The Tucson Weekly took home seven honors in the Arizona Press Club’s annual contest—and six of those were first-place wins.

Five of those wins came in writing categories. In comparison, the Arizona Daily Star only took home one first-place writing prize, and three first-place awards overall.

All of the Weekly’s writing honors came in metro or “Best in Arizona” categories, meaning that the Weekly’s entries competed against those submitted by all of the state’s largest newspapers.

Tim Vanderpool won two first-place trophies. His “Predators and Prey” (May 20, 2010) took top honors in the Public Safety Reporting category. Judge Jordan Smith, of the Austin Chronicle, noted: “Vanderpool does a nice job of making a personal experience the jumping off point to navigate the often-charged topic of sex offender laws. The subject matter is complex and often under-reported outside of spot news related to individual arrests. Vanderpool does a good job of navigating the core issues of crime and punishment in this area of the law without succumbing to the sensational.”

Vanderpool’s other win came in the Health Reporting category, for “Death by Study” (March 4, 2010), about a potential childhood leukemia cluster in Sierra Vista. Judge Meg Kissinger, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote: “This story was as effective in telling what is known about cancer cluster studies as it was fleshing out the frustration of what is not known. Compelling examples. Excellent writing.”

Tom Danehy, Margaret Regan, Emily Bowen, Linda Ray and Anna Mirocha shared top honors in the Personality Profile category for their Local Heroes contributions (Dec. 23, 2010). (The Weekly entered the entire Local Heroes package, featuring profiles of 10 people, but the Press Club board decided that only five “stories” could be included as one entry, and therefore only sent five of the 10 profiles to the judge.) Judge Tracy Ahrens, of the Chicago Tribune, raved: “A beautiful blend of five short portraits of community heroes. The works are easy to read and hold the reader. These pieces make you want to meet every person showcased. More publications should do routine personality profiles like this of often hidden, unsung heroes in every community.”

Renée Downing won the Don Schellie Award for Column Writing, for a selection of her work including "To Annoy a Mockingbird: Meet Fu’s New Mortal Enemy” (May 27, 2010) and “A Disturbing Revelation: Downtown Phoenix Has Recently Become … Nice” (April 1, 2010). The Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Thomas noted: “Downing has what I like to call writing genetics. Her topics were clever and her writing crisp. She ably turned mockingbirds into villains and Phoenix into, well, something almost desirable. Being from Orlando, I certainly could relate!”

Weekly scribes took the top two places in the all-encompassing Criticism category. Margaret Regan took first for “The Whole Picture” (Feb. 4, 2010), “Tiled Roofs and Borrowed Styles” (July 15, 2010) and “Deposited by Angels” (Oct. 28, 2010). Mark Feeney, of The Boston Globe, commented: “Serious without being solemn, Regan’s reviews demonstrate intelligence, range, and a consistent ability to provide context and make larger connections.”

For the fifth year in a row, James DiGiovanna was honored as Arizona’s best film critic, as he took second in the Criticism category, behind Regan, for “Tolstoy, Plus Boobs” (Feb. 18, 2010), “Emotion Exposed!” (March 25, 2010) and “Tragic Remake” (April 22, 2010). Judge Feeney said: “Possessing an impressive knowledge of film, a knowledge he wears lightly, DiGiovanna writes with frequent verve and consistent passion.”

Photographer David Zickl took first prize in the non-metro Portrait Photography category, for his picture of ranchers Robert and Phil Krentz. The image was used on the April 29, 2010, cover of the Weekly, along with the story “The Krentz Bonfire,” about the as-yet-unsolved murder of Robert Krentz.

Daniel Gonzalez, of The Arizona Republic, was named the Virg Hill Journalist of the Year at the awards ceremony, held Saturday, May 21, at the Sheraton in downtown Phoenix. Jen Levario Cieslak, also of The Republic, was named Designer of the Year, The Republic’s Michael Chow was honored as Photographer of the Year. The Explorer’s Thelma Grimes was named the Community Journalist of the Year for the second year in a row for work she did at the San Pedro Valley News-Sun.

I have no idea why the Phoenix New Times decided to make a bacon version of Joe Arpaio, but I welcome that sort of pioneering spirit. $75 well spent:

Last September, FX premiered a show about two private eyes called Terriers. The show had a sunny setting in Ocean Beach, an eclectic township of San Diego. It had two dynamic leads in the perpetually underrated Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, who played the Cajun-accented bad guy in the first season of True Blood. Terriers was exceptionally well-written and engaging, and the more episodes you watched, the more hooked you became. It also had an absolute masterpiece of an opening credit sequence. Take a look.

It's hard to say whether the Russell Pearce recall was going to work or not, but at least, I'd like to see it actually come to a vote before Pearce gets another session to reign destruction on the state. Well, because Arizona Elections Director Amy Bjelland made a tiny mistake regarding the rules for recall, if the movement does get enough signatures, there won't likely be a vote until March:

Arizona's elections director said she inadvertently gave an incorrect timetable to the organizers of a drive to recall controversial Senate President Russell Pearce, forcing a change in strategy in the historic recall effort.

Elections Director Amy Bjelland said she initially told recall organizer Randy Parraz that if he filed his signatures by May 25, there would be enough time to verify them and schedule a November election.

But Bjelland since has notified Parraz that Gov. Jan Brewer has 15 days to officially call an election if the signatures check out, not five. The difference of 10 days in the recall timetable means Citizens for a Better Arizona already has missed the actual deadline, May 10, to turn in the signatures for a November election and can only hope for a March 13, 2012, election.

A March recall election would fall midway through the next legislative term. Parraz and the organizers were hoping for a November election, which, if successful, would force Pearce out before the next session convenes.

"I was not factoring in the governor's 15 days," Bjelland said. "It is what it is. I felt terrible about it."

Now, according to the article, those seeking a recall might not have the signatures ready on time anyway and some responsibility should fall on the organizers, who apparently did read the rules for themselves, but it's definitely a little distressing that the state's election director can't be bothered to make sure she knows what she's talking about before handing out deadlines.

[HT: Blog for Arizona]

Sure, we're all goofy over the latest failed rapture prediction, so Facebook is full of links to Blondie's "Rapture", but may I humbly suggest a substitute, just to mix it up a bit? My first instinct was Larry Norman's "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", a classic futuristic look at the rapture, thinking of those left behind by the event, but Norman's brilliant and strange Christian rock career probably deserves better representation than that somewhat embarrassing track.

Instead, who better to warn of the forthcoming apocalypse than the Wu-Tang's GZA/Genius, with "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth"?:

• Jim Nintzel
• We wanted to believe: Hector Acuña and Tim Archibald on the hunt for evidence.

I teamed up with photographers Hector Acuña and Tim Archibald to spend some time with the UFO community back in the mid-’90s, including a fact-finding mission to Roswell for the first big celebration of the anniversary of the ’47 saucer crash. I had a lot of fun, but I gotta say that I walked away more skeptical than I started out.

There's a new theory about what happened at Roswell when the reports about the flying disc hit the local paper:

A new book on that mysterious government site in the Nevada desert called Area 51 claims there was no alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 but there was a crash of a disc like object there, there were strange looking bodies and the government did cover it up.

Oh. And former Russian dictator Joseph Stalin maybe had a hand in it.

According to Annie Jacobsen, the reporter and contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times on national security matters who authored "Area 51," the “spaceship” that crashed at Roswell was actually a Soviet spy plane that came down during a storm.

Jacobsen says an impeccable source she worked with for 18 months while writing the book — a former engineer at Area 51 who saw the wreckage and the bodies - claims it was filled with bizarre looking, possibly genetically engineered and/or surgically altered child-sized pilots that were designed give the appearance of aliens — small bodied creatures with big heads and large eyes.

And what was behind the crash? Then Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was hoping, Jacobsen writes, that the news of a disc like UFO flying around in the sky would cause widespread panic in the U.S., as did the Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast “War Of The Worlds.”

Stalin was said to be fascinated over how the broadcast caused panic among some Americans who actually believed the nation was under attack by aliens from outer space.

And it gets weirder. Those alien looking bodies were said to be scientific experiments created by the "Angel of Death," Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, for the USSR after the war.

We've all been fooled by something on the internet at one point or another, I imagine, but getting tricked by an article from The Onion? In 2011? Not cool.

• Today is the last day to help a local mountain biking group win a $50k grant to preserve trail access in Southern Arizona. Here is how you can help.


• A piece of the Rillito River path that has been a missing link in the system for 20 years is now paved and open to bikes. Find out where it is.


• Local bicycle recycler BICAS saved 40 bikes from the landfill during their University of Arizona donation drive. Check out the story.


• The United States' most influential bicycle advocate spent several days in Tucson this week. He gave the city a blueprint to becoming one of the best bike cities in the country. Check out what he says we need to do and check out his thoughts on Tucson's bicycling community.

Randall Mario Poffo, better known as professional wrestling legend "Macho Man Randy Savage," died this morning in a car accident following a heart attack in Tampa, Florida. The Macho Man was hands down one of the most recognizable and dynamic stars of the WWF in the 1980s and '90s, then as part of the rival WCW, and later TNA before his retirement in 2005.

I've followed wrestling on and off since I was a kid, but what do you even say about this guy? He really was the sort of character that made watching overgrown men hit each other while wearing tight pants or underwear interesting somehow. The Macho Man character was wildly larger than life, barely making sense at times, waving his arms around, and punctuating every promo aside Mean Gene with an "Ooooh Yeah", like the Kool-Aid Man personified. By now, everyone knows that professional wrestling is a rough gig for the actual participants, but still it always seemed like Randy Savage walked the balance between being aware of the ridiculous nature of the whole thing and total professionalism in giving the audience a great show. What more could anyone ask from the guy?

From Wrestlemania 3, here's one of the greatest pro wrestling matches of all time, Savage vs. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat. Apparently, this was one of the first matches to be extensively choreographed instead of improvised on the fly, with Savage and Steamboat practicing for days to get everything just right, and it really shows.

Randall Mario Poffo, the Macho Man Randy Savage, was 58.

Watching Saturday Night Live in the streaming video era is often an exercise in frustration. Maybe there will be something outrageously funny (this happens every other week, maybe?), but while it's always more entertaining to watch whatever happens when it's actually on, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by just waiting until clips show up on Facebook or some blog the next day. Of course, some of you might have a social life and are actually doing something out with actual people on Saturday nights, too busy to care about network television. I used to be among you once. Enjoy it while it lasts.

However, if you're going to watch any episode of the show, tomorrow's season finale should be worthwhile, if only for the re-appearance of the "Dick in a Box" guys, played by this week's host Justin Timberlake and SNL cast member Andy Samberg. TMZ leaked a photo of the guys in costume taping a segment for this week's show, with special guests Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson.

If you need to catch up or just want to recall the memories of the previous two installments, the wildly unsafe for work videos are below the cut.