If you want to take a break from the duck-and-cover drill by your bedroom window and take in a good show, The Red Elvises are back at The Hut for a one-night only engagement tonight. Show time is 8 p.m. and cover is $8. Expect a lot of fun and good music from the band that likes to "rock this joint until we sound like Pink Floyd."

See the full multimedia review from their previous Hut engagement, reported on this very blog.

Oh, yes, Elvis is very much alive. And he's Russian...

It's the Weekly's birthday! This issue is Vol. 24, No. 1, which means we're 23 and probably about ready to graduate from college!

In any case, enjoy this week's edition!

Our friends at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies--of which the Weekly is a proud member--are reporting that Arizona's junior senator, Jon Kyl, is up to no good:

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-AZ, has informed colleagues that he may introduce an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917, to criminalize the communication or publication of any classified information "concerning efforts by the United States to identify, investigate, or prevent terrorist activity" and expand the penalty to 20 years in prison. The amendment, which Kyl has said he plans to introduce tomorrow in a Judiciary Committee markup of an unrelated bill, would give the government tremendous power to silence critics and to limit the debate and discussion on the techniques it elects to use in the "war on terror." AAN encourages members in states with a Judiciary Committee member to call their senator and urge them to oppose Kyl's measure. The Sunshine in Government Initiative, an open-government coalition of which AAN is a member, is circulating discussion points (PDF file) regarding the proposal.

This is a bad thing. If he does, in fact, introduce this--and I assure you that we'll keep you posted--we encourage you all to write him and tell him this idea sucks, and that freedom of the press is important.

This came in a news release from the Community Food Bank:

The Community Food Bank is in need of help. Financial and food donations are down and the Food Bank is experiencing an increase in requests for emergency food boxes. Financial giving is off 10% from this time last year, with food donations down 8%. “This is having a significant impact on our resource,” said President and CEO Bill Carnegie. “Combine these deficiencies with an increase of over 1,000 additional emergency food boxes each month and you begin to understand the problem,” he added.

The Food Bank is especially concerned as summer approaches and more local families with children will be needing food. Each emergency food box the Food Bank distributes provides about $33.00 worth of food. “If we could get everyone to sponsor one or two emergency food boxes for a local family during the month of March, it would really help,” added Carnegie.

The Community Food Bank can be reached at 3003 S. Country Club Road, at 622-0525 or online at www.communityfoodbank.org.

If you live in the Blenman Elm neighborhood in the University area near Tucson Boulevard and are at home, please be alert and cautious. Police are currently searching for an armed suspect in that area. They have blocked off street entrances at the Tucson intersection and are also searching backyards of homes near Speedway Boulevard.

I counted at least six parked patrol cars with lights flashing near the intersection of Speedway and Tucson, and police have advised a friend of mine who lives in the area to stay below the windows of her home while they search her backyard.

Update: Police left the area around noon, but are following leads in the neighborhood. I don't know if they caught him or not, but they are looking for a hispanic male between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-11. He dropped the gun in my friend's neighbor's backyard as he was fleeing over fences.

If you have been reading this blog for a while you probably know more about greyhounds and greyhound racing then you previously did.

When someone sent me this headline, I practically jumped out of my skin with excitement.

The Dog Protection Act is being proposed in New Hampshire, not Arizona. However, I am happy for the greyhounds in New Hampshire. Perhaps Arizona will be the next undertaking, what with the 180 missing and presumed dead greyhounds from last year.

According to this press release, more than 700 dogs have been injured in the past two years at New Hampshire tracks. Don't think that this is an exception; it's more the rule.

A 65-page report outlining the ills of the New Hampshire greyhounds has been sent to lawmakers in that state. To view photos, injuries, and deaths of New Hampshire greyhounds, click here. Greyhound racing is no picnic for the dogs.

I just received a press release from a PR firm reminding me that Tucson was named one of the best 10 cities to live in America. I previously mentioned this in my column when it first previewed.

Now it's mentioned in the magazine in more depth and online. Although the text in the magazine is spelled correctly, the added headline for "Tuscon" is not. (See this week's rant.)

Other mentions include the Community Food Bank farmers' market and some unusual produce there, Tucson Originals, Zivaz for best light bite, and crediting El Charro for inventing the chimichanga. Click on pages 2 and 3 for parks and recreational type activities. For a change, Canyon Ranch Resort trumps Miraval as the best spa.

A CBS News blogger thought the Weekly was right on target for taking KGUN 9's news department to task over a recent sweeps-month piece they ran on Craigslist and gay sex in public parks. Blogger Brian Montopoli graciously acknowledged some points I made about the KGUN story, and then tied them in to an earlier discussion on an "ambush porn" piece that appeared on the CBS News Web site.

Montopoli's point was that the Internet can indeed be a scary virtual place, but it's not as scary as KGUN's Jennifer Waddell and others in the media would have us believe with their simplistic reporting.

I'm sure this isn't the kind of exposure KGUN 9 would like for their stories, but it's exactly the kind I adore! This makes me not only a minor Tucson celebrity, but also an extra, if you will, on the national media stage. In other words, if a TV camera were focusing on a big-time media personality, you would see my left temple in the background.

Thanks, CBS News! And thank you, KGUN 9—keep up the substandard work!

So, how do you think Ellen did? How was the show?

My two cents? She did OK, but I'd put her behind Steve Martin, Billy Crystal and Jon Stewart, and about even with Chris Rock (although he was certainly more exciting). She was very vanilla.

Of course, this is coming from someone who loved it when Letterman hosted. Go figure.

It was a very predictable, forgettable show overall. (The only moments that stand out were the hilarious Ferrell/Black/O'Reilly number and the fact that Martin Scorsese finally won a damn Oscar.)

I am still pissed that Crash robbed Brokeback last year.

The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, of which Tucson Weekly is a member, has published an internal memo from a San Antonio daily outlining a plan to publish a free weekly newspaper aimed at the 18-to-35-year-old reader.

The memo says the new publication is "designed to serve a market that otherwise has few alternatives for information in San Antonio." One of those existing alternatives is the San Antonio Current, another AAN member, which has been serving the community for more than 20 years.

The Current is published by the family-owned Times Shamrock, which also owns alt-weeklies in Baltimore, Detroit, and Orlando, as well more than 20 community newspapers in Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York, and 11 radio stations in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Maryland, and Wisconsin.

The daily is the San Antonio Express-News, owned by the Hearst Corporation. According to a recent press release, Heart is one of the nation's largest diversified media companies, with 12 daily and 30 weekly newspapers, nearly 200 magazines, 29 television stations which reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers, interests in leading cable networks, television production, newspaper features distribution, and real estate.