Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (June 25

Skinny GETTING EVEN MADDER: Brenda Even's hokey sign-off at campaign appearances, "Don't get mad, get Even," was heard a couple weeks back in Green Valley at the ribbon-cutting for a slip-and-fall type health center that she and Ray Carroll attended. Ever the charming Irish rogue, Sugar Ray recognized Even's work in health areas and invited her to help cut the ribbon.
Afterward, Even lashed out at Carroll, saying she saw right through him. She ripped Carroll for "writing" an article bylined by Chris Limberis in this journal which criticized her tax-and-spend record at TUSD ("The Tax Lady Sings," June 11). Wow--Sugar Ray can do it all!
But Even wasn't done. Following the ceremony, she called the John C. Scott Show on her cell phone to find the obsequious host at the ready to join in the denunciation of the "crude" Weekly.
"I have just finished talking to Ray," Brenda told Scott's listeners, "to say one-on-one, basically do not, do not in any way bring my late husband into this issue."
(Never mind that Carroll said nothing, in Green Valley or in The Weekly, about John Even).
"This is a campaign," Even continued during her radio appearance. "I am committed to the people of District 4. I will be an excellent, uh, supervisor. But I am not about to discuss the loss of my husband. I recognize that has taken place. I recognize that every day of my life. And I want to make it very clear that I think that is off limits and inappropriate and, I would believe, that (Carroll's) campaign, his supporters, his followers--and that includes The Weekly--simply have no standards. That is definitely below the belt. I would not do that and I do not wish anyone to do that to me. And I needed to make that really clear."
Even's admonition hadn't taken shape a day earlier, when she chatted with another KTKT hack, barker Bert Lee. Here's a sample:
Lee: "I think your courage perhaps showed itself most in the last days of your husband's life. How long ago did John pass away?"
Even: "John died about 14 months ago."
Lee: "Will you ever get over it?"
Even: "Well, I think that's one of those things if you've been with someone for a long period of time, it's very difficult to get over. But we don't have too many choices here."
Lee: "I'm so glad you said that. Because in my own experience, 68, almost 69 years of it, nobody is ever dead as long as once person remains upright who loved them and remembered them."
Even: "That's right."
Lee: "So Abraham Lincoln is alive to me. John Kennedy will always be alive. Frank Sinatra will always be alive. And to you, John Even will always be alive."
But back to Brenda's appearance on the Scott show. Fired up after her misdirected chewing of Sugar Ray, Even reeled off some reassuring qualifications for a political candidate: "I am not stupid. I am not impossible. And I am not irrelevant."
Sigh...
It's time to point out to readers, voters and Brenda Even herself that she and her crowd are responsible for John Even being part of this campaign. When she sought appointment to the seat last year, Even and her camp talked about how she would best continue his "legacy." And when her ambition went unfulfilled, she launched a run that has lifted directly from John Even's campaign materials.
So just who is trying to raise the dead?
EVEN MORE! Educator/ administrator Carolyn Kemmeries and TUSD board member Brenda Even were big pals when they were neighbors in the Peyton Place that is Wilshire Heights. Some of their kids are particularly close.
Imagine Kemmeries' shock when the gals got together for lunch recently. Orange hair ablazing as she races for the Board of Supervisors, Even coldly told her former dear neighbor: "I hope you are not going to ask me for my support."
Even reportedly told Kemmeries she's giving all her support to her tool on the TUSD board, Gloria Copeland, who appears--and deserves--to be a one-termer.
The Even-Kemmeries estrangement is almost as pronounced as the schism between The Rev. Joel T. Ireland and fellow TUSD board member James Noel ("If I Were A Carpenter") Christ. Everyone at TUSD is talking about the blood feud between these former buddies who once shared and shared alike.
ST. JOHN'S PILGRIMAGE: Ron St. John is leaving his cushy $57,377-a-year job as stand-in for Board of Supervisors Chairman Mikey Boyd to head off to Romania. He'll be working in a Washington-concocted program to teach Romanians about politics right down to the precinct level. No doubt they'll learn from St. John's experience running for the District 13 House seat in 1996.
As you might recall, St. John put an early squeeze on some big contributors, assembling a formidable warchest almost a year before the election. In the following months, he pissed away more than $20,000 in campaign booty on rental cars, tires for the rental car (mysteriously purchased before the car was rented), books, a computer and software, Brooks Brothers shirts, and other frills. St. John then dropped out well before the election, citing his partner's inability to get work.
He also dropped out of sight after a stint as Boyd's chief deputy in 1989, when Boyd was the county recorder. St. John left the country then as well, not long after filing for bankruptcy.
He'll be replaced by the stalwart who also replaced him at the Recorder's Office, Toni Hellon, who brought order, efficiency and accountability to that office. (Of course all those advances were lost when Boyd brought in Matt Halle, who so severely hurt Boyd in his first year as a supervisor that St. John actually did a good job of propping the aging pretty-boy Boyd back up.)
Hellon is smart and straightforward. She's the county Republican Party boss as well as the head of Gov. Jane Dee Hull's southern Arizona campaign crew. Her husband Mike is chairman of the state Republican Party and a Republican national committeeman.
The trouble for Boyd: Toni won't start until after the November 3 general election. Boyd aide Norma Soto DeBonis already is overworked and underpaid. We wish Mikey were bright enough to call for his own tee times.
DANNY ECKSTROM'S NIGHT OF GOLDEN MEMORIES: Supervisor Dan Eckstrom is well known for his fundraising techniques. Eckstrom has an edge over most other pols in this department because he not only uses those talents for something other than himself, but does so with a sense of humor.
Eckstrom has always done a lot for the Pio Decimo Center, and at 6 p.m. Friday, July 17, at Kino Veteran's Memorial Center, 2805 East Ajo Way, he's set up a $15-a-head celebration to raise money for youth activities at the John A. Valenzuela Youth Center. Money raised will support scholarships at Pima College and the UA and other youth programs.
Entertaining at this Celebracion de la Comunida will be Mariachi Tapatio and Ballet Folklorico Tapatio, while political cartoonist David "Fitz" Fitzsimmons of the morning daily will be serving as emcee. Fitz can bring the house down all by himself, but Eckstrom has set up additional entertainment with a silent auction and raffle for one-of-a-kind tickets.
How about a chance to sit down for a special lunch, served at the Kino Hospital Cafeteria, with county health czar Dr. Deputy Richard Carmona and his political nemesis, Supervisor Sharon Bronson? Or another with former Supervisor Ed Moore and the man he canned, former County Manager Enrique Serna? Or a special lunch with Eckstrom himself and City Councilman Steve Leal where they actually pay! (Of course, it'll have to be at a cheap all-you-can-eat joint.)
Bravo, Danny. A good cause. Would that there were more public officials with your attitude.
SLICIN' AND DICIN': In his most recent convoluted decision, Pima County Superior Court Judge Michael Brown has refused to grant injunctive relief to the Town of Tortolita, which is trying to fend off annexation attempts by Oro Valley while Tortolita appeals an appellate court decision declaring the nascent town to be illegally incorporated. Currently, there's no court order declaring Tortolita or that other upstart town, Casas Adobes, out of existence, but Brown apparently is deciding on the basis of what he feels the Arizona Supreme Court's decision will be. That poses the question: Does Brown have inside information, or is he merely arrogant?
His decision allows Oro Valley to go ahead with five separate land grabs that would destroy Tortolita as a viable community.
But this pathetic farce is made worse by the two-faced statements of Oro Valley Vice-Mayor Paul Parisi, who claims he's always supported the right of Tortolita to incorporate. But Parisi has simultaneously supported those annexations that would keep Tortolita from happening. Now he has the audacity to speak from both sides of his mouth by saying Oro Valley planned to annex all that stuff anyway, and some current Tortolita residents took part in the Oro Valley planning process.
Here's the story Paul doesn't tell: It's general knowledge that Marana and Oro Valley officials met in a coffee shop over on Ina Road a few years back and drew a line down Shannon Road. Everything east, Oro Valley; everything west, Marana (kind of like when Stalin and Hitler divvied up Poland). That some current Tortolita residents were invited to watch Oro Valley officials explain their plans for them doesn't sanctify their actions.
If Parisi had any integrity, he'd just say, "Screw you--we want that dirt for Oro Valley to take care of our friends, the land speculators who own it." That would at least be honest, Paul.
Now you know why Parisi is a target of the latest recall attempt, led by his former running mate in Oro Valley's previous recall, former councilman Rudy Roszak. Oro Valley's "manifest destiny" approach to annexation hasn't benefited Oro Valley residents. It's just another example of how tightly the Growth Lobby owns its stooges.
WAITING ROOM: The Pima County Board of Supervisors has extended the contract of Pima Health Service Director Dr. Deputy Richard Carmona by 90 days at his current salary of $15,000 a month. The Pima Health Commission, which will forward its final recommendation to the supes for ratification, apparently needs more time to sift through the many applicants for the job--which means those who thought Carmona already had the position wired may have been jumping to conclusions.
There are rumblings by some Pima Health Commission members about Carmona's management style, and it's clear that two of the five supes--Sharon Bronson and Dan Eckstrom--not only don't want Carmona in charge, but dislike the whole system and would disband it and place the power back with its statutory authority, the supervisors themselves. That makes it a little difficult to attract $180,000-a-year a talent, and thus the commission has decided to take a longer look.
In the meantime, Carmona is still the health czar, but he's not looking quite as powerful as he did a short time back.
JUST SITTIN' ON THE PORCH O' THE DAY, WASTIN' YO' TI-YI-YIME: Rain pours down in sheets as The Skinny sits on the porch of our first Tucson apartment on Second Street in the West University area. We're dry. It's 1977 and a gaggle of vacuous local magazines have been skimmed and tossed aside at our feet. The dope we've been smoking has made all that pointless, kiss-ass journalism seem like, really, really, uh, whatever, man. Like the people who create them, they're slick, these magazines, even slippery when wet.
But that was years ago, and now these magazines wouldn't be caught dead in the West University area, since their publishers mail them, free of charge, only to rich people in the foothills who buy useless, fancy crap by the truckload. Yes, we watch the rain drip steadily into our cheap duplex, put our feet up on a low brick wall and imagine a large bundle of cash, or perhaps a vice president of sales and marketing, could float out the door any minute.
Must be the dope writing this stuff.
It's 1980, and we're in our second apartment in Tucson. We're avoiding work on term papers for educationally disadvantaged rich kids at the UA who will later go on to read those local slick magazines with nothing in them. The kids' rhetorical skills are only slightly more disjointed than our own.
A hedge of upper-class privilege separates us from the rabble as we become inexplicably mesmerized by the mist bouncing off the waxy green stacks of crisp, $20 bills decorating our porch. The 20-degree drop in temperature in the last 15 minutes makes us think of, oh, we don't know, maybe belting down another stiff one so that we can continue writing this drivel and fill our allotted space, which stares us in the face every damn month after unprofitable month.
We remember every porch of every place we ever lived, which is a lot more than we can say about the pointless journalistic pufferies we churn out every month, even resorting to pimping our childhood memories in an effort to fill that bottomless maw of space. Sure, we could go out and do some actually reporting, but that would require mixing with the great unwashed, the unyuppies to whom we don't send our slickly empty publication. God, what a waste of marketing effort they are.
This summer, when the rains begin one afternoon, or evening, or perhaps in the late afternoon, right after our coffee break, but before we send out for Chinese because our editorial staff is deserting us like rats from a sinking ship, find a porch somewhere. And for godsakes, keep on turning out that bilge, because we'll publish it--just as long as it has nothing to do with what's happening in the real world.
Welcome our advertisers to this, the dampness of our season of the yuppie rain shtick, well, at some point this summer, although who knows when, and we'll probably be in Montana anyway.

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