The Crush pARTy is taking over the Tucson Museum of Art yet again to offer a full day of food, drinks and, of course, art. The event, which is presented by the Southern Arizona Arts and Cultural Alliance as a fundraiser for both the organization and the museum, will showcase a wide variety of wine, beer and coffee as well as nearly 40 restaurants.

Here's who will be attending this time:

47 Scott, Agustin Kitchen, Athens on 4th Avenue, Commoner & Co., El Charro Café, El Cisne Restaurant, Gourmet Girls Gluten Free Bakery, Guiseppe's Ristorante Italiano, HighWire Lounge, HUB Ice Cream Factory, Humble Pie, Kalina Russian Cuisine & Tea House, Le Rendez-vous, Noble Hops, Obon Sushi Bar Ramen, Pastiche, Prep & Pastry, Primo, PY Steakhouse, RA Sushi Bar Restaurant, Reforma Cocina y Cantina, Saffron Indian Bistro, Sonoran Sno-Cones, Sonya's Brown Sugar Bakery, Street Taco & Beer Co., Table of Elementz, Tavolino Ristorante, Tequila Factory, The Coronet, The Living Room, The Melting Pot, The Still, Tohono Chul Garden Bistro, Tucson Tamale Company, UME: Asian Cuisine & Sushi, Union Public House, and Vero Amore.

The Crush pARTy will also offer live music, manicures, a photo booth and a silent auction for both art and wine. The festival kicks off at 12 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 15 at the Tucson Museum of Art (140 N. Main Ave.) and runs until 3 p.m. General admission tickets are $80 and VIP passes are available for $150. For more information on this event, or to purchase tickets, visit the event's website.

Burlesque is a big deal locally. Now, Tucson Burlesque is (hopefully!) coming to you in book form.

Steve McMackin (you might know him as the art director behind Edible Baja) is a photographer intimately familiar with the Old Pueblo's burlesque scene:

In October 2010, Black Cherry Burlesque asked me to photograph their 2010 Halloween show. It was a ton of fun, and a real technical challenge to photograph the performers. So I came back for their next show... and the next... and the next… after 5 years, 150,000 photos, 1,100+ acts, 150+ performers and 50+ shows it's time to bring these photos off of Facebook and into the real world. This is the best of the best: about one photo per one thousand taken is being selected for inclusion in the book. 

Honestly, just watch his video about the project. The photos are beautiful.

The book's existence depends on how its Kickstarter goes, and the fundraising effort has a bit of ground to cover: McMackin has set the goal for $22k and the deadline for Dec. 1.

Ambitious? Absolutely—but there is good reason: 

My photos have until now only been seen on Facebook, whose compression algorithms do awful things to photos. Even in print, most people do digital printing for short-run books, which doesn't have the sharpness or deep blacks that will really make these photos shine.

So we are going for the gold and are getting the book printed at an offset press, with CMYK plates, with careful color checking, in a nice thick hard-bound book. If we get funded, we'll start with a 9" x 12" book at 160 pages, but if we meet a few stretch goals, we can get a larger, 12" x 12" book with 200 pages for the same price.

This is going to be a really nice book that you can leave on the living room table. I've picked out a few thousand of my favorite photos, and as soon as the kickstarter funds I'll start designing it. I'm also planning on writing a little about some of the photos and telling some interesting stories, but the focus is burlesque performances.

Ballet fans, get excited. The people over at Ballet Tucson have decided they love you and have given us a ton of tickets to give away. 

We're going to be giving these tickets out slowly, as the shows approach. But, the first giveaway we're dong is pretty special: It's for the a pair of tickets to the Opening Night Gala. 

Opening Night Gala
Friday, November 13
Gala Reception – 6:30 pm
Performance – 8:00 pm
Temple of Music and Art
Jekyll and Hyde
Masquerade
Carmina Burana

Opening Night Gala includes:
Pre-performance wine & buffet reception
Silent auction
Live musical entertainment
Post-performance champagne toast and dessert reception with company artists

Jekyll and Hyde (World Premiere)
Choreography: Chieko Imada, Mary Beth Cabana
Fresh and fanciful “steampunk” rendition of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson dark Victorian novel.

Masquerade
Choreography: Chieko Imada, Mary Beth Cabana
Colorful and upbeat episodes at a lively masquerade ball.

Carmina Burana (Premiere)
Choreography: Daniel Precup
A thrilling and dynamic interpretation of Carl Orff’s “scenic cantata”.
Tickets on sale September 8
$100 per person
Order by Phone (Brown Paper Tickets):
800-838-3006

All proceeds benefit Ballet Tucson.

For those of you who aren't lucky enough to win, you can pick tickets up here. Or, if you can stand missing out on the fancy of the Gala and are more interested in the ballet itself, check back next week for tickets to the Fall Concert next week.

Tucson Meet Yourself 2015 came and went, offering insight into the cultural diversity in the Old Pueblo. With food, music, dance, arts and crafts, attendees could peek into something a little different than what they're used to and take a mini vacation without ever leaving the city limits.

Here are some of the sights of this year's event:

There is a way to tell if a book is a well written polemic by a conservative author. I call it “The C Clue.” If you look up a book on Amazon, you will see a horizontal bar graph. This graph depicts the relative numbers of the different star ratings. A conservative polemic will have a large number of one star ratings with somewhat fewer two star ratings. They represent the work of those from the other side of the political spectrum who wish to suppress the book. The book will have few three star ratings, but many four star, and still more five star ratings from conservatives who love a well written polemic. So, when the graph looks like a “C,” you may assume it to be arguing from a conservative political perspective.

Such a book is The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West, by Michael Walsh (as of this writing, this book is more of a capital E, but you get the idea).

To get a good perspective on this book, one should take a look at the author. Walsh graduated from the Eastman School of Music in 1971. He worked as a reporter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, then became its classical music critic. He later became a music critic for the San Francisco Examiner, then for Time Magazine. Around the turn of the century he was a Professor of Journalism and Professor of Film & Television at Boston University. He wrote for National Review, and had a weekly column at the New York Post. He helped Andrew Breitbart launch Big Journalism.com, and became a featured journalist at PJ Media. He has authored over a dozen books both fiction and nonfiction. In short, he is a bit of a Renaissance Man.

All next weekend, you have the opportunity to go Greek without any of the weird fraternity nonsense that phrase typically entails. Rather, the 39th annual Tucson Greek Festival is returning for four days of Greek food, dance, drinks, music and more.

Although you can check out the full food menu for this year's fest online, you can expect classics like hummus, falafel, baklava, dolmades and more and you might even discover some new favorites. You can definitely look forward to saganaki ($5; pan-fried cheese with Greek brandy and lemon), Athenian baked chicken with lemon and oregano ($9) and roasted lamb shank with rice pilaf ($12), as well as Greek beer, ouzo, wine, coffee and brandy. The event will also feature live Greek music, the award-winning Panathenian Dancers and a Greek market.

The Tucson Greek Festival will take over St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church (1145 E. Ft. Lowell Road) on Thursday, Sept. 24 from 5 to 10 p.m., Friday, Sept. 25 from 5 to 11 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 26 from 4 to 11 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 27 from noon to 6 p.m. Admission is $3 per day for adults of $6 for a four-day pass. Kids under 12 get in free. For more information and the full food menu, visit the event's website.

Tucson's Museum of Contemporary Art is putting on a fall fundraiser unlike any before. Thanks in part to the presence of the Mobile Pools, this unique event will be a poolside celebration of the arts in its many forms—after all, the beauty of contemporary art is its all encompassing nature.

The Salon / Synchro / Sangria certainly has a clever alliterative name down, but the museum fundraiser aims to deliver on all that name promises and more. The "Salon" portion comes in the form of a discussion with MOCA curator Jocko Weyland who will discuss the history of the Mobile Pools, which he helped conceptualize, and his new book Danny's Lot. The book is part photo essay and part narrative, looking at the early days of those dumpster pools and what they mean to adaptive reuse and contemporary art. 

As for the "Synchro," UCSB Theater & Dance doctoral candidate Yasmine Jahanmir will be performing at the event, and the "Sangria" comes courtesy of Penca's Bryan Eichhorst. With three different sangrias on the Penca menu regularly featuring tasty ingredients like Amontillado sherry, pennyroyal-infused pisco and a mirepoix shrub, you can be sure the sangria game will be strong at the MOCA. 

Hors d'oeuvre from Hotel Congress, Hamilton Distillers' Whiskey del Bac and Barrio Brewing's Barrio Blonde will also be served at the party, with additions from other event sponsors like Salon Salon and Atelier de LaFleur. The swanky shindig will allow attendees to mingle, sangria in hand, in their best "poolside chic." 

The Salon / Synchro / Sangria takes place at MOCA, located at 265 S. Church Ave., on Friday, September 11 from 6 until 9 p.m. Tickets for the fundraiser are $100 and you can find yours, along with more information, on the museum's website.

For 18 months, the immigrants' rights advocacy group Corazón de Tucson worked on a project that involved providing immigrants and their families with arts therapy. Some really nice pieces resulted from that venture, and now organization is ready to showcase them in an upcoming exhibit.

Throughout the project, called Resolution Through Arts Engagement in the Era of SB1070, two local artists—Cristina Cardenas and Wesley Fawcett Creigh—collaborated with clinical therapist—Faviola Agustin—to develop a trauma therapy program, where migrants were given a space to vent about their experiences coming to the U.S. and the reasons for immigrating.

“The expressive arts not only inspire hope but also allow emotional pain and acute trauma to begin to heal and be released. The migrant families and members of Corazon allowed us access into their intimate journeys and personal lenses using artistic work. Each individual piece is unique and carefully created but collectively their commitment to resistance, healing, and hope supersedes any political or colonial structure,” says Faviola Agustin, who advised the lead artists in effective methods of arts therapy, in a press release. 

And so the exhibit Mis Historias/My Stories was born.

"For me the art classes made me feel like I had wings, it allowed me to travel. My experience in the workshops permitted me to feel emotions I do not feel in other activities; it freed me, gave me peace, it relaxed me and it taught me that even if I don’t have a lot of artistic ability I can still create," says Francisca Lopez, one of the therapy workshop participants. 

The opening reception for Mis Historias/My Stories is happening on Saturday, Sept. 19 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Tiny Town Gallery, 174 E. Toole Ave.

My friend Ron was halfway through a Kurt Vonnegut novel when he decided to reach out via Facebook for assurance that his particular book would get better. I replied, "It doesn't." A while later he replied saying that I was right. The subject of Vonnegut reminded me of one of his recurring characters, Kilgore Trout. Trout was himself a science fiction writer who could only achieve publication as filler for pornographic books and magazines (no internet in the 70's). Kilgore Trout, in turn, reminded me of a hilarious, wildly imaginative, and sometimes disturbing 1975 novel Venus on the Half-shell, by Phillip Jose' Farmer, originally published under the pen name "Kilgore Trout".

If you have yet to read it, Venus on the Half-shell makes for an absorbing, fast paced, escape from our crazy times. I told Ron as much.

Most authors will start a novel by painting a picture of the setting, then begin the introduction of the characters. Farmer starts Venus with the protagonist, Simon Wagstaff, having sex atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. Next came the great flood, literally. An alien race called the Hoonhor traveled from planet to planet checking out the state of evolution. If the state was not well, they cleansed it. Earth was one of these. The Hoonhor caused all the water vapor in the atmosphere to precipitate at once, washing the planet, and giving evolution another shot. 

Our hero, Simon Wagstaff, managed to float around long enough to float by an abandoned Chinese spacecraft which he boarded shortly before running aground on, where else, Mount Ararat. After learning how to fly the craft, Simon left Earth and traveled the galaxy far and wide to find the answers to unanswerable questions, like, "Why are we created only to suffer and die?"

The novel starts out with a bang, but that is only the first in a number of sexual adventures. There was, for example, the planet Dokal where all the people were identical to humans with the exception of possessing a five to six foot long prehensile tail, naked, save for a tuft of fur at the end. The Dokals insisted on fixing his lack of tail problem, and after the installation, he found it to be quite useful. Useful, he found, in ways he had not imagined, like when the King's young daughter named Tunc (an anagram) seduced him and... well, I'll leave it there.

Occasionally the humor could be a bit disturbing. As it turned out, faster-than-light travel was made possible by sucking energy from a parallel universe to feed the engine. Unfortunately, the globs of energy were actually living beings. They died in the process. The engine, in fact, transmitted the sound of their wailing death cries - the faster he went, the louder they became. Simon found it terribly unnerving.

Farmer was a great admirer of Vonnegut, and through the persona of Kilgore Trout he was able to take the Vonnegut style to far higher level of humor and creativity. Writing Venus was a joy for Farmer, and it shows in the writing. He speaks of laughing out loud while typing it, and concluded, "What a blast it was!"

Venus is a great escape novel for the science fiction buff, and the joy of the author in its creation touches you. Finish your summer reading with this!

Oh yeah, Ron's book that did not get better was Slaughterhouse Five.

Long, long ago, the Arizona Department of Transportation bought a bunch of downtown warehouses along the railroad tracks with the intention of demolishing them—along with the El Presidio Neighborhood—for a highway that thankfully never happened.

While the warehouses sat vacant, a bunch of artists started renting them out, creating an organic arts district. In more recent years, ADOT has been selling off the warehouses at auction. But it still owns the Citizens Warehouse along where the railroad tracks cross Sixth Street just west of Stone Avenue.

Citizens Warehouse is home to a wonderful bunch of artists—Nick Georgiou, Rand Carlson, Dirk Arnold and many others—who are producing great work that's now on display at Etherton Gallery. And this Friday, August 21, the gallery will host a panel discussion on the past, present and future of the Citizens Warehouse with state Sen. Steve Farley, Demion Clinco of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation,longtime downtown arts advocate David Aguirre and others. It's sure to be a great discussion if you're into history, arts or Tucson's future—and if you haven't seen the terrific Artists of Citizens Warehouse show, here's a chance to check that out. Here are the details from Etherton:

In conjunction with its exhibition, The Artists of Citizens Warehouse, Etherton Gallery is pleased to present a community panel discussion addressing the past, present and future of the Citizens Warehouse.

Designed by Roy Place (1887-1950), who designed several buildings on the University of Arizona campus, and the iconic Pima County Courthouse, the Citizens Warehouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was slated for demolition in 1985, but through the efforts of numerous government officials, leaseholders, artists and others, it was saved from destruction.

Now owned by Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), it is home to over 20 artists whose work is currently on display at Etherton Gallery. Although artists have brought thousands of Tucsonans and tourists downtown over the years, garnering tremendous publicity for the area and contributing to its revitalization and economic growth, the Citizens Warehouse, may still face threats from on going development opportunities downtown.