Cover Story
The Battle at Home
Between 11 and 20 percent of veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom have PTSD, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Currently, the FDA has approved two medicines for PTSD treatment: Zoloft and Paxil. Both have labels warning of increases in suicidal thoughts.
Quick Bites: From Catering and Carts to Café
You might’ve heard of—and hopefully tasted something made by—Tumerico, a local catering, food-cart and farmers-market business owned and run by Chef owner and chef Wendy Garcia (See this week’s Chow feature for more about eatery). Now you can taste Garcia’s delicious, healthy dishes on a whim, without browsing markets, hunting down food carts or hosting…
Casa Video Top 10
Hello, dear TW readers! Most of our staff is spending the day eating leftover stuffing and mashed potatoes, so things will probably be a little slow on the blog today. You can entertain yourself until we’re back with this list of Casa Video’s most popular movies from last week (or, if you’re really adventures, you…
The Weekly List: 20 Things To Do In Tucson In The Next 10 Days
Your Weekly guide to keeping busy in the Old Pueblo. Pick of the Week: Local Black Friday & Holiday Shopping Somehow, it happened. Despite months of intending to get holiday shopping done early, Thanksgiving has arrived and there are still gifts left to buy. Well, you might as well save some money. Ditch the mall this weekend…
Laughing Stock: Eddie Pence, Abby Louise Jensen, ‘Set – Unlisted’ and Wildcat Comedy
ALL IN THE FAMILY (BUT USE THE INSIDE VOICE FOR PENISES) “You want to teach your kids about heartache and loss, buy a hamster,” Eddie Pence says. The line comes near the end of a series of laughs about how we think about our pets. For example, we panic when a dog “gets lost,” whereas…
Cinema Clips: Arrival
Director Denis Villeneuve has made one of the year’s best science fiction films. Amy Adams stars as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguistics teacher crippled by visions of a daughter who died of a rare illness. She lives a life of seclusion, where the only thing she really does is teach her class and mope around…
T.H.R.E.A.T. Watch: Normalizing ‘White Nationalism’ Down to ‘Nationalism’
A neo-Nazi group met in Washington D.C. over the weekend celebrating Trump’s victory. The keynote speaker proclaimed the superiority of whites (though he preferred the word “Europeans”), referenced Nazi Germany and ended his speech by shouting “Hail Trump! Hail Our People!” which was greeted with cheers and Nazi salutes from the crowd. Since the election, Trump…
In The Flesh: Global Dance Festival—Wild West Edition with Alison Wonderland, Bassnectar, And More
Last Saturday night an army of bassheads sporting tutus and kandi bras, armed with homemade totems, turned out to see our favorite artists and rage the night away with 10,000 of our best friends. Global Dance Festival: Wild West Edition was hosted by its namesake and Relentless Beats at the incredible Rawhide Western Town and…
Quick Bites: Wildcat Fans Unite (and Get Dining Deals)
Calling all UA Wildcat fans—that’s probably most of you: The Downtown Tucson Partnership, Playground Bar & Lounge and ZonaZoo have joined together to honor the fact that… well, the fact that most of you are Wildcat fans. More specifically—and excitingly—the groups are celebrating with “Bear Down Downtown at Playground,” dubbing Playground Bar and Lounge the…
Education Groups Call for ‘A Physically and Emotionally Safe Learning Environment’
Spurred by reports of increased harassment of students who are members of ethic and religious minorities since the election, a number of education organizations have issued a call to action. Most of the organizations are as mainstream as they come: the National PTA, the National School Boards Association and so on. From Education Week: The organizations…
Jenna Needs a Home
Hi, I’m Jenna! I’m a beautiful, 6-year-old shepherd mix and I need a new home. I was found as a stray in October and brought into the Humane Society of Southern Arizona by a good Samaritan. I love to go on daily walks and I really bond with people. I’m looking for a home where…
T.H.R.E.A.T. Watch: ‘I Threatened and Insulted You, So You Owe Me an Apology.’
Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed and cheered when he entered the theater to watch the musical, Hamilton. At the end of the show, a member of the cast read a short statement directed at Pence. That’s what actually happened. Trump tweeted that Pence was “harassed last night at the theater by the cast of…
Cinema Clips: The Edge of Seventeen
Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig makes an impressive debut with this darkly funny take on the life of a modern day high school outcast. Hailee Steinfeld gives her best performance since True Grit as Nadine, a highly intelligent teen going through an awkward stage when her best friend (Haley Lu Richardson) starts dating her brother (Blake…
Education In a Trump Presidency: Reading Tea Leaves
Trump didn’t talk a whole lot about education during the campaign, but he said enough to give us a sense of the direction he wants to head. More vouchers, more charters and a modification or elimination of Common Core. “Choice,” not Common Core. That pretty much sums it up. If you want a model for…
What Will We Tell the School Children?
How should teachers deal with the Trump presidency in their classrooms? Tough question. Genuinely tough question. The campaign was a hard enough call in the classroom, what with its graphic accusations of Trump’s history of sexual predation and the allegation that Hillary should be spending time in jail, not in the White House. But now…
Update! Vince Neil to play Donald Trump’s Induction. Of Course He is. True Bros in Arms.
According to this piece in Rolling Stone, Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil has been “uninvited” to play the presidential inauguration. It’s just all so ugly. Here’s the original post: So Mötley Crüe’s duck-voiced frontman Vince Neil is scheduled to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Of course he is. We knew this face-lifted, woman-loathing, drummer-slaughtering tub o’ lard…
Song of the Day: ‘Mr. Flagg’ by Gabriel Sullivan; Plus, Casa Maria Soup Kitchen Benefit with Sullivan, Rich Hopkins, Cesar Aguirre and more!
Casa Maria mission was part of the lay Catholic worker movement founded in the 1930s. Liberty, Social Justice and Peace—just words? Sure, but with each year they become more important to the health of a city and its residents and those visiting or just passing though. Like many of you, I used to see Brian…
Keep Your Pup Safe: Understanding Parvo and Distemper
In the last month, a spike in distemper and parvo cases constituted an outbreak in Tucson and a warning for Marana. Both of the diseases are highly contagious and possibly fatal for dogs who contract either illness. Last week, the Pima Animal Care Center halted all voluntary owner surrenders after the spike in distemper and…
What’s In A Name
Originally hailing from Hong Kong, the Kwan family wound up in New York then made their way through the central United States only to find a home here in Tucson. Once they settled into the Old Pueblo, their eldest son, Howard, began apprenticing at various restaurants but found solace in the kitchens of sushi chefs.
Day of the Dead Revisited
Calexico’s haunting border-lands music has provided the soundtrack for movies, TV shows and even a play, but it’s never been used in a dance performance.
Power and Money
Sitting in the opening night’s audience a day after the presidential election was just a bit eerie.
Zen Invasion
Arrival is a movie that gives itself time to breathe, and while it does have a few action scenes, it’s, for the most part, intellectual fare.
Battle Acts
Think about how many times you’ve given serious consideration to the twist dance in the last 25 years or at least since Mad Men went often air.
Editor’s Note
The pendulum swung, Mari tells the kid, but this time it went too far and we have to speak out for our friends.
Noise Annoys
But the silver lining is that punk rock is gonna be “great again”? That’s almost like saying the good part about unarmed black men being gunned down by cops in the streets is rap music will creatively flourish.
Dust Devil
Puffing up, scrambling down. 4300-5000 corrugated feet of oak, coral bean, mirabilis, woven rivulets. Meters mere inches southward, we muse, “Same over there. An intact ecosystem. Spectacular.” Picture El Jefe lounging the length of the thigh-thick branch jutting across that chasm, four strands of twisted wire, pads the size of outstretched hands, leaving behind with…
Vintage Vinyl Tucson
“They’d get really drunk and I saw them get in fist fights on stage,” said The Dearly Beloved’s Tom Walker about The Sot Weed Factor. Even though the blues-based Yardbirds and Kinks-inspired band were rough around the edges, they were unhappy with the crude cavernous sound at Tucson’s Copper State Recording Studio.
Tucson Salvage
Dawn Brandt pushes her fists together so her finger tats spell out “HIT HARD,” and a tiny anvil on her left forefinger serves as a space divider between the words.
Know Your Product
The first time I saw J Lugo Miller in action was waaaaay back in ’92. We were both obnoxious 15-year olds in Amphitheater High School’s elective photography class—meaning that we were attempting to transition into being pretentious 15-year olds—and I overheard him bragging to some other teenaged jerk about how it was “so easy” to…
Police Dispatch
A tenant in an east-side apartment complex was cussed at and threatened by an elderly woman—possibly a neighbor—who bragged of having a squad of “hoodlums” at her beck and call.
Pleasure Activist
Aftercare is what happens after an encounter, but should be negotiated, talked about, or thought about before the encounter. This is a concept that is discussed in BDSM communities because biochemical, psychic, and emotional states are often in more extreme states within these scenarios, but any sexual encounter has the possibility of attaining those heights,…
Police Dispatch
A real estate agent found out one of the houses she’d been trying to sell had been burglarized—at least, the property had been burglarized—in a very odd way: a large swath of fake grass had been stolen from the yard.
The Skinny
Winner and losers from last week’s election
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Math problem: If there are 20 Mexicans, 20 Indians, 20 Chinese, 20 Puerto Ricans, 20 Blacks, and one white person on a room, then how many people are there in the room who’s identity is used as a benchmark to establish the identities of the rest of the people in the room? (Hint:…
Letter to the Editor
They say he got elected by the people who look like us. Remember, please, however, that not all the people who look like us voted for him. To those of you who did, enjoy your gloat. It may prove to be the best part of the experience for you. You kept her (or them) out…
Letter to the Editor
One did not even need to ask, the question hung so thick in the air the morning after Election Day. It was garbage day; debris wafted through the dry west Tucson streets only fueling the feeling of desolation. This was Clinton territory, this was one of many ground zeros across the country where the political…
Letter to the Editor
I’m depressed. Can’t sleep. Can’t exercise. Can’t concentrate. Can’t play with our cute new Golden-doodle puppy, Deuce. I wish he would leave me the fuck alone. Doesn’t he realize we just elected Donald Trump? I’m baffled by his level of energy, his appetite. What’s he so happy about? It’s good to be a dog. It’s…
