The Desert Museum is hosting their first ever Desert Dessert Night from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday, May 24.

The Museum partners with Tucson Originals restaurants and KOLD to bring a sweet (pun intended) cook-off using Sonoran Desert ingredients. Fifteen Tucson Original restaurant chefs will be concocting their original dessert offerings and the Museum will be open for a twilight viewing of the grounds. They will also offer specialty coffees and beverages for sale to enjoy with your after dinner delights.

Tickets are on sale now and expected to sell out. Click here to purchase your tickets and for more information.

Tucson City Council members say they are not surprised to hear that City Manager Richard Miranda is stepping down on July 31, so Miranda’s departure appears to have been in the works for a while.

Miranda’s resignation comes as the city is wrapping up yet another tough budget year. The city had a budget shortfall of roughly $30 million when Miranda started the budget process. That has largely been whittled down, but many of Miranda’s suggestions, including changes to the bus system and cuts to parks and outside agencies, were largely scrapped by the City Council.

Councilwoman Regina Romero expects that one of the top assistants in Miranda’s office will become the interim city manager: Kelly Gottschalk, Martha Durkin or Albert Elias (brother of Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias).

“One thing that Richard has done well is assemble an outstanding team in the manager’s office,” Councilwoman Karin Uhlich said. “The team in the management office is very strong and that’s going to be important because we’ll need strong leadership as we search for a permanent replacement.”

Council members appear to be leaning toward a national search for a replacement.

“That’s always my first instinct,” Romero said. “Even though we know we have a lot of talent here, we want to give whatever talent we have here the opportunity to compete in an open process that will only make them look better if they take over.”

Turnover in the City Manager’s Office has been rapid. In the last decade, the city has had four managers: James Keene (who left in 2005), Mike Hein (who was fired in 2009), Mike Letcher (who was fired in 2011) and Miranda, a Tucson native who had a 34-year career with the police department that culminated with a decade as chief of police before moving to the city’s administration.

Council members say they’d like to find someone who would last longer in the job.

A couple of education profs out of University of Illinois maintain that math achievement of students in public schools, meaning schools run by school districts, is higher than the achievement of similar students in private schools. (Note: The article is in Education Week which is subscription only, so the link may not bring up the complete article.) The profs, Christopher and Sarah Lubienski, wrote a book on the subject, The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools.

The same study found that district and charter schools are about equal.

Is it true? As would be expected, pro-privatization scholars have disputed the findings. Here's the definitive answer on which side is right: Who the hell knows? Every education study is suspect because children aren't lab rats, every classroom is a universe unto itself, and different scholars can slice and dice the same data to come up with wildly different conclusions. So all "results" from educational studies should be taken with heaping helpings of salt.

That being said, every reasonable study I've seen has concluded there's about a dime's worth of difference between the achievement of similar students in district, charter and private schools, and that dime gets passed around to different types of schools depending on the grade level of the students, the subject matter and the nature of the study. This goes all the way back to the George W. Bush administration, where his Department of Education tried to prove private and charter schools were better than district schools and ended up with the conclusion that one scored higher in one area, another scored higher in another area, but the whole thing came out as a wash. Bush's folks were so frustrated with the study, they ran it again a few years later and got the same results.

The purpose of this communication is to inform you that I intend to retire from the City of Tucson effective July 31, 2014. My reason for making this decision is that after nearly forty years of service with the City of Tucson, I feel that is time to make this move for my family and me.

I want to thank the Mayor and Council and the citizens of this community for allowing me to serve our great city. It is an honor and privilege to be a member of an organization that is dedicated and committed to the service of its constituency.  

"I count myself fortunate to have had Mr. Miranda serving as City Manager these past three years. He has been a steady, stabilizing presence, well-respected by City staff and the community, whose integrity and devotion to Tucson both are exceptional. I have benefitted from his counsel on many occasions. I respect his decision and wish him and his family all the best. He will leave some very big shoes to fill.

I expect that when Council returns from the Memorial Day holiday, we will begin the process of a national search for a new City Manager. In the meantime, Mr. Miranda leaves us with very capable department heads and Assistant City Managers. We can afford to take the time necessary to be assured of a good fit in our new appointment."

• Photo courtesy of YouTube.
• Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler co-star in their third romantic comedy together.

We are all guilty of enjoying Adam Sandler's movies, and there's no shame in that. Sandler's latest film debuts this weekend, so most of you will go see this film out of habit or because of your undying loyalty for the prolific funny man. Sunday, I was having this strange conversation with James Hudson, also known as TucsonScene James, and I mentioned that Sandler seems like he's planning his next film around his next ideal vacation spot.

Obviously, I'm not the only one that shared this sentiment. Hudson sent me this verbose article The A.V. Club published about Sander's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel's talk show last night.

“Yes,” Sandler replied enthusiastically, secure in the knowledge that it absolutely doesn’t matter if he just admits, point blank, that he chooses his projects based on whether they include a trip to some luxury destination, because they are Adam Sandler movies for Adam Sandler audiences. “I have done that since 50 First Dates,” Sandler explained. “It was written in another place. I said, ‘Imagine if we did it in Hawaii, how great that movie would be.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, that’s a very artistic idea.’ I’ve been doing that ever since.”

I can't blame the guy. Hell, I envy the son of a gun. If I ever met the Water Boy, I'm going to give him a wicked awesome high five. Hopefully, he'll find it in his heart to film a movie in the Old Pueblo to spend more time with his family members that live here.

• FoodNetwork.com

Last night Food Network's - Food Court Wars, featured some hometown food truck folks. Tucson's own, Costa Rican food truck, Kadooks, took on Sierra Vista's, Asian fusion - food truck, J's Kitchens, to earn a year rent free spot in the food court in Sierra Vista's mall.

I am a food freak, so I get all fan boy when I see Tucson (and surrounding areas not including Phoenix) in the national spotlight. This episode was a lot of fun to watch. Kadooks brought their Caribbean flair complete with Costa Rican coleslaw and won the concept portion of the show. The prize for the first battle of the food court war, was getting some one on one time with Tod Graves, multi-millionaire entrepreneur, founder and owner of Raising Canes Restaurant.


The two brick and mortar hopefuls then went on to a marketing event at Fort Huachuca, where, in my opinion, Kadooks also brought the better dish, (there are no "winners" declared in the second leg of the show, just get people to show up) with their Gallo Pinto and Cilantro/Citrus Chicken pitted against J's Kitchen's pork lumpia (which for whatever reason they continued to call a spring roll, if it is Filipino, and fried, it LUMPIA!).

According to the weather forecast, there’s not one day this week that’ll spill over into triple-digit territory. That’s good news for those of you that enjoy outdoor cinema screenings, like tonight’s presentation of the 1963 Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant film Charade at Cinema La Placita, 110 S. Church Ave. The charming combo of Grant and Hepburn, along with co-stars Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy, really makes this romantic-comedy/suspense-thriller shine. Jonathan Demme remade this in 2002 as The Truth About Charlie, and although Demme is a great director, casting Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton in the Grant and Hepburn roles assured it’s box-office doom. Charade starts tonight at 7:30 p.m. and $3 gets you in and a bag of popcorn. Visit cinemalaplacita.com for more information.

There’s less than two weeks left in May, and that means the May series at the Loft Cinema, La Dolce Fellini: A Retrospective, is winding down. There’s still a few of his films left, like tonight’s screening of Fellini Satyricon. Arguably his most iconic film, Fellini Satyricon tells the story of ancient Rome—with lots of freakish imagery and hallucinatory sequences. The film starts at tonight 7 p.m. Tickets are regular admission. On Saturday, May 24, the Loft is screening Amarcord, Fellini’s somewhat autobiographical tale of growing up under Mussolini in Rimini. Don’t expect a typical run-of-the-mill coming of age story, this is Fellini we’re talking about, so be look out for more creeped-out visuals and hallucinatory sequences. Amarcord plays at 7 p.m. Tickets are regular admission, and both films are presented in glorious 35mm.

Speaking of hallucinatory, on Friday, May 22, and running through the holiday weekend, the Loft is screening Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece (kind of a misnomer, most of his films are) 2001: A Space Odyssey every night at 10 p.m. I’ve told you about a lot of films that you must see on the big screen, but this is the numero uno, mandatory big-screen experience,whether or not you’re eating “brownies.” There’s nothing quite like leaning back and watching that bone fly up in the air and become a spaceship on a huge screen. General admission is $6, Loft members are $5.

In this week's print edition, I reported on Rosemont's Copper's problems with acquiring a Section 404 permit under the Clean Water Act, which is key to getting approval for its plans for an open-pit mine in the Santa Rita Mountains southeast of Tucson.

More bad news for Rosemont today: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has told the U.S. Forest Service it intends to reinitiate its consultation with the federal agency regarding the Final Biological and Conference Opinion.

In a May 16 letter to Coronado National Forest Supervisor Jim Upchurch, Fish and Wildlife Field Supervisor Steven L. Spangle said that the consultation had to re-evaluated for several reasons, including the impact on ocelot habitat and the impact on Southern Arizona waterways. (You can read the entire letter here.)

Rosemont officials downplayed the news in a press release.

"While we are disappointed with any delay, our expectation is that these final issues will be handled in a timely, expeditious manner," said Gil Clausen, president and CEO of Augusta Resource Corporation, the parent company of Rosemont Copper.

Rosemont acknowledged that the permitting process would not likely be completed by the end of June, as it had previously projected.

"The USFS has commented informally that it may not be in a position to issue the final Record of Decision (ROD) by the end of the second quarter of 2014," according to today's press release. "However, until the USFS determines whether consultation with the US FWS must be re-initiated and publishes the definitive ROD schedule, expected by the end of May, it is uncertain when the ROD will be issued. The Company believes that the ROD may be delayed until the third quarter of 2014."

Mine opponents said the latest news was another major setback for the mining company.

“The Army Corps already decided that Rosemont’s mitigation plan falls woefully short of compensating for the damage it would do, and now the Fish and Wildlife Service is indicating that the mine’s impacts could be worse than it feared,” said Randy Serraglio of the Center the Biological Diversity in a press release. “Taken together, these decisions are a one-two punch that could be a knockout.”

In other Rosemont news, the financially squeezed company announced that one of its lender had agreed to release $6 million to the company ahead of schedule. (Read the press release here.) That could give the company breathing room while it fights off a hostile takeover attempt by Hudbay Minerals.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is wealthy when it comes to knowledge, and I'm sure he's rolling in that Cosmos money. But he's not below bending over and picking up a quarter. Who isn't?

Here's three minutes of Tyson explaining how wealthy Bill Gates actually is. Considering it's Throwback Thursday, I thought I'd share this excerpt that has resurfaced the Internet's attention three years later. It's always #tbt at Reddit.