Newsreel

Any publication's editorial department is a gaping chest wound hemorrhaging money, to hear the bottom-liners tell it, and the sales department is there to infuse the place with life-giving dollars. John Hankinson certainly loved to keep the money flowing--he spent about a decade at the Tucson Weekly, first selling ads and then as sales director--but he also loved the sheer weirdness of much of the Weekly's editorial content.

With an eye to early retirement, John recently jumped to the obscenely lucrative world of radio (he belongs near music, anyway, having run local record stores in the 1980s). But his last act of countercultural defiance lurks at the center of this issue: Mondo Tucson, the Tucson Weekly's guide to the strange.

For years, John had been trying to talk my predecessors into doing this supplement, a vehicle for advertising that would also be an entertaining, oddball visitors' guide. I was the only one gullible enough to buy his pitch.

Troy Martin designed the screaming-tabloid cover, and the entries are the work of the usual gang of idiots: Jamie Manser, Jennifer Nichols, Jim Nintzel, Margaret Regan and yours truly.