MOCA announced early this morning that Anne-Marie Russell's temporary replacement at the helm of the museum would be Samuel Nohe Ireland. Beginning May 1, Ireland will take over for Russell after her ten-year run as executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

As Russell moves onward to an executive directorship at Sarasota Museum of Art, Ireland, who was raised in Tucson and got his BA at UA, will be taking over here and working alongside curator Jocko Weyland on upcoming programming. 

"Sam brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise back to MOCA Tucson, and has an intimate understanding of MOCA's mission, vision and operations," a statement from Board President Courtney McEniry said. 

Ireland's museum pedigree also includes an MBA from Portland State University and an MA in Art History from Sotheby's Institute in New York City. He previously served as MOCA's Director of Operations from 2009 to 2011 as well.

Hey, hep cats. Exploded View is hosting a night of Beat-era film and poetry and the whole shebang should be a real kick. The event is set to explore the hip scenes in both North Beach and Greenwich Village of the era both on the screen and in person. 

The "Can You Dig It, Man?" event will feature John Melillo of UA's English department presenting a selection of works from Housten Donham, Johanna Skibsrud and Christopher Cokinos. Then, on the big screen, you can catch Christopher Maclain’s "apocalyptic speedtrip" The End, Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy (which is narrated by Jack Kerouac) and other rare films by Wallace Berman and Bruce Conner.

The whole event starts Wednesday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Exploded View Microcinmena. At just $5 a ticket, it shouldn't take much to noodle it out, ya dig?

Matt Rios of Maker House says the past two years of renovating and running the community space has involved 60 to 80 hours of work a week for him, but the journey has been rewarding. Despite all of that work, the team has announced that on April 11, the venue, restaurant, coffee shop and bar will shut down.

"It's been two really, really hard years of work," Rios says. "But it's been so worth it."

The times have indeed a-changed. From Peanuts, 1971:


To the current issue of the AARP Magazine:


As Pete Townshend might say, I'm just talkin' 'bout my [aging] generation.

Fans of the Professor Blastoff podcast already know that Tig Notaro's performance is a must-see this Wednesday, but, in case you need convincing, consider one of the moments that rocketed Notaro into the national gaze:

One night at LA's comedy hotspot the Largo, Notaro took the stage and instead of carrying on with her normal set, she starts hesitantly, "Hello. Good Evening. Hello ... I have cancer."


Notaro had been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier that day, and, rather than pretending like nothing happened, she stood up there and told the truth. The beauty of the moment is Notaro bounces between making the audience sad and uncomfortable to laughing and uncomfortable at every turn, even so far as reassuring the crowd several times that it's okay.

The moment has been lauded by comedians like Louis C.K. for its raw honesty and emotion. It was featured on NPR's "This American Life." Marc Maron even chose to replicate the scenario in his show. Of course, Maron was the heroic truth teller for the "Maron" rendition because it's his TV show and he likes to keep the focus on him, but it's still flattering maybe since he used Notaro as the concierge.

As for standout moments in recent stand up history, Notaro's is definitely up there, which is why you should go see her when she performs as part of her "Boyish Girl Interrupted" tour at the Rialto Theatre on Wednesday, Feb. 24 starting at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and available, along with more information, on the Rialto Theatre's website.

Bubbles, Ricky and Julian have left the trailer park and are coming to Tucson to present their comedic variety show "Still Drunk, High and Unemployed."

The actors from the cult Canadian TV show Mike Smith (Bubbles), John Paul Tremblay (Julian) and Robb Wells (Ricky) will be performing at the Fox Theatre on Friday, Feb, 20 starting at 8 p.m.

Although they're probably most well known for their highly binge-able TV show, the trio also released three Trailer Park Boys movies, including last year's "Trailer Park Boys: Don’t Legalize It."

There are still some tickets available, which range in price from $35 to $55, but you should know they are running out fast. If you don't want to miss out on seeing the "Trailer Park Boys" live, you should definitely grab a seat soon via Fox Theatre's website.

And now, to prepare for the show, here's a supercut of some great Bubbles moments:

Some people like to make broad and obnoxious generalizations. One persistent stereotype in the comedy world is that women aren’t and can’t be funny. Obviously Tucson Improv Movement’s Jessica Peck doesn’t agree and her weekly comedy night is out to prove those completely ridiculous people wrong.

During the month of February, Peck and her troupe, The Riveters, will be performing on Saturday nights in the Best Show Period, a night showcasing female comedians in Tucson. 

"It's really important to showcase not only female talent but also female perspective on comedy and life in general," Peck says. "It's a really unique perspective that often gets overlooked."

Peck's troupe includes six other comedians: Catherine Bartlett, Esther Brilliant, Jessica Greg, Jessica Hill, Shanna Leonard and Claire Horton. However, each event begins with a comedian/storyteller before their improv troupe begins. Although those initial speakers change from event to event, Saturday, Feb. 14's performance will feature Noel Hennessy of the Female StoryTellers and comedian Nancy Stanley.

While the show is named Best Show Period (get it?), Peck says that the event is more than just a bunch of "for women only" jokes about women's issues. Their improv is based off of one word suggestions with last event's being centered around home and the next event likely being something about love, since it is on Valentine's Day.

"It's an overall celebration of female talent in community so it's about celebrating women—not excluding guys," she says. "We want both in the audience. But comedy in general has always been more of a boy's club."

Since it is improv, there's really no telling just where the performance will go thematically, but Peck assures that there will be something for everyone.

"Some people think this isn't for them," Peck says. "Funny is funny regardless of gender."

You can catch Jessica Peck and the Best Show Period at Tucson Improv Movement every Saturday in February starting at 9 p.m. Tickets for each event are $5. Peck says although the show stops at the end of February, it will likely be resurrected in a couple months for another run.

When you think of the word "home," do you think of your house? Do you think of where you grew up? Do you th ink of the people that are or were there? Well, TEDxTucson is bringing speakers to the ZUZI! Theatre in the Historic Y to talk about just that for the "Home is Where the Heart is" presentation.

With three speakers taking different approaches to the topic, there will be a little something for everyone. Speakers include John Wesley Miller (a pioneer in Tucson's green home building), Dominic Alexander (a clinical engineer working on artificial heart devices) and Pablo Peregrina (a folk music troubadour who is also active in border volunteerism).

TEDxTucson's "Home is Where the Heart is" will be at the ZUZI Theatre on Friday, Feb. 27 from 7 until 9 p.m. Tickets are $25 for benefactors and $20 for participants and can be purchased through Eventbrite. 

Living in Tucson, I think it is fascinating that we are two, three, four hours away from some rather interesting towns in Sonora, Mexico. You wake up in the Old Pueblo and by noon you can be eating birria tacos from a street vendor and looking at the remains of Father Kino through a glass.

That's what I did this weekend. 

Early Sunday morning, three friends and I drove down to Madgalena, Sonora, and made pit stops in two other towns in the area, Atil and Tubutama. It's a very easy trip, you just get on the I-19, go through the Mariposa Port of Entry and then take the 15 once you are in Mexico. As long as you stay on that road, you'll see the turns to these small towns.

The first stop we made was in Tubutama. It was deserted. I counted maybe 15 people in the town's plaza, playing corridos (traditional, narrative Mexican songs) through small speakers, and what seemed like a hair styling event. Then we turn to the church, and there is an older woman sitting in there, praying, waiting for mass to start, but we didn't see a priest or any signs of anyone aside from her at the church.

A couple of years ago, there was a shooting in Tubutama, or a massacre I should say, allegedly between two drug cartels. It was reported by residents that in one night about 100 trucks and SUVs made their way into the town. The drug war has definitely been the driving force for people abandoning towns like Tubutama. The more deserted it gets, the better for drug cartels.


Atil was the second stop. Beautiful, colonial, quiet. No one on the streets except for a teacher and two of her colleagues who were leaving a church after mass.

Visit these two if you're into places that haven't changed in decades and if you'd like to see the effects of Mexico's drug and human smuggling, as well as poverty—many of these towns are empty because people have migrated here. They're located very close to Altar, Sáric and Sásabe where there are more coyotes (human smugglers) than there is vegetation. 

Then, there's Magdalena. What a change of scenery. People everywhere, loud music (they had some sort of festival on Sunday with dance groups, singers, food) vendors on the streets, what seemed to be the entire town hanging out by the Magdalena river and the main plaza.

This is interesting: locals like to hang out by the river, and watch smaller cars try to cross through the water and then get stuck in the river. There's music (trios of musicians called taka takas), alcohol and food. You don't need much else. That river had been dry for a while, but recent rains filled it up with a little bit of water recently.

Madgalena is also where you can see the remains of Father Kino. His bones are placed in the same spot where he died, and what was his old parish. That parish is now dust, but he's still there.

Beautiful town.

We are all aware of borderland dangers, but places like Atil, Magdalena, even Tubutama and the others (I don't know about Sásabe, you might not want to go there or Sáric. They are popular drug smuggling corridors) are worth exploring.

Logan Phillips—widely known in the Old Pueblo, the Arizona-Mexico borderlands and beyond as DJ Dirtyverbs—got hooked on cumbia in the early 2000s while living in the central Mexican state of Querétaro. 

Particularly Cumbia sonidera (which has humble beginnings in the poorer barrios of Mexico City) became the unofficial soundtrack of Phillips' Querétaro life and the many other years he orbited through Latin America (including my homeland, Guatemala).

"Playing on the buses in Querétaro, there is something about the guacharaca (a fundamental percussion instrument in cumbia) that just pierces through the noise of the bus and the engine," he says. "It became part of who I was, but when I moved back to Arizona in 2011, I didn't find a space that felt like where I had been."

So he created one.

And for two years now, El Tambó pops up every couple of months or so at Club Congress to celebrate old school cumbia and to be a magnet for the culturally diverse minds that inhabit these desert grounds. But it hasn't been about, "Hey, it's Latin night, everyone else fuck off." It's been a space where Phillips gets to share music that has emotional meaning to his soul with us, no matter where we come from, regardless whether we have heard cumbia before or not, he wants people to visit, get to know each other, have a good time and expand their interests even if that takes us through routes we thought we'd never cross paths with.

"Also, I wanted to create a platform to connect Tucson into this national alternative Latino movement that is happening. There are amazing events in LA, San Francisco...(groups like) Quitapenas...young alternative Latinos with a strong sense of identity," Phillips says over some afternoon coffee at Café Passé. "I really wanted to put Tucson on the map as far as taking advantage of that. Why is the sound of Tucson dusty twang, when we have this huge Mexican population and Chicano population or people like myself who just grew up around that."

What went on to become El Tambó started out with Phillips DJing every Thursday at the then-recently-opened La Cocina. (DJ Herm took on Saturday nights.) That lasted for about three months, then Phillips left town and El Tambó went to sleep for some time. Upon Phillips' return to this land, Congress approached him about bringing some of his flavor there.

"I feel lucky that Hotel Congress would be open to have cumbia sonidera on a Friday night in the middle of downtown, that is a very strong cultural message, especially in the way downtown is changing so fast," he says. "I give credit to Congress and now the Rialto as well, who brought amazing acts like Ana Tijoux, Café Tacuba, Calle 13, amazing, huge acts. Those two spaces are really working hard to advocate for inclusion."

He calls cumbia a genre without borders. Cumbia is created from Canada to the southern-most tip of Argentina, he says.  "Arizona is also part of that experience. Arizona is part of Latin American regardless of the geopolitical borders that there are, through cumbia we can kind of find our heart in that as well...for me it is about a lot more than just a party."

On Friday, Feb. 6, at El Tambó, Phillips is dedicating a set to '90s cumbia sonidera. During our chat, he remembers the first time he scavenged for a cumbia album in the markets, mercados, of Querétaro. He said, "I want cumbia," and they gave him a '90s cumbia CD that featured artists like Los Ángeles Azules, "and I just listened to it over and over again."

"I'm going to play a set of those songs, some of it is pretty heavy cheese, the '90s were a hell of a time for cumbia," he says.

El Tambó is still growing, but Phillips is pretty satisfied with what's been happening. He'd like to keep that "it happens when it happens" vibe, too.

"We need dance floors that really represent who we are as a community in all of our shades and linguistic varieties, it is really important," he says. "A lot of music has taken a very aggressive turn, very misogynistic and materialistic turn. (Although he is a fan of a lot of hip hop, these days) some hip hop has become a de facto pop culture instead of being a niche. Boiled down to its lowest common denominator of message, and I don't feel good dancing to misogynistic lyrics."

It's refreshing to walk into a place and hear songs that are like poems, celebrating life, people close to the land, "to me that is something that resonates a lot more than making money or whatever the theme is."

His long-time friend DJ Herm (an El Tambó virgin) will be joining, as well as the Los Angeles-based, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latin band Cuicani (also El Tambó virgins). 

After this, Phillips is off to the Phoenix Feb. 11 release of his book, Sonoran Strange, and then going on a short tour.

El Tambó starts at 9 p.m. and is $6. For more info, visit the event's Facebook page.