The Loft Cinema is loading their calendar now that they’re back to hosting in-person events, and their latest announcement continues one of their most beloved series: the Cat Video Fest is back!

This new addition of the festival features a collection of funny cat videos curated from across the world, and helps raise funds for local cats in need. The festival includes approximately 100 cat videos, and at less than a minute each on average, there’s plenty of opportunity to rapidly see all types of feline fun.

A portion of ticket sales from these screenings will benefit Tucson’s Hermitage No-Kill Cat Shelter and HOPE Animal Shelter. The Cat Video Fest 2021 is only available in theaters. The Fest runs from Friday, July 23 through Wednesday, July 28 (except Monday), on the Loft's big screen. $10.

Read more on the Loft's website. 

TUCSON – It’s been a year since the Bighorn Fire blackened broad swaths of the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. Now, a recent tour of Catalina State Park and Mount Lemmon reveals sprigs of new growth peeking through the forest floor. Wildlife, including bighorn sheep, are returning. Life in Summerhaven, a tiny community near the summit of Mount Lemmon, has returned to normal.

But at a time when more than 20 wildfires are burning across drought-wracked Arizona, the memory of – and respect for – fire is never far away.

“The mountain was lit up like the Fourth of July, and it was very startling to many people – scary, in fact,” Mark Hart, public information officer for the Arizona Game & Fish Department, recalled on the news media tour.

The fire began June 5, 2020, after lightning struck the Pusch Ridge Wilderness. It burned for 48 days, growing into one of the biggest fires in Arizona history at nearly 120,000 acres.

Residents of the Southwest are intimately familiar with the devastating effects of fire on homes and businesses, but Hart said wildlife in the rugged Catalina range can benefit from such events as the Bighorn Fire.

“It clears dense vegetation, promotes new growth and, indeed, can alter the landscape in many positive ways,” he said.

Harkins Theatres is hosting Tune Squad vs. Goon Squad Space Jam: A New Legacy Special Event on July 17 at Tucson Spectrum 18.

For only $12, guests get a ticket to see the movie, a small popcorn, a mini basketball and a part in the Tune vs. Goon face-off. Guests can wear orange to show their Tune love or purple to cheer on the Goons.

NBA future Hall of Famer LeBron James goes on an epic adventure with Bugs Bunny with the animated/live-action event Space Jam: A New Legacy.

When LeBron and his young son, Dom, are trapped in a digital space by a rogue A.I., LeBron must get them home safe by leading Bugs, Lola Bunny and the whole gang of notoriously undisciplined Looney Tunes to victory over the A.I.'s digitized champions on the court: a powered-up roster of professional basketball stars as you've never seen them before.

To purchase tickets, visit Tucson Spectrum 18 or Harkins.com.

State lawmaker Randy Friese, a Democrat elected to his fourth term in the Arizona House of Representatives last year, is in the race for the retiring Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick’s seat. (The district lines are scheduled to be redrawn before the 2022 election by Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission.) Friese is a trauma surgeon who saved Gabby Giffords' life on Jan. 8, 2011. Also in the race: Friese’s fellow state lawmakers Sen. Kirsten Engel and Rep. Daniel Hernandez. (The Weekly will post Q&As with the other candidates later this week.)

What makes you the person for the job?

I guess it's just a sense of service I've had throughout my career with the Navy, a teacher at the medical school, a legislator who is serving my fourth term in the Arizona House of Representatives. So I think it'd be an opportunity to broaden my service to the community. I've always felt that being a trauma surgeon was community service. I looked at my legislative services as broadening that and this just takes it a step further.

What do you make of this audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County?

I find it dangerous. Very, very troubling. The people who are running the audit are not trustworthy, don't have the experience. I think Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said a few weeks ago that the Dominion machines now need to be returned and new ones need to be released before another election. It's just unfounded and dangerous.

Were you disappointed that the proposal for a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was blocked by a Senate filibuster?

Of course. I don't understand why the senators would block a proposal that was bipartisan to start with. The commission was created with a nod towards the requests of the House Republicans that were on the developing team. The subpoena power was bipartisan, as I understand it, and there were certain things that were put in there to make people comfortable with the ability to get to the facts. This country deserves more information on how that developed, what the intentions were. We need a lot of the answers and that commission would have gotten there in a way that would make people comfortable that all points of view were respected and taken into consideration

How do you grade Congress's response to the pandemic?

I think a lot of the response to the pandemic lay in the executive branch agencies. I think Congress's response to the pandemic was voting for the funding through the Cares Act I and II and the American Rescue Plan. I think those were necessary. It was a lot of spending, but we needed to get aid and help to the American people and small businesses. And so I would look at Congress's response and probably say that it was a B-plus, getting aid out in those different plans. I would grade the executive branch a little differently until the new team came in.

How do you think the Affordable Care Act could be improved?

The intention, when the Affordable Care Act was initially passed, was to continue to work on it. In 2010, when it was passed, I believe that the Democrats in charge changed the scope of the Affordable Care Act to try to entice some Republicans to vote for it. High-risk corridors, reinsurance, those types of things, were put off to try to get some Republicans to support it. And that didn't happen. And I believe the concept was to address those in the future years. And they were unable to because the intent was then, under the new majority Republican majority—I don't know how many times they voted to try to repeal it. So I think there are things we can do to broaden the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, We need more young, healthy people using the Affordable Care Act and the exchanges to get their health care to sort of spread that risk out. And that costs, right? The more young healthy people you have buying insurance that aren't using it, the more money is available to pay for those that are older and less healthy that require the health care. So I think there are ways we can try to improve it. Absolutely. Starting with those high-risk corridors.

What did you think of the Biden administration's infrastructure proposal?

WASHINGTON – For a mostly red state, Arizona has a lot of blue-state company when it comes to states ranked by electric vehicle ownership, according to recent government data.

Arizona had 28,770 registered electric vehicles as of June, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, the seventh-highest number among states. When ownership is measured per 1,000 residents, Arizona inches up a notch to sixth place, with just over four electric vehicles per 1,000 people.

That rate put Arizona just behind Oregon and Colorado and just ahead of Nevada and Vermont. California was in the lead by far, with 425,300 registered electric vehicles, or one for every 10.7 residents.

Arizona EV enthusiasts welcomed the ranking, which they said they have seen reflected in steady increases in group membership, but said the state can do better.

“Arizona is growing by leaps and bounds in major areas, but still struggling out there in the hinterlands,” said Jerry Asher, vice president of the Tucson Electric Vehicle Association.

He and others said the biggest challenge in Arizona, as in much of the country, is the lack of readily available charging stations for electric vehicles.

Currently, there are 385 public fast-charging plugs and 1,448 non-fast-charging plugs in the state, said Diane Brown, executive director with the Arizona Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. And many of those “are not available 24 hours a day, often making EV charging less convenient to the public,” she said.

It’s no surprise to hear last year’s monsoon was wimpy — only 0.03 inches of rain away from being the driest Tucson monsoon ever recorded, according to the National Weather Service. And while rising heat is relatively predictable, climate change seems to have a less linear impact on rainfall, with monsoons ranging from weak to powerful over the past decade. Luckily, this year’s monsoon is off to a much better start than last year.

We’re less than a week into July 2021, and Tucson has already seen more rain than in the entire month of July 2020. The National Weather Service reports that we've already seen half an inch of rain in the first few days of July, beating the 0.46 inches of rain seen throughout all of July 2020, as measured at the Tucson airport.

The contrast is even stronger when comparing Junes. This June saw 0.17 inches of rain, compared to none last year.

Since 2008, the National Weather Service has defined the monsoon as rainfall between June 15 and Sept. 30. Prior to 2008, the monsoon start date was determined when the average daily dewpoint was 54 degrees or greater for three consecutive days.