Free Comic Book Day is coming. Comic book retailers all around the world hand out free funny books. The holiday was initially started in 2002 to get more people reading comics and help local retailers. Heroes and Villains created this very strange video for FCBD.

There will be cosplay contests, coloring for kids, photo booths and free comics. Sly Dogs Food Truck will be in the parking lot.

Go here for more information.

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite actress was caught on film belittling a young girl with cancer for asking for her autograph, or as her publicist puts it, "No comment," everyday heroes were at work.

• Ghader Ghalamerev

Our story begins in Östersund, Sweden. Ghader Ghalamere, a Kurdish Iranian married to a Swedish resident, was facing deportation to Iran due to bureaucratic red tape. Even though he was recognized by the UN as a refugee and was on a legal path to Swedish citizenship through marriage, Ghader had to leave Sweden to finish paperwork due to initially arriving without documentation. While the Persian people are vibrant and welcoming, the Kurds have a less than warm relationship with Tehran. More on that in a minute. When the flight was about to leave the runway, the passengers found a brilliantly simple way to ground the airplane. The flight never launched, and Ghader was saved.

Since the Kurds have never attacked us or been on the receiving end of abuses at the hands of the U.S., many people on both sides of the American political spectrum tend to ignore them. The plight of the Kurdish people is an impossible complicated subject that one could get a PhD in and still barely understand, so here's a perfect explanation of Kurdish relationships with Iran, Iraq, and Turkey: After the Ottoman Empire was on the losing end of WWI, it was renamed Turkey, just to rub their noses in it. Its territory was then arbitrarily split into new countries without regard to culture, ethnicity, or religion, creating fun and exciting new conflicts! The Kurds got split up primarily into southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwest Iran, despite not being ethnically Turkish, Arab, or Persian. They've at times been forbidden from speaking their home language in Turkey, attacked with chemical weapons in Iraq, and have faced ongoing persecution in Iran. Ghader was allegedly a member of a Kurdish separatist movement in Iran. Needless to say, Ghader was not looking forward to returning to the area.

When his deportation flight was about to take off, the other passengers took action the only way they knew how: they listened to Disney Channel protest music and threw overpriced bumper stickers on their cars, raising awareness so that someone else could take care of the problem. Just kidding, they aren't Californians. When the flight was about to take off, the passengers simple refused to buckle their seat belts. That's all. Because the passengers weren't buckled up, the plane couldn't launch and his deportation was delayed. After the delay, more protests got him a new hearing and now he has been released from detention.

In summary, the passengers were true heroes: They refused to buckle up. That's it. It was simple, yet effective. At this point I am just throwing in extra phrases because I feel like the summary should be longer. No elaborate scheme here. No dangeresque escapes. Thanks to their efforts, Ghader was not deported to Iran, potentially saving him from persecution and separation from his family or something.

Read the original story here

Until next week, may all your dreams come true.

• Photo courtesy of CoLab Workspace.

Associated Blog Editor Scott Stanley rounded up four of the local reporters to talk about the ever changing local media in the Old Pueblo at Colab in the downtown Pioneer Building on Wednesday, April 25. The panel consisted of Arizona Daily Star's columnist Tim Steller, Tucson Sentinel mastermind Dylan Smith, our very own Mari Herreras and myself. Surprisingly, the room was packed! There were Weekly and Star reporters in the crowd. Tucson Velo's Michael McKisson asked some hard hitting questions. I had a blast, and it was an honor to share my limited knowledge.

• Photo courtesy of CoLab Workspace.

Here's the full audio from the exciting journalism talk and top notch hecklers:

Tim Steller has a column in today's Star putting a "Moderatometer" to LD-9 Republican Rep. Ethan Orr. When Steller covered the Moderate/Not-A-Moderate debate before, he leaned toward thinking Orr was more moderate than not. This time, though, Steller isn't taking sides. He's letting Orr, his legislative record and Democratic candidate Randy Friese duke it out for themselves.

For me, the most interesting line in the whole column is this observation by Steller:

Speaking of one of his many votes, Orr seemed a bit tired of the “moderate” discussion.

Hmm. When does a politician grow tired of having himself discussed in print? Only when the evidence is turning against him. And it looks like Orr is wondering whether the discussion of his moderate cred is beginning to take a nasty turn.

Steller points out three pro-gun votes Orr made this session. The bills were apparently too out-there for Gov. Brewer, who vetoed all three of them. By going to the right of Brewer on guns, Orr certainly earned his 92% rating from the NRA, but he didn't do much to bolster his claim to being a moderate.

And on women's health issues, Orr has a solid right wing voting record.

On what is perhaps even a hotter-button issue [than guns], abortion, Orr voted in favor of the bill that allows for surprise inspections of clinics providing abortions. Orr, who opposes abortion in general, said it’s a fair law since other medical facilities are subject to surprise inspections, too.

Sad news for many in Tucson's journalism community who learned the recent passing of former Tucson newsman, teacher and mentor Walt Nett.

Nett's Facebook page was filled with heartfelt goodbyes and reminiscences.

Nett's last gig was covering courts for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in Texas. Many of us who followed him on Facebook enjoyed his posts about the cases he covered, but mostly we loved his posts about his dog Chester and of course, music.

• Walt Nett's owner, Chester

The Avalanche-Journal newsroom is a little quieter, hearing fewer booming laughs, stories of Tucson and bulky fingers typing furiously.

There's a deep sense of loss.

Longtime newspaper reporter-editor Walt Nett died Wednesday in his home in West Lubbock.

He was 59.

Walt's 35-year career included stretches as a reporter and editor in Arizona and California, including as a journalism instructor at the University of Arizona.

He most recently covered the courts beat as a reporter in Lubbock, writing about local, state and federal courts. Nett was a pinch-hitting reporter whose knowledge of every topic a journalist could write about made him a newsroom sage.

I and his other colleagues in Lubbock hoped to see more stories from him. But it wasn't meant to be.

We still don't have all the details about how he died.

The A-J learned of his passing after authorities discovered him in his home while conducting a welfare check when he didn't show up to work.

A couple of A-J reporters checked on his beloved dog Chester, whom he brought with him when his tenure at the A-J began in December 2008.

Chester will stay with Walt's landlord for the time being. Walt's landlord told our reporters that Walt appeared to have died from natural causes.

Walt was genuinely loved and respected by his co-workers.
News of his passing is very painful.

Looking at the messages on Walt's Facebook page expressing sadness and loss about his death, I'm touched and impressed by the impact he had on so many.

Middle age pop-punk rocker Avril Lavigne is struggling to stay relevant with the kids these days. The 29-year-old artist didn't intend on debuting her latest music video Hello Kitty on Tuesday. According to her rep, the video was "leaked" a day early, and the response wasn't pretty. The overwhelming consensus is that it was racist and insensitive towards Japanese people. In the video, Lavigne is drinking sake and dancing around Japan in a obscure cupcake skirt while surrounded by four Asian dancers in matching outfits the whole time.

Lavigne responded to her haters via Twitter:

RACIST??? LOLOLOL!!! I love Japanese culture and I spend half of my time in Japan. I flew to Tokyo to shoot this video…
— Avril Lavigne (@AvrilLavigne) April 24, 2014

…specifically for my Japanese fans, WITH my Japanese label, Japanese choreographers AND a Japanese director IN Japan.
— Avril Lavigne (@AvrilLavigne) April 24, 2014

Obviously, there's more to Japan and their people than cutesy, colorful outfits and eating sushi. The worst part of this is the really random dubstep bridges. Maybe this is all just a publicity stunt to get everyone to buy her newish self-titled album? It has to be good since Nickelback's Chad Kroeger helped write it.

Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally's campaign has released a poll showing her leading Democratic Congressman Ron Barber by 3 percentage point in Southern Arizona's Congressional District 2.

The survey, done by polling firm OnMessage, shows McSally at 45 percent and Barber at 42 percent. That margin is within the poll's margin of error of plus/minus 4.9 percent.

McSally spokeswoman Kristen Douglas said in a press release that the poll showed Barber is "in big trouble and voters are ready for a fresh start. The numbers speak for themselves: The more Southern Arizonans know Ron Barber, the less they want him to represent them."

Barber's campaign team declined to release internal poll numbers but said the OnMessage poll did not match up with its recent survey numbers.

"Southern Arizonans are going to support Ron Barber in November because we know that he is on our side," said Barber spokeswoman Ashley Nash-Hahn. "He is not going to vote for a reckless plan to raise taxes on the middle class and strangle Medicare, which is what Martha McSally said she would vote for."

OnMessage did early polling in the 2012 race between Barber and McSally; Barber narrowly defeated McSally in that contest by about 2,500 votes. In the August 2012 survey, OnMessage showed McSally trailing Barber by 5 percentage points.

You can take a look at the entire poll here, but the polling memo suggests that Barber is being dragged down by the unpopularity of President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act:

What’s important to note here is the extent to which the President’s floundering ratings are hurting Barber. We’re dealing with a Congressman who is doing everything he can to convince the voters he’s an independently-minded moderate, yet 85% of voters who disapprove of Barber also disapprove of President Obama, highlighting the extent to which voters undoubtedly connect the two.

Conclusion

Congressman Ron Barber is being forced to deal with the repercussions of his Party’s failures in Washington. The President’s signature legislative accomplishment continues to become more and more unpopular among second district voters and there is no evidence to suggest that trend will change any time soon. As a result voters, especially swing voters, are steadily moving away from Barber. While this race will undoubtedly remain close to the end, national trends and McSally’s efforts have now placed the race in her favor.

In the “Say, Where’s The Promotion?” department, there’s a special “Pre-Screening” of Nicholas Stoller’s (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) latest film, Neighbors. Starring Seth Rogen and current cuddly bad-boy Zac Efron as two warring neighbors (as far as I can tell, this is not a remake of the bizarre John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd film of the same name), this is sure to be a hit amongst the backwards baseball cap and red cup set this summer. The screening kicks off tonight at the Gallagher Theater, across from the food court in the Student Union Memorial Center over at the U of A. Here’s some kickers: this screening is FREE with a CatCard, and there’s a post-screening Q&A with Neighbors actors Jerrod Carmichael, Dave Franco (James’ little brother) and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin from Superbad). I’m going to assume this is a Skype deal; the website recommends you tweet your questions with the hashtag #NeighborsUA. For more info, visit union.arizona.edu.

The spice will flow heavily this week over at the Loft Cinema. Not only are they opening up the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune on Friday, they’re also throwing in David Lynch’s 1984 version as well. Playing as part of the Loft’s Late Night Cult Classics series, Lynch’s outlandish (is there any other kind with this guy?) adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark sci-fi novel is either a masterpiece or a disastrous failure, depending on what day of the week it is. I go back and forth all the time. It was a huge flop on it’s release, and the war between Lynch and the studio is the stuff of legend (Lynch even slapped an Alan Smithee credit on the extended-cut TV version). Still, Dune is a daring film and it’s stuffed full of Lynch trademarks (garbled voices, freakish dream sequences, oozing liquids and rock musicians in co-starring roles), and it’ll be a hoot to see it stacked against Jodorowsky’s vision. I'll say this: Jodorowky wanted Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon era) to compose the score, but Lynch got Toto (never good in any era). Dune plays on Friday, April 25 and Saturday, April 26 at 10 p.m. Tickets are $6 and $5 for Loft members. MUAD’DIB!