Cover Story
Fiction 84
About This So-Called Contest I had mixed feelings about this whole Fiction 84 contest thing. Why? Well, on one hand, short-writing contests are undeniably a hoot. Readers clearly enjoy them—more than 320 of you sent in a total of 400 or so stories—and the results are a whole lot of fun to read. Plus, it…
How Will This Party End?
Be careful browsing on slate.com. There’s some apocalyptic party-pooping going on, and if you ride your bike every where you go, have chickens in the back yard and closed your bank account, then maybe you’re ahead of this end-curve. For more end-time revelry, check out Josh Levin’s series on how America is going to end…
Happy Birthday, Helen Thomas
Everyone is wishing President Obama a happy birthday today, but I found out through this foodie blog that it happens to be Newswoman Helen Thomas’ birthday, too. This reminded me of Ms. Thomas’ excellent chiding of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in early July. Today, Obama brought Ms. Thomas some cupcakes, figuring, I guess,…
Give Casa Maria Some Love
Casa Maria serves soup and bag lunches every day to those who are hungry and could use some help to make sure those meals continue. The organization is having a food drive through Aug. 25. Congressman Raul Grijalva’s office sent out the following reminder: Founded in 1981, Casa Maria provides a variety of services including…
Business King, Not Free Speech
The headline on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times, “Voices From Above Silence a Cable TV Feud”, should have been above the fold and more about freedom of speech rather than media moguls making nice in the name of making a buck. The feud between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann goes back almost…
School Tuition Organizations on Defense Again
Take a good look at Tom Horne’s face. This is the man elected to advocate for public education in Arizona, but it always seems he’s more eager to screw public education that advocate for it when it comes to vouchers and legislators. But after reading two articles recently on school-tuition organizations, it feels like the…
More Money Problems
As Republicans at the Arizona Legislature struggle to pass a budget, the financial news just gets worse. Arizona finished the fiscal year on June 30 with an estimated shortfall of nearly $474 million, even after all the cuts that lawmakers made back in January, according to the latest report from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.…
Film Screening and Q&A at Crossroads Grand Cinemas
The only Tucson screening of Smile ‘Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story takes place at 1 and 3:30 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 1, at Crossroads Grand Cinemas, 4811 E. Grant Road. Filmmaker Lee Story will be on hand for a Q&A after the 1 p.m. showing. Here’s some info about the film: Smile ‘Til…
Farley on the Budget Negotiations
Here’s the latest missive from state Rep. Steve Farley, a midtown Democrat: I know it’s a few days early for the monthly edition of the Farley Report, but there is action to report on the budget front. Unfortunately, that is not good news. You will recall in the last report I described a unanimous vote…
To Live Again
Willy Russell’s one-woman play Shirley Valentine relies significantly on the casual slinging of a certain level of schmaltz as the title character, a charming and self-effacing 52-year-old Liverpool housewife, rediscovers herself. The abilities of viewers to tolerate that schmaltz usually dictate whether they find the production to be a bemused sitcom or a mini-revelation. Factor…
Multiple Strands
Artist Michael Nolan is not yet 30 years old, but his self-portrait is one of the most old-fashioned works in the Arizona Biennial ’09 at the Tucson Museum of Art. The every-other-year survey of contemporary Arizona art is known for its cutting-edge art materials, and this year’s edition has plenty. Straight pins, tabloid magazines, a…
Canine Club
Football-sized pugs trot along in cadence before veering off toward a suddenly alarmed Pekingese. Other dogs race around like loose atoms, lapping at outstretched hands, watering trees and merrily sniffing one another’s rollicking behinds. Welcome to Miko’s Corner Playground, a pooch Xanadu in Reid Park with its own blooming social set. These two acres of…
The Need to Please
Young people are so cute when they fall in love with each other’s special crotch feelings. Or at least that’s the convention in the movies, where the menace of acne is unknown, and the elderly appear only in the shadows to utter something wise or stupid, and then cede the floor to slender and worthier…
The Skinny
PERFORMANCE ANXIETY The Rialto Theatre Foundation won a battle last week when Pima County Superior Court Judge Michael Miller ruled that the nonprofit organization had previously worked out a verbal agreement with landlord Don Martin that required Martin to give the foundation 60 days to move out of spaces the Rialto is now using for…
Wait for the Surprise
All signs pointed to a bad time when it came to Orphan. The film is the billionth “demon-child” movie to get the green light, and it actually includes Vera Farmiga as the troubled mother who must deal with the evil kid. Farmiga was in Joshua, a 2007 demon-child film that co-starred Sam Rockwell. Déjà vu.…
Police Dispatch
A FOOL AND HIS MONEY WEST RIVER ROAD JUNE 30, 4:18 P.M. A man who engaged in sexual activity with two unfamiliar women—and who claims he did not intend to purchase their services—ended up paying dearly anyway, according to a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report. When interviewed, the reportee said he had been robbed after…
Now Showing at Home
This Is Spinal Tap (Blu-Ray), Watchmen: Director’s Cut (Blu-Ray), For All Mankind (Blu-Ray)
Media Watch
Smith leaves Tucson for Belo position in Virginia
Top Ten in Movies
Casa Video’s top rentals for the week
T Q&A
Jane McCollum
Most Fantastic Blend
When the Ramones played their first British show, on July 4, 1976, it was exactly what a generation of pissed-off youths—facing racial tensions and skyrocketing unemployment—was looking for. But three years later, things had cooled off a bit. The mostly white punks and the mostly black reggae fans realized, as they found themselves in the…
Danehy
Some things I just don’t understand … • A woman in Sierra Vista was convicted of stealing $3,500 from a Buena High School student account. She was sentenced to three years in prison. NFL player Donté Stallworth (with the lame-ass apostrophe) consumed four giant tequila drinks at a Miami nightclub, became way past legally drunk,…
Soundbites
BUZZ BAND ALERT! Are Tucsonans ready for the latest buzz band from across the pond? Of course we are! As the summer heat all but suffocates us, we always can use some diversion. Scotland’s Glasvegas—coming to America after recently touring the United Kingdom with U2 and Kings of Leon, and after attracting major attention at…
Messina
I’m sitting in a clubhouse at a midtown apartment complex, watching seven people stretch their faces and fingers as they roar like lions. Eyes are popping; tongues are hanging; expressions are exaggerated. Instead of a typical lion roar, each person is simulating laughter, with loud exclamations of HA! and HEE! and HO! This isn’t an…
Live
The Album Leaf, Terraformation
Guest Commentary
I have always been fascinated by bumper stickers. They are sort of a pre-electronic Twitter (which I also find fascinating). Bumper stickers are more provocative, because you don’t choose to “follow” them: They are in your face. My wife often chides me when I squint through the windshield to read a sticker, or pause in…
Sax Ruins: Yawiquo (Ipecac)
Leave it to the Japanese to take any medium—comic books, film, rock—to its logical and extreme conclusion. Just when you thought nothing more could be done in the jazz-based idiom with a saxophone and a drum kit, along comes Sax Ruins, a deadly duo featuring improvisational sax player Ono Ryoko and Ruins skinsman Tatsuya Yoshida.…
Before the Bitching Begins
Got a question? Perhaps the answer is right here: • My Fiction 84 entry was not picked for publication in this week’s issue. This deeply upsets me. Should I send off a rambling, somewhat insane letter bitching you out? Oh, please, for the love of God, don’t do that. (Based on prior experience, I know…
Fiction 84: Other Interesting Entries
Every Species Counts “It’s just an ant!” the son protested. The father placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Every species has a purpose and provides a benefit to other species. Ants to lizards, lizards to birds. Birds then provide eggs for lizards. Even trees and rocks provide homes and protection. We’re all connected and…
Discovery: LP (XL)
Listening to Discovery’s LP reminds us that synthpop is the “sound of the aughts.” Twenty-somethings in the year 2025 will be playing LCD Soundsystem and the Postal Service at their nostalgic ’00s parties, decked out in American Apparel thrift finds and high tops with straps. Though LP feels like a recapitulation of everything faddish about…
Mailbag
A Fan of Taxing Rich People Less Makes His Case In the hubbub of the budget crisis, the Arizona House and Senate agreed to provisions of a “flat tax.” Although the deal was killed, I am glad to see the conversation getting attention (“Another Republican Triumph: Help the Rich, Screw the Poor,” The Skinny, July…
Got Stars?
If you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Hector Vector, the Flandrau Planetarium’s 33-year-old star projector, then you blew it—because nobody stepped up to save the UA Science Center, which officially closed June 1. The staff members who continue to work at the UA Science Center—with reduced hours and salaries—are afraid they’ll be…
Gallows: Grey Britain (Reprise)
With Grey Britain, South London hard-core quintet Gallows unleashes a devastating screed against the stupider features of 21st-century English life, particularly the knife-happy, chip-stuffed, binge-drinking, surveillance-crazed, sex-drunk, credit-maxed mentality that plagues a once-sturdy people who withstood German air bombardment during both world wars. Vocalist Frank Carter certainly doesn’t put much stock in his fellow Brits…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans at construction sites always draw a dick and a vagina on the interiors of port-a-potties? They sure are not as poetic as they are artistic. Original Schreck in Houston Dear Gabacho: Methinks we have a coprophiliac in our midst—how else would you know the ethnicity of toilet-taggers? The Mexican doesn’t…
Privacy, Please
Arizona has had the dubious distinction of leading the nation in per-capita complaints concerning identity theft for the last two years. Yet managers in the city of Tucson’s General Services Department didn’t foresee a problem in mandating the use of a biometric time clock by employees. “I just didn’t anticipate the controversy,” says Ron Lewis,…
Nine Questions
Topher Mileski
Treasure Tales
It’s cruel of W.C. Jameson to bring out a book called Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Arizona at this moment. For one thing, his information derives from legends and lore—you know, stories passed down “from generation to generation,” offering less validity than a Wikipedia entry. Very often, there’s little, if any, evidence that the…
Noshing Around
Revolutionary Grounds I was wandering Fourth Avenue just after sunrise when a coffee craving hit, so I ducked into Revolutionary Grounds, a small, leftist coffee shop and bookstore in the old Rainbow Planet spot at 606 N. Fourth Ave. The coffee was strong; the books on everything from Leon Trotsky to self-made clothing were worth…
Top Ten in Music
Zia Records top sales for the week
Top Ten in Books
Antigone Books best-sellers for the week
Absolutely Fabulous
When was the last time you saw a runway show in Tucson? David Aguirre thinks it’s been too long. As the director of downtown nonprofit gallery Dinnerware Artspace, Aguirre often helps shine a light on local contemporary artists, but he feels that one artistic area has been consistently left out—fashion design. “We show work that’s…
Modern Taqueria
Chileverde is a place where you might see movers and shakers enjoying lunch. You know who they are: that lawyer you saw on TV last night, or perhaps a famous local chef. You’ll see plenty of people wearing jury tags, too. There are several reasons for this mixture of clientele. One, of course, is the…
City Week
Putting on the Moves Summer Dance Expo 2009 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 1 Loews Ventana Canyon Resort 7000 N. Resort Drive 747-9464; summerdanceexpo.com The music is all cued up, and the crowd is watching—which means it’s almost time for Tucson to get its tango on. Now in its fifth year, the Summer…
