Cover Story
Not Going Anywhere
People gather around Pima County Public Defender Margo Cowan, as she tells them, unequivocally and in perfect Spanish, that they’re protected.
Win Tickets to See Max & Iggor Cavalera Return To Roots
If you never had the top of your head blown off by heavily storied Brazilian metal monsters Sepultura then you’ve never had the top of your properly blown off. (Sepultura were the loudest band on earth, we swear it—laid waste to both Slayer and Metallica back in the day). Now, Sepultura originals, irreplaceable singer/guitarist Max…
Laughing Stock: Roll Out the Welcome Mat
This week’s comedy picks have never performed in Tucson before. They bring the funny in very different styles: Think El Charro vs. BKs, both of which they should visit. Johnny Beehner: Funny in any genre Johnny Beehner mines laughs from everyday details no one else notices but everyone recognizes. In his anecdotes of family life,…
Weekly List: 15 Things To Do In Tucson In The Next 10 Days
Your Weekly guide to keeping busy in the Old Pueblo. Pick of the Week: Dillinger Days Dillinger Days: One of Hotel Congress’ claims to fame is the historic 1934 fire that lead to the capture of bank robber John Dillinger. Dillinger and his men were taking refuge at Congress after a series of robberies when the…
Cinema Clips: Patriots Day
The latest collaboration between director Peter Berg and actor Mark Wahlberg, Patriots Day, stands as not only a valuable tribute to the victims and heroes of the Boston Marathon bombings, but a solid, meaningful, gritty look at what it took to take down the terrorist Tsarnaev brothers. Wahlberg plays Sgt. Tommy Saunders, another one of…
Win Tickets to See Orgy at the Rock on Jan. 24
Kohl-eyed goth-glamsters are back from the dead, or maybe that’s what they’d like you to believe. Or maybe they never died and just sort of faded away, which is worse. You’ll recall Orgy had a fairly sizable hit with New Order’s classic “Blue Monday” (theirs was truly a wickedly dirty cover), and their ’98 debut…
How Not To Read The Onion
Reading the confused comments under The Onion articles is one of my favorite past times. Please enjoy these randomly chosen reactions of reading satire literally as much as I have. The people who were appalled by SeaWorld’s new specialty: The people who had some serious concerns about an ice lawsuit: Perfecting the intricacies of the…
Gabe Sullivan: Songwriting Machine!
At the beginning of 2017, as winds turned cold and Mercury moved into retrograde, Gabriel Sullivan, Tucson guitar-slinger (for XIXA and Howe Gelb), record producer and prolific songwriter, embarked on an insane project; to compose, record and post a song a day for a year. It’s a challenge he imposed upon himself once before in…
Trump’s Election Has Been Very Good For K12 Inc.
The impending demise of K12 Inc., the for-profit online school corporation, has been an occasional source of schadenfreude in my posts. Online education as the sole source of schooling for K-12 students is a bad idea for all but a few people, and K12 Inc. needs millions of students, which requires a regular infusion of new students,…
A Beloved Local Musician in Need: Local Music Superpowers Rally to Help
As all of us T-town residents know, Tucson cares. I moved here from Brooklyn four years ago, after nearly a decade of touring the states as a musician. The perpetual travel of my 20s gave me the rather unique experience of getting to know every nook and corner of our country, coast to coast, border…
Cinema Clips: Live By Night
Director Ben Affleck’s latest is a period piece/costume drama that looks like a lot of work went into it, but never feels like a cohesive picture. Affleck also stars as Joe Coughlin, one of those gangsters you just gotta love, fighting the gangster fight during Prohibition in sunny Florida. Joe rises to the top of…
A Dollar a Day, and Other Observations About Ducey’s Education Funding Proposal
Governor Ducey surprised me by proposing $114 million in new education funds for the upcoming state budget. That’s $90 million more than I expected. According to Senator Steve Farley (D-Tucson), most of that comes from highway funds. Meaning, to paraphrase It’s A Wonderful Life, every time a school bell rings, a roadway gets a pothole.…
Lando Chill Drops Latest Vid (‘Early in the Morning’) And it’s Lovely, and it Kicks Ass.
Lando Chill’s latest video is a sweet and temperate tour of Northern Arizona (Winslow, Flagstaff, and Kaibab National Forest), full of lover’s joy (Chill and Laísa Laiia), without any dreaded maudlin overtones. The tune and video each effortlessly balance gentle flow and wide-eyed optimism for a deep appreciation of being alive, and unalone. Kudos to directors…
The Fake News Frenzy
The most recent presidential campaign has reignited many Americans’ Facebook rants about “journalism these days,” and how it’s all turned into a biased, money-centered propaganda machine. No one could log into Facebook during the run up to the election without reading one or more lofty diatribes on why the candidate they support will be the…
Cinema Clips: Paterson
Adam Driver plays the title character in writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s latest, a bus driver with a penchant for poetry. His name is Paterson, he lives in Paterson, New Jersey, and he sets his folded clothes out every night so he’s good to go in the morning. His wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) aspires to be a…
Song of the Day: ‘St. James Infirmary’ by Allen Toussaint
The first thing you do when you hear the late great Allen Toussant’s take “St. James Infirmary” is at the first imprint of sound consider the amount of times this anonymous standard has been recorded, much less played in a dormant piano bar by a pair of hands that feel its languishing generosity. And now,…
Delores Needs a Home
Hi, I’m Delores! I’m a pretty 3.5-year-old mama dog and I need a home. I was found as a stray so the Humane Society of Southern Arizona doesn’t know a lot about my history. They do know that I love other dogs and I love to run! I’m part of the Jog-A-Dog program so I…
LTW Offers a Generous Dose of Sweetness and Surprise in Buyer & Cellar
For those who may have welcomed 2017 with not a large dose of cheerful anticipation, get thee to Live Theatre Workshop’s production of Buyer and Cellar, a very funny—and very well done—one-man script about the shopping mall underneath one of the buildings on Barbra Streisand’s compound in Malibu. Yes. You read correctly. An underground shopping…
U.S. Rep. Grijalva Won’t Be Attending the Trump Inauguration
Congressman Raul Grijalva told his House colleagues today he won’t be attending Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration: Thank you Mr. Chairman. I rise today to tell my constituents that I will not be attending the inauguration of Donald Trump as our next president. My absence is not motivated by disrespect for the office, or motivated by…
Fringe Goes Mainstream
if you want to start your theater-going year with a heady dose of the “bigger and badder” variety, you should check out the sixth annual Tucson Fringe Festival.
You Can Be Heroes
The latest collaboration between director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg, Patriots Day, stands as not only a valuable tribute to the victims and heroes of the Boston Marathon bombings, but a solid, meaningful, gritty look at what it took to take down the Tsarnaev brothers.
Metal Injection
Love or loathe English metaltitans Iron Maiden, you can’t deny the band’s lasting legacy in the world of heavy metal, or even, um, rock ‘n’ roll sword ‘n’ sorcery play.
Noise Annoys
The trajectory of the grand closing of the DIY venue is tradition now, and it’s cliche.
Know Your Product
Classical violinist-gone-rogue Samantha Bounkeua arrived in Tucson in 2012 by accident and was immediately adopted into the arts community.
Vintage Vinyl
Have you ever watched a live band and noticed the drums and bass in your left ear, the guitar and keyboards in your right ear, imaged in empty gymnasium like reverb?
Cash the Crops
Recreational marijuana has proved to be a boon for states that have legalized it, and this year four states will add that bounty to their budget.
Pleasure Activist
A New Year can feel like a clean slate. A chance to leave unwanted baggage behind and to forge ahead into the New Year feeling lighter—buoyed by dreams and optimism. And then there are those buzzkills who will remind us that most New Year resolutions evaporate by Valentine’s Day. With that in mind, I find…
Editor’s Note
It takes more than a national memorial. Much more.
Dust Devil
From the Santa Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, the Tucson, the Tortolita mountains they came faster, faster, faster than light to this mountain cradle, the Sonoran Desert. Spinning, spinning, spinning a cocoon of love around them. Then right through them a thousand love arrows lift them skyward. From young to old, leaving stardust for…
Freshman Orientation
Congressman Tom O’Halleran won the Congressional District 1 seat in last November’s election.
Community Connections
Engel Indo started the year by paying a client’s $750 rent. The previous week he helped a family whose house was destroyed in a robbery, brought Christmas baskets to families in need and gave away an Arizona Bowl ticket.
The Skinny
Grand Bust Obama decides against protecting Grand Canyon through executive action President Barack Obama is missing the opportunity to protect the Grand Canyon area from uranium mining and other potential future development. Congressman Raul Grijalva announced last week that he’d been told that Obama would not use his executive authority under the Antiquities Ac to…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Why is Mexican Spanish so maligned by the rest of the Hispanic world (even Dominicans!)?
Don of Bread
On a particularly hot afternoon last summer, people gathered near an elementary school in midtown Tucson, waiting patiently for their orders to arrive and chatting with one another about what they planned to do with their purchases.
Tucson Salvage
In the cold and dark drizzle it’s hard to tell the jagged edges between earth and sky, and the potholes are filled with rare rain and yellowy lights reflecting from the Triple T over by the freeway.
Frida’s Flowers
The spirit of Frida Kahlo hovers sort of over an unusual outdoor exhibition at the Tucson Botanical Gardens.
