Although the June 12 Congressional District 8 special election will decide her replacement, we've seen very little of Gabby Giffords' presence in the race between Democrat Ron Barber and Republican Jesse Kelly.

Sure, Giffords asked Barber to seek the seek and she and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, both have endorsed Barber for this run and the Congressional District 2 race in the fall. She and Mark Kelly (no relation to Jesse Kelly) have helped Barber with a fundraising pitch. And the Arizona Democratic Party sent out a mailer in recent weeks reinforcing Giffords' endorsement.

But as the race hits the final stretch, we're seeing more of Giffords. We had the announcement yesterday that she'd be coming to town for a concert and rally at the Rialto Theatre this Saturday, June 9. And today, the House Majority PAC, a super PAC that aids Democrats, unleashed a new ad recapping some of Jesse Kelly's more radical positions—eliminating corporate taxes and the minimum wage—as well as reminding viewers of what Kelly said about Giffords in the last election.

Jesse Kelly said those things about Giffords before she was shot (you can see the entire speech by Kelly here; it's a much more angry Jesse Kelly than we've seen on the campaign trail in 2012). But some people still hold a grudge against him for his rhetoric in that campaign, as Tom Zoellner wrote about in a recent Tucson Weekly:

Kelly went after Giffords with an odd sense of vengeance, and his campaign painted her as a brainless puppet of Nancy Pelosi and the president. Violent images were part of his rhetoric. He helpfully compared Mexican border-crossers to Islamic terrorists and said government employees were "putrid" and had no love of their country. "Send a warrior to Congress" was his tagline.

He notoriously encouraged supporters to shoot an M16 with him to raise money for her defeat. He led Republicans in chants of "Gabby's gotta go!" during a Tea Party rally at Hi Corbett Field.

Kelly said this at a candidate forum, in reference to two previous campaigns in which the discussion had been respectful: "Gabrielle Giffords, your time's coming, because you've had patty-cake played with you twice. We play to win. We play to win on this campaign. ... We're coming."

I worked on that campaign for Gabrielle and will never forget the way she was personally vilified in the months leading up to the massacre—the way that it became acceptable to talk about her as though she was a traitor to her country and somebody less than human. Gabrielle had seen her office windows smashed several months before, and wondered out loud during the election if the partisan ugliness might persuade some nut to take a gun to one of her events and shoot her.

In January we wrote about Casino del Sol's ridiculously bad decision to revamp its Cosmic Bingo event by, among other things, parting ways with fun and flirtatious drag queen MC Lucinda Holliday. The goal, casino officials said, was the revive a format that had gotten stale, which is hard to believe about something that involved a 6-foot-tall dude in a wig and dress holding a microphone with a fuzzy penis cover and encouraging grandmas to yell 'ohhhhhh, sixty-nine!'

Well, looks like instead of reviving it with these changes, Casino del Sol killed one of its most fun and unique entertainment options.

An email sent out to Club Sol members today quietly noted that this Saturday will be the final session of Cosmic Bingo. No details were provided as to why it is ending — other than the obvious, that the new version sucked eggs — but the message did ask people to come out for 'one last party.'

Thank you, no. I attended the first non-Lucinda Cosmic Bingo, and swore never to go again. Sounds like many other people followed suit, based on the still-coming-in posts to Lucinda's Facebook page. That, more than anything, is probably why Cosmic Bingo will be no longer.

For me, any day that starts out with a well-done Fela Kuti cover is a good one (even though this track has apparently been available for a nearly a week, which makes me question how I spend my time), so this take on "Lady" by tUnE-yArDs, Angelique Kidjo, ?uestlove from The Roots and Connecticut-raised, African-influenced German rapper Akua Naru is certainly welcome. The track is a follow-up to the 2002 benefit album Red Hot + Riot, is available on iTunes now, with funds going to AIDS research.

Oxygen bar and tea house Breathe, Drink and Design at 416 E. Seventh Street has closed, saying the loss of business due to the modern-street-car project and the summer slow-down was too much to bear. From the place's Facebook account:

Hey everyone. Just wanted to thank everyone for your patronage and support throughout the last year. Unfortunately, we closed our doors at the end of this past month. It just got a little tough to keep the business going through all of the construction on 4th Ave. and we figured that it would be especially tough during the Summer with all the students out of town. These things happen, though.

But, hey... you never know when we might just get the crazy notion to do this again! So, what we want to say is "Thank you, and goodbye for now!"

Have a wonderful day, friends!

To be fair, one cannot overtly blame the construction downtown for this closure being that the success rate of a business model dealing chiefly in tea and oxygen has yet to be proven. That said, the construction surely did nothing to help the business out, and here's hoping we don't see more shuttered businesses before the construction dust clears.

In "The Internet Can Be Very Strange" news, Eduard Khil, best known to people who watch YouTube videos as Mr. Trololo, has passed away from complications from a stroke he suffered earlier this year. While Mr. Khil's strange televised singing performance has been seen by millions, he apparently didn't really benefit from his largely anonymous fame:

“The death of the exceptional singer, Eduard Khil, is an irretrievable loss to Russian culture,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday in a statement expressing his condolences. “He was truly a people's artist. Several generations of people loved his songs not only in this country but also abroad.”

[...]

The baritone learned of his newfound fame courtesy of his grandson, according to a St. Petersburg journalist who knew him personally.

"From his grandson he learned that T-shirts and mugs with his image had become available in the West, and he joked that he never earned a kopeck from them," Mikhail Sadchikov told the Associated Press on Monday. "He was also very optimistic, positive and ironic at the same time."

The kitschy (and oh-so-catchy) wordlessness of the Trololo song, more properly known in rough translation as “I Am So Happy That I’m Finally Coming Home,” interestingly had its roots in Cold War-era history. After the original lyrics about a cowboy riding his horse home in Kentucky didn’t fly with Soviet censors — it’s unclear if the ban was official or unofficial — the words were turned into vocalizations instead.

And decades later, a star was born.

Khil was 77.

Just when I think I've managed to make some sense of the world we live in, there's this, where the Kardashian family who went on an extended reality show photo shoot a vacation to the Dominican Republic and decided to film a semi-lipsynched version of Notorious BIG's "Hypnotize," wherein Bruce Jenner, once famed athlete, plays his wife's caftan-clad butt like a set of bongos.

My head hurts now.

Although it is just the beginning of summer, I have lately been finding myself saying, “I’m bored,” what should I do on my day off, or “what should I do this weekend?”

Well, if you're in the same boredom boat, Copper Country may be the answer to your question. A friend recommended that I spend a couple hours of my time looking at unique antiques, so I decided to take her advice and see what the she was raving about.

With 32,000 square feet you are guided through the “mini-mall” with signs indicating a Way Out West section, Treasure Trail section, Sunset Boulevard and several other sections to direct one through the maze.

Almost every inch of space is filled with collectibles ranging from modern to antique furniture, jewelry, clothes of all different styles, antique cameras, cowboy boots, books, clocks, stoves, artwork and much more.

Last month we received a call from Patricia Rydeen, owner of Ears Wings N Things. She informed us that her rooster and duck mated and created what she calls a ducken. The little guy/gal had a chicken foot growing out of its head. Rydeen now reports Ducken is doing well and is almost two months old. Check out the video posted by Explorer News.

Guess what? People are generally disgusting, as detailed by a Daily Mail article about public pools:

A shocking new survey claims that a full 20 per cent of those swimming and splashing about also relieve themselves in it.

Furthermore, red-eyes that often associated with a day at the pool are from chloramine, the chemical created when urine combines with the chlorine that's already in the pool, not from the water treatment chemical.

While it did not exhaustively look into the reasons behind why people think they can urinate in a public pool, the survey suggests that it is easy and anonymous.

Oh, there's more:

The report says that the famous ‘pool smell’ results not from the chlorine, but from the slurry of water impurities swimmers bring in by not showering reacting with the pool’s chemicals.

That is to say, the more strong-smelling a pool is, the more contaminated it is as well.

The Council notes that a well-maintained pool with the proper pH balance has no discernible odour.

• Jim Nintzel
• Gabby Giffords and Ron Barber tour the Community Food Bank shortfly before she formally resigned from Congress earler this year.

Gabby Giffords will make a special appearance on behalf of Democrat Ron Barber at a get-out-the-vote concert at downtown’s Rialto Theatre next Saturday, June 9.

Giffords, who stepped down from Congress in January to focus on her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head during a shooting rampage that left six dead and 13 wounded, asked Barber to run for the remainder of her congressional term.

Barber, who is facing Republican Jesse Kelly in the June 12 special election, was Giffords’ district director. He was among those wounded on Jan. 8, 2011, taking bullets in his leg and face.

The concert, a free show designed to reward volunteers and generate voter enthusiasm leading up the June 12 special election, will feature Sergio Mendoza y La Orkesta, along with a special appearance from Joey Burns and Jacob Valenzuela of Calexico, which is one of Giffords’ favorite bands.

It will be Giffords’ first public appearance in Tucson since she stepped down on Jan. 25.

Details on the show, which is from 5 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 9, at the Rialto Theatre, here.

More on the race between Barber and Kelly here.