His morning show co-host Jennie Grabel was let go last week, and now Chris Patyk, who was also the program director for The Mountain, news station KNST and the somewhat accurately named Funny 1450, has been let go by Clear Channel as part of their nationwide plan to not have so many actual people on the radio.

I'm not the biggest fan of The Mountain or any of Clear Channel's stations in this market, but this seems like the move towards the nationwide broadcasts and wildly homogenized crap that everyone feared when the company was buying up every station they could get their hands on. At this point, if there aren't personalities on the air that I care about and the music is the same here as it is in Tulsa and Toledo, why shouldn't I just switch over to listening to Pandora stations that feature slightly more of the songs and artists I like and far fewer commercials?

The Mountain did an admirable job of connecting to the not-terribly-musically-adventurous-soccer-mom listening audience they cultivated between their Studio C performances and Jennie and Chris constantly out in the community, but I guess those days are likely over.

At least we'll still have the music of Colbie Caillat to get us through this tough time, I suppose. Best of luck out there, Chris.

The armored car industry? They're fans of the old school dollar bill:

The armored-car industry also opposes the coin. "It's primarily based on weight," Larry Sabbath of the National Armored Car Association says. "If you think of all our trucks carrying around that weight, that's obviously higher fuel costs for us, and more breakdown of trucks."

A familiar name is pushing for the change to shiny coins, however:

You have this gigantic deficit. You have this supercommittee, and Congress is looking for savings anywhere they can," says former representative Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., a longtime coin advocate.

The move to a coin would cost money in the short term, but eventually save money because paper currency lasts about 42 months — while coins theoretically last forever. Moving to a coin could save $5.6 billion over 30 years, according to the Government Accountability Office.

"You're not going to find that kind of savings that involves no tax increase and no cut to anybody's program," Kolbe says...

When Kolbe first started introducing $1 coin proposals in Congress in 1986, it was a way to help Arizona mining interests, he admits. Those proposals never got out of committee. Now, with most other Western economies replacing their lowest paper bill with coins, the time is right to modernize the currency system, he says.

While Herman Cain is having some issues with the "witch hunt" following him after past allegations of sexual harassment arose this weekend, there's always time to break out a gospel number, isn't there? So, at a National Press Club event, Mr. Cain delivered this rendition of the Dottie Rambo classic "He Looked Beyond My Faults" (not "Amazing Grace", as a number of clearly godless heathens in the political media reported). Your move, every other presidential candidate.

[The Atlantic]

Based on his American television persona, you'd probably assume that there isn't a sensitive side to celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey, but you'd be wrong. Just like R. Kelly, he's a man that doesn't see nothin' wrong with a little bump and grind, as evidenced by this exceptionally edited sex advice video.

[HT: Eater]

Tracy Jordan - Werewolf Bar Mitzvah (RAC Mix) by RAC

Ladies and gentlemen, for your Halloween dancing pleasure, Tracy Jordan's "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah", remixed by RAC.

When you’re a small restaurant, the last thing you need is bad publicity. Usually this comes from things like a bad review in a local newspaper, or a failed inspection at the hands of the county health department. Such an incident occurs and you circle the wagons to try and deal with it.

But having one of your employees show off his junk to a little girl? At the counter? No amount of brainstorming can plan for that.

This is the situation at The Wing Factory, at 6330 E. Golf Links Road, where on Sunday employee Elias Guerrero was arrested on an indecent exposure charge after he apparently whipped it out in front of a 9-year-old girl.

• Tucson Police Department

According to the Tucson Police Department, the 24-year-old Guerrero was working behind the counter Sunday afternoon when the girl, who was at the restaurant with her family, went alone to the counter and asked for extra sauce for her food.

Instead, she got a show. Guerrero allegedly lifted up his shirt, exposing himself to the girl.

TPD says the girl quickly went back to her family, who immediately left the restaurant. They called police a short time later, reported what happened, and later that afternoon arrested Guerrero.

Not surprisingly, Guerrero is a registered sex offender — in California, though — with a history of numerous exposures, TPD said.

So … who wants wings?

araabMUZIK (his use of capital letters, not mine) is coming to Club Congress on November 10th, and it's a little difficult to encapsulate what it is exactly that he does. He's a hip-hop producer making tracks for Cam'Ron and others, he has a Pitchfork endorsed instrumental album out, and he's a maestro on the digital music creator, the MPC, ripping up samples by Cannibal Corpse while his fingers fly creating the beat live.

There might not be an easy way to define the guy, but the video at the top of this post gives some indication of what his live show is like and based on everything I've seen and heard from the guy, it looks like this could be a one-of-a-kind concert. Plus, it's only $3. I have no idea where this guy is heading, but I personally want to make sure I take advantage of the opportunity to see him at work up-close while I still can.

Here's a track from his new album, Electronic Dream:

"Let It Go":

It's hard to believe that it was only 72 days ago that Kim Kardashian and some guy who plays basketball, I think, got married. Also, it's hard to believe that every time I flip through my online cable guide, it appears E! is running their wedding special, but it apparently wasn't meant to last, as Kim is going to file for divorce today, according to TMZ. In honor of their whirlwind, but short-lived, romance, we offer this montage of photos matched up with a Nick Lachey song that I found on YouTube. Don't be afraid to let the tears flow.

It's Monday morning, so perhaps your perspective on the world might not be at its most positive right now, but the AP ran a two part story [1, 2] over the weekend about Bryon Widner, a former skinhead who turned his life around and chose to painfully remove his facial tattoos as part of the process.

For 16 years, Widner was a glowering, strutting, menacing vessel of hate - an "enforcer" for some of America's most notorious and violent racist skinhead groups.

Hellbent on destruction, he was living to die, though even during the bloodiest beat-downs he knew he was unlikely to lose his life as a warrior in the glorious race war promoted by the white power movement.

"It was more likely to be a bullet through the head," he says, grimly.

By the time he was 30, Widner had spent a total of four years in jail, accused of murder and other charges, though he was never convicted of a major crime. Victim intimidation, he says, took care of that.

And then he met Julie Larsen.

Like Widner, Larsen's arms and legs were covered with neo-Nazi symbols - iron crosses, a Totenkopf skull, axes crossed into a swastika, the Nazi salute "sieg heil." She posted regularly on the Internet forum, Stormfront. Its motto: "White Pride, World Wide."

...But by her 30s, the single mother of four was questioning her racist beliefs. She grew tired of telling her children they couldn't watch certain Walt Disney movies because Hollywood was controlled by Jews, or listen to rap music, or eat Chinese or Mexican food. After struggling to put an abusive marriage to a skinhead behind her, she yearned for something simpler.

"I just wanted a normal family life," she said.

And to his great surprise, Widner discovered that was what he wanted, too.

But leaving a life of hate would not be easy when it was all that he had known. And when his past was tattooed all over his face.

• It'll be almost just like this, but more awesome.

I'm a big fan of the Pima County Fair, not just because I enjoy carnival rides, incarnations of 70's rock bands, hypnotists, and fried food items, but also for the competition side. I'm generally frightened by animals, so I skip out on the 4H style stuff, but every year, I head over to the Home and Fine Arts competition area and see what's happening in the worlds of pickling, table decorating, and woodworking. It's just a fun time for the entire family, and since someone clearly put a lot of time into these products, I feel like I could take a few minutes to check their wares out.

However, this year, I've decided to watch from the sidelines no longer. This year, I'm going to take on these feats of creativity, cookery and design myself. However, I don't want to just participate. I want to dominate.