Male heroes get a lot of play in today's media, from comic books to movies to TV. Kore Press asks, what about the super women?

This Saturday, Kore Press invites Tucson to their Fall 2012 Grrls' Literary Activism Workshop, where they plan to screen "Her Powers. And Ours.," a short film that celebrates the strength of the everyday girls and women in our world; in conjunction, there will be a screening of "Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines."

From Kore Press:

Who's Your Wonderwoman?
What's your strength or superpower?
If you could create a supergirl or super woman,
what powers would she have?

Four teen grrls and their peers in Tucson have been discussing these and other questions as they create a short film on the subject of finding your power, personal challenges, and she-roes.

Onscreen, you'll see Grrl Workshoppers Phoebe Meixner (City High School), Emily Marigold Hall (University of Arizona), Samantha Bell, and Amelia Marsh (both University High School) use discussions, interviews, and memories to explore creative visions for new superheroines. Wonder women mentors Kimi Eisele, and Piper Weinberg led the workshops and helped the grrls create their short film about the strengths and superpowers within everyday girls and women.

Kore also encourages people to send in the names of their personal She-roes, so they can be honored on the heroine list at Kore's website.

Tickets to the screenings are $8 for general admission, and $6 for Loft Cinema members. For more on the event, check things out here.

Apparently 23-year-old Zhang Feng, of Zhengzhou, China, can generate enough force with his punches to blow out candles that have been placed three meters (or nearly 10 feet) away.

The video even features the Chinese journalists who were there to watch the feat giving their best shot at replicating his fists of fury, though they wound up unsuccessful.

From Oddity Central:

Feng says he has been practicing the art of air punching for the last eight years, after doing some online research. He found that the form of “Shaolin Sunshine Hand” was the easiest one among the 72 Matchless Skills of Shaolin, so he started practicing it. At first, he only managed to put out candles just 3 cm away, but as time passed and his skills improved, he was able to extinguish a flame up to 3 meters away. But during these 8 years of training he used up more candles and lighters than he can remember, and at one point his family got so worried about his obsession that they forbade him from practicing. He continued to do it in secret, and although his family didn’t support his efforts, they stopped opposing him after a while, as long as he didn’t injure himself or set the house on fire.

That's true familial support right there.

2012 isn't just about Mittens and Obama. It's the year we were inspired by the Russian punk group Pussy Riot. Two of the group's female members were recently sent far from their young children in Moscow to two notorious prisons in Siberia.

Coincidently, 2012 is also the year of the vagina. Yeah, remember that word that brings some Republican legislators to the knees (so to speak)? VAGINA!

So, let's give thanks to a recent post on Bust Magazine about 10 Awesome Feminist Halloween Costume Ideas. How about going as Pussy Riot, or a gaggle of vaginas?

The first step, of course, is to rip the head off.

At least, from what paleontologists from Montana's Museum of the Rockies gather, that's how Tyrannosaurus Rex did it.

From Nature:

As [Denver Fowler] and his colleagues examined the various types of bite mark on the skulls, they were intrigued by the extensive puncture and pull marks on the neck frills on some of the specimens. At first, this seemed to make no sense. “The frill would have been mostly bone and keratin,” says Fowler. “Not much to eat there.” The pulling action and the presence of deep parallel grooves led the team to realise that these marks were probably not indicative of actual eating, but repositioning of the prey. The scientists suggest that the frills were in the way of Tyrannosaurus as it was trying to get at the nutrient-rich neck muscles.

“It's gruesome, but the easiest way to do this was to pull the head off,” explains Fowler with a grin. The researchers found further evidence to support this idea when they examined the Triceratops occipital condyles — the ball-socket head—neck joint — and found tooth marks there too. Such marks could only have been made if the animal had been decapitated.

Awesome. For the rest of that article, check out Nature.com.

And now, people in rubber dinosaur suits fighting:

Odyssey Storytelling was voted in the latest Tucson Weekly's Best of Tucson as Best Way to be Entertained by Real Life Adventures in an Off-Broadway Setting. Anyone who has participated in a storytelling evening or been to a "performance," knows there's a lot of love for the organization that brings folks together to hear local folks tell stories — usually a theme for the evening brings it all together and brings the crowd to tears and mostly lots of laughter.

A good portion of that love is due to Odyssey's founder Penelope Starr, who retires the end of the year after 9 years leading this storytelling ship. A celebration is planned to bid Starr farewell and celebrate the organization that continues on its storytelling mission with Adam Hostetter, Sarah Smith, Roscoe Mutz and Shannon Snapp herding us cats, er, yeah story people.

A party is planned and all past storytellers are invited — everyone who has ever told a story on the Odyssey stage. The party is Saturday, Dec. 15, from 7 to 10 p.m. Want more info, send a message to Mr. Hostetter at [email protected].

Yesterday, U.S Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said democrats "distorted" his "pregnancies from rape are something God intended to happen" comments. Here's what The Huffington Post wrote about it. It's really easy for people like Mourdock to blame others for the words that come out of his mouth. He said democrats twisted his words to dimish him politically. But shortly after, the Democratic National Committeeposted videos of him saying those comments.

GOP candidates need to shut their mouths about rape already, especially when defending their anti-abortion views. It is simply offensive to hear this idiocy. Remember U.S. Congressman Todd Akin, and his enlightening revelation that we, women, can shut down our bodies to avoid pregnancies after being raped?

Every day it becomes more obvious to me that GOP candidates (including GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney) are clueless when it comes to women's issues and women's rights.

I generally don't dig horror movies, myself—something about watching people get hacked to bits in odd ways makes me a bit uncomfortable—but Dick Night sounds like the kind of movie that I might consider breaking my anti-horror-movie oath for...and not because its title sounds like both a very honestly-titled porn flick and the name of a gritty noir detective.

Here's a blurb about the film, taken from its website:

Rachel hasn’t left her house in two months since being left at the altar. But today she’s moving on — she’s getting out of the house and going in search of some rebound sex to get over her broken heart. How hard could it be to get laid on Dick Night? If she can just deal with these goddamn vampires…

Dick Night was filmed in the Old Pueblo, by born-and-raised Tucsonan Andy Viner, who graduated from University High before getting degrees at Duke and USC.

If the trailer here has you intrigued (or, like me, you're wondering just what the hell "Dick Night" is as a concept) you'll soon be able to find Dick Night via Video on Demand starting Oct. 30.

At least, that's what the New York Times's is saying in this story from Dwight Garner.

From the Times:

The PB&P has been a minority enthusiasm in America for generations, lingering just under the radar. The sandwiches appeared on lunch-counter menus during the Great Depression and in extension-service cookbooks in the 1930s and ’40s in recipes that generally called for a few spoonfuls of pickle relish. A lot of people’s grandmothers used to eat them.

These days, they’re a cult item. Kinsey Millhone, the fictional private investigator in Sue Grafton’s alphabet series of mysteries, is probably America’s best-known devotee.

Below that, there’s a consistent but low-level Internet buzz about the combination, just as there is about the other unlikely things people like to marry with peanut butter and place between bread slices: mayonnaise, olives, thick onion slices (this was Hemingway’s favorite sandwich), horseradish, bacon, Marmite (in England) and Vegemite (in Australia), to name but a few.

(Cue look of terrified disgust)

In my quest for the perfect peanut butter and pickle sandwich, I’ve made these things with expensive hipster pickles, homely farmers’ market ones and my wife’s artful homemade beauties. They’re all pretty good.

But my go-to ingredients, month in and month out, are Claussen pickles, the ones in the refrigerator section — they’re crunchy and have a bright flavor — and Smucker’s Natural peanut butter, which isn’t sweet. (I’m agnostic about crunchy versus smooth.) I use whatever good bread is in the house. If I’m feeling decadent, I’ll toast the bread first and spread some unsalted butter on each slice before adding the PB&P. That’s genius, and the prelude to a tasty nap.

...

“In the United States, we’re used to peanut butter with really sweet pairings,” [Lee Zalben, of New York City's Peanut Butter & Co.] said. “But in other cultures, combining savory with sour is more of a tradition. Look at Chinese, Indian and Thai food, for example, in curries and satays and moles. I’d put peanut butter and pickle roughly in that tradition.”

Maybe I'm a bit too squeamish, or a bit too not-pregnant, but the idea of peanut butter and pickles terrifies and disgusts me more than a sandwich that is nothing but mayonnaise and cheese. Is anyone out there a devotee of these monstrosities?

For the full article, check here.

No matter the results of the 2012 Presidential election, its debates will be notable for three phrases: Big Bird; binders full of women; and horses and bayonets.

If you've been on the Internet at all over the past month, you've seen the hallmarks of these new memes — the Tweets, the Tumblrs accounts and the mass of spectacular images.

Which is what Esquire's Stephen Marche comments on — and laments.

From Esquire.com:

The early debates will be remembered for their production of memes. Big bird. Binders full of women. And now battleships. The two candidates took opposite tacks in dealing with the new reality. Romney clearly was trying not to saying anything memorable. That's why he stopped himself at the end of "I love teachers." Ordinarily, he might have said something like "I love teachers. They're wonderful gals." Or something like that. He probably knew, right there, or in preparations before, that something like that would end up on Buzzfeed, wittily repackaged in fifty different ways. Obama ran straight into the brave new world. Clearly the line "The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back" was designed explicitly to generate a Twitter spike and it worked. "Horses and bayonets" alone drove a hundred and twenty-five thousand tweets per minute. #Horsesandbayonets started trending, and didn't stop. Almost instantly @horses_bayonets launched with a single line: "How do I monetize this?"

...

Twitter's first impact on presidential politics has been fun and has added a level of urgency to the spectacle, but it has also diminished at least somewhat the grace of the proceedings. That's too bad. Because if those debates showed anything, it's that we need grace more than ever. We need about as much grace as we can get.

I just wonder if regaining some semblance of grace is possible in this age of instant online vitriol.

For more, check out the post here.

After many months of hectic restaurant action around Tucson, things have slowed down a bit this month. But there are still quite a few interesting little food-related tidbits going on across the city.

Out west, it appears Taco Giro is opening a location in the old El Sabroso Oakwood Grill location at 610 N. Grande Ave. Taco Giro has another location out on East 22nd Avenue, where it’s been serving up killer Mexican eats for a long time.

Not far away, at Dragoon Brewing Co. at 1859 W. Grant Road, there are also great things happening. We stopped in the other day and found a bunch of 55 gallon wooden kegs full of beer in the corner of the tasting room, which is part of the microbrewery’s new beer-conditioning program. They also had a small keg behind the counter where they let the beer soak up the flavor of various hops for long periods of time. The guy working said the place is now producing specialty beers for 1702 as well.

Heading east, Tucson’s second Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers has opened at 7120 E. Broadway Blvd. Company officials say they plan to open more locations in Tucson before long as well.

A new place called Café Francais and Patisserie is opening in Plaza Palomino at 2970 N. Swan Road. We haven’t heard much about the place, but it has started hiring so the opening can’t be far off.

Also out east, a place called Elle Mae’s Café has opened in the former Jethro’s Café spot at 8585 E. Broadway Blvd.

Downtown is in sort of a holding period when it comes to new places to eat and drink, but that’s only because numerous restaurants are under construction. Saint House, Diablo Burger, Proper, a new restaurant at 50 E. Broadway Blvd. and the second location of Thunder Canyon Brewery are all in the works down there.

Still hungry? We’ve also heard that the Sawmill Run Restaurant up on Mount Lemmon is opening a location down in the city. The restaurant has had an excellent first few months in business and I haven’t heard a single bad thing about the food up there. We’re still digging for details on that one, but have verified that a second location — and perhaps more — are in the works.