This week Twin Peaks fans got some rough news on the series' eagerly anticipated reboot. After two decades of being gone, the beloved cult supernatural crime drama was slotted to come back with full cast and writer/director David Lynch in tow. It sounded like the redux was on the right track until Showtime decided Lynch wasn't worth the money that he was asking and went on with the project without him. Though the network claims they're still in negotiation, Lynch's Twitter feed begs to differ.

"After 1 year and 4 months of negotiations, I left because not enough money was offered to do the script the way I felt it needed to be done," Lynch said on Twitter, continuing in an ensuing Twitter update, "This weekend I started to call actors to let them know I would not be directing. Twin Peaks may still be very much alive at Showtime."

Here's what Twin Peaks' cast had to say about journeying back to the world of Laura Palmer and Special Agent Dale Cooper without Lynch:

Google defines the word bacchanal as "an occasion of wild and drunken revelry" (please don't look up what Webster's defines it as), and Borderlands' first ever Bacchanal promises to be just that. With two days of totally free music, art, comedy and, of course, beer (the beer isn't so free), the brand new community event will feature a range of entertainment options on Saturday, April 11 and Sunday, April 12. 

The event kicks off at Borderlands Brewing Co., located at 119 E. Toole Ave., on Saturday at noon where attendees can peruse works of art from a range of Tucson artists. Organizer Ryan Malco says the event is an opportunity for them to showcase pieces from locals who might rarely get the chance to be seen otherwise.

"This community has so many wonderful artists who don't get opportunity to show their work," Malco says. "Borderlands is very happy to offer Tucson's artists a place to be seen by the community."

Owner Mark Erman of Ermanos made it pretty clear in his interview with us in a previous article that his new bar was in fact a bar first and not a restaurant. However, with a menu touting locally sourced ingredients, seasonal selections and unique flavor combinations, it seemed like this bar was promising some of the best bar food in town.

Starting off with the Zip burger, which is just $7 during happy hour and late night (Tuesday-Sunday: 2 - 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. to close), I was immediately impressed. For a "not restaurant," Ermanos certainly has other restaurants in town beat on the burger front. The moist, tender Double Check Ranch beef patty was thick and flavorful, accented perfectly with the house "Zip sauce"—a savory blend of soy and worcestershire sauces, butter and herbs that's been reduced and intensified. It's the kind of burger you'll be thinking about for a few days after you eat it. I could go for another right now, in fact.

Anyways, after that first successful taste, my table decided to kind of just go for it, ordering dish after  dish because that burger blew us all away.

The gnocchi and cheese with poblano chiles and herbs ($10) came in a small, hot cast iron dish. The flavor was similar to a standard mac and cheese, but the pillowy gnocchi gave the finished product more interesting texture.

The meatballs ($10) used the same Double Check Ranch beef that made the burger stand out and it's that attention to sourcing that really makes Ermanos' food much more than bar food. Using quality ingredients and augmenting them with stimulating spicing  combinations, which in the meatballs' case was orange, fennel pollen and whole grain corriander, allows those ingredients to take center stage, while still  Even the fries ($4), which were perfectly crispy, were served alongside a five spice spiked ketchup. Typically I forego ketchup, especially when they fries are good on their own, but the creative addition of five spice to the condiment made it tasty and exciting—much more than a ramekin of Heinz. 

In terms of beer, Mark's brother Eric Erman has done a great job of curating a list that features many different varieties and breweries. The staff was ready and willing to help with suggestions, should you have difficulty deciding as well. Some of the best brews I tried from that first visit were the Destihl Raspberry Berliner Weisse (a sour white beer tinted blush from the berries), Great Divide's Colette (a lightly vegetal farmhouse ale) and Dragoon's Pony Express (a complex and smoky American Pale Ale). But, with 34 taps total at Ermanos there's a lot more to try off the list—and that's not even getting into the wine selection. 

Really, the only way Ermanos isn't a restaurant is the fact that all service comes from behind the bar. Unfortunately that was also one of the only faults I found in the restaurant on that first visit. With a group of about six, someone else's tab was mixed into mine and removing those items off of my card took a bit of time. It's not exactly a major hinderance, but I did notice after I had left that I ended up being double charged for something anyways. Hopefully with time those glitches in the system will be worked out, allowing the bar and kitchen to shine as brightly as they do already.


Ermanos is open now at 220 N. Fourth Ave. Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. until 12 a.m. and Friday through Sunday from 11 a.m. until 1 a.m. 

The NY Times has painted the most complete picture of New York's powerful and controversial Success Academy charter schools I've read to date. The schools claim high test scores for low income students, and the claims bear out, with some clarification. Critics claim the charters use pressure cooker tactics to get students to perform and overwork their teachers, and those claims bear out as well, with some clarification. There's plenty of information in the article for supporters or detractors to latch onto.

According to the article, the 43 Success charters, located in poor areas of New York, have very high rates of students passing the state tests, higher in some cases than schools with more affluent students. If the testing in the schools is legit, and I haven't read anything indicating that the students are helped during the testing or the test papers are doctored in any way, that's impressive.

Arizona Gives Day has arrived. It's a great time to contribute to our favorite nonprofits, even if it's just $5. What matters is the gesture and that, at least once a year, we are all on the same page with helping out.

Here are my suggestions (not in any particular order) but Arizona Gives website has a bunch more, and, of course, many of you already have your own.

KXCI — Beloved KXCI, not even my own mother reads my emotions as well as you do. It makes me squeal with happiness that you are the only radio station here that pays attention to amazing artists from around the world, including music I grew up listening to in Latin America. When I drive home after a crazy day and Manu Chao or Ana Tijoux start coming out of my speakers, I lose my shit. Thank you.

Friends of Pima Animal Care Center — I adopted my 4-year-old dog Donna from here about eight months ago.  PACC is in desperate need of more room and other care improvements. 

The All Souls Procession/Many Mouths One Stomach — Need I say anything? All Souls is Tucson. Thousands of us come together in this ritual that pulls influence from El Día de Muertos and other world traditions paying homage to the living and dead. There's a lot going on, and Moctober Fest alone isn't enough to put it all together. Also, any donation you make will be matched!

Tucson Interfaith HIV/AIDS Network INC — Better known as TIHAN, this organization has been around since 1994 with the sole goal to provide people living with HIV/AIDS with faith-based (and all other types) of support, including meals, support groups, health and body wellness help.

Youth On Their Own — Youth On Their Own helps out homeless and at-risk youth graduate high school and stay off the streets. A lot of these kids have no support from their families, and YOTO steps in to try and fill that void as much as possible. 

Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona — Rather than buying extra food that will probably go to waste in your household, use the money to help feed families in our region. This doesn't fix poverty, but at least it brings temporary relief.

The Primavera Foundation — Primavera is doing what it cans to help Tucson's homeless. Something I've been repeating every week: we don't have enough resources and the ones we do have need improvement. 

Come on, you have all day!

It's violins, violins and more violins at Exploded View on Thursday, April 9. Leading the pack of violinists will be Jeffrey Young, an experimental violinist, composer, and laptop musician from Brooklyn, who will perform original works and a homage to fellow N.Y.-area violinist Paul Pinto.

"I'll perform a quirky selection of my own music for solo violin and live electronics ... including in-your-face theatrics, unabashed shredding and oceanic soundscapes," Young said in an e-mail.

"I'll also play a short piece for speaking violinist and retuned violin by Paul Pinto, a fellow member of New York’s thingNY composer-performer collective."

In addition to Young's "Violins and Noise in the Magical Kingdom of Dust," Tucson's Robert Anthony Villa will perform the 2nd and 3rd movements from Ysaÿe’s "Violin Sonata No. 2," followed by improvisation using a range of themes and inspiration.

Algae and Tentacles will also be throwing some violin action into the mix with frontman John Melillo being backed up by three violinists: Samantha Bounkeua, Becky Pattowiz, and Villa.

You can catch Jeffrey Young's "unabashed shredding," along with Algae and Tentacles and Villa's solo work, this Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets will be sold at the door at Exploded View, located at 197 E. Toole Ave., for $5 the day of the show.

I'm too excited to write words about it, so you'll have to read what Esquire wrote:

Ahead of the April 14 release of Edge of the Sun, Calexico performs "Falling From the Sky" on Conan.

Meanwhile, NPR is now streaming the whole album here.

NPR's Tom Moon notes:

The miracle of Calexico: Though the scenery of the American Southwest remains largely unchanged — give or take varying degrees of water panic — the band's sense of it continues to deepen and grow. What began, nine albums ago, as a series of outsider snapshots has evolved into a more studied portrait of something beyond ersatz trinkets and cheap norteno knockoffs. Something poignant, nuanced, reverential. It's too early to tag Edge Of The Sun as the band's masterpiece, but song for song, it's the most textured and dimensional Calexico record. It starts with a screaming blast of pure pop asking the musical question, "Where do you fall when you have no place to go?" and from there, it rambles through all the desert permutations of no place to go — the tiny cantinas where the narcocorridos tell their tales, the gulches by the side of the road where the drifters rest, the places best described by their nothingness.

All of it drips heat. As with everything from the band, especially the similarly diverse 2003 album Feast Of Wire, Edge Of The Sun covers lots of stylistic ground — what knits it together is that constant, tremolo-like shimmer of sun radiating off of brush, dirt, pavement. The sources of inspiration, evident in various ratios at various times during this variously populated band's run, are usually rendered in reviews as an equation involving mariachi, tequila, Steinbeck, narco ballads, Morricone, norteño, Hank Williams, border wars, Barbara Kingsolver, the kitsch wing of indie rock, Dylan circa John Wesley Harding, psychedelic surf of the '60s, Byrds-y high harmonies and baritone guitars.

From these, Calexico has fashioned an alluring, sometimes overstuffed, strangely durable audio mythology. The sonic aesthetic has evolved over the years, but mostly in small ways: Edge Of The Sun features some snazzy brass writing, and vocal-harmony arrays that scream rainbows the way the Grass Roots and other pop acts of the '60s did. The atmospheres, as richly detailed as they are, exist in service of sly, high-level songwriting. Founders Joey Burns and John Convertino understand the forms and structural basis of the styles, as their take on mariachi draws on the chord progressions and melodic turns embedded within some of the form's classics. While the music can ride a wave of irreverence — see the giddy bilingual "Cumbia De Donde," featuring Amparo Sanchez — it's never simply a glib touristic re-creation. You can learn something from it. There's always basic respect for the forms, as well as sensitivity to the ways to subvert them: It's an act of worship to transform something as easily stereotyped as mariachi into music that's vivid and cinematic and original. That's what's going on here.

I'll tell you, in my next life I want to come back as a consultant. Doesn't matter what kind‚—environmental, medical—hell, even toilet bowl technician will do. I just want a starboard seat on that gravy train of perpetual expertise. And hey, if my karma holds out, I might even reincarnate as a consultant on the Broadway Boulevard Project.

As you may recall, back in 2010 the City of Tucson convened a Citizens Task Force, ostensibly meant to represent various interests along the the proposed Broadway widening project, from Euclid Avenue to Country Club Road. Around that time, the city also brought onboard a gaggle of consultants, from Tucson's own Kaneen Advertising and Public Relations, and "facilitator" Nanci Beizer, to Philip Erickson of Oakland-based Community Design+Architecture.

So, just how much have taxpayers dished out, for all this per-hour prowess? Well, darned if these folks or their city handlers care to talk numbers. City staffer and project team co-leader Beth Abramovitz didn't return a call from the Weekly seeking sums. Neither did facilitator Nanci Beizer. When I ran into Kaneen project manager Joan Beckim at a Citizen's Task Force meeting, she simply couldn't say what the firm earned for chores such as erecting flip charts and fetching sandwiches and setting up meeting rooms. I did receive a return call from Kaneen Vice President Rick Kaneen, who referred me back to the city. Same for Community Design President Phil Erickson. When I reached him at his Oakland offices, Erickson told me in several different ways that such numbers—even ballpark figures—just weren't quite available.

Finally, with help from City Councilman Steve Kozachik—whose Ward 6 encompasses the Broadway project—I learned that, as of October 2014, this tribe of consultants, spinners and facilitators had collectively lassoed upwards of $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars.

Beneath all that hard cash, however, lurks a tart little irony. The entire Broadway project had nearly collapsed at a meeting in mid March, when the Citizen's Task Force was asked to enter a parallel universe, wherein existed a roadway plan that reflected almost none of task force's well-publicized priorities, such as historic preservation and dedicated transit lanes. Refusing to be bulldozed, many members revolted.

A week later—and some five years after this process began—city officials allowed a volunteer and retired transportation planner named Gene Caywood to present his own proposal before the task force. With a bit of creative pinching and squeezing, Caywood was able to place the road alignment without demolishing some 40 historic properties and businesses as suggested by all those wise consultants. The task force quickly adopted his route as a guidepost.

Caywood diagramed the whole thing in less than two weeks. His fee? Zero.

For details on Caywood's plan, go to http://www.tucsonaz.gov/broadway/citizens-task-force

Local novelist Lydia Millet takes a look at Tucson's International Wildlife Museum for the New York Times:

On the outskirts of this city stands a fake-medieval castle with an elk statue atop its battlements. In the courtyard is a bronze relief of a man shouldering his rifle — one C. J. McElroy, a Texan who founded both this International Wildlife Museum in 1988 and, before that, in the early 1970s, Safari Club International, the trophy hunters’ group that’s headquartered here.

The wildlife museum contains, like its more pedigreed natural-history cousins in cities like New York and Washington, dioramas composed of the stuffed bodies of animals posed in sculpted woodlands or prairies with painted backdrops. These dioramas — as the scholar Donna Haraway has shown — have roots as colonial-era gardens of Eden in miniature. Some are very beautiful, too, with sublime and tragic qualities that captivate adults and children alike. And the dioramas have more to recommend them than the McElroy Hall, where hundreds of disembodied heads, many from animals shot by the museum’s founder, are lined up in long rows on knotty pine walls. The room is a monument to the scale of these kills. (Mr. McElroy reportedly took more than 100 safaris on six continents; his obituary says he claimed 425 trophies in the safari club’s record book.)

More than the dioramas, it’s this old-school trophy chamber — a victor’s hall of imperial conquest, plunder and braggadocio — that seems to lay bare the museum’s core. Giraffes soar toward the high ceiling while a polar bear and black bear stand on hind legs, paws raised, faces frozen in fearsome roars. In the middle, great cats are penned, one from each famous species in a phantom Ark. But most overwhelming are the heads, protruding from the walls all around. If I weren’t familiar with the bizarre conventions of taxidermy — if I were a child, for example — these gentle, doe-eyed faces on chopped necks would certainly haunt me.

Millet notes that the Safari Club International still encourages the hunting of threatened species around the globe: