The Range made it over to the Loft last night for part one of The Other Network, which featured great TV pilots that didn't get the green light for network execs. Gotta say that Conan O'Brien's Lookwell was a work of genius. And Conan's story about how he and some Harvard buddies stole the Robin costume from Burt Ward was worth the price of admission alone.

Tonight, you'll have your chance to see Heatvision and Jack, which "stars Jack Black as a super-intelligent ex-astronaut, Owen Wilson as the voice of his talking motorcycle, and Ron Silver as himself, the villainous actor/NASA enforcer." That would have been appointment TV.

More details here.

Charlie Spillar, the sculptor who did yeoman's work in preserving the statues at Magic Carpet Golf, is now trying to save the big screens at the shuttered De Anza Drive-In in hopes of launching a new drive-in theater elsewhere in town. He tells us:

On Friday, June 18, a group of dedicated volunteers will be helping to remove major components of the giant screen from the closed and demolished De Anza Drive-In Theater on Alvernon near 22nd. The structures will be moved to a secure location for reassemble at a later date. Ever since the theaters closing, the public has been overwhelmingly supportive of a new drive-in project underway.

The efforts are lead by Charlie Spillar (savior of the Magic Carpet statues) and Demion Clinco, of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation. They have assembled an advisory team made up of several city government and business leaders. The group has plans for a community based new drive-in to be called the Cactus Drive-In. This was the actual name of the original drive-in at the Alvernon location started in 1951.

The volunteer organization now has a website in process to keep

MadAtoms reviews Arizona's history of sucking.

Republican Brian Miller, one of five Republicans seeking to oust Democratic incumbent Gabrielle Giffords in Congressional District 8, tells us why he doesn't believe spending billions of dollars on a wall will solve border problems. Pay attention at the 35-second mark.

Yesterday's NPR poll was lousy news for Democrats in close races like Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. But today, the Dems are taking heart in an AP poll:

The reeling economy remains people's top concern, according to an Associated Press-GfK Poll conducted earlier this month, making public attitudes about it crucial for both parties' hopes in November. The good news for Democrats: By a margin of 47 percent to 42 percent, people trust them more than Republicans to guide the economy, and slightly more - 64 percent - say their household budgets are in good shape.

In addition, people want Democrats to win control of Congress by a 46 percent to 39 percent margin. That is the second straight month in which Democrats have held a delicate advantage on that question since April, when 44 percent preferred Republicans and 41 percent picked Democrats.

Here's the methodology, per AP:

The AP-GfK Poll involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,044 randomly chosen adults and was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from June 9-14. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

Unless those adults are voters, it sounds like a pretty flimsy sample to be pinning your hopes on. We'd guess at this point that the NPR poll, which hit up voters in swing districts, is probably closer to reality. If you want to see really bad news, check out the section on messaging. The GOP wins big when it comes to framing the debate.

PDF of the NPR poll here.

Tonight and tomorrow at the Loft Cinema: The Other Network, a compilation of the best stuff you never got to see on the glass teat. Details here.

It wasn't a story in The Onion, but it could have been.

For a year, Boise, Idaho, police were hoping to find the person sticking condiments in a local library drop box, causing thousands of dollars in damage with ketchup and corn syrup.

According to a story in the Idaho Statesman here, the condiment bandit was finally caught after dropping an open jar of mayo through the box. The bandit is a 74-year-old woman who happened to have a loaded handgun under the driver seat of her car.

Earlier, we reported that Blog for Arizona's David Safier broke a story about a student journalist who did a video interview with Republican Senator John Huppenthal here.

Tonight, we found out that not only did the blogger Democratic Diva break the story, but she also printed a retraction tonight, saying that evidently, Huppenthal returned to finish the interview with the student (although that's never shown in both the long and short format videos), and that Arizona Capitol Times' Yellow Sheet reported that the student isn't happy that the video is being used to make Huppenthal, a candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction, look like a political buffoon.

Well, Huppenthal was co-sponsor of SB 1070, so...

You can read the Diva's latest here. And David Safier's take here.

Above is the short version of the student's interview, but you can watch the longer version here.

The Kelly campaign posts video of the fireworks from yesterday's CD8 debate in Green Valley.

Green-turned-independent Dave Ewoldt has beaten Democrat-turned-independent Ted Downing’s effort to get him tossed off the November ballot.

Both men are running without party affiliation against Democrat state Sen. Paula Aboud in midtown Tucson’s Legislative District 28.

And Downing, who represented LD28 as a Democrat in the House of Representatives for two terms before losing a primary race against Aboud for the Senate seat in 2006, has a big gripe: Aboud and her companion, Terri Berg, helped Ewoldt make the ballot by passing his petitions.

Ewoldt says that Aboud and Berg did offer to carry some petitions for him because they’d been talking throughout the spring about the burdensome requirement that he had to collect 655 signatures to make the ballot.

Ewoldt, who has helped the Green Party run candidates in recent city elections, actually could have qualified for the ballot with just 46 signatures if he had remained a Green, but he decided that he’d have a better shot by embracing the independent label.

“The Greens are still looked by Democrats as spoilers,” Ewoldt says. “They’re looked at by Republicans as tree-hugging Feminazis.”

Ewoldt says Downing also decided to drop the party label in hopes of avoiding a primary fight with Aboud.

“He tried to talk me out of running because he says he’s going to re-file as an independent,” Ewoldt says. “I was like, OK, Ted, whatever. He admitted that he couldn’t beat Paula in the primary. I said, ‘What makes you think you’re going to do any better as an independent?’”