This is not at all how I remember Underdog, and the writing seems pretty sharp and the voiceover work is solid, but I'm not sure I'd let my kids watch this a second time.

“Many of the fantasy and role-playing games are smack in the middle of the occult, and that’s the truth,” says Jack Gracie. Gracie is the spokesman for Tucson’s Christian Awareness Fellowship, a “non-profit interdenominational Christian group primarily devoted to educating the body of Christ concerning the cults and the occult.”

“In these games, kids are taught how to invoke demons and thinks like that. And now it has gone beyond a game.”

Gracie explains how he sees the development of “Satanism” among game players.

“There is really nothing wrong with a certain amount of fantasy,” he says. “It can be creative. But eventually it goes beyond the role-playing games. It gets to the point wehre kids are learning how to kill each other. The game has bushed beyond the Ken and Barbie scene. This stuff is really evil.”

—Tim Vanderpool, in a cover story exploring the hysteria over Dungeons and Dragons

Who Is the Real Howe Gelb?

Playing in multiple bands simultaneously is nothing new for stage-struck musicians who will do almost anything for their art. Certainly Howe Gelb is neither the first nor the best player to go that route. In two quick years, however, he has managed to strike an impressive if somewhat manic balance between his new wave/streetwise Giant Sand (formerly Giant Sandworms) and his desire to play hard but authentic country music, longings that go back to his tenure with Ned Sutton & the Rabbits.

Since moving to Los Angeles in the late 1984 he’s released one album with Giant Sand, one album with The Band of Blacky Ranchette on a French label, has toured bits and pieces of Europe (and is about to depart for the continent again) and has just completed the final mix-down for Heartland, Blacky’s second album.

Unfortunately, the Band of Blacky Ranchette, a legitimate Tucson supergroup with Rainer on slide guitar, Jack Martinez on bass, Tom Larkins on drums and Neil Harry on pedal steel, has only been captured on state a handful of times. Their work, however, on Blacky’s first album shows a group feel for the material that’s managed to transcend whatever excess baggage they may have brought along from their won working bands, be in blues, new wave, hard rock or straight country.

Yes, it will be a little bit of a hassle to have to travel to Disneyland to purchase the Muppet Star Wars toys. Yes, I'm sure at some point I will question when I'll stop getting excited by nostalgic pop culture merchandise. However, it will be all worth it when I have a Link Hogthrob as Han Solo toy on my desk.

From Disney:

Cody shared with me an early mock-up of the packaging featuring Beaker as C-3PO and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew as R2-D2. The other sets will include Link Hogthrob as Han Solo with Fozzy the Bear as Chewbacca, and (my favorite) Sam the Eagle as Obi-Wan Kenobi with Gonzo as Darth Vader complete with his chicken Camilla as a Stormtrooper.

These figures won’t arrive until Fall at Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort. If you are visiting Star Wars Weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, you can see them on display in Jabba’s Hut, the specially-designed merchandise location near Disney’s Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster.

The things you find online when digging for information about old Eurovision competitions on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, Cindy & Bert divorced in 1988, although Cindy continues to perform.

Today's xkcd comic makes me want to grab a blanket and cry myself to sleep under my desk. Terminator 2 was twenty years ago? Just super.

Perhaps you didn't waste large amounts of your youth playing video games in places like Wunderland, the long gone nickel arcade once on Tucson's eastside, but for me, the Flickr photo pool "Growing Up In Arcades" was a fun look back at when another variation on Pac-Man was an exciting gaming development.

I have some affection for comic book superheroes, as any slightly unpopular kid in my age group probably does, but on occasion, I get confused by the sheer number of people in weird outfits with amazing powers. Thankfully, someone gathered the heroes both famous and obscure on to one infographic. I'm particularly interested in learning more about Big Wheel, who apparently drives a giant wheel. Sounds amazing.

[Fast Company]

Living in Seattle at the time, I remember coming to work the morning Zapata's body was discovered lying dead on a street corner in the Central District, and for friends I worked with who were intricately part of the music scene, it was a tough day. When Cobain died almost a year later, those same people, besides cursing Courtney Love, asked "How much more are we supposed to take?"

While Zapata didn't become as famous as Cobain, her death is far more tragic. For 10 years her murder remained unsolved until DNA evidence, saliva found on her body, helped capture her killer. While Cobain left behind a young daughter, perhaps the only other tragedy is that his legacy that hasn't propelled good rock and punk into the mainstream as we experienced back in the 1990s (No, Linkin Park, or anything emo, like My Chemical Romance, is not the kind of spawn Nirvana deserved).

Here is a snippet from the Washington Post on Cobain:

In a recent Rolling Stone article, Cobain discussed his troubled marriage to singer Courtney Love of the female punk band Hole and the joy of fathering his daughter, Frances Bean, now a year old. He also talked about his heroin addiction, the weight of sudden fame and fortune, and his discomfort at being a symbol of his generation. Small and slight despite a ferocious onstage presence, Cobain seemed ill-equipped for such a role.

"If there was a Rock Star 101 course, I would have liked to take it," he said. "It might have helped me."

Among young music fans, Cobain's death was felt as viscerally as John Lennon's or Bob Marley's. More than any current rock performer, he bore the burden of being anointed by the media as a spokesman for the angst-ridden twentysomething generation.

All three members of Nirvana came from broken homes. Cobain, son of an auto mechanic and secretary who divorced when he was 8, did not speak to his father for eight years — until signing his breakthrough contract with Geffen in 1990. As a shy teenager, he became enthralled with punk rock and began collecting records and playing guitar, though he saw himself as a rhythm guitarist — out of the limelight. When Cobain was still a teenager, his father had forced him to pawn his guitar and join the Navy; instead Cobain reclaimed the guitar and left home.

"The divorce, the violence, the drugs, the diminished opportunities for an entire generation, that is so crucial to the sound of their music and the success of their music," biographer Azerrad said recently. "The band translated that pain and anger and confusion into musical sound waves very directly that hit a nerve among a large amount of kids who had a similar experience."

"None of you will ever know my intentions," Cobain had painted onto a wall of his home in Seattle not long ago, a magazine writer noted in a recent profile in Details magazine. It seemed an apt epitaph.

The destruction of the longstanding DeAnza Drive-In last April left yet another hole in the Tucson landscape, a hole frequently filled by new car lots, used car lots and Taco Bell.

• Photo Ryn Gargulinski
• DeAnza Drive-In was dismantled in April 2010 but the screen was saved to create a renewed Cactus Drive-In.

But fear not, nostalgia buffs, as a new drive-in is still in the works, with the latest update bringing the best news yet.

Negotiations are brewing between Tucson mover and shaker Charlie Spillar, the driving force behind the preservation of the drive-in, and a guy who actually wants a drive-in on his property.

“It has a dream of his for many years,” Spillar said in an e-mail. Although the mystery man’s location and identity has not yet been disclosed, we like him. We like him a lot.

The theater that’s primed to open, Cactus Drive-In, is not new per se. It will feature DeAnza’s former screens and the original moniker of the drive-in on 22nd Street and Alvernon Way when it opened March 13, 1949.

“The property owner is very supportive of a drive-in on his property and is very happy to work with us,” Spillar wrote in a Facebook Cactus Drive-In Theater Project message. “Unfortunately there are many obstacles to overcome as yet because of zoning, neighborhood acceptance, etc. but the outlook at this time does look very positive.”

Break out the popcorn. Kudos to the property owner, and even more to Spillar, who is as tenacious as a pit bull on a rubber chicken when it comes to preserving Tucson’s kitschy history.