Local rapper/tattoo shop owner/TAMMIES nominee Isaiah Toothtaker is a busy guy, releasing new music every few weeks it seems, but I suppose that's how the hip-hop world works these days. Today, he dropped Sea Punk Funk, an eight track collaboration with producer Sixtoo for free via Bandcamp. I have literally no idea how to classify this stuff, which verges on witch-house at times, vintage video game electronica at others, but creative and weird throughout. Dark and ominous stuff which might not be for everyone, but creative and weird in the best possible way. Plus, it's free. What do you have to lose?

The very strange musical Hedwig & the Angry Inch is one of my favorite things ever, so even the announcement of a first draft of a sequel is just about the most exciting news I've heard in awhile. Sure, it'll probably be another decade or so before I actually see it live (and based on the limited box office success of the film version, I doubt it'll be on the big screen), but any Hedwig news is good news:

BREAKING CULTURAL NEWS: I’m not sure if this has been announced anywhere or not. I had coffee-and-conversation this morning here in Greenwich Village with my old friend John Cameron Mitchell, the creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He is busy putting the finishing touches on his first draft of a Hedwig sequel and will be doing a reading and recreating the role of Hedwig on September 16th at a special performance at this year’s Afterglow Festival in Provincetown. “We spend so much of our early lives trying to figure out who we really are,” he said as a way to enigmatically sum up the new Hedwig plot line. “And we spend the rest of our lives preparing ourselves to let it go.”

He then went on to tell me in detail the narrative of the sequel for which Hedwig’s original composer Stephen Trask will write the music once more. There was such sweet excitement in his voice as he told me scene after scene, much like the sweetness and excitement he first had when so many years ago we sat in another coffee shop and he shyly admitted he was writing the role of a transgendered rock’n’roller so he could play it himself...

As for the sequel? Let’s just say it’s something that could only happen to Hedwig - a phantasmagoria with dollops of brutal reality interwoven into its multi-media narrative.

Hedwig lives!

Just a bit of follow-up regarding Kade Mislinski's new shake shop, which we told you about earlier this week. From the HUB Restaurant and Ice Creamery Facebook page:

We're proud to announce the October Opening of Lulu's Shake Shoppe between HUB & Playground on the south side of our building. Thick hand-crafted Milkshakes, tater-tots, fries and hot dogs all to go out of our pickup window.

Let us pause to take this all in. HUB's ice cream makes the hair on my neck stand up in a very good way; there's a high-end chocolate shop called the Chocolate Fox in the same building complex; and we live in Tucson, where cold things to eat are very nice to have. This combination of factors foreshadows delicious things.

I am excited. Have a good weekend.

The video above is the new single from the B-Side Players, which begs the question, what exactly is a spliff and why is life like that? Maybe I'll leave that answer to our Medical Marijuana columnist Mr. Smith.

However, while philosophizing on the B-Side Players, you should also ready yourself for their show at the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St., on Tuesday, July 31, with Tucson's American Android and The Jons — all to benefit the Save Ethnic Studies Raza Defense Fund. Doors open at 7 p.m. Cost is $10 and you can get your tickets now online here.

Former Tucson Unified School District Mexican American Studies director Sean Arce and educator Jose Gonzales are battling it out with former teacher John Ward, who continues his lawsuit against the teachers. Right now, Gonzales and Arce's legal team are in the middle of depositions and transcription costs — the need for donations is critical. On the other side, Ward's lawsuit is being funded by donations raised by Attorney General Tom Horne — making the lawsuit an extension of his anti-Mexican American studies agenda.

The $10 admission goes to a good cause, but you are also in for a great show. The B-Side Players are an amazing mix of Ozomatli, sprinkled with a little Bob Marley.

In a 2006 interview with the San Diego Reader, saxophonist Russell Gonzales explained Chicano life in San Diego and it sounds like these guys have a good understanding of what life is like right now in Tucson and Arizona:

“San Diego is an odd place to grow up if you are Chicano,” says B-Side Players saxophonist Russell Gonzales. “In my personal opinion, Chicano culture in San Diego is considered a novelty. It has been designated simply to a park in National City and similar areas were you can’t deny the overwhelming presence of the people who live there. These are the barrios of San Diego. They were designed to keep a culture and a race of people segregated from the rest of America; glass menageries to keep novelties like Mexican culture in.”

“There are other cultures in similar situations here, to be sure, but Mexico is in our blood, so this is who we represent. We are the Brown Side Players, and we are taking the culture out of glass cases and displaying it to the rest of the world.”

“People compare us to Ozomatli all the time,” says singer Karlos Paez. “But they used to come to see us play back before they became a band themselves.”

In July 2007, the band performed at LAMC in NYC, while their song “Nuestras Demandas” was number one on the Alternative Latino Singles Chart on iTunes and their new album Fire in the Youth was number ten on the Alternative Latino Album Chart. A new video for “Nuestras Demandas” was inspired by a May 2007 immigration protest scuffle with police.

Their 2009 record Radio Afro Mexica won Best World Album at that year’s San Diego Music Awards. The band won Best World Music at the 2011 SDMAs.

If drinking delicious beer and learning about making mead sounds like your idea of a good time you might consider carving out a little time for an event next Saturday.

Local chef and mead-maker Jerry Morgan is teaming up with the guys down at Borderlands Brewing Co. for a demonstration on mead at 12:30 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 4. That, by the way, also happens to be the American Homebrewers Association's Mead Day.

Morgan is an interesting guy who has a lot of knowledge about crafting this ancient honey wine - more about that here - and the demonstration should be a good one. Sadly, the brewery isn't able to allow Morgan to dish out any mead samples due to liquor laws, but you will walk away with enough information and inspiration to go home and brew a batch of your own.

The brewery is located at 119 E. Toole Ave., and it opens at noon on Saturdays.

The scorpions got here first and the nonprofit Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute in Tucson wants to make sure they are here to stay, with their many invertebrate friends, so it hosts an annual summer conference here for bug scientists and educators. This year, the 20th annual Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference is at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, July 31 through August 5.

The conference is open to anyone, at a fee of $305 for the full event or $130 a day. Some field trips can be purchased individually. The conference draws about 100 attendees each year from universities and museums around the country and gives conference goers from zoos, schools and universities a chance to learn from each other.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County will show how to build an outdoor exhibit for insect biodiversity in the interest of “citizen science” to help educators engage the public. One session is on “utilizing insects to bring success to struggling students.” Who knew? An educator from the Millstone River School will show others how this works.

Emily Francis, director of the Institute, said the conference aims to share knowledge and encourage conservation of invertebrates.

Some events are tailored to families. Others are simply aimed at making learning fun. There will be a Family Bug Hunt and Picnic on Aug. 2. On the same day, a workshop called “Ask a Bug” is scheduled. The scientists and educators have a sense of humor along with a deep commitment to biodiversity and sustainability. Unlike some of us, they aren’t afraid of scorpions and tarantulas. One area of study by these scientists is “human attitudes toward anthropoids.”

A scientist who studies the caloric intake of the Giant Jumping Stick will talk about how those calories are used effectively by the invertebrate. The St. Louis Zoo will show how local bugs can be incorporated into public displays at zoos that mostly focus on exhibiting animals with spines.

“Death Eaters,” the American Burying Beetle, and its relative, the Margined Burying Beetle, are among the topics of arthrostudies papers to be presented on Aug. 4. If you want to learn how to farm mass quantities of tarantulas economically and maintenance free, there’s a session on that, set for the same day.

One of several field trips to be offered, on Aug. 3, will take visitors to Catalina State Park, to see the “Flora and Wee Fauna” in the park. There will be a poolside insect trivia contest at 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 2. Exhibits of bugs and on bug research will be set up throughout the conference at the hotel.

Presenters are set to come from California, Oregon, Missouri, Delaware and elsewhere around the country. In earlier years, before the economic crunch, the conference attracted international attendees.

Conference T-shirts decorated with a comic illustration of a giant beetle pulling a cage filled with jeans-clad scientists is on sale online at $17.

Registration is underway and you can register up to the start of the conference online. Go to http://sasionline.org/ to register and for more information about the conference on the website of the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute. Or feel free to call them at 883-3945.

The day I interviewed Republican Patrick Gatti for this week's cover story on the CD1 congressional race, who knew the interesting remark he shared with me would make news on the Arizona Republic's AZ/DC Blog.

The blog post kindly describes the Show Low retiree's campaign as low-key, although I mentioned he said he's only raised about $500, which is about as low as a key can get. But I digress. The focus of the post was Gatti's remark on his fellow Republican congressional candidate Jonathan Paton:

“He portrays himself as a warrior, but he was in the National Guard, which I consider to be of lesser quality than full Army,” Gatti said (although Paton is actually in the Army Reserve).

Gatti doesn't completely deny the quote, but that he "can't confirm that quote." However, Paton, the actual contender in the Republican primary, told the AZ/DC that he was quoted accurately in the same story and didn't understand why Gatti, who got Paton's service wrong to begin with (Army Reserve not National Guard), felt it was of a "lesser quality":

“I’m not in the National Guard, but we have a saying that we’re all green. We’re all the same,” he said. “My main reaction is regarding the reputation of the best army in the whole entire world. That army does not function without the Guard and the Reserve components. They have the same training and the same responsibilities in the field as the active duty component."

I wondered the same thing, especially when I shared the story with my mom, a former captain in the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps, who probably said a few expletives under her breath in reaction.

Well, maybe Gatti was just confused the day I interviewed him. Did AZ/DC get to the end of my story? After chatting to me about cutting more federal dollars to the tribes (you know, the rent we pay for the land and all those wonderful things we did — look ethnic studies is banned in Arizona, so I probably shouldn't treat this as Howard Zinn moment.), he talked about how he and Democrat Wenona Benally Baldenegro were the only two congressional candidates to go before the Hopi Tribal Council.

Benally Baldenegro is Navajo. In fact, her candidacy was recently endorsed by the Navajo Nation Council. Gatti said this about the candidate:

He describes Benally Baldenegro, a member of the Navajo nation, as "a Hopi Indian and educated outside the reservation and brought back in to do work for the reservation."

My mom, a fourth-generation Tucsonan, proud to have served her country (especially as a nurse. I'm telling you, don't mess with nurses), was even more upset that Gatti didn't have enough respect to note Benally Baldenegro's tribe correctly and had the chutzpah to remark backhandedly about her education.

Too bad AZ/DC didn't think it was important to ask Gatti about those comments. Maybe an ethnic studies class for Gatti is needed after all and an introduction to U.S. Army basic training, which my mom is ready to provide.

Check out the photo of police violating the same bicycle laws they write tickets for.

The Tucson Velo photo contest in in full swing. Check out the most recent entries.

Two bicycle counters were installed recently. Two days later, one was broken and had to be replaced. See where they are located.

After all, it appears that some birds are just as good at puzzles than the under-seven crowd. I blame Dora the Explorer. I'm not sure why that show is to blame, but I'm pretty sure it is:

Researchers pitted birds against boys and girls using tests inspired by the Aesop’s fable in which a thirsty crow is able to drink from a pitcher after using pebbles to raise the water level to within its reach.

In two of the three tests at Cambridge University, the birds — Eurasian jays — did just as well as the seven-year-old children...

The experiments built on earlier work in which jays quickly learned that adding stones to a cylinder half-filled with water would bring a tasty treat floating on the surface within reach of their beaks.

In a second task the jays — colourful members of the crow family and about the same size as jackdaws — realised it was better to use pebbles, which sink, than corks, which float.

When Cambridgeshire children, aged four to ten, were set similar tasks, they did as well as the jays on the first, up to the age of seven.

Slideshow

Tucson Botanical Garden

Click to View 12 slides

While living in Tucson for the past three years I would say I have not taken full advantage of what the city has to offer. I had heard about Tucson’s Botanical Garden from a friend and thought I would take a trip and explore it myself.

I would suggest going early in the morning and bringing a water bottle along the way because with summer temperatures it can get pretty hot.

As I make my way through the trail, I am surprised by the massive amounts of green I see. The garden has various aspects that are entertaining for the entire family, including the tropical green house, Children’s Discovery Garden, birdhouse garden with birdhouses made by local artists, sensory patios, zen garden and much more.

At the end of the trail I decided to head back into the gift shop where the Porter Hall Gallery is located. Local artist Valerie Galloway is featured in this months exhibit.

Some great events they have featured this summer you should check out:
Twilight Third Thursdays: every third Thursday during the summer they host an evening filled with art, music, food and drinks. The next third Thursday is August 16 from 5 to 8 p.m.. Public: $9 adults, $4 children, members $8, $3 children
Hot Fridays: enjoy the intensity of the hot summer at the botanical garden. July 27 and August 24 from 5 to 8 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, with members getting in for free.