart Warrior, but Ali took this persona to a different level—he gave it validity and beauty. He sometimes took his act too far, by his own admission (he apologized publicly, albeit years later, for some of his taunts at Frazier, for instance) but his routines, delivered in that mellow yet subtly provoking voice, were always witty, playful and—most important—undergirded by a palpable love of humankind. If contemporary athletes, celebrities and political figures imagine that their blustering self-aggrandizement and mindless insulting of rivals are somehow Ali-esque, they’re very much mistaken.

RIP Champ.

DIVERSITY, PHOENIX STYLE

A sign on a business The Kid and I passed:

I don’t know, does it make you want to be nice to them?

On an unrelated note: A friend of mine sent me this picture of a toy he says he found on the shelf of a discount/closeout store back east, noting that he was shocked to see the kid on the box flashing gang signs:

He says he later found it online and posted a question about it, and that two suppliers replied that they were dropping it from their inventory. I’m relieved of course, but honestly I’m too naïve to have recognized those as gang signs; I would have thought the kid was just gesturing his satisfaction at scoring an awesome new wooden locomotive and steamroller.

On yet another unrelated note: Something has been on my mind since the other day when I happened to hear, on the radio, Kenny Loggins singing “Danger Zone” from the 1986 Top Gun soundtrack. Now I’ve heard that song way too many times over the years, but I don’t think that the full insipidity of the chorus ever struck me before:

Highway to the Danger Zone

Gonna take you right into the Danger Zone

[repeat with emphasis on different words]

For now, let’s set aside the fact whatever Cole Porter it was who wrote these lyrics rhymed the word “Zone” with the word “Zone.” Let’s focus, instead, on the content—on what the song is telling us. It’s telling us that the highway to the Danger Zone is going to take us right into the Danger Zone.

When I complained about this to The Wife, she wearily suggested that in her opinion, the lines are discrete from each other, not intended as a single sentence but as a repetition for effect. And maybe she’s right. But I still question whether “Danger Zone” represents the highest achievement of the American songwriter’s art.

FREEZE FAME

It’s often a hundred and twelve degrees here in the Valley. For years, I’d spend much of the day working outside, reflecting that the cliché was true—it is a dry heat. Like a kiln. By the time I’d collapse on my couch, I’d feel as dried out as a clay pot, and as fragile.

On Arizona summer days like this, I would lament the lack of a cure readily available to citizens of my beloved home town of Erie, Pennsylvania: Rita’s Italian Ice, in my never-very-humble opinion America’s greatest frozen dessert chain. Why, I’d wonder, was this chilly ambrosia not available out here in the sweltering land of the Zonies, where we could really use it? But almost two years ago, I became aware that a few Rita’s franchises had indeed opened around the Phoenix area.

The dish we call Italian Ice—or sometimes, rather redundantly, “water ice”—comes by its name honestly; it really does go way back in Italian history. It’s claimed that Nero himself would send slaves to the mountaintops near the Eternal City to collect snow, which would then be hustled back to the feast and mixed with fruit and other sweeteners. Back in dear old Erie, at least during the brief summers, we never had to resort to such hassles to enjoy this refreshing treat.

We just had to betake ourselves to the Rita’s on Gore Road, just off upper Peach Street, and walk up to the little window, and for a ridiculously low price a sweet-faced teenage girl would hand us a cup of Italian Ice fit for a Roman Emperor. If it was a particularly lucky day, the menu would include Wild Black Cherry. If so, I might buy a large, and sit on the concrete step and luxuriate in the scrumptious flavor and the humid but comparatively pleasant Pennsylvania afternoon. The sign at Rita’s reads “Ice Custard Happiness,” and I’d be hard pressed to disagree.

Rita’s menu has, within its limited scope of cool treats, a lot of variety. A dozen or so different flavors of ice are offered, some daily, others every few days, along with chocolate or vanilla soft-serve custards—my ten-year-old favors the chocolate, straight up. These may be blended with the ice for a “Misto” drink, or for a “Blendini,” which may be topped with Reese’s cups, M&Ms, Oreos and other such goodies.

Polluting pure, innocent Italian ice in this manner is acceptable for a little kid, I suppose, but for an adult it’s an appalling vulgarity. The same goes for some of the queasy, gimmicky flavors of ice that show up under Rita’s glass from time to time, like Swedish Fish or Red Velvet Cake or Cotton Candy or Peeps. Don’t misunderstand; Peeps are the greatest Easter candy ever invented, but delicious as they are, they aren’t what you’d normally call refreshing.

I always make a point of asking for a sample of these freaky, rich flavors when I see one I haven’t encountered before, and the gracious staff always obliges me with a tiny cupful and a tiny spoon. Every time, I have the same reaction—that they taste amazingly like what they’re called, in frozen liquid form, and that while one taste is a delight, a whole cup would be oppressive to a mature palate.

Not every adult shares this view, however. Asked to name his favorite flavor, Zach Cobian, co-owner of the Tempe Rita’s at McClintock and Elliot, says “Birthday Cake. I don’t even like sweet things all that much, but for some reason I love it.”

Well, enjoy to your heart’s content. But after I sample such kid stuff, I then buy what I came in for—Wild Black Cherry. Make no mistake, even among Rita’s flavors it’s a stunner—deeply sweet but not cloying, and studded with fleshy bits of real cherry. Indeed, while in a pinch I’ll settle for Rita’s standard non-wild Cherry, or Mango, or Juicy Pear, or “Alex’s Lemonade,” I rarely go into the place unless I’ve been informed by email that the Wild Black Cherry is on the menu that day. When it is, I usually buy a couple of quarts to take home and freeze—it’s very revivable by means of a microwave zap and some patient stirring. There are four quarts of it my freezer at this writing.

One minor warning, however: Wild Black Cherry will turn your lips and tongue a gory, arterial scarlet. If I was directing a vampire movie, I would make the actors eat it between takes.