Tucson Weekly, Sept. 30, 2021

THE SKINNY: JUDGE TOSSES LAW BANNING MASK MANDATES IN SCHOOLS

SEPTEMBER 30 - OCTOBER 6, 2021 • TUCSONWEEKLY.COM • FREE

TikTok Tattoo

Wesley Owens let his 6-year-old daughter give him a tattoo.

It’s gotten 30 million views on TikTok.

A Tale of Tucson Salvage by Brian Smith

CINEMA: Tammy Faye’s Religious Experience

XOXO: Marty Stuart, Tech N9ne, Pat Metheny

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

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STAFF

CONTENTS

CURRENTS

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Reactions to Maricopa County’s election “audit” that found Biden won by an even larger margin than the official count

TUCSON SALVAGE

8

War survivor and single dad wears his heart on his leg

CINEMA

13

A new film examines the rise and fall of Tammy Faye Bakker

MUSIC

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ADMINISTRATION Steve T. Strickbine, Publisher Michael Hiatt, Vice President

EDITOR’S NOTE

Jaime Hood, General Manager, jaime@tucsonlocalmedia.com Tyler Vondrak, Associate Publisher, tyler@tucsonlocalmedia.com

Viral Sensation WHEN TATTOO ARTIST WESLEY OWENS’

first-grade daughter had to stay home after close contact with a fellow student who tested positive for COVID, he decided to let her tattoo a heart on his leg. (And yeah, it hurt.) He posted the video to TikTok; in the last few weeks, it’s gotten more than 30 million views.

But Owens’ story is way deeper than a viral video. As Tucson Salvage columnist Brian Smith writes in this week’s cover story, he’s an Iraq war vet and Louisiana native who relocated to Tucson after one too many hurricanes.

He’s also a single dad raising his daughter Adeline, and it’s his love for her that has helped put him on a better path. As Brian says in the column, he wears his heart on his leg, permanently tattooed by his little girl.

Elsewhere in this week’s issue: Columnist Tom Danehy thinks it’s time that Alabama updates its constitution; The Skinny looks at Gov. Doug Ducey’s big loss in court this

Claudine Sowards, Accounting, claudine@tucsonlocalmedia.com Sheryl Kocher, Receptionist, sheryl@tucsonlocalmedia.com

week over mask mandates; film critic Bob Grimm blesses the new Tammy Faye Bakker biopic; staff reporter Alexandra Pere explains why you should check out this week’s Tucson Film and Music Festival; Xavier Omar Otero tells us where to rock all week; Tucson Weedly columnist David Abbott looks at the slow pace of expungement of marijuana offenses in Pima County; and, as usual, there’s plenty more to explore in our pages, so sink in and enjoy!

Adeline’s tattoo

Jim Nintzel Executive Editor

Catch Nintz talking about all the fun stuff to do in Tucson at 9:30 a.m. Wednesdays during the World Famous Frank Show on KLPX, 96.1 FM.

RANDOM SHOTS By Rand Carlson

EDITORIAL Jim Nintzel, Executive Editor, jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com Jeff Gardner, Managing Editor, jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com Mike Truelsen, Web Editor, mike@tucsonlocalmedia.com Alexandra Pere, Staff Reporter, apere@timespublications.com Contributors: David Abbott, Rob Brezsny, Max Cannon, Rand Carlson, Tom Danehy, Emily Dieckman, Bob Grimm, Andy Mosier, Linda Ray, Margaret Regan, Will Shortz, Jen Sorensen, Clay Jones, Dan Savage PRODUCTION Courtney Oldham, Production Manager, tucsonproduction@timespublications.com Ryan Dyson, Graphic Designer, ryand@tucsonlocalmedia.com Emily Filener, Graphic Designer, emilyf@tucsonlocalmedia.com CIRCULATION Alex Carrasco, Circulation, alexc@tucsonlocalmedia.com ADVERTISING TLMSales@TucsonLocalMedia.com Kristin Chester, Account Executive, kristin@tucsonlocalmedia.com Candace Murray, Account Executive, candace@tucsonlocalmedia.com Lisa Hopper, Account Executive, lisa@tucsonlocalmedia.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING Zac Reynolds Director of National Advertising Zac@TimesPublications.com Tucson Weekly® is published every Thursday by Times Media Group at 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona. Address all editorial, business and production correspondence to: Tucson Weekly, 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona 85741. Phone: (520) 797-4384, FAX (520) 575-8891. Member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN). The Tucson Weekly® and Best of Tucson® are registered trademarks of Times Media Group. Publisher has the right to refuse any advertisement at his or her discretion.

XOXO: This week sees Marty Stuart, Tech N9ne, Pat Metheny, Geoff Tate, Cleopatrick and more...

TUCSON WEEDLY

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Expungement clinics in the wake of Prop 207

Cover image by Brian Smith. Cover design by Ryan Dyson.

Copyright: The entire contents of Tucson Weekly are Copyright Times Media Group No portion may be reproduced in whole or part by any means without the express written permission of the Publisher, Tucson Weekly, 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, AZ 85741.

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

CURRENTS

Trump lost to Biden. (The “audit” concluded that Biden actually won by about 260 more votes than the official election results.)

during the audit hearing Friday posted messages about killing members of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors because of the audit.

Rogers, calling the 2020 election The ‘audit’ found no evidence of fraud. But Republicans say it’s the smoking gun they wanted.

SEIZING ON “corrupted,” announced that she and a UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS coalition of Republican lawmakers in other states who similarly believe baseless THE ARIZONA REPUBLICAN PARTY claims are calling for forensic audits in all billed the rally after the hearing as a “de50 states due to the results of Arizona’s election, said that the hearing “vindicated”

By Jeremy Duda brief,” but many politicians—most running “audit.” When she said she will continue to him for a trip he made to Washington D.C. Arizona Mirror for re-election or a higher office—gave push for Arizona to decertify the results of on Jan. 5 to deliver an “evidence book” to stump speeches or repeated unsubstantithe 2020 election — something legislative Arizona GOP Congressmen Paul Gosar ated claims about the results of the “audit,” attorneys say is not possible — the crowd and Andy Biggs.

THE LONG-AWAITED RESULTS OF particularly allegations that there were began chanting “USA.” Finchem would later be seen outside the Arizona Senate’s “audit” of the 2020 cybersecurity lapses and the election was “If we don’t have accurate and fair electhe Capitol building on Jan. 6 as rioters election in Maricopa County unequivothus not secure. tions, we don’t have a country,” Rogers said. breached the Capitol building, attempting cally concluded there was no evidence of In his presentation to the Senate, CyFIR The 2020 election has been deemed by to interrupt the certifi cation of the election fraud, but that didn’t stop leading Arizona CEO Ben Cotton claimed election fi les had election experts and cybersecurity officials results.

Republicans from claiming that the elecbeen deleted.

Maricopa County offi cials to be the most secure election in United In reality, the “audit” found no evidence tion review was the smoking gun needed said nothing was deleted, but the fi les were States history. of the massive fraud that Finchem and to prove the claims they’ve been repeating instead archived for preservation and to many other Republicans, led by twice-imsince last November. free up space on the election machines.

‘AUDIT’ WILL PROMPT PUSH FOR peached former President Donald Trump, “Today is vindication day,” Rep. Mark Sen. Sonny Borrelli, a Lake Havasu NEW, RESTRICTIVE LAWS have said changed the outcome of the elecFinchem, R-Oro Valley, told a crowd of Republican and vocal proponent of false tion.

The auditors made numerous claims about 80 people who gathered on the CapTHE ONLY SPEAKER AT THE AZGOP itol lawn immediately after the “audit” was of impropriety, but provided no proof that claims that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, seized on Cotton’s claim. event who did not outright say they beany laws were broken and did minimal presented to the Senate Friday afternoon.

“By deleting fi les, plain and simple you lieved there was fraud, call for the decerinvestigation of the alleged anomalies.

Finchem, who has been at the forefront nullifi ed an election,” he said as the crowd tification of the election or say the “audit” The election review also concluded that of efforts to undermine the results of the erupted in cheers and applause. vindicated Trump supporters was Senate A fired-up Borrelli made a number of President Karen Fann. claims to the audience, saying that the “You guys are the true heroes,” Fann said Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to the crowd, which also included some violated federal law and that they will be volunteers who worked on the “audit” itself. “held accountable.”

“It’s been rough, it’s been real tough,” “Do we think that this was a free and fair Fann said, remarking that she has received election?” Borrelli asked the crowd, which threats related to the audit, though she enthusiastically shouted back, “No!” noted the support she has received has Borrelli has been a major supporter of been far greater. the “audit” efforts, appearing on right-wing Fann reiterated that the Senate will be media channels drumming up support for handing over the information it collected the Senate’s efforts. He said media outlets to Attorney General Mark Brnovich. that reported critically on the “audit” did Other lawmakers, such as Rep. Walt so unfairly, and falsely claimed that they Blackman, R-Snowflake, said that the audit “worked with” the Maricopa County Board is a signal for future legislation. of Supervisors, which refused to cooperate “Now we’re going to find out who has with the Senate’s review. backbone and who doesn’t,” Blackman “When you see (the news), just turn off said. “This is when the work starts, the TV,” Borrelli said. “Just don’t listen to America.” certain radio stations anymore.”

Blackman, like several other speakers, Other elected officials pushed supportcalled for arresting county leaders and ers to ignore any claims that the “audit” election officials. didn’t prove fraud.

“If you tamper in an Arizona election, “No matter what the left says, we will you should stand behind bars,” Blackman Let our hungry readers keep this in the narrative,” Sen. Wendy said. ■ know you are there!

Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said, adding that they Out door dining, Take-out, or Delivery! will hold whoever is responsible for the This story originally ran in Arizona Mirinvented election fraud “criminally liable.” ror. Find more at AZmirror.com Supporters on Rogers’s Gab account

FALSE ALARM

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CURRENTS

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Compassion

HELP ME HELP YOU

Downtown lecture series

6 p.m. Wednesdays, Oct. 6, 13, 20 and 27

University of Arizona hosting series on compassion at Fox Theatre

17 W. Congress St. Free foxtucson.com

environmental well-being.”

On Wednesday, Oct. 13, Joseph Lacoste Sanguinetti, a postdoctoral fellow in UA’s Department of Psychology, will explore the science behind caring WE’VE ALL EXPERIENCED MORE for others. Sanguinetti will examine than our recommended dose of dread over the past year. Rather than lean into new neuroscience detailing how our brains are wired for compassion, and the strife, the University of Arizona’s College of Social & Behavioral Sciences how “training practices like meditation activates brain circuits related to positive is going in the opposite direction for their annual lecture series. The College’s emotion, reduces stress, and leads to overall well-being.” signature event at downtown’s Fox “They’re all different definitions of the Theatre will examine various definitions same topic. An interesting thing about of compassion, from how we define it compassion is that it’s not just a feeling. through religion to how it impacts the It’s wired into our need for cooperation,” structure of society.

Alvarez said. “But it’s also a kind of Running every Wednesday through enigma, in that we don’t exhibit care for October, SBS’s free lecture series inall others equally. What is the science cludes four guest speakers each prebetween feeling compassion for some senting a different side of compassion. but not others? In that sense, we realize Previous lecture topics include music, women’s power and animals. Every year, it’s a scientific and social conundrum worth exploring.”

SBS dean John Paul Jones III and SBS On Wednesday, Oct. 20, Maha Nassar, associate dean of community engagement Maribel Alvarez select a topic that associate professor in the UA’s School of Middle Eastern and North African Studis both familiar, yet open to ies, will look at compassion on the scale interpretation. of international diplomacy. In particular, “For this year, we knew there was a she will examine the shifting conversasense of exhaustion that everyone was tion around Palestine and Israel. Nassar feeling, and social unrest,” Alvarez said. specializes in Middle Eastern cultures, “So we could have easily done it on a having published the book “Brothers more incendiary topic, like crises or the pandemic. But a lot of people don’t want Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World.” to hear about that. We know what the The final installation is on Wednesday, problems are, so let’s focus on solutions.

What do we need for our political, social Oct. 27, featuring Buddhist minister and author Lama Rod Owens discussing and health divides?” compassion as a tool of liberation and The community lecture series opens justice. Owens reaches into his knowlon Wednesday, Oct. 6, with a talk from UA instructor Leslie Langbert, who also edge of Buddhist teachings and social serves as executive director of the Center justice movements to help listeners “think about compassion as a practice for Compassion Studies. Langbert will more intentional than simple gestures of explore the power of compassion on benevolence or charity.” Owens earned communities, and how it is essential his Master of Divinity degree at Harvard for our survival. Langbert’s Center for Divinity School, and blends his formal Compassion Studies investigates the Buddhist training with experiences impact of “compassion and contemplagrowing up in the South. tive practices on individual, group and

By Jeff Gardner jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com

sbs.arizona.edu/dls-2021

“Lama Rod Owens is an amazing speaker who met a very important criteria for us: He works in the arena of healing and the Buddhist tradition of compassion, but he also looks at how we use our senses of rage,” Alvarez said.

“In that tradition, there might be a lot of spiritual masters or gurus, and also speakers focused on social injustice, but I think there are very few people who combine the topics. He isn’t soft about the questions of justice and liberation, nor does he let himself be consumed by the negative. He has that equilibrium.”

Attendees can register online for free tickets for the Downtown Lecture Series “Compassion: A Tool for Liberation and

Understanding.” The Fox Theatre requires all attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours prior to attendance.

“Often we see the public come to hear about something that is interesting and familiar, but they leave scratching their heads because their ideas on the subject change. That has happened with music, animals and privacy. And we hope it happens again here,” Alvarez said. ■ For more information, visit foxtucson. com or sbs.arizona.edu/dls-2021

M I T HU UM T S

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

DANEHY

THE ALABAMA CONSTITUTION COULD USE A TUNE UP

By Tom Danehy, tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO LOOK at the calendar to remind yourself that we really are two decades into the 21st century.

And even then, we can’t always be sure.

Consider the news coming out of Alabama.

Next year, a whole lot of Alabamans (is it Alabamans or Alabamians…or Backward Toad People?) will have the opportunity to vote on a new state constitution. It turns out that their current one (which has been in effect since 1901), is as racist as a Trump rally on Nathan Bedford Forrest’s birthday.

Alabama has actually had six constitutions. The original one was drawn up in 1819, when the Alabama Territory became a state. Then there was a new one in 1861 after Alabama seceded from the Union.

Then, after Alabama and its vulgar racist brethren took that ass-whuppin’ in the Civil War, that was followed in 1865 and again in 1868 by what are known as the Reconstruction Constitutions. A few years after that, Alabama adopted the Ending Reconstruction Constitution (they had had enough of that “freedom for all” stuff).

Finally, spurred on by the successful KKK-led coup that removed duly elected Black officeholders, burned out Blackowned businesses, and slaughtered an untold number of Black citizens in Wilm-

CLAYTOONZ By Clay Jones

ington, North Carolina in 1898, the white leaders of Alabama decided to go full-frontal un-American in writing a new Constitution. As a citizen of the United States, it’s hard for me to imagine that a document this disgusting could have been official at any time during our nation’s history. The fact that it has been in effect for 120 years and is still the law of that state boggles the mind.

When the current constitution was being proposed, the president of the constitutional convention, John Knox, said in a speech, “The new constitution eliminates the ignorant Negro vote and places the control of our government where God almighty intended it should be—with the Anglo-Saxon race.”

As Robert Wuhl said in Good Morning, Vietnam, there’s not much gray area there (no color pun intended).

Alabama politicians were no less blunt, adopting a proclamation saying that the new constitution was intended “to establish white supremacy in this state.”

Among the abominations in the document is this: “The Legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a Negro, or descendant of a negro.” (I wonder

why “Negro” is capitalized, but “descendant of a negro” is not. I’ve always thought that Southern mentality was that descendants of Black people, even after three or four generations, are still considered Black.)

That passage was left in the Alabama Constitution even after the United States Supreme Court, in 1967, struck down all such laws (in the case of Loving v. Virginia).

It was finally removed in 2000 after being put to a statewide vote, but even then… Less than 60% of the Alabama electorate voted to get rid of the anti-miscegenation law and nearly half of the state’s counties voted to keep it in the state Constitution.

Then there’s this: Section 256 (still) says that “separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race.”

After the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, outlawing school segregation, Alabama doubled down, passing an amendment in 1956 that said that the state didn’t recognize a widely accepted right to publicly funded education for all young people. The “thinking” was that if Alabama claimed not to believe in any such right to free public education, they could set up quasi-private schools that could still be segregated.

We all saw how that worked out in Forrest Gump.

There was an amendment in the Alabama Constitution making it illegal for women to vote. There are descriptions of how to disenfranchise Black people who

had previously had the right to vote. There is wording outlining the use of literacy tests and poll taxes to keep Black people from voting. Also, for decades, the constitution made voting illegal for “idiots and insane persons,” people who were married to someone of another race, those who had committed “a crime against nature” (being gay), and even those who had been convicted of vagrancy.

The crazy thing is that this document isn’t written in stone (although it does appear to have been written by Stone Age people). The Alabama Constitution comes in at just under 400,000 words!

(The average length of a state constitution in this country is just over 30,000 words.)

The Alabama constitution is more than 50 times longer that the U.S. Constitution.

Along with the screaming racism, it’s also filled with all kinds of other nonsense. While the U.S. Constitution has 27 Amendments, the one in Alabama has a stunning 977 amendments. Many are picky little things installed by rural politicians who ruled Alabama for generations. (For example, the 480th amendment deals with the salary of the probate judge in Greene County.)

Just as here in Arizona, the Alabama State Legislature has far too much power over cities and counties in the state. Only a handful of the state’s 67 counties have even limited home rule, making it easier to keep Black people from voting.

Or, as they say in Alabama, “Negros or descendants of negros.” ■

THE SKINNY

ballots, and various other dumb provisions that evidently couldn’t otherwise get enough votes to pass the Arizona Legislature.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich said he would appeal the ruling.

“It’s unfortunate that left-wing groups want to undermine the legislative process and indoctrinate our children with critical race theory and force vaccines on those who don’t want Judge tosses law banning mask mandates in schools them,” Brnovich said on Twitter.

What’s really unfortunate is that Brnovich isn’t supporting the Arizona Constitution and condemning the

By Jim Nintzel showed that classrooms without unilogrolling that put all these provisions versal masking were 3.5 times more jnintzel@tucsonlocalmedia.com likely to experience a COVID outbreak. into the budget. Preventing the budget from becoming the Christmas tree that Team Ducey has argued that kids lawmakers can hang anything on isn’t IN DEFENDING A STATE LAW are free to wear masks if they want to, banning mask mandates in schools and but that ignores the basic science here: undermining the legislative process.

It’s requiring lawmakers do it the right universities that was snuck into the The masks collect the droplets that way. If these policies are so great, they budget in the final days of the legislakids cough, sneeze and even breathe tive session, Gov. Doug Ducey made out. That means the virus, if a kid hap- should be able to pass on their own.

Brnovich’s behavior is unfortunate a big deal about following the law. He pens to have it, has less opportunity to but not surprising. Just last week, he insisted universities abandon a plan to spread. And let’s face it: Parents who went full anti-vax while speaking in require vaccinations or weekly COVID don’t want their kids wearing masks front of a GOP crowd. As first reporttests because it was against the law. are, by and large, the same parents ed by Dennis Welch of 3TV/CBS5, He said local school districts shouldn’t who aren’t taking precautions against enact mask mandates because it was COVID, so their families are more likeagainst the law. He offered schools that ly to come down with it.

SORENSEN didn’t enact mask mandates extra monMasking is just another mitigation ey from the state because they were measure that allows classrooms to following the law. remain open and limits the COVID So it’s a rich irony that the law that spread. We understand that there are Ducey cherished so much was passed many anti-maskers who don’t underin an unconstitutional fashion, accordstand that (or don’t give a crap), but ing to a Maricopa County Superior you’d think the governor’s advisors Court judge who tossed the legislation would be smarter than that. Hey, earlier this week. maybe Ducey can check with his new Judge Katherine Cooper said it advisor, Dr. Rich Carmona. Our former was a violation of the Arizona Constisurgeon general can explain it to you, tution’s single-subject rule, which says Doug—not that you’re interested in you can’t logroll a bunch of unrelated listening. legislation into a single bill. Cooper’s Cooper’s decision may be overdecision will certainly be appealed, but turned on appeal—but anything that she made no bones about why the law keeps masks on kids in classrooms unwas unconstitutional. til the 5-12-year-old set can be vaccinat“The issue here is not what the ed is a win. Sure, not every parent will Legislature decided but how it decided vaccinate their kids, but then they will what it did,” Cooper wrote. “The bill is be only risking the health of their own classic logrolling—a medley of special children instead of the ones around interests cobbled together to force a them. vote on all or none.”

We should note that it’s not just There were cheers from Democrats, the mask mandate that was tossed. educators and many parents regarding There were other laws pushed into the the end—for now—of the mask ban in budget, including a ban on teaching schools. critical race theory in schools (the latFor all those who are complaining est distorted boogeyman of the right), that masks don’t work, last week’s CDC some ballot legislation to prevent the study that included Arizona schools Chinese from sending in bamboo

BREATHING EASIER

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

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Brno asked the crowd: “If you can get COVID after you’ve had the vaccine and you can still spread it, then what’s the point of the vaccine?”

Perhaps Brno is too busy using his office to position himself to run for U.S. Senate to pay attention to the COVID outbreak, but roughly 90% of the people hospitalized and dying from COVID are unvaccinated. The Skinny would say having a mild case of COVID is better than dying from it, but maybe we just don’t understand the price of freedom.

It’s hardly the first time Brno has worked to undermine public health.

He was among the GOP AGs who led a very flimsy suit all the way to the Supreme Court to throw out the Affordable Care Act, but even the current conservative justices ruled against him.

If he’d had his way, millions of people would have lost their health insurance and suffered the consequences.

All in all, it’s increasingly obvious that voting Republican is bad for your health. ■

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TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

Story & photos by Brian Smith

War survivor and single dad wears his heart on his leg WESLEY OWENS, this Pentecostal-raised kid from Louisiana, got so used to death and dead bodies and suicide bombings in wartime Iraq, the one major trauma that still feeds his PTSD involves this: Two boys heading to a local mosque in a small car … a soused driver captains a semi-truck. The big rig swerves and crushes the car, just pancakes it.

Owens rolls through the khaki-hued streets of Baghdad five miles west of the Tigris River, the lead gunner at the machine gun atop a Humvee.

He arrives to find the smoldering car bloom in that horrible post-crash way, the immediate onlooker adrenaline and horror, the dust, blood and searing heat. Owens is still a teenager too, barely 19, serving a stupid war in Iraq and out on patrol, doing his duty.

Iraq is advanced in many ways but also primitive, for example, there are no jaws-of-life for crash rescue, and to compensate, five or six bystanders rip the car’s roof off with their bare hands to save the teens.

Yanked up and out, the boys lay on the asphalt, and the smell of their blood on the wicked-hot day plugs the air, a sickening pong of death.

One of the boys’ father pushes through the gathered crowd to his dead son and howls, a wretched aural betrayal of God and life, and it is so abject and heartbreaking it gets Owens in his chest, inside his guts.

That sonic sorrow circles inside his head, seeps into his unconsciousness; that, and a fear he might likely die here too. He thinks of his own father holding him like this man who lost his son, but dad is a world away in

Louisiana.

“It wasn’t a part of death that we were used to,” the tattoo artist Owens says, 16 years later. A pleasing southern argot of mixed dialects gives strange musicality to his words.

“This was death with emotion.”

IT IS A TUESDAY AFTERNOON and Wesley Owens is kicking back inside his workplace, Tattoo Avenue on East Broadway in Tucson, a clean, award-winning parlor trimmed in handsome Halloween-orange and blond wood. Several stalls are edged in artist obsessions, colorful trip-fueled geometric shapes, realism and abstractions exploding in color. It’s worlds and years away from the 2004 battlefields, and Owens wears cuffed jean shorts, burgundy Converse and a Metallica “Rebel” tee, and Drake fills the room. It is a slow day, he’s the only other soul here.

Now, the animation of Owens’ deportment jolts at first, dude is some kind of walking pictogram of 3D images, a life trajectory traced in body art. A giant tarantula tat takes up acreage atop his shaved head. The word “insatiable” is inked in cursive above his right eyebrow. “It means,” he laughs, “I was never satisfied in life, at least at the time.”

Scan down below the sizable ear spacers, dotted left eye, the cheekbone and colored neck etchings, to some hilarity, including a tat of old Betty White wielding a snake, a juxtaposition old and new; saucy woman, graceful reptile. (“You know she loves snakes, right?”) Others curve femi-

Wesley Owens inside Tattoo Avenue

nine, with ideas of cherishing integrity and new surroundings. A thigh design shows a female jester, happy with tears, which seems to suggest it’s better to be redeemed through joy than pain. Older youth markings wink to punk and metal, including the Christian MXPX and P.O.D. Owens’s workspace, neat and kind of soldier minimalist, offers some insight into his honed abilities, from animal styles to black work. He doesn’t study art of other tattooists, he says, doesn’t want the influence. His pulls from the world around him, animals, imagination, pop culture—all manner of reptiles and desert critters too. I’ve seen his matching alien Buddha tats on a mom and daughter, insect images and video game heroes on others. Wild horses, Jellyfish and cactus. You can spot an Owens’ piece, if you know his work. The war vet is an original.

He transmits a kind of stoner ease.

The soothing but focused ice-blue eyes and subdued laughs regularly directed at himself. Yet any inmate database search turns up myriad tatted faces and shaved heads. Owens knows that judgement well, understands the wide net of hurtful stereotypes projected onto him for his appearance, people pulling their kids in closer at grocery stores, locking car doors as he walks past. He is all about

shattering preconceptions.

More, his body ink work is more about creating rainbow skin colors, a nod to an affinity for all races, a symbolic gesture to blot out white privilege, as he once noted on his Facebook page.

“I went to Iraq with three tattoos,” he says, and those included a punk band The Misfits, his name spelled in large old English typeface across his stomach and the word “soldier” in Chinese on his back. A soldier friend in Iraq ordered a tattoo kit, “Over there you don’t know if you are going die, and I always wanted a sleeve on my arm before I died. So we did it.”

Owens turned a burgeoning newfound tattoo passion into a career.

Indeed, Owens, splayed out on a chair, is a seasoned 35, but looks like a kid, a manboy swinging effortlessly between the adolescent and the adult. In one moment, he’ll detail the financials of raising a young daughter by himself — the COVID lockdowns, feeding, clothing, budgeting, saving, teaching—and in another, you’ll hear the ADHD workings of an intelligent mind, scrolling his phone for TikTok and Instagram updates, chatting in the lingo of a tattoo artist in command of hip-hop, punk and pop commercialisms as up-to-the-moment as a YouTube yogurt commercial.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

He has reason to pay attention to TikTok, which he began (@tat2highway) to document adventures in tattooing, animals and life with his daughter.

He lifts his phone, lands on one video and explains.

Recently daughter Adeline was quarantined from school after contact with a COVID-positive schoolkid (she tested-out negative). Dad took her into work. Adeline wanted to learn to ink. Dad obliged. Armed with a buzzing tat pen, a determined squint and a shaky hand, the 6-year-old etched a little-kid heart on dad’s leg.

“It hurt!” Owens says.

Dad posted the action on TikTok and it hit viral freakout, first a few thousand views, then a million, now the girl-tattooing clip boasts nearly 30 million views and counting. The video boosted his TikTok following to close to 100,000, growing daily.

Anything he does on TikTok now regularly draws thousands of viewers.

He’s looking to monetize it, somehow, media-company branding and licensing, which can be lucrative for a chosen few, but “if I made an extra $20 a month, I’d be stoked.”

The tattoo work provides enough money to pay this single dad’s bills. It’s not easy so far. Yet the gazillion social media views put his head into a spin. Loathe to exploit his daughter, he says he will not, and he’s careful what he posts, mindful of child images projected on TikTok (and Instagram) and creepy oddballs who log-in to chat. But, Owens reasons, a point of social media for him is to stay busy with work, the only way he sees his clientele list grow.

The stuff the two do together—long hikes admiring desert wildlife and petroglyphs, the climbing gym, random adventures and tattooing, is really for kicks and doesn’t stink of solipsistic self-promotion; rather, it reveals a tender bond between father and daughter.

AS A SENSITIVE KID GROWING UP IN AGING mobile homes (“we weren’t rich”) around woodsy Louisiana, Owens’ options felt limited: construction, sports, oil rigs, the military or jail. He was forever on the outskirts looking in. “I never liked hunting, I never played sports, I just wanted out.”

He defines his adolescent life as area rote—BMX bikes to motorcycles, skateboards for transportation, sketching and drawing, punk rock, Tony Hawk video games, helping his dad customize and modify classic trucks into show beasts. But there was also strict religion and church five days a week.

Dad and stepmom converted to Pentecostal when Owens was 6 years old, but he was yanked in diverse directions. Owens’ biological mother, with whom he also spent time, suffers “mental-health issues.” She got him onto cigarettes at 8 years old.

First-grader Adeline inked a heart tattoo on her dad’s leg.

“She would have me light her cigarettes and by then she’d forget, so I would smoke them. At 10 she was buying me dip.” Said he could smoke at 13. He got into her weed. His grandma and her kindness toward others remains his single biggest influence; his devastation lasted years after her death when he was 10.

Owens can delineate subtle differences of Pentecostal churches in the south, degrees of beliefs, the mystical spirituals, speaking in tongues, the long history in Christianity. He regards it all with an absurd grin.

He laughs, “Basically you’re either an angel or a devil. My parents didn’t want me to work because they thought I’d buy clothes they’d hate. Didn’t let me drive because they thought I’d go get into trouble.”

He’d sneak punk rock. “I’d get MXPX at the Christian bookstore and my parents still wouldn’t let me keep it!”

Religion breeds rebellion, discoveries and unknown braveness takes its place.

At 16, Owens was a self-taught coder with dreams of working for the government as a computer hacker. He practiced said skill at high school, slicing into that school’s computer system, tracking the Calcasieu Parish school board and getting into emails. Got in the principal’s account and mentioned a bomb to close the school for a day. His IP scrambler somehow failed and within hours cops were knocking on his door. Lesson learned and that “pretty much ended” his high school days. He entered a military school for his GED.

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Owens comes from a long line of infantrymen; father, grandfather, great grandfather. Felt like the right thing for Owens to do and his old man signed him into to the military at 17. “My dad wouldn’t sign me in as infantry, the mainland combat force (“Eleven Bravo”) but that’s what I wanted.” Dad thought it too dangerous. So Owens volunteered when he got over there. (“We got hit by rockets and I refused to be a sitting target.”)

Later an anomaly, Owens was a Bernie man, far left of his parents and the “huge number racists in Louisiana.” Before Obama was elected, Owens tagged poles and buildings in his hometown with his own art: a fetching graffiti stencil that shows Obama as the bomb.

He is close with his parents now, especially his father, a diametric opposite, which Owens describes as a love in which they accept one another for who they are.

Dad was once a musician, backed legends, including soul-great Percy Sledge and swamp-popper Charles Mann, tells stories of drinking one night with Janis Joplin months before her death. He had six children, two each with three different wives, Owens the second to last. There is speculation.

Owens laughs. “Every first son resembles my dad, the second ones not at all.”

OWENS SAW COUNTLESS PEOPLE SHOT or blown up in Iraq including friends, and it all but silences him in recall. “Not every day, but often, especially on holidays.”

Suicide bombings wiped out gatherings during the Muslin holy month of Ramadan, and an improvised

CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

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TUCSON SALVAGE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

bomb once blew up a fuel truck 100 yards away from Owens on Christmas Eve, which “lit up the night like day,” yet another moment he figured he was a goner.

This was 2004, after the U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist Iraqi regime. “We did Iraq’s first election after we got Saddam out,” he says. “It was politically unruly, insurgence everywhere, and it hadn’t gone on long enough yet to see the [Iraqi] citizens want us out of there.”

He fired on enemies, unsure if he killed anyone. He shakes his head, this single dad to a first-grade girl. “She knows I was in a war. She knows I’m going to cry if I watch a war movie.”

Fourth of July still kicks Owens’ PTSD into gear. He understands the psychology term “psychic numbing,” that inner-deadening as deaths pile up.

For calm in Iraq he traveled and took in its beauty. “I couldn’t sit in the motor pool. I had to see the coun-

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try.” He goes on about visiting the Etemenanki, a ziggurat in ancient Babylon, south of Baghdad, the possible inspiration to the biblical Tower of Babel.

“Seeing that blew my mind.”

After serving a year, he waited in Kuwait to go home to the family trailer in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He watched on the news as Hurricane Katrina hit. His heart broke, and killer hurricanes became a recurring theme in his life.

He couldn’t believe the conflict post-Katrina, the looting, the fighting.

“I was excited to return to a peaceful home but I came home to a warzone.”

He spent the next two years cleaning, rebuilding, and fighting PTSD, the dark inner-tripper so often full of rage.

“I’d pick the biggest guy in a bar and go after him.” He shakes his head. “I wasn’t right in the head, drinking all the time to self-medicate.”

He’d get jailed for stupid shit, discharging a weapon, drunk in public, “process for marijuana manufacture.”

He was about done with a military career after Iraq. He wanted to be a tattoo artist.

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He went AWOL after not showing up for requisite National Guard drills.

“I did not get paid for doing the first three drills, and they couldn’t figure out why. So I didn’t show up for the others.” He turned himself in and spent a week in the county clink. His platoon sergeant gifted him a carton of cigarettes for comfort. Owens got out of the army on a general discharge, benefits intact. He worked construction, and as an offshore deck hand. Later as an engineer on a crew boat, he failed a piss test for weed. Its use was a key to calming his PTSD, which came down each time he went to sleep. Mental-health treatment helped some too, he says, but the VA paperwork in Louisiana proved difficult to navigate.

SIX YEARS AGO, OWENS BALLOONED

to 215 pounds on the VA’s (non-narcotic) treatment cocktails to “fix” his PTSD. He’d been married and split with his wife summer 2016. She’d checked into a world of drug addiction and arrest warrants after the birth of Adeline.

At that moment he confronted the inner-frights and hatreds, wrestled complete control of his life for the first time, centered on self and his daughter. He won full custody of his daughter, got off all prescription meds from the VA, got sober from booze, cold-turkey off cigarettes, went raw vegan for months, and dropped 80 pounds. Then he bought a couple tarantulas and a snake, and literally “climbed his first mountain,” on a trip to Washington State. “13,000 feet in the sky.” Call it a spiritual awakening.

Owens began to turn honorable feelings into actions, became a participant in his days. For example, he always adored wildlife and animals, and the little lives took on deeper life meaning and purpose. He began rehabbing racoons and squirrels and releasing them in nature. He rescued and raised his first opossums, named them Princeton and Penelope, and got close to them. Adopted a fetching, tri-colored albino Nelson’s milk snake.

Owens soon rescued and carefully raised various species of reptiles.

Eventually he housed and cared for dozens: pythons, boas and colubrids, anything non-venomous. Various footlong monitor lizards, myriad geckos.

He’d train these little dinosaurs to eat from his hand, many raised from hatchlings and as such he calls them “my babies.” He and Adeline grew close to their reptiles, named them all. He housed 150 tarantulas too, and “named the first 30 of them, but some don’t live that long and it sucks.”

Owens rattles off details on the care and feeding, produces myriad photos, including one from last year of a little Adeline wearing a big grin wrapped in her favorite snake, a 12-foot Burmese python.

He built habitats inside a backyard shed he refurbished into a living paradise. Suitable terrariums in a veritable backyard zoo, reptiles kept in lighted enclosures built with wood he’d “drag a mile down the beach.”

Ran plumbing for the watering, conduits for electricity, changed water daily, grew a yard garden that yielded fruit.

He pushes up skin of his arms, tracing little bite scars rising up from ink.

“I have been bitten,” he laughs.

The little refuge lasted more than four years, a Zen-ass quiet world, the other side of gunfire, death and wary memories, filled of calm repetition, caring for and adoration of graceful creatures, teaching his daughter that love.

There is easy personal allegory here, an empathy for creatures whose appearance intimidates people, makes them nervous. He could be talking of himself.

“I had been able to change so many people’s perspectives on these animals. All it took was for me to show the beauty I found in them to ease their fears. It’s about being the light in this world that changes opinions and breaks stereotypes.”

He’d never have guessed he and Adeline would be forced to shack up inside the shed with the animals.

The year 2020 started well for Adeline and Owens. He was tattooing and piercing on a large clientele in Lake Charles.

Then COVID shut down the area in

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

March, and Jeff Russell, the owner of the tattoo shop, died of cancer, leaving Owens the business.

As a new business owner, Owens was just finding his legs, getting on top of the taxes and learning to run the place, but hadn’t gotten to the lapsed hurricane insurance yet. (“I figured we had some time before the next hurricane.”) Three and half months later in August, Hurricane Laura all but killed the shop. Income stopped. He began to salvage the place when Hurricane Zita came through in October and landed the final blow. His business was dead, his dedicated employees out too.

The region suffered. Owens lived in a well-kept suburban brick house (rented) with a big yard, barbeque, and animal shed in a sedate neighborhood of mostly older people. It flooded, created black mold in his home and that’s when he and Adeline slept for more than a month in the reptile shed.

Surviving on government emergency food, he’d gather hot food and water for his older neighbors. He boiled water on the outdoor grill to make tea, showered with water bottles (“takes about 10 bottles of water to get a good one,” he laughs).

He raised $4,500 with help from friends to move himself and his daughter the hell out, donating his zoo to a caretaker based in Texas and Louisiana, who drove to Owens’ and collected them all. Dad and daughter were heartbroken, but their pets are safe. Owens visited them on a trip to Louisiana.

They landed in Tucson last year, stayed with Owens’ half-brother here, slept on bunk beds. A few weeks later Owens got hired at Arizona Tattoo and moved into their apartment earlier this year.

“I pray to whoever looked out for me all these years, I’ve been through so much shit.” It’s not God, he adds, it’s more of a greater good, or nature.

“You shouldn’t need religion to be a better person. I just want to make people around me happy.”

Really it is this: A sweetness and sensitivity to what he calls his “adventures.” He (literally) went to battle and

emerged on the other side, self-hatred yielding to self-analysis, a wisdom from mistakes, to loosen the clasp of debilitating familiarity, which gave way to self-awareness.

Also, he says, “Adeline is, 1,000% the reason I’m a better person.”

A DAY LATER AT DINNERTIME, Owens relaxes on a gray ottoman in their gated-complex apartment on Tucson’s east side. Adeline plays in and out of her bedroom with stuffed animals and their two cats they raised from kittens. The day was like any other day lately; a routine for which he is damn grateful. He got Adeline to school and daycare, worked, picked her up, and now maybe they’ll head to a rock-climbing gym. Adeline must eat her vegetables first before anything sweet. He doesn’t allow his daughter screens.

Adeline is accommodating and curious, and there’s that baffling parental trick, his mind to hers, that non-parents can only marvel at. She learns and listens. In dreamy excitement she shows off her stuffed rainbow unicorns and a baby Yoda, and a tiny arm scar like a trophy, where a Blue-tongued skink, an intelligent and (mostly) friendly lizard nipped her back in Lake Charles.

The apartment is immaculate. (“I’m a little OCD,” he says, “Adeline gets it, she’ll straighten things up too.”)

Lavender ambient lighting, the walkout patio crammed with their blooming plants and foliage. A kind of curated collection of graffiti art decorates in splashes of color, a green glowing neon “Open” sign from his tattoo place in Louisiana illuminates the kitchen. Everything has its place, like Adeline’s school backpack hanging next to dad’s skateboard on the back of the front door.

One piece hanging on the living room wall shows Adeline’s colorful footprints as butterfly wings, a painting gift from her that says: “Happy Mother’s Day! To Daddy!”

Owens says Adeline hasn’t asked about her mother, and there is no contact. “It could be because she only really knows me.”

Troubled past or no, from female basics to the schoolwork, the work of any single dad raising a daughter is not easy, especially one so quickly judged from his appearance. “I like to have moms in my life,” he adds. “I have mom friends who help me, like a support group.”

He’s made habits of early morning hikes, treks with Adeline, and occasional runs of area peaks. “It’s the first time in my life I electively wake up at 5 a.m. Tucson is amazing.”

After a moment, he adds, that musical argot heightening whatever wonder, and by way of explanation, “there was nothing worth waking up for in Louisiana. There was so much oppression there, I mean that’s why New Orleans gave us jazz. It was the oppression, and it really hasn’t changed that much.”

The PTSD is never fully dormant. “I have medical marijuana with VA discounts, and I don’t feel like a criminal [in Tucson] smoking,” which he does occasionally, away from Adeline.

But, he adds, “I still don’t do well in big crowds. I stand on the outskirts.” ■

Heart tattoo by 6-year-old Adeline Owens

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Editor’s Note: While we are delighted to see Tucsonans once again gathering for fun events, we are also aware that the Delta variant is circulating and case counts in Arizona are on the rise. Please consider getting vaccinated against COVID if you haven’t yet and following CDC guidance, which includes wearing masks at crowded indoor events. Keep yourself and others safe—the pandemic isn’t over yet.

Indoor Concerts at the Gaslight Music Hall. Have you been to one of these bad boys yet? Indoor shows at the Gaslight are back, which means you’ve got plenty of opportunities to treat yourself! This week alone, they’ve got a Bluegrass Jamboree at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 30 ($27), and a Soul Train Dance Party with Zo & the Soul Breakers at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 1 ($20).

On the weekend, they’ve got the Music of the Traveling Wilburys (along with a mix of music by the likes of Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and George Harrison) at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 2 ($27). Then, there’s Heartaches and Highways – A Tribute to Emmylou Harris at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 3 ($27).

Oro Valley Fall Artisan Market. Now that October is here, we can really start embracing fall. Light some scented candles! Hang some decorative autumn leaves! Drink two pumpkin spice lattes at once! And, of course, attend the Oro Valley Fall Artisan Market. The outdoor market has a reduced capacity of 60 artisans and five food vendors this year, but no shortage of variety or quality. See some of the Southwest’s finest artisans in fashion, home goods, painting, visual arts and food, all to the tune of live music. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 3. Oro Valley Marketplace, 12155 N. Oracle Road. Free.

Evening of Play. Most of the time when you hear about the Children’s Museum Tucson, it’s because they’re putting on an event for children. Kids this, kids that! And you know what? What about us adults?

Feels a little unfair. Okay, obviously that’s a joke, but this 11th annual event is a night for adults that will give you a chance to play like a kid. Enjoy food, drinks and entertainment while supporting a wonderful local cause. There’s even glitter tattoos and a candy table! Plus wine glass painting, live music and more. 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 2. Children’ Museum Tucson, 200 S. Sixth Ave. $150.

Yume Japanese Gardens Reopens. This year, which has so far been about three decades long, but simultaneously 14 seconds long, has felt weird. We could all use some Zen energy and a little bit of a mental reset, which is why we’re so excited for this reopening! And in tandem with the tiniest, most hopeful glimmer of cooler weather on the horizon? Wonderful.

Starting Oct. 1, come on down to stroll through the serene gardens at Yume. If you’re really looking for a treat, sign up for their Path to Emotional Healing Program, where you’ll learn to reflect on your own stories to enable yourself to thrive. Yume Japanese Gardens is located at 2130 N. Alvernon Way. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday to Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. $13 GA, $10 seniors, $9 students/ military, $6 kids 3 to 15.

by Emily Dieckman Tucson Reptile & Amphibian Show & Sale.

There are certainly a lot of neat reptiles in Arizona. I, for one, love seeing a good lizard on a morning walk. But rare are the opportunities to see thousands of tortoises, snakes, lizards, frogs, turtles and bugs in one, wonderful, 60,000-square-foot space.

So, heck are we excited for the 19th annual iteration of Arizona’s largest and oldest reptile show. In addition to seeing and buying reptiles from well-known breeders, you can also buy things like art, jewelry and reptile supplies. AND there’s a petting zoo!

You can pet a giant lizard!!! 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 3. Tucson Expo Center, 3750 E. Irvington Road. $10 adults, $5 kids 6 to 12.

Admission is cash only!

Puppet Cabaret. Everyone knows that the best puppet shows aren’t just funny: They’re also philosophical, musical and recommended for adults and older teens.

Red Herring Puppets is putting on this grownup puppet slam for two weekends only, and we do not recommend missing it. The show is a series of short vignettes performed by talented local puppeteers, and you’ll get a chance to see a variety of puppet styles putting on several types of performances. 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 1, 2, 8 and 9. Red Herring Puppets, Tucson Mall, 4500 N. Oracle Road (upper level between Macy’s and Forever 21). $12 for reservations.

First Saturday Art Walk at Untitled Gallery. It’s a new season at Untitled Gallery, which means it’s time to welcome the newest exhibiting artists! Their current show, “Reflection,” features work by new members Katrina Lasko, Thaddeus Camp and Russell Recchion, as well as pieces by original members Inna Rohr, Momoko Okada and Nicola Marshall. The show is all about reflections the artists have made during the madness of the past year and a half, and it includes some completely stunning work. Come by to check out the exhibit sometime even if you can’t make the art walk! 4 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2.

Untitled Gallery, 101 W. Sixth St. 12th Annual Tucson Humanities Festival.

This event hosted by the UA College of Humanities kicks off this week and lasts all throughout October, and it’s seriously cool! Offered mostly in a hybrid format after last year’s entirely virtual event, there’s something for pretty much everyone. (I mean, you can’t tell me you’ve never told or enjoyed hearing a story, ever.) This week, they’ve got a German-English Translation slam at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Sept.

30. Then, there’s “A Life in Stories: Visions & Journeys in the Land of Mystery” at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 4 and “Inflection Points: A Gallery Talk on Poetry in Translation” at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 5. Visit humanitiesfestival.arizona.edu for more information.

0.5K: The Ultimate Underachiever’s “Run.” Why is the word “run” in quotation marks? Well, for one, half a kilometer is less than a third of a mile, or about a lap and a half around your ole’ high school track. But it’s more than that. You start off at Sky Bar Tucson, where you can carbo load, Michael Scott-style, on a slice of pizza, then get your hydration on with a shot and a beer. Then, you’ll make your way the grueling distance down Fourth Avenue to the finish line, which is just O’Malley’s.

There, you can celebrate with a donut and a glass of champagne. And don’t worry, they’ve got a water station and aid kits (with lollipops) in case you need a boost along the way. Registration comes with four drinks, a slice of pizza, a donut, a fanny pack and one of those pretentious-looking oval-shaped stickers that says “0.5K.” 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 2. Sky Bar Tucson 536 N. Fourth Ave. $49, but must register in advance.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 13

tic individual. Her Tammy Faye gives the real-life counterpart a bit of dignity to go with the comical flamboyance. She also nails the Tammy Faye singing voice with many musical moments.

Garfield conveys the bland, unimpressive, fake personality of Jim Bakker quite well. He does an excellent job capturing a very boring loser. His is the less showy performance, but I’ve seen a lot of Jim Bakker over the years, and Garfield nails his total lack of charisma. Still boggles the mind how this troll siphoned millions of dollars out of all those bank accounts. Oh, wait. No, it doesn’t. There are a lot of idiots

By Alexandra Pere in the world. alexandra@tucsonlocalmedia.com The movie glosses over the Jessica PHOTO COURTESY SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES Hahn affair and doesn’t cover much after THE 17TH TUCSON FILM AND MUSIC the scandal and the Bakkers’ eventual Festival is back from Oct. 1 to 3 with an emdivorce. While the focus is on Tammy here, A new film examines the rise and fall of Tammy Faye Bakker phasis on female directors. it would’ve been interesting to see a little Opening night of TFMF will start at 7 p.m. bit of Jim’s post-jail life pushing apocalypse with the intriguing story of Fanny, the first food sold in buckets. This bastard is still all-female rock band to release a long-playing getting people to donate millions to his

By Bob Grimm album with a major label. In FANNY: The It’s in these short opening scenes where fake causes. Again…there are a lot of idiots Right to Rock, the documentary explores how tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com Jones establishes her character as a hard in this world, and Jim Bakker is one of their this underrated group of women opened the ass who really is just looking for an excuse rock genre to women and Filipina-Amerikings. to be nice and happy. Many actresses TAMMY FAYE MESSNER, AND HER Additional supporting cast includes Vin- cans. The band formed in California during could’ve turned this part into something douchebag former husband Jim, were a the ’60s, influencing forthcoming rock cent D’Onofrio as Jerry Falwell, the Darth bitter and stoic, but Jones gives Rachel total freak show, a fraudster clown act that stars like Joe Elliot (Def Leppard), Kathy Vader of the scumbag televangelist world. serious depth. Jones delivers a master class stands as a prime example of ugly ’80s Valentine (Go-Gos) and Gail Anne Dorsey D’Onofrio disappears into the guise of the (David Bowie), all of whom appear in the underbelly greed and out of control televan- in reserved line delivery and effective facial ultimate TV religion villain, to the point documentary. The Arizona premier of FANexpressions. gelist morons. where the actor is no longer recognizable.

NY will be followed with an exclusive Q&A When Chastain steps in as an older TamMaking a movie about Tammy Faye and Let’s hope extended time playing this awful session with Fanny drummer Alice de Buhr. my going to Bible college where she soon her creepy husband is no easy trick. Fall human being didn’t have an adverse effect Saturday is full of independent documenmeets Jim (Andrew Garfield), she brings From Grace (1990) featured douchebag on his pancreas. taries with a small-town focus. The festival multiple dimensions to a person that got Kevin Spacey as douchebag Jim, and the Credit Showalter for making this a some- starts with short documentaries from 12:30 reduced to a bit of a clown mess joke by the angelic Bernadette Peters as Tammy Faye. times awkward and unpleasant experience p.m. to 2:30 p.m. This segment contains five media up until her death in 2007. Honestly, Despite the star power, it was a middling documentary shorts that unearth original because that’s actually what it should be. affair, and the story has always been ripe for after watching what Chastain does with stories from desert dwellers.

You’ll cringe more than you will laugh, but Tammy Faye in this movie, watching the a retelling.

The Whole Enchilada, directed by Maggie that’s what you are going to do when you real Tammy Faye in old news clips and inAlas, telling their story in an entertainSmith (wife of Tucson Weekly columnist watch a credible depiction of the depths terviews (like her live interview with Jim on Brian Smith), is one of the shorts to be ing and truthful way that appeals to the the Bakkers fell to. Chastain giving Tammy Nightline, recreated in the film) feels a bit moviegoing masses is quite the challenge.

Faye a true, big heart makes the ugly parts CONTINUED ON PAGE 15 different. There was a real, sometimes sweet Thankfully, director Michael Showalter go down a little easier. ■ person under all of that makeup. is up to that challenge with The Eyes of Yes, she was partially responsible for a Tammy Faye, featuring a marvelous Jessica despicable swindle involving the Bakker Chastain in the title role. ministry, which included the Heritage USA There’s one big problem going into Bible Disneyland and a massive TV netthis movie: It’s only a little over two hours, work. But she was also a gay advocate/icon, and this really needed to be a miniseries. at Tucson Expo Center as well as a passionate singer. She made up There are many years, layers and chapters 3750 E. Irvington Rd. for some of her misdeeds, and this movie to the Bakker tragicomedy, and one movie does a solid job of showing us some of her couldn’t possibly cover it all. This is an Sat., Oct. 2 nd 9:30-5pm & Sun., Oct. 3 rd 10- 4pm redemptive qualities. abridged telling of the car crash that was • Adults $10 60,000 sq ft of frogs, snakes, lizards, tortoises and turtles. Reptile petting zoo.

Chastain captures all of the Tammy their multiple scandals.

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Faye mannerisms (and, yes, the caked-on The film starts in the ’50s, with a young • 5 & under free Cash at door and no pets please makeup) in a way that feels less like cariTammy Faye eager to attend church with TucsonReptileShow.com her mother, Rachel (an outstanding Cherry cature and impersonation, and more like *Masks may be required channeling the flawed, blindingly optimisJones), and father, Fred (Frederic Lehne).

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

By Xavier Omar Otero tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

MARK YOUR CALENDARS… To be a rock and not to roll. This week sees Marty Stuart, Tech N9ne, Pat Metheny, Geoff Tate, Cleopatrick and more pass through town. Read on.

THURSDAY, SEPT. 30 Heavy metal has a pleasurably sordid affair with mariachi music? Metalachi, “The world’s first and only heavy metal mariachi band,” do unholy things to metal classics.

Bring your holy water aspergillum. At 191 Toole... Infusing neo-psychedelic garage rock with Motown flourishes, Shannon & The Clams pay deference to the Year Of The Spider (2021). On Club Congress Plaza.

With the fuzzy-wuzzy, classic horror flick campy, softcore porn pop of The Paranoyds...

FRIDAY, OCT. 1 A child prodigy, this country/bluegrass living legend was gifted his first guitar when he was just 3 years old. As a young boy, Marty Stuart met Bill Monroe after a concert. “Do you want to play the mandolin, boy?” The bluegrass icon asked, before handing him his mandolin pick. “This right here will help you out.” “I carried that pick to school with me every day like it was kryptonite in my pocket,” Stuart recalls, in Country Music, a film by Ken Burns. By 12, Stuart had taught himself to play both mandolin and guitar. After sitting in with Lester Flatt’s band, The Nashville Grass, he became a permanent member just shy of his 14th birthday. After Flatt died, Stuart toured with country icon Johnny Cash’s band for six years. One could easily conclude that Stuart has led a truly charmed life, before even taking his solo career into account. Since the 1990s, the five-time Grammy winner has risen to become a country music torchbearer. Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives celebrate the 20th anniversary of his iconic album, The Pilgrim, at Rialto Theater. Nashville singer-songwriter Ward Davis opens... Born Aaron Dontez Yates, at 17, he found the inspiration for his moniker

after a gangster (Black Walt) heard him rap.

“He said I sounded like an automatic weapon.” Finding early inspiration in the work of N.W.A. and Public Enemy, it wasn’t until hearing The Great Adventures of Slick Rick (Def Jam, 1988) that Yates began developing his signature rapid-fire “chopper” style — cramming 13 syllables or more in every second. Now, 20 years into his career, Yates entered the new decade with a trilogy. Starting with Enterfear (April 2020) his 22nd studio album. Followed by two EP’s comprised of studio outtakes, More Fear (Aug. 2020) and final installment Fear Exodus (Oct. 2020). At 49, Yates keeps pushing. “Fears are going away. When you’re fearless you can say whatever the fuck you wanna say.”

Tech N9ne rolls the Strange New World Tour into the Rialto Theatre. With special guests Rittz, Krizz Kaliko and more... “Fake it ‘til you make it,” Luke Gruntz confesses, in an interview with Loudwire. “I’d been doing some online sleuthing trying to figure out how bands get fans.” Tired of playing shows to a steady audience of 10—realizing that “no matter how loud we are, [or] how hard we try, our voices aren’t gonna be heard”— this Canadian rock duo was willing to sidestep their integrity to get “Hometown” a larger audience. After being featured on Spotify’s Rock This podcast (hosted

by Allison Hagendorf), their 2017 single catapulted into the stratosphere (receiving over 50 million streams to date). “I sent [Hagendorf] this totally BS email pretending to be a fan. ‘Oh my God, Alli, you’ve gotta check out this band Cleopatrick,’” Gruntz recalls. “Within like 20 minutes, she replied and had put us on one of her playlists.” New rock mafia Cleopatrick make a stop at 191 Toole. Toronto rockers Ready The Prince open... Released in 2020, during the darkest days of the pandemic, to little attention, awash in fuzz with canyon echoes and glass-like feedback, A Nice Sweet Getaway, points to unseen dangers that lurk in open spaces. La Cerca fêtes their latest album at Sky Bar Tucson... Big on sleaze, short on substance, The Dirt is a band of filthy “dirtbags”—inspired by the androgynous, hell-raising bad boys that trolled the Sunset Strip of the 1980s—dolled up in leather, CoverGirl makeup, kohl eyeliner and a superabundance of Aqua Net. Performing the glam metal hits that defined the Decade of Decadence. The Dirt: ’80s Hair Metal Experience gives “love a bad name.”

[Prophylactics strongly recommended.] At AVA Amphitheater... Officially forming in London in 2012, these Atlantans chose the

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

name Algiers for its reference to a place where violence, racism, resistance and religion historically have clashed and commingled. Their appeal is broad, finding acceptance with everyone from “recovering goths to Motown obsessives to indie-rock fiends to hip-hop heads.” The Guardian tabbed their sound, “Dark stuff, but good grief they’ve got soul.” But the road to arrive at this unique destination rarely takes the shortcut. “I think if a process doesn’t go through that entire range of emotions, then maybe you’re not doing something right,” Lee Tesche told NPR. “I’d be worried if we went through the whole process thinking we were making the greatest record... I’m sure we’d come out with a record that was a total piece of trash.” Algiers perform material from There Is No Year (Matador, 2020). At Club Congress...

SUNDAY, OCT. 3 Making a difference in the lives of people living with HIV/ AIDS. Good Trouble performs classic rock covers for The Red Concert—a fundraising event in support of TIHAN (Tucson Interfaith HIV/AIDS Network)—at Monterey Court...

TUESDAY, OCT. 5 The title track to Queensrÿche’s 1990 album “Empire”— which contains an odd spoken passage citing U.S. law enforcement expenditure statistics—warns of an unstoppable, dystopian future, rife with violence, in which drug trafficking leads to societal collapse. Reaching triple-platinum status—fueled by the chart-topping success of hit single “Silent Lucidity”—Empire (EMI, 1990) stands as Queensrÿche’s greatest commercial success, garnering this “thinking man’s progressive metal band” critical acclaim.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Geoff Tate and band will perform Empire in its entirety. Additionally, the setlist includes Queensryche’s second studio album, Rage for Order. Operatic vocalist, Geoff Tate brings theatricality and a 4-octave range to the Rialto Theatre. The “bald man” Kurt Deimer opens... In a blinding flash of aggression, these heavy metalists emerged from the primordial soup (otherwise known as L.A.) in 2012 with the release of their self-titled EP. Drawing their name from a Plasmatics song, “Butcher Baby,” these Wendy O. Williams acolytes gained traction from a YouTube video of their headbanging interpretation of “Fucking Hostile” by Pantera. After completing a North American tour supporting Goliath (Century Media Records, 2013), frontwomen Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey spoke about their decision to ditch the nipple-tape look.

“We got tired of it,” Shepherd told Artisan News. “The band started [as] an ode to the Plasmatics. Wendy O. Williams was a badass. She didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought.

We share that spirit.” When asked if they were concerned about the nipple tape overshadowing their music, Harvey retorted, “[My] nipples were sore. We wanted to evolve.”

Despite their record label’s disfavor for the album’s title and artwork, in 2015 they released Take It Like a Man. Harvey explains, “It’s not a gender thing.”

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REEL INDIE

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premiered during this segment. This film dives into the history of Tucson’s rock music with interviews with local legends Dan Stuart (Green on Red) and Howe Gelb (Giant Sand). These interviews are interwoven with unreleased film footage from the Pills, Naked Prey and Suzie Caruze.

The centerpiece film for Saturday is the world premiere of Crossing Columbus, directed by award-winning filmmaker Cathy Lee Crane at 7:30 p.m. This film discusses the history of Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid on the town of Columbus, N.M. Crane will be available for a Q&A after the premiere.

Sunday will start with a collection of short films focusing on personal stories like Dear Jane, directed by Noah Kistler.

This film follows the story of two sisters who flee their religious cult. The highly anticipated film The First Step directed by Brandon Kramer and produced by Lance Kramer will start at 5 pm. The First Step is an exploration of how a polarized America deals with criminal justice reform and the addiction crisis through the eyes of CNN correspondent Van Jones. The festival will close at 7 p.m. with the West Coast premiere of ForeverMoore: The Angelo Project, directed by Tisa Zito. This film focuses on Angelo Moore, an inspirational musician who left his mark on LA’s ’80s punk scene.

The 17th annual Tucson Film and Music Festival will be held at The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St. Admission is $8 admission. Purchase your ticket ahead of time at tucsonfilmfestival.eventbrite.com.

FULL SCHEDULE: Friday FANNY: The Right to Rock (Arizona Premiere) at 7 p.m.

Saturday Documentary Short Film Showcase 12:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.

• Bisbee Always Survives (World Premiere) • Kandittundu (Seen It) (Arizona Premiere) • Mustang Moments (Arizona Premiere) • Road Movie (World Premiere) • The Whole Enchilada (World Premiere) In A Different Key (Tucson Premiere) at 3 p.m.

Bad Animal (World Premiere) at 5 p.m.

Crossing Columbus (World Premiere) at 7:30 p.m.

Rez Metal (Arizona Premiere) at 9:30 p.m.

Sunday Narrative Short Film Showcase 3 pm to 5 pm • Dear Jane (Arizona Premiere) • Feed Your Muse (Arizona Premiere) • Ghosted (Arizona Premiere) • Sombras (Arizona Premiere) • Staff Pick (Arizona Premiere) The First Step (Southwest Premiere) at 5 p.m.

ForeverMoore: The Angelo Project (West Coast Premiere) at 7 p.m.

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Prime Leaf partners with Ward 6, AZ NORML for expungement clinic

By David Abbott tucsoneditor@tucsonlocalmedia.com PRIME LEAF DISPENSARIES ARE joining up with Tucson Councilmember Steve Kozachik and Southern Arizona NORML to host an expungement clinic at Tucson’s Ward 6 offices on Saturday, Oct. 9, as efforts to seal records of Arizonans with minor marijuana convictions continue.

“We figured that based on the turnout we had (at the first clinic), which was 15 people, we’d get better results if we teamed up with Prime Leaf to help promote it,” Kozachik said. “So we hope to get more people involved.”

The clinic is the second to be held in

Kozachik’s office and the first in partnership with Prime Leaf. Arizona and Southern Arizona NORML chapters so far have hosted more than 20 clinics, hitting nearly half of Arizona’s 15 counties, although the lion’s share have been in the Phoenix metro area in partnership with dispensaries there.

While NORML has worked with Green Med-adjacent Harambe Café on Tucson’s east side, this will be the organization’s first Tucson clinic openly partnering with a dispensary.

Prime Leaf CEO Brian Warde sees it as a socially responsible thing for dispensary owners to do, given the economic impact the passage of Prop 207 has had on cannabis businesses throughout the state,

and the role expungement played convincing Arizona voters to legalize adult-use, recreational weed.

“What these expungement clinics provide is to get word out on the street, and to get people talking about it,” he said. “I think that will certainly gain momentum, and will help people understand and trust the system.”

Warde comes to the expungement discussion through a life directly affected by the War on Drugs, which has led to an estimated 200,000 people with expungeable cannabis offenses in the state of Arizona.

His professional life before entering the cannabis industry in 2014 was as an advocate for underserved communities and people. He worked for the Department of Justice as a victim’s advocate for Southern Arizona Native American tribes and with the federal government to prosecute perpetrators of sexual assault. He has also worked to help people dealing with opiate addiction, and sees expungement as a way to begin healing in communities that have been hard-hit by the War on Drugs.

But he came to his vocation through first-hand experience with the fallout from those drug policies, growing up in an economically challenged family with a step-father caught in the criminal justice

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system, in part because of low-level drug convictions.

“I’ve seen what minor drug offenses can lead to and the impacts on people. Those affected me directly,” he said. “I never spent a day outside of a prison with (my stepdad). So that hit home for me as much as my career did.”

Warde hopes to set an example for other Tucson-area dispensary owners, and spur them to join the effort to advance expungement in what is expected to be a multi-billion dollar industry, the fruits of which many will share.

“I hope to inspire all dispensary organizations and anyone benefiting off of the current climate to participate in fixing the wrongs for those that have paved the way and paid the ultimate price for our successes,” he said.

Expungement of marijuana offenses means that the conviction records are sealed as if they had never happened and cannot follow the petitioner around. The legalization initiative succeeded, in part, because of the promise of repairing at least some of the damage done through the decades-long War on Drugs.

So far, though, those efforts have not CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

TUCSON WEEDLY

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resulted in a flood of expungements.

According to the Arizona Superior Court in Pima County, since July there have only been 28 petitions filed and only 16 records have been sealed. Three petitions have been denied.

Pima County Attorney’s Office Senior Counsel Jack Chin says there are likely “tens of thousands” of records eligible for expungement in Pima County, although there are no “hard numbers.”

“In terms of increasing capacity, Southern Arizona Legal Aid has hired attorneys to work on the issue, and we will be responsive to them when they file petitions,” Chin wrote via email. “In the medium to long term, the only way the will of the voters will be carried out is through aggregate expungements, as have been accomplished in other states.

This office is thinking about how to make that possible.”

Many cannabis advocates in the state believe the only way to expedite the process is to come up with a system that

automatically expunges records. The state of New York instituted an automatic system that happens “without filing any motions and without any fees. You do not have to do anything,” according to the New York State Unified Court System website.

While advocacy groups can only do so much, it is more than likely the only way to fully implement expungement is to adopt some kind of similar system.

Warde believes state and county prosecutors should bear the responsibility for that and it should not be left to nonprofits or community agencies.

“The system had no problem finding money to purchase equipment, hire task forces and arrest and incarcerate people when it was their agenda,” he said via text. “They have been awarded funds from taxing the consumers in our industry to get it done. I heard more people praising them and using those conviction statistics to drive the War on Drugs narrative, so now use the current climate and funding to drive the new narrative of legalization and (take) steps to make people whole again.”

Robinette said Arizona NORML will continue its efforts throughout the year, with about 30 more planned by the end of the year, and he hopes to have at least one clinic in every county by then.

In 2022, he sees automatic expungement efforts stepping up.

He said one of the primary items on NORML’s 2022 legislative agenda is to push for legislation “that will make expungements in Arizona both universal and automatic. While we thoroughly enjoy and are grateful for this opportunity to do these clinics, and to help people in the cannabis community, we still would prefer that petitioners didn’t have to jump through hoops to make the petition and the expungement happen.”

Robinette estimates that about 650 petitions have been processed per week in the state and that NORML volunteers have “processed or created over 1,000 petitions through all of our clinics.”

The upcoming clinic will not involve the Pima County Attorney’s Office, so that potential attendees feel more comfortable participating. Kozachik thinks many people avoid petitioning because

they fear they may be walking into a legal trap.

“We are not involving the PCAO in this, not because we have an attitude about them,” he said. “It’s that oftentimes, people are reluctant to come in and start talking about prior convictions with a Pima County attorney.

“For instance, if I came in and was trying to get a possession for two ounces expunged from my record, but I also had a Grand Theft Auto on my record, they would be honor-bound to pursue (it),” Kozachik concluded.

The clinic will take place at the Tucson Ward 6 office, 3202 E. First St., from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9. Attendees should bring as much information as they can involving their specific cases. Masks will be required and provided onsite for those who do not have one and COVID protocols will be in place. ■ For more information, go to arizonanorml.org/expungement/, www. facebook.com/primeleaftucson, or www. tucsonaz.gov/ward-6.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

NEWS NUGGETS Sedona Ranch Retreats, a spa offering life coaching, “past life regression” and cannabis coaching sessions, has banned vaccinated people because they “reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

The facility offers visitors overnight stays in suits and cabins that run up to $179 per night.

The retreat, run by Fernanda Durlene, loudly proclaims its stance on vaccinations on its homepage, featuring a video titled “TheBigVirusHoax.com with Dr. Fernanda Durlene - Healing, Health & Truth,” as well as what’s sure to become a classic of the era, “I Will Not be Leaving Quietly,” by a group known as Five Times August.

Further, in the FYI section of the website there are links to pages such as, “What’s In the COVID-19 Shots?,” “‘Madam Speaker, you are not God!’ Cawthorn RAILS against

XOXO

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15

“It’s the inner strength you have to find in order to pull your boots up and keep moving forward.” Butcher Babies whirl into a “Headspin,” at 191 Toole. Flanked by Infected Rain and Stitched Up Heart... After hearing Miles Davis’ Four & More (Columbia, 1966) this world-renown jazz guitarist—incorporating articulation customarily reserved for horn players—began developing his trademark style. Throughout a storied career, 20-time Grammy Award winner Pat Metheny has consistently sidestepped convention. Working with a diversity of artists, including Ornette Coleman, David Bowie, Milton Nascimento and Steve Reich, to become one of the most accomplished jazz artists in music history. “It starts when we disappear.” Pat Metheny with pianist/ organist James Francies and drummer Joe Dyson performs selections from Side-Eye NYC (Modern Recordings, 2021)—a headfirst reinvention of the 1960s organ, drums and guitar trio, popularized by artists like funky Hammond B3 master Jimmy Smith.

At Fox Tucson Theatre...

Pelosi’s mask mandate in the House,” “THERE IS NO ‘CORONAVIRUS’ THERE IS NO ‘COVID-19’” and of course, “Horrific Findings In The Blood Of The Vaccinated.”

“We are a mask-free retreat center. We do not offer any services or stay in our property if you have received the COVID shot,” the website proudly proclaims, “Therefore at this time cannot host vaccinated guests.”

Durlene also “apologize[s] for any inconvenience,” of course.

Get the shot. ■

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 6 A triptych of local art—works by Golden Boots, Touchy, and Female Gaze—can be viewed and appreciated live on the Club Congress Plaza...

THURSDAY, OCT. 7 Dana Cooper’s lifelong love affair with music began early. One of his fondest memories is that of an excursion, tagging along with his father, to The Calico Cat, a Kansas City dive bar. After popping coins in the jukebox, he recalls his dad marveling at his then-2-year-old son singing along with Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb platters.

Years later, now an integral figure in the Nashville songwriting community, Cooper has collaborated with renowned writers like Tom Kimmel, Kim Carnes and Don Henry.

His upcoming release, I Can Face the Truth, (slated to drop in early 2022), finds this insightful storyteller facing hard truths head on with humor and unfeigned expression.

Dana Cooper spins yarns. At Monterey Court...

Until next week, XOXO...

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SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

By Rob Brezsny. Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s EXPANDED WEEKLY HOROSCOPE 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 $1.99 per minute. 18 and over. Touchtone phone required.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Blogger AnaSophia was asked, “What do you find attractive in a person?”

I’ll reproduce her reply because it’s a good time to think about what your answer would be. I’m not implying you should be looking for a new lover. I’m interested in inspiring you to ruminate about what alliances you should cultivate during the coming months. Here’s what AnaSophia finds attractive: “strong desire but not neediness, passionate sensitivity, effortlessness, authenticity, innocence of perception, sense of humor, vulnerability and honesty, embodying one’s subtleties and embracing one’s paradoxes, acting unconditionally and from the heart.”

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Taurus author Roberto Bolaño confessed, “Sometimes I want greatness, sometimes just its shadow.” I appreciate his honesty. I think what he says is true about most of us.

Is there anyone who is always ready for the heavy responsibility of pursuing greatness? Doubtful. To be great, we must periodically go through phases when we recharge our energy and take a break from being nobly ambitious. What about you, dear Taurus? If I’m reading the omens correctly, you will benefit from a phase of reinvention and reinvigoration. During the next three weeks, you’ll be wise to hang out in the shadows of greatness.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Have fun, even if it’s not the same kind of fun everyone else is having,” wrote religious writer C. S. Lewis. That advice is ten times more important right now than it usually is. For the sake of your body’s and soul’s health, you need to indulge in sprees of playful amusement and blithe delight and tension-relieving merriment. And all that good stuff will work its most potent magic if it stimulates pleasures that are unique to you—and not necessarily in line with others’ tastes.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “It is one thing to learn about the past,” wrote Cancerian journalist Kenneth Auchincloss. “It is another to wallow in it.” That’s stellar advice for you to incorporate in the coming weeks. After studying your astrological omens, I’m enthusiastic about you exploring the old days and old ways. I’m hoping that you will discover new clues you’ve overlooked before and that this further information will inspire you to re-envision your life story. But as you conduct your explorations, it’s also crucial to avoid getting bogged down in sludgy emotions like regret or resentment.

Be inspired by your history, not demoralized by it.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Would you like to deepen and strengthen your capacity to concentrate?

Cosmic rhythms will conspire in your favor if you work on this valuable skill in the coming weeks.

You’ll be able to make more progress than would normally be possible. Here’s pertinent advice from author Harriet Griffey: “Whenever you feel like quitting, just do five more—five more minutes, five more exercises, five more pages—which will extend your focus.” Here’s another tip: Whenever you feel your concentration flagging, remember what it is you love about the task you’re doing. Ruminate about its benefits for you and others.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): What’s your favorite feeling? Here’s Virgo poet Mary Szybist’s answer to that question: hunger. She’s not speaking about the longing for food, but rather the longing for everything precious, interesting and meaningful.

She adores the mood of “not yet,” the experience of moving toward the desired thing. What would be your response to the question, Virgo? I’m guessing you may at times share Szybist’s perspective. But given the current astrological omens, your favorite feeling right now may be utter satisfaction—the gratifying sensation of getting what you’ve hungered for. I say, trust that intuition.

SAVAGE LOVE FIGURATIVELY PISSED

By Dan Savage, mail@savagelove.net

I’m worried this may be above your pay grade. LOL. My boyfriend and I have been together for nearly five years. When we first got together, he shared a fetish with me, which has honestly gotten out of hand. I’m not close-minded and I genuinely love pleasing people, and my approach to sex has always been, “Whatever turns you on, turns me on!” But his fetish has crossed the line from kink to obsession. Not to mention the onus of his “fetish” falls entirely on me.

So, the big reveal: my boyfriend is a urophiliac. But not just your garden variety one. If he doesn’t get to watch me pee every single time he gets angry. The first

two years of our relationship were terrifying because if I peed while he was at work, he would throw a fit of epic proportions. So, I would hold it in. This caused UTIs and other problems. But he still insists that I must hold it in for as long as possible so I can give him “a strong stream” every time. I also have to let him watch me poop, which is embarrassing as hell, because I pee when I poop. If I need to pee in the middle of the night, I have to wake him up—which makes him mad—so instead of waking him up I hold it in all night. It has gotten to the point where his obsession has become mine. But it’s not sexy for me.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the English language, the words “naked” and “nude” have different connotations. Art critic Kenneth Clark noted that “naked” people depicted in painting and sculpture are “deprived of clothes,” and embarrassed as a result. Being “nude,” on the other hand, has “no uncomfortable overtone,” but indicates “a balanced, prosperous, and confident body.” I bring this to your attention because I believe you would benefit from experiencing extra nudity and no nakedness in the days ahead. If you choose to take on this assignment, please use it to upgrade your respect and reverence for your beauty. PS: Now is also a favorable time to express your core truths without inhibition or apology. I urge you to be your pure self in all of your glory.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio poet Anne Sexton wrote, “One has to get their own animal out of their own cage and not look for either an animal keeper or an unlocker.” That’s always expert advice, but it will be extra vital for you to heed in the coming weeks. The gorgeous semi-wild creature within you needs more room to run, more sights to see, more adventures to seek. For that to happen, it needs to spend more time outside of its cage. And you’re the best person to make sure that happens.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) could be a marvelous friend. If someone he cared for was depressed or feeling lost, he would invite them to sit in his presence as he improvised music on the piano. There were no words, no advice—only emotionally stirring melodies. “He said everything to me,” one friend said about his gift. “And finally gave me consolation.” I invite you to draw inspiration from his example, Sagittarius. You’re at the peak of your powers to provide solace, comfort, and healing to allies who need such nurturing. Do it in whatever way is also a blessing for you.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): At age 23, Capricornborn Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (1721–1764) became French King Louis XV’s favorite mistress.

She was not born into aristocracy, but she wielded her Capricornian flair with supreme effectiveness.

After I had our child, I literally wasn’t allowed to have 30 seconds alone in the bathroom after shoving a human out of my vagina in full view of 10 adults I did not know. Even then—in the hospital—he had to watch me pee. I can’t use the bathroom in public unless I videotape it for him. I’m in hell. I haven’t had a private piss nobody has watched or made me feel guilty about for FIVE YEARS. I feel like my humanity is being leached away.

I’ve said all these things to him, and He. Does. Not. Care. This has taken over my entire life. Sorry if it’s weird. I’ve read your columns for years and you’re the only person I can ask about this. LOL. I don’t want to break up my family over this. Help me!

—Unrelenting Requirements Inducing Nervous Exhaustion

Ultimately, she achieved a noble title as well as high prestige and status in the French court. As is true for evolved Capricorns, her elevated role was well-deserved, not the result of vulgar social-climbing. She was a patron of architecture, porcelain artwork, and France’s top intellectuals. She ingratiated herself to the King’s wife, the Queen, and served as an honored assistant. I propose we make her your role model for the next four weeks. May she inspire you to seek a boost in your importance and clout that’s accomplished with full integrity.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The bad news is that artist Debbie Wagner was diagnosed with two brain tumors in 2002. The good news is that surgery not only enabled her to survive, but enhanced her visual acuity. The great news is that on most days since 2005, she has painted a new image of the sunrise. I invite you to dream up a ritual to celebrate your own victory over adversity, Aquarius. Is there a generous gesture or creative act you could do on a semi-regular basis to thank life for providing you with the help and power you needed?

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): A self-described “anarchist witch” named Lars writes on his Tumblr blog, “I am a ghost from the 1750s, and my life is currently in the hands of a group of suburban 13-year-olds using a ouija board to ask me if Josh from homeroom has a crush on them.” He’s implying that a powerful supernatural character like himself is being summoned to do tasks that are not worthy of him. He wishes his divinatory talents were better used. Are there any resemblances between you and him, Pisces? Do you ever feel as if you’re not living up to your promise? That your gifts are not being fully employed? If so, I’m pleased to predict that you could fix this problem in the coming weeks and months. You will have extra energy and savvy to activate your full potential. ■ Homework. Describe the status quo situation you’re tired of, and how you’re going to change it.

Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

You don’t wanna break up your family over this, URINE, but I sure do. To be perfectly frank, I’d like to break up your boyfriend’s skull over this—figuratively speaking. I’m not advocating violence.

It’s just that… after reading your letter…

I wanna figuratively slap your boyfriend upside the head so hard his figurative skull breaks into a thousand figurative pieces. And while I don’t think your question is above my pay grade—what you need to do seems obvious to me and will, no doubt, be obvious to everyone who reads your letter—I nevertheless called in a couple of experts.

Dr. Ian Fields is a urogynecologist who specializes in pelvic floor disorders and bladder conditions. I shared your letter with him to get his expert opinion on the risks you’re taking with your physi-

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

cal health, URINE, but before Dr. Fields would address the health risks you’ve being bullied into running, he wanted to address the elephant in the bathroom and the bedroom and the delivery room.

“Let’s call this behavior what it is: abuse,” said Dr. Fields. “This woman needs to get out of this controlling and abusive relationship.” I am in complete agreement with Dr. Fields, URINE: you’re not indulging a kinky boyfriend, you’re being terrorized (your own words) by an abusive boyfriend. Leave him.

“In terms of health risks, there are many,” Dr. Fields continued. “Keeping large amounts of urine in your bladder is a set up for recurrent urinary tract infections. These infections can track upwards to the kidneys in some cases and cause an infection in the kidney called pyelonephritis. Recurrent bouts of pyelonephritis can lead to permanent kidney damage. And you don’t want to lose your kidneys—once they lose function, it doesn’t return.”

Destroying your kidneys isn’t the only health risk you’re running, URINE. “Keeping large amounts of urine in the bladder can lead to a bladder stretch injury and may lead to long-standing urinary retention—or the inability to empty the bladder—which may or may not recover over time,” said Dr. Fields.

“The bladder is a pretty hearty muscle and can recover from many insults but repeated damaged like this could do irreparable harm. In addition, these insults could lead to overactive bladder and with time, to urgency urinary incontinence, that is, leakage that you cannot control when you get the urge to go to the bathroom.”

So, URINE, the health risks you’re running to avoid your boyfriend’s anger cannot be described as insignificant.

Now let’s talk about the emotional and psychological damage your boyfriend has already inflicted on you.

“If this woman came to me for individual therapy, I would be compelled to point out to her that her boyfriend is physically and emotionally abusing her,” said therapist Marissa Myers, LCP. “Getting ‘uncomfortably angry’ and ‘throwing a

fit of epic proportions’ are examples of manipulative behaviors abusers use to make sure their victims know who’s in charge. The disregard this man has for her physical health and safety raises the bar to physical abuse in my opinion.”

Myers frequently works with individuals and couples to help them resolve conflicts around sex and intimacy, URINE, but she would not work with you—alone or as a couple—with the goal of saving this relationship.

“Working with this reader on how to compromise or communicate better regarding this issue would amount to facilitating the continuation of an abusive relationship,” said Myers. “My advice to her is to begin gathering resources, telling safe people, and planning a safe exit.

Once she’s safely out of the relationship, therapy can help her avoid getting into another abusive relationship.”

Which is not to say this is your fault, URINE. Your boyfriend manipulated you with his anger and leveraged your own desire to be a good partner against you.

And while it’s fine to fantasize about watching your partner pee every time she pees, it’s unrealistic and unfair and unworkable to demand that your partner allow you to watch them every single time they take a piss.

There’s nothing LOL about any of this, URINE, and I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear. Yours is one of those letters that makes me wish I had a time machine so I could take you back to the start of this relationship—five years and one kid ago, back when your boyfriend first began terrorizing you—and implore you to leave him before things escalated to this point. And while I’m sure you love your kid and don’t regret having that baby, URINE, you can’t let your desire to keep your child’s home intact prevent you from escaping the hell your boyfriend has made of your life. Take Myers’ advice: Make a plan, lean on supportive friends, take your kid, and get away from this man before your kidneys explode.

I’m a happily married (mostly) lesbian woman. I am somewhat attracted to men, but only in the context of a threesome with my wife. While I don’t have any desire to sleep with men on my own, I do like giving handjobs to men along with the occasional blowjob. My wife knows about this and is fine with it. We can’t really do much by way of threesomes right now for various reasons, so I’m considering finding a guy (if this pandemic ever ends) to indulge me. My wife is a former sex worker and it bothers her that I do this for men—jerk them off, blow them— without any form of reciprocity. She said it’s a service that I shouldn’t be giving away for nothing. I see her point, but I’m not interested in money. An exchange of services sounds interesting though!

Like, I will jerk you off if you clean my bathroom or mow my lawn. I have two questions. First, what do you think about my wife’s view on the subject? Second, what’s the best way to find/approach someone who would be into an arrangement like this?

—The System Called Reciprocity Your wife doesn’t enjoy giving men blowjobs or handjobs, TSCR, so she gets nothing out of blowing or handing some guy. That’s why her male clients had

Comics

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 21

to pay her for her services. You, on the other hand, enjoy giving blowjobs and handjobs, TSCR, and that enjoyment is what you get out of them. Your wife sounds like one of those straight guys who doesn’t understand why his gay best friend loves giving head even if the guy he’s blowing doesn’t return the favor and/or clean the shower.

As to finding someone who might be interested in being blown or jacked off by a lesbian in exchange for some light housework/yardwork, TSCR, there’s this thing called the Internet. Maybe you heard Katie Couric talking about it on the Today show in 1994? Well, I think the Internet is going to catch on and there are these things on the Internet called “hookup apps” where you can post explicit personal ads. But be careful: if you post a personal ad that reads, “Married lesbian seeks houseboy, will milk for chores,” your phone will “blow up.” I think that’s meant figuratively, TSCR, but the Internet is so new I can’t promise your phone won’t literally blow up. mail@savagelove.net Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage!

Check out my new website at www.savage.love!

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Edited by Will Shortz ACROSS

Pink alcoholic drink, for short 6 Spree 9 “Not a chance!”

15 Music rights org.

16 Absorbed, as a loss 17 Where to turn for selfknowledge 18 Important map information 19 Measure of conductance 20 Bikes without pedaling 21 It comes first in China, but second in the U.S. 23 Important part of a taxi 24 Suffix with infant 25 Need for making pochoir prints 27 Raid shelfmate 31 2019 World Series champs 33 Coach 34 “Uh-oh. Better get ___” (auto repair slogan) 35 Poker declaration 37 Together, in music 39 Indefinite ordinal 40 One way to run … or a hint to four geographical intersections found in this grid 44 O’er and o’er 46 Real first name of Spider-Man villain Doctor Octopus 47 Pangs 50 V.I.P.s 52 Cover story 55 Neat and orderly 56 Datum 57 English channel, familiarly 1

59 Animal house 60 Statue of Ganesha, e.g.

62 Found an occasion 64 Wiggle room 67 Apposite 68 Media exec Robert 69 Small storage unit 70 Part of STEM: Abbr.

71 Naming, informally 72 First airline to complete 73 74

a round-the-world flight L.A. winter hrs.

Meshlike

DOWN

First space probe to enter Saturn’s orbit 2 Kissing-related 3 Strategy that stokes fear 4 Bad start?

5 Warms up the crowd, in a way 6 Signal-blocking device 7 To whom the Greeks dedicated the Parthenon 8 Bygone Chevrolet division 9 Actor Williamson who played Merlin in “Excalibur” 10 ___ about 11 Title character in a classic John Cleese comedy 12 Functioned as 13 “A jealous mistress,” per Emerson 14 Sari measure: Abbr.

22 Validate, with “to” 23 One studying the Vedas 26 “Bye now!”

28 “Capisce?,” in ’70s slang 1

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29 Bat Appreciation Month,

appropriately: Abbr.

30 Japanese dance/drama 32 Dear fellow 34 Drug in “Breaking Bad” 36 Pipe buildup 38 Loose 41 Lesley of “60 Minutes” 42 Suitable-sounding name for a kid on Santa’s naughty list?

43 Elem. school basics 44 Bungler 45 Where some keys are found: Abbr.

48 U, V, W or Y, but not X

59

49 Jargony rationale for a

business merger Blot 53 Predecessors of Lenovos 54 “Amscray!”

57 Grab by pinching, as an ice cube 58 Hippie happening 61 Per ___ 63 Current event 64 Swab 65 Carrier to Japan 66 Rapper MC ___ 67 Shakespeare’s “poor venomous fool” 51

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