In a bad economy, everyone needs more creative advertising, even the good folks at NASA who just wrapped up their You Control the Hubble Contest. With national moods waxing on personal survival, and waning on space high jinks, NASA knows it must woo the Public for more moolah. (The following transcript may have been supplied through the Freedom of Information Act, or it may have been simply made up.)

Ring-ring. Ring-ring.

"Thank you for calling Wienerschnitzel on Broadway. This is Jimmy, can I interest you in a foot long?"

"Hello, there! This is Captain Hildebrand with NASA. I'm calling to inform you, Jimmy, that you have just been selected winner of our You Control the Hubble Contest!"

"I'm sorry sir, that was one wiener?"

"No, winner! You are the winner of our Hubble Contest, Jimmy. You have the opportunity other civilians can only read about in laughably dumbed down science magazines. You, Jimmy, can tell us—all of us at NASA, or 'naysay' as we call it down here, I guess I can divulge that—you can tell us where to point the Hubble Space Telescope!"

"That's a Coke? Did you say a large Coke?"

"No, Jimmy—well, OK, I'll take one medium Diet Coke. What I'm trying to say is that you won our contest. We picked a random phone number from a comically outsized astronaut helmet here in Cape Canaveral—where it's really muggy by the way—and yours is the winning number! Jimmy, your vision and your vision alone will control the world's most powerful

In this day and age of reduced veteran benefits, it's good to see one company providing veterans with a little help.

Cruise Planners/American Express, a home-based travel agent franchise network, launched their Corps Care veterans program in November. The program provides veterans with more than $2,500 in discounts toward purchasing a franchise.

The company also conducted a veteran franchise giveway contest where veterans submitted an essay explaining why they deserved to receive a franchise. "It's important that companies and organizations reach out to help ease the transition of the veteran community back to a civilian lifestyle," says Michelle Fee, CEO of Cruise Planners. "It's often challenging for veterans to readjust to the workforce and we want to support them in this process."

The winner of the $10,000 franchise is Chris Silman of Sahuarita (pictured above) who was notified in honor of Memorial Day.

Silman served six years in the Air Force working as an electronic warfare systems technician. He was deployed to Afghanistan where his combat search and rescue unit was directly responsible for 22 combat rescues of downed pilots, injured soldiers and Afghan fighters.

Some say that cleanliness will get you closer to godliness, but it's filthiness that'll score you a new grill thanks to a contest being put on by Barbecue World.

The contest—which ends Saturday, July 4—offers a bulletproof excuse to not have to clean up after one's self, which is a secret desire of any barbecue nut worth his sauce.

So lay down thine wire brushes and scrapers this Memorial Day weekend, and let the funk in.

Here's the text from the press release with more details:

BARBECUE WORLD HOLDS CONTEST FOR TUCSON’S DIRTIEST GRILL

Tucson, Arizona — With the grilling season now in full force, Barbecue World is looking for the dirtiest, grimiest, greasiest grill in Tucson — and will award the owner with a brand-new $1,000 barbecue island or $800 to Barbecue World.

“My favorite thing about summer is the barbecues. But after a good long summer, those grills get pretty dirty,” said George Holley, owner of Barbecue World and 15-year veteran of the barbecue business. “This is a great opportunity for Tucson’s dirty grill owners to win a clean new grill. And a clean grill is important when it comes to great tasting food.”

Barbecue World will award the Contest’s second place winner with

It's quite a night out there! First, provided this rain lets up by then, the Tucson Toros will be playing at Hi Corbett Field for the first time in more than a decade. Sure, it's Golden League Baseball instead of the Pacific Coast League, but who cares? It's the Toros at Hi Corbett. Details here.

If baseball isn't your thing, you should head over to the Loft Cinema to check out Bad Bugs Bunny, a collection of scandalous Bugs Bunny cartoons from the ’30s and ’40s. Here's the Loft's description:

Get ready for the unvarnished truth about the dark side of American history as revealed in fabulous, vintage Warner Brothers cartoons at the hilarious program BAD BUGS BUNNY: THE DARK SIDE OF WARNER BROTHERS. This scandalously entertaining, educational and eye-opening 16mm film program features rarely seen cartoons from the 1930s and '40s, exploring sexism, racism and violence as filtered through the satirical antics of beloved Warner Bros. characters like Bugs Bunny and others. Censored by the studio and long-since pulled out of circulation, these cinematic curiosities offer a surprising (and sometimes shocking) glimpse into our recent past, a time when racial stereotypes, harsh violence and gender inequality ran rampant in “children’s cartoons, ” reflecting a much different, pre-PC American popular culture. Many of the shorts also include the quirky, jazzy orchestration by the genius of offbeat sound scores, Carl Stalling.

Globe-trotting film curator and collector Dennis Nyback will appear live to put these cartoons into a historical perspective and discuss their hidden history and censorship by Warner Brothers. First shown at Seattle’s Pike Street Cinema in 1993, Nyback’s BAD BUGS BUNNY program (culled from the curator’s own massive 16 mm film collection) has traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe, playing to sold-out houses around the world.

And if you like a taste of both baseball and movies, consider checking out Sugar, now playing at The Loft. I saw it last night and have to agree with Arizona's best film critic, the award-winning James DiGiovanna, who wrote last week: "While it could have been a perfectly decent standard-order sports film, Sugar rises above its roots and produces a tense, engaging and ultimately fresh perspective on the genre."

This week's new batch of Mars photos taken by the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab's HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been posted, including this shot of Martian dunes. Photo by NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

Great video I found on Rum, Romanism and Rebellion. The comments bring it all home, too.

From Rex:

All of the above is apparently too much for Bruce Ash, Al Melvin, Vic Williams and other anti-education activists to fathom. They would rather posture and preen, screaming about bloated bureaucracies and the supposed wonder cures of vouchers and charters. They also try to distract people from noticing their ideological games by engaging in myth-making about teacher associations in a vain attempt to get voters to see those groups as merely self-serving.

Recent polling would indicate that Arizona voters are increasingly fed up with the failure of the Republican Party in this state to recognize the role of public education in the second-fastest growing state in the union. Right-wingers have also systematically purged those in the GOP who did back our kids and their schools during the primaries. The time is ripe for change and renewal. As Democrats, we must do all we can to seize the day and send Bruce’s buddies home.

I was doing just fine without cable movie channels.

When gas hit the roof last year, I cut all those extra channels and decided I could wait, rent the seasons I missed or catch them on the Internet. But the new season of Weeds on Showtime has lured me back, so I can get plugged back into Nancy the Hemptress. And, of course, Dexter returns, soon, too.

I tried. I really tried.

This is a shoutout to parents as thrilled as I am that summer has arrived.

This is the last day of school for the 2008-2009 TUSD school year. Whew. We survived. I'm going to take advantage of this space and thank Ms. Quaranta and her team once again at Rogers Elementary. Ms. Q, as we call her at my house, is one of the best teachers of kids with autism in Tucson.

She's moving to Nebraska, and TUSD is losing a gifted teacher. She told my son early in the year something that meant a lot to him when he hit a few rough patches: I’m not giving up on you. Considering how many teachers have given up on him over the years, he really held on to those words.

Sure, TUSD has room to improve, but obviously there are good teachers out there, and we need to thank them as much as possible. We also have to wonder what our GOP legislators would have been like if they'd had teachers like Ms. Q.

Maybe they just needed someone to say, "I'm not giving up on you," since they seem so eager to give up on our kids' education.

The UA's Flandrau Science Center will close its doors on Monday, June 1, after fueling imaginations of all ages for more than 30 years.

I try not to chime in with my opinion very often, but this totally sucks. I know the economy is a cruel mistress, and that no one is immune, but when local treasures like Flandrau start dying off it makes me wonder: Is there any intelligent life left here on planet earth?

Here's the text from the press release announcing the closure:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 20, 2009

Say Goodbye to Hector Vector Star Projector
Flandrau Science Center closes June 1st

Tucson, Arizona - The public is invited to visit Flandrau: The University of Arizona Science Center and say goodbye to Hector Vector Star Projector before it closes it doors on June 1, 2009. Flandrau Science Center is closing as a result of state budget cuts announced earlier in the year.

Hector Vector Star Projector, the nickname local kids fondly gave the optical projector that rises from the floor at the beginning of each planetarium show to depict the realistic night image of our sky and solar system, has been a staple for generations of Tucsonans. Many adults that came to Flandrau Science Center as children years ago to watch Hector’s wondrous performances now bring

Given some of the court documents that suggested that Lee Enterprises was helping Gannett plot the end of the Citizen last summer, I thought this week's "Random Shots" was right on the money. Nice job, Rand Carlson!