Great news for all of you folks out there who has missed seeing me host the Friday night Political Roundtable: The AZ Illustrated makeover is nearly complete and the long-running newsmagazine will be returning to the air next week.

The new AZ Illustrated will feature new hosts each night of the week (except for Friday, where you'll still see me). There's a new focus each evening, including metro news on Monday, science and tech on Tuesday, nature and environment on Wednesday, arts and entertainment on Thursday and politics on Friday.

I'm thrilled to be getting back into the studio and excited about the new lineup that the AZPM team has put together. The full press release, with details about the new hosts and focus, is below the cut.

Which means that we all need to go out and get blazed as f—k on some catnip, obviously.

Tucsonan Jason Willis, maker of the retro-educational short film, had this to say on the film's Facebook page:

Whoa! Totally amazing!

The Sundance Film Festival has just announced (via the live streaming awards ceremony) that Catnip: Egress to Oblivion? has won the Short Film Audience Award for 2013! I'm completely dumbstruck and amazed!

Even more awesome: I won this based on the traffic and hits sent to YouTube, so honestly it's totally because of all of you guys — the links that you shared completely made this happen. Fucking madness!

Seriously, great work, folks.

There are few more dangerous ways to get to the United States than to travel, by foot, along the Sonoran Desert. Of the many who begin the trek, there are those who don't finish it — and, as UA anthropology doctoral candidate Robin Reineke writes in an article for the BBC, "one day in the desert heat is enough to make a body unrecognisable, so the possessions that are found with the remains can be incredibly important to the family."

Reineke's article tells her story as an anthropologist who helps identify those who have died during their journey through the desert through the use of the objects they had on their person at the time of their death.

From BBC.co.uk:

There's often an interesting combination of objects. Mostly it is the normal stuff that anyone would take with them on a trip - toothpaste, socks, snacks, water.

But then there are these very personal items - photographs of loved ones, handwritten notes from family members, kids' drawings.

The letters are from the children or wives of those we've found dead, wishing them luck and telling them that they're loved, that they should be very careful on the journey, that the family's prayers are with them, that the family's hopes are with them.

And the photos have been touched and pulled out over and over again, then folded up and put back carefully.

Some of the items have unspoken stories.

We mentioned in The Skinny a few days ago that an immigration-reform package remained at the top the legislative agenda in Washington.

Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake are part of a bipartisan group of senators who are unveiling an immigration package today.

Flake spokeswoman Genevieve Rozansky tells The Range via email: "Sen. Flake believes that now is the time to move forward with immigration reform that includes increased border security, a workable program to address future labor needs, and a plan to deal with those already in the country illegally without granting them amnesty."

Slate has a roundup of details here. Matthew Yglesias' summary:

The framework features extra money for border enforcement and the establishment of a border commission composed of governors, attorneys general, and the like from border-area states. It will provide for automatic green cards to "immigrants who have received a PhD or Master's degree in science, technology, engineering, or math from an American university." It will also create what I take to be an enlarged agricultural guest-worker program, only with some mechanism for veteran guest workers to earn green cards. It will provide a mechanism for unauthorized migrants to turn themselves in, pay a fine and back taxes, and receive provisional legal status.

Yglesias notes that details are yet to come:

This is a "framework" and not legislation, so there are lots of loose elements and further questions one might ask. But all in all it seems like a humane and sensible approach that will, among other things, do more to improve the fiscal position of the United States than all the discretionary spending caps in the world.

For Miriam Ruth Black, her writing career came after her retirement, as a way to express an issue she felt was not focused on enough in novels these days.

Most popular novels highlight the lives of the young and glamorous, showing off their youth and the lifestyles that go along with that. Black, however, decided to write a book from a different angle.

Black’s novel, titled “Turtle Season,” is about a middle-aged woman, Anna Simon, who loses her husband of 30 years and learns of many betrayals on his end after his death.

While most women might use this as an excuse to let their lives fall apart, Simon uses this tragedy and her lost ties as her role as a mother, wife, and educator to pursue other interests and still maintain meaning in her life.

All of us who have lived here for a while have, at one time or another, gloated to our friends and family in some less-weather-friendly place about how perfect the climate here is most of the time.

Emphasis on the word most of the time. Well, today is one of those days not to gloat about, thanks to this strange wet stuff falling out of the sky.

Nevertheless, just because there might be a little bit of moisture — I believe the overpaid weather people on local TV call it 'rain' — coming down, that does not mean today's Canada-Denmark international soccer friendly isn't still going to be held at Kino Stadium.

Because, believe it or not, in other parts of the world, this type of weather is considered the rule, not the exception, and the sports must go on. Just ask the fans of the Portland and Seattle MLS teams when they come down here over the next few weeks.

Knowing how weather fickle the locals are, the good folks at FC Tucson have put together a little pick-me-up post to keep people excited about the match today. Please enjoy ... and then get over the fact it's not 75 and sunny and go watch some soccer!

This legislative session, LD 8 Representative Michelle Ugenti of Scottsdale has introduced H.B. 2004, which would introduce laws that would make it a Class 5 Felony for people to make online profiles impersonating other people—though the bill's text, as it stands, doesn't explicitly make it clear whether or not parody accounts are in the clear.

From the text of the bill:

A. A PERSON COMMITS ONLINE IMPERSONATION IF THE PERSON, WITHOUT OBTAINING THE OTHER PERSON'S CONSENT AND WITH THE INTENT TO HARM, DEFRAUD, INTIMIDATE OR THREATEN ANY PERSON, USES THE NAME OR PERSONA OF ANOTHER PERSON TO DO EITHER OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. CREATE A WEB PAGE ON A COMMERCIAL SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE OR OTHER INTERNET WEBSITE.
2. POST OR SEND ONE OR MORE MESSAGES ON OR THROUGH A COMMERCIAL SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE OR OTHER INTERNET WEBSITE, OTHER THAN ON OR THROUGH AN ELECTRONIC MAIL PROGRAM OR MESSAGE BOARD PROGRAM.

Arizona isn't the first to introduce laws such as this one — 8 other states are either considering or have already enacted one — but it's interesting to note that this one was introduced by a legislator who has a parody account mocking them.

Okay folks, we've got four passes, good for two tickets apiece, to any performance of Arizona Theatre Company's Freud's Last Session which is running now through through Feb. 9 at the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.

If you're interested in obtaining one of those passes, head to our "Contests" link at the top of the page, or click here.

We'll be drawing four names out of our digital hat on Jan. 30, and we'll be notifying winners by the emails they provide.

For more info on the play, check out Arizona Theatre Company's information page.

Not sold on entering? We've got a selection of clips from a 2010 performance at New York City's Marjorie S. Deane Little Theatre below the jump.

Local author Frank Babb used his experiences serving his country to create a fiction novel titled, “Hot Times in Panamá.”

The book follows the main character, Frank Blake, who is drafted and posted in the counterintelligence program in Panamá, because he had taken a year of high school Spanish.

As Babb states, the book is also “about personal relations of people.”

The novel also follows Blake’s love for a woman named Julia that he met at a party. After that, she disappeared and he never hears from her again until he receives a letter from her 45 years later.

Although the book does draw ties of Babb’s personal experiences in the war, he stresses that it is fiction.

“I emphasize the book in fiction, but like all fiction, things that happen sometimes get retold, refashioned, restated, and so on, for use of fiction,” said Babb.

Okay, okay, I get it. A week after I ripped the gruesome HBO series Girls, it wins the Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series. But, please note, these are the Golden Globes, not the Oscars or Emmys. The Golden Globes are a bit more…interesting. Remember, former Golden Globe top acting awards have gone to such luminaries as Linda Blair, Sasha Baron Cohen, and (gulp!) Pia Zadora. I understand that some people are enthralled with the different-ness of Girls, but different doesn’t always mean better, even in television. Seinfeld was different, but so was My Mother, The Car.

I urge you to watch the show for yourself, just to see how gratingly annoying it is. But, if you don’t have HBO or the time to watch the show, I’ll provide weekly updates of it along with the other TV topic(s) of the week, just to keep you updated.

This past week, responding to public pressure that the show was too white, writer/producer/director/idea person Lena Dunham found another guy to get naked with on screen. And whaddya know, he’s black. Donald Glover, from the show Community and the guy whose alter ego is rapper Childish Gambino, falls for our leading lady and chases her around a bookstore, complaining that he is having trouble “running with a boner.” Somewhere, Oscar Wilde is weeping at not having been alive in the 21st century, wherein he would have had the opportunity to make fail-safe erection jokes.