Not that this excuses falsifying a police report and faking a kidnapping, but it takes an impressive amount of skill to duct tape yourself to your car's steering wheel.

Congrats to our Pac-10 brethren from Corvalis, who are the national champions in baseball.

While it's a bummer Arizona (and my alma mater, Stanford, the team Oregon State steamrolled in the super regional) didn't advance (or in Arizona's case, even make the postseason), you've got to be happy the Pac-10 took the crown. And if our fave teams couldn't do it, who better than Oregon State, arguably the least-successful school historically in the Pac-10?

Ya gotta be happy for them. Congrats, Oregon State.

I’ve been on vacation for the past 5 days in Northern California, and the weather wasn’t as cool as I would’ve liked—it was in the high 90s in parts of the East Bay, but there were layers of fog coating the horizon driving southbound on Highway 1. That was refreshing, even though the hairpin turns were not. 

While on vacation, I didn’t read any newspapers (except the East Bay Express, an alternative paper) and didn’t watch any television; a vacation from the news is just as important as soaking in mother nature’s eye candy. I don’t even know if the Internet has been saved. 

There was a bill pending that would allow horse off-track betting locally, which could have forced Tucson Greyhound Park to close because of the revenue loss. For some of us who own greyhounds, let’s just say we were tap dancing curbside, hoping the track would close. Although greyhounds are built to run, they are not built to live in stacked cages 22 hours a day—and not to run in 107-degree heat. 

Arizona is one of 14 states where greyhound racing is still legal. Are Arizonans barbarians? 

When I adopted my dogs in 1998 and 1999, most dogs who retired from the track were between 3 1/2 and 5 years old. Today, they’re mostly 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years old. Dogs are over-bred and wash out so quickly, many with broken bones. TGP retires 600 dogs a year, and the local adoption groups are scrambling as fast as they can. The Phoenix track retires 700 dogs a year. 

The bill was removed from voting which—for now—means the TGP remains open for business. The TGP is owned by a Florida-New York corporation, so the revenue doesn’t really stay here (but for the people of South Tucson, it does provide low-paying jobs and pays property taxes which support some of their services).

Thankfully, greyhound racing continues to wane as most people want to go to a glitzy gaming casino instead of a run-down track whose foodservice facilities recently got dinged by the health department.  

If you give a rat's patootie about local music, then you should be at the Rialto Theatre this Wednesday night (June 28) for the 13th annual TAMMIES awards.

Here's the thing: This is a free event with one sole purpose: To celebrate all the good that's in the Tucson music scene. We'll be giving out almost 50 readers' choice and critics' choice awards—in an entertaining, fast-paced fashion, of course—in between performances by The Deludes, The Drakes, the Bad News Blues Band, Se Salen, Nick Luca and George Howard.

Let me say it again: The whole point of this FREE event is to celebrate local music. Nobody—the Weekly included—makes much, if any, money off of the TAMMIES. Really. We do it because we believe in what our local musicians do.

And seeing as I am the poor schlub who had to count all the freakin' readers' choice ballots, I REALLY WANT A LOT OF PEOPLE TO SHOW UP, DAMMIT.

So, be there. Wednesday night. Rialto Theatre. 7:30 p.m. FREE!

Some guy by the name of Charles S. sent this to my Noshing e-mail, but since it's appropriate to the current discussion about the media, I'm putting it up here.

Dan Rather leaves, and the profession he helped elevate chases him out with Enquirer-worthy snipes. What were the headlines yesterday? "Rather Departs Under Cloud of Scandal," "Dan Rather Finally Quits Having Stayed Too Long." I think journalists have forgotten that before Rather and his generation, the media was a propaganda branch of government, a ventriloquist at the service of the party in power. Rather and his cohorts made journalism a force to be reckoned with. They actually told people things that mattered. They were arrogant, even haughty, because the government they went after had shamelessly abused power (kinda like today), and in order to take on those challenges, you have to be rather fat in the head. You certainly can't accuse the press today of being fat in the head. I'd say submissive would be an apt description.

And perhaps that's the reason for all the nasty remarks as Rather fades. Today, radio, TV news and print journalism exist as a Bush Administration mouthpiece. Now that the last giant of the profession has departed, the media can properly return to sniveling for a seat at the table.

The interesting thing about this uproar and its media coverage is that it's probably given Don Goldwater legitimacy as a candidate. I mean, John McCain and Jim Kolbe are talking about this nobody now, which is something they really weren't doing before.

Let's face it: The only thing Don Goldwater has going for him is his last name. At least a candidate like Len Munsil has credibility—Munsil actually done something political before. Yes, what Munsil has done has been vile and hateful, but at least it was something.

I’m so happy that I can’t drive right now.

With my current residence placing me smack dab in the middle of County Supervisor Ann Day’s River Road nightmare, I only need to close my eyes and listen while my driver du jour bitches as we traverse a craggy obstacle course of dirt, temporary asphalt and construction workers.

Want even more fun? Just wait until it rains.

It all started with the county allowing River Road between Hacienda del Sol Road and Campbell Avenue to disintegrate into a lunar landscape, forcing drivers to jack steering wheels right and then left at the last minute—unless the searing afternoon sun blinded the drivers, leaving tires, rims and struts hapless to the mouths of a plethora of jagged road monsters.

Then came the construction cones, the weather-beaten Ashton Construction trucks and the dreadfully yellow earthmovers, along with sun-brewed traffic flaggers who have the nerve to grin and laugh at drivers as frustration levels become equivalent to daytime temperatures.

I remember talking to Ann Day about the mega project back in 2002, which she loosely described as the great missing piece to the puzzle that would allow her constituents to move about the area more freely. Boy, Ann, I am happy my tax dollars bought you that $37,000 Dodge Durango more than a year ago! (Another well reported fact by the late Chris Limberis from the April 21, 2005 Skinny.) Maybe you can give me a ride to work next time, and together, we can experience the River Road adventure.  

I’d love to hear what you have to say when we’ve completed the course.

This story was funny in the first place, but it was his nickname that had me doing a spittake.

Our friend and former colleague Walt Nett, now doing the journalism thang in Fresno, recently alerted us to this, from Media Matters for America, which calls itself a "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

Maybe Ann Coulter will be finally recognized as the frothy, inacurate plagiarist that she is. Or maybe not. In any case, it's nice that the Weekly and Walt are being recognized for the reporting he did on her.

Arizona's legislators aren't the only ones suffering from flag fever. According to the Boston Phoenix:

The United States is on the verge of joining China, Cuba, and Iran as the only nations in the world where “desecrating” the flag is a national crime.

Maybe we should tip them off to the importance of posting the Constitution on classroom walls. Of course, if John McCain and Jon Kyl have been paying attention, they already know this.