• Aleksa Brown
• DISCOS live at the Red Room

I applaud restaurants and bars "dressing up" for Halloween - in fact, I campaigned for local places to do so back in 2010 - and the delightful Saffords of Tap & Bottle made me very happy last year when they turned their craft beer and wine joint into the Meet Rack for a night last year.

This year, the bar is going as The Red Room, the indie rock/cocktail establishment attached to Grill, both of which closed back in November of 2011 (more on the history of the Red Room in David Mendez's August cover story), but they could use your help.

From Facebook:

Friends - this year T&B has a special halloween night planned. We will be dressing our bar up as the Red Room to honor one of our favorite Tucson places from the past. More details to come...but before then we would love pictures of your photobooth pics from the Red Room to feature on halloween. Please pm me your pics or email to [email protected]

Heist Pizza Parlour, the Aaron May artisan pizza joint which was located in the former Grandy's/Rockin' Baja Lobster/Big Fat Greek building at 7131 E Broadway Blvd, has closed after a little over than a year of service. They apparently served their last pies on Sunday and now the phone is disconnected and their Facebook page has been deleted.

Despite hearing some negative feedback on some of the food (although editor Dan Gibson gave the place a positive review in February), the staff at Heist sure did a great job and were always pleasant and fun. The concept was cool, and, hey, had some awesome names for dishes (ex. Everyday I'm Brusslin', Hard out Here for a Shrimp).

Whether you were a Heist fan or not, I think we all agree it is sad to see an independent and local(ish) restaurant that employed many Tucsonans go under.

Good luck to the Heist Family from top to bottom, and yes, it is 'Hard Out Here For a Shrimp'...

A few days ago, I wrote about an Education Accountability Session sponsored by the Pima County Interfaith Council and others. Though a number of candidates were given a chance to speak — briefly — the highlight of the event was listening to seven young and not-so-young adults talk about their personal educational journeys. These are people who have benefited from a combination of their own hard work, often overcoming daunting obstacles, and educational opportunities they found in Pima County. I was so moved and impressed by their stories, I invited some of them to be on the cable access program I host with Ann-Eve Pedersen, Education: The Rest of the Story. Two of the seven were able to come, though more wanted to. These are busy folks, as you'll learn from listening to Ana Chavarin in this interview. One of the participants wanted to come, and he was even willing to miss some work and lose some of his earnings, but his boss advised against it. Going to work was definitely the right choice. Another participant apologized to me, saying she was tutoring a young student at the library during that time. No need to apologize to this old teacher for her dedication to helping a student succeed.

Ana, who is currently a student at Pima Community College, has a wonderful story to tell, and she tells it with the kind of spirit which has carried her this far and will continue to carry her into the future. It's well worth listening to. It actually gets better about halfway through.

• Image from the Skrillex Facebook fan page.

Way back in 2002, the Artist Then Known as P. Diddy released the ridiculously titled We Invented the Remix. Even when taking into account the Bad Boy Records mogul’s reputation for unbelievable claims, this one was outrageous and absurd.

Diddy, nor anyone he likely ever met, did not by any stretch of the imagination invent the remix. Skrillex did. Before your head explodes, let’s redefine the word “remix” for contemporary use and how it applies to the post-dubstep EDM DJ: These days, everything is a brand. You are a brand. So for the former Sonny Moore—the once upon a time 15-year old frontman for class-of-2004 screamo band Every Time I Die (whose debut album Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has a Body Count is the most perfectly titled of its genre)—”remix” is the reinvention of the self, not a record.

When recurring throat problems threatened his future as a singer in 2007, Moore jumped ship from the Warped Tour circuit, reprioritizing his homemade electronic recordings into the main focus of his career and christened himself Skrillex, after a childhood nickname and, tellingly, his social media handle. He’s frequently said in interviews that he discovered electronic music after hearing a member of Korn namecheck Aphex Twin on MTV’s Total Request Live, which says so much more than he could have ever intended: Not only is it a neat summarization of the Skrillex sound, it’s a distillation of the odd and by-chance trajectory that has followed him his entire public life.

Finding his signature sound—which has been proven to be very divisive among audiences—was mostly “trial and error,” he told several publications, including Alternative Press. Taking the basic elements of Britain’s post-grime 2-step style, also known as dubstep—bottomless, reverberating bass frequencies; arrhythmic, skittering drum programs; and, most infamously, the squelching synthesizer noises that many have insultingly compared to a dying goat screaming—Skrillex refigured and expanded these characteristics to super-sized American extremes that made sense as an electronic variation of screamo’s bipolar tendencies.

Skrillex quickly began a meteoric rise in popularity on the live DJ circuit, which led to his first commercial breakthrough, a remix of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” at the height of her short-lived superstardom in 2009. Similarly, the debut 2010 EP “My Name is Skrillex” was rapidly reissued by fellow EDM traveller Deadmau5’s label Mau5trap after Skrillex uploaded it onto MySpace.

By this point, his reputation as the most guilty offender and purveyor of dumb-downed “brostep” beloved by turnt up frat boys and sorority girls was already congealing among electronic music purists, and not unrelated, his in-demand status as a producer, remixer and DJ was ascending at a startlingly rapid pace. 2010 saw the release of the second Skrillex EP, “Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites,” which sold quite respectfully; over the next two years he’d record an even bigger hit EP, “Bangarang,” and collaborate with both Korn and the Doors, which showed how widespread his influence was growing. By 2012, Forbes reported that Skrillex was making 15 million dollars a year, positing this young man, barely old enough to drink legally, in the ranks of the world’s highest paid entertainers. It seemed like everybody had an opinion of Skrillex, and those most willing to speak up were steadfast in their disgust for his music—all before he’d even released a proper debut album.

That would come earlier this year, with the Top Ten full length hit, Recess. While the album was markedly more varied, artfully constructed and nuanced than his previous efforts, it did little to silence his detractors. To Skrillex’s credit, he seems to be taking the criticism in stride, as evidenced by the record’s opening track, “All’s Fair in Love and Brostep,” but the question remains, who exactly is the silent majority who pays Sonny Moore extravagant sums of money to entertain them and—in a particularly transitional state for the music business and fans’ loyalty to artists—why?

Skrillex is scheduled to play AVA with DJ Mustard, Branchez and David Heartbreak Tuesday, Oct. 7 at 6 p.m. Tickets are $42 for general admission, $62 for VIP.

The Buffet is celebrating its 80th (!!!) anniversary on Saturday, Nov. 1 from 1 to 5 p.m. (mark your calendars!), but the festivities have already kicked off as Mayor Rothschild has signed on to what appears to be the greatest proclamation ever to be issued from his desk.

You can read the whole thing above, but here are my favorite WHEREAS-ES:

WHEREAS, the atmosphere inside The Buffet Bar displays decades of names, quotes, drawings and jokes covering the walls as intentional graffiti art...

WHEREAS, for recreation, The Buffet Bar has a regulation-sized shuffleboard table where games are played for free...

WHEREAS, The Buffet Bar still serves hot dogs "cooked in beer"...

Congrats, in advance, to the owners and staff of the Buffet for this recognition.

Last week, I wrote about the teases of new Twin Peaks material on Twitter, but today there's a payoff as Showtime has announced that the cult favorite is returning to television for nine episodes set in the present day. The bad news: the episodes won't air until 2016.

I need to pace my freaking out since it'll be at least fourteen months until the new episodes air, but for obsessed fans of the show like myself, this is great news to start off a work week.

I talked to Bill Maher about Islam, the possibility of a Republican majority in Congress and what makes stand-up still interesting for him. On a similar note, he got into a heated argument with Ben Affleck about Islam on last night's Real Time.

He's scheduled to perform Sunday, Oct. 5 at the TCC Music Hall. Tickets range from $48.50 - $95.

DG: I saw that after your Charlie Rose interview that Glenn Beck offered an open invite to come on his internet show or whatever it is now to have a civil dialogue about Islam. Is it possible for you and Glenn Beck to have a civil dialogue about Islam?

BM: Of course! We could have a civil dialogue about anything. Glenn Beck has had an open invitation to appear on my show for years. I would reiterate that invitation. Glenn Beck, come on my show and I'll come on yours.

DG: That seems like a fair trade.

If you're not registered to vote by midnight on Monday, Oct. 6, you're not gonna be able to cast a ballot in this year's election. It's easy as can be online—as long as the state knows you're a citizen—by following this link.

Otherwise, you can find a list of Pima County locations to fill out the form in real life here. And the Pima County Recorder's Office will be doing drive-by voter registration both downtown and in eastside Tucson on Monday, Oct. 6. Read all about the details here and find some unregistered friends to sign up. Your vote, your voice.

The obsessive folks at the Welcome to Twin Peaks fansite noticed something on Twitter today: both of the creators of cult-favorite TV show Twin Peaks posted the same tweet, seemingly hinting at a rebirth for the show:

Dear Twitter Friends: That gum you like is going to come back in style! #damngoodcoffee
— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) October 3, 2014

Dear Twitter Friends: That gum you like is going to come back in style. #damngoodcoffee
— Mark Frost (@mfrost11) October 3, 2014

Their possibly-jumping-to-conclusions analysis:

We just had The Entire Mystery Blu-ray release, so that’s not what they’re tweeting about. Now with David Lynch recently hinting at a return to Twin Peaks (“Just wait and see!” ), could a revival finally be fact instead of rumor? Are we going to see a third season (on Netflix perhaps?) or will there be a sequel (or another prequel) to the Twin Peaks movie?

With Netflix seemingly throwing money at any creative idea they can turn into a stream, a new Twin Peaks product for them almost makes sense. I'll believe it when I see it, but for the rest of the day at least, I'll be occasionally squealing about the idea of my favorite weirdo-mystery show returning.

In the meantime, revisit Bob Grimm's review of The Entire Mystery Blu-ray set.

Is there anyone foolish enough to watch an ad from McSally supporters attacking Barber, or from Barber supporters attacking McSally, and think it's the absolute, unvarnished truth? Is there anyone who thinks when a 1975 DUI against a House candidate in, say, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, shows up a month before the election, the timing is a coincidence?

If so, I've got some beautiful beachfront property on Speedway you might be interested in buying. It's a real bargain, and I have lots of offers already.

It's political season, right? Every statement that could affect the election should have a big Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) label slapped across it. There may be a kernel, or a few kernels, or lots of kernels of truth in what you hear and read, but there's a reason you're hearing and reading about it now and it's wrapped up in a package carefully designed for maximum impact. Someone is trying to get your vote.

But somehow, even thinking people who pay careful, critical attention to politics don't scrutinize information about TUSD around election time with the same jaundiced eye. Too many people react to a sudden explosion of bad news with, "What did you say? Something terrible, something catastrophic is about to happen at TUSD? Oh my God! The sky is falling!" "You say board member Jones or candidate Lopez is the only person who can avert the catastrophe? Thank God there's someone out there who can make everything right!"

A deputy superintendent who's leaving the district and may, or may not, have a score to settle sends out a worst-case-scenario forecast that TUSD will be $15 million in the hole by the end of the year, and he does it at the request of someone running for the board on a platform that the district is heading for disaster and needs to change direction. Is the report an objective assessment of a district that's dug itself deep into a financial hole? It's possible. Or is the report a politically motivated statement to cast the superintendent and his supporters on the board in the worst possible light? That's possible too. Either way, what better time to drop a hair-on-fire disaster report than a week before the early ballots are dropped in the mail?

Before voters take the report at face value and assume it's an objective analysis of the district's financial state, they need to ask themselves, who will benefit if voters believe it? Then they can listen to what others say about the report, weigh the evidence on both sides and make up their minds.