It's just a Red Ryder BB gun, but it's not going to be easy to come by. Ralphie pleads his case before his mother, his teacher and even Santa Claus at Goldblatt's department store. The universal response: "You'll shoot your eye out."
The Tucson Community Theatre presents A Christmas Story, a funny and touching memoir about growing up in the Midwest of the 1940s.
The free performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and December 13-15, and 2 p.m. December 9 and 16. All shows are at the Randolph Art Center auditorium, 200 S. Alvernon Way. For more information, call 791-4663.
GET RADICAL. A benefit for a controversial environmental group should leave you better informed about the state of the world.
The Arizona Independent Media Center will debut several films in a benefit for the Earth First! Winter Rendezvous, a yearly event for radical environmentalists to socialize, mobilize and howl at the moon. The next rendezvous will be held in Southern Arizona in February.
Come and learn more about local and international environmental issues. See clips from:
• A Year in the Streets: The Revolutionary Movement against Capitalism chronicles anti-globalization mass actions (Seattle/WTO, Los Angeles/DNC, Prague/IMF/Worldbank) as well as Northwest forest campaigns and other environmental actions, and
• Lacandona: The Zapatistas and Rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico in which indigenous Zapatista communities struggle to protect the Lacandon jungle, their homeland, from NAFTA.
Other videos on desert conservation also will hit the screen.
The screening starts at 6:30 Thursday at the Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St. Admission costs $5 and includes refreshments and a raffle. For more information, call 884-7004, visit www.arizona.indymedia.org or e-mail arizona@indymedia.org.
MUSIC FOR THE OCCASION. Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the UA Museum of Art on Friday with an a cappella performance of Spanish Renaissance music.
The Kress Foundation Collection contains 60 European paintings and sculptures spanning the 14th through 19th centuries. The Kress collection is crowned by the 26 surviving panels of the late 15th-century Spanish retablo by Fernando Gallego for the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo. Superb paintings by such masters as Vittore Carpaccio, Domenico Tintoretto, Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci), Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Jusepe de Ribera, Emile Jean Horace Vernet and Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun, among many others, complement the Gallego retablo and provide for an exploration of 500 years of historic European art.
Robert Quinn, UA emeritus professor of art history and author of Fernando Gallego and the Retablo of Ciudad Rodrigo, will acquaint visitors with the collection and reminisce about the first public exhibition of these superb paintings 50 years ago.
Cantique, which will be serving up the music, is Southern Arizona's new vocal ensemble devoted to the performance of music of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Composed of four experienced musicians, Cantique is committed to creating music of only the highest quality, true to the intents of the composer.
This special event, which is from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Friday, is free and open to the public. The University of Arizona Museum of Art is located near Park Avenue and Speedway Boulevard. For more information, call the museum at 621-7567 or visit www.artmuseum.arizona.edu.
