If you didn't have anything better to do with your time during the earlier parts of the day this summer, you probably watched a fair amount of the World Cup (or perhaps you tried your best to avoid the World Cup).

While the soccer was good and the general excitement over the spirit of competition was fun to watch, the real breakout star of the competition might have been Paul the Octopus, the resident of a German aquarium who successfully predicted the outcome of every Germany match and the Spain/Netherlands final. Sadly, like a candle in the wind, our prognosticating pal Paul has been taken away from us.

A shame, but as Neil Young said, it might be better to burn out than fade away. Plus, apparently octopi don't live all that long. Who knew?

Hopefully, you're predicting the outcome of soccer matches wherever you are, Paul. We'll see you at the crossroads.

Calexico's Facebook feed yesterday provided a link to a Chicago restaurant that is immortalizing the band in burger form (adobo steak burger, green chiles, avocado, grilled cebollitos). While it's always nice to see Joey and John recognized, even in the culinary world, the story behind the indie rock burger is probably more interesting than the likely delicious burger itself.

Each year, Logan Square-area seasonal-driven restaurant Lula Cafe takes on a new theme for one night only on Halloween. According to Time Out Chicago, "In 2007 the restaurant morphed into Olive Garden. The following year, it was O’Lulahan’s, an Irish pub. Last year it was Not Doug’s, a kind of zombie version of Hot Doug’s."

This year, Lula is parodying/paying tribute to a burger restaurant down the street from them called Kuma's Corner, which names its burgers after heavy metal acts (Baroness, Mastodon, Brujeria and the like). Lula's one-night-only take featured burgers either inspired by (the Calexico one) or devised by (the Shellac burger) indie-rock acts.

Obviously, we're unlikely to head to Chicago just to get a limited edition burger (although with whiskey joint Longman and Eagle down the street, the idea is tempting), and it's a little late for this year, but couldn't a Tucson restaurant ripoff appropriate this idea for next year? Late October isn't usually when a restaurant in this town needs a boost of attention, so maybe for April Fool's? It's an instant PR hook (I know we'd report on it) and just plain fun for everyone involved.

Step up your game, Tucson restaurateurs ... I want to see some one-off restaurant concepts in six months.

A presentation of the shape-shifting, weight-shifting future of the cell phone.

Salon names Republican Jesse Kelly, who hopes to unseat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Congressional District 8 next week, one of the "10 Most Terrifying Would Be Congressmen."

From Salon:

In March, John McCain's spokesman declared that the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) is "backed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites." Evidently, that view is not shared by Jesse Kelly, the GOP hopeful who is now running neck and neck with Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona's 8th District. Kelly has embraced ALIPAC's endorsement and signed the ALIPAC pledge to "use the full power of my office, including impeachment if necessary" to secure the U.S. border.

The Anti-Defamation League agrees with McCain. "White supremacists and racist skinheads have encouraged their followers to engage in activity on behalf of ALIPAC," the ADL charged last year. The ADL has shown how ALIPAC President William Gheen portrays illegal immigrants as criminals who carry infectious diseases.

In an emailed statement, Kelly responded to the Salon list with this comment: “The most terrifying things right now are the job-killing tax and regulatory increases in the Obamacare scheme that Giffords forced on Arizona.”

The ALIPAC story broke last week, with The Hill reporting on it here and Politico reporting on it here. Brian Rogers, spokesman for the McCain campaign, didn't comment on his earlier comments about ALIPAC when questioned by the Phoenix New Times, as you can read about here. That's not much of surprise, given that McCain is now starring in an ad supporting Kelly, even though Kelly called for a "day of reckoning" for Arizona's senior senator back when Kelly endorsed J.D. Hayworth in the GOP primary.

Kelly himself was questioned about ALIPAC by KGUN-9 News last week. He didn't seem particularly eager to embrace the organization, as you can see in the clip.

We all make mistakes, so maybe it's bad form to mock others when they err publicly.

Then again, when the local Tea Party copies and pastes the wrong e-mail and sends it to their followers, it's hard to not see the humor in that.

The first e-mail from the Tea Party on the downtown hotel vote starts off making sense ... but seemed a little off-message after a few lines:

TELL THE CITY COUNCIL TO VOTE NO!

Join us on Tuesday October 26th at 5 p.m.

Bring a sign or we'll have signs there for you.

The final decision on the new Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center Expansion in downtown Tucson is days away when the Tucson City Council will make a monumental decision to either proceed with this project or end it. As fellow contractors in the Tucson community, and with potential involvement in this project, we are asking for your support one more time to send a message to the City Council that this project needs to happen.

This vote is contentious and we need to remind our City Council how important this project is to Tucson and our crippled construction economy. In the next four days, please take the time to contact each Council member and let them know that this project needs to be built. Key points to mention as well as Council member and Mayor contact information is below.

Thanks to many of you, we had a terrific turnout of over 500 supporters at the Rio Nuevo board meeting several months ago and that went a long way towards keeping the project alive. We need an even bigger turnout this Tuesday October 26th at 5 p.m. - the Council meeting has been moved to TCC because of crowd expected so let's not disappoint! This will be regular session, public discussion of the project beginning at 5:30 pm so please plan to arrive by 5:00 pm.

TTP Leadership

Thanks for your help again on this important issue.

Then, about eight minutes later:

Wow,

...Please disregard the entire last message. We cut and pasted the wrong letter.

It is very important that we say NO to the hotel as there is no way to pay for it in the current economy. The last message is what the supporters of the measure are going to use to get people out to support this boondoggle.

Please show up with signs o use ones that a business leader will be helping provide.

Even if you do not live in Tucson, this issue is of the utmost importance. Please show up and support Steve K. in finally forcing the city concil to support fiscal sanity."

One question unrelated to the error: Which "business leader" is providing the anti-hotel signs?

The latest odds in the race between Congressman Raul Grijalva and Republican challenger Ruth McClung from Nate Silver of The New York Times and fivethirtyeight.com. Details here.

Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up. Details here.

Every day has a YouTube video that goes along with it, and today (so far), it's a video created by a Fox affiliate in Dallas for their local Emmy awards.

I guess this is supposed to be funny, with old media types really sticking it to social media obsessed news producers, but it's just not connecting for me. (Full disclosure: I am employed as a web producer, so maybe this hits a little too close to home.) While the rush provide content on nearly every possible platform can be a little tedious—just watch an hour of CNN to get an idea of how this can go wrong—the real problem is that terrible reporting is still terrible when its on a new hip platform of the moment like Twitter.

Still, what ends up being disappointing about this video for me is that a breaking story—like a shooter on the loose—is exactly where multiple platforms with more immediacy are an improvement over a TV station breaking into an episode of Judge Judy. In 2001, the lag between the first plane hitting the World Trade Center and when I actually heard about it was shockingly long by 2010 standards. I was running late for work, didn't turn on the TV at home, had a CD on in the car, and sat down to work on an Excel spreadsheet for a while before someone told me the office was shutting down for the day. These days, even outside of a world-dislodging story like Sept. 11, if there was a gunman downtown, something would buzz on my iPhone within moments of the story breaking, and I'd be able to react accordingly. That's why at the Weekly, we are trying to think of better ways to report the news as it's useful to you, the consumer, on whatever platform you're using. Obviously, that's hopefully not via a Facebook photo of one of our reporters and a bodybag, and there is some trial and error in finding the best way to convey information on Twitter, etc., but the desire to tell stories, provide context and also entertain doesn't really change.

If you have ideas on how we can do that better, please let us know—either in the comments, via e-mail, or even through a tweet.

It's not that uncommon to see references to Arizona politics outside of our own media bubble on the internet, but generally, the references are predictably either something that Joe Arpaio did or complaints about SB 1070.

Thus, it was a little surprising to look on the front page of link-sharing/source-of-amusing-images website Reddit and see the headline "6 out of 10 propositions on my Arizona Ballot are outright lies, cleverly written to deceive voters."

For a link to make the front page of Reddit is a challenge, requiring hundreds of the site's users to "vote up" the post, which in this case might say more about the general distrust for politics on the site than anything else. Still, that someone took the time to post their frustration with a system that is theoretically supposed to allow for some direct democracy in our legislative process should be some cause for alarm, right?

Even worse, the first comment on the post doesn't really encourage optimism for whether people have any idea what they're voting for on Nov. 2: "I have asked a dozen acquaintances their opinions on ANY of these props and have yet to get one that had any clue to what any of them were, let alone formed a decision about which way to vote. I can't help but feel like we are f***ed."

The post is below the cut.

Linda Ray fills you in here on the big party happening this Sunday, Oct. 24, at Hotel Congress: Sergio Mendoza y La Orkesta with be joined by special guests—Calexico, Brian Lopez, Salvador Duran, Molehill Orkestrah and a whole bunch more—to rock the ol' vote for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the rest of the Democratic ticket on Election Day.

The concert is free for all, so just click here for details of how you can get an advance ticket—or just swing by on Sunday.

Special Election Season bonus: A free Calexico concert download from a Rialto Theatre performance. Click here for your own copy or just push play to listen.