University of Arizona Class of 2013, congratulations! After 4 (or 5, or 3, or whatever) long years, you've finally reached the end of the road, which might lead to battles with unemployment, a job you dislike, grad school, or any number of possibilities — why, the only thing that's a virtual certainty is your crippling student loans. Hooray?

Actually, that's not true, as it's virtually certain that you had one of the cooler graduation ceremonies in the country last week, with the giant video/light/fireworks show that took place in the recently-remodeled Arizona Stadium:

UA's undergraduate commencement held Friday screened a video mashup that featured photos of students edited together with scenes from music videos, movies, TV and major news events that occurred during the last four years, set to a soundtrack that included Ellie Goulding, among others. The students also wore LED bracelets that lighted up on cue.

...

The university collected photos for the Jumbotron display by asking students to tag their Instagram photos with #beardownlife. They also arranged photo booths where students could pose together.

And while some schools frown upon students decorating their caps, UA invited students to exercise their creativity, even asking graduates to share photos of their skills.

Check the video out below — if nothing else, it's a hell of a way to send off folks who invested a whole lot into their school. Plus, fireworks!

[Huffington Post]

• disneyparks.disney.go.com

We gladly gave Disney a fair bit of grief the other day when we rained judgement upon their "brilliant" attempt to legally own Dia de los Muertos, but we're gladly willing to praise the House of Mouse too — such as when they do brilliant things, like offer people the opportunity to become cannon-fodder Imperial Stormtroopers!

From the Disney Parks blog:

The 10-minute experience uses the world’s highest-resolution, single-shot 3D face scanner created by our Imagineering scientists with Disney Research labs. That captured image is later sent to a high resolution 3D printer to create the figurine. The completed figurine will arrive within 7-8 weeks after the experience if shipping domestically (it takes a little longer if shipping internationally). Guests will also receive either a Carbon-Freeze Me light-up band or a collector button depending upon which option they choose.

Now, as noted above, the figurine will take roughly two months to show up at your door, and it'll cost $100 — but it's an incredibly detailed replica of your face and head on a Stormtrooper body. It's not something I'm willing to go to Florida and drop $100 for, but it's something I find immensely cool to a nigh-unreasonable degree.

Oh, that's an important thing to note, too: You can only experience this fun bit of future-tech-used-for-toys at Disney World in Florida. Sorry, folks who have already planned their D-Land trips.

Of course, if you're interested in going the captured-smuggler-frozen-in-carbonite route, but no one out there is lame enough to actually think that's better than being a Stormtrooper, right?

Rapper and ALL-CAPS TWITTER USER Tyler, the Creator recently rolled through Tucson's Rialto Theatre as part of a tour with fellow Odd Future collective member Earl Sweatshirt and other members of the Odd Future crew. His notes from the tour?

IN N OUT IS FUCKING BUTT WEAK THIS SHIT IS NASTY

— Tyler, The Creator (@fucktyler) May 1, 2013

Well, there's no accounting for taste I guess.

Regardless, Mr. the Creator and his crew swung by Staring Without Caring, the tattoo studio of local artist and Tucson Weekly cover subject Isaiah Toothtaker to get some ink — you can see the results of the session below.

Vinnie's Pizzeria, all the way out in Brooklyn, New York, has one of the best daily special boards that I've yet come across, replete with clever puns, great artwork, and some of the most intriguing, out-there pizza combinations that I've seen in recent memory (yes, even more intriguing than No Anchovies' gourmet combinations, which can get a bit wacky at times).

The art on the boards is sometimes a pop-cultural one-off, such as the odd late '90s cartoon character; occasionally, there's a theme week, as when Vinnie's counted down to the new season of Game of Thrones; and when the time calls for it, it's occasionally a farewell.

But my recent favorite? The callbacks to ABC's TGIF comedy block:

• specialbored.tumblr.com

Check out more of the artwork at Special Bored; there's a few more of my favorites below the jump.

This video comes from a trio of ladies out of the University of Saskatchewan, where Sarah Zelinski, Kayla Hatzel and Dylan Lambi-Raine created this video for their Women and Gender Studies class. In it, they examine the way in which women are sexualizied in advertising media, and question how such ads affect violence against women.

Then, they flip the script entirely, swapping men for women in the ads.

Check it out. If you just want to check the gender role swap, roll the video forward to about 2:40 (though I recommend you watch the whole thing to get a better grasp of what they're talking about.)

I have to say I'm somewhat surprised, but Janos Wilder, who might be the one "contestant" in the Tucson Weekly Celebrity Showdown who cares at all about the results, rolls into the finals with a dominating win over Amanda Beard (72% to 28%) to meet Gabrielle Giffords in the final (who dispatched Richard Carmona in a closer vote than I had imagined, 57% - 43%).

So here we go: Tucson's culinary soul vs. Tucson's hero.

Janos beat Chuck Bowden, Mark Kelly, Savannah Guthrie, and now Beard.

Giffords emerged triumphant over Bud Foster, Mr. An, Chuck George, and finally Carmona.

Voting runs until Wednesday April 1st and then we'll have a winner. It took long enough, but I'm glad we could work together to finally resolve the burning question of who is Tucson's most important celebrity.

The incredible run of Lisa Frank comes to an end as she loses to Richard Carmona by ten percentage points, but Janos Wilder continues to dominate our Celebrity Showdown, taking out Savannah Guthrie by over 300 votes. So now we're down to four: Amanda Beard vs. Janos and Gabrielle Giffords vs. Richard Carmona. Vote now to determine our Showdown finalists.

This video is currently blowing up on YouTube, but it's honestly one of the better quick-hitting absurd videos I've seen in some time.

Enjoy.

There's been some discussion on social media about our comics lately, especially the ones not by local authors, so I thought it might be time to find out what you, the reader, think about these strips in the first place.

You might notice that a few strips aren't included in the survey. The local strips (Hoopleville, Red Meat, Random Shots and K. Rat) will likely be in the Weekly as long as the authors keep creating them. In fact, we're definitely looking to add another local strip or two. Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World is so good, it feels like his strip is just an alt-weekly given at this point. Mild Abandon is still new and, frankly, I find it hilarious, so it's safe.

Also, I'd love to know what strips you enjoy that we're not currently running. Is there a particularly brilliant webcomic we've missed? Something another alt-weekly has that we don't? We'll leave the survey up for a month or so and see what we learn. Thanks in advance for your help.

Take the survey here!

This isn't exactly a huge deal, but it's cool nonetheless:

Comic genius/all-around funny guy Louis C.K. is currently doing an AMA (their version of a community question-and-answer session) on Reddit right now, in support of his new stand-up special "Oh My God," which was filmed in Phoenix and is running on HBO this weekend.

And now I know what I'm doing for the rest of the afternoon. Sorry, people who pay me money to do stuff.

Check out an outtake from his most recent special, Live at the Beacon Theatre below — and be warned, it's pretty NSFW.