Tucson Weekly: Cheap Thrills (February 5

Cheap Thrills STAGE OF LIFE: Barbara Van Diest is used to hearing about the ups and downs of interpersonal relationships. In fact, the host of It's About You encourages the emotionally downtrodden to spill their troubled guts on cable TV.
But she insists that her show, which already enjoys great popularity in the narcissistic nirvana of southern California, is hardly all about self-obsessed snivelers.
"Actually, it's great fun," she says. "And I think it's something that Tucson could really use. It's a talk show, and I answer phone calls from California and from here."
She also takes queries from the audience, who'll be asked to write up their problems on a pair of note cards prior to going on the air.
"Basically, I want to help folks have better lives, and be in great relationships with others and with themselves."
Towards that end, she's inviting interested folks to be part of the audience when the show tapes on the first and third Saturday of each month in the downtown offices of Access Tucson, 124 E. Broadway. The next show will be Saturday, February 7. For free tickets, times and other information, call 299-2708.
ZOOT SUIT TRIBUTE: The Tucson-Pima Main Library helps celebrate Black History Month with live tunes and a musical chat. Longtime local jazz faves Cass Preston and the Individuals lay down some tight grooves at 2 p.m., followed by Yvonne Ervin, executive director of the Tucson Jazz Society. Ervin will dish up her popular 40-minute lecture, From Armstrong to Zoot: A Brief History of Jazz, laced with recorded music and great anecdotes.
Free event is 2 p.m. Sunday, February 8, in the Main Library Lower Lever Meeting Room, 101 N. Stone Ave. For details, call 791-4393.
PRINTED PAST: The history of art is filled with countless utterances, treatises, essays and polemics about the proper relationship between the "sister arts."
Often that relationship is little more than a bramble patch of competing, often completely different visions, and rarely do different means of expression mesh in one person. But if anyone was ever able to marry the disciplines of visual art and the written word, it's Ed Colker.
For the past half-century, he's developed unique skills in printing images he's created, and text by himself and others. Now a retrospective of that legacy of fine work is on display in the UA Museum of Art.
Five Decades in Print: Ed Colker covers 70 years of artistic growth through selected woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and limited editions with text, complete with "images that illuminate rather than illustrate" poetic verses from Michael Anania, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, Kathleen Norris and the ancient Celtic "Song of Amergin."
Five Decades runs through March 15, with an opening reception from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, February 15, in the UA Museum of Art, located on the southwest end of the pedestrian underpass at Speedway and Park Avenue. Regular gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. For details, call 621-7567.

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