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Weird Stuff
Friday, December 9, 2016
Help This Guy Find His Father's Lost Telescope
Posted By Ross Olson on Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 10:00 AM
Chris LaBoda is on a mission to find a piece of family history. Last April, a telescope was sold from his parent's estate in Tucson. This particular telescope is is special: LaBoda's father built it by hand in the '60s.
Telescope is about 5' long, white with spotting scope on the side and wood tripod. Came in a nice wood box with green felt where the telescope came in contacted the wood ...The telescope was sold by a family member and a real estate agent without the consent of LaBoda, who is offering a $100 reward to anyone who finds it. If you see or hear anything pertaining to the telescope, reach out to LaBoda on Facebook and help him out.
My father, who was a mechanical engineer, built it and polished the lenses by hand back in the 60’s. We used to set it up in the backyard during the summer to look at stars.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Whiskey Party at the Good Oak
Posted By Lauren Renteria on Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 8:39 PM
Whiskey lovers, Good Oak Bar (316 E. Congress St.) is calling your name this Thursday, Sept. 29.
If you want an education experience all about whiskey, get excited because Charlie Garrison of Garrison Brothers Distillery in Texas is hosting a seminar at the bar from 3-4 p.m. You'll want to RSVP for the event and it'll cost you $10.
The party really begins at the 6 p.m. with Garrison and Tucson's Stephen Paul from Hamilton Distillery, both of whom will be hanging out during the event to talk about their original whiskeys.
What more can you ask for? Good Oak promises bourbon-friendly food (including barbecue burgers!) on the menu, plus country and blues vinyl all night long.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Fruit Fiends Unite for Tucson's Pomegranate Festival
Posted By Lauren Renteria on Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 11:00 AM
Brought on by the Friends of Tucson's Birthplace in conjunction with the Ajo Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the festival is a free, all ages event. Festival goers can enjoy the wide variety of pomegranates with other fruit enthusiasts as well as music, tastings and presentations from Jesus Garcia, Nina Sajovec and Alfredo Gonzalez.
You don't want to be caught off guard of your fruit knowledge at this homage to pomegranates.
Here are few fruit facts to know before going to the Pomegranate Festival:
- Pomegranates are in season from September to February in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the fruit is in season from March to May.
- The pomegranate originated from the Mediterranean area. Today, it is cultivated all over the world including California and Arizona.
- In ancient Greece, the pomegranate was regarded as "the fruit of the dead."
Click here for more information on the festival.
Monday, June 6, 2016
A Note of Resignation: Pima County Supe Ally Miller's Communications Aide Calls It Quits
Posted By Jim Nintzel on Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 4:36 PM
In case you're counting, that makes at least 11 staff members that Miller has burned through since taking office three-and-a-half years ago.
DesJarlais, 19, had been in the media spotlight every since a strange news website, the Arizona Daily Herald, emerged in mid-May. The Herald was purportedly the work of editor Jim Falken, who does not exist, except as an alias that DesJarlias has used in online gaming and various odd projects, such as the development of a fantasy nation called the Independent Republic of Dido Place, named for the street on which DesJarlais lives with his parents.
Despite the links between DesJarlais and Jim Falken, DesJarlais has denied being behind the Arizona Daily Herald and initially pointed the finger at another Republican activist, John Dalton. After Miller leveled accusations at Dalton, however, Dalton told the press that he didn’t know anything about the entire bizarre affair, but he would like someone to get to the bottom of it so he could take legal action against whoever was pretending to be him. And then another sketchy email arrived in the email boxes of various members of the media and political activists, claiming to be from another John Dalton who took the blame for the entire affair—except no one seems to be able to locate this second John Dalton, which suggests that he also does not exist. Or at least that what is suggests to us—Miller and her allies say that that the emergence of a second John Dalton who exists only as someone who sends emails clears DesJarlais of all charges.
Nonetheless, Miller has stood behind DesJarlais, suggesting the media should be ashamed of following the story and besmirching her staffer’s good name. Miller and DesJarlais went as far as to file reports with the FBI alleging identity theft.
If all this seems absurdly complicated—well, it is, so if you want the details, you should check our coverage here, here and here.
In the meantime, we’re waiting to see if the FBI has any interest in investigating this nonsense. And Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson has asked County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry to look into what’s going on. Huckelberry has asked Sheriff Chris Nanos to check in with the FBI to find out if an investigation is underway. Huckelberry is holding off on any other action until the county is able to fulfill a massive public-records request from the Tucson Sentinel that might get to the bottom of whether DesJarlais was moonlighting as Jim Falken, intrepid reporter for the Arizona Daily Herald—and, more importantly, whether Miller had any knowledge of that project.
Huckelberry said those records could “shed some light as to any county equipment being used on premises or owned by the county—computer systems or phones or anything else, or employees doing similar actions while being paid by the public.”
We hear that Miller’s office is now reviewing thousands of pages related to that record request, so it might be awhile before we get to the bottom of this. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
This Is the Best Email About Pima County Supe Ally Miller's Crazy Links to Bogus Website
Posted By Jim Nintzel on Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 4:05 PM
Dear Miss Loraina Hunnicutt,
I am a big fan of your cartoons, and I would like to submit 1 here. I look at all your cartoons and my dad got me photo shop and I learn it at school. I am getting an B in my computer drawing class.
I did it in the style of your cartoons and it is about a funny story you have been reporting and so have the news other people.
If you need me to explain it here goes - in Star Wars Episode IV (a New Hope), Obi-Wan Kanobe says to the stormtroopers "These are not the droids you are looking for".
Everyone loves Star Wars jokes, so this one is funny.
But in my joke, it's about how Ali Miller and Tim Deloris are pretending not be Jim Falcon, even though everyone knows that the Arizona Daily Herald was really Gerald Falcon. John Hucelbarry and Chuck Winchester are in the back ground. Andf I put in a saguaro and deathstar.
If you don't want to buy it, even though it fits your style, I am offering it to the Tucson Weekly, or Tucson Sentimental or Northeast Explorer, which I have cced to show that I'm serious.
You can use it for only $74.99, which I think is cheap. I will take $49.99 if I retain synication rights.
Gerald
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Get In Touch With Downtown's Paranormal Side With Specter Tours
Posted By Nicholas A. Johnson on Thu, May 26, 2016 at 2:30 PM
Historians, skeptics and believers in the paranormal can all find something to love about the downtown Tucson ghost tours put on by Specter Tours.
The small Tucson-based tour company leads walking tours around downtown Tucson.
Tour guide and business owner Robert Owens is a dedicated historian and entertainer. Tour goers are taken around many Tucson landmarks such as the Rialto Theater, the Fox Theater and the Pioneer Hotel.
The Pioneer Hotel, the site of Arizona’s most deadly fire, has a rich history and spooky ghost stories to compliment it.
The tour also stops by 101 E. Pennington Street, an old mortuary that is now the home of Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink and Tough Luck Club. Owens recommends it as a place to relax with a drink while looking for apparitions after the tour.
Specter Tours is in the process of adding a new route, which is expected to open in early July. The new route will take tour guests around Fort Lowell Park with ghost hunting equipment similar to what you might see on television, like thermal imaging scanners.
Tickets can be purchased through Groupon for the Friday and Saturday tours. Tours start in front of the Rialto, loop around downtown, and end at Hotel Congress.
Friday, May 20, 2016
Pima County Supe Ally Miller's Aide Claims He Was Victim of Online Impersonation and Did Not Try to Masquerade as a Reporter, But The Story Seems Less Than Credible
Posted By Jim Nintzel on Fri, May 20, 2016 at 1:47 PM
The bizarre story about Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller’s staffer, Timothy DesJarlais, has taken some new twists today.
As the Weekly reported yesterday, DesJarlais has an alter ego, Jim Falken, and recently someone had used the Falken name to create an online news site and to query members of the Board of Supervisors as well as candidates for office.
Big kudos to Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith, who has a comprehensive report on DesJarlais’ strange cyber trail and the only interview with DesJarlais about this peculiar episode. It was after Smith reached DesJarlais via phone on Tuesday night that traces of “Jim Falken” began vanishing almost immediately from the web.
DesJarlais, who is also seeking a seat on the Marana School Board, has not returned multiple phone calls from the Weekly to confirm or deny that he set up an online news source—the Arizona Daily Herald—under the name of “Jim Falken.” But he did release a statement to the online propaganda blog Arizona Daily Independent.
DesJarlais acknowledged creating the “Jim Falken” identity “as part of a high school project” but said that he did not have anything to do with Jim Falken’s effort to create the Arizona Daily Herald:
“Regarding the current Arizona Daily Herald site and email address, those accounts are bogus accounts created by someone trying to impersonate me,” DesJarlais said in his statement. “As I work for Supervisor Miller and know both Kim and Marla well, I would have no reasons or time to pull any stunts like this. Nevertheless, I do apologize to anyone for the inconveniences caused to them and charge whoever did this to come forward and confess the truth.”
Perhaps DesJarlais will join O.J. on the hunt for the “real killers” next.
Friday, April 8, 2016
A Blog Post That Jumped Out Of A Tree
Posted By Rebecca Noble on Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 1:36 PM
I was enjoying a quiet moment sitting in the shade of my favorite old tree at Catalina Park earlier this week, blissfully unaware of my surroundings until I felt a small impact ripple across the ground. Mystified, I looked behind me and a young male had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. I stared at him for a second, trying to process where in the world this person could have come from. He told me that he’d been up in the tree, enjoying the beautiful day and if I was “feeling adventurous” I should try it out myself. He caught me on a laundry day in a pair of pants that have gotten a little bit tighter over the years, but I promised him I’d come see what the tree is all about when I’m wearing something stretchier. With a warm smile, he told me to have a good rest of my day in that very genuine Tucson-way that reminds me of why I love living here, and off he went.
Today, I came back to that towering (for the desert) tree. Using the gnarly old lumps dotting the trunk as footholds, I hauled myself up into the canopy and appreciated the view from 20 feet up, letting go of the stresses of four classes, two jobs and an internship for a few minutes and watching the storm clouds roll by through the tree branches. Sometimes strangers have good advice.
If you want to climb the tree too, look for the tallest tree in the southwest corner of Catalina Park at 900 N 4th Ave.
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James G. Davis (1931-2016): Down at the Tower Bar, A Retrospective
Celebrating the career of Tucson artist James G. Davis with a selection of paintings and prints made… More
