Count Your Blessings

The Weekly's been pretty damned critical of our hometown as of late, and justifiably so. Tough love is called "tough" for a reason. But this week--at least in this little space--I'll talk about a couple of good things.

· No matter your thoughts on the intricacies of the bond questions themselves, you must admit that it's encouraging the community voted to invest in itself the way it did last week. Now, we must ensure that--unlike with some previous bond issues--the county actually does what it should with the money. The Weekly will be watching; I suggest that you do, too.

· I am constantly amazed at the amount of cultural/entertainment happenings in this town. One thing in particular that's impressed me--over and over and over again--is the number of cinematic offerings in Tucson. A couple of weeks ago, we broke Weekly records, I believe, in terms of the size of our Cinema section. The Loft is always bringing kick-ass indie films into town (as well as some clunkers--I'm still trying to get over Japon, which was one of the worst movies I've ever seen--but, hey, that's the nature of movies, indie and big-budget alike). It seems like almost every week, there's a film festival or a special event, and now, the Back Alley Film Festival has returned (see City Week). If you're a movie fan in the slightest, Tucson's got to be one of the best places to live, outside of the Los Angeles/New York/San Francisco areas. For more film coverage, check out Zachary Woodruff's summer movie preview and James DiGiovanna's review of the buzz-intensive Super Size Me.