I definitely could have lived without hearing "the Italian Bruno Mars", but I am still quite appreciative of the Hollywood Reporter's year-end wrap-up of Eurodance hits, broken down by county, which is even more exciting. My personal favorite, "Brad Pitt" by Severina (above):

Similarly, Croatian pop star Severina managed to snare around 5 million views for her racy 2011 offering simply called “Brad Pitt” (no, we’re not making this up). The singer is well known in Zagreb and beyond for a sex tape that leaked years ago that arguably a good half of young Croatia has seen online. Her clip below is safe for work, but touches on sexual themes visually, so consider yourself warned.

The Loft announced today that they will be screening (for free!) Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane as part of their Essential Cinema series on Sunday, January 29th at 11 am and Tuesday, January 31st at 7 am, which is great news for people who enjoy movies, but even better news for a web producer looking for an excuse to post his favorite Kids in the Hall sketch.

Slideshow

Santorum Goes Hunting

Click to View 8 slides

Rick Santorum's hunting trip in Iowa yesterday was likely more for votes than the actual shooting of pheasant, but he did have the requisite orange safety gear.

There's not really been much to look at when driving the lonely stretch of Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix, unless you're like me and your eyes are always drawn to the LED screens that show the difference in price between paying cash and credit for diesel gas at truck stops.

But then came the M Passion Adult Boutique, the best reason to slide off I-10 at Picacho Peak since ... well, ever!

Housed in a renovated store front and tucked between the abandoned Nickerson Farms Restaurant and — I can't make this stuff up — the Arizona Nut House on the west side of the interchange, M Passion opened on Dec. 15, according to the store employee who anxiously greeted my wife and I when we visited on a recent drive home.

The store itself is similar to pretty much any standard adult boutique with its array of clothing, lubes, lotions, appendages, orifices and a video library for all manner of fetishes. Only its location makes it stand out, that and the bright pink exterior of the building, not to mention the billboard that first drew our attention a few miles to the north on I-10.

According to its Web site, M Passion is mostly an online retailer, though it boasts a "showroom" in a mall on Toledo, Ohio.

There's no mention of the Picacho store on its Web site, which includes the statement that it is "MPowering Romance and Sexual Well-Being."

Needless to say, for this store to survive it's going to have to hope it can somehow turn novelty drive-up traffic into repeat customers. After all, isn't a waterproof Vibrating Jackrabbit and some delay creme just as alluring a road trip purchase as a Blizzard or some scratch-off tickets?

I would love to share with the Weekly's audience my magnificent recipe for churros, but then a measurement goes awry and people are sent to the hospital with oil burns. You're on your own, Tucson cooks!

The publisher of La Tercera must pay individual damages to 11 women and two men ranging from as little as $279 to $48,000 for one woman whose burns were particularly severe....

Judges determined that the newspaper failed to fully test it before publication, and that if readers followed the recipe exactly, the churros had a good chance of exploding once the oil reached the suggested temperature. Grupo Copesa, which publishes the paper, said it will abide by the ruling.

Days after the recipe was published in the paper’s “Woman” magazine in 2004, hospitals around the country began treating women for burns suffered when the dough boiling in oil suddenly shot out of kitchen pots.

[Washington Post]

A notable release from last year: Death Clouds on Mt Baldy: Tucson's Lost Tragedy by Cathy Hufault. (290 pages, Arizona Mountain Publications, $19.95) For more information, click here.

Book summary:

On a lovely November day in 1958, six boy scouts set out to climb Mount Baldy in the Santa Rita Mountains. A freak snow storm caught them totally unprepared. Three stumbled back down the trail and the other three became the focus of the largest search and rescue operation in Arizona history—19 days—on foot, by helicopter and horseback.
Death Clouds on Mt Baldy is a haunting historical adventure drama which relays harrowing accounts of rescue, survival, bravery and tragic loss.

Haufault writes:

The book was written as a tribute to this diverse group of inner city kids who ran into trouble on a carefree adventure hike in our wilderness. It also honors the over 750 people who desperately searched for them. Many do not realize that this was the start of SARA, the Southern Arizona Rescue Association.

This week, in the first of two videos from the guys at Heroes and Villains, Eric and Arnie discuss Fables 112 and wish you a belated Merry Christmas.

Fans of Eric and comics will want to stop by Heroes and Villains tomorrow between noon and 2 pm as he (along with Jason Pedersen and Ken Wright) sign and sketch things with purchase of their new edition of Zombies vs. Cheerleaders.

With a menu written by legendary Italian food guy Joe Scordato, the newish Gusto Osteria at 7153 E. Tanque Verde Road definitely steps out on the right foot. And for those who freaked when Scordato took the braciole off the menu at Guiseppe's (it's back now, by the way) it's available at Gusto Osteria. Meraviglioso!

There's more information about Gusto Osteria over here.

Van Halen announced today that they would reunite for the first time since 1986 to tour, put out a new album, etc. (although it's not like we haven't been down this road before), and while I would consider myself a fan of the band's material, including "Panama", which might be one of the best songs ever, as long as Eddie's kid is playing bass, I'm not interested. Let's stand up for Michael Anthony, rock fans. He was a great bassist and backing vocalist, plus the sort of rock and roller who would play a Jack Daniels' logo-ed bass. A Michael Anthony-less Van Halen is a no fun Van Halen, which isn't really Van Halen at all.

I'm going to do what I've done since the band parted ways with David Lee Roth in the first place and just pretend that they quit while they were ahead and they've live on, encased in amber preserved in their 1984-era form:

There has been some discussion [here and here] on The Range about anonymous commenting, so this piece by Kee Hinckeley (which appeared on Google+, of all places) seems worth revisiting.

Here lies the huge irony in this discussion. Persistent pseudonyms aren't ways to hide who you are. They provide a way to be who you are. You can finally talk about what you really believe; your real politics, your real problems, your real sexuality, your real family, your real self. Much of the support for "real names" comes from people who don't want to hear about controversy, but controversy is only a small part of the need for pseudonyms. For most of us, it's simply the desire to be able to talk openly about the things that matter to every one of us who uses the Internet. The desire to be judged—not by our birth, not by our sex, and not by who we work for—but by what we say.

Pseudonyms are not new to the computer age. Authors use them all the time. Our founding fathers used them. Anonymous and pseudonymous speech have been part of democratic society since its beginning. What is new is that more and more strangers, whom we have never seen and never spoken to, know our names. What is new is that a name, with just a few minor pieces of information (birthdate, friends names, employer, industry, town…) can in a few seconds provide thousands of personal details about who you are and where you live.

[...]

I leave you with this question. What if I had posted this under my pseudonym? Why should that have made a difference? I would have written the same words, but ironically, I could have added some more personal and perhaps persuasive arguments which I dare not make under this account. Because I was forced to post this under my real name, I had to weaken my arguments; I had to share less of myself. Have you ever met "Kee Hinckley"? Have you met me under my other name? Does it matter? There is nothing real on the Internet; all you know about me is my words. You can look me up on Google, and still all you will know is my words. One real person wrote this post. It could have been submitted under either name. But one of them is not allowed to. Does that really make sense?

For what it's worth, I don't really have an issue with anonymous commenting and I actually like the online culture of the persistent pseudonym. I just would prefer that people not be jerks, even if I realize the impossibility of that ideal. After all, my name is on everything I write and I'm willing to expose aspects of my life, personality, beliefs, etc. as part of what I do for a living and I hope that's part of what people appreciate about my writing, but it takes about a minute for someone to respond to something I've thought about for a few hours/days/weeks with a curt "this sucks and you suck too" retort. It's sort of funny, because at this point in my online writing career, I'm not really phased by insults - someone beat you to whatever you're going to say, I assure you - but it sucks a little that someone won't assign even the most vaguely defined identity to their criticism. That doesn't suck enough to change the rules of interaction, but it does seem worth challenging people choosing to interact online to do a little bit better, to aim a tiny bit higher.