PHXations—Saturday, January 30
For an appearance by Anvil, the heavy metal band, at the Marquee Tuesday, the club will screen the documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil before the show. Details here.
Hard to recommend the show, however—it’s another one of those Marquee service-fee-ripoff specials where a $19 advertised ticket magicks its way up to $27.75 after three separate exorbitant service fees—a 46 percent tariff.
Matthew Moore has an installation at Sundance. It’s set in a Park City grocery store, and consists of time-lapse films of vegetables growing—with free food besides. Details from the festival here.
Moore is a sculptor, filmmaker and I guess you’d call it conceptual artist, who uses his farm west of Phoenix, now in its fourth generation of family ownership, as a fulcrum for his interests.
PHXated liked this Moore apercu: “Instead of pointing fingers I started pointing thumbs, and start to dissect how we distribute food.” His website is here.
8:18 PM
Fear & Loathing in Maricopa County
The Republic yesterday had a depressing story about how what it calls the “rank and file” in Maricopa County government have been coping with the tensions induced by Joe Arpaio. With the grand jury investigating Arpaio, some employees are talking.
Now, as they wait to see what will happen, a cross-section of county employees spoke with The Arizona Republic, talking publicly for the first time about life inside the county offices during the political battles, lawsuits and arrests going on above them at the highest levels of county government.
Among the details:
Others worried that even minor infractions – a chipped windshield, having a beer before driving home after work – would be an excuse for deputies to pull them over or arrest them.
One Superior Court judge moved meetings with her staff and other judges to the chamber restroom, believing it would be a less likely spot for a listening device.
7:05 PM
How bad is Arizona's financial situation?
Here’re some details from the Tucson Weekly, which is crunching state budget numbers:
• The total tax take for the month was $681 million, which was more than $90 million below forecast.
• In the first six months of the fiscal year, tax collections have shrunk 16.7 percent compared to the previous year.
• Sales taxes were off by 10 percent in December. Merchants can be happy that the retail sector was only off by 3 percent, but construction workers lost out as contracting taxes dropped by more than 36 percent. Sales tax collections, by the way, have been shrinking for 23 months.
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7:09 PM
What's up at the EVT?
Here’s the feature well of the East Valley Tribune’s site right now:
The top story—the cop tragedy in Gilbert—is two days old. The bottom one is about … a book reading at a library? From the outside it looks like the paper isn’t staffing its website over the weekend.
8:43 PM
What's up with Hollywood Video?
I had an account at Hollywood Video for emergencies, at least until they started robocalling me at home to try to get me to enroll in a monthly subscription program.
The parent company, which calls itself Movie Gallery, had already been in bankruptcy once, so I wasn’t surprised to see various stores around town closing, though many remain open. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that it’s probably going back into bankruptcy, possibly next week:
As part of the restructuring, Movie Gallery could attempt to close about two-thirds of its outlets—about 1,800 stores, these people said. That could create a significant number of layoffs, given the company currently employs 21,000.
In an initial wave, Movie Gallery plans to shutter just over 800 stores, these people said, and then make plans for further closures.
The story notes that Netflix, vending machines like Redbox, and even iTunes is eating into the video-rental business—but read on and you can see the real culprit:
Movie Gallery’s troubles began after it took on too much debt to acquire Hollywood Entertainment Corp. in 2005 for more than $800 million. The company, which no longer reports financial results, has aggressively tried to cut costs, closing about 500 stores last year. It carries about $600 million in debt today.
11:15 PM
A Scottsdale handcuff manufacturer is getting some naughty ideas
The Phoenix Business Journal reports that a new company, Scottsdale Inventions, is marketing a next-generation set of handcuffs: One that wou;d allow cops to give prisoners a shock if they had to. (You can read part of the story here.
The paper says the company thinks the idea might work in the bedroom, too:
The idea for a consumer version of the cuffs came from Colone getting swamped with ads for adult-oriented products during Web searches. He said it dawned on him that the proliferation of those ads might lead the company to another product — one that would allow consumers to play out their own version of “good cop, bad cop” behind closed doors.
The company plans to make and market a less powerful product, dubbed Funcuffs, to consumers, keeping stock on hand to ship through distributors or sell online.
11:29 PM
What are the most active arts venues in town?
The PBJ has a list this week of the area’s arts centers, ranked by the number of people who walk through their doors annually. Here’s the top five:
1) Symphony Hall, with 350,000 attendees at 250 performances
2) Mesa Arts Center, with 300,000 attendees at more than 1000 events. (The venue has four theaters and other event spaces.)
3) US Airways Center: 300,000 attendees. (No events total is given.)
4) Chandler Center for the Arts: 286,000 attendees at 250 events
5) Grady Gammage Auditorium: 284,000 at 43 events
Cricket (260,000) and the Dodge (200,000) are right behind. A note at the bottom says that Jobing.com Arena didn’t participate in the survey, which seems a bit churlish. Unmentioned is the Celebrity Theatre.
11:58 PM