The connections to Tucson continue for Grand Canyon University's men's basketball program, which moves to Division I hoops next fall under the leadership of well-known Phoenix hoops celebrity Dan Majerle.

Majerle filled out his coaching staff Wednesday, adding former Canyon del Oro High School standout Chris Crevelone as an assistant.

Crevelone was most recently on the staff at Texas, where he was a graduate assistant and video coordinator. Prior to that he played collegiately at Adams State in Colorado. Crevelone, who according to Majerle will be used heavily in the recruiting world, likely will tap into contacts made from when he used to work Lute Olson's summer basketball camps at Arizona.

Majerle is taking over a program that announced two years ago it was planning to go to Division I, and at that time it appeared that transition was going to be done under former UA interim head coach Russ Pennell. Pennell and the school, though, reached a 'mutual' decision (read: they wanted a flashier name, and paid Russ to go away) to part ways after Pennell led the Antelopes into the Division II playoffs.

Broadway in Tucson is bringing Blue Man Group to the Tucson Music Hall in two weeks.

The group has become popular for its musical performances that involve comedy, audience interaction and sometimes toilet paper being thrown into the crowd. At least that's what Mario Divetta experienced three years ago when he saw them in Las Vegas.

"You're in Vegas already," Divetta said, "you got a drink in your hand and you're just watching this really interesting, unique, multimedia show ... I had a blast when I was watching it."

Divetta, marketing and sales manager for Broadway in Tucson, said they had to jump on the opportunity of bringing the group to Tucson again. Blue Man Group performed five shows about two years ago in Tucson.

The group will hold eight performances this time around, giving more Tucsonans the opportunity to watch the "worldwide phenomena," Divetta said. Tickets have been on sale since November and have been selling strong but there are still some tickets left, he added.

The performances involve unusual instruments such as pipes and oil barrels.

"They kind of bring out these oil barrel looking things and put something on the top and then when they start drumming it, it's almost like a water/light show," Divetta said. "You see the splash of these color pieces. It's really cool."

Because of these messy materials, Broadway in Tucson advises that people who attend wear "casual attire" such as sneakers and jeans to the show.

Blue Man Group shows are appropriate for all ages and the fact that the group doesn't talk at all throughout the show makes it so that anyone can understands what's going on.

"This is a show you have to experience live," Divetta said. "You can't go off of video or things that you've heard. You have to experience it live to really get the full effect of it."

The show opens April 23 and the last performance is on April 28. Tickets range from $29- $69 and can be purchased here.

In this week's print edition (hitting streets right now), I have a a look at the latest on the efforts to push expanded background checks on gun sales through the U.S. Senate as it returns to work this week. (I have a longer and somewhat dated piece on the challenges to enacting background checks here, if you're really feeling like digging into the topic.)

This morning, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced they had developed a proposal to require background checks on sales at gun shows and via the internet:

The New York Times reports:

Under the terms of the agreement, background checks for gun buyers would expand to gun shows and online sales — a huge portion of gun sales that are made without the background checks used by gun stores — and it would maintain record-keeping provisions that law enforcement officials find essential in tracking criminal gun use, but that gun rights groups find anathema.

The bill would also modify the current measure, which will receive a procedural vote on Thursday, in other key ways. For example, the background checks provision would extend to fewer gun buyers than many gun control groups — and some Democrats in the Senate — would like. Sales between family members, for instance, would be exempt.

Further, other provisions of the current background component of the gun safety bill were removed, including one requiring that each state validate another state’s concealed carry permits and another one limiting Internet sales to five or more guns per year.

Talking Points Memo reports that the NRA is unhappy with the proposal.

I have to admit there were some surprises in the second round of the Tucson Weekly Celebrity Showdown. Amanda Beard (64%) over Sean Miller (36%)? Chuck George over Lute Olson in a close one? But most of all, I was stunned to see that Janos Wilder took Mark Kelly in a blowout. You never know, I suppose.

The quarterfinals are live now. Cast your votes to determine who will advance to our final four. Will it be ex-pat singer Linda Ronstadt or swimmer/model/memoirist Amanda Beard? Morning show star Savannah Guthrie or superchef Janos Wilder? Hero Gabrielle Giffords or weather predictor Chuck George? Surgeon Richard Carmona or unicorn-maven Lisa Frank? This round won't last long, so vote now.

Locally-owned restaurant Tucson Tamale Company is in the throes of Tamale Throwdown 2013, their search for the newest, greatest gourmet tamale flavor as suggested their fans, friends and customers from the Tucson area.

Last year's winner was the Paella tamale, filled with spanish chorizo, roasted chicken, shrimp, peas, red peppers and rice, wrapped in saffron-flavored masa — and they're looking to Tucson for their next crowd-sourced follow-up.

As they say in their Facebook posting advertising the throwdown, "any ingredient, any meal, everything is on the table." Personally, nothing strikes me as perfect as their Sonora tamale (chicken with green chile salsa), but you guys have to have a greater food imagination than I do.

Head over to their Facebook page to share your idea in the comments — if your idea is chosen, you'll get three dozen tamales and your idea on the menu for the next year.

Making fun of the Arizona Daily Star's website isn't that difficult, honestly. It's kinda terrible in a number of different ways, from content to usability — and I'm not saying that as a competitor, but as someone who actually uses the Internet for things. It's just bad.

But c'mon, azstarnet.com. This is what you're running on your site right now?:

• azstarnet.com
• 'Tuned in,' they say. Right.

That, dear reader, is a bylined story highlighting a special being run by a national chain of sandwich shops that isn't even based in this town:

Subway has resurrected its popular early bird BOGO offer.

Throughout the month of April you can get a free 6-inch sandwich with the purchase of a 6-inch sandwich. But the offer is good only until 9 a.m. daily.

Subway has 39,182 restaurants in 102 countries and a big handful of them in the Tucson area including at 5480 E. Speedway, 2955 W. Valencia Road, 455 E. Wetmore Road, 1503 W. Saint Marys Road and 10325 N. LaCanada Drive in Oro Valley.

Apparently, it isn't even an ad. It's just...there. As a thing. We'll assume that they got a press release from Subway and had to write SOMETHING for the Caliente section — slow news day. I get it. We'll fill our pages with goofy content too sometimes (and hell, it's not even like we're [completely] against the idea of sponsored content, though if we did so we'd at least ensure we weren't whoring ourselves in the process — and we wouldn't pretend it wasn't an ad, either).

But they're running this as the top story in their food section, bumping a local story to site purgatory:

• azstarnet.com
• Really? Really?

See that note about Brewd Coffee Lounge? As mentioned in Noshing Around last week, Brewd closed up shop after a rough year downtown. The Star's story notes their forthcoming move to the east side, which might help them in the long run, as they won't have to compete with construction or two other high-quality coffee joints (Sparkroot and Exo Roast Co.) less than a mile away.

That is actually interesting — far more so than a rewritten press release about cheap-ass sandwiches, anyway.

Get it together, Daily Star — we all know that you're likely to move to a paywall, joining most of your other Lee Enterprises brethren, sooner rather than later. There's no way that you're going to convince people to buy into your website with content like that...or this baseball quiz, for that matter, which was ripped straight from the website of stltoday.com, complete with links to St. Louis Cardinals features at the end, no less.

At the Lone Star College's CyFair campus in Cypress, Texas this morning, fourteen people were injured in a stabbing incident, leaving two in critical condition.

According to ABC News, "a white male suspect described by police as 'approximately 21 years of age and currently enrolled at Lone Star College system' has been arrested, but authorities have not released his name."

"We do not know exactly what type of weapon was used other than to say that it is at this point an unknown instrument," said Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia to CNN. "We don't know whether a knife or some other type of instrument."

One freshman student, Maya Khalil, was in class when all of this was going on. She walked out of her classroom in the campus' health sciences building, to find injured students throughout.

"We got out of the classroom and everybody was out, like, right in front of my classroom, like bleeding on the neck and on the ears," said Khalil in a video.

At this time, the motive of the suspect is unknown and the campus is on lockdown. If you visit the Lone Star College's website, there is an alert about the situation:

ALERT: LSC-CyFair Locked Down

LSC-Cy Fair Campus remains on lockdown and is currently being evacuated by law enforcement. Traffic flow out of campus parking lots is being managed by LSCS campus police and Harris County Sherriff’s Office. LSC-CyFair campus will be closed for the remainder of the day/evening. LSC-Fairbanks Center is open.

The media staging area has been established at the south parking lot near the Learning Commons/Library building.

The incident occurred near and around the Health Science Center and remains an active crime scene with changing and evolving information. HCSO has one suspect is in custody and another suspect may possibly be at large.

There are 11 confirmed victims; 4 have been transported by life-flight and others by ambulance to area hospitals.

Updated 4/09/2013 at 12:59 am

Katie Bolger, the chief of staff for City Councilman Paul Cunningham, has asked Tucson Weekly to publish her apology to the community for her behavior following a run-in with police last week:

Open Letter to my fellow Tucsonans:

On Friday, March 22, I conducted myself in a manner that is deeply embarrassing. I am extremely regretful and offer my apologies to the men and women of the Tucson Police Department, who were doing their jobs serving the community.

I was walking home after a night out on Fourth Avenue. I crossed Speedway at Fifth Avenue and was stopped by a Tucson police officer. The officer informed me that another car had to perform an “evasive” maneuver to avoid hitting me.

Instead of acknowledging that I had dangerously crossed the road, I became angry with the officer. Three more patrol cars responded to the scene and I became verbally offensive.

Multiple times I was asked to sign the citation for jaywalking, but I stubbornly refused and instead spent the night in jail. On Sunday March 24, I called Tucson Police Chief Villasenor to offer my apologies for my rude, inexcusable, unprofessional conduct towards his officers.

I am a public official in that I serve as a staff member for an elected City Councilman. For this, I am held to a higher standard of public conduct—as I should be.

I write this letter not only as an apology to the officers who were witness and subject to my unbecoming conduct, but to the residents of the City of Tucson.

I was born and raised here in Tucson. I have never lived anywhere else. I am blessed in many ways. I have been given the opportunity to work for the City I love.

I have embarrassed myself, family, friends, and co-workers, and for that I am truly sorry.

I want to thank Councilman Cunningham for believing that I am worth a second chance serving in his office. My goal is to prove to him, and the Tucson community, it is a chance worth taking.

—Katie Bolger

Most weeks, La Cocina runs an event called Tuesdays for Tucson. It's a really solid deal for non-profits in this town: You bring the people, La Cocina provides the place, and your charity gets 10% of the net profits for the night.

On April 30, the Loft Cinema is the non-profit of the night and they're pulling out all the stops to raise some money for their renovations and improvements, bringing a lineup of music, comedy and other stuff that's impressive for a Tuesday night somewhere with no cover. Howe Gelb, Al Perry and Pork Torta on one night? What a deal, plus you can feel like you're doing something positive while eating nachos and drinking a cocktail, which is always nice. See you there.

Nice to know that Canada and Australia have teamed up to compile information that every human being already assumed to be true...women find men with larger penises more attractive than their less-endowed counterparts:

So Mautz and his team, working at the Australian National University, designed an experiment in hopes of settling the controversy. They created 49 unique, computer-generated, nude, life-sized male figures. Each figure varied in three traits: height, shoulder-hip ratio and flaccid penis size.

The researchers then displayed all the figures to 105 Australian women with an average age of 26. The women, who were not told which traits varied, were asked to rate the attractiveness of the figures as sexual partners on a scale of 1-7. The women were alone in the room and their responses were anonymous.

As past studies have shown, women prefer tall men with broad shoulders and narrow hips, like an Olympic swimmer. But when Mautz controlled for those variables, it turned out that penis size (overall length and girth) was about as important as stature.

“As you increase penis size, the amount of attractiveness scores gets bigger” in a linear fashion, he explained, until 7.6 centimeters, or 3 inches. After three inches, attractiveness still increased, but in smaller increments.

Not only were the ratings higher, but the women also spent more time gazing at the generously endowed figures, a sign they preferred looking at them as opposed to figures with smaller penises.

The good (?) news, I guess? If you're a man larger than three inches in length, you've made it over the general attractiveness ledge to where the ratio of size/likelihood-any-woman-will-ever-want-you levels out. That's something, right?