Check out a video of the new BMX park from the prospective of the riders. Hopefully you don't get motion sickness easily.

The University of Arizona spends $15,000 a year providing free valet bicycle parking to its students. In its second year it has taken off. Find out how many people are using the service.

Hall of famer Bill Walton will be easy to spot while riding all 111 miles of this year's El Tour de Tucson. Find out just how much Walton rides his bike.

The man who invented mountain biking spent an evening this week riding with 120 Tucsonans. Find out what Gary Fisher had to say about the ride.

The cyclist killed last week when he failed to stop at a stop sign had brakes on his bike and didn't appear to be panicking when he rode into traffic on Grant Road. Read more about the crash and see what his friend had to say about him.

Hundreds of people turned out to celebrate Pima County's Loop project completion. Check out all the photos and video from the event.

Last night's 2011 World Margarita Competition got the Tucson Culinary Festival rolling in style. It was a packed house with all of the usual foodie elite in attendance. I was there, too.

Margarita samples were consumed en masse as attendees cooed over gourmet food and drink brought in by Tucson Original restaurants. Kudos to the organizers of this event and to all of the participants. It was a great night and I will definitely be back next year.

I do have one suggestion, however, for the judge who called Bushi's drink "Like something a teenage boy would serve to a girl to try to get her into bed" and "... like something Hello Kitty would make. I can't wait to see the Hello Kitty taco!" Lay off the American Idol reruns; Simon Cowell you are not. Teenage boys are not serving young ladies drinks garnished with edible flowers and shortbread. It was a mean and confusing thing to say.

The rest of the event was an absolute blast though, and tons of money was made for local charities. If you ever get the chance, this is one of the best annual events to check out what numerous Tucson restaurants have to offer.

• Those limes are actually Jell-o shots.

• These were topped with egg cream and ginger-snap crumbs.

• The competitors board.

• "I need light! Spilling tequila is a sin!" said Maria Mazon while pouring killer margaritas in low light.

• All but one of the judges were great.

• Rimmed with chile salt, which was wonderful.

• The competitors from the Cup at Hotel Congress wowed the judges with a purist recipe.

• Bushi's entry.

• Photo Ryn Gargulinski
• Roadkill makes for an easy, last-minute costume.

Devils and witches and ghosts — ho-hum. Halloween costumes can be about as creative as the latest reality show. We can only watch spoiled housewives scream at each other so many times before we start to snooze. The same holds true for the bland and overdone Halloween costumes. You know the type: the standard stable of serial killers, zoned-out zombies and female pirates with too much cleavage.

But don’t fret. There is still time to break free from the band of bland with a stunningly creative costume that packs plenty of pizzazz.

Like a virus. Credit for this doozy of a getup goes to a New York City poet who happened upon the idea while perusing “The Big Picture Book of Viruses.” Before you pooh-pooh the costume as disgusting, do check out the gorgeously brilliant hues of the Picornaviridae line of infections. They are incredibly intense as well as loads sexier than any pirate cleavage could be.

The virus costume design is open, depending on the virus you choose, but it will surely include amazing textures and patterns.

This is actually happening, but thankfully, the producers of the new Three Stooges movie have given us five months to prepare for this (likely) cinematic tragedy:

The comedy is not a biopic but instead is shot in three segments in the style of their film shorts from the '30s and '40s and places the trio in contemporary times as they struggle to save the orphanage where they were raised. The Farrellys, known for R-rated ribaldry, have vowed to keep the humor at a PG level. But with Larry David as a vindictive nun, an appearance by the kids of The Jersey Shore and even that hunky Old Spice guy in the cast, the slapstick should still run amok.

And now, a poll:

It would be hard for any lawyer to fathom a more riveting caseload than the one Paul D. Clement carried during his seven years in President George W. Bush’s Justice Department.

As solicitor general for three years and deputy solicitor for four, Mr. Clement appeared before the Supreme Court 49 times, defended the administration’s detention of terrorism suspects, fought off challenges to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and validated the prosecution of medical marijuana growers in a landmark commerce case.

But if possible, the docket that Mr. Clement has compiled in the private sector as one of Washington’s leading appellate litigators may situate him even closer to the center of national discourse.

At the moment, he is defending both Arizona’s tough new law against illegal immigration and Congress’s prohibition against federal recognition of same-sex marriages. And if, as expected, the Supreme Court soon announces that it will hear a challenge to last year’s health care law, it seems increasingly likely that it will be Mr. Clement who argues, in the thick of the 2012 campaign, that President Obama’s signature domestic achievement is unconstitutional.

Two sets of recommendations this week, with the second half to come tomorrow. Today, tracks by Spankrock, David Bowie, Henry Mancini, and Ryan Adams.

The classic example of a curious cat, Bess, a 9-year-old domestic long hair female, minds everyone else's business for them. This sweet and sassy extra large bundle of joy loves snuggling, playing with toys and amusing her many admirers with spirited tumbles to solicit chin scratches. Please get to know this delightful kitty soon at the Humane Society of Southern Arizona’s main shelter.

Bess is currently living at the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd. The Humane Society is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Their phone number is 327-6088.

The late Chris Limberis wrote about Burns when she won the seat after several attempts to be elected:

But low-key persistence has finally rewarded Burns, 51. In January she will replace James Noel Christ, who after two terms on the board is coveting a TUSD administrator's position to replace the one he commutes to in Tempe.

"I'm real ready," Burns says. "Someone has told me that the learning curve will be flat for me given all my years of service. I already know who's who and what's what.

"It all starts with teachers in the classroom. I want to make it attractive to go into the teaching profession," says Burns, who attended community college in Michigan before moving to Tucson nearly 30 years ago. "I want to make it attractive for teachers to be in TUSD and attractive to stay with us."

Burns jokes that she'll miss the gatherings of parents, TUSD insiders, union officials and others in the lobby and outside TUSD headquarters when the board is cloistered in long and tedious executive sessions....

Burns has a son who graduated from Tucson High School and a daughter who is a sophomore at Tucson High. She and her husband, both extremely proud of their daughter's academic success, joke that they created, improbably, a cheerleader.

The case of Burns' son highlights many of the frustrations Burns has had with TUSD's huge and often stumbling bureaucracy. Though her son transferred to Tucson High from Rincon High School and was there from the start of the fall semester, TUSD officials listed him as a dropout and phoned the Burns household five months into the school year to find out where her son was.

"We expect excellence from our teachers; we need to demand it from administrators," Burns says.

You might remember that Frank Antenori tried to get a law on the Arizona books to require random drug tests for welfare recipients earlier this year, and while the Senate loved the idea, the bill died in the House.

Such a bill did become law in Florida, but it's not going so well on the whole "is it Constitutional?" front:

In a blistering 37-page opinion (PDF) issued late Monday night, federal court Judge Mary Scriven put a halt to the tea party Republican's marquee plan, concluding that "the wholesale, suspicionless drug testing of all applicants" for Florida's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) constituted an unreasonable search in violation of the 4th Amendment....

"Though the State speaks in generalities about the 'public health risk, as well as the crime risk, associated with drugs' being 'beyond dispute,' it provides no concrete evidence that those risks are any more present in TANF applicants than in the greater population," Scriven wrote in her ruling against Florida's government. "It is not enough to simply recite a governmental interest without any evidence of a concrete threat that would be mitigated through drug testing."

Don't worry, Frank, I'm sure you'll find some other way to continue your war on the poor. Just keep brainstorming. The ideas will come.

Gov. Jan Brewer has put the Independent Redistricting Commission on notice:

Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday turned up the heat on the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, giving the five commissioners a Monday deadline to respond to allegations of "substantial neglect of duty and gross misconduct in office."

Failure to do so, she said, would lead her to conclude the commissioners are guilty of the allegations. But answers would help her determine whether she should initiate proceedings to remove one or more of the commissioners, something the Arizona Constitution empowers her to do.

Just last week, as we reported in The Skinny, state Sen. Frank Antenori was downplaying the likelihood that Brewer and Republican lawmakers would push for removal of IRC chairwoman Colleen Mathis or other members of the commission.

This is a high-stakes play by Brewer. Should she call a special session by the Legislature, it's unclear how the removal process would work. Would IRC members be afforded due process and an actual trial, where they could call witnesses of their own? Or would lawmakers simply come into session and vote to remove them in a kangaroo court? And if members are removed, how are replacements found? The Arizona Constitution calls for any new members to come from the original pool of applicants, although convincing any new members to stop into the process this late—especially after the way that the GOP has gone after the current IRC members—could prove challenging.

Time is also running out for these maps to be completed, since they still need approval from the U.S. Justice Department before the 2012 election season can begin. Does the process start all over, or does the GOP have some sort of maps that they'd like to just thrust onto the IRC for rubber-stamping?

Or will the courts just end up drawing the districts? And if so, will GOP lawmakers who now are looking at safe districts go along with impeaching IRC members and rolling the dice that federal judges will give them safe districts over the next 10 years?