Tonight at 5 p.m., Undocumented Youth in Action will be holding a press conference at the John A. Valenzuela Youth Center, at 1550 S. Sixth Ave.

UYiA is an organization dedicated to assisting and advocating for young immigrants that would be eligible to earn citizenship under the DREAM Act. Today marks the first day that DREAMers are able to apply for Deferred Action under guidelines set by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

From the press release:

Across the U.S., DREAMers will be presenting the first applications for submission under the new guidelines to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). They will hold press events to answer questions and advocate for a truly permanent solution. This is an important step, but these aspiring Americans and their families will only reach permanent resolution through passage of the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform legislation by Congress.

At this press event, DREAMers will share their stories of how meaningful this action by the Department of Homeland Security is for their dreams to reach their fullest potential as aspiring Americans.

For more information, contact Alexandra Samarron at 409-3664, or visit their Facebook page.

I can't say that the preview video below is work-safe; I can't say that I understand how they're going to squeeze their act onto the Proscenium stage of Club Congress; and I can't say that I've had that much interest in going to burlesque before tonight.

But The Body Show, from Super Happy Funtime Burlesque, looks like some damn dirty fun, with a quality sounding band backing the be-pastied ladies and a large, mostly-naked man.

Here's the description, lifted from the Hotel Congress site:

"The SHFB body show follows the story of burlesque dancer Marcella La Salsa who, during a black tie fist fuck party, gets sucked up into a burlesque dancers’ cavernous ass. Lost in an anus, she meets a wacky mad scientist, his sexy assistant, and a half eaten pickle. Together the team decide to go on an amazing adventure throughout the interior of the body, learning about all its crazy functions and spending a particular amount of focus on the ass and titties."

With a description like that, how could you NOT go?

The 21 and over show starts at 8 p.m., with tickets at $10.

Video is below the jump for those of you who can't watch mostly-naked people at work.

2008 political prop and current candidate for U.S. Congress (no, really) Joe the Plumber has lived up to snowbird stereotypes by coming in from the Midwest and yelling about things.

Mr. Plumber (real name: Sam Wurzelbacher) gained notoriety in 2008 for challenging then-candidate Barack Obama's views, and subsequently flipped that fame into a primary victory in the race for Ohio's 9th district Congressional seat. He was in Prescott over the weekend to bring a bit of star (?) power to state Sen. Lori Klein's campaign to move to District 1's state house seat, where he spoke his mind about immigration and border security policies:

For those not watching the video, Joe said: "For years I've said, 'Put a damn fence on that border going to Mexico and start shooting ...' that's how I feel. I'm not going to hide it just because I'm running for office. I want the borders protected, and I'm very adamant about that."

But he didn't stop there, reiterating his message at a rally the following day:

Of course, he took care to follow that up "It's not because I'm bloodthirsty. It's not because I want to kill illegal immigrants, it's because I want my border secure. It's all it comes down to."

I get it — make an extreme statement about border security and guns, get popular with the right crowd, get elected. Makes sense.

But considering what happened at a Safeway last January, a theater in Aurora last month, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin just over a week ago, and in College Station, Texas, just two days ago, it might be time to cool it on the gun rhetoric for a while, right?

For more, check out the stories at Prescott eNews here and here, where you can read a bit more about Lori Klein's disgust with her local "Chamber of Communists."

Election years are great, right?

Want to watch a bunch of high school football players try to eat way more than they should? If so, the Tucson Hunger Games event taking place this Sunday, Aug. 19, might be right up your alley.

From the press release announcing the event:

Shlomo & Vito’s New York Delicatessen and Pizza Kitchen will host “Tucson Hunger Games” in the Courtyard of Plaza Colonial on Sun. August 19 at 6 p.m. The Ultimate Man vs. Food Competition is part of their celebration of their Grand Re-Opening efforts.

Local high school football teams will compete for their chance to win $500. Players from each school will compete in 4 Quarters with four rounds of food.

Round 1: Matzoballs
Round 2: Hotdogs
Round 3: Shlomo & Vito’s NY Style Pizza
Round 4: Keylime Pie
Overtime: Shlomo & Vito’s Cheese Fries (if there is a tie breaker)

The High School Football Player who eats the most in the competition will win $500 for his school’s football program.

The event is open to the public and admission is free. Plaza Colonial is located at 2870 E. Skyline Drive.

Arizona Senate hopeful and first-time GOP candidate Tyler Mott says he probably should have taken a deep breath before telling Facebook what was on his mind last August.

At the time, he was thinking about hanging President Obama.

After the president’s decision last year to review, and in most cases stop, deportations of illegal immigrants without prior criminal histories, Mott took to his Facebook page to call for Obama’s head, as well as the head of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

His full post read: “Who the hell does Obama think that he is? His job is to enforce the law. He doesn’t get to arbitrarily decide not to deport people who have been ordered deported. If Obama wants the job of making the law, he needs to back to running for Congress. Or if he wants the job of interpreting the Constitution, then he needs to get appointed to the Supreme Court. Obama and Napolitano should both be hung for treason!”

When we called Mott to ask if he really believed the president and secretary of homeland security should be hung for treason, Mott said he had no idea what we were talking about. So we read the post back to him, as well as the comments from several of his Facebook friends who said that was “not cool.”

Mott said the president should be held accountable for breaking the law, which he says Obama did by focusing his administrations efforts on prosecuting high-priority immigration cases.

“If George Bush would have done the same thing, the left would have been furious,” he said. “That’s something that Congress needs to take up.”

But after he verified the post was, indeed, on his Facebook account, he softened his tune.

“Obviously, the hyperbole I was using wasn’t anything to be taken seriously,” he said. “I’m a pro-lifer. I believe in life. I don’t believe in killing people.”

He also took the comment down from his Facebook.

This week, Marvel tests the theory that any comic is made better by putting the main character in space. All I needed to hear: "Like Steven Seagal with robot legs." Also, fish porn and a Fritz Lang reference.

The giant green placard that signals a place will soon be serving alcohol is hanging on the corrugated metal fence surrounding a piece of property at 417 Herbert Avenue, right next to Ordinary Bike Shop. For those unfamiliar with the area, that's just a block west of Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street.

Closer inspection shows the word "microbrewery" scrawled across said sign and further research shows that this is one of the new microbreweries we already wrote about. A liquor license application has been filed for that address under the name Corbett Brewing Company. The guy who filled out that application is Scott James Cummings, who is either not getting the messages I've been leaving for him at O'Malley's, which he owns, or just ignoring me, both of which I'm fine with.

It looks like a cool little spot for a microbrewery. There appears to be some outdoor seating space and it's a neat old building.

(Thanks to Tucson Weekly reader Craig Gray for the tip!)

• The Contained Gardener
• Summer Potted Glory

We can make good use of afternoons with major cloud cover to give our plants some respite, add some fresh late summer flowers and to consider planting tomatoes for a fall harvest.

Watch for the forecast of high chances of monsoon activity for several days in a row. Hoping that our temperatures are below 100, plan to do some planting during this period.

Good plants to watch for are:
** Zinnias
** Osteospermums
** Pentas
** Angelonia
** Salvias
** Gallardia (Mexican Blanket)
** Coriopsis

In September, you can add petunias, snapdragons and some late season marigolds to this list!

Early girl tomatoes and other varieties that are 65 days or less to fruiting are your best bet.

Plant early in the morning, water deeply and if we do not receive the afternoon cloud cover, give the new plants a little shower of water to cool things off.

It would be a good idea to give your tomatoes some shade covering (draped over the tomato cages) on full sun days.

Now is the time to fill your pots with additional color that will carry you into November!

———————————————————————————————————————————————————-

• The Contained Gardener and Sonoran Gardens Join Forces

I am staying on with Sonoran Gardens through the transition and will make sure that our free potted garden classes continue with yours truly!!

Questions? Email Marylee!

If you would like to speak with someone directly, call 520.579.9411 or visit our combined website!

For some reason, I started my time here on The Range with a post about the Insane Clown Posse, so it seems to make as much sense as anything else to end my time here with an embedded video from one of the group's thoroughly terrible cover tracks from the bonus album Smothered, Covered and Chunked, out today. You probably shouldn't press play. It's really awful, but I try to keep some sort of narrative thread through my work.

Anyhow, it's been an exciting 673 days and 2446 posts for me here at the Weekly, but tomorrow I'll be somewhere else, and in a few weeks, someone else will be the proverbial captain of the ship. A sincere thanks to nearly all of you who left comments, shared our posts on Facebook or Twitter, who entered contests, or who mentioned that they enjoyed something I wrote.

In some ways, writing for a living online has robbed me of some of my ability to have human emotions about my work, but there have been some great moments for me here and I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of people who give me great hope about the city I live in. Then again, all of that is generally balanced by someone leaving a comment suggesting that I "shove a bat up [my] ass."

I won't miss waking up to some guy leaving fifty comments in all caps about how the city of Tucson killed his dog, Suki, the snarky remarks from the typo police, or people who feel the need to comment on posts about a concert that the band mentioned sucks, but tomorrow I'll probably see an amusing news story about robots or hear about something cool happening in town that I'll want to share and I won't really have a place to do so. It'll be weird, but I'm sure the internet could also use a break from my opinions.

Most of all, thanks to everyone I've worked with here, both the staff in the office and everyone who contributed to The Range. See you around town.

Late last week, Weekly World Central got a call from several Pueblo Magnet High School seniors regarding unexpected cancelled bus service they experienced the first two days of school. The students we talked to, as well as several parents and teachers, hope to be at tonight's Tucson Unified School District governing board meeting to describe what happened and demand school bus service be returned to their school during call to audience.

You can read more about what happened to the students in this week's paper online tomorrow afternoon and officially out Thursday, Aug. 16. We wrote about the December 2011 decision by TUSD to hire a private firm for $200,000 to turn around the district’s transportation department in the next year, rather than spend about $94,000 to hire a new transportation director after a failed candidate search. The firm was tasked to work on routing issues and address complaints about buses being late.

Enrique Garcia told us he was ready for the new school year to start, rushed out to greet the bus, but it never came. Daniel Barragan had the same experience. Teachers are reporting that students are getting to school late, and the students report the buses are crowded and some community members aren't able to get on the buses with so many student on board.

In our story we pointed out a letter TUSD Superintendent John Pedicone sent in an e-mail to all TUSD staff on Friday, Aug. 10 welcoming everyone back for the 2012-1013 school. Pedicone praised transportation, contrary to what we learned:

“While there are many things about which we should be proud, the transportation of our students this past seven days should be high on the list. Our Transportation administration, all of the support personnel, and our drivers worked very hard to make sure the experiences of last year and as long as most people can remember were not repeated. Let me tell you that they did it! I want to thank them for their hard work, dedication and willingness to develop and learn new systems in order to see positive results,” Pedicone wrote.

“... the biggest thing that bothered me is that they didn't inform the community of this decision. (The principal) told me he didn’t know about it until that Thursday,” Barragan said.

We asked Pedicone to answer several questions about the bus service issues brought up by the students who were provided Sun Tran bus passes as part of TUSD's transportation program. Due to space, we weren't able to print Pedicone's entire e-mail. We also followed up because several questions were not answered.

He offered this response to clarify the schools 2 1/2-mile policy discussed in the story:

I will have to ask Candy Egbert to respond to some of this but let me clarify the 2 1/2 mile issue. High School students who live outside of the 2 1/2 mile limit get transportation. So, any student who lives 2 1/2 miles from the school that is considered their neighborhood school or to a magnet that they qualify for and who live on a route where Sun Tran operates get passes. If a student lives 2 1/2 mile from the school and does not live on a bus route or is an exceptional ed student, they get yellow bus service.

Candy will explain the rest.

You can read Pedicone's first e-mail after the jump, and we will follow-up on where Pueblo's buses are being used, and what other schools were issued Sun Tran passes. Pedicone said 4,000 students were issued Sun Tran passes. We want to know the cost of those passes and where the money came from in the TUSD budget.