JAVA Country Bar Roundup

For JAVA Magazine - May, 2010

(Miss Brittany Doster at Shotgun Betty's)

This ain't yer grand-pappy's Western scene, young 'un. The days when REAL cowboys frequented bars in the downtowns of Phoenix, Scottsdale or Tempe ended in the 1970's, if not earlier, and the establishments which catered to them ended as well. What replaced them were bars, steak restaurants and lounges which chose western-ness as a theme to attract the growing tourist and college dollars.

If you seriously want to get in with the crowd that knows how to castrate a bull (properly, I mean), then you'll have to head out of town. Go to Wickenburg, Casa Grande or Coolidge. Just remember, REAL ranch folk party a little differently. They're up and out before dawn, and in the sack (sleeping) by 8pm.

If you want to get your country groove on, but do NOT want to have to feign interest in the latest hilarious insemination mishap, the Valley proper has you covered. The past few years have seen the emergence of several new venues for those looking to scoot their boots, along with the demise of others. Here we present a roundup of some of the hottest of the kicker bars in the area. One thing is for sure in the Valley - when it comes to Western, there's something for nearly everybody, even if you don't own a hoof pick.

Hot Off The Grill Country

When trends ignite, club owners scramble to cash in, and the collection of clubs that spring up are often a mixed bag. Such is the case in downtown Scottsdale at the moment, where three new clubs are hoping to ride the current cow-person trend through to the end. They are Saddle Ranch Chophouse, Shotgun Betty's and Revolver. One of these places definitely has some charm.

Saddle Ranch (Scottsdale Rd between Fifth Avenue and Drinkwater) is the Western bar Disney would build if Disney still built bars. It's sort of like a double decker Cracker Barrel restaurant, but with booze and more expensive meat. Although the space is cavernous, the central mechanical bull ring doesn't leave much room for dancing, unless it's in the main thoroughfare to the bathrooms. There's a lot of staff running around talking to one another, but they seem to leave the patrons pretty much alone.

While the mechanical bull is a unique attraction in the area, it doesn't take long to figure out that it's not the "bull's" good side you have to get on, but the dude in the booth with his hand on his joystick, CONTROLLING the bull. Basic rule: Hottie girls stay on as the dude bumps and grinds them via his cyber-bovine proxy / too-drunk frat guys get spanked (not in a good way.) Though this may be a suitable ethos in many respects, it spoils the notion that chance or skill are really at play, and means that the bull thing gets boring real fast. If you DO decide to ride, however, remember to tip the joystick dude. Got yer back.

One final word about Saddle Ranch - I was referred to their publicist in L.A. for all comments, and the monitors throughout the place were playing Lady Gaga, Jay Z and Usher. Make of that what you will.

Shotgun Betty's, just down the street at Stetson and Wells Fargo, is a better bet. It's just as inauthentic (when did the country aesthetic and the 1990's Poison video one combine?) but a better place to hang your hat for a couple hours.

Just to get it out of the way, if you haven't heard, it's owned and operated by the same person that owns Skin Caberet, and is his take on the type of bar made famous in the movie Coyote Ugly, where the bar girls get on top of the bar and put on a show periodically. The girls employed seem to be between the ages of 21 and 22, and have a body fat percentage somewhere in the 12% - 15% range. They're dressed in daisy dukes, boots and cowboy hats, and the Western theme pretty much ends there, visually.

It's a small and semi-dark place once night falls, and the walls are lined with tall, cozy banquets. The dancers are there when you want some eye candy, but it's also possible to sit back, have fun with your friends and get pleasantly bombed without the typical Scottsdale meat market mentality taking over. Shotgun Betty's is fun and doesn't take itself too seriously. In that way, it actually does kind of embody the old country spirit.

Besides their nubility, the bar and cocktail staff also seem to actually care about the patrons. They are present enough to be there when you need them, and they pay as much attention to the women as the men. Score one for good, old-fashioned hospitality - a much welcome return to form for Old Town!

Three doors to the west on Stetson, a new club called Revolver has taken over the space once occupied by Six. Revolver describes itself as "western chic." Seems like the same old vibe, though, and you'd be damned before you find any decor from farther west than Chicago. Fortunately they kept the absolute best part of Club Six - the bathrooms. There may be a reason (besides the bathrooms) to go here, but not if you're looking for anything remotely cowboy or western.

Old Country

(Model: Anakaren Slazar)

The Rusty Spur (Main Street in old town) beats Handlebar J's (just north of Shea) by a couple of years, 1958 versus 1960, but surely there's room enough for both under the heading of "oldest western bar in town." Your experience at either would be just about what you would have had there thirty years ago. The wood is real, the live country music is real, and they are both locally owned and operated. They were ALWAYS places that attracted a large percentage of tourists versus locals, but at least at this point they're authentically OLD places that do so. In a town that does very little to preserve its real past in favor of pandering to winter visitors and college kids with the latest re-interpretation, their very survival all these years merits you stopping in at least occasionally.

The Rusty Spur, in particular, is ripe for a local revival! This Summer, after the tourists have gone and ASU is on hiatus, this is the place to be. No table is too far from the bar to yell for another round,

or too far from the stage to join in on a verse of "Cold, Cold Heart."

An honorable mention must at this point go to The Coach House Tavern, located on Indian School Road, at Goldwater. It's not particularly country/western (the only real nod to the genre being an old wagon wheel nailed over the entrance,) but it's another leftover from a city that once proclaimed itself "The West's Most Western Town." A determinedly un-pretentious hole-in-the-wall, the Coach House has been the neighborhood bar of choice for locals for fifty years and continues to go strong. A large patio was added not too long ago, which doubled its capacity, but the heart of the bar is still a small, dark and funky room with decades of residue in the cracks. It's easy to find patrons who have been coming for twenty years or more, no matter when you visit. With drink prices approaching half of what you would pay at some of the surrounding clubs, it's no wonder, either.

Cattle Baron (people who own people who own cows) Country

The Stockyards Restaurant (Washington, just west of 48^th Street) is another hold-over from the Valley's past that has retained much of it's original character and mission. Though difficult to imagine now, as recently as the early 1970's, there was an enormous cattle yard located between Van Buren and Washington at 48^th street. At one time it was the largest in the world, and old-time residents can attest that it smelled like it, too. Beginning in 1954, The Stockyards Restaurant sat on a small elevation usually just upwind (to the south.)

The Tovrea family which owned the meat packing company and the restaurant were local upper-crusters, and The Stockyards became the meeting place for the men (such were the times) who made Arizona happen. Backs were slapped, deals were sealed and pesky investigative reporters plotted against in the overstuffed leather booths. Though cleaner and much less stuffy since a 2005 renovation, it is just as quietly iconoclastic as ever, and the hand-carved mahogany bar is still a sight to behold.

The Stockyards Restaurant is the Durant's of the western crowd. It's just right for those nights when you got $200 bucks to blow and only a nice sippin' whiskey and a charred chunk of large quadruped will do. You know what I'm talkin about.

Alt Country

For men and women who dig men and women, respectively, there's a happening and locally famous bar at Camelback and 7^th Avenue in Phoenix called Charlie's. Long before Brokeback Mountain lifted the weathered canvas veil on same-sex kicker love, Charlie's was strumming that crowd's tune. Now celebrating its 25^th year, Charlie's remains the premier place in the Valley where couples can do the Texas two-step cheek-cheek, toe-to-toe, and scruffy beard to scruffy beard. It's a wild Western place, actually, renown as much for being fun as for being gay. LOTS of straight people go, too, because Charlie's knows how to have a good time, western style. Just leave your inhibitions at the door and nobody gets hurt, yuh hear?

Big Country

There is an entire class of country club which doesn't aim to be anybody's cozy watering hole - they want to attract people by the heard, and they do! Mostly off the beaten path, where lower real estate prices help make a basketball arena-sized bar more viable, clubs such as Graham Central Station, Whiskey River, Tom Ryans and Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar and Grill" load people in by the thousands. Whether you're line dancing, seeing a country band or just getting loaded, bring a posse - a BIG one. You'll need them to hold your seat when you hike to the bathroom!

We've focused on just a few interesting places, but by no means is this sampling of western night life exhaustive. In a city with the footprint of the greater Phoenix metro area, there are tons of out-of-the-way places and many of them attract a more or less countrified crowd. Find em and tell your friends. Stick them in the pocket of your Lee jeans and make em your own.

Valley Fever Sundays at Yucca Tap Room in Tempe

For JAVA Magazine May, 2010

Once a week, there's a place in Tempe where time takes a cigarette and country music lovers are transported to the smokey, whiskey soaked days of the early 1970's. Dana Armstrong, a third-generation Valley of the Sun girl, has done her level best to conjure up that bygone era for patrons of Yucca Tap Room at Southern Avenue and Mill.

For the past five years, Armstrong has hosted Valley Fever, Sunday nights at Yucca Tap. At the weekly gig and various special events throughout the year, fans can experience a more authentic version of the "Arizona country" Dana and many grew up with, albeit with much less nicotine.

"I wanted to recreate a kind of old Arizona feel...kind of like Mr. Lucky's" Says, Armstrong. Mr. Lucky's, which closed in 2004, was a long-time favorite of the Valley honky-tonk set. Although it spawned such pale imitations as big-box country-themed clubs Graham Central Station and Toby Keith's, Mr. Lucky's was there from the get go, and there was nothing ironic, kitschy or retro about it's country/western character.

"I wanted to rebuild that moment. I just brought the records I wanted to hear to the place I wanted to hear them," she explains. "I invited everybody I knew and hoped some would show up...I figured if they stayed that was just a bonus. I didn't want to force it on anybody - Whoever else appreciated it, that's who I wanted to be there."

Dana thinks the Yucca Tap Room was the perfect environment. "It looked right - it's been there for forty years."

The Yucca Tap Room is kind of easy to miss, but once you find it you'll understand the appeal. To say it's unassuming is an understatement. It looks very much as it has for forty years, just off the southwest corner of Southern and Mill, with a low, flat roof and peeling paint. Yucca still doesn't accept credit cards, either - yet another charming throwback to the past!

Once inside, though, the atmosphere is warm, and you can hear some of the best music in town. "After about three months [spinning records at Valley Fever], we decided to start adding [live] music...usually just one band every Sunday…"

The bands are mostly NOT cover bands, though. "Some of them are just straight honkey-tonk bands, like Junction Ten...they write their own songs, but they sound like they're from 1975, which is perfect for me. I can't really label it...we have some bands that come at it from a sort of folk angle, but they all have the same spirit. The bands don't stick to covering those songs, but they're definitely strongly influenced and inspired by those old songs."

Valley favorite Flathead is part of what Dana calls the "Valley Fever family" of bands. "Greg Swanholm [lead singer of Flathead] is like our biggest supporter...he was there from the beginning and still comes every Sunday," she says. "The thing about Flathead is they're so unique and hard to categorize...I don't know what to call their music, but it fits right in."

Armstrong has noticed the popular re-discovery of country/western culture of late, but draws a distinction between that and Valley Fever. "It may be a trend right now generally, but at Valley Fever it's the real deal." Instead of re-packaging and borrowing from the original version of the culture, "we're actually trying to re-cultivate and delve into it."

Why 1970's honkey tonk? "I have this thing where I just want to be living in a very specific era...it goes back to my childhood and my dad's taste in music...Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Mo Bandy…" She plays older stuff, too. "I'll play anything from the fifty's...Hank Snow, Hank Thompson...but my favorite is the late 60's to early 70's."

In addition to Sundays, Valley Fever typically hosts several day-long events throughout the year. "We have our annual all-day show called the Quarantine usually in March. Last year we had Waylon day, to celebrate his birthday, then we had HanksGiving, where six bands played all Hank Williams covers."

"It's still fun!"

Modern Phoenix Dot Net

for JAVA Magazine

"We all have to do it for ourselves, that's the message," says Alison King who, along with Husband Matthew, run Modern Phoenix, a web presence devoted to the preservation of Modernist residences in the Valley. Perhaps so, but in terms of understanding the mid-century architecture that surrounds us, the Kings alone have given the rest of us an enormous head start.

What began as a visual scrapbook for the two design fans, has grown in less than a decade to be THE source for information on the subject; as well as a virtual meeting place for fellow enthusiasts and homeowners.

Between March 28 and April 11 this year, that virtual meeting place becomes actual, as Modern Phoenix holds its sixth annual Modern Phoenix Home Tour and Expo. For details on this, go to ModernPhoenixWeek.com. The subject of the tour this year is the Paradise Gardens community of Central Phoenix, a 1960's era neighborhood designed in conjunction with famed Modernist architect Al Beadle.

Growing up in a Modernist-designed Scottsdale neighborhood, Alison didn't always see the charm in her surroundings. "When you grow up with it, it just seems normal and you don't appreciate it," she says. It wasn't until she lived in New York, where most of the housing was of pre-war design influence, that she came to see Valley architecture differently. "It was just just so different there, with all the brownstones…," she says.

"When my husband and I went to Parson's School of Design [in NYC] we took classes in architectural design and started going to the Guggenheim and the Met and I was coming to understand the vocabulary and detail of it...so when we would come back here for holidays I started to appreciate it more and more."

"When we decided to give living in Phoenix a shot, we had to decide between [traditionally] historic bungalow, Willow-district homes, which people were really fixing up, and more modernist homes, which were really actually in decline."

The Kings bought a "cracker box" current home in North Phoenix and began searching the Valley for someplace more suitable. That search formed the foundation of Modern Phoenix.

Alison would use her spare time to drive around Phoenix and take pictures of homes she thought might be possibilities or which generally suited the couple's aesthetic sensibilities. "This was before Flickr, before Facebook...but I could build my own page with my pictures and give my husband the URL so that he could look at them," she explains. "...but once you start naming things [on the internet] people start finding them."

Soon, Alison and Matthew began to get lots of correspondence from people interested in individual architects, or Modernist dwellings in general. "People would write me from Texas or someplace and say 'I'm coming to Phoenix and I have no idea where to look.'"

Alison didn't intend to be the go-to guru for all questions regarding local Modernist architecture. "It started to be a serious time commitment, for one thing," she says. "That's why I started the forum; so people could get in touch with one another and share their own information."

Ultimately, though, another unforeseen time commitment arose. "Within months of putting up the message boards and getting people to talk to each other consistently making these sort of virtual friendships and this network...it became obvious to us that we really needed to do a home tour." Modern Phoenix was taking shape.

"It started off as a group of like-minded friends who wanted to get together and talk about somebody's house or bathroom or whatever…" The first event was in 2005. "We just said, 'let's be Arizonans and walk around.'" Sounds care-free, doesn't it? Not so fast. "The minute it was over, people kept asking me 'when is the next one?'"

And so a new annual Valley event was born, the Modern Phoenix Home Tour and Expo.

Aside from the very first event, organizing the homes to be toured was more difficult that Alison first imagined. Not only did many people not know what they had in terms of the significance of their own houses, but putting that forward as the basis for a community activity was something Alison sometimes had to work at. "That's the hardest thing...it's not like it was in the '70's when I was growing up - sometimes these neighbors don't even know each other…"

It's getting easier as the event matures, Alison explains. "I still do a lot of the recruiting by word of mouth or door-to-door or phone calls." Thanks in large part to the King's efforts, awareness has been raised about mid-century architecture in general and the Modern Phoenix site and tour in particular. "They've heard of us now," she says.

In fact, the event has become successful enough to pay for itself. "We charge a fee for the tour...but this is the first year that we're able to offer most of our educational events for free," she says. In addition to the actual tour, other items on the roster include seminars, discussions and slideshows by architects, designers and historians.

Anyone curious about researching their own home (or their future one) will find resources and guidance at this year's event as well.

Besides having become a second career, Modern Phoenix has benefitted the Kings in a particularly tangible way. It was through a connection made on the website's message board that the Kings found their own current home, just outside Phoenix's central corridor. A participant with whom Alison had once corresponded got back in touch, wondering if the Kings had any interest in a home that was about to go on-market. "If we'd just gone with a traditional realtor, I doubt if we ever would have found anything like this."

In fact, the home they found was close to the very heart of mid-century, Modernist design. "Our house was designed by Ralph Haver, who first built the house next door as his own residence, and then this one." From it's "spider legs" exterior columns and beams, to it's low-slope roof, the house is a classic example of modernism for the masses.

Though small by today's standard, the main impression one gets is of spaciousness. De rigueur design elements from recent decades, such as framed-in alcoves, artificial columns, rounded corners, and elaborate window coverings are absent in a modernist home. In Alison's, house, clean lines are the order - lines that seem to go toward infinity, as they begin at the front door and cary through to the furthest reaches of the patio (shown here.) The far wall of the living room is a picture window; essentially making it a landscaped view of the world beyond. Her breakfast table nestles at the joint of two more broad expanses of glass (shown below.)

Form follows function here. Designed for life where temperatures can exceed 110 degrees, the living spaces are quick to heat and quick to cool, as there is no additional airspace given to vaulted ceilings. While entire walls of glass feature prominently in some parts of the house, sides facing full sun (such as the traditional front of the house) have none.

Other intrinsic advantages? "These things are built like tanks," says Alison. She says an independent home inspection on her Haver house turned up a small fraction of the problems that previous, contemporary, home had - even though the Haver home had a good 50 years on the other.

At this point, Alison believes she has a good handle on what once was and what now remains of the mid-1900's Modernist dwellings in the Valley. Her main source of initial research has been at the Phoenix Public Library's Arizona Room. Developers used to announce their plans for new subdivisions in learned journals and trade-to-consumer publications, many of which are are stored there. These aren't available online and can't be loaned out; so Alison has multiple three-ring binders straining to hold page after page of old articles and advertisements that she's photographed at the library, and brought back to "Modern Phoenix Central" to follow up on with a personal visit.

"1953 to 1964 was the heyday of Modernist home building in the Valley," says Alison. "Around the mid-sixties is where single family homes gave way to multi-family homes." "Also, at one point there was apparently a mason's strike, and all these homes that were built out of block or brick [like virtually all of the Modernist ones] were in crisis...that's a unique regional thing that influenced what was being built at the time."

Being old and of limited supply in the Valley housing market at one time meant the likelihood of protection and even assistance when it came to preservation. Neighborhoods with early 20^th century housing, such as the Willow and Encanto areas are designated as historic and owners are kept from making alterations that run too far afield of the property's original design.

Mid-century homes, on the other hand, didn't have time to reach the same type of popular appeal before a critical change took place. In 2006, Arizona Proposition 207 was passed which, among other things, put the price of historic designation so high as to make it nearly impossible to achieve, says Alison. "The city has played its role maintaining the historic neighborhoods that were already designated prior to Prop 207, but now [a neighborhood would] have to hire a private consultant for thousands of dollars before you'd even have a chance."

And so the importance of Modern Phoenix grows even further. In the place of neighborhood associations and historic designation, it hopes to raise the value of mid-20^th century architecture in the Valley by raising the awareness of it. "As owners of Modernist homes, we're on our own," says Alison. "A lot of homes have been lost just out of neglect and because people really didn't know what they had. A huge part of the fight for preservation is education."

The Doctor Is In...teresting!

An Evening With Dr. Dot

Excerpts in JAVA Magazine

March, 2010

The business and personal promotion phenomenon that is Dr. Dot whirled in and out of the Valley briefly a couple of weeks ago. The self-described Massage Therapist, Sex Columnist, Author, Singer and Celebrity Confidant came to town to drum up massage business at an annual convention for the performance tour industry. Marginally successful there, she truly excelled in her main area of expertise - BEING Dr. Dot!

The JAVA offices made the connection for me. She had come in yesterday and was leaving tomorrow. "Tonight," I was told, "she plays." If I was going to behold the good doctor (an admittedly un-official title) this would be my only opportunity. 10:30pm. Uncle Monkey's in Mesa. I'm in.

Search your heart out on the net - there's plenty to see and most of it is supplied by her. The basics are thus: Hippie parents taught her massage. Became a teenage concert junkie. Supported her habit by trading massage favors for access to gigs. Went from massaging for access to massaging for pay thanks to Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones. Toured with the Dead for a year with a German boy who "looked like John Lennon." Had a baby with him. Dated Bruce Willis. Has apartments in Berlin and the New York City area. Featured multiple times on German TV. Can drop names like most people drop skin cells.

In recent years, she's developed a worldwide army of "Dot Bots" - licensed massage therapists and/or chiropractors who get their assignments directly through Dr. Dot. They earn a spot on the team by either auditioning in person or, more typically, for someone else who has, and who knows what Dr. Dot requires.

In addition to that, she writes contributions for Penthouse, a regular sex and relationship advice column for the NYC alternative rag, the New York Press, and something similar for a German sex publication. "I'm really mean in that one. Oh God, am I MEAN!"

Right at 10:30 I enter Uncle Monkey's, a hopping and unpretentious joint in a strip mall near Southern and Dobson in Mesa. Looks like a dive, smells like a dive, but the place is packed with regulars, drinks are cheep and the girl behind the bar is cute as Hell (cuter, really.) At the far end of the room, past the dancing couples and the young guys playing pool, in front of the DJ booth, at a cocktail table with an entourage of two, stands the figure of Dr. Dot. She looks for all the world as if she could be Christina Applegate's busty younger sister.

She's doing karaoke.

More to the point, she has come to kick some karaoke ASS. "Did you see me do Stevie Wonder?!" she asks.

"No - I didn't even know he was here!" She doesn't get it. "What did you sing?"

"I did 'Livin For The City.'"

"Great song! How did you do?" I ask.

"It was phenomenal."

I'm expecting her to smile, but it's immediately clear that she is merely stating a fact. No irony at all, and she doesn't stay engaged for my reaction. She's busy looking through the catalog, trying to decide on her next phenomenal performance. "Nobody even clapped. Everybody here is so apathetic."

Hmm.

Not wanting to interrupt her search, I introduce myself to one of her two companions, a pretty young lady in jeans named Rachel who, though attentive, seems very tired. I tell her the conversation I'd just had. She chuckles knowingly at my description of Dr. Dot's glowing self praise and then acknowledges, "well she WAS pretty damn good."

And so she would continue to be. Over the next couple of hours and at two different bars, she does a handful of other songs and owns each and every one. Her takeover of Tina Turner's part in "Proud Mary" was a revelation. Sure, Ike was still helping out on the low end, but Dr. Dot was neither derivative nor inferior. It helped that she had the short skirt and pumps, but the vocal alone would have still passed the audition.

As it turns out, Rachel and the other girl in the entourage are Dot Bots, and joined up in Mesa to man a booth at the convention. Rachel is local, Dr. Dot flew in from New York City ("O.K., well Hoboken"), and the other girl is from Michigan.

There's no phony pretense that this is a party of equals, and no reason there should be any. They all have an easy rapport with one another, but there's no disputing who is in charge. The alpha is not prepared to concede any ground and the betas don't try.

If she's king of the hill, though, she's a benevolent one. Both in person and online, an unavoidable aspect of her personality is that she gives credit where it's due. She is fiercely proud of the Dot Bots and credits their talent with the success of the concept. Instead of saying good things happen to her because she's innately deserving, she comfortably and naturally acknowledges others for giving her the various opportunities that have come her way.

She also has, when she wants to exhibit it, something that customer service experts call "relationship extension." She can approach strangers and develop a mutually rewarding, temporary, relationship with them. This skill was on display throughout the night whenever something would catch her attention or pique her curiosity. Not only with men (who are more apt to allow her in anyway) but also with other women; such as servers, karaoke dj's, and various strangers in the clubs. If she wants to know something, she asks. She made them feel that she was genuinely interested in them, and she seemed to be.

At Uncle Monkey's, she leeds a one-table rebellion to change the mood of the room. We clap for every karaoke performer, good and not so much, because it's only right. Dot's not looking for anything she's not prepared to reciprocate.

Dr. Dot says she only drinks alcohol occasionally, and tonight she has cranberry juice at one bar and club soda at the next. That is one thing that separated her from most every other patron. She doesn't smoke - neither cigarettes nor marijuana ("It makes you apathetic!")

The doctor works her message - it's her primary asset these days - and that message is "I've been included in the lives of celebrities." It's not mere words. At least three different times between the two clubs and at breakfast afterward, she took out either her phone or camera and riffled through scads of candid photos of her with artists of varying renown. There are far too many to mention, but try these on for size: Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Sting, Joey Ramone, Motorhead, Tool, Depeche Mode… They kept coming, long after the point had been made.

Which is cool in a way and a shame, as well. Dot Stein (her real name) is talented and energetic in her own right. She's built - and is still building - a small empire in a niche market. She's smart enough not to let her indulgences drag her down, yet independent enough to carve her own path. She is every bit as rock and roll as the "stars" she massages and banks on. When pressed, she concedes that the celebrity angle is a means to an end - it opens doors. One must wonder, though, if she will always be comfortable being so strongly identified in terms of the company she keeps rather than her own achievements.

The entire Dr. Dot International Massage operation is, apparently, done from her cell phone; with ALL the calls worldwide going to Dr. Dot personally before being assigned out. She maintains absolute control over everything. Obviously this saves her money, and satisfies the control freak in her, but how much larger can it all get before she goes nuts? She just shrugs.

While virtually everyone else around us was getting loose and letting it all hang out, she kept her cool, kept her edge and kept control. She observed everything and everyone. If this was an example of blowing off steam, I felt a little sorry for her, actually. There was never a ten minute period where she wasn't checking her cell phone for new messages and massage requests. If there's a time when she's not on, it wasn't this night.

After the bars, we headed to Denny's for breakfast, where Dot let her guard down a bit. She's a natural observer and formulates opinions on many things. "Are you circumcised?" Uh… "American guys are usually circumcised. They're also limp. I've known some boys in Ireland and their dicks were hard as diamonds over there! It's because they put fluoride in the water here - it gives guys limp dicks and makes them apathetic." Yes, sir, opinions.

By 3:30am, fatigue was taking its toll. The girl from Michigan had long since left, and Rachel was about to pass out. I had begun my day intending to end it at least five hours earlier. Tomorrow, Dr. Dot had another busy day ahead, with an early afternoon flight back to New York and some potentially contentious negotiations with a band manager who wasn't towing the line; yet only she seemed unfazed by the late hour. Finally, though, she took pity on us and called it a night. Sort of.

"If you want to talk more you can come back to the hotel," she said, "but I'm not going to fuck you. I'm also not going to give you a blow job." In true rock and roll fashion, Dr. Dot knows how to get her point across.

Some other times a comment like this, though coming from left field, may have offended me. Maybe I would have protested about how much I've avoided drinking fluoridated water all these years. I mean, a guy likes to be asked, you know?

In the end, though, I just smiled and said, "That's o.k." The evening, and not marijuana or fluoride, had rendered me apathetic.

POSTSCRIPT

I've heard from Dr. Dot since this piece (or most of it) came out in the print version of Java. She was at first very complimentary, and ultimately very bitter. In the space of three days (March 5 - 8) she friended me and UN-friended me on Facebook. She claims that I misquoted her. I don't believe so. One error that I DID make was in describing the nature of the publication she writes for in Germany. What I called a "sex publication" is actually an arts/entertainment magazine that Dot informs me is similar to JAVA, only larger. Fair enough. I stand by all the rest.

You can read her blog post about it here, and read the original excerpt printed in JAVA Magazine. The full piece is what you see above. There was one line she asked me to omit in my online posting. I did so as a courtesy, and because from my standpoint the change was insignificant. It's neither the first, nor the last, instance of me eating a little shit to keep the peace. It's usually more effective.

I certainly can't fault her for wishing to guard the value of her "brand." The piece I did is the only thing I can find online that is anything but a re-statement of her own advertising message. If that's what all this is, though, then I think she's being much too sensitive. I said some pretty nice things about her, after all. She tells me that in her public railings against me she intentionally omitted my last name so I wouldn't have to "worry about anybody looking [me] up." How kind. She did, however, reprint the entire article; so I presume that she feels my veracity is only questionable when she doesn't like what I say. I'd like the by-line back, but no worries, Dot - my gift to you. Rock on.

(Space) Rocks In Her Head

For Java Magazine,

February, 2010 - On newststands now!

You may be surprised to know that the top of the world is a cluttered office at ASU's main campus. Behind a desk there sits the stunningly beautiful Professor Meenakshi Wadhwa, Director of ASU's Center for Meteorite Studies. Not content with merely being a renowned scientist in the field of cosmochemistry, (because, honestly, who couldn't do that?), this PhD from Punjab is also an avid hiker, triathlete, pilot and potential astronaut. She's doing what she loves, and having a great time doing it - on top of the world, as they say. Did I mention the stunningly beautiful part? Well, it bears repeating.

Sorry guys (and girls), she's taken.

Born and raised in India, Mini (her favored nickname) was not the typical young Indian girl. In a culture that generally expects different things from its daughters than from its sons, she credits her parents for keeping her free to set her own path. "My father was always very progressive and my family never imposed any limitations on me. A lot of girls in India grow up with the pressure to get married as soon as they can."

"IF they go on to higher education at all, it's with the idea that it will just help them get a better match when they do get married. More often, they just learn how to cook and how to clean. I didn't even learn to cook until I attended graduate school here in the states."

How is she now? "I'm pretty good!"

Professor Wadhwa is by no means boastful, but she's not self-effacing, either. When our conversation gets to how she spends her leisure time, tucked between running and seeing bands, she casually mentions "I just got my pilots license." It's clear she didn't want to draw attention to it, but when I do a double-take, she admits her enthusiasm. "Yeah, I've wanted to do that for a long time… it was very cool!"

Perhaps she's accustomed to being exceptional, but she bears herself with an easy assuredness and lack of affectation. "Cool" seems to be how she describes the things that please her the most.

Her path to ASU began with a youthful interest in rocks and the physical world, but she says she wasn't one of those people who knew what they wanted to do from an early age. "I went into geology not fully appreciating what it was all about, really. I knew that it required a lot of field work and I liked the idea of being outdoors and basically doing something in the physical sciences."

It was early on, however, that she realized she'd chosen an untraditional pursuit. "...so I went to the university to sort of talk to the professors and look into it, and there wasn't a single woman faculty member; and even today it's a very small minority of departments of geology in India that will have faculty that are women."

Though she won't describe it as a struggle, she did have some convincing to do. "They were not very encouraging. The professors would say 'no no, it's not a field for women. You have to go on these long field trips and trudge around a lot…' They didn't think I could do it. I just said, 'wait a minute, I'm pretty sure I CAN do it.' "

How much of a motivation was proving them wrong? She laughs. "Well their attitude kind of goaded me on, but that was really secondary," she says. "I mean, at that age (17) you're still trying to prove yourself, but I KNEW I could do it just as well as anyone else, and I wanted the chance to actually do the work, that's all. In the end I was first in my class, so I kinda did o.k., I think." Point proven.

In deference to her father, Mini applied for a potentially lucrative position with the Indian oil and natural gas commission just after graduation and got it! This meant financial security, relative prestige and, since she was so young, the likelihood of even higher promotion in the future. Besides which, and not unimportantly as far as her family was concerned, she could still live in India. By any traditional standard, accepting the position was an easy choice.

Mini Wadhwa, as you may have already gathered, is not about easy choices.

"At the same time, I'd applied to grad school here [the U.S.] and been accepted here, too," she explains. "The job in India was just not where my heart was. If I'd taken it I probably would have left anyway...it's not what I wanted to do."

And so she came to Washington University in St. Louis for graduate work in geology - basically the study of physical Earth. One fateful day, however, a professor allowed her to examine a piece of a Martian meteorite that had been discovered. The lightbulb went off that she could apply all of her training not only to Earth, but to the arguably far cooler entire solar system as well! The die was cast, the seed was sewn, insert your own cliche here because I'm out.

Since then, she has done field work in Antarctica, been Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago, Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, and Curator at the Field Museum, among other positions and appointments. Some of her awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Wings WorldQuest Air and Space Award, and the Meteoritical Society's Nier Prize - among others.

If you look up at the right time, you probably won't see it, but somewhere up there is an asteroid named in her honor as well - 8356 Wadhwa.

She also got married - to another geologist whom she first met in Hawaii, fresh from her Antarctic stint.

Doesn't that mean she never really gets too far away from work? "Yeah, well, maybe, but we love our work! Also, there's a lot about his work that I don't know and vice versa, so it's always interesting still." Does that sound ideal? Maybe it is. Eleven years suggests something's working here.

"I have absolutely no tips whatsoever on balancing personal and professional time...I'm a big believer in doing the most that you can every single day and having fun with it," she says. Still, she's avoided burnout by getting outdoors. She hikes, goes to concerts and has become, to even HER surprise, a triathlete. "I was an outdoorsy kid, but I never did any of the three sports before really. I got to know people here and they were getting into it and I thought, 'why is it that I can't get into that?' " Why not, indeed?

[One of over 1,500 meteorite samples which comprise the collection of the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration]

Drawn To ASU

The Center for Meteorite Studies has been at ASU since 1960, when the university had the foresight to purchase the collection of Arizona resident and avid meteorite collector Harvey Nininger. A "gentleman" scientist who also operated a museum at northern Arizona's Meteor Crater, Nininger virtually established the field of meteoritics in the US, according to Wadhwa. A portion of the collection had already been sold to the British Museum and ASU had to scramble to get the rest.

Today, the center holds the largest research collection of meteorite samples in the world, and the fifth or sixth largest collection even considering those held by museums.

In 2006, ASU incorporated the center into its newly-formed School for Earth and Space Exploration, a multi-disciplinary school, encompassing everything from meteoritics to engineering, geology to astrophysics. It was the attraction of building this dynamic new school from the foundation that lured Mini and her husband (also on the faculty) to Tempe.

Though very active following the lunar missions of the early 1970's which brought back moon rocks for examination, the center itself was still not widely known, despite having such a significant collection. Part of Prof Wadhwa's mission is to change all of that.

"The center really is a kind of unique resource," she says, "so we've been trying to rejuvenate interest in our samples and try to make them more available in the science community as well as to the general public. And now there are plans for the school to have a new building and a big component will be exhibit and interactive space, and the meteorite collection will be a big part of that."

The outreach extends into the local community as well. "We have samples that we take to schools to try to get kids fascinated with this stuff. Plus there's a lot of people who don't know we're here." Probably most people don't, actually.

Like the rest of the faculty, Wadhwa had to take a furlough earlier this year to help make up for budget cutbacks brought on by the recession. In addition, she says they lost the equivalent of at least one and possibly two positions this year.

Might there be a well-endowed benefactor out there who just needs to be made aware of the school?

"That's why I'm talking to you."

Mini Wadhwa, you sweet-talker, you! Oh. Yes, publicity. Yes, I see. I'll certainly do what I can.

As full as Wadhwa's life may seem at the moment, it's about to get even fuller.

After a career spent largely studying Martian soil that has found its way to Earth by natural means, Wadhwa would like to go and get some for a change. She is principal investigator for a Discovery Class mission to Mars, which aims to collect Martian atmosphere and dust samples and return them to Earth for study. "It'll be a big time commitment but I'm really excited about it because Martian samples will mean a lot to different scientists around the world."

"Right now, we can only be 99 percent sure that what we think are Martian meteorites are actually from Mars," she explains. Part of the SCIM (Sample Collection for the Investigation of Mars) mission would be to give us samples that we can be 100 percent certain of for comparison. Further experiments on the samples would seek to answer questions about the evolution of Mars, the solar system and the Earth itself. NASA will decide next year whether or not SCIM is included in its next mission.

Assuming the mission does go through and is successful, Wadhwa and her team at ASU would be first up to receive the fruits of their labors. "We'll have six months after the samples get back to do a subset of experiments on them. The idea is to try and get the most science out of the sample, so the last thing we'd want to do is hoard them. It's impossible to have our small group of individuals do all the research that needs to be done, so we limit ourselves to just what we think we'd be best at and then make the samples available to others."

Having Wadhwa as "principal investigator" on this project will certainly raise her profile, as well as that of the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration. "Part of the draw of being in this unique environment is that you have all of the different parts together at this one school. The goal is to prepare the next generation of space scientists, so bringing NASA projects here is definitely something we want to do as much as possible."

And what does the future hold for this award-winning and amply accredited professor?

"Twenty years from now I hope we'll have actual samples back not only from Mars, but from some of the other planets in the solar system. I want to be involved in some of these missions."

JAVA: And if there's a manned mission…?

Wadhwa: Oh...

Throughout our long and pleasant conversation, Professor Wadhwa was always sure-footed. She's been interviewed a lot and is justifiably confident of her material. It was intriguing, therefore, when she hesitated slightly at this question.

Wadhwa: Oh...GOD yes, absolutely!

JAVA: Is that why you're keeping in such good shape?

Wadhwa: Well...you know…who knows...

JAVA: Is that actually what's in the back of your mind when you're doing triathlon - so that you can still pass the astronaut exam when you're sixty?

Wadhwa: Ha ha ha ha...of course not...I mean, of course SO! That's what I meant to say [she is now officially blushing.] Yeah, I would LOVE to have been an astronaut. That would have been very cool!

Lest we think that her head is now in the clouds, she takes pains to explain that it is not.

"At the same time, there's so much cool stuff for me to do...and the important thing is to have fun at what you're doing at the present time. You don't want to just sort of make do and bide your time while you're thinking about some really really long term sort of plan that you're aiming towards..." Yeah yeah yeah, the common term for those things is "dreams," Professor. I get the impression that she's trying to convince herself as much as me.

She needn't worry.

Who among us would ever accuse Mini Wadhwa of simply biding her time?

See more pictures of the esteemed professor at my Flickr page.