• Jim Nintzel
• Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta brought the mambo to Festival en el Barrio

A few photos from yesterday's spectacular Festival en el Barrio.

Kavanagh is now backing off on the idea of criminal penalties for men who enter the ladies' room and women who enter the men's room, according to political reporter Dennis Welch:

Facing mounting public criticism, Rep. John Kavanagh said he no longer wants to make it a crime for transgendered people to use the bathroom of the opposite sex.

Now, the Republican says he pushing a law that protects businesses from criminal prosecution and lawsuits if they deny transgendered people from entering the restroom in which they identify with.

This marks a big change from last week when Kavanagh introduced a bill that would have made it a Class 1 misdemeanor for a transgendered person to enter a public restroom that's designated for the opposite sex.

"I have scrapped that idea; I was criticized because it involved criminalization and more laws and you know what, it's right," Kavanagh said Sunday on 3TV's weekly talk show

World Sports Grille, the sports-themed, game-packed, restaurant at the corner of the Foothills Mall closed yesterday.

Their main number has been disconnected and when I called the alternate sales number, I was informed they closed yesterday and that was all. Looking at the restaurant's website they seem to have recently opened a location in Seattle and plan to open one in New Hampshire. My question: What they are going to do with the pinball machines?

Tower Theatres at Arizona Pavilions in Marana announced today, via its website, that it will be closing this week, Thursday, March 28.

From mytowertheatres.com:

We must humbly express our sadness that this Thursday, March 28th, 2013, we are closing Tower Theatres.

We have celebrated five years, three months and 21 days as your center for Hollywood entertainment. Our little 12 screen building has served the community not just movies but private screenings, birthday parties, high school events, lock-ins, summer kids clubs (TREEHOUSE!), movie premieres, local independent films and as the host of Cornerstone Church for over 4 years.

...

It has been a pleasure to serve your community while doing one of the most enjoyable of American pastimes; watching movies. It is this shared experience that swallows our hearts and minds and sets us free into other worlds. It is why movies will always be with us.

Please continue supporting movies and experience them as directors everywhere envision them: in the theatre.

Kent Edwards,
Managing Partner

From Inside Tucson Business:

"We'd been facing bankruptcy over the past three years," Edwards said in a phone interview, referencing a foreclosure notice and sale the theater faced in 2010.

"We thought we had worked our way out of it, but the landlord [Marana Cinemas Associates] decided to go a different direction and asked us to move."

According to Edwards, Phoenix-based Harkins Theatres is in talks with the landlord, and should be in the space by May.

"We're disappointed that it didn't work out, but we want to thank everyone who supported us," Edwards said. "We're still going to be operating Grant Cinemas at Crossroads and Oracle View, and we hope that people will continue to support us there."

Multimedia interweb goliath Amazon has confirmed that it has greenlit the pilot for a TV adaptation of the 2009 zombie-filled action-horror-comedy Zombieland to be part of its streaming video service in what is probably a terrible, terrible idea.

From cnet.com:

"Zombieland" is the 13th and latest original series to bite off a pilot on Amazon's Prime video service. Six other comedy pilots and six children's pilots will also air on Prime Instant Video and Lovefilm UK exclusively for paying subscribers. Viewers will be able to watch and review each pilot, helping decide which of them will score a full season's worth of episodes.

Amazon told CNET that the pilots are "coming soon" but it has yet to announce an official date. The company didn't reveal how many spots will be available in the lineup. But obviously not all of the pilots will make the cut to a full series.

"'Zombieland' is a fan favorite, and we can't wait to see where this story line goes in a serialized format," Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, said in a statement. "We've been announcing a lot of exciting exclusive content for Prime Instant Video, like "Downton Abbey," "Under the Dome," and "Justified," and we think adding original shows to that lineup is going to make Prime even more enticing for customers."

Of course, one might have to consider that the zombie craze appears to be crashing down after having reached its zenith a few years ago, when seemingly everything that could have the undead slapped into it did have the undead slapped into it.

There's also the little matter of whether or not you attempt to entice Zombieland's stars (Mark Zuckerberg Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin) back — though considering the movie careers of all four, that might be a tough sell.

But really, the big concern should probably whether or not you can get Bill Fucking Murray to reappear from time to time, considering the best moments in that film involved either him, Twinkies, or Woody Harrelson acting like a lunatic.

Yeah. I don't have high hopes for this one.

The set-up is underway for today's Festival en el Barrio, which starts at 1 p.m. in downtown's El Presidio Neighborhood. The bands include Calexico, the Heartless Bastards, the Rebirth Brass Band of New Orleans, Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta and a whole bunch more.

The weather is beautiful, the music will be great, food trucks will be serving tasty food and you even get free admission to the Tucson Museum of Art. Plus, you're helping raise money for radio station KXCI.

Seriously, is there some reason you wouldn't do this? Get on down there this afternoon. More details here.

And possibly the best celebration GIF I've ever seen.

From Saturday's 74-51 Arizona Wildcats victory over Harvard:

• Bleacher Report
• I wish to buy this man a beverage.

Really, the only way to respond to that GIF is with yet another GIF:

Nice moves, friend. See you in the Sweet Sixteen.

(h/t: Bleacher Report)

This is because, undoubtedly, several thousand Arizona basketball fans are already drawing up plans to drive or fly to Los Angeles for the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament now that the Wildcats have locked up a spot in the West Regional semifinals at the Staples Center.

Arizona (27-7) had no problems whatsoever with Harvard on Saturday, whooping those soon-to-be CEOs 74-51 in the third round in Salt Lake City. The victory puts the sixth-seeded Wildcats in line for a matchup against either Iowa State or Ohio State, who play Sunday.

Notable from today's convincing victory: Mark Lyons, who had 27 points, became the first player in NCAA history to reach the Sweet 16 in back-to-back seasons, but with different schools. He made it in 2012 with Xavier before transferring thanks to the NCAA's generous graduate student transfer rule.

Something else to prepare for: droves of T-shirt stands on every corner in Tucson. Get your knockoff gear now!

This just in:

There's a report of a man with a rifle in the Administration Bldg. UAPD is on the scene. Please stay away from the area.
— Univ. of Arizona (@UofA) March 23, 2013

Update: Just spoke with UAPD. No further information at this time, and there's been no confirmation that there was a shooting — they're looking into the report.

We'll keep things updated as we hear about them.

Update: Scanner reports say that there is "no indication that UMC is in any danger."

Interesting development. UA campus is on lockdown cause there's a man w/ a rifle on campus. We just got locked in the Rec Room till its over
— Jason Harris (@jrharris22) March 23, 2013

Update, 5:46 p.m.: Scanner reports saying that there's a male subject on the third floor of the Admin building, on the north side.

Update, 5:54 p.m.: From UAalert campus alert system: "Leave Admin bldg NOW thru 2nd fl lobby out the north lobby doors UAPD in bldg"

Update, 5:56 p.m.: From UAalert: "Evacuate Modern Languages Bldg to the east exits. Leave now thru the east doors"

Update: 5:59 p.m.: TPD scanner chatter: UA evacuees "haven't seen or heard anything out of the ordinary."

Update 6:07 p.m.: From UAalert: "UAPD & TPD are searching the Admin Bldg. remain clear of the area around Admin Bldg."

Update 7:20 p.m.: From UAalert: "Investigation continues at Admin Bldg. Avoid areas around Admin Bldg, 2nd St and Mountain due to police activity." Floor-by-floor sweeps have turned up nothing so far.

Update 7:29 p.m.: From UAalert: "The campus is open EXCEPT for the administration bldg during this on-going investigation." Sweeps are continuing.

Update 8:41 p.m.: Via @DailyWildcat: Police appear to be leaving campus. We're calling it a night here. If any more information comes in, we'll keep you updated.

Have you ever turned on an episode of a TV series that you’ve been watching for a while and then wondered (often aloud), “Why the hell am I still watching this?”

NOTE: This doesn’t really apply to young people, who apparently have found a new way to watch TV. The girls on my basketball team wait until an entire season of a program is over and then they watch all of the episodes in one junk food-fueled weekend. That’s actually a good way to get acquainted with a new series that you had skipped (The Walking Dead or Episodes), but who wants to wait an entire season to watch something they already like?

Anyway, I turned on House of Lies the other night and came to the realization that it will be for the last time. About halfway through the episode, I thought of the classic line from Jack Nicholson’s last B-movie, Hells Angels on Wheels. Some knucklehead was holding a joint in his hand and uttered, “this shit is shit.”

And so it is with House of Lies. I watched the first season because I love Don Cheadle. He portrays an industrial-strength jackass, a tightrope-walking business consultant named Marty Kaan (which, wink wink, is a homonym for “con” as in “con man”). He’s divorced from (but still having sex with) his viper of an ex-wife, who is also a business rival. The two have a son, Roscoe, who is either gay or transgender or probably just un-parented.

Marty has a crack team that includes two guys who are over-smart and under-mature, and Kristen Bell, who is blonde. The first season was okay, as they did this cool thing where Marty would look into the camera and explain how he was going to separate some stupid corporate types from a lot of their money. There was also some sex, usually with pretty good looking (naked) women, but that’s not enough to carry a show.

In the first couple seasons, the underlying tone with Cheadle and Bell was "will they or won’t they?” Then after a severely drunken night out at the end of Season Two, it’s now “did they or didn’t they?” Really, I don’t give a crap. They both are good looking and have way more money than a human being should and all they do is whine and moan.

Now, Marty has sold his soul to a racist would-be politician as a means to start his own company, Bell’s character is sleeping with a dildo manufacturer, and the other two guys are so damn boring, I couldn’t tell you what they’re doing.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me happened when Marty’s ex, who apparently is good looking, but is way too skinny for my taste, got upset when Roscoe decided to move back in with his dad. In the span of one-and-a-half episodes, she tried lesbianism with her maid, had an orgy in the pool, had sex with Marty’s ne’er-do-well brother on Marty’s kitchen counter, and went back to snorting copious amounts of cocaine.

When it ends (and I’m betting that it will end pretty soon), let me know what happened. I don’t think I’ll care.

The Girls Finale:

There have been two episodes since I spoke to you last. Each was worse than the other. In the penultimate episode of the season, main character Hannah’s OCD gets so bad that she sticks a Q-Tip so far into her ear that she perforates her eardrum. Then she goes to Urgent Care where a doctor from India ridicules her. There were also two sex scenes, one boring and the other quite repulsive. In the latter, a guy makes a woman crawl on all fours, then roughly enters her from behind. He humps a couple times and then ejaculates on a part of her body that she had specifically asked him not to ejaculate upon. It was very ugly—borderline rape, really—and in keeping with the show’s tradition of being not funny at all.

In the season finale, Hannah’s OCD is keeping her from writing that e-book for which she has already spent the advance. She complains on the phone to her ex-boyfriend, the Ejaculator, who runs across town and kicks her door down because her various neuroses won’t allow her to get out of bed.

Aren’t you glad you don’t watch this nonsense?