Thursday, January 28, 2016
From 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 31, Tucson’s female beer crew will be serving up six brews with the cookies you know and love from the little ladies in green. Since there was such a big turnout for previous events, this time around you can get your cookies and beer at two different locations: Tap & Bottle (403 N. Sixth Ave., #135) and Borderlands Brewing Co. (119 E. Toole Ave.)
Here's what you can expect:
- Upslope Brown with a Do Si Do
- Hangar 24 Orange Wheat with a Trefoil
- Sierra Nevada Big Foot Barleywine with a Samoa
- Barrio 2015 Girls Pint Stout Russian Imperial Stout with a Thin Mint
- New Belgium Citradelic Tangerine IPA with a Savannah Smiles
- New Belgium Glüttony with a Toffee-tastic (both gluten free)
Cookie and coffee pairings will be offered at Exo Roast Co. for the teetotalers right next door to Tap & Bottle. Girl Scouts will also be on-site if you want to buy a few boxes to take home, which, let’s be honest, you probably do.
Tags: girl scout cookies , beer , tucson , events , girls pint out , tap & bottle , borderlands , pairing
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Whistling at a woman while she walks down the street to the local grocery store is not a compliment.
Screaming things at us in the nature of, "nice legs," "nice tits," "smile!" Or, in Spanish, "mamacita," "dame un beso" (give me a kiss)—not compliments. And, please, please, please, do not look at us from atop your awful, gas-wasting trucks with eyes that say, "If we were in a room alone, I'd have my way with you, whether you consent or not."
Now, if I'm approached by someone and that someone says, "you look really nice today," or, "I love your dress"—that's a compliment. Thank you so much. Smile.
I usually respond to the "mamacita" or "nice legs" with the middle finger. But these young women from Mexico City gave me a way better idea—let's combat sexual harassment on the streets with a toy gun filled with confetti and loud punk music.
Tags: aj+ español , mexico , mexico city , women , confetti , punk rock , feminism , sexual harassment
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Don't worry about the foundation funded by the Walmart fortune going broke spending all that money. It's already putting out about $200 million a year to promote the privatization/"education reform" agenda. Over the years, about one-quarter of the nation's charter schools have been recipients of Walton Foundation startup money. The foundation may be deciding to focus more of its regular expenditures on the charter sector, or maybe it's planning to pitch in a little more on top of what it's already giving.
The Foundation says it's planning to target low income communities in urban areas like Los Angeles and new Orleans, meaning it has a dual purpose of expanding charters in places like L.A. (the Waltons aren't the only philanthropists working on that, they have company) and tweaking the program in places like New Orleans which are already dominated by charters.
Which makes me wonder. Lots of big-bucks philanthropists along with mid-level players like hedge fund multi-millionaires and billionaires (yes, in today's wonderful world of growing income inequality, just having a billion or two makes you a minor player) are giving lots and lots of money to charters and the groups that support them. Yet one of the original selling points for charter schools was that they can do more than the bloated school districts, with their administrative overload and teacher union bosses, with less money. But if you look at the charters that get press for their accomplishments (some deserved, some not), they all get money beyond their state allotments, sometimes lots of it. Do charters, even successful charters, have any right to claim they're getting more educational bang for the buck, or are they proof that you can't do education on the cheap?
Tags: Walton Family Foundation , Walmart , Charter schools , School privatization
The historic site, with its two fireplaces, beautiful masonry and lack of roof or windows, lends an air of mystery and timelessness to Arzate's song "No More." The surrounding mountains and prevalent saguaro provide a picturesque view of the desert. The video was produced by Sandra Westdahl.
Last year, Arzate and his band submitted their song "On & On & On," along with several other submissions from Tucson bands. If your band is entering this year, send your videos along to [email protected].
Tags: carlos arzate , kind souls , bowden , stone house , tucson , npr , tiny desk , no more , Video
Border Patrol saw a decrease in the number of suspected migrants found dead in Arizona last fiscal year, and they attribute it to "enhanced efforts" to rescue and assist immigrants attempting to cross the desert.
The agency reported 68 remains in fiscal 2015, down from 110 in fiscal year 2014—the figures include the Tucson and Yuma BP sectors, says a Customs and Border Protection press release.
U.S. Border Patrol agents working along Arizona’s border with Mexico stepped up their campaign in fiscal year 2015 to save distressed migrants while giving them options to call for help. As a result, agents report finding fewer deceased migrants as calls for assistance hit new highs.Since March 2015, CBP's Joint Intelligence and Operations Center coordinates responses to 911 calls from migrants. To sum it up, the JIOC assists emergency dispatchers in Pima, Maricopa Pinal, Cochise and Santa Cruz counties to facilitate getting in touch with Border Patrol.
The press release says that between March and September of last year, Border Patrol and JIOC assisted with 467 calls, and a total of 804 people were rescued within the Tucson and Yuma sectors.
Migrants are being encouraged to call 911 before their situation becomes an emergency. The sooner they call, the faster CBP resources can respond. Dehydration, injury or hypothermia can quickly become critical without proper care.The Pima County Office of Medical Examiner counted the remains of 129 undocumented migrants in 2014—the majority from Mexico and Guatemala. And as of Dec. 31, 2014, more than 800 bodies under the medical examiner's custody remain unidentified.
The office hasn't yet released numbers for 2015.
Tags: border patrol , customs and border protection , pima county office of medical examiner , immigrants , migrants , migrant deaths , desert , tucson , arizona
That's right, you do!
We've got two pairs of tickets to the Wildcat game (UA vs Oregon) on Thursday, Jan. 28. Here's the deal: We're going to give the tickets away the day of the game, around noon. The winner will have to be able to make it to our Northwest office sometime before we lock the doors at 5 p.m. The game itself starts at 9 p.m.
Good luck, sportsbuds.
Tags: basketball tickets , UA basketball , tucson weekly giveaway , basketball tickets , UA sports , free stuf
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
February is going to pretty great in terms of late night television. Yes, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver will be back mid month and that's wonderful—but I'm more excited about what is popping up on TBS. Samantha Bee, who left the Daily Show last year after more than a decade, is getting her own show: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
I recommend you watch all of the previews for the new show, or at the very least go revisit some of her Daily Show highlights. New York Magazine published a long interview with Bee, beautifully titled "Smirking in the Boy's Room." An excerpt:
To succeed at producing a weekly show that slices headline news to the quick, she must be two things that women are not always embraced for being — very funny and a little angry — and she must be those things while exuding a quality almost never afforded women: authority.It’s quite a bit easier to sound like a hero in a deeper register and like a scold in a higher one, even if you are saying the same kind of words and doing the same kind of job as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert or John Oliver.As Bee says, we're kinda done with sausage.
But Bee is perhaps uniquely equipped to give this kind of role a test drive. She’s a news junkie, an unapologetic feminist; she is direct and sincere and also bitingly funny; in her corner office is a large painting of a bare-chested Vladimir Putin riding a bear, a prop taken from The Detour, a half-hour comedy she co-created with her husband, Jason Jones, planned for later this year. The absurdly silly image seems to reflect some of Bee’s comedic DGAF drive to make her point. When Vanity Fair last year published a photo of all-male late-night hosts, she infamously retweeted the image doctored to include her as a tattooed centaur with laser eyes.
Tags: late night television , late night all male hosts , samantha bee , sam bee , full frontal with samantha bee , daily show correspondents , jason jones , the detour , women on tv , sausage party , centaur with laser eyes , Video
A report that evaluates medical marijuana programs nationwide says Arizona is doing pretty well in protecting the rights of medicinal weed patients, as well as giving patients easy access to their medicine.
However, according to the patient-input-based analysis by the Washington-based nonprofit Americans for Safe Access, Arizona is in the dumps when it comes to product safety rules, meaning regulations, such as comprehensive marijuana testing protocols aren't yet in place.
The nonprofit surprisingly gave the state an overall grade of B-, largely because the report finds that Arizona protects its medical marijuana patients from issues like DUIs and other arrests. In terms of DUIs, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in November 2015 that medical marijuana patients suspected of driving under the influence must prove that the amount of active THC in their system is not enough to cause impairment—which critics say is quiet harsh.
The analysis also gives the state kudos for having a decent number of dispensaries in place (there are more than 80 throughout), allowing patients to grow their own weed (only people who live more than 25 miles away from a dispensaries have this right), and having reasonable guidelines for qualifying conditions—even though the Arizona Department of Health Services was pressured by a judge to add post-traumatic stress disorder to the Medical Marijuana Act two years ago, and refused to add eight new conditions, which included brain injury and diabetes, last year.
Read the whole report here.
Tags: americans for safe access , medical marijuana , weed , arizona medical marijuana act
Now, there's
However, one thing is indisputable, according to Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler.
“What is indisputable is that many people believe it’s happening,” he said. “You can’t really argue with that. And I think that matters.”Nope, can't argue with that. Some people believe it's happening. And that's good enough for
There you have it. When you're a Republican, facts don't matter. It's what some people think, with absolutely no evidence, that matters. I could go down the long list of faith-based Republican "facts," but why bother?
A "Comic Stylings of J.D. Mesnard" Bonus Feature: Back in 2009, Mesnard was working for Senate Republicans as Staff Policy Advisor. He put out a delightfully deceptive list of facts showing that Arizona's education funding was just fine, thank you. The list had lots of comic moments, but this one is my favorite.
We are 26th in funding per classroom of students.Not bad, eh? 26th. Right in the middle. How dare anyone say we don't support our kids' educations?
Let's see, how do you compute the "funding per classroom of students"? You count the number of kids in a classroom and multiply it by the amount of funding per student. So every time you add a student, you increase the "funding per classroom." At the time, Arizona was 50th in student-teacher ratio, meaning we had more students in each class than any other state in the nation.
I don't know why Mesnard didn't take the next step and recommend we put ten more kids in every class so we could be NUMBER ONE IN FUNDING PER CLASSROOM OF STUDENTS! (We're Number One! We're Number One! We're Number One! )
Tags: Vote by mail , Voter fraud , Rep. J.D. Mansard , Education funding
Sometimes people call Tucson the foot of Arizona because it's boring, because it's barren, because it's "no Phoenix," etc.
Locals, you know that's not true. If you need a reminder, the Tucson community offers up a LOT of cool, recurring weekly and monthly events. Not only are the events on this cool, though—they’re also free. I can’t think a better-sounding combination.
Tucsonans, don't let yourself waste away in this culturally vibrant, diverse town. Get out and explore with Tucson’s 15 coolest, free-est attractions, separated into categories for your ease of use.
MUSIC
The more I’ve lived here, the more I’ve realized that Tucson is kind of a small-scale Austin, Texas—and, yes, I’ve been to Austin. Its music scene is, from a non-local standpoint, actually pretty popping. Any given week, many downtown / 4th Ave. venues host shows ranging in genres from jazz to EDM.
2nd Saturdays: 2nd Saturday is the Tucson equivalent of what is elsewhere known as First Friday. It’s one of Tucson’s many cultural affairs, mixing art, food, and music to create what 2nd Saturday organizer Sandy Mellor calls an urban block party. Though the art and food sometimes cost attendees, the music is always free, entertaining and oftentimes from local artists.
Hotel Congress: You can expect Congress to host a live show from a menagerie of touring artists at least a couple times a week. The historic hotel offers a pretty diverse range of shows, too—they’ve hosted groups including chillwave Hippie Sabotage, pop-punk Modern Baseball and new-wave Martha Davis and The Motels. Every week, though, catch DJ Sid the Kid’s ‘80s/’90s-themed Monday House Party, cumbia-inspired DJ DirtyVerbs Friday nights on the Plaza, and a bunch of local DJs at Saturdaze Dance Party every Saturday night, among many other weekly Congress events.
Cushing Street Cool Jazz: Every Saturday night from 7 to 10 p.m., Cushing Street Bar and Restaurant hosts a “cool” jazz showcase featuring the music of Jeff Lewis and pals. Jazzy.
Tags: tucson , do this! , tucson events , free stuff , free events , community , music , arts and culture , farmers markets , tucson second saturdays , meet me at maynards , free yoga , hotel congress , free jazz , MOCA Tucson
