THE WHOLE ENCHILADA: Remember a few years back, when the killjoys over at the Center for Science in the Public Interest told us Mexican food was as bad for you as playing with radioactive waste? Well, don't let those Washington eggheads know about this, but someone has finally done all of us a real public service by putting together a compendium of nearly every single one of the Baked Pueblo's Mexican eateries. Tucson author Suzanne Myal's sleek Tucson's Mexican Restaurants celebrates the our town's culinary roots with capsule sketches of more than 90 of our sizzling cocinas. Myal recruited her daughter, who's fluent in Spanish, for a four-month tour of duty through upscale restaurants, tiny diners, take-out places and even taco trucks. In addition to an exhaustive restaurant guide, the book includes historical snippets, recipes and essays from longtime Tucsonans, as well as an introduction by Jim Griffith, coordinator of the UA Southwest Folklore Center and no stranger to Mexican food himself. Myal tips her hat to Tucson Weekly food maven Rebecca Cook, "who took my muddled notes and two-syllable words and made them into sentences I never thought possible." Myal admits the four-month culinary rampage was exhausting. "I'd had it with Mexican food at that point," Myal laughs, "but I'm going back at it now." Suzanne Myal will sign copies of Tucson's Mexican Restaurants at a publication fiesta from 2 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, March 15, at Borders Books and Music, 4235 N. Oracle Road. Los Changuitos Feos will perform Mariachi music, and many of the restaurants featured in the book will work overtime to outdo each other with a sumptuous complementary buffet. DEATH'S DOOR: They're calling it "a doorway into the human experience of death and loss," under the optimistic umbrella Death: A Round Trip Ticket. (See the review in the Arts section for more information.) The multi-media show at Central Arts Collective takes a literary bent the collaboratory, artist-rendered Book of Ours, a four-part handmade book honoring our dead. Join them for story telling, a reading and video-art screening at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 13, at the gallery, 188 E. Broadway. Exhibit continues through March 29, open from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and until 7:30 p.m. for Thursday Art Walks. Call 623-5883 for details.

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