Cover Story
Balancing Act
Politicians love to talk about waste in government. Take Republican Steve Kozachik. He says his Democratic opponent, Councilwoman Nina Trasoff, should have cut more spending in the city’s $420 million general fund, and that she should have hired more cops and firefighters during this year’s budget deliberations. On his Web page, Kozachik complains: “The mayor…
No Rush to Vote: Early Ballot Numbers
There’s a huge X factor in this year’s city election: Pima County’s permanent early-voter list. In previous city elections, voters had to ask for a mail-in ballot. In this election, more than 62,000 early ballots went out automatically to city voters when early voting started on Oct. 8. There are roughly 224,000 registered voters in…
Good-bye Alan Ward
I recall the first time I met Alan Ward early last year at the downtown farmers’ market in front of the Main Library. I liked him instantly. I met with him to talk about the market’s troubles with that troublesome Mexican flag-burning bozo the Tucson Weekly calls Asshat. Ward was manager of the market that…
City Council Race: What’s All This About Big Dicks?
ArtNet checks in on Tucson’s Big Dick #1 art scandal that’s become a swelling controversy in this year’s City Council race: It is easily the most pathetic attempt to restart the Culture Wars yet. Republican politicians in Tucson, Az., have put the local Museum of Contemporary Art in their crosshairs, attacking what they call a…
Slash and Burn: State Budget Cuts
State agencies are reporting the impacts of a 15 percent budget cut back to Gov. Jan Brewer. The cuts may be necessary since the state is facing a budget shortfall of $1.5 million, according to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Howie has the round-up: State agencies are proposing early release of convicted felons, eliminating health…
Crimes Rates: Hell In a Handbasket!
Crime rates are dropping, for the most part, in Tucson, according to TPD stats. But Republicans seeking seats on the City Council and supporters of the Public Safety First Initiative say crime is out of control. And they say they’ve got polling that shows that people believe it. Ryan Sager at Neuroworld looks at some…
More Opposition to Public Safety First Initiative: Don Diamond Gives $$$
We’re told that legendary land speculator Don Diamond has given $1K to the campaign to defeat Prop 200, the Public Safety First Initiative that Tucson voters will decide on Nov. 3. Diamond joins the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Metropolitan Pima Alliance and Cox Cable as members of the local business establishment who oppose…
Diwali Festival of Lights
The waterfalls at Govinda’s Natural Foods Buffet Govinda’s Natural Foods Buffet (711 E. Blacklidge Drive) has been serving up excellent vegetarian and vegan food since 1992, and they hold quite a few free festivals and other events every year. Speaking of free festivals … I somehow botched getting Govinda’s notice for their Diwali Festival of…
And Now They’re Drugging Our Water!
Yes, we know you’re dying to know more about the “Big Dick” scandal now messily exploding all over the City Council race—and we’re working with the Arts desk on a report of the poor man’s “Piss Christ” escapade playing out this week. In the meantime, read Rhonda’s account. (We think it’s a shame she had…
Otra Vez: Latin Music USA
If you missed the PBS series Latin Music USA, you can see the next installment on Monday, Oct. 19, KUAT Channel 6, 9 p.m.: The Chicano Wave. The first episode on salsa happened to be my favorite. So far, after watching the series I’ve either wanted to put on some Celia Cruz and dance around…
Open Wide: Tamale-Eating Contest!
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Eating the Distance – The Brad Sciullo Story Pt. 2 www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore Here’s your chance to launch a career in the sport of competitive eating! El Charro Cafe is looking for contestants in its first-ever tamale-eating competition. Details from…
The No. 1 Fan
As far as I know, no one had yet made a decent film of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener. And Big Fan is a movie about a rabid football fan whose life revolves around phoning sports-radio call-in shows. I think you see where I’m going with this: Yes, Big Fan is the first successful adaptation…
Media Watch
Frat house at center of ‘Daily Wildcat’ theft investigation; Rocky Mountain Emmy Award ceremony slated for Phoenix; Blowing up the media stock bubble
Shameless Self-Promotion
The Tucson Weekly won 13 awards in the Arizona Newspapers Association’s annual contest, covering work done from May 1, 2008, through April 30, 2009. The awards were announced on Saturday, Oct. 10, at the Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in downtown Phoenix. The Weekly competed in among the state’s…
Paradise Lost
Peter Billingsley, a good pal of Vince Vaughn and the legendary Ralphie from A Christmas Story, has made a terrible feature directorial debut with Couples Retreat. One would think that casting Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Kristen Bell and Kristin Davis would’ve gotten him comic gold. However, the film proves that it’s ill-advised to send a bunch…
The Big Pink: A Brief History of Love (4AD)
In the opening sequence to Robert Altman’s 1992 film The Player, producers at a movie studio pitch ideas that merely recycle things that have already been commercially successful. One guy wants to make “Ghost meets The Manchurian Candidate,” while another pitches “Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.” A scenario like this could explain the existence…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: An uninsured wetback just hit my car and totaled his. He had no insurance and no license, but he did have a nice cell phone. I asked him if he was OK in my limited Spanish, but he did not ask about me or my children. He was handcuffed and taken away to…
Top Ten in Movies
Casa Video’s top rentals for the week
T Q&A
Koor “Chris” Garang
Now Showing at Home
“It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.”: The Complete Series; Trick ‘r Treat; The Shortcut; A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (Extended Edition)
The Black Crowes: Before the Frost … (Silver Arrow)
It’s not easy being a Black Crowes fan. Since its debut in 1990, the now-legendary bluesy rock ‘n’ roll band has created some amazing music, most notably the first three albums (including the immortal Amorica, released in 1994) and a wonderful live collaboration with Jimmy Page. But other recordings have felt either indulgent or uninspired.…
Western Revisited
They may have been fresh off the plane from Hollywood, but the Cannons and the Montoyas had just as much mud on their chaps as any other cowboy in the Wild West. OK, so they were characters being played by actors, but one would have never known that after looking at those Tucson Mountains in…
Timely ‘Diary’
Some say it never happened. They claim a Hitler-mandated Holocaust is a hoax. Perhaps this is reason enough for the University of Arizona’s Arizona Repertory Theatre to dust off the well-worn Diary of Anne Frank and give it new life. We might need a reminder of the well-documented fact that an estimated 12 million people—6…
In the Way of Democracy
Abby Road confronted numerous barriers to keep her voting streak unbroken during the city’s September primary—and she’s afraid that she’ll face more obstacles to vote in the Nov. 3 general election. “I don’t want to lose any more of my rights,” Road declares. She’s confined to an aging, 300-pound, battery-powered wheelchair because of arthritis and…
Fewer Steps
Last fall by this time, FUNHOUSE movement theater had already staged its annual outdoor concert in the cool autumn air at Reid Park. NEW ARTiculations was dancing on the streets downtown, in preparation for a major November show at the Pennington Street Parking Garage, and Thom Lewis Dance was looking ahead to a spring concert.…
Police Dispatch
JUST HANGING OUT WEST PARK ROAD SEPT. 21, 6:53 P.M. A woman was found “hanging out” in a desert neighborhood with a methamphetamine pipe and many bags of food, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report stated. Deputies were advised that a female who had previously burned down her house was walking around a southwest-side neighborhood…
Division and Limitation
One night on the Tohono O’odham reservation, there was a knock on Morgana Wallace’s door. An artist from back East, Wallace had only recently moved West to join her boyfriend, a teacher at Tohono O’odham High School. She didn’t yet know that nighttime knocks are common on the rez, where numerous migrants trek by on…
Danehy
What I find most troubling these days in the political arena is that complex issues, many involving science, are being argued at a high-decibel level by people who couldn’t even spell “science” if you spotted them the first five letters. For years, many people have denied the phenomenon of climate change, and while most have…
Harmonizing Women
Harmonies are back. Many independent and alternative artists—from singing duos to so-called freak-folk bands—have re-infused popular music with the musical values of two- and three-part vocal arrangements. The all-female Silver Thread Trio is one of the most exciting purveyors of vocal harmonies in the Old Pueblo. The 3-year-old group has recorded one praised album, Silver…
Downing
Isn’t it beautiful out? You may get this type of miracle weather year-around in places like Honolulu and Santa Cruz, Calif., but could people there possibly appreciate 75, bright and breezy the way we do after five months of Sonoran summer? No way. You feel like drinking the air, like never going inside. You can…
Making It Work
Ask the members of Last Call Brawlers what kind of music they play, and they’ve got a simple, concise answer: “rock ‘n’ roll.” And while that may be true, it’s also a bit simplistic. In its earliest days, Last Call Brawlers was a straight-up rockabilly band. The Tucson group played its first show 10 years…
Guest Opinion
During a time when everyone seems to be talking about what’s wrong with our public schools, Tucson’s chess educators exemplify what we have been doing right. It’s a little-known fact that Tucson is home to some of the most talented chess players and most successful chess coaches in the country. Since 1994, the Catalina Foothills…
Ordinance Ignored
Last year, South Tucson voters gave a thumbs-up to helping the beleaguered dogs of Tucson Greyhound Park. Among other things, the new law makes it illegal to inject female greyhounds with anabolic steroids. Those steroids contain hormones to keep the dogs from going into heat, but are also believed to cause genital deformities and severe…
Looking Back
Last week’s issue garnered a substantial amount of response. First, the good news: While I was unable to attend Pride in the Desert last weekend (I was in Phoenix at the Arizona Newspapers Association annual convention), the Tucson Weekly folks who manned our booth said numerous people stopped by to thank us for doing last…
Soundbites
SPANISH MEETS SOUTHWESTERN I can’t say I have a wide-ranging knowledge of Spanish music, but I know what I like. And I love the new, self-titled album by DePedro. Some backstory: While the new album by Jairo Zavala (he records under the name DePedro) may be his first to get wide distribution in the United…
Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women: Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women (Yep Roc)
When Chris Gaffney died, Dave Alvin lost both a close friend and the frontman of his band, the Guilty Men. Alvin formed the Guilty Women to perform at a festival last fall because, he said, he couldn’t bear seeing the empty spot onstage where Gaffney used to stand. The women surrounded Alvin with such ease…
City Week
Local Readings A Night of Poetry 7 p.m., Friday, Oct. 16 Antigone Books 411 N. Fourth Ave. 792-3715; www.antigonebooks.com Antigone Books has long supported authors from all walks of life, and this Friday’s poetry reading will continue the tradition with three award-winning Tucson writers. Alison Deming, Boyer Rickel and Pamela Uschuk have all read at…
Political Misfits
The Tucson Tea Party event on Saturday, Oct. 10, was billed as a bipartisan political love-fest by organizers. But once folks showed up at the Tucson Electric Park carrying large “No on Prop 200” signs, that bipartisan spirit disappeared. Caitlin Jensen and Murray Hudson got to experience that Tea Party camaraderie first-hand as they carried…
Mailbag
Uhlich Makes Her Case While I respect the Tucson Weekly’s prerogative to take a non-endorsement position on the race for City Council in Ward 3 (Oct. 8), I disagree with the rationale and want voters to know the full story. The Weekly reported that I “led an effort to delay a 25-cent increase in bus…
Try the Salad
When I heard that Daniel Scordato was going to open a pizza restaurant in the former 58 Degrees and Holding Co. space in St. Philip’s Plaza, I was thrilled. I love great pizza (who doesn’t?), and Scordato knows what he’s doing in the kitchen. His Vivace restaurant is one of Tucson’s most renowned Italian restaurants,…
Live
Dr. Dog, Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard
Paradoxes on the Rez
There’s some sort of paradox in this new novel’s notion of a group of Navajos—a people famously averse to trucking with the dead—playing “death metal” rock music. As there is in the title’s contradictory, punning notion of “living decay.” To those notions, add images of Indian toddlers with water-spout ponytails, skillet-wielding drunken cattle-rustlers, glorious Monument…
Stairway to Heavin’
How to make the most of the 19th Annual Bisbee 1000, aka the Great Stair Climb, in 12 easy, well, steps: Step 1: Get thee to a runnery. Or, if you already have some athletic shoes, dig them out of the closet. Walk around the neighborhood a couple of times, and maybe climb a few…
Top Ten in Books
Mostly Books best-sellers for the week
Nine Questions
Glenn Tilbrook
Top Ten in Music
Toxic Ranch Records top sales for the week
Noshing Around
Harvest Feast Five chefs are putting their heads together for the Tucson Community Food Bank’s “Dinner Under the Stars” at the Marana Heritage Farm (12375 N. Heritage Road) on Sunday, Oct. 25. The event—featuring locally grown foods—starts with a social hour at 5:15 p.m. and is followed by a five-course dinner. It’s $100 per person…
The Skinny
JUST SAYING NO TO PROP 200 The opposition to the Public Safety First Initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot continued to grow last week. The latest business group to come out against Proposition 200: The Metropolitan Pima Alliance, a wide-ranging group of commercial real-estate developers, contractors, engineering firms and architects. Wow, what a bunch of…
Commentary: The More Things Change…
The folks at KUAT-TV’s Arizona Illustrated were gracious enough to invite me to do a commentary on this year’s city election. You can watch it after the jump:
Crashed on the Moon
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five—that bottle’s kicked, too?—four, three, two, one… CRASH! They crashed a rocket on the moon the other day, on purpose. NASA was out of vodka, and a spokeswoman said, “This is the most cost-effective way to find out if the moon has any vodka.” Taxpayers remain skeptical, mostly because the…
