Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday Thursday 16 BARE ESSENTIALS. "We love things that have impact yet are sophisticated, like classical nude paintings and sculpture," say traveling modern rock troubadours Walter Parks and Stephanie Winters. "Our music was stripped down to the essentials--just a duo. The name fit." There you have it: The Nudes. The guitarist/cellist duo's latest release, Velvet Sofa, is a tour de force of jazz-inflected folk music combining lyrical ballads and innovative instrumentals. Other highlights include guest performances by Heartbreaker drummer Stan Lynch and percussionist Manolo Bedrena (known for his work on Weather Report's Heavy Weather album). "Arizona," a quest for lost spirituality in the Southwest, alone is worth the price of admission. Hear them live and at their improvisational best at 8 p.m. at the Southwest Center for Music, 2175 N. Sixth Ave. Tickets are $6, $5 for students, TFTM, TKMA and KXCI members, available at Hear's Music and at the door. Call 884-1220 for reservations and information. Friday 17 POETRY SLAM. It's almost eerie, but there's a conspicuous absence of things that go bump in the night, now that the majority of collegiate transients have gone home for the summer. Fortunately, Borders Books comes to the rescue with an outlet for your Friday night angst with yet another incarnation of the Poetry Slam, a no-holds-barred audience-judged reading aimed at squashing the bloated egos of poets everywhere. Here the spoken word and the written word collide in a frenzy of artistic outrage. Or something like that. Give your attitude a mohawk and head over to Borders Books and Music, 4235 N. Oracle Road. The open mike free-for-all starts at 9 p.m. Call 292-1331 for information. Saturday 18 ON YOUR TOES. Ballet Arts Foundation presents its 10th anniversary spring concert with two performances at 2 and 7 p.m. in the PCC Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Program includes "Carnival of the Animals," a "Romeo and Juliet" pas de deux, Joplin and Swan Lake, Act II. All seating is reserved, and tickets are $10 at the door. Call 623-3373 for information. DRUNKEN BEES. Not the killer ones, just the buzzing, bumping, rock and roll kind. Tonight Club Congress hosts a screening of Marianne Dissard's new half-hour documentary about Giant Sand, Tucson's own beloved alternarock icons. Dissard made a pilgrimage all the way from France to make this documentary about her favorite band, and her video has all the unpredictable, do-it-yourself spontaneity of the music itself. Dissard manages to take the mundane details of her subjects' lives--like sitting on a stoop, fending off a drunken rambler--and transform them into a fairy tale about artistic creation. Local music fans won't want to miss this. Drunken Bees shows at 8 p.m. at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St. The $3 suggested donation will benefit ailing bluesman Rainer. DOWNTOWN SOUTH AMERICA. Spice up your life with a trip downtown to the annual Festival of South American Music and Dance this weekend at El Presidio Park, between the tall buildings on Church Avenue and Alameda Street. Attractions include Chilean dancing, Brazilian music, and most importantly, lots and lots of food booths. For all the great Mexican restaurants in town, South and Central American joints are few and far between. This may be your only chance this year to sample amazing tidbits you'll crave in vain for the rest of your life. Carpe Diem! Festivities run from 6 to 10:30 p.m. tonight and continue from 6 to 10 p.m. Sunday. This free event is sponsored by the Hispanic Cultural Showcase of Tucson. Sunday 19 CANDLELIGHT MEMORIAL. Tucson joins more than 290 cities and 40 nations tonight in the world's largest grassroots AIDS event, the 13th International AIDS Candlelight Memorial and Mobilization, a gathering that honors the memory of people who have died of AIDS, supports those living with HIV, and strives to involve the community in the fight against the disease. This year's event will focus on the problem of discrimination against people with AIDS and HIV and address the ways in which education can help reduce the root cause of prejudice worldwide. Participants will light candles, listen to remarks from local AIDS service organizations, and have an opportunity to learn about volunteer programs. The Desert Voices chorus is also scheduled to perform. The memorial is hosted by Wingspan and begins at 7:30 p.m. at Armory Park on Sixth Avenue, one block south of Broadway. GLIMPSE THE INVISIBLE. Invisible Theatre concludes its 25th anniversary season with Stepping Out, by Richard Harris. This toe-tapping comedy, directed by James Blair and choreographed by Stuart Moulton, tells the story of a mismatched crew of folks striving to conquer their inhibitions and clutziness by learning to tap dance. The play closes Invisible's season with a feel-good bang, and anyone who's ever yearned in their secret heart to really learn how to dance will be able to relate to this one. Tonight's performance of Stepping Out will be presented as a benefit for the Rape Crisis Center. Discount tickets for Monday's preview are still available for $10, with regular performances continuing through June 9 at Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Ave., at Drachman Street. For reservations and information call 882-9721. Monday 20 BATTER UP. If you haven't been to Reid Park Hi Corbett Field to see the Tucson Toros yet, what are you waiting for? You're missing some great fun, like the Izzy-Dizzy Bat Race, where two fans spin around 10 times and then race each other down the sidelines, and the Dash for Cash, where one lucky spectator gets to take on Tuffy Toro in a spin around the bases. Oh, yeah, there's some Baseball, too. The struggling Toros return to town tonight to begin a four-game series against the Vancouver Canadians. (Now there's an original team moniker.) Following that series, the Toros will tackle the Colorado Springs Sky Sox May 24 through 27. Special bonus: Free tickets are available for tonight's game at all Circle K stores. Game time is 7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Regular tickets prices range from $3 to $6. For more information call 325-2621. Tuesday 21 PHOTOGRAPHIC RETROSPECTIVE. For all would-be anthropologists who ended up with day jobs and subscriptions to National Geographic instead of exotic time travels and field notes, take heart. Helga Teiwes presents a photographic journey through the Southwest in which you can live vicariously through her documentation of the daily life activities, agriculture and ceremonies of Hopi, Apache, Navajo, Tohono O'odham and Tohono Akimel (Pima) tribes. The slide lecture begins at 7 p.m. in the Wilson Room at Tohono Chul Park, 7366 N. Paseo del Norte. Admission is free for members and $2 for non-members. Call 742-6455 to reserve a space. Wednesday 22 GRIDIRON SHOW. Beware, compadres faint at heart. The annual Gridiron Show aims its blunt, heavy object at the unsuspecting Tucson community. You may think that after 43 years of this venerable Tucson tradition you'd know what to expect, but with the warped minds of Headline Productions enlisting the help of press folks, politicos and (gasp!) Lobbyists, the results are impossible to gauge without a Richter scale. Seedy-ROM opens at 8 tonight and continues nightly through May 25 at the Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets range from $15 (cabaret) to $25 (front row), available at the door or in advance from the TCC and Dillard's box offices. A portion of Gridiron's proceeds will benefit the Tucson Arts District Partnership, Inc. Call 320-0920 for reservations and information. City Week includes events selected by Calendar Editor Mari Wadsworth. Event information is accurate as of press time. The Weekly recommends calling event organizers to check for last-minute changes in location, time, price, etc.

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