New oxygen bar ÷ Tucson's first and only ÷ at local strip club offers means for Înatural' high

Friday night was the grand opening of Tucson's one and only oxygen bar · and who does the Wildcat send to cover the event? Two silly feminist entertainment reporters. Good choice.

Together, the two of us are assigned to sit and huff the big O. We imagine the prospects of this fun assignment: giggling and taking notes about our legal high. Sounds innocent and non-controversial, right? But there is one catch: Our mountain air resides at one of Tucson's only all-nude girlie bars, the Bunny Ranch. [Read article]

Richard Threlkeld has seen it all. Well, if you're talking about U.S. conflicts in the past 30 years, he has. Reporting live from conflicts ranging from the Gulf War to the Vietnam, Threlkeld has been the correspondent to risk his life and bring home the news. And now that he's retired, he's bringing the UA his opinion.

As a veteran broadcast journalist, Threlkeld will speak on U.S. foreign policy Monday night in the Special Collections area of the Main Library. The event, sponsored by the Friends of the University of Arizona Libraries, is titled "9/11 to 11/5: From Terror to Today." It features Threlkeld, a retired correspondent for both ABC and CBS who has covered U.S. news and conflict since 1966. [Read article]

Most reporters do not find themselves naming off women so that their subject can create rhymes about having sex with them. However, this exercise mirrored interviewee MC Paul Barman's song "Cock Mobsters," in which he rattled off various inventive sexual encounters with female celebrities.

Kylie Minogue: "She's not as ire as En Vogue," Barman said.

MTV News' Suchin Pak: "She loves my huge-in cock," Barman spat. [Read article]

Here are a few things I can tell you about visiting New York City with definite certainty: You will overpay for things. You might see a couple of rats. And you probably won't have anyone smoke crack in front of you, before (or after) stimulating their genitals.

Hopefully.

Here's a quick and dirty guide to visiting New York City, based on what I saw during my quick-and-dirty trip last weekend. [Read article]

ÎDead Poets' Society' is far better than its new replica, Kevin Kline's ÎThe Emperor's Club'

Utz: A new genre has been born · it's called "the dedicated teacher at a really handsome East-coast prep school leaves a profound impact on the lives of his students, and in the end, the passionate teacher realizes his students have taught him a lesson, too."

Betancourt: Yeah, "genre" meaning "mindless collection of pseudo-morals arranged haphazardly along a plot line made entirely of cliches" and "born" meaning "forced on the senior citizens of the world coated with Ensure in the form of jokes you don't have to hear clearly to get." [Read article]

Frida Kahlo's art makes its observer feel wounded. Her violent, carnal strokes mar the delicate senses we expect to be only gently caressed in places like art galleries. It is instinctual to turn away from things like this, things that expose human frailness. But Kahlo not only refused to turn away from her mortality, she painted it ÷ and in a joyful foreign language of color no less.

I know this because Julie Taymor knows this. She directed "Frida," her second film (after "Titus," and the phenomenal Broadway production of "The Lion King"), which tells Frida Kahlo's story. [Read article]

Shoot Out at the OK Chinese Restaurant

There was a time in the music industry when music was about music. Before nearly every song became available on the Internet; before MTV made "stars" out of pretty, talentless, singers; even before people purchased albums based on the opinion of wannabe music critics: Musicians were the voices of the people.

Ramsey Midwood sends the listener back to those days with Shoot Out at the OK Chinese Restaurant. This album is an old-fashioned bluegrass/folk album that, with needle scratches barely audible during the beginning and end of the songs, sounds as if you're listening to an old 33 or 45 instead of a CD. [Read article]

The Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse

Last year, Jay-Z released the hip-hop classic The Blueprint. Then, Jay decided to take his blueprint for The Blueprint and build on it for a second at-bat.

On The Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse, he stretches one amazing single album into two discs of coasting excess.

What happened is Jay took a warehouse full of party/Hot 98.3/Life and Times of S. Carter-type tracks and crammed them all together on The Gift, the album's glucose-saturated first disc. The Gift is spent celebrating affection for the good life/radio airwaves, leaving the listener wondering if Jigga spent too much time with R. Kelly. [Read article]

Riot Act

Pearl Jam have been through more changes than the nation's national security. 1998's Yield was the last real turning point in the band's career, getting people excited again after the experimental Vitalogy and the mixed feelings on No Code.

However, if there was ever a "falling off" record for a band, it was 2000's Binaural, in wihich Eddie Vedder let the rest of the gang take a bigger part in writing duties to ambiguous results. "Thin Air," anyone? [Read article]