Cover Story
Kerouac of the Canyonlands
It’s remarkable that after 75 years, the disappearance of Everett Ruess has likely been solved. Many assumed he’d spend eternity being what he was in life, a lost boy, who spent his too-few years searching the Southwest’s wildest places, writing stirring prose about what he saw and becoming, in the decades after his disappearance, a…
More Great National Publicity For Arizona
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c <td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'The Gun Show – Barrel Fever www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests The nuts who brought AR-15s to Obama’s Phoenix appearance make the Daily Show! (Jon Stewart is still great, but does anyone else get…
Knock On Wood
Barney Frank compares a town hellion to a dining room table.
Mob Rule
Whether you’re watching the national health-care farce or Arizona’s legislative circus, you can’t help but wonder sometimes if democracy is doomed because the conversation takes place so far away from the facts, while the election of our lawmakers is dependent on citizens who have a very shaky grip on what, precisely, government does, as well…
State Budget Update: Brewer Ready To Blink?
Our Capitol sources tell us that Gov. Jan Brewer may be ready to sign a GOP budget without a tax referral, if certain changes are made. Details to follow…
Who Says Punk Is Dead?
This kid will probably have a show on MTV by the end of the year. Hat tip to Fish Karma.
Rialto Update: Lease Extended Until September
Looks like the Rialto Theatre Foundation won’t have to move this week out of space that the non-profit organization is now using as a green room, administrative offices and storage. The foundation has announced that its landlord, Rialto Block Project, LLC, has agreed to allow the foundation to continue using its offices, green room and…
Friday Roundtable: State Budget, Housing Prices and Premature Political Campaigns
The Wick Communications takeover of the KUAT-TV’s Friday Roundtable is complete, with Arizona Illustrated anchor Bill Buckmaster sharing the stage with Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News and Sahuarita Sun paired with yours truly. Watch it all after the jump.
Friday Roundtable: Young Wright vs. Paton
State Rep. Nancy Young Wright and State Sen. Jonathan Paton stopped by the Arizona Illustrated Roundtable last night to talk about—what else?—the state budget, along with non-partisan elections and hog-dog fighting, which has nothing to to with debate on the Senate floor. Watch it after the jump.
T Q&A
Anna Himler
Top Ten in Music
Toxic Ranch Records top sales for the week
Comings, Goings
August has been a time of transition here at Weekly World Central, as some longtime writers are exiting stage left—thereby allowing other talented folks to take their places. James Reel is stepping down as our freelance arts editor and theater critic at the end of the month. You can read his explanation on Page 26.…
Soundbites
PICK A WORTHY BENEFIT SHOW This weekend brings us two fine benefit shows with local bands performing to raise funds for two worthwhile, local, music-related organizations. The only problem? They’re both on the same night. Unless you lack access to TV, radio, Internet, magazines and newspapers, you’re probably aware that 40 years ago this weekend,…
Ask a Mexican?
Dear Readers: We begin, as we do each week, with cojones, although the huevos in question deal with my column a couple of semanas ago on why gabachos prefer the former term for testicles as opposed to the latter. I gave a rough etymology of the two (cojones comes from the Spanish singular cojón, testicle,…
A Decade of Plays
Two weeks from now, if all goes according to plan, the Tucson Weekly will publish my final review as the paper’s theater critic and arts editor. Let me make this clear: I haven’t been fired, and I’m not quitting in disgust. It’s just that I’ve been contributing to the Weekly for 10 years, during much…
From Chi-Chi to Sid
John Leguizamo is bringing his latest performance piece, John Leguizamo Live!, to the Leo Rich Theater next Friday and Saturday, Aug. 21 and 22. In anticipation of his Tucson visit, I talked to Leguizamo about the show, his past performance pieces and some tumultuous moments in his Hollywood career. Back in ’92, my roommate and…
Art Parts
Newspapers are going out of business almost faster than anyone can read them. As Tucsonans are all too aware, the Tucson Citizen, publishing in one form or another since 1870, stopped the presses on May 16. This past Sunday, The New York Times Magazine reported that Philadelphia—my hometown!—might become the first big American city with…
Bountiful Mexican
You’d think there is some sort of Arizona law making it illegal for any Mexican restaurant on the southside to serve bad food. Yeah, there are a few violators—as the saying goes, laws are meant to be broken—but the vast majority of southside Mexican joints seem to abide. El Doradito (also called El Dorado, or…
Noshing Around
Hotel Congress Renovation Hotel Congress will unveil its new, improved and much-larger patio at the hotel’s celebration of the new Fourth Avenue underpass, on Thursday, Aug. 20. Todd Hanley, general manager for the hotel, said the area will be reminiscent of European community areas and will increase the number of patrons and special events the…
Slums or Salvation?
Some people call them “necessary evils,” while others call them “rat traps.” In any case, unlicensed boarding homes for the mentally ill—which, since they are simply boarding houses, don’t require governmental licensing—are beginning to draw attention. The number of unlicensed boarding homes in Tucson is estimated to exceed 50, based on information from several sources.…
The Honeymooners
Director David Twohy’s casting of Steve Zahn as his lead in A Perfect Getaway turns out to be a masterstroke. Zahn, a decent supporting actor in past comedies and dramas, gets perhaps his biggest chance to show off his chops in this surprising summer thriller that’s far better than expected. The setup is routine: Cliff…
Extreme Empathy
Phoenix detective Annie O’Brien seems to be one of those people who’s caught almost no breaks: She witnessed her mother’s suicide as a teenager, and lost her father just after her 30th birthday. Six pages into Jeffrey Mariotte’s riveting Cold Black Hearts, a chain of events makes it clear that things aren’t getting much better…
Wall Worries
Call it an expression of public will, or just political pandering; either way, you can’t call the new wall on our southern border benign. Cutting a daunting swath from California to Texas, it has degraded waterways, chopped up private property and wreaked environmental havoc by severing wildlife-migration routes and pummeling habitat. Now, three years after…
Now Showing at Home
Pete’s Dragon: High-Flying Edition, Big Trouble in Little China (Blu-Ray), Tyson
Top Ten in Books
Antigone Books best-sellers for the week
Thinning the Thickets
When it came to logging in the Southwest, the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity won the war in a rout. “We squashed the timber industry and the Forest Service, and dictated the terms of surrender,” says Kieran Suckling, the director of the center. He’s talking about a war that began in the 1980s, when the…
Top Ten in Movies
Casa Video’s top rentals for the week
Mailbag
Thanks for Printing Hoffman’s Alternative-Reality Blather Thank you for the essay on Obama bumper stickers by Jonathan Hoffman (Guest Commentary, July 30). It’s refreshing to get my fix of delusional alternative-reality blather somewhere besides the trolls infesting Salon’s letters columns. I live in a boring, predictable world in which it would be impossible to vote…
The Skinny
IN GROVER, WE TRUST Yet another effort to pass a now-overdue state budget collapsed earlier this week, when Republican senators couldn’t find a 16th vote. The Legislature has now missed an extended deadline to get a referendum on the ballot to ask voters to pass a temporary sales tax to get Arizona through its tough…
No Monkeys on Bikes
On Hold on Now, Youngster … (Arts and Crafts), the first 2008 Los Campesinos! album, there are guitar and violin lines zipping about wildly, handclaps and exuberant shouts (in unison or solitarily), and pummeling instrumentation that can metastasize or collapse in on itself. On We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (Arts and Crafts), released later…
Media Watch
Portillo in, Merino out as editor of ‘La Estrella,’ Associated Press’ Tucson reporter takes early out, No more Moten at KRQ
Live
Chuck “Wagon” Maultsby and His Same Old Band, Duncan Stitt
Police Dispatch
TOO DRUNK TO HURT NORTH KAIN AVENUE JULY 16, 8:18 A.M. A man woke up after a night of heavy drinking to major injuries he did not remember getting, according to a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report. Deputies found the reportee in his trailer—and apparently still drunk. He told a nonlinear story about getting “hammered”…
Busdriver: Jhelli Beam (Anti-)
Like an auctioneer on speed, Busdriver’s impressively fast rhyming skills help him stack the strange, intriguing Jhelli Beam with a word count generally reserved for major Russian literature. Jhelli Beam, with both live instrumentation and programmed beats, highlights Busdriver’s loquacious, throaty rhyming. It also features appearances from Nick Thorburn of Islands (on the middling “Happy…
Danehy
In 2003, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, alarmed by data that showed a skyrocketing number of traffic collisions resulting in injuries and fatalities caused by people talking on cell phones while driving, wanted to do a comprehensive study on just how bad the problem was, and how it could be creating a culture of…
Magnolia Electric Co.: Josephine (Secretly Canadian)
Josephine finds Jason Molina bound by regret and fits of restless isolation, staring down his ghosts while forging a path of escape through deep shadows and the faraway horizon. The latest album from Magnolia Electric Co. is a somber and deeply evocative work, drenched in images of open sky, sunsets and the tragedy of those…
Return of an Old Friend
Imagine that Tucson is a puzzle. Well, we just found a key missing piece behind the sofa. It’s been more than two years now since the project to reconstruct the Fourth Avenue underpass began, and on the date that’s now recognized as Tucson’s birthday—Aug. 20—we’ll be able to enjoy the much-anticipated results. Once again, we’ll…
Messina
It’s 8 p.m. on a Friday night at Christ Presbyterian Church. The front lights are dark. No one is worshiping at this hour. But there is activity in the church. Head to the back of the building, walk up the stairs and enter; go down the hall and turn. Ahead, you will see the bright…
Julian Plenti: Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper (Matador)
Since the album’s title finds Paul Banks (of Interpol fame) literally describing his new alter ego for his audience, it’s telling that he chooses to link this persona with the album’s third track, “Skyscraper,” an ambient, acoustic soundscape mostly sans vocals. It’s one of the least-interesting songs on the album, and one of the most…
City Week
Fantasy Land Fun Valley of the Moon Fantasy Tour 7 to 9 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 15 Valley of the Moon 2544 E. Allen Road 323-1331 Celebrate Tucson’s birthday trippy-fairy-tale style, complete with gnomes, fairies and magic, at Valley of the Moon, a Tucson attraction built by George Phar Legler nearly 80 years ago. The fantasyland,…
Guest Commentary
I took my oath to join the Army National Guard on April 2, 2009. I remember standing in a small room with about 15 other recruits. Everyone was wearing jeans, T-shirts that covered their shoulders and cleavage, and closed-toed shoes. I was the youngest in the group—17. I stood up straight and looked forward in…
Nine Questions
Ed Kuklinski
French Feelings
I found the first hour or so of Summer Hours somewhat baffling. It’s not that the plot and action weren’t clear; it was just unclear to me why the film was made. It begins with a family reunion in the countryside north of Paris. The 75-year-old matriarch, Hélène, has invited her three grown children, Adrienne,…
Buying Local and the Birth of Globalization
A very long time ago, a local tree fell in a local forest, and a handful of locals carved it into a canoe. They used this canoe to cross the previously uncrossed river, upon whose East Bank they lived. When these East Bankers landed their canoe on the foreign West Bank, they found odd people…
The Latest From Mars
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona An Oblique View of Victoria Crater NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Interesting Crater in Meridiani Planum It’s been a while since we shared new photos of Mars taken by the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab’s HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The upper photo is an oblique view of Victoria Crater. Dr. Alfred…
The Budget: Will Brewer Blink?
The Arizona Senate, unable to get enough votes to refer temporary sales tax to the ballot, has instead passed pretty much the same version of the budget that Brewer vetoed on July 1. Here’s an interesting detail from the Arizona Republic: The latest plan keeps alive a key Republican goal to repeal a state property…
Budget Package Fails Again
Another push to get a budget package through the Arizona Senate failed this afternoon. The Arizona Republic has the details.
Bike Church
Check out this shrine to cyclery. People are calling it the Bike Church, and it’ll be unveiled at a ceremony from 6:30 to 9 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 15. These pictures were taken during the construction phase of the project. The completed structure will be 24-feet-tall and painted pure white. Its design mirrors classical religous architecture,…
