Thursday, January 2, 2014

Posted By on Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 5:30 PM

Some of us in the Moldy Pueblo sought menudo in the morning, tried to find a coffee shop that decided to open for the off-from-work masses, and some who stayed home. Others shuffled around the house in their pajamas and stood over the stove to make the post-holiday tamale season scrabbled eggs with those old tamales. In this sentence old means, by now, a week or so old. Still edible, but even better fried up with eggs.

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Posted By on Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 4:30 PM

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  • Image courtesy of Tom Collins.

191 Toole, formerly Skrappy's, is hosting its first concert next Saturday, Jan. 11 at 4 p.m. There are 11 bands scheduled to play at the Second Saturday all ages show. San Francisco band Cool Ghouls will join The Resonars, Lenguas Largas, Dream Sick, Discos, Best Dog Award, Otherly Love, Hermanitos, Logan Greene Electric, Hip Don't Dance and Riverman for an all night music fest.

There will be food carts, art vendors and giveaways.

The show is free, but consider leaving a few bucks to help out with the remodeling.

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Posted By on Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 3:30 PM

The top-ranked Arizona men's basketball team begins Pac-12 Conference play tonight when it hosts Washington State at 8 p.m. on the Pac-12 Network, a.k.a. the channel not good enough for DirecTV.

While the first chance to watch the 13-0 Wildcats in action in nearly two weeks is a good reason to tune in, the team isn't likely to be the main draw.

What is, you ask? Why, none other than the McKale Center's fancy schmancy new four-sided overhead video board, which the school has been installing above the court since Arizona's last game on Dec. 23.


Why yes, it does look big enough to crush the entire Wildcats and Cougars rosters during pre-game warmups.

The new, mammoth contraption is part of a multi-phase overhaul of McKale, which all told will cost $80 million and will include new seats, better concessions and bathrooms and lots of other bells and whistles.

Posted By on Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 12:00 PM

Bobby and Cynthia review the first issue of Marvel Now! Avengers Rogue Planet in this weeks Talking Comics. title=
  • Photo courtesy of Cynthia Gerriets.
  • Bobby and Cynthia review the first issue of "Marvel Now! Avengers: Rogue Planet" in this week's episode of Talking Comics.

Your New Years resolution should involve reading more comic books, but there are so many to choose from. That's why should keep up with Heroes and Villains' Bobby Acosta and Cynthia Gerriets weekly show Talking Comics. This week they suggest latest issue of MARVEL NOW! Avengers: ROGUE PLANET. The issue was written by Jonathan Hickman and art by Esad Ribic.

"ROGUE PLANET" Part 1 of 5 Captain America and Iron Man plan for the next version of the Avengers.A runaway planet is on a collision course with Earth.A visitor from the future helps save the day.AVENGERS #24.NOW = AVENGERS #1 IN ALL-NEW MARVEL NOW!

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  • Image courtesy of Marvel.com

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Posted By on Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 11:00 AM

Punk rock will never die, but it will relocate.

Toxic Ranch Records closed out their Sixth Street location on New Year's Eve with style, but it was just the beginning of a new chapter for Bill Sassenberger and company. According to James Hudson's Facebook post, the record store will reopening on Jan. 15 in a new location on East Broadway and South Olson Avenue.

It's a New Year's Eve miracle! Toxic Ranch Records just announced that they've found a new location over on Broadway and Plumer— look for the grand opening on January 15th!

The announcement was made at the last in-store concert on New Year's Eve.

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Posted By on Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 10:10 AM

It’s a brand new year and there’s a plethora of great film screening in town this week. Let’s get down to the nitty.

The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd, is kicking off a fantastic new series this month. Hitchcock Blondes showcases the films from the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. Not just any of his films, but those starring ladies of the fair-haired persuasion. Let’s just say Hitch may have had a fetish. May have. The series starts with the 1945 film Spellbound, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, on Thursday, Jan. 2 at 7 p.m. Be prepared to spiral down the psychological staircase into the shadowy abyss of a mental asylum in this top-notch thriller. The series continues with Rebecca on Saturday, Jan. 4 at 7 p.m. This 1940 shocker was Hitchcock’s first American film and stars Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Both of these films are general admission.

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Posted By on Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 9:00 AM

It’s time to feed your inner nerd.

It’s the new year, so it’s a good time to talk about time, and when eggheads start talking about time, they can get really worked up. St. Augustine asked: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not." The Ancient Greek Sophists denied that time is real, saying that it is merely a concept or a measurement. And don’t even get me started on Einstein’s space-time continuum.

So I’m going to bring time down to earth and just talk about the months of the year, which is confusing all by itself, starting with the word month. It’s a Germanic word derived from moon, probably because some early ways of tracking time were based on the lunar cycle. That, by the way, is 29.5 days from new moon to new moon. That cycle doesn’t track with an even number of days. Nor does it track with seasons, which are important for hunters, gatherers, farmers, and snowbirds. That’s why we now base calendars on the sun. That’s problematic too, since we circle the sun every 365.25 days, but it’s more easily corrected with a leap year. Anyway, our solar calendar is divided into months, which comes from the moon cycle. Got that?

Months are confusing, too, when you look at September, October, November and December. These months are from the Latin numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10. But they are months 9 through 12 on our calendar. Back in the days of the old Roman (pre-Julian) calendar, when there were only 10 months, September through December were in fact months 7 through 10. But the Roman calendar had gotten seriously out of whack with solar year—the first month, January, fell in autumn—so Julius Caesar decreed a new calendar. When he did, he inserted two more months, which pushed September through December to months 9 through 12.

Let’s go to the month that begins the year. January is named after the Janus, the Roman god of transitions. He’s usually depicted as two-faced, looking both backward and forward. That’s why the first month of the year bears his name: out with the old, in with the new. February is named after a Roman purification ritual and festival. Februus, the god of the dead, was actually invented later based on this festival. March, of course, comes from Mars, the Roman god of war. In the Roman climate, March is springtime, and that meant it was time to call up the legions and conquer somebody.

April is a tricky one. The month of April was sacred to the Roman goddess Venus, who is modeled after Greek goddess Aphrodite. So it’s possible that April is a kind of riff on Aphrodite. Or it might come from a Latin word for opening, because it’s the time of year when trees and flowers bloom. No one’s quite sure. The Anglo-Saxons called the same time of year “oster monath”, possibly derived from the goddess of dawn, which is where we get the word Easter. That lusty month of May is aptly named after Maia, a Greek fertility goddess. The Romans held the celebration for their own fertility goddess, Bona Dea, in the month of May.

Juno was Jupiter’s wife, and worshipped as the goddess of marriage and the household. Back then it was considered good luck to be married in June, and we still talk about lucky June brides today. July used to be Quintilus, the fifth month. But the Roman Emperor Augustus renamed it in honor of Julius Caesar, who was born in that month. Augustus didn’t have what you would call a small ego, so he thought he deserved a month named after himself, especially after conquering Marc Antony, Cleopatra and Egypt. So he renamed (or had the Senate rename) the month Sextus to August. Oddly, though, he didn’t pick his birth month to bear his name. Instead he picked the birth month of Cleopatra, Egypt’s last ruler. (This was a considerable improvement on the Anglo-Saxon name for the month, which was Weodmonad—weed month). Other Roman emperors, including Nero, tried instituting months bearing their names, but were thankfully unsuccessful.

Well, I’m out of time, whatever that is. See you next week (hint).

Word Odyssey is a weekly column on words, their origins and the stories that go with them. It appears each Thursday on The Range.

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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Posted By on Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 11:00 AM



There will be little to no blogging today unless something really awesome or super tragic happens. All your favorite Weekly writers will be back in the office tomorrow. Everyone at The Range would like to wish you a prosperous New Year.