Cover Story
Tea Party Medicine
Jane Orient is aware that her critics describe her and her associates as whackos. The feeling is mutual, she says. Orient is a Tucson doctor who happens to be the executive director of a national organization that’s getting a lot of attention lately, thanks to the Tea Party movement and the debate over health-care reform.…
Speaking of Owen Buz Mills
Here is a look at the fella who dumped $2 million into the Arizona governor’s race: A campaign ad Owen Buz Mills shot for an NRA position.
Martin’s In!
To no one’s great surprise, state Treasurer Dean Martin has announced that he’s running for governor. AP has the details, although the story refers to Owen Buz Mills, the shooting-sports guy who dumped a couple of million bucks in the campaign last month, as Buz Owens. Guess that illustrates Mills’ name ID problem… Incidentally, Martin…
Farley Report: “Economic Armageddon” Ahead
Rep. Steve Farley sends his first weekly summary from the Arizona Legislature: Howdy, Friends O’Farley… It’s Opening Week of Regular Session, but this legislative reunion doesn’t quite have the same excitement to it after meeting more or less constantly for the previous year. What does add to the excitement is the vastness of our fiscal…
Access Tucson: Curtains for Certain?
If anyone was hoping for much resolution to the city’s budget woes at today’s Tucson City Council meeting, they were out of luck. But something amazing did happen: All of the city’s labor groups stood united against a pay proposal brought forth by City Manager Mike Letcher. They provided their own proposal to council members.…
Brewer Appoints Rick Myers To AZ Board of Regents
Gov. Jan Brewer announced this afternoon that she has appointed Rick Myers, former IBM exec and member of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, to the Arizona Board of Regents. He’ll replace Fred Boice.
State of the State: There Will Be Blood
When Gov. Jan Brewer delivered her first State of the State speech yesterday, expectations were pretty low—so there were audience members who thought she did a pretty good job, despite her tendency to screw up the timing on most of her good lines. RAND CARLSON Gov. Jan Brewer The folks who liked the speech were…
Friday Night Roundtable: Our Collapsing Governments, The City Council Recall and Elections 2010
A look back at the week gone by and a look forward at the legislative session that starts next week on KUAT-TV’s Arizona Illustrated. Watch it after the jump. BTW, KUAT-TV will be airing Gov. Brewer’s State of the State speech on Monday, with commentary from Christopher Conover and me! It’s supposed to start sometime…
Friday Night Roundtable: Melvin vs. Farley
State Sen. Al Melvin and State Rep. Steve Farley stopped by Arizona Illustrated’s Friday Night Roundtable today. Al still believes the state can get out of this budget mess without raising taxes and opposes a one-cent sales tax proposition, although he would vote to send it to the voters for a final call. His solution…
Picture This: Samantha M. Sais
SAMANTHA M. SAIS/NYTI Ian Lewis, 8, who has Asperger syndrome, plays “hand dinosaurs” with a classmate before beginning class work at Drachman Montessori Magnet School in Tucson. Samantha M. Sais is a student at the University of Arizona School of Journalism with a focus in photojournalism. Sais is also going for her bacherlor in fine…
‘The New York Times’ invades Tucson
JOSE R. LOPEZ/NYTI The New York Times Company editors and 23 journalism students from around the country have invaded the UA School of Journalism for The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. For 10 days, the students cover stories from around the city. This week comes a blog entry from Amanda Portillo. Portillo is a…
21st Century Disney: “Daddy, Let’s Pretend We’re the Others”
Lostfans, preparing for the final season, are petitioning the show’s parent company to help keep the TV show’s spirit alive. They’re asking Disney to turn Tom Sawyer Island into a Lost-themed island trip to Dharmaville. These childhood-crushing transformations aren’t new; Swiss Family Robinson’s Tree House is now Tarzan’s Tree House; the Pirates of the Caribbean…
Picture This: Hero’s Farewell
ROXANA VASQUEZ Mario Carrasco, a member of the Honor Guard from the Tucson Fire Department, watches the fire truck bearing Captain Anthony Tucker’s casket drive away. Tucker, who died from cancer, was a native of the Tohono O’odham Nation and was with the Tohono O’odham Fire Department for 11 years.
The Martian Dunes
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona New images from the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab’s HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, including a shot of the dry ice melting near in the high northern latitudes. LPL’s Candy Hansen tells us: There is a vast region of sand dunes at high northern latitudes on Mars. In the winter,…
Historic Romance
Emily Blunt absolutely sparkles in period-drama The Young Victoria, a film that manages to be a good (though embellished) piece of history and strikingly romantic at the same time. Blunt plays Queen Victoria, covering her life from shortly before her coronation to shortly after her marriage to Prince Albert of Germany (Rupert Friend, who is…
All in the Family
What’s in a name?” inquires Juliet in the Bard’s famed tale of doomed love. The answer, if the name happens to be Redgrave: Quite a bit, actually. The family Redgrave is chock full of actors, awards and genuine fame borne from an impressive body of work spanning five generations. And if your name is Lynn…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Readers: The Mexican is still trying to shake off the Herradura from the previous year, so I’m reprinting a favorite column of mine this week. To make up for my siesta, though, I’m bringing back the YouTube edition of this column. Just visit youtube.com/askamexicano every Thursday for the latest edition! Dear Mexican: I just…
Soundbites
TWO WOODEN NIGHTS Tucson is rather fond of its musical traditions—think HoCo Fest, KFMA Day, Club Crawl®, the Great Cover-Up, etc.—and this week brings with it another wonderful tradition. In the late 1980s, then-River Roses frontman Chris Holiman had an idea to attempt to unite a fractious music scene by putting a pile of acts…
Sausage Fest
Rare is the metal band that can shred your face clean off while using virtuoso techniques worthy of Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini—with all the sonic subtlety of a pissed-off Japanese giant monster. Which is why Whittier, Calif.’s Exmortus tends to stand out amidst the current thrash-metal resurgence—a resurgence spearheaded in significant part by New York…
God Has Our Back
Back in the ’70s, my wife saw to it that her children watched Little House on the Prairie on a regular basis, herding them in front of the television for a healthy dose of adventurous, frontier character-building. In an effort to promote family bonding (and get a dose of hunky Michael Landon), she would usually…
Beer Bliss
Jim Counts and Bob McMahon are two well-known—and sometimes controversial—figures in Tucson, but luckily, they’ve set politics aside, and their joint eastside venture produces delicious results. Counts—owner of the original Nimbus on 44th Street—and McMahon opened the eatery in October, taking over the home of McMahon’s Italia. The décor takes Nimbus to a new level…
In a Flash
The bright camera flashes that catch red-light runners at four Tucson intersections no longer startle drivers like they once did. But have the cameras been “effective in reducing both the number and severity of crashes,” as was promised when they were first proposed? That question could be answered by a two-year study of the effectiveness…
Top Ten in Books
Mostly Books best-sellers for the week
Dead in the Desert
There’s a vile stench out here, on the trash-ridden land south of Tucson International Airport. But as smells go, this one’s easy to peg: It’s the stink of rotting flesh, riding for miles on robust winter breezes. Just before Christmas, animal-rescue groups discovered what the human residents of this wasteland have long known: Their desolate…
Top Ten in Movies
Casa Video’s top rentals for the week
Preseason Report
Can Gov. Jan Brewer hang on to the office she inherited? Will Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords face Republican Jonathan Paton? Will Joe Sweeney once again embarrass the GOP with a quixotic campaign against Congressman Raúl Grijalva? These questions and so many others will be answered later this year as candidates launch their campaigns, and voters make…
Now Showing at Home
Taking Woodstock (Blu-Ray) UNIVERSAL MOVIE B- SPECIAL FEATURES B DVD GEEK FACTOR 5.5 (OUT OF 10) James DiGiovanna and I differ a bit on this one. While I agree that it’s not one of the better films from director Ang Lee, I still kind of liked it. It’s an equally enjoyable and frustrating film about…
Capitol Campaigns
Even as the state teeters on the edge of bankruptcy with few solutions in sight, there are a few brave souls—or highly ambitious egomaniacs—still interested in serving in the Arizona Legislature. Here’s a roundup of potential candidates, based on what we’ve heard in recent months. LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT 25 Legislative District 25 is one of those…
Lymbyc Systym: Shutter Release (Mush)
As instrumental bands go, Lymbyc Systym is one of the more interesting ones. The band is just two brothers (originally from Tempe); their songs utilize countless sounds, samples and instruments; and each song moves with a melodic and rhythmic momentum that many instrumental bands lack. In other words, the songs captivate instead of falling into…
The Skinny
RENTAL RELIEF We’re going to press before the Tucson City Council meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 5, but from what we’ve heard from City Council members, there’s little support for City Manager Mike Letcher’s proposed 2 percent tax on residential rental payments. Without that tax, the city will be in the hole by more than $3…
Vektor: Black Future (Heavy Artillery)
At this point, the thrash resurgence seems never-ending. But one small label has it down pat, scooping up young, ambitious, intelligent metal bands that honor yesteryear’s greats while striving for a semblance of originality in a genre that blew its wad 25 years ago. New York’s Heavy Artillery Records recently signed Tempe quartet Vektor, who…
Danehy
It is dismaying that there hasn’t been a huge public outcry against the Arizona Legislature’s all-out assault on the state’s teachers. Perhaps it was the timing of the legislative action, which took effect just before the holidays. Perhaps it was the low-key and lackluster coverage it got in the media. Or maybe it’s just that…
Red State Soundsystem: Ghosts in a Burning City (Self-Released)
In Las Vegas, where unfinished hulls of hotel-casinos and the incomplete sprawl of subdivisions rot in the sun, there dwells a young musician named Joshua Ellis. He records under the moniker Red State Soundsystem in an apartment next to a comics shop. Unlike other lap-pop artists, Ellis (a former colleague of this publication’s editor and…
Downing
Toward the end of War and Peace, Tolstoy shows us a number of tender domestic scenes. In them, we encounter, after a lapse of time, those principal characters who have managed to survive both Napoleon and the turbulence of youth. Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary and Pierre have, to our great satisfaction, sorted themselves out at…
Nine Questions
Amy Shapiro
Guest Opinion
As I am sure you all know, Dec. 15 was Bill of Rights Day. In Tucson, it was celebrated in a manner reminiscent of colonial times. The Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The amendments were ratified on Dec. 15, 1791, which made Dec. 15, 2009,…
Noshing Around
Krispy Kreme Is Back Dan Brinton, aka “Doughnut Dan,” has opened a third Southern Arizona Krispy Kreme location at 5775 E. Broadway Blvd., near Park Place Mall. The store doesn’t have a walk-in area, so doughnuts and coffee—including some affordable specialty-coffee drinks—are sold via a walk-up window and a drive-through. Austin’s Apparently Closed Austin’s Old…
Police Dispatch
THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF REJECTION WEST ROLLER COASTER ROAD DEC. 9, 11 A.M. A science-magazine-reading suitor showed bafflement at both the physics and chemistry behind an encounter with the opposite sex, according to a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report. Dispatchers received an “unwanted person” call in which the caller explained that a man she had…
Live
Sonic Youth, Sic Alps
Top Ten in Music
Toxic Ranch Records top sales for the week
One Last Look Back
Welcome to the first Tucson Weekly of the new year. As we plunge into 2010, I’d like to take one last glance back at 2009. While many have bemoaned the general crappiness of 2009, at Weekly World Central, in many ways, it was a pretty good year. While there were some definite low points (including…
Media Watch
KVOA makes adjustements; Hansen releases sports retrospective
T Q&A
Shari Popen
Mailbag
Nintzel’s Feelings on Click Reveal an Embittered, Unhappy Individual While looking through your newspaper to check on the opening time for Winterhaven’s Festival of Lights, I came across “Get Out of Town!” (Dec. 17). I found the section dealing with Jim Click particularly interesting, because it reflects an increasingly sad and disappointing practice in our…
Weekly Wide Web
It’s now 2010, so we’ve got a little present for you: In addition to offering videos of Howe Gelb and Ryanhood playing at the Fox Tucson Theatre as part of the First Night bash, we’ve made it easier for you to find all of the wonderful things on TucsonWeeklyTV. Instead of searching for our YouTube…
Huck and Jim Come to Life
You probably know the plot of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck, a favorite Mark Twain character, befriends runaway slave Jim and helps him escape down the Mississippi River to freedom. It’s an old story, yes, but a great one. If you think the book is heartwarming, wait until you see it unfold in the…
Horse Help
The Horse Boy is a documentary about Rowan, a 5-year-old boy with severe autism-related behavioral problems. His father, Rupert Isaacson, is a journalist and human-rights activist who loves horses. One day, young Rowan wanders over to a neighbor’s stable and starts hugging a horse. Rupert is amazed to see that Rowan’s behavioral problems vanish when…
City Week
Makin’ Changes Sustainable Tucson meeting and screening of In Transition 5:45 to 8 p.m., Monday, Jan. 11 Joel D. Valdez Main Library Lower Level Meeting Room 101 N. Stone Ave. 770-9861; www.sustainabletucson.org It’s now two years until 2012, when the Mayan calendar suggests the world will end. OK, the world probably won’t actually end in…
Tucson’s 12-Minute Makeover
Time to tidy up, Tucson. On Tuesday, Jan. 12, city officials are asking residents to step outside for 12 minutes at noon to clean up where they live, work, learn and play—whether it’s a front yard, playground, ball field, sidewalk, parking lot or alley. Participants will be asked to dispose of litter in their own…
Sure, It Looks Cute Now. But Just Wait Until It Opens Fire With A Plasma Cannon
UA electrical engineering senior Matt Bunting has gotten some attention for a robot he built as a class project last year. Alan D. Fischer brings us this bulletin from the UA: A six-legged robot designed to use cognitive reinforcement learning to most efficiently walk straight forward seems to be opening professional doors for UA electrical…
