Scenes from the second and final weekend of the 2016 Pima County Fair including side shows, copious amounts of barbecue, a performance from nu-metal band P.O.D., rides, games and family fun on Friday, April 25. 

Hi I'm Barney!

I'm a 2.5 year old little boy who lives at the Humane Society of Southern Arizona Main Campus!

I'm very shy and scared in the shelter and really cant wait to find my new home!

I have good history with another dog in my previous home but am pretty shy around new dogs and people. I really hope that my new family will be patient with me as I acclimate to your home.

Contact the shelter at 327-6088 to check on my availability and exact location!

Lots of love,
Barney (823460)

Tucson, you've probably noticed we're a little bit blessed when it comes to game stores. Pretty much anywhere in town, you're just a few minutes away from picking up a game of Catan or some Magic the Gathering cards. 

Support your favorite local game stores in Best of Tucson's Best Game Store category—but also support them in real life because we've seen too many (Hat's, A2Z, Game Daze) call it quits over the last few years. 

A traveling man (Mathieu Amairic) is stopped in customs and recounts his life. Paul tells a short story about a strange trip to Russia that involved a bit of espionage, and that story segues into his college years and Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), the love of his life. Quentin Dolmaire plays Paul for the majority of the film, a charming, somewhat hazy love story based on an older man’s memories and perhaps laced with idealistic remembrances.

The love story, set to a soundtrack of eighties music and filmed authentically by director Arnaud Desplechin, is a good one. The framing device seems a little hokey at first, but upon reflection, actually works well. Dolmaire and Roy-Lecollinet make for a convincing young, unsure couple whose courtship is interrupted by youthful dalliances and long trips apart. It’s all a little confusing at times, but the two performers make it all very worthwhile.

Amairic has little screen time, but he makes the most of it, especially in a scene near the end when he confronts an old friend about complications involving Esther. Is Paul just a crazy guy remembering a girl that didn’t love him as much as he loved her? Is he just blowing things up in his mind now that he’s had distance from her over the years? What’s that beginning scene between him and a woman all about?

It’s one of those movies that doesn’t answer all of the questions for you. You just make of it what you will. 

April 24th, 2016 from Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel on Vimeo.

On this week's episode of Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel: Meteorite hunter Geoff Notkin, the former host of the Discover Channel's Meteorite Men, talks about his longtime fascination with space rocks and his upcoming meteorite-hunting boot camp; County Attorney Barbara LaWall tells us why she wants a sixth term as Pima County's top prosecutor; and Democrat Courtney Frogge explains why she wants to represent Tucson in the Arizona House of Representatives.

You can watch the show Sunday morning on the CW Tucson, Channel 8 on Cox and Comcast and Channel 58 on DirecTV, Dish and broadcast. You can also listen to it at 5 p.m. Sunday on Community Radio KXCI, 91.3 FM. Or you can watch it online by just clicking play above.

Here's a rush transcript of the show:

(Nintzel) Hello, everyone. I'm Tucson Weekly senior writer Jim Nintzel, your host for Zona Politics. Today, we'll be talking with County Attorney Barbara LaWall, as well as Courtney Frogge, a candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives. But we begin with Geoff Notkin, the former co-host of the Discover Channel's Meteorite Men series and one of the world's foremost, and most entertaining, experts on meteorites. Mr. Notkin makes his home here in Tucson, and will be hosting a three-day boot camp to teach you how to hunt for meteorites, May 1 through 3. Geoff, welcome to Zona Politics.

(Notkin) Thank you! What a fantastic intro!

(Nintzel) So, what got you interested in these space rocks.

(Notkin) It's been a Lifelong fascination, Jim, and I became interested as a very little boy in all things scientific, but particularly astronomy, and anything to do with rock-hounding. So as a little boy growing up in Southern England, I was always out in the quarries and the forests looking for rocks and fossils. And then, my dad was an amateur astronomer. He had his head in the stars. He would wake me up in the middle of the night "Geoffrey, look through this telescope. You can see alien worlds!" And I was dazzled by this concept, that a little boy in England could see bodies in outer space. And then when my parents took me to the geological museum in London as a kid, and I saw meteorites for the first time, that's when it all hit me, and I thought, "Well, these are rocks from outer space!" That's science-fiction, and astronomy and rockhounding and everything cool wrapped up into one. So I was bitten very young by the meteorite bug, and it never let go.

(Nintzel) Tell us about this meteorite right here on our table.

Originally, I was going to write about one of my favorite quick meals to be found in midtown Tucson for under $10, the Tempeh BLT sandwich and a 16 oz. cup of Conspiracy Roast coffee (pictured above) at the Food Conspiracy Co-op on 4th Avenue.

As usual, Tucson had a different idea.

While I was groggily filling up my coffee cup, the woman next to me offered a cheery, “Good morning!” and I found myself wrapped up in a 45 minute conversation about Tucson, methods on achieving our lofty career aspirations and ultimately how to live a happy life.

Jawana Cox moved to Tucson two years ago after living in Alaska, Colorado and Virginia, and has been trying to get her holistic healing business off the ground while her husband finishes up his accounting degree. She has been tirelessly researching how to use LinkedIn, Instagram and other types of social media and watching webinars on small businesses for guidance on how promote hers, Wholesome Touch for Health, effectively.

Next on her list of things to do is teaching a series of four classes at the Food Conspiracy Co-op each Saturday in May about four interwoven topics from medicinal herb and essential oil use to removing stress from busy lives.

As the minutes ticked by and groceries were picked out around us, our conversation shifted from how we’re actively pursuing our careers to how we think about them.

Google marked Earth Day with some truly stunning illustrations. As beautiful as those doodles are, celebrating our planet is better done offline and outside.

Go to a farmers market, take a hike, grab a sketch book and illustrate the Earth on your own. Find a way to say thanks to the planet for keeping us alive all these years.

Sometimes professors are feeling merciful around finals and let their evening classes out after only ten minutes. Quiet scenes of palm trees, olive trees and red brick buildings from my walk back to my car from the Marshall Building to the parking lot behind the Harvill building on the UA campus on Thursday, April 21.

I sometimes cite education studies and statistics in my posts, but I try to be careful to write about the "conclusions" drawn from the material rather than saying the study "shows" or "proves" something. Any study is only as good as the quality of its data as well as the way the data is sliced and diced. When it comes to studies concerning education, that's a big problem. Skepticism is always advisable.

Short side trip: When I was taking a graduate school statistics course, our assignment was to go to the library, find a good and a bad statistical study and analyze them for their strengths and weaknesses. I asked the prof where I would be most likely to find bad statistical analysis, and he said, "Go to the education journals. Most of those studies are pretty bad." He wasn't criticizing the researchers as much as he was pointing out that it's almost impossible to create strong control groups or comparisons because the variances between students and teachers are so large. No two students, groups of students or teachers are identical, so any conclusions researchers draw from the data are open to question.

Case in point: the rise in state test scores, especially among Hispanic students, starting in 2007. Does that mean Arizona began doing a better job educating its Hispanic population?

Two researchers at Arizona State University's Educational Policy Analysis and Evaluation program have taken a look at the rise in Arizona student scores on state tests, especially among Hispanic students, starting in 2007, a few years before SB 1070 passed in 2010. They ask the question: is the rise in scores an indication that student achievement went up, or does it reflect fewer undocumented students in our schools, which would mean fewer Hispanic students whose English language skills are low? Their conclusion: SB 1070 and the 2007 law requiring businesses to use E-Verify to check the legal status of their employees resulted in a drop in undocumented students, and that was the main driver behind the increase in state test scores among Hispanic students.

The data is fairly convincing. When the researchers looked at Arizona schools where the student population was more than 75 percent Hispanic, they found a far more dramatic rise in student scores starting in 2007 than they found in schools with smaller Hispanic student populations. They also found that the 75 percent-plus schools had a greater percentage drop in the number of Hispanic students than the other schools.

Come celebrate National Poetry Month at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library (101 N. Stone Ave.) on Sunday, April 24 for the free workshop entitled "How I Survived the Gay Rights Movement as a Trans Person of Color" and a poetry performance by the black, transgender Huffington Post blogger J Mase III.

The workshop, which runs from 1 to 2:30 p.m. in the library's lower level meeting room, will encourage attendees to explore their identity and address the dynamics of power and privilege in their lives. The workshop is for LGBTQIA individuals and people in solidarity.

The poetry performance and Q&A will begin at 3 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Here's a little about J Mase III from the event's press release.