Congratulations to J. Paul Oetken, the first openly gay man to be a federal judge:

Mr. Oetken won Senate confirmation by a vote of 80 to 13. He will take his seat as a federal judge in Manhattan after President Obama signs his commission, which may be as soon as this week, according to the office of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

“When there are so many qualified gay and lesbian people and none of them get on the bench, you scratch your head and wonder why,” said Mr. Schumer, who recommended the appointment last year to Mr. Obama. “But the old barriers that existed in society are crumbling. That’s what this will say.”

Mr. Oetken, 45, a graduate of Yale Law School, was a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the Supreme Court before working for the Justice Department and then as associate counsel to President Bill Clinton.

He is now a senior vice president and associate general counsel at Cablevision.

Deborah A. Batts, a lesbian, has been a federal judge in Manhattan since 1994.

[NYTimes]

• By Twitter user @KelliMarshall

We still have 65 days to wait before the season four premiere of Parks and Recreation, so amusing grocery labels will have to suffice as entertainment until then. $3.99 isn't bad for center cut, however.

See also:

The surprisingly good TV series Friday Night Lights came to an end on Friday night, but that doesn't mean you can't still be inspired by Coach Taylor. When you're down and you don't think you can accomplish greatness, play this video compiling the greatest motivational hits from the series' run.

[NYMag]

In honor of New York state government's decision of marriage equality last month, this week's New Yorker cover features two beautiful brides gliding down the Brooklyn Bridge hand in hand. We think it's lovely. Props!

Courtesy of New York Observer:

This weeks Barry Blitt cover illustration, featuring two brides strolling down the Brooklyn Bridge, continues a long tradition of (sometimes gay-)wedding-themed covers that The New Yorker summarizes in a blog post. The covers have gone from zanily buzzythe neon-pink backdropped couple in 1994to sardonicthe groom in white silk schmatte in 2004to this weeks rather sweet cover, with the bridge stretching forward into the horizon.

Click here to view previous New Yorker wedding-themed covers.

I don't know all that much about The Grandmasters, but as a Wong Kar-Wai fan, I'm excited to see what he does with the martial arts genre, and the cast includes Kar-Wai regulars like Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi. Plus, there are people kicking each other in a heavily stylized rainstorm. That's a movie right there, just slap some plot around it.

[NYMag]

I'm a little puzzled by the somewhat recent a capella craze, but now that I've heard Danish group Local Vocal perform this medley of 90's Eurodance hits — including tracks by Scatman John, La Bouche, and Ace of Base — I finally get it. I don't feel like I need to hear any more of it, but I don't think I'm engaging in hyperbole by saying this is exactly what all music should be like.

She was born in the Ukraine, she's getting her MBA at the University of Arizona, she's loves Starbucks and her two dogs, and her turn-ons include guys who wear earrings...meet Playboy's Miss August, Tucsonan Iryna Ivanova. While Ivanova wants to eventually get her PhD, joining the elite sorority of Playmates is her biggest accomplishment so far:

Being Miss August is something I’m very proud of. Honestly, I might be prouder of being a Playmate than any of my academic achievements. There are many great schools you can attend, but there’s only one Playboy.

In case you'd like to see a lot more of Ms. Ivanova, the August issue of Playboy is on sale now.

There’s growing opposition in reaction to a proposal to change the admissions policy for Pima Community College. The community is invited to an 8 a.m. forum tomorrow, July 19, to learn more and add to the current discussion. The forum will take place in the Amethyst Room at the college’s downtown campus at Speedway Boulevard and Stone Avenue.

PCC Chancellor Roy Flores issued a report in June that included an announcement that by next summer, admissions to the community college will require a high school diploma or GED, as well as scoring “above a minimum level established by Pima Community College on college assessment examinations” in math, writing and reading.

Flores told the Tucson Weekly that the college, which has about 70,000 students at its five campuses, offers remediation services to 80 percent of all students. But a smaller percentage of those students, about 2,300 who enter Pima without a high school diploma or GED, end up failing due to a severe lack of skills — students who can’t operate at a third, fourth and fifth grade level.

In order to be admitted at Pima, a student doesn’t have to have gone to one day of school, according to Flores. New students are tested to see if they are deficient in writing, reading or math. Some of those students might want to work toward getting their GED, but have a lot of work to do before they get to those GED classes, and many of those students, Flores says, fail before they get there.

“We take their money, and they buy expensive text books and then end up failing, burdened by debt and student loans,” Flores says. “It isn’t fair when you have no chance of succeeding.”

Former State Rep. Phil Lopes and others disagree with Flores’ plan to change PCC’s open admission policy.

Lopes told the Weekly he and others are thinking about that 28-year-old who dropped out of high school at 16 and needs to improve his or her life in order to feed their family.

According to a letter and announcement sent to the PCC board by those against the policy change, the founding Pima County Junior College District Board adopted an open-admission policy in 1967, and that the college “provides an open door to educational opportunity. It is more interested in what a student is ready to do than in what he has done.”

The letters point out that other community colleges continue with the same open-door policy —- one that is supported by the American Association of Community Colleges.

Also shared was a perspective by a faculty retiree that “closing the door on education is not what the College was founded upon, and it is not how it contributes best to the community in difficult times.”

While there were some technical difficulties at Phoenix's not-at-all lamented concert venue Compton Terrace that day (including Nine Inch Nails storming off the stage as the heat melted their electronics), today marks the twentieth anniversary of the first stop of the 1991 Lollapalooza tour, with headliners Jane's Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Living Colour, among others. MTV's 120 Minutes was there to speak to some of the bands, but they didn't really capture the absurd heat, cognitive dissonance of seeing some of these bands perform in the middle of the afternoon, and the eventual overwhelming wave of body odor. While the festival transitioned to a multi-day event held only in Chicago, there isn't much left from the early heyday of alternative music and the current incarnation is impeccably run, so it's nice that the brand still has some value.

[Slicing Up Eyeballs]

"Happiness" by Yana Payusova and Joseph Farbrook is on display in A Tale of Two Heads, through Aug. 31 at Joseph Gross Gallary, 1031 N. Olive Rd.