A teenage girl walks into a classroom every day, usually a few minutes late. She then puts her head down on the desk and falls asleep. When the teacher asks the kid why she even bothers to show up at all, the girl explains that she has two kids of her own (who are being…
A few things to touch upon; let’s call it pre-autumn cleaning: • Back in the heyday of Saturday Night Live, there was a vicious skit that I believe starred Bill Murray. (Hey, it was a long time ago.) It involved a disgraced political candidate giving his concession speech on election night. Instead of being at campaign…
Here’s my Christmas gift list. You’re all welcome: New UA football coach Rich Rodriguez—A clock with a loud-ass alarm that goes off after the Wildcat players have participated in 20 hours of offseason workouts each week. The only thing worse than a team with a losing record is a team with a losing record that’s on…
This weekend, just a couple of days after having joined their fellow Americans in celebrating Thanksgiving, Catholics from all over the United States are going to look to the heavens, arms outstretched, and say in unison, “What in the hell’s going on here?!” For nearly 2,000 years, the Catholic Mass was celebrated in Latin. The…
Former President Bill Clinton warns that the Republicans are going to try to use voter-ID scare tactics and political skullduggery in future elections. He sees these moves as, at the very least, the first step in a slippery slope toward curtailing voter turnout among minorities and lower-income Americans (who generally tend to vote Democratic). The…
Watch out, folks! Arizona’s Republicans are on the warpath. They’re not out to gut the state’s public schools; they’ve already done that. They’re not talking out of both sides of their mouths, on one side whining about a federal “nanny state” while on the other telling cities how they can go about their business; they’ve…
Tucson city voters: Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in the middle of a Coen brothers movie, where the good guys are hopelessly flawed, and the bad guys (with the exception of Anton Chigurh) are far more inept than evil, prompting the victims to laugh even as they’re being ripped off? After spending the…
A couple of weeks back, I wrote that albums (8-tracks, actually) by Average White Band and Earth, Wind and Fire helped me get through college where the only two local radio stations played American country and Mexican country. I apparently struck a chord (there’s no way around that phrase), because I got a bunch of…
This column is about the Phoenix Suns, so if you’re one of those people who focus on granola or worry about Japanese radiation drifting over Tucson, you can look elsewhere for a kindred spirit. However, I will weigh in: granola, good; radiation, bad. I went to a Suns game to check on Channing Frye, one…
I was at a social gathering over the holidays, and the topic of the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act came up. It had just been defeated in the United States Senate. (Actually, in the arcane workings of that body, the Senate voted in favor of it, but not by enough, effectively…
