• Jim Nintzel

The largest disco ball in North American history was under construction this afternoon at Hotel Congress in advance of the big Studio 54 New Year's Eve party tonight.

That sounds like fun, as do the big downtown dance parties at the Rialto Theatre and Playground; Paula Poundstone's set at the Fox Theatre; and the Loft Cinema's screening of The Poseidon Adventure, which is timed to start so that everyone in the theater can celebrate the new year at the same time as the doomed passengers aboard the ship do.

You can find the Weekly's roundup of New Year's Eve stuff right here.

As someone who spent far too much time watching the antics of the Bluth family during my college years, I'm unhealthily excited about the future prospect of watching the return of Arrested Development this May.

From CraveOnline.com:

Fox briefly posted the 14 episode names and the premiere date of May 4, 2013 on their press website before quickly taking it down. (Via Oh No They Didn’t)

Each episode of the fourth season has the name of the central character that it will follow. Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), Gob (Will Arnett), Lindsay Fünke (Portia de Rossi), George Michael Bluth (Michael Cera) and George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) will each get two spotlight episodes, while Tobias Fünke (David Cross), Maeby Fünke (Alia Shawkat) Buster Bluth (Tony Hale) and Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter) will each get a single episode.

Because Netflix will premiere the entire season on a single day, fans will be able to watch “Arrested Development” in any order that they choose.

For the episode order and speculation as to the show's future, check out CraveOnline.com.

I had reported on Parlour here in Noshing around a few weeks back, peering in the window, and hoping it wasn’t a long “soon” on when they would open. Per their Facebook page here, the new frozen yogurt place on Fourth Avenue will be opening Jan 1. Looking at the flavors on their website (www.theparlourtucson.com) the nerd in me is drawn to the Dragon’s Blood Sorbet. I think I may have to get my LARP group together and go on a quest for dragon’s blood “soon.”

On Tuesday, January 1st, a gaggle of food trucks will be gathering at Himmel Park, 2650 E. First St., to feed your post-New Year festivities hunger. Scheduled to appear from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. are: MaFooCo, Jamie's Bitchen Kitchen, Stolen Recipe BBQ, Smokin' Hot BBQ, Chef's Kitchen, and more. Put on your sunglasses and welcome some of the best Tucson food trucks into the new year.

If you were inside or just outside the Speedway Boulevard strip club known (for the time being) as Ten's, Tucson police want to talk to you about a shooting.

Then again, if you're a regular of that establishment at that time of night, police queries might start becoming part of the routine for your gentleman's club excursions.

A 32-year-old man was shot to death in the parking lot of Ten's Showclub early Sunday morning, the second fatal shooting there in little more than a week. The first incident on Dec. 22 had four victims, one of whom died a few days later.

With two homicides in its parking lot in eight days, Ten's could find itself in the same predicament the club formerly known as The Candy Store was in a few years ago.

The Candy Store, where the club Venom can now be found at 22nd St. and Craycroft, had two fatal shootings in its parking lot in 2009, and a few months later The Candy Store was raided by police to break up an internal drug-pushing operation.

Nothing so far about Sunday's shooting directly connects it to Ten's itself, or any activity inside the club — police say it was the typical scenario of two groups of people first jawing, then punching and then ultimately shooting at each other — but the parking lot publicity can't be good for the club.

Any suggestions for names for the club if and when it shutters and ultimately reopens as another version? Mine is the Pit Stop, fits well with the Speedway location.

There are several ways to look at the Sunday, Dec. 9, arrest of Tucson Unified School District's former Mexican-American Studies director and co-founder, Sean Arce, who now faces charges for allegedly assaulting his ex-wife and for vandalism and trespassing.

There's the view from rabid critics of the district's beleaguered MAS department, who see state Attorney General Tom Horne a hero and buy into a mythology that the classes are anti-American. To them, Arce's arrest somehow exposes the dark underbelly of the program.

But there's also another view, from people who have supported the program and its return to TUSD but see Arce's arrest as an example of issues that need to be addressed within a movement that formed in response to Horne’s anti-MAS law, as well as SB 1070.

In the days after Arce's arrest, the Tucson Weekly talked to dozens of people who were responding to the news, and to gossip that at times grew out of control. While many expressed heartbreak for someone they respect, others said they worried about how Arce’s arrest could fuel further attacks against MAS.

Here’s what happened the night of Saturday, Dec. 8 and early morning of Sunday, Dec. 9, according to a Tucson Police Department report obtained by the Weekly. Police said they responded to what was described as a break-in in progress. One witness interviewed said he heard banging at his neighbor's house, went to investigate and saw two broken windows and a man he didn't know bleeding from his right hand and standing inside the house. When the man saw the witness, he left the house, and the neighbor followed him and saw the man get into a white sedan.

More information about what occurred that night came from a police interview with Arce's ex-wife, who told police she was at La Cocina the night of Saturday, Dec. 8, when Arce showed up, grabbed her arm and pulled her away from a table where she sat with friends. After several patrons separated the couple, she left the bar and restaurant with friends and drove home.

A friend who was leaving the ex-wife's house saw Arce in the neighborhood, according to the ex-wife's interview, and called to tell her that Arce was driving toward the house. After she got off the phone, Arce’s ex-wife heard banging against a sliding glass door and she left with friends through the garage. They drove off and she called the police.

The report noted that when police arrived at the house, they found the front door and garage door open, and two broken windows, one of them with no glass left in the frame. But no one was inside. Blood found on glass from a broken window and on the front door was collected for evidence, according to the report.

Arce's ex-wife told police that she thought he was staying at the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort & Spa to celebrate his birthday. Police arrested Arce at his Starr Pass room and he was transported to the Pima County Jail and booked on suspicion of domestic violence/assault, domestic violence/criminal damage and domestic violence/trespassing.

Last month, 13-year-old McKenna Pope went with her mother to buy an Easy-Bake Oven for her 4 year old brother, who had shown an interest in warming food up with a light bulb—and was unhappy with the fact that the ovens only came in bright, feminine colors. So, she made an issue of it, launching a petition on Change.org to get people interested in her cause:

“Boys are not featured in packaging or promotional materials,” she says in her petition. “And the oven comes in gender-specific hues: purple and pink. I feel that this sends a clear message: women cook, men work ... I want my brother to know that it's not ‘wrong’ for him to want to be a chef.”

...

Pope's mother, Erica Boscio, says her daughter got the idea for the campaign after a recent visit to Target, where the mother-daughter duo had planned to buy an oven for Gavyn following his tortilla incident. When they saw the packaging, they didn't think it would fly. Boscio says her daughter went home and "did her homework," researching to see if there was a more gender-neutral version. She didn't find one.

Good news, folks; the petition worked, and McKenna saw the proof with her own eyes after accepting an invitation to Hasbro to view the new, masculine prototype:

Hasbro confirmed in a statement that the new oven is in the works, and will be unveiled at the Toy Fair trade show in February in New York City. The toy will be available for sale in the fall of 2013. That’s when Pope's brother will get his oven. "Given the widespread interest in McKenna Pope’s story, we extended an invitation to McKenna and her family to visit Hasbro and meet with our Easy-Bake team," the company said. "During her visit, we showed her a new black and silver Easy-Bake Oven design that has been in development over the past 18 months."

Awesome—but one question: does it really take 18 months to develop a new colorway for a plastic box fitted with a light-bulb? New repaints of Transformers figurines come out every few months and are sold at a premium price for being "limited edition"; surely this hasn't been in production for a year-and-a-half...at least, not unless you count "sketch in the margin of last year's meeting notes" as "in production."

Either way, bravo and brava to Hasbro and McKenna, respectively.

No idea why we haven't talked about this event already, but tonight's Industrial Bowling event at Golden Pin Lanes seems like one of the most unique evenings of entertainment to occur at a bowling center in some time. $5 gets you three games of bowling and shoe rental (not a bad deal, really), but you also get industrial and electro music played by three DJs and "club lighting & visuals" (which sounds sort of like black lights and strobes with Eraserhead projected on a wall to me, but I suspect it's more involved than that). Plus, if you're over 21, there's a full bar, so that's a definite plus.

If anyone goes, please send photos. Seriously.

Today in fake problems: Senators complaining that they had to come back to Washington, cutting their holiday vacations short, to fix a problem entirely of their own stubborn creation:

But for once, those lawmakers were fully united, if only around their sadness and frustration at being stuck in Washington in a holiday week, peering over the edge of the fiscal abyss.

“This is no way to run things,” complained Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who checked off the various backyard sports he longed to be playing with his children: football, soccer and some golf.

[...]

Mostly, people just looked mad. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, his tie slightly askew, looked as gloomy as the clouds hovering over the Capitol dome. “I didn’t realize how much I didn’t want to be here until I got here,” said Mr. Schumer, who had taken the red eye from San Francisco, where he had arrived only days earlier to visit his daughter.

Poor Senators, elected to a prestigious office, so despondent that they have to work like suckers, who couldn't even be cheered by Taco Thursday (which is actually a thing on Capitol Hill). I shed one solitary tear for you, people who make $174,000 a year.

UPDATE: Full credit goes out to Arizona's representation in the Senate, who both showed up this week (unlike some people...we're looking at you, Barbara Boxer). Kyl's appearance is especially notable, since he's done with the gig in January.

• Courtesy: Center for Biological Diversity
• For when you've gotta play it cool—cool as ice.

From the release:

“There are more than 3 billion people on the planet under the age of 25. The choices this generation makes will determine whether our planet and its wildlife and natural resource base are burdened with 8 billion or 15 billion people. The difference between these paths can be measured by how many other species are left to roam alongside us,” said Jerry Karnas, population campaign director with the Center. “Our Endangered Species Condoms are a great way to get a conversation started about how the growing human population is affecting the wild world around us, especially animals already teetering on the edge of extinction.”

Since launching the campaign in 2009, CBD claims to have given out 450,000 condoms, all of which feature animal designs. While I can't account for the effectiveness of their condoms, I can definitely vouch for the fact that the packaging (hah) is eye-catching: the Endangered Species Condoms come in boxes covered in designs featuring a number of endangered animals and snappy slogans.

For example: "In the sack? Save the leatherback," "safe intercourse saves the dwarf seahorse," "don't go bare, panthers are rare," and the classic "when you're feeling tender...think about the hellbender," which conjures rather uncomfortable images if you're not familiar with the hellbender salamander.

In all seriousness, they have a point: the earth's population of humans has doubled (!) since 1970, which will soon put an even greater strain on our already-aching natural resources. So the message here seems to be "for your children's sake, try to not have children," which is certainly a message that I can behind (hah).

Check out EndangeredSpeciesCondoms.com for a look at the packages (hah) and head to biologicaldiversity.org to read more about their campaign, including a report on the top 10 U.S. species threatened by population growth.