It's 104 degrees outside and your air conditioner is broken. What do you do? Luckily, the innovative folks at HouseholdHacker have devised an AC that will save you some money and give the kids something to do this summer vacation. This $8 AC is so crafty it would make Macgyver jealous.

All you're going to need is a Styrofoam cooler, ice*, one or two dryer vents and a desk fan.


Don't be afraid to send us some pictures if you decide to craft one of your own.

Looking for a reason to move to Tucson? The Tucson Young Professionals are hosting a #thisistucson Launch Party from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 22, at the Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch Resort, 5501 N Hacienda Del Sol Road. .

#thisistucson is a city-wide social media campaign that allows people to express why they live in and love the Old Pueblo. For instance, I would say "The Tucson Weekly, and Carnitas, Duh," but no one asked me.

General Admission tickets are $25, and they include appetizers and drink coupons. Click here or the flier above for more information.

Your prayers have been answered, nerds. J.J. Abrams sent a message from the Star Wars set to tease us, and formally announce the Star Wars: Force for Change initiative. This is an effort to raise funds and awareness for UNICEF's Innovation Labs and its innovative projects benefiting children in need.

Star Wars: Force for Change wants to create a brighter tomorrow for thousands of kids and families around the world. With your help and creativity we can develop innovative solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. By acting as a Force for Change, your donation to support UNICEF’s Innovation Labs and other innovative work for children will fund dozens of life-changing projects like these in communities across the globe: • Portable, solar-powered learning kits being built in China, Uganda, and Burundi to ensure every child in the world has access to relevant, quality learning. • Mobile phone application developed in South Sudan and Uganda, and used in the Philippines, that helps reunite children with their families after an emergency. • A text messaging solution in Zambia that helps families receive infant medical test results from clinics, in half the time, through mobile phones. Join us! Help create a brighter tomorrow for thousands of kids and families. Be a force for change.

Every contribution offers exclusive Star Wars memorabilia AND A CHANCE TO BE AN EXTRA IN THE NEW STAR WARS FILM, and the proceeds go to a really good cause. Incentives include concept art, Episode VII script signed by J.J. Abrams and limited edition light hilt. Basically, this is a Kickstarter that doesn't suck.

Click here to win bragging rights at every comic-con, ever.

Grassroots Growing

7 p.m. Wednesday, May 21

The Loft Cinema, 3222 E. Speedway Blvd.

322-5638; www.loftcinema.com/film/open-sesame-the-story-of-seeds 



Do you know where your seeds came from?

While plenty of people pay attention to what they eat, tracking where the food comes from isn't as common an activity. Even less so is learning the origin of the seeds being used to create certain food items.

The seeds that make a good amount of the food we eat is the subject of a new documentary, Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds, that is holding a special screening at the Loft. The event will also feature a Q&A session involving local seed experts.

Together, the film and discussion group aim to raise awareness of what's going on in the world of seeds, an industry that's become more and more dominated by genetically modified organisms (known as GMOs) and is driving out the original organic seeds.

“This is very much a local issue,” said director Sean Kaminsky, who was inspired by his grandmother's love of seed collecting to make the documentary. “It's something that's been taken away from the local platform, but it needs to be a local issue.”

Kaminsky said the film does side with people who are championing for a return to more organic growing. That direction brought him to Tucson to film people enrolled in the Seed School, a program created by local nonprofit Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S).

He said groups like NS/S are part of a small, but growing movement to empower people to take seeds back into their own hands.

The Q&A session will feature several local seed experts, including NS/S founders Bill McDorman and Belle Starr as well as Jeau Allen and George Bradley of the Southwest Seed Exchange.

Tickets to Open Sesame are $9.25 for adults, $7.50 for military, students and teachers, $6.25 for seniors and children and $5.75 for Loft members.

– Written by Brian J. Pedersen

Heroes In Picture Form

4 to 9 p.m. Saturday, May 17
Borderlands Brewing Co., 119 E. Toole Ave.

820-4412; www.ziembaphoto.com 

The emotions surrounding an event involving first responders is often hard to describe, as police, firefighters and other emergency personnel race to save lives and protect the public.

But thanks to great access and a keen eye for imagery, Roni Ziemba has turned depicting what goes on inside the yellow tape into an art form. An art form, she says, that fits perfectly with her adrenaline-fueled personality.

“I am definitely a risk taker,” said Ziemba, whose latest collection of photos of Tucson-area first responders, Stronger Than Steel, was recently released. “I'm an adventurer. I've always lived on the edge, so this is a perfect venue for me. And visually, it's just a very cool thing.”

This is Ziemba's third book of images of local firefighters, police and emergency responders, the first of which came out in 2011 after she was asked to hold a “small art show” of her photos that became the biggest fundraising arm of that year's Heroes Day event.

A second book came out in 2012, while this latest 100-page tome features pictures from 20 different agencies taken over the last 18 months.

Ziemba said the key to her work has been developing strong relationships with the first responders, to the point now that she has a fire pager for the Northwest Fire District and is working on a similar arrangement with the Tucson Fire Department.

She has dealt with other agencies, too, including Tucson Police's SWAT, noting that “whenever they're going to blow up something, they call me.”

The launch party for this latest book will also serve as a fundraiser to help with the 2015 volume, as proceeds from book sales—the glossy, hard-bound coffee talk book costs $75—as well as from raffles at the event will go right into photographing scenes in the next year.

Borderlands, the launch party hosts, is also donating 10 percent of beer sales to the American Red Cross. — Written by Brian J. Pedersen

It's been five years since the Tucson Citizen printed its last publication. After 139 years of news, the daily was taken by the grim economic times that loomed in 2009. Gannett employees were laid off or forced into retirement. Some went on to do bigger and better things, or have been forgotten altogether. The Citizen tried to operate as a daily news blog headed by Mark Evans, but was recently shut down and converted into an archive.

Sadly, the journalists and photographers will live on in clippings that collect dust in the vacant Citizen offices that I have had the pleasure to rummage through before I jumped ship to the Weekly.

I used to cross the bridge from the Star's offices and pretend to look for a Citizen story just so I can imagine what it could have been like to work in the once busy newsroom. I would walk around the empty cubicles and try to piece together what section worked where. I would sit in the old, quite archive room and read stories from Tucson's past.

So I'll have to live vicariously through Tucson's renaissance man Daniel Buckley:

On my first day I came in wearing a suit and bow tie. There was no reception area like the paper would acquire later on. Instead you walked into the newsroom and straight into a row of folks that worked for the paper. I knew I was to report to Bruce Johnston but had no idea where in this maze of desks that might be.

And so I walked up to the closest person to the door and said hello to Pat Head – a rather imposing black woman who looked up from what she was doing and cheerlessly asked, “What the fuck do you want?” Before I could answer she yelled at the sports section, “Corky! There’s some kid in a bow tie. Must be for you!”

I explained who I was and what I was doing there and she pointed behind her without glancing toward the features section of the paper. I went back and got settled in with my first editor, Bruce Johnston, who was one of the greatest people I’ve ever worked with in journalism. He made me feel completely at home, and like no question was a dumb one.

Luckily, Buckley  has been promoting the five-year reunion on Facebook. Buckley is encouraging all the Citizen staffers to regroup at 5 p.m. at The Shanty, 401 E 9th St.

SEE people who used to work there, including ME! EXPERIENCE the joy of adult beverages with RECOVERING JOURNALISTS! Seriously, hoist a beverage with us in celebration of a place that brought Tucson its news from 1870 until 2009, employing along the way many talented writers, photographers, design people, editors, and a couple old poops. HEAR ANGEL TRUMPETS AND DEVIL TROMBONES! YOU ARE INVITED!

Bulldog Mariachi & Folklórico w. Los Lobos from Daniel Buckley on Vimeo.

If you haven't already, please take a moment to check out Buckley's video he shot at the Los Lobos featuring the Bulldog Mariachi & Folklórico, from White Elementary School concert at the Rialto. It was a beautiful and inspiring night for Tucson. Honestly, I'm tearing just thinking about it!

The Tucson Comic-Con is only six months away, so it's never early to start promoting. Mike Olivares, TCC con director, plans on having monthly mini-comic-cons —beginning in May—leading up to the actual event on Saturday, Nov. 8 and Sunday, Nov. 9. The first all day event is taking place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 15, at Maker House, 283 N. Stone Ave.

There will be panels on the medium and cosplay. Local comic book retailers and cosplay groups will be parading around. Tucson based funny book artists and writers will be tabling at the event. There will be a drink and draw session, of course.

Best part is the outdoor bike-in movie at 8 p.m. The feature for the evening will be Tank Girl:

Second Saturdays Downtown gets going tonight at 5 p.m. and this month happens to mark the event's four year anniversary—what's proven to be a popular and important revival of what those stricken with Moldy Pueblo love remember as Downtown Saturday Nights.

Lot's of great entertainment tonight, like Tucson's Japanese ensemble drumming group, Odaiko Sonoran; Tucson Circus Arts stilt dance, Mel Rivers formerly from the Drifter; and some desert surf rock from Shrimp Chaperone.

Being that it's Mother's Day weekend, do me a favor, and between all the activity, stroll on in to the Screening Room, 127 East Congress, for the '80s Music Video Sing Along, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. My fantabulous middle-schooler son organized the event to benefit Pima County animal shelters and celebrate what he loves most (next to Marvel)—80s music. It's his Bar Mitzvah project, and you are welcome to come in, cool off, help out and sing along.

From the Facebook page invite:

Sing along to your favorite '80s music videos at The Screening Room, downtown Tucson during 2nd Saturdays Downtown Tucson. (Happy Fourth Anniversary 2nd Saturdays) Costume contest, karaoke contest and family fun. $3 suggested donation and/or a bag of dog or cat food. All donations and proceeds benefit local Pima County animal shelters.

... Bring the kiddos and the grannies — well especially the grannies who remember the words to "99 Luftballons" And dancing of all ages, and abilities, encouraged — super encouraged.

Here's some good news if you like free music and concerts.

Prom Body is planning on embarking on a summer tour along the west coast, but they need a van for this ambitious journey. So, there will be a quasi-fundraiser to help raise some dinero for the aspiring four-man-band tonight at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St. The opening acts scheduled to play include Discos, Jacob Hom, Pete Fine and comedy group Moist Noize.

Doors open at 8 p.m. No cover charge if you're 21 and older, so get a babysitter.

Prom Body will be headlining the show and they demand you learn yourself the words to the new song from their upcoming album Naughty by Natural.

You can listen and download the desert pop band's latest single "My Paradise" after the jump:

If you're wondering why it's been hotter than a Calvin Klein model lately, I might have an explanation. I'm not a meteorologist but I think it has something to do with Antonio Sabato Jr.'s presence within our metropolitan area.

The General Hospital actor is currently filming his new special Fix it and Finish it (which you might remember from our post looking for places for Sabato to fix and finish a while back). Sabato Jr. has been sharing some of his Tucson experience on Twitter and Instagram, and it seems positive. So, yay Tucson!

Here's a video he shared on his Facebook page:

You will be able to meet the once and current heartthrob at Casino Del Sol on Saturday, May 10. The meet and greet starts at 2 p.m. There will be drink specials, giveaways, free massages and manicures from award-winning Hiapsi Spa. No word on whether he'll be wearing a shirt or not.