r-2019-01-10

january

10-16,

2019

Touch base

ContaCt improv danCe See arts&Culture, page 14

The governor’s charm and backers took him a long way

EXIT SANDOVAL serving northern nevada, tahoe and truckee

EMail lEttErS to rENolEttErS@NEWSrEviEW.CoM.

Penn pal Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I just got back from Pittsburgh. (And, boy, are my jokes tired.) And I mean the one in Pennsylvania—not the one in the Bay Area. My fiancee, Margot, is from there, and we were there to visit her family. I’d never been there before.

Western Pennsylvania is different than Northern Nevada in most regards—the wet climate, the post-industrial landscape, the urban geography more geared toward following rivers than nestling valleys— but it reminded me of Reno in one important way: It’s a much nicer town than you might expect based on pop culture depictions.

Friendly folks, neat architecture, scenic landscapes. We took a day trip to visit Gettysburg and toured the battlefields. (The Gettysburg National Cemetery was closed because of the government shutdown.) We took Clyde, our 13-month-old baby, to the Pittsburgh Zoo and saw lions and tigers and a baby gorilla (no bears). And I was really impressed by the Heinz History Center, a Smithsonian-affiliated museum, where we saw a lot of classic Americana, like Buzz Aldrin’s helmet, Satchel Paige’s glove and Fred Rogers’ sweater.

It was a restorative trip, and I’d like to once again thank everyone here at the RN&R for their great work while I was away. And, on a related note, I’d like to bid a fond farewell to sales manager Emily Litt and advertising consultant Myranda Thom, both of whom are leaving the paper to focus on their education. They’ve been a blast to work with the last few years, and I wish them nothing but the best.

And one last note: This is the last week to submit stories for our 95-word fiction contest, so quit procrastinating! Check out the promo on page 10 for all the details.

—Brad Bynum bradb@ ne wsrev i ew . com

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01.10.19

The business solution Win-win solutions are best. If Congress won’t fund the border wall, the White House should pursue private funding. Since every other TV commercial is for insurance, banking or credit cards — solicit All-State, State Farm, Geico, Esurance, Progressive, Wells Fargo and Capital One to sponsor portions of the wall. On the Mexican-facing side, pitch beer companies: Corona, Modelo, Dos Equis.

Result: President declares victory, Congress moves on to more vital issues, companies get advertising and tax write-offs, government employees go back to work.

You have a better solution? What’s in your wallet?

Michael Sion Reno

Designing letter Re “Interior design” (news, Dec. 27): I read your political news avidly. On environment, you are often acute. Not so much here.

First key question: Why would Catherine Cortez Masto give “her blessing to Heller taking over at Interior,” when he stands for everything she and fellow democrats believe should be upheld from the Obama administration.

Second key question: Who in their right mind would imagine that “ the Nevada Department of Wildlife, which was once a hunting and fishing agency . . . became an environmental agency in the 1970s.” Look at who runs it.

Third key question: It is not enough to say Nevadans are “for” Monuments.

Which Monuments do Nevadans support, and administered by which agencies and/ or Native American constituents? Do Nevadans really care about Navajos and Utes in Utah, or Paiutes/Shoshones in Nevada?

Fourth question: If gender and sexual discrimination is in the Interior mix, is this to be understood as a problem before or after

Jessica Santina, Todd South, Luka Starmer, Bruce Van Dyke, Ashley Warren, Allison Young Our Mission: To publish great newspapers that are successful and enduring. To create a quality work environment that encourages employees to grow professionally while respecting personal welfare.

To have a positive impact on our communities and make them better places to live.

Editor Brad Bynum Associate Editor Jeri Chadwell News Editor Dennis Myers Special Projects Editor Matt Bieker Calendar Editor Kelley Lang Contributors Amy Alkon, Kris Vagner, Bob Grimm, Andrea Heerdt, Holly Hutchings, Shelia Leslie, Josie Glassberg, Eric Marks,

Creative Services Manager Elisabeth Bayard Arthur Art Directors Maria Ratinova, Sarah Hansel Publications Designer Katelynn Mitrano Ad Designers Naisi Thomas Office Manager Lisa Ryan RN&R Rainmaker Gina Odegard

januaRy 10, 2019 | Vol. 24, Issue 48

the Trumpers took over Interior, or is it just a continuing problem?

Fifth question: how can one distinguish Heller’s views on the environment from Zinke’s, or from the crazies that run the state of Utah? I actually don’t understand these sentences: “Heller has been harshly critical of the creation of national monuments, aligned himself with Cliven Bundy, and tried to hold down the size of wilderness areas. Still, it may be difficult for Trump to find a Republican who agrees with him on Interior issues.”

Cheers for the New Year.

Michael Cohen Reno Editor’s note: The meaning of that last line is that, given Trump’s stated campaign promise that public lands would not be sold off (“I want to keep the lands great ... and I don’t think it’s something that should be sold”), it may be difficult for him to find a qualified Republican to be interior secretary who supports that view. Of course, that is assuming that Trump still takes that position.

Holiday decency Thanks to all the people, groups and organizations that donated time, money and gifts to those in need during the holidays.

Reno may be the Biggest Little City but the people that live here have very big hearts!

There are always groups looking for volunteers during the year. No pay but a few hours a week helping someone else makes up for that. A smile goes along way. Again thanks for thinking of someone that just needed to be remembered during this time of the year!

Jerry Wallis Reno

Offended male Re “Power spreads out” (Left Food Forward, Dec. 2): Sheila Leslie’s commentary was offensive. The take is that men are inferior as

Distribution Director Greg Erwin Distribution Manager Bob Christensen Distribution Drivers Alex Barskyy, Corey Sigafoos, Gary White, Joe Wilson, Marty Troye, Timothy Fisher, Vicki Jewell, Olga Barska, Rosie Martinez, Adam Martinez President/CEO Jeff VonKaenel Director of Nuts & Bolts Deborah Redmond Director of People & Culture David Stogner Director of Dollars & Sense Debbie Mantoan Nuts & Bolts Ninja Norma Huerta Payroll/AP Wizard Miranda Hansen Accounts Receivable Specialist Analie Foland

Sweetdeals Coordinator Skyler Morris Developer John Bisignano System Support Specialist Kalin Jenkins N&R Publications Editor Michelle Carl N&R Publications Associate Editor Laura Hillen N&R Publications Editorial Team Anne Stokes, Caroline Harvey, Thea Rood Marketing & Publications Consultants Steve Caruso, Joseph Engle, Elizabeth Morabito, Traci Hukill, Celeste Worden Cover design Sarah Hansel

legislators because they “tend to see public policy issue as a game to be won.” Her perspective continues with men being more likely to bully rather than persuade.

It gets worse. The “just 19” men in the Assembly chamber (as well as 12 in the Senate) will be less interested in issues that affect the average family and will be uncomfortable discussing issues that are “packed with emotion.” Thanks for the stereotypes. They seem no different from the ridiculous claims of the 1885 legislators you rightfully indict.

David Hamcock Reno

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opiNioN/StrEEtalk SHEila lESliE NEWS taHoE fEaturE artS&CulturE art of tHE StatE filM fooD MuSiCbEat NigHtClubS/CaSiNoS tHiS WEEk aDviCE goDDESS frEE Will aStrology 15 MiNutES bruCE vaN DykE

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By matt bieker

What grade would you give Sandoval?

Asked AT Joe Crowley sTudenT union, 1664 n. VirginiA sT. Anne ThursTon Student

I would say a B. I can’t really say much because I haven’t really been as involved as I should be as a college student. … The one thing I really liked was the idea of the Millennium Scholarship. That was something that really helped and made sense for Nevada students.

CrisTA hArTmAn Industrial hygienist

That’s a tough question because I’m a faculty here, and I haven’t gotten a merit increase. So I’m not going to give him an A because we work hard around here, and everyone’s been on the same pay for quite a while, since Sandoval’s been in office. But, otherwise, I’ll give him a B.

Jorge monTeiro Post doctorate student

Shallow journalism is embarrassing In 2010, the reelection campaign of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, anxious to avoid facing Republican Sue Lowden in the general election, zeroed in on this Lowden statement: “I think that bartering is really good. Those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter, and that would get prices down in a hurry. And I would say, go out, go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor.”

The next thing we knew, a Reid supporter in a chicken suit was dogging Lowden, claiming that trading chickens for health care is preposterous. Journalists immediately joined in on the Lowden pounding like an arm of the Reid campaign. Not one Nevada reporter we read or heard actually scrutinized Lowden’s proposal. If some had, they might have learned that at least 11 state governments— including Nevada—and numerous municipalities regulated barter as a way of coping with the recession. Nevada Revised Statutes and Nevada Taxation Department regulations dealt with “barter clubs,” as did Internal Revenue Service procedures. At U-Exchange online, Nevadans were bartering scuba instruction, slot machines, photography, furniture, cars, flight instruction and even real estate.

Economist Thomas Cargill said medical office bureaucracies are anxious to deal with patients who make it easier to avoid more paperwork.

But it was easier to write stories poking fun at Lowden, so the press helped Reid take Lowden out in the primary and throw the GOP nomination to Sharron Angle.

Then, Reid’s campaign started making fun of Angle’s notion of getting rid of the federal Departments of

Education and Energy and several subcabinet agencies.

Once again, no homework or research was done by journalists. Reporters tended to list the departmental abolition proposal among several Angle proposals to show the absurdity of her platform. But abolishing federal programs is right in the mainstream of the Republican Party. For instance, among those who supported abolishing the Department of Education was Ronald Reagan. Heard of him? He reportedly had pretty good GOP credentials.

We’d love to avoid agreeing with Donald Trump about anything, but he’s not altogether wrong on shoddy journalism, and there is no better proof than the way journalism endorsed his “Pocahontas” slur against Elizabeth Warren by slanting the news coverage of her DNA test.

Journalists rushed to do the story without enough interviews or research. One denunciation of Warren by an unelected Cherokee official was emphasized and a statement of support by an elected Cherokee official was deemphasized—as was the near-unanimous round of supporting statements by other tribal officials. Her consultation with a tribal official on how to announce the results was mostly unreported. When Huffington Post’s Jennifer Bendery spoke to numerous Native American officials, she found them frustrated that “nonNative people are defining a debate about Native people without letting them speak for themselves.”

The hard work of journalism is too often going undone. Ω

From 0 to 10, I would say a 9. I think he did a good job. I think the investment at UNR was really good during his tenure. I’m not a Republican, but you have to recognize [what he did] right.

T yler PArry Student

He was actually a very decent Republican. I would actually rate him at around a B-minus. He did give Tesla a free break from paying taxes that could go to funding our schools, could have gone to maybe fixing some of our infrastructure.

monique normAnd Outreach coordinator

I’d give him a B. He was a good moderate, which is probably why he lasted as long as he did. I feel like he was willing to try and meet people where they were at, rather than being one side or the other all the way. He tried to work that middle ground ... willing to have those conversations.

01.10.19 | RN&R | 3

Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful is a 501( c ) 3 nonprofit dedicated to creating a cleaner, more beautiful region through active community involvement and education.

BIKES

Kiwanis Bike Program 337-1717 Reno Bike Project 323-4488

BOOKS

Big Brothers Big Sisters 3523202

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CARDBOARD

Find out where to recycle or properly dispose of unwanted items in the Truckee Meadows.

Businesses may charge for disposal services or will only take commercial customers. Please call individual businesses for details.

Visit us at

Gospel Mission 323-7999 Green Planet 21 358-3000

CARPET

Gone Green 525-1447 Teachers Warehouse 691-0216

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ktmb.org/recycle

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for our more extensive guide!

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NV Recycling 888-9888 Habitat for Humanity 3235511

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Report illegal dumping by calling (775) 329-DUMP (3867) or through Washoe County Sheriff’s Office mobile APP: WCSO

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Drop off recyclables (glass, cans, plastic, bottles, newspaper, phone books, office paper, & cardboard) at Waste Management Recycle America Stations: 1100 E. Commercial Row, Reno 1455 E. Greg. St., Sparks

Want to Volunteer?

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Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful | P.O Box 7412, Reno NV 89510 | (775) 851-5185 | www.ktmb.org | staff@ktmb.org

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by SHEILA LESLIE

Trump stamps his foot Last September, I stood on the Great Wall of China, begun in the 7th Century as a means of protection from nomadic invaders.

Newly renovated for tourists on a day trip from Beijing, the section of the wall I traveled was beautiful in its East-West traverse of the hilly countryside, with elegant guard towers and temples interspersed randomly to break up the monotony of a rambling stone and dirt wall.

President Trump loves China’s wall, romanticizing its beauty and purpose to bolster his pig-headed insistence on a border wall with Mexico, despite Democratic arguments that it’s an antiquated strategy for curbing illegal border crossings. “The Democrats are trying to belittle the concept of a wall, calling it old-fashioned,” Trump said.

“The fact is there is nothing else that will work, and that has been true for thousands of years. It’s like the wheel, there is nothing better.”

Like nearly everything the president says, it’s not true. According to blogger

Sara Lynn Hua, China’s Wall “helped keep nomadic forces at bay, and also served as good lookout points for invasions.

But in the end, the Great Wall was more of a moderate deterrent than an impenetrable fortress.” In response to Trump’s comments, Ishaan Tharoor from the Washington Post noted the Great Wall’s significance is best understood “not as a security barrier, but as a work of political propaganda.”

Exactly. Trump is now boxed in by his own rhetoric and the demands for a wall from conservative talk-show hosts, causing a government shutdown over Congress’ refusal to provide $5 billion to construct it. Public opinion is against him, however. According to a mid-December Quinnipiac poll, 55 percent of Americans oppose the border wall, and 62 percent oppose shutting down the government to fund it.

Maybe the public understands a Politico headline from August 2016 better than the President: “The World

Is Full of Walls That Don’t Work.”

Michael Dear points out Trump and others have been obsessed with border walls post-9/11. He concludes that, at best, walls “offer temporary respite from deeper tensions which usually remain unresolved by separation. At worst, walls can exacerbate the problems they were intended to solve. … Walls do not work as permanent solutions to tough problems. Which is why, ultimately, they fall.”

General John Kelly, Trump’s outgoing Chief of Staff, told the Los Angeles Times the wall had been left behind long ago. “The president still says ‘wall’ — oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats. But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.”

Trump promptly tweeted his dissent early on New Year’s Eve morning, in his usual juvenile style:

“An all-concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED, as has been reported by the media. Some areas will be all-concrete but the experts at Border Patrol prefer a Wall that is see-through (thereby making it possible to see what is happening on both sides). Makes sense to me!”

Lost in the battle over the wall are thousands of federal workers on unpaid furlough due to the budget impasse.

The Office of Personnel Management suggested workers contact their landlords and request a deferred payment option or suggest a trade such as doing maintenance or painting instead of paying rent. It reminds me of Nevada’s own Chicken Sue (Lowden), a failed U.S. Senate candidate, who suggested Nevadans would be fine without Obamacare. If they were unable to purchase health insurance they could revert to paying their doctor with chickens instead, as they did in the “olden days.”

It would all be quite amusing if it were Ω not reality in America in 2019.

01.10.19 | RN&R | 5

by BoB Conrad

BoB Price 1936-2019 State legislator Bob Price was never involved with the #MeToo movement, but many years ago he heard that a University of Nevada, Reno legislative intern had been dismissed by her legislator when she rejected his advances and was in danger of being dropped from the entire intern program. Price said he would take on the young woman as a second intern. They had a good working relationship, and she passed the intern course. It was one of many instances of his championing women.

When Dawn Gibbons took her military pilot husband’s place in the Assembly during the Kuwait war, Price was helpful to her in learning the ropes.

In 1978, many assemblymembers believed the Equal Rights Amendment, providing for gender equality, was bottled up in the Senate and they would never have to vote on it. So some of them promised their votes to both sides. Then it passed the Senate, causing consternation. Members who had voted for ERA in earlier sessions changed their votes under heavy lobbyist pressure. Price ended his remarks before the vote, “I want to implore you, my fellow colleagues, even beg that just this one time, today, right now, when we vote on this issue, I beg you to vote from your heart ... and to rise above all other pressures.” It moved many but did not change votes.

ERA was defeated.

First elected to the Nevada Assembly as a member of the “Watergate Class of 1974,” Price joined a group of young reformers swept into office that year. He eventually became chair of the Assembly Taxation Committee, where he almost single-handedly stopped sales tax hikes from bring enacted.

No sales tax increase got through the legislature until 1997 when Speaker Joe Dini created a new Infrastructure Committee with Price’s colleague David Goldwater as chair and diverted sales tax measures to it. That committee approved sales tax hikes in Clark and Washoe counties for a Southern Nevada pipeline and for the casinos’ railroad trench in the north. “Reno casinos thus got the downtown railroad trench for which they were not willing to pay,” columnist Andrew Barbano wrote this week. In 1998, Dini forced Price out of the Taxation chair and gave it to Goldwater.

The casinos were disturbed by Price blocking sales tax hikes, since it created pressure for higher casino taxes. He also introduced legislation protecting workers from firing without cause and barring casino political contributions. The casinos mounted a major 1990 campaign to defeat him for reelection in his North Las Vegas assembly district. He won.

His Assembly colleague Chris Giunchigliani said, “Bob Price was a prince of a man. … He was a proponent of annual sessions, public education and worker rights. It says a lot about a person when his ex-wives all got along and supported him. His style may have been low key, but he was definitely a statesman.”

He served 28 years, suffered a heart attack in 1998, left elective office in 2002 and moved to Sparks, where he and his wife Nancy—a former Nevada regent—lived in a home moved from its original site on the Comstock. He died there last week. A recreation center and a 10-acre park in Clark County are named for him.

—Dennis Myers

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Students as undercover drug agents is an idea that is generating a lot of debate among experts. Students are not heard from on the issue much.

Shadowy arena School District’s use of student drug informant called risky, troubling eric Sinacori, 20, died in 2013 after injecting three bags of heroin. The prominence of opioid abuse today may not highlight this tragedy as unusual, except that Sinacori was acting as a confidential informant for campus police at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Sinacori was caught by campus police selling drugs on campus, and a year later his parents found him dead after he had overdosed following a drug deal with another student.

Sinacori’s parents sued the university for wrongful death because it did not notify them of Sinacori’s involvement with campus police. The suit was tossed because, according to a judge, it was only Sinacori who violated student codes, not the university. UMass, however, has since eliminated its confidential informant program.

“We have determined that our Police Department and Student Affairs division can employ other approaches …

to combat illegal drug use, possession, and sales, and protect the members of our campus,” the school’s chancellor, Kumble Subbaswamy, said after Sinacori’s death and role as a campus informant came to light.

The use of narcs on college campuses usually only comes to light when the results are deadly—a student lost his life acting as an informant—or when the news media get wind of it.

Such cases highlight the inherent dangers of using informants. Law enforcement operates under a veil of secrecy often for legitimate reasons, but the use of confidential informants has shown deadly results and often legally questionable practices.

Using students as drug informants is risky, said Alexandra Natapoff, a law professor at U.C. Irvine and author of the award-winning book Punishment without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.

“The use of criminal informants is a highly secretive institution, and criminal justice and other public entities often do not disclose the extent to which they engage in informant use,” Natapoff said.

“Nevertheless, we do know, anecdotally, of many instances in which schools use their own students as informants.

“The most high-profile examples that have come to light recently are in the college-campus context, and we have seen a number of scandals over the past couple of years in which students have come to harm as a result of the college campus policies.”

Natapoff said that local police or college police have pressured students into becoming informants when they are caught with small amounts of drugs.

Even using adult confidential informants, she said, is controversial. The U.S. Department of Justice criticized the DEA in 2015 about the government’s use of informants. The DEA resisted an audit by the DOJ about the practice, and the secrecy of how informants are used was highlighted as questionable because it allowed the federal government to green-light drug deals and other criminal activities without oversight (Link: https:// bit.ly/1Kl77JS).

Natapoff said using college students as informants is risky but that a case at a public high school level was unheard of. She was surprised when I read to her a portion of a Washoe County School District letter that documented the use of a high-school student serving as an informant in a drug investigation.

School district officials said there’s no policy against the practice.

“WCSD doesn’t have a specific policy in this area, but we do work closely with law enforcement agencies in promoting the School Secret Witness program and the State’s ‘Safe Voice’ program,” said district spokesperson Victoria Campbell.

The district’s Area Superintendent Lauren Ford, working in a previous capacity, was documented as giving back marijuana to a high school student. Her actions were defended by her then-supervisor, the now-retired Area Superintendent Roger Gonzalez.

Gonzalez said that Ford gave drugs back to a student because the student was an informant in a drug investigation.

“That student had served as an informant and had provided the school with the name of the student who was dealing

… drugs on the campus,” Gonzalez wrote.

Marijuana possession is considered a criminal offense, according to district policy, and administrators have discretion as to how cannabis possession is handled.

“Non-criminal matters that are reported are handled by school and district level staff,” said district spokesperson Campbell. “Criminal matters are handled by the school police department.”

Three points are mandatory, according to district rules, when drug possession is discovered: notification to school police, the school’s administrator, and the student’s parents.

When asked, a school district official said the district would like to explore the issue further.

“We don’t currently have a policy on student informants, and we thank you for bringing that to our attention,” said spokesperson Megan Downs. “This is something we would like to explore in the near future.”

It was, in fact, the district’s own documentation that brought the issue to light. When Ford gave back marijuana to a student, the act was memorialized by Gonzalez. Virginia Doran, the school district’s director of labor relations, Chris Reich, a school district attorney, and human resources employees, were all copied on the letter.

School officials did not elaborate on the district’s practice of using students as informants, but Natapoff said that, at the least, because of students being minors, the practice should have triggered a notification to parents.

“There has been outcry from parents (at the college level) who are appalled that their students, who they have entrusted to these institutions, have been put into compromised and dangerous situations,” she said. “I’m personally unaware of these practices at the high-school level, but it does not surprise me.

Such practices at educational institutions, Natapoff added, are “largely unregulated, secretive and lacking in accountability. The use of informant deals in schools raises its own highly troubling implications” that move schools more to a criminal justice model and away from educational goals.

Specific to the Washoe County School District, Natapoff further explained that “the fact that they are exercising their authority in these risky and problematic ways vis-à-vis with their own students without a policy is also unfortunately characteristic of the world of informants where institutions often make their own unregulated decisions about what kinds of deals to cut, what sorts of people to exert pressure on, and what kinds of information to gather without oversight or knowledge of best practices.

“Because it is such a secretive environment by its very nature, institutions often engage in policies that we would consider to be entirely unacceptable in other arenas of public policy,” she added. “These are children. I’m guessing they have policies about the materials used in the straws in the cafeteria.” Ω

Death in the family

Reno is now losing its oldest building, the city’s first Masonic building, later the Reno Mercantile Company. It is the last remnant of the lineup of connected buildings constructed when Commercial Row was Reno’s main street. The building’s beautiful features, ornate fixtures and metal ceiling are passing into history.

PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS

01.10.19 | RN&R | 7

The Rumor of “Organ Harvesting” Favors “Seasoning” In their daily life, people always like to add a variety of seasonings in cooking in order to greatly stimulate their appetite. In monotonous study and work, people often “add seasoning” to their life by making some small changes that make life more interesting and elegant. However, “the addition of seasoning” may not always bring out “positive energy”. For example, when “certain seasoning” is added to an ordinary event and news, an ill-disposed rumor may come into being or even have the “wings” to ravage. The rumor of “organ harvesting” invented by the cult Falun Gong favors “seasoning”.

“Tragedies” are invented to blind the rational mind.

The rumor of “organ harvesting” tried to win sympathy, and the rumor makers concentrated on the “tragic” side in various ways. They tried to inspire sympathy of the people (especially the Westerners) through bloody visual shocks and description of tragic scenes. The sensual shock was invented to blind the rational mind. While describing the rumor of “organ harvesting”, the cult Falun Gong invented many cruel details. For example, “[The Chinese government is] still taking the organs of Falun Gong practitioners for sale, and they do it without anaesthetizing the victims”; “Tens of thousands of people have been killed by organ harvesting”; “[Falun Gong] Members were closed in the basements of labor camps, prisons and hospitals for organ harvesting, and then they were burned”...

This “exaggerated” description fully manifested the “inhumane side” in the rumor.

In addition to written description, the photos were more visually shocking. Photo exhibitions about “organ harvesting” have almost become the main means for the cult Falun Gong to smear the Chinese government in Western countries. Despite the absence of definite evidence, they fabricated and spread a large number of so-called “schematic” and “imaginary” illustrations that were “bloody and cruel” to stir public sentiment. This “tragic seasoning” has undoubtedly made the rumor of “organ harvesting” “stronger”. Even some parliament members of the Western world evaluated this description as “colloquial and vivid” although it is nonsense.

“Secrets” are created to stimulate curiosity and attract attention.

The Falun Gong media knows propaganda well and is even better at attracting public attention by exposing highlights. To suit the prevailing public curiosity, the rumor of “organ harvesting” was not only exposed as an asserted “secret”, but also “updated in real-time” with various social hot-spot “secrets” exposed in different stages to retain public attention. For example, when it first appeared in 2006, the “organ harvesting” news was described as “a stunning secret” and included secretive words such as “concentration camp”, “imprisonment”, “organ harvesting” and “body burning”. Later, the “secret story” from the “CPC internal

intelligence” Pete, the “insider testimony” of Annie, wife of a doctor in Sujiatun, and the emotional description of “an old military doctor from Shenyang” greatly satisfied the curiosity of the public. The cult Falun Gong needed exactly such tricks to attract attention. The story didn’t end there though. In order to avoid being drowned in the vast amount of online information, the rumor of “organ harvesting” was often “attached to” various social hot issues, such as the “Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun” incident, the organ transplant conference, and some influential criminal cases in China, whose purpose was to keep the rumor going by taking advantage of those social hot issues.

“Exaggeration” is added to make waves.

When cooking, people sometimes make food bigger, softer and even more delicious by fermentation or frying it with starch. The rumor of “organ harvesting” invented by the cult Falun Gong was full of “expanding agent” from the beginning. For example, the Falun Gong media alleged that more than 6,000 practitioners were detained and suffered “organ harvesting” in the “Sujiatun Concentration Camp”. Ten years later, in a so-called New Report published by the Falun Gong media, the number of organs that were taken from Falun Gong prisoners in China soared to 1.5 million and the number of “organ harvesting” hospitals changed from 1 to more than 80. Li Hongzhi, the Falun Gong cult leader, once claimed that exaggeration makes news believable. Pitifully the Falun Gong media was stupid to allege that the Sujiatun Hospital took organs from 6,000-odd people while it was actually able to hold more than 300 patients.

Anyway, “expanding agent” has become an indispensable ingredient in the dishes of news reported by the Falun Gong media.

Then, how could the rumor dish with so much “seasonings” be cooked in a “pot”?

As Gregory Globa, a Ukrainian anti-cult expert, observed, this “pot” was “media trap”. The cult Falun Gong duplicated and spread the rumor rampantly via its media and attracted eyeballs with sensational headlines. It exploited various media and even yellow news to flood credible but seemingly boring expert analyzes so as to pave the way for the spread of the rumor of “organ harvesting”.

This was a “media trap” into which the Western people were misguided, without getting the truth. This is what we need to be alert to.

The cult Falun Gong put so many “ingredients” in the rumor of “organ harvesting” and produced a strong soup. If the people are blinded by compassion and attracted by those “secrets”, they would become easy targets of the deception.

However, a soup is a soup. Without substantive content, the diners get nothing.

The rumor of “organ harvesting” is nothing but a pale soup.

A PAid AdveRtiSement

8 | RN&R | 01.10.19

tahoe

Legal limbo Measure T update Ballot Measure T in South Lake Tahoe passed by a mere 58 votes in November after a total of 6,976 residents cast their votes. Now the measure, which would largely ban vacation home rentals like Airbnb, stands in limbo.

On Dec. 24, El Dorado County Judge Thomas A. Smith issued a temporary injunction on Measure T after a lawsuit was filed in December by a group calling itself the South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group.

The suit claims that the measure is unconstitutional.

Measure T is supposed to ban vacation home rentals in residential areas of South Lake Tahoe by 2022. The only exceptions would be for full-time residents, who would still have the right to rent out their homes for up to 30 days per year. The measure also includes language limiting the number of occupants who may stay in a rental at one time to 12. Judge Smith’s injunction stopped the enforcement of the occupancy limits, which were set to go into effect on Jan. 1. His decision has stopped the city from enforcing those limits at least until Jan. 24, when the case against it is due back in court.

Prior to the lawsuit that triggered the temporary injunction, the City of South Lake Tahoe had said it would enforce occupancy limits using discretion until after the holiday season. Proponents of the measure have indicated concern that the city may not defend it rigorously against the current court challenge.

One of the reasons for their worry is that the city previously failed to defend a ballot measure, also called Measure T,

by Jeri ChAdWeLL

j e ri c @ne w s re v i e w . c o m

This photo of South Lake Tahoe from Wikimedia Commons was taken in 2007, a little more than a year before vacation rental service Airbnb was founded.

COURTESY/MARK JAMES MILLER, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

that was approved by voters in 2016. It would have restricted the City of South Lake Tahoe’s decision-making powers concerning the U.S. 50/South Shore Community Revitalization Project.

A lawsuit was filed against it and the project was ultimately deemed unconstitutional by a judge after the city sat on its hands.

When asked last month whether the city intends to defend against the claims made in the recent lawsuit, City Attorney Heather Stroud told the Tahoe Daily Tribune’s Ryan Hoffman that she had not received legal direction from the South Lake Tahoe city council on how to respond to the suit.

On Jan. 7, the South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group filed a request asking that Measure T be put on hold in its entirety for the remainder of the court proceedings. And on Jan. 8, the city council met behind closed doors to discuss the measure and current lawsuit against it. The council was expected thereafter to give Stroud direction on how to proceed with the lawsuit, but no final decision was made.

According to the Tribune’s Hoffman, who filed a report shortly after the city council came out of its closed-door meeting Tuesday morning, the city is hopeful that it can please people on both sides with a compromise that would continue the restraining order on occupancy limits for vacation home rentals but still allow the rest of the measure to stand.

As to whether or not the city will defend the central component of Measure T banning almost all vacation home rentals in three years time, Stroud told Hoffman, “That decision hasn’t been made yet.” Ω

01.10.19 | RN&R | 9

Get

! t r sho

Time for our annual micro

The

Last week to submit!

fiction

competition!

’s 95-word fiction contest Write a miniature story that’s exactly 95 words long.

We want exactly 95 words, as counted by LibreOffice, Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

Email submissions to contest@newsreview.com with the subject line “Fiction 2018.” Put each story in the body of an email because we won’t open attachments. We require the author’s name, email address and phone number listed above each story. (That stuff won’t affect word count and will be removed before judging.)

Titles are acceptable, without affecting word count, but not required.

Stories must be received before Jan. 16, 2019.

Here’s an example: Lieutenant Nishiyama’s unit searched for Viet Cong soldiers in a village near the Laotian border. As expected, they found nothing. No hidden enemies.

A solitary, elderly woman was cooking rice. The smell made Nishiyama homesick.

Nishiyama called to the translator: “Tell her I’ll trade two packs of American cigarettes for a bowl of that rice.”

It was delicious.

“Ask her for more.”

“She’s not poor enough? You’ve got to eat all her food?”

“What? There’s enough food here for a dozen men.”

Nishiyama looked at the woman.

“Hey Captain, we better search this property again.” *This year’s story example is based loosely on a story told by Vincent Okamoto in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s 2017 documentary series The Vietnam War.

Looking for inspiration? Check out last year’s winners here: www.newsreview.com/reno/short-cuts/content?oid=25735902

10

|

RN&R

|

01.10.19

exiT

The governor’s charm and backers took him a long way

SANDOVAL

STOry AND phOTOS by DeNNiS MyerS n 2009, the Nevada Republican Party was in serious trouble. It had won the governorship in 2007 with Jim Gibbons, and his shallow views of public policies, lazy work habits, and disorderly handling of his divorce made him enormously unpopular. If he became the Republican nominee when he ran for reelection, the GOP was doomed.

A group of high powered lobbyists and businesspeople had, in 1996, won the governorship for the GOP by financing the candidacy of Kenny Guinn and freezing all other candidates out. They decided it was time to do it again, and their attention turned to Brian Sandoval.

Sandoval had once been a fast rising political star. He went from state legislator to chief gambling regulator to state attorney general in nine years. His rise alarmed Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who saw an attractive Latino Republican as a future challenger. Reid decided Sandoval was the ideal person to fill an open district judgeship and gave his name to George W. Bush, then in the White House. Bush nominated Sandoval in 2005, taking the young politician out of politics.

The business/lobbyist cabal convinced Sandoval to resign the judgeship and re-enter politics, both of which Sandoval did on September 15, 2009. The 2010 primary against Gibbons was a milk run, Sandoval beating the incumbent by an incredible 28 percentage points. In the general election, Sandoval faced Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid, who was enormously popular on his home turf—he won election to a second term as commissioner in a landslide—but also faced the difficulty municipal officials often have making the transition to statewide office. He trailed Sandoval through the entire campaign and lost 53 to 42 percent.

The lobbyists and businesspeople had their governor. Sandoval brought two important qualities into office. He had the political

protection of the cabal and need not worry about reelection. And, though journalists and other politicians constantly gossiped about his future, Sandoval never showed any desire to reach higher or leave the state of Nevada for D.C. The backing of the moneymen gave him political security, though it also held him beholden to them. (He will now join a major casino entity as president.) The unwillingness to leave Nevada left him free to take whatever policy positions he wanted without worrying about their impact on his political future. When he passed up his best chance to go to D.C.—a U.S. Senate race when Harry Reid retired—it made it patently clear he was not a threat to other politicians, further enhancing his freedom of movement. It also allowed him to be a real Republican with traditional GOP values.

The greatest limit on Sandoval’s flexibility was self-inflicted. For some reason, he ran on a no-new-taxes pledge, which leaders in both parties thought unnecessary. He was going to win, anyway, and then face massive problems of historic proportion, so why take anything off the table?

hArD TiMeS Sandoval took office in January 2011, a grim time in Nevada. The Great Recession caused

by Wall Street deregulation that triggered the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2009 hit Nevada particularly hard. The state had the highest foreclosure rate, the highest jobless rate, and residents were leaving at rates Nevada had not experienced in the postwar era.

In his first legislative message, Sandoval spoke of Nevadans as a family: “Nevadans are confronted on all sides with bad news. Our friends have seen their credit ruined. Someone in our family has lost a job. The house around the corner stands vacant. A neighbor has closed her business.

A relative is one trip to the doctor away from financial or physical ruin. Some believe government is the only solution to our current plight. I disagree. Unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy—the cure is not more government spending but helping businesses create jobs. The key is to get Nevada working again.”

The tone was a disappointment to Democrats and moderate Republicans who had hoped Sandoval would govern in the Kenny Guinn tradition. It is hard times when the public needs government to be there.

Guinn left office complaining of those “who don’t believe in government,” and Sandoval seemed to be embracing that group.

Moreover, Sandoval’s program included beating up on government workers who were suffering from the recession caused by business.

The state had a $2 billion deficit, and Sandoval proposed a $5.8 billion budget.

It included what amounted to a tax on state government workers—a 6 percent pay cut, coupled with loss of longevity pay and step increases. To add insult to injury, workers were forced to take 12 days a year off.

Sandoval’s program also showed the foolishness of his no-new-taxes pledge. After the anti-worker proposals, he still needed revenue, and he tried to tap local governments for some of their revenues—in effect, raising state taxes by having them laundered through municipalities. The courts blocked that maneuver at a cost to Sandoval’s budget of $656 million.

Fortunately, the anti-worker policy was a one-time thing, putting the burden of a revenue shortage on a vulnerable group, instead of those who caused it. As his administration wore on, Sandoval represented a throwback to the Republican Party that existed before Newt Gingrich and his allies intentionally polarized the system in the 1990s. He was a civil, agreeable Republican, only occasionally yielding to the temptation to join the party’s extremists.

Sandoval’s other responses to the recession and hard times allowed him to bask in the glories of more jobs and an economic boom without having to do anything about the wreckage those policies created at the local level.

He lured Tesla and thousands of jobs to Storey County with a corporate

welfare payout larger than the corporation demanded and larger than any state government had ever offered—$1.3 billion, the equivalent of 16 percent of the Nevada state government’s annual budget—and dumped the consequences into the laps of local governments in Lyon, Storey and Washoe counties, including a housing shortage that drove rents and home prices sky high. The deal was approved by the Nevada Legislature in a special session in September 2014, and the Tesla plant began operating on July 29, 2016, which gave the construction industry almost two years to prepare for the arrival of thousands of workers who poured in looking for jobs.

But builders said publicly that they were reluctant to move ahead until the actual need arrived, and Sandoval did nothing to use the governor’s pulpit to jawbone the industry to get moving.

A few local officials anticipated the havoc Sandoval would wreak by reducing school funding and causing a shortage of housing. Reno City Councilmember Jenny Brekhus said, “That is a critique I have of Sandoval. He did economic development on steroids to get the state out of the recession but ignored local government and school districts’ ability to accommodate growth propelled by his policies.”

This and other corporate welfare represented a sharp change in Nevada policies, which previously kept corporate subsidies low. No other governor of either party had engaged in such giveaways. “I don’t see any reason for that,” Guinn had said of the notion of increasing business tax breaks.

Sandoval’s unwillingness to leave Nevada left him free to take whatever policy positions he wanted without worrying about their impact on his political future.

“exiT SANDOVAL”

continued on page 12

01.10.19 | RN&R | 11

“exit Sandoval” continued from page 11

At the current level that abatements are being used by Tesla—$240.3 million—and at the current level of Tesla workers—7,059—Brian Bonnenfant of the Center for Regional Studies said that the cost to the public is $34,042 per job. Readers are cautioned against using this figure in isolation. It’s a figure that’s easy to over-simplify because other parts of the Tesla deal could generate public revenues.

“One must figure in the sales and property taxes, fines and fees paid by the 7,059 new jobs brought to the area (induced impact), and weigh these revenues against costs to government to service the new households,” Bonnenfant wrote. “Most, if not all, fiscal impact analyses required by local governments for new housing developments show a net-positive to government revenues from new residential construction over 20 years. Residential developments are shown to provide more government revenues than costs. … Moreover, the net impact to government revenues must also include the indirect impacts from the abatement, which is the real (but often ignored) objective of abatements. The abatement for Tesla helped market our region as an ideal hub for manufacturing and distribution. The global hype about [Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center] and its famous tenants (Tesla, Google, Switch, Apple, Blockchains, Jet, etc.) is now parlaying into relocation and expansion of HQs and high-tech companies with high wages.”

So the jury is still out on whether the Tesla deal produces more revenue than it costs. And it may never be known.

Politicians are not wild about research into their governing devices. A lot of people in the state have a stake in corporate welfare and don’t want any computations to undercut it. Ideology sometimes trumps wisdom. Democrats don’t want to hear the evidence that motor voter doesn’t work.

Congressional Republicans vetoed followup studies to learn if their welfare reform program worked. State legislators and others, including journalists, bewitched by the big names Sandoval brought to Nevada by throwing outlandish tax breaks at them, have done little follow-up to learn whether the investment was worth the return. Will state legislators who approved Sandoval’s deals want to check back on them?

School fight One of Jim Gibbons’ legacies was his assault on education, which undercut Sandoval’s favorite state concern, economic development.

Gibbons slashed education spending in his budget recommendations to the legislature, particularly in higher education.

The state’s higher education system was cut

12 | RN&R | 01.10.19

Flanked by a legislative escort committee, Sandoval waits to enter the Assembly hall to give his 2013 message on “the condition of the State.”

In April 2015, Sandoval and U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell greeted tribal leaders at the Nevada Wildlife Department for an announcement on sage hen habitat.

“somewhere between 36 and 42 percent” during Gibbons’ term, according to Nevada System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Klaich in 2011. Joblessness in Nevada was at 13.3 percent.

In his first legislature in 2011, Sandoval recommended spending that legislators said was right out of the Gibbons songbook— cutting elementary and secondary education almost six percent and higher education by just under 18 percent. The Associated Press began its report, “Gov. Brian Sandoval wants to improve Nevada’s troubled schools while slashing education spending.”

Las Vegas columnist Ken Miller wrote, “But it’s difficult to believe a governor’s priority is getting Nevada back on the right track when he proposes education cuts so enormous they threaten to not only limit the quality and availability of higher education, but make it so cost-prohibitive that few will want to try.”

When Democrats added money back into the education budget, Sandoval vetoed that budget. Clark County students who traveled to Carson City to lobby built a “Sandoville” on the lawn. A coffin full of letters protesting the education spending level arrived.

Sandoval’s veto message said the bill had the “clear intention of casting opponents as somehow ‘anti-education’ while at the same time forcing a tax increase.”

“We are hearing from countless parents, students and educators that the governor’s proposed budget would decimate Nevada’s schools,” said Assembly budget chair Debbie Smith. “They want us to pass a more prudent plan.”

It was at that point that the Nevada Supreme Court overturned Sandoval’s raid on local government revenues, creating a $600 million hole in the budget and uniting Sandoval and the Democrats in getting any schools budget approved. Sandoval ended up breaking his tax pledge and accepted extension for two more years of payroll, sales and car registration taxes that otherwise would have expired. However tense the education budget standoff, Democrats said dealing with Sandoval was still easier than with Gibbons or some of the social conservative Republicans in the legislature. His calm and charm made their disagreements easier to negotiate.

And the message brought to the capitol by actual parents and students was not lost on Sandoval, nor was the repeated importance of

education cited by companies looking for new locations. In 2015, after winning reelection without a no-new-taxes pledge, Sandoval offered a $1.5 billion tax program that would be largely devoted to education. Some of it went to new fads like all-day kindergarten and an English language learner program, but no one objected. The important thing was that Nevada was getting serious about education after the Gibbons era had disdained it.

The governor engaged, as so many governors have done in the postwar era,

in some reorganization, moving boxes around on the state organizational chart. His proposals, which the legislature approved, removed the lieutenant governor from his roles in economic development and changed that department’s functions into an arm of the governor’s office. He also changed the Nevada Board of Education from an elective board to a mostly appointive board.

Appointments were doled out to influential groups like the Nevada Association of School Superintendents. The Nevada

Assembly and Senate were given two of the appointments in violation of separation of powers but making it easier to win legislative approval. The governor also now appoints the state schools superintendent, previously the function of the board. The voice of the public in education policy was reduced, and it is particularly detached from the needs of lowincome parents and students.

Sandoval’s staff often struck legislators as amateurish. During Gibbons’ one term, he cast

reforms, meeting with families and the homeless, silencing underlings who tried to justify the dumping. Sandoval did none of that.

His first comments finally came when a KSNV television crew cornered him at a public event. When a governor could have shaped public response to the appalling news and directed the bureaucratic reaction, Sandoval was below the radar.

He was similarly reticent when Donald Trump came on the scene. Though he has avoided identification as a Latino politician, Sandoval did express his concern over Trump’s antimigrant stances: “I’ll put it this way—I disagree with him, and I have said that publicly. It is not good for the Hispanic community, and they are not reacting well to it.” He supported Marco Rubio for the GOP presidential nomination, then John Kasich. When Trump became the apparent nominee, Sandoval endorsed him over Hillary Clinton, doing so as inconspicuously as possible (by tweet), not even using Trump’s name: “I plan to vote for the presumptive nominee although it is no secret that we do not agree on every issue.

Elections are about making choices and the Democratic nominee is simply not an option.”

As governor when Trump entered the White House, Sandoval has avoided talking about Trump, except when he could not avoid it—not generally being considered a Trump critic in this period when the fate of the GOP is at issue. Republican governors Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland, John Kasich of Ohio (who appears likely to oppose Trump in the 2020 primaries and caucuses), and Susana Martinez of New Mexico had the nerve to oppose Trump outspokenly, and they could have used Sandoval’s help.

When the 2014 dispute over Cliven Bundy’s failure to pay his bills unfolded in Bunkerville, Sandoval made one of his bows to the far right, endorsing Bundy, while the rancher lured people with weapons to Clark County for a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management. What was most interesting was Sandoval’s rationale for that stance.

A free speech zone, common to disaster sites like wildfires, had been established near the standoff to allow reporters and newsmakers to conduct interviews in safety and out of the line of fire. Sandoval issued a prepared statement attacking them: “Most In July 2012, Sandoval disturbing to me sits listening after he is the BLM’s presented his economic establishment development plan to an audience at UNR. of a ‘First Amendment

When builders wouldn’t build, the governor was silent. more vetoes than any other governor. Some of that was attributed to his not doing his homework and heading off problems before bills got passed, but some of it was blamed on aides who did not alert Gibbons to problem areas in bills. Over his two terms, Sandoval cast more vetoes than any governor, and his staff was similarly faulted.

AdministrAtor Sandoval was not a strong leader, seeming to rely on the fact that no one could touch him politically as long as his moneyed backers supported him. He tended to administer government, not lead it. When in 2013 the Sacramento Bee broke the news that Nevada mental patients were being given bus tickets and Ensure and shipped out of state where they became homeless, committed crimes and died, Sandoval vanished from sight. As the story unfolded, others said the things the governor should have been saying. “The reason we’re investigating is because this is awful,” said state health officer Tracey Green. “We are saddened by this.”

“We own it—we blew it, and we are taking corrective action,” state Health and Human Services director Michael Willden said, a quote that appeared everywhere from the Bee to a website called End Time Bible Prophecy.

Nevada was getting big play.

But departmental functionaries, though trusted inside the state, were not the figures who count when a state’s reputation is on the line. With national news reports relentlessly drumming the patient dumping story, the state needed the governor front and center, denouncing the shoddy practices, instituting

Area’ that tramples upon Nevadans’ fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution.”

He called the zone “offensive to me and countless others” and called for it to be shut down, and it was. What’s amazing is that a former federal judge did not know the purpose and history of such zones; that a GOP governor who addressed the 2012 Republican National Convention did not know that convention had such zones; or that a Nevada governor did not know the state has municipal free speech zones.

Sparks has one on Tenth Street between Victorian Avenue and C Street, Reno in Idlewild Park on Earth Day. They don’t prevent expression from taking place elsewhere. They just provide a place of safety.

Sandoval was later embarrassed when the rancher he endorsed unsurprisingly started spouting off about race.

CodA Sandoval led entirely by example and by the strength of his influential lobbyist supporters, never speaking out about what meanspirited, polarizing leaders were doing to his party and society. He embraced the Affordable Care Act enacted by a Democratic Congress, but only by setting up

a state health care exchange and expanding Medicaid, not by forcefully endorsing the concept of national health care. The Nevada Independent last year ran the headline, “Despite moderate stances, Sandoval issued most vetoes in Nevada.” That encapsulated some of the questions about Sandoval, leading to questions about whether his moderate style and charm concealed reactionary policies. And he was enabled by state journalists whose scrutiny of his policies was slight. In eight years, he did nothing about the state’s oppressive tax structure that burdens workers more than the one percent.

Merriam-Webster dictionary uses actual sentences from books, magazines and newspapers for examples of how to use the words and terms it defines. In the entry for PATIENT DUMPING, it uses the January 2018 sentence, “On her watch as executive editor, the Bee was a Pulitzer finalist for feature photography in 2013 and stories about Nevada’s patient dumping in 2014,” thus immortalizing Nevada’s behavior.

What Willie Brown said of Jerry Brown during his first 1970s term as governor is true of Sandoval—that he never used his great popularity for something that really mattered. Ω

01.10.19 | RN&R | 13

On a Sunday evening, a group gathered at Flux Movement Lab to practice contact improv with teacher Erica French.

KEEpIng

touch in

Contact improv classes

story and photos by jErI ChadwEll jErIC@nEwsrEvIEw.Com

E

very Monday evening, a small group of people gathers at Flux Movement Lab, 646 Eureka Ave., to practice contact improv dance, a form that blends modern dance, improvisation, and the kind of weight exchange with which martial arts practitioners are familiar.

Flux’s weekly contact improv jam usually draws five to 10 people, sometimes more. It’s led by instructor Erica French, whose been dancing since she was a child.

14 | RN&R | 01.10.19

“My mom put me in ballet, so I grew up dancing,” French said. “But it wasn’t until I was in college, and I went to school for dance at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, that I discovered that I love modern dance.

It seemed more natural for the body. It seemed easier and just more organic—not trying to force things. It was more of an authentic giving of expression that I think a lot of people in society are looking for

right now.”

French discovered contact improv during college but said she only began practicing it regularly about two years ago.

“I had a divorce that was pretty traumatic, and then contact, in short, was a great way to connect with people in a way that felt safe and wholesome and healthy and fun and playful,” she said. “As an adult, you don’t really get that a lot.”

When French first started organizing contact improv jams in the Truckee Meadows, people began turning up for different reasons—but a common one, she said, was to feel a sense of connection.

“There’s the fun and the game of it and the challenge of it, of course, but there’s also that feeling connected, too,” she said. “Contact, in a way, is an offshoot of modern dance. But there are a lot of people who get into contact from other mediums, like martial arts.”

French has met the people who make up her regular cadre of contact improv participants in many different places. Many of them have different dance backgrounds and interests. They all describe contact improv in different ways, and they became involved in French’s weekly jam events for different reasons.

Jack Rothschild is a regular jam participant who met French swing dancing at a club. He said a sense of connection with other people was an important part of contact improv’s initial appeal to him. He used to attend jams like French’s when he lived in Boston, where he said there are at least four or five such weekly events.

“I’m also a physical kind of person,” Rothschild said. “I used to be a phys-ed teacher.

To me it’s a combination of ballet and gymnastics almost. I like both parts of that.”

Another regular jam participant is Marius Poliac, who met French blues dancing out on the town a few years ago. He’s a mathematician, a tango dancer and a former rock climber among other things.

“I think contact is somewhere between rock climbing and tango dancing,” Poliac said. “Rock

climbing requires you to be right in the present because, otherwise, you can die. Tango, you don’t die, but you have to have a very strong connection with your partner. Also, tango is improvisational.”

Before French established contact improv jams in the Truckee Meadows about two years ago, Poliac used to travel to the Bay Area to attend them. He said the local jam has made him “so happy,” because for him, it’s more than an opportunity for connection or play.

Poliac uses the improv dance sessions as a type of therapy for his Parkinson’s disease and said it helps him maintain balance mobility and, importantly, posture.

“Parkinson’s will make you walk stooped over,” he said, “When I go home after contact improv, my wife says, ‘You grew two inches!’”

In a jam What does a contact improv jam look like?

Before leading an impromptu one on a recent Sunday evening, French explained, “A lot of people think, ‘Oh, you’re just rolling on the floor with each other.’ It’s like, ‘No, you’ve got to get past that.’ There’s a lot of awkwardness and a lot of laughing and weird noises.”

The basic premise is to create shared points of contact with other dancers and, in turn, new

Instructor Erica French

embraced contact improv centers of gravity that change as dance after a divorce. partners lean into, push and shift around one another.

“Contact is like empathetic mirroring, kinesthetic mirroring,” French said. “There’s no lead and no follow, and there’s no right or wrong. It’s just really being open to that connection point. … There are lots of little techniques we use to help people find natural ways of moving,

“ T here’s The fun and The game of iT and The challenge of iT, of course, The next exercise had them bring their buT There’s also ThaT heads together, as if magnetically pulled and then repelled. As people warmed up, French them to move freely—to “jam”—withfeeling connecTed, Too.” invited out instruction. As the jam progressed, the erica french insTrucTor

but that’s just scaffolding. It’s framework.

Playfulness is getting away from the fear of the unknown and your body doing weird things and just exploring.”

At a recent jam, French put participants into a playful mood by first leading them in an exercise where they were to imagine their heads had a great enough weight to slowly pull them to the floor. The dancers slowly tumbled to the ground, rolled and rose again.

Giggling ensued.

Learn more about contact improv classes at Flux Movement lab here: https://bit.ly/2CBnpCl.

participants’ movements became more exaggerated—the mock magnetic forces between them resulting in intertwined somersaults and dancers spinning circles around a series of ever shifting axes created by their constantly maintained touch.

Watching contact improv, some inexperienced dancers might initially feel intimidated by the flowing, almost contortionist-like movements—but French insists that it’s a dance form that can work for anyone and encourages newbies to attend a jam.

“The first time I really did contact, it took me about three hours to really let go,” she said.

“It can be scary, but once you figure it out, it’s very grounding.” Ω

Dancers create new centers of gravity as the push pull and tumble over one another during a Sunday evenng contact improv jam.

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by JERI CHADWELL

je r ic @ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m

Jonathan Kreidler does boudoir photography in outdoor locations around Northern Nevada.

Flash on Jonathan Kreidler In a December post on photographer Jonathan Kreidler’s Instagram page, a model by the name of Kay stands nude at the center of a desolate, wintery scene, her bare feet planted in the snow.

It’s the type of photograph for which Kreidler is known. He takes models to remote locations for outdoor boudoir shoots in the desert and mountains surrounding the Truckee Meadows. For Kreidler, a recent Bay Area transplant, the opportunity to mix a bit of offroading with his part-time photography vocation is somewhat of a dream come true.

“That’s generally my favorite thing to do in life,” Kreidler said. “Being outdoors was kind of a necessity, not just something I wanted to do.”

He loves it despite the challenges it presents, including the real risk of winding up stranded, which happened while he and model Kay were on their shoot.

“So we went out to Boca Reservoir, and I decided to go offroading in my Subaru— because it’s got all-wheel drive—and then I got stuck in the snow, in a ditch, with the model,” he said. “And that was the only car we had. So we kind of had a Donner Party situation. We had to, like, hike out to the road and call triple A, and the service was super spotty.”

Still, Kreidler thinks both he and his models get something out of shooting in the outdoors.

“I don’t really like doing boudoir indoors, like in people’s bedrooms, because it’s usually kind of small and hard to do,” he said. Plus, he finds it’s easier to get people out of their heads when they’re not in their own environments.

“People just kind of get it—if they’re uncomfortable doing any kind of boudoir 16 | RN&R | 01.10.19

PHOTO/JERI CHADWELL

photography, being outdoors is the least of their concerns,” Kreidler said. “I just kind of put on my salesman voice. I pretend to be hella awkward and funny. It just kind of works. It makes them focus on me, so they’re not focusing on how uncomfortable they are.”

Getting people past discomfort is an important goal for Kreidler—made all the more important when his subjects are less experienced models than say, Kay, or those who are new to boudoir and potentially don’t see their own bodies as great subjects for nude photos.

“You see me—I’m not the most attractive-looking dude,” he said. “So I kind of get that desire to buck the social norms of what beauty looks like. I like giving people the opportunity to see themselves as beautiful, even if they’re not classically attractive. That’s something that’s near and dear to my heart and kind of the basis of my company.”

For now, Kreidler holds down a day job doing marketing for a real estate company.

Despite having nearly a decade of professional photography experience under his belt, he views himself as someone who’s still at least somewhat an amateur. His goal is to transition to full-time photography in the next year or so.

For now, he’s playing with things like couple’s boudoir photography and exploring trends like men’s boudoir photography—which he refers to as “dudeoir.”

“I subscribe to the belief that all bodies are beautiful, so if dudes want to get sexy, too, on camera, then, why not?” he said.

“I want to do more of that … but guys are a lot harder to get into a boudoir situation than women, because women, I feel, are already naturally kind of—the culture kind of says, ‘women equal sexy,’ but guys don’t have that image out there.” Ω

Learn more about Jonathan Kreidler’s photography here: jbkimaging.blog.

by BoB Grimm

b g ri m m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m

SHORT TAKES

1

“Wait, where is this surprise party again?”

Don’t look Sandra Bullock puts her supreme talents in a Netflix sensation movie that is only half good with Bird Box, a film that feels like a bunch of overused horror gimmicks mashed into one messy entity.

Malorie (Bullock) is a gloomy painter. The film shows Bullock only painting black backgrounds to make her look authentic. She’s dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Sister Jessica (Sarah Paulson) tells her to get out of the dumpy-dumps, and takes her to the doctor for a checkup, shortly after seeing a strange report on TV about people killing themselves in Russia.

While visiting with the doc (Parminder Nagra), all hell starts to break loose in the hospital and, even more so, on the streets. It appears as if people are seeing some sort of entity and deciding it’s far too much for them to handle, so they kill themselves in creative ways (stepping in front of buses, bashing heads into windows, walking into fire, etc.). Malorie manages to navigate through a hellish urban landscape, and winds up trapped in a house with a few others.

Until the point where Malorie winds up in the house, the film looks promising. The street suicides scene is genuinely scary, and flash forward scenes show Malorie trying to find some sort of safe haven with two children, all wearing blindfolds to avoid seeing the killer vision. Those scenes work OK as well, although they are very much just a play on last summer’s A Quiet Place, with characters simply not able to see rather than prohibited from making noise.

The movie hits a total dead end once Malorie goes in that house. It’s pretty much the same scenario as that remake of Dawn of the Dead, right down to the pregnant women and shopping scenes.

John Malkovich is one of the house survivors, and he’s just doing a variation on the usual John Malkovich. After witnessing the death of his wife, he just gets Malkovich angry, yelling at Malorie in that deliberate, pause between the words kind of way. (“You … are the reason … she … is dead!”)

Seems to me your average male would be curled up in a fetal position in the corner bawling his eyes out after witnessing such a thing as their beloved wife’s demise, but Malkovich just gets pissed Malkovich-style. I was laughing, and I’m quite sure that wasn’t the desired reaction from filmmaker Susanne Bier.

As for the other survivors, there’s the young punk, the female cop, the other pregnant woman, the older mom type, and the Malorie love interest.

When Bullock is trading lines with most of these folks, they are clearly and obviously outmatched, especially in some of the moments that seem more improvised. They just shouldn’t be in the same room with Bullock, who is top-notch despite the hackneyed scripting.

The title of the film stands for a shoebox that Malorie keeps birds in as a monster alarm. This, to me, makes no sense. It’s established that if you are outside, and if you look, you will inevitably see “the monster” that will make you off yourself. Why put a bunch of birds through hell? There’s no escaping the monster, who inevitably shows up within seconds of you opening your eyes. A bird chirping is just incidental.

The scenes with Bullock and the children on the river, while not all that original are, nonetheless, riveting and tense. Much of this is due to the excellent child actors, simply named Girl (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Boy (Julian Edwards). The little expressions they make while Malorie lectures them on how one stupid move could kill them are heartbreaking.

There is one thing totally amazing about Bird Box. BD Wong, who plays one of the house survivors, is 58 years old. The man looks like he’s 35!

As for the movie itself, I credit Netflix for doing a great job hyping it and Bullock for acting her ass off even when the material drifts into dreck. Ω

Bird Box

12345

Aquaman

The latest DC effort, Aquaman, is middling fun for about 20 minutes before it becomes one of the worst films of 2018. It’s the typical DC garbage can of a film and proof that Warner Brothers has learned next to nothing when it comes to making a good comic book movie since Christian Bale took off the cowl (Yes, Wonder Woman was good—the lone exception.) Jason Momoa returns as big, tattooed, beefy Arthur, the dreamy son of a Lost City of Atlantis queen (Nicole Kidman) and Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison), a lowly lighthouse keeper. Fett finds the queen washed up on the rocks and takes her home, where she promptly eats his goldfish. (What a laugh riot! She ate his pet fish!) She gives birth to Arthur, and the origin story part of the movie is well on its way. We see a few more moments in the fish man’s young life. Arthur is bullied in an aquarium, where he gets a tiger shark all riled up to the point that it almost breaks through the glass and kills his entire elementary school class. (That would’ve made for an interesting twist.) Momoa eventually shows up in full party mode, and it looks like we could be on our way to some goofy fun.

Alas, like Zack Snyder before him, director James Wan doesn’t know how to keep a leash on his epic, and this things goes bonkers in a bad way. The undeniable charms— and admittedly glorious hair—of Momoa can only go so far in this unholy mess.

1

Bohemian Rhapsody

Rami Malek gives it his all as Freddie Mercury, the late lead singer of Queen, in the new biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. That, and a competent recreation of Queen’s Live Aid domination, are just about the only good things you can say about this mostly embarrassing effort to memorialize an incredible person and his sadly short life. The movie basically takes Mercury’s legacy, completely screws with his life’s timeline and makes up a bunch of unnecessary events to pad its 135-minute running time. Malek, acting through a big set of fake teeth made to capture the look of Mercury’s four extra incisors, is decent in the role. He actually sang on set, his voice blended with a Mercury soundalike to keep the movie from being a completely lip-synched affair. There’s a movie happening between those musical sequences, and that movie is terrible, a messed-up bit of fakery that prompts a lot of unintentional laughter. There’s a great, truthful movie to be made about the life of Freddie Mercury. Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t even come close to being that movie.

3

Green Book

Director Peter Farrelly gives us Green Book, essentially a remake of Driving Miss Daisy with the roles reversed and starring Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and the Academy Award winning actor from Moonlight (Mahershala Ali). It’s a feel good movie about race relations that goes light on the grit and heavy on the sentiment. Based on a true story, Mortensen plays Tony Lip, an Italian bouncer at the Copacabana who finds himself temporarily without a job while the club is being renovated. His next gig installs him as a driver and bodyguard for Dr. Don Shirley (Ali), an African-American classical pianist who is touring a jazz trio in the early 1960s Deep South. There is nothing in their dialogue that is anything remotely original or surprising, but Farrelly is lucky to have these two guys in the car. Without them, this film would be a total slog. Mortensen, who has had his share of dramatic and action roles, gets a chance to show off some comedic timing.

He also put on over 40 pounds for the role.

Mahershala is good as Shirley, so good

you wish the script matched the majesty of his work. Seamless special effects make it look like he can play a mean piano. The movie is average at best, delivering a relatively good time while feeling quite dated. I expect a little more heft from a movie with this subject matter.

3

Mary Poppins Returns

5

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Casting Emily Blunt as the iconic title character in Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel 54 years in the making, proves to be a stroke of genius. Casting Lin-Manuel Miranda in the role of Jack, a copycat character modeled after Dick Van Dyke’s Bert in the original classic, well, not so much. Blunt plays the role with her own sensible spin, not by any means copying what the great Andrews did over half a century ago, but nonetheless giving us a practically perfect variation on the infamous nanny. Miranda sports the same cockney accent (not nearly as gloriously, wonderfully bad as Van Dyke’s) and plays a lamp lighter in London instead of a chimney sweep. His part of the film feels like a giant missed opportunity because, while he can sing and dance up a storm, he isn’t funny. Van Dyke was funny.

The result is a movie that has a lot of charm and some amazingly good sequences—with Blunt powering us through. But while I might’ve been sitting on the fence as the film headed into the final turn, my attitude went full positive when none other than Dick Van Dyke shows up as a helpful banker. He not only shows up but gets on top of a desk and dances better than anyone else in the movie. It’s only a few seconds but, I’m telling you now, they are some of the best seconds any 2018 film has to offer—pure nostalgia heaven.

While Tom Holland’s live action Spider-Man remains in limbo due to that infamous Thanos finger snap, Sony Pictures ups the ante on the Spidey franchise with the eye-popping, all around ingenious Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, one of 2018’s greatest cinematic surprises. While there have been awesome superhero movies and terrific movies based on comic books, this very well might be the best “comic-book movie” ever made. Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is trying to adjust to a new, upscale school after winning a scholarship. He’s away from his big city friends and getting some guff from his wellmeaning police officer dad (Brian Tyree Henry), who wants him to appreciate the chance he’s been given. Miles’s uncle (the ever busy Mahershala Ali) keeps him grounded, encouraging him to continue as a graffiti artist. On one of their painting excursions, Miles is bitten by a strange spider and then—well, you know. He eventually crosses paths with the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker (Chris Pine).

And, as the plot would have it, parallel universe portals open and allow in a whole fleet of different Spider-Men, Spider-Women, Spider-Pigs and SpiderRobots. That group is comprised of Peter B. Parker (the invaluable Jake Johnson), Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), SpiderHam (a mishmash of Spidey and Porky Pig voiced by John Mulaney), Peni Parker and her robot (Kimiko Glenn) and, best of all, Nicolas Cage as the black-and-white Spider-Man Noir. So Miles is one of many Spider entities on hand to go up against Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), whose corporation is responsible for the time hole rip allowing all of his adversaries into his corner of the universe. Like any good comic book, the movie is stacked with action, plot threads and many twists and turns.

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by Todd SouTH

Northern Nevada

LocaLLy roasted

Spiced up

at 1715 s. WeLLs aVe. magpieroasters.com

18 | RN&R | 01.10.19

In India, a haveli is a fancy mansion or temple. Recently opened Haveli Indian Cuisine & Bar aims to deliver that vibe, with life-size figures of Indian revelers, ornate decorations, golden flatware, crystal centerpieces and a disco-lighted dance floor. A full bar is available to help you adjust to the explosion of color and sparkle. Though they offer a lunch buffet ($11.99), my dinner companions and I had arranged for a prix fixe meal of dishes chosen by the chef ($25 per person).

Service was prompt, despite occasional moments I’d chalk up to being “lost in translation.” (I’ve included à la carte pricing for the dishes we sampled.)

Things started off with a green lentil soup ($6.99) loaded with chopped garlic and scallion. It had a lot of body, and the seasoning was robust. This was followed by fish pakora ($11.99), chunks of mild white fish marinated in ginger and garlic, battered in spiced gram and rice flour, deep fried and served with fresh tartar sauce. The bright red nuggets were lightly crispy and tasty with or without the dillforward tartar sauce.

Tandoori chicken ($15.99) marinated in yogurt and spices, baked in a tandoor oven and garnished with fresh onion and cilantro was much saucier than the dry, pink stuff to which I’m accustomed.

It reminded me of chicken tikka and presented me with the choice of trying to gently pry meat off the bone, or just embrace the mess with teeth and fingers.

Regardless, it was well worth the trouble.

A dry salad of lettuce, green olive, red onion, tomato and hot pepper ($6.99) was included to complement the curried dishes that followed. I added a little raita as dressing (a yogurt, herb and vegetable condiment). Plain naan flatbread ($2.99) and garlic naan ($3.99) were provided,

Haveli Indian Cuisine & Bar recreates the opulence of an Indian mansion with ornate decorations, crystal centerpieces and a dance floor. pHOTO/ALLISON YOUNG

great for sopping up all the delicious sauces. It was pillowy and crisp—the perfect gateway drug for anyone new to Indian cuisine.

Our saucy dishes served with a side of long-grain basmati rice included aloo gobi ($9.99) with curried potato, cauliflower and other veggies; goat curry ($15.99) featuring chunks of bone-in goat simmered in garlic, ginger, thyme, onion, hot pepper and spices; sahi paneer ($11.99) cubes of fresh cheese in a thick gravy of cream, tomato and spices; and murg makani ($13.99), a.k.a. butter chicken, in a tomato butter curry sauce.

The veggie dish was fairly mild but enjoyable, and the goat was very good.

The meat fell off the bone, and the sauce was balanced and hearty. If you enjoy lamb, you’ll love this goat dish. I like cheese in any form, but the simple paneer was just a sidekick to its excellent cream sauce. However, the winner was the butter chicken—among the best I’ve had.

Finally, shrimp biryani ($15.99), a big pile of rice with saffron and other spices, bell pepper, pea, carrot and some impressively large, seasoned prawns buried inside. The shrimp were big enough to eat with fork and knife, and the rice/veggie combo was fragrant and ridiculously plentiful. I added the makani and sahi sauces to this with great effect. Even if you’re avoiding carbs, this is a must have. After all this, we were too pleasantly full for the variety of dessert enticements available.

Maybe next time. Ω

Haveli Indian Cuisine & Bar

287 Los Altos Pkwy., Sparks, 451-7469

Haveli Indian Cuisine & Bar is open from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Learn more at haveliindiancuisine.net.

by Joey Thyne

Breyshon Johnson started rapping in 2004 at the age of 16 and began producing a few years later.

Fresh produce Duse Beatz At a young age, Breyshon Johnson fell in love with music, listening to his brother’s CDs of Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and the Luniz. Today, Johnson is one of the most prolific hip hop producers to come out of Reno, under the name Duse Beatz.

Born and raised in Reno, Johnson started rapping in 2004 at the age of 16 under the name Young Duse. Over the years, he traveled across the country, performing in Miami, Indianapolis, Boise and Los Angeles—opening for artists like Wiz Khalifa, E-40 and YG. Producing began out of necessity in 2006.

“I started making beats because we didn’t have enough money to pay for beats from big producers,” Johnson said. “At that time, it was only big producers like Pharrell and Timbaland.”

After years of touring, Johnson hung up the mic and took a seat behind the board, transforming from Young Duse to Duse Beatz.

“I stopped rapping because it cost too much,” Johnson said. “You really gotta have marketing dollars to be able to get your name out there. The music industry is shady. A lot of people want to get you for your money, and they don’t really do anything. I lost the passion for me actually being an artist, and I just wanted to be behind the scenes.”

All of Johnson’s beats feature a signature Bay Area bounce, a sound pioneered by artists like Too $hort in the mid 2000s which has recently made a comeback into the mainstream. He gutted a shed in his parents’ backyard and turned it into a studio. In the past, Johnson has produced for such artists as SOBxRBE, Blueface,

courtesy/PJ sagun

Drakeo the Ruler, Jay 305, Saviii 3rd and Earl Swavey. Johnson said the favorite beat he has made is for the song “Uchies.”

With his work all over Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and Instagram, Johnson believes the internet is both a blessing and a curse for music.

“It makes it easy with all the streaming services, so you can get your product directly to the consumer now,” Johnson said. “So when you make a song, you don’t need to go to a studio. You can build your own studio. Record a song that night. Drop it the next day. … It’s just oversaturated.

That’s what made the rap game change when it changed.”

Although Johnson respects the new school—listening to rappers like Lil Baby and 21 Savage—his heart belongs to the classic West Coast sound.

“I still got that old school soul. … I listen to lyrics,” he said.

One rapper, Mozzy, a former collaborator of Duse Beatz, stands out to him as an example of a lyricist who remains in today’s landscape of Soundcloud mumble trap.

“He’s different from everybody else,” Johnson said. “Everybody else just puts out party rapping, talking about girls, money and drugs. But Mozzy is on a whole different level. He’s talking about real life. If I had to compare someone to Tupac—I’m not saying he is Tupac—but it would be Mozzy.”

In 2016, famous producer DJ Mustard flew Johnson out to LA to collaborate on a track.

“He basically just told me you only need one hit, and you’ll be set for life,” Johnson said “And gave me a little bit of game. …

If you want to take it to the next level, you got to get a song that’s on the radio. … but a major push in the streets, too. It’s easier said than done—but it’s easy.” Ω

Learn more about Duse Beatz’ production work here: https://bit.ly/2cuchka.

01.10.19 | RN&R | 19

THURSDAY 1/10

FRIDAY 1/11

SATURDAY 1/12

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

Dance party, 10pm, $5

Dance party, 10pm, $5

Karaoke, 9pm, W, no cover

alIBI alE WorKS

Chile Verde, 9pm, no cover

Coffis Brothers, The Mountain Men, 9pm, no cover

Open Mic Night, 6pm, M, no cover Swing dancing, 7:30pm, Tu, no cover

Bar oF aMErICa

Bias & Dunn, 9pm, no cover

Bias & Dunn, 9pm, no cover

5 Star Saloon

132 West St., (775) 329-2878 10069 Bridge St., Truckee, (530) 536-5029 10040 Donner Pass Rd., Truckee, (530) 587-2626

CarGo ConCErt Hall

The English Beat

CEol IrISH PuB

Roger Scimé, 5pm, 8:30pm, no cover

538 S. Virginia St., (775) 329-5558

CottonWooD rEStaurant

10142 Rue Hilltop, Truckee, (530) 587-5711

Holehearted, A Friend A Foe, Preacher, Impurities, 7pm, $5

432 E. Fourth St., (775) 409-4431

FaCES nV

Alyssa Edwards, 8pm, $20

HEllFIrE Saloon

Whiskey Preachers, 8pm, no cover

239 W. Second St., (775) 470-8590 Carson Comedy Club, Carson City Nugget, 507 N. Carson St., Carson City, (775) 882-1626: Gabriel Rutledge, Fri-Sat, 8pm, $15 Laugh Factory, Silver Legacy Resort Casino, 407 N. Virginia St., (775) 3257401: Quinn Dahle, Thu, Sun, 7:30pm, $21.95; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm, 9:30pm, $27.45; Tanyalee Davis, Tue-Wed, 7:30pm, $21.95 The Library, 134 W. Second St., (775) 683-3308: Open Mic Comedy, Wed, 9:30pm, no cover Pioneer Underground, 100 S. Virginia St., (775) 322-5233: Carlos Rodriguez, Fri, 9pm, $12-$18; Sat, 6:30pm, 9:30pm, $12-$18

3372 S. McCarran Blvd., (775) 825-1988

tHE HollanD ProjECt

RN&R

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Post shows online by registerin g at www.newsr eview. com/reno. D eadline is the Frida y before public ation.

Traditional Irish session, 7pm, Tu, Wed. Night Showcase, 7pm, no cover

Dark Black, BodyHeat, Common Mishap, Spoken Views Open Mic + Poetry Slam, 7pm, $5 6pm, W, $3-$5

jIMMy B’S

Open mic with Monsterbug Productions, 9pm, W, no cover

juB juB’S tHIrSt Parlor

Radolescents, The Hajj, Vampirates, 8pm, M, $10

lauGHInG PlanEt CaFE

Jazz Jam Session Wednesdays, 7:30pm, W, no cover

180 W. Peckham Lane, Ste. 1070, (775) 686-6737 71 S. Wells Ave., (775) 384-1652

941 N. Virginia St., (775) 870-9633

lIVInG tHE GooD lIFE nIGHtCluB

James Wilsey, 7:30pm, no cover

1480 N. Carson St., Carson City, (775) 841-4663 1021 Heavenly Village Way, S. L. Tahoe, (530) 523-8024

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Destroy Boys, Sarchasm, Slate, 7pm, $7

140 Vesta St., (775) 742-1858

tHE loFt

20

Nigel St. Hubbins, 9pm, no cover

Live music, 6:30pm, no cover

DEaD rInGEr analoG Bar

Comedy

MON-WED 1/14-1/16

The Magpie Salute, The Stone Foxes, 8pm, $20.64-$22.94

255 N. Virginia St., (775) 398-5400

Jan. 12, 8 p.m.

The Saint 261 S. Virginia St. 221-7451

SUNDAY 1/13

01.10.19

Magic Fusion, 7pm, 9pm, $22-$47

Magic Fusion, 7pm, $22-$47 Magic After Dark, 9pm, $32-$47

Magic Fusion, 7pm, 9pm, $22-$47

Magic Fusion, 4:30pm, 7pm, $22-$47

Magic Fusion, 7pm, M, Tu, W, $22-$47

THURSDAY 1/10

FRIDAY 1/11

SATURDAY 1/12

SUNDAY 1/13

The LOVING CUP

Howlin’ Rain, Garcia Peoples, 6:30pm, M, $7-$10

188 California Ave., (775) 322-2480

MIdTOwN wINe Bar

1527 S. Virginia St., (775) 800-1960

DJ Trivia, 7pm, no cover

Arizona Jones, 8:30pm, no cover

MILLeNNIUM

MOOdy’s BIsTrO, Bar & BeaTs

Margo Cilker Band, 8:30pm, no cover

10007 Bridge St., Truckee, (530) 587-2626

Acoustic Wonderland Sessions, 8pm, no cover

Karaoke with R&B Productions, 9pm, no cover

The POLO LOUNGe

Bingo with T-N-Keys, 6:30pm, no cover DJ Bobby G, 9pm, no cover

DJ Bobby G, 9pm, no cover

Alias Smith Band, DJ Bobby G, 9pm, no cover

Steel Rockin’ Karaoke, 8pm, no cover

Live music, 8pm, no cover

PONderOsa saLOON

106 S. C St., Virginia City, (775) 847-7210

The Magpie Salute

Margo Cilker Band, 8:30pm, no cover

Paddy & IreNe’s IrIsh PUB 1559 S. Virginia St., (775) 322-8864

Bingo w/T-N-Keys, 6:30pm, Tu, no cover Jason King, 6:30pm, W, no cover

Greg Gilmore, 8pm, no cover Pancho Barraza, 10pm, $40

2100 Victorian Ave., Sparks, (775) 378-1643

906-A Victorian Ave., Sparks, (775) 359-1594

Karaoke, 7pm, M, no cover DG Kicks Band, 8pm, Tu, no cover

red dOG saLOON The saINT

The English Beat, 8pm, $40

261 S. Virginia St., (775) 221-7451 United Defiance, Year of the Fist, Machine Gun Vendetta, 8;30pm, $5-$6

Shadowkiller, Ghoulish, Overkill, Four Stroke Baron, 9pm, $5-$6

sPLash reNO

RuPaul Drag Race All Stars viewing party, drag show, 8pm, no cover

Anime and Gaymer Showdown with Lily & Drusilla, 10pm, $5

TONIC LOUNGe

Funk You Up Fridays with Ego Death, 11pm, no cover

715 S. Virginia St., (775) 786-4774 340 Kietzke Lane, (775) 686-6681 231 W. Second St., (775) 337-6868

Elephant Rifle, The Rare Forms, The Juvinals, Pry, 9pm, $5-$6

VIrGINIa sTreeT BrewhOUse 2660 Lake Tahoe Blvd., S.L. Tahoe, (530) 544-3425

Trivia Night with Aubrey Forston, 8pm, no cover Trivia Night with Bradley James, 8pm, karaoke, 9:30pm, W, no cover

Corb Lund, 8pm, W, $15

211 N. Virginia St., (775) 433-1090

whIskey dICks saLOON

Jan. 13, 8 p.m.

Cargo Concert Hall 255 N. Virginia St. 398-5400

Open mic with Doug Tarrant, 7pm, W, no cover

76 N. C St., Virginia City, (775) 847-7474

shea’s TaVerN

MON-WED 1/14-1/16

Howlin’ Rain Jan. 14, 6:30 p.m.

The Loving Cup 188 California Ave. (775) 322-2480

Monkey, 9pm, no cover

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ATLANTIS CASINO reSOrT SPA 3800 S. Virginia St., (775) 825-4700 1) Ballroom 2) Cabaret

BOOMTOWN CASINO HOTeL

2100 Garson Rd., Verdi, (775) 345-6000 1) Events Center 2) Guitar Bar

CArSON VALLey INN

1627 Hwy. 395, Minden, (775) 782-9711 1) Valley Ballroom 2) Cabaret

Pimps of Joytime Jan. 12, 9 p.m.

Crystal Bay Casino 14 Highway 28 Crystal Bay (775) 833-6333

CIrCUS CIrCUS reNO

500 N. Sierra St., (775) 329-0711 1) El Jefe’s Cantina 2) Cabaret

THURSDAY 1/10

FRIDAY 1/11

SATURDAY 1/12

SUNDAY 1/13

MON-WED 1/14-1/16

2) All In, 8pm,no cover

2) All In, 4pm, no cover Platinum, 10pm, no cover

2) 2) All In, 4pm, no cover Platinum, 10pm, no cover

2) Platinum, 8pm, no cover

2) Escalade, 8pm, M, Tu, W, no cover

2) Jamie Rollins, 6pm, no cover

2) Paul Covarelli, 5pm, no cover Ebony Not Quite Ivory, 9pm, no cover

2) Paul Covarelli, 5pm, no cover Ebony Not Quite Ivory, 9pm, no cover

2) The Robeys, 5pm, no cover Mike Furlong, 9pm, no cover

2) Tandymonium, 6pm, M, no cover Jason King, 6pm, Tu, no cover Keith Allen, 6pm, W, no cover

2) Revival, 7pm, no cover

2) Revival, 8pm, no cover

2) Revival, 8pm, no cover

2) Halie O’Ryan Band, 9pm, no cover

1) DJ MoFunk, 10pm, no cover 2) Halie O’Ryan Band, 9pm, no cover

1) DJ Chris English, 10pm, no cover 2) Halie O’Ryan Band, 9pm, no cover

2) Yonder Mountain String Band, Handmade Moments, 9pm, $32.50-$35

2) Pimps of Joytime, Midtown Social, 9pm, $20-$23

1) Sheep Dip 55, 8pm, $40 3) DJ Bob Richards, DJ Roni V, 10pm, no cover

1) Sheep Dip 55, 8pm, $40 3) DJ Dustin, DJ Roni V, 10pm, no cover

2) DJ Impakt, 10pm, $20 3) Andersen/Ackerson, 6pm, no cover

2) DJ Fuze, 10pm, $20 3) Andersen/Ackerson, 6pm, no cover

CrySTAL BAy CASINO

14 Highway 28, Crystal Bay, (775) 833-6333 1) Crown Room 2) Red Room

eLdOrAdO reSOrT CASINO 345 N. Virginia St., (775) 786-5700 1) Theater 2) Brew Brothers 3) NoVi

Karaoke

GrANd SIerrA reSOrT

Pizza Baron, 1155 W. Fourth St., Ste. 113, (775) 329-4481: Wacky Wednesday Karaoke with Steve Starr & DJ Hustler, 9pm, no cover.

The Point, 1601 S. Virginia St., (775) 3223001: Karaoke, Thu-Sat, 8:30pm, no cover Spiro’s Sports Bar & Grille, 1475 E. Prater Way, Ste. 103, Sparks, (775) 356-6000: Karaoke, Fri-Sat, 9pm, no cover West 2nd Street Bar, 118 W. Second St., (775) 348-7976: Karaoke, Mon-Sun, 9pm, no cover

2500 E. Second St., (775) 789-2000 1) Grand Theatre 2) LEX 3) Crystal Lounge

2) Tyler Stafford, 6pm, Tu, no cover Left of Centre, 6pm, W, no cover

2) Karaoke with Rock U Ent., 10pm, no cover

2) Karaoke with Rock U Ent., M, W, 10pm, no cover

HArrAH’S LAKe TAHOe

2) Buddy Emmer and guests, 8pm, Tu, no cover

15 Hwy. 50, Stateline, (800) 427-7247 1) South Shore Room 2) Casino Center Stage

NUGGeT CASINO reSOrT

2) Jeff Foxworthy, 8pm, $55-$95

1100 Nugget Ave., Sparks, (775) 356-3300 1) Celebrity Showroom 2) Nugget Ballroom

PePPerMILL reSOrT SPA CASINO 2707 S. Virginia St., (775) 826-2121 1) Terrace Lounge 2) Edge 3) Capri Ballroom

SILVer LeGACy reSOrT CASINO

407 N. Virginia St., (775) 325-7401 1) GEH 2) Rum Bullions 3) Aura 4) Silver Baron

1) Rose’s Pawn Shop, 7pm, no cover

1) Rose’s Pawn Shop, 8pm, no cover

1) Rose’s Pawn Shop, 8pm, no cover 2) DJ Spryte, 10pm, $20

1) The Contraptionists, 6pm, no cover

2) DJ R3volver, 9pm, no cover 4) DJ MoFunk, 9pm, no cover

2) Live music, 9pm, no cover 4) Soundwave, 9pm, no cover

2) Live music, 9pm, no cover 4) Soundwave, 9pm, no cover

4) DJ MoFunk, 9pm, no cover

1) The Contraptionists, 6pm, M, Tu, W, no cover

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01.10.19

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Volume 30, iSSue 27

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Karen James is a noted journalist who specializes in relationships, romance, and sex.

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This week I got a letter from a reader about a “little secret” that has made her sex life with her husband absolutely explosive! (Those Texas women are spicy!)

Tina writes: Dear Karen, For years my husband and I had a great love life.

He was sexy, passionate and so confident. But when he reached his 50s, he started to struggle with getting and keeping an erection. The few times we did have sex, his erection was definitely softer, leaving us both unsatisfied. He tried every product out there; prescriptions, creams, testosterone, male enhancement pills… but nothing worked. I know this is terrible, but I found myself thinking “My strong, passionate husband has become a sexual weakling.” I had no idea it would all turn around in just 3 weeks!

Last month, he came home from a business trip in Europe and shocked me with more sexual energy and passion than he’s had in years. Hard as a rock, he tossed me around the bedroom like we were newlyweds and gave me a night I’ll never forget! It was incredible and so exciting!

He flat wore me out that night and it’s been like that ever since. His erections are so hard and powerful, they trigger the most intense, toe-curling ‘moments’ I’ve ever had! So here we are, enjoying the best sex of our lives… in our late-50’s!

On his trip he stayed in a hotel room next to an Italian nutritionist and his wife. Through the walls, he heard them passionately making love every single night, and sometimes again in the morning. One afternoon, he saw the husband leave their room and he couldn’t believe it. The man looked much too old to be having so much sex.

My husband couldn’t help himself, so he asked the man his secret. The nutritionist smiled, introduced himself as Vito, and told my husband he was 78 years

old, his wife 65, and that after 32 years of marriage, their sex life was as good as ever. Then he took a small pack of tablets from his satchel, gave it to my husband, and said “These come from a small town up north and are made from naturally pure extracts, packed with densely rich sexual nutrients. They will give you back the sex-drive you had when you were young, and make you harder than you can imagine.” Then he laughed and said, “You’ll become an Italian Stallion like me!”

Italian Stallion is right! These past several weeks have been a dream. My husband's desire for me is through the roof. He takes me whenever he wants, and he even wakes up most days with a ‘morning salute’ like he did years ago. I love it! He’s a sexual powerhouse, beaming with confidence, and our marriage is stronger than ever.

Karen, here’s why I’m writing you. The pack of tablets is about to run out and we desperately want more. I’ve looked everywhere but can’t find them. Do you know anything about these tablets from Europe and how to get some here in the States?

Sincerely, Tina C., Fort Worth, TX Tina, you and the rest of my readers are in luck because I do know about these secret European sex tablets. Ever wonder why older men from Italy, Greece, Spain, and all over Europe are famous for staying energized, passionate and sexually active well into their golden years? Well, for decades, these men have relied on a unique blossom extract called Provarin to enhance their sexual performance and satisfaction.

Milled on the fertile northern plains, the key ingredients come from pure extracts found along the Sea. Finely ground and pressed into tablets, Provarin has a legendary reputation throughout the European sexual underground for fueling extremely hard erections, and a powerful climax. As Giovanni from Amsterdam put it, “It's like sexual rocket fuel, especially for us older guys!”

power is enough to send us over the blissful edge! I found out about Provarin a few years ago when I was dating a cowboy from Wyoming. He took Provarin every morning and believe me, that good ol’ boy sure rocked my nights!

All-natural and safe to take, Provarin is still a wellkept secret for those in the know and they like to keep it that way. It’s an old-school, family business and product is still harvested by hand. They don't have a website and don’t do any advertising. They don't need to. Long-time customers and word of mouth ensures their limited stock is sold out every year.

They do have a distributer here in the U.S. and you’ll be happy to know that Provarin is surprisingly inexpensive. When I reached out for this article, a spokesman said they were proud to produce the highest quality product for men and couples. He went on to say that if any of my readers call today and mention this article, they’ll be offered an ADDITIONAL 50% DOUBLE-DISCOUNT, FREE RUSH SHIPPING, AND A BONUS PACK OF 30 TABLETS FREE! Wow, so there you go, Tina – and the rest of you readers! This offer is only good while supplies last so just give them a call today and mention this article. The number is 1-800-716-1077.

Aren’t you glad you asked?

The best part from a woman’s perspective, as you well know, is that the extreme hardness and ongoing

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Dramatic portrayal. Results atypical. Your results may vary. To assure confidentiality, identifying details, scenarios have been modified or fictionalized. The pen name Karen James is used for privacy purposes. Always consult a health care provider before taking any supplement.

313706_9.8_x_10.5.indd 1

01.10.19

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1/4/19 RN&R

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FOR THE WEEK OF januaRy 10, 2019 For a complete listing of this week’s events or to post events to our online calendar, visit www.newsreview.com.

DOWNTOWN ICE RINK: The ice skating rink is open for the season through Jan. 21.

Visit Greater Nevada Field’s Facebook page for schedule. Thu, 1/10-Wed, 1/16, 10am. $6-$12. Greater Nevada Field, 250 Evans Ave., (775) 334-7000,

www.facebook.com/GreaterNevadaField.

ECLECTIC EVENING BOOKCLUB: The group meets to discuss Behold the Dreamers

by Imbolo Mbue. Wed, 1/16, 5pm. Free.

Northwest Reno Library, 2325 Robb Drive, (775) 787-4100.

FAMILY FUN FRIDAYS: Sierra View Library invites families to spend time together by participating in activities such as fort building, arts and crafts, family movie matinee and board games. Fri, 1/11, 3:30pm. Free. Sierra View Library, 4001 S. Virginia St., (775) 827-3232.

FAMILY FUN SATURDAY—BEASTLY ENCOUNTERS: Learn about wild animal

jan/12:

RENO PHILHARMONIC: UNEXPECTED EVOLUTION

The Reno Phil continues its 2018-2019 Classix series with a guest performance by virtuosic string trio Time for Three (pictured). The group will perform a work written specifically for them by composer Chris Brubeck, son of legendary jazz artist Dave Brubeck. The work takes on a “train” theme with a musical adventure that embraces a variety of genres, including classical, jazz, country, funk and gospel. The Reno Phil Orchestra will perform Carlos Simon’s Amen!, Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, op. 45 and Ellis Hamilton’s Possibilities.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 12, and 4 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 13 , at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts, 100 S. Virginia St. Tickets are $29-$89. Call 323-6393 or visit renophil.com.

diversity in Nevada, discover the difference between herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, and find out what can be learned from animal tracks and scat. No reservations needed. Sat 1/12, 10am. $8, free for children age 17 and younger. Nevada State Museum, 600 N. Carson St., Carson City, (775) 687-4810, nvculture.org/ nevadastatemuseumcarsoncity.

GENEALOGY OPEN LAB: Beginner, intermediate and advanced family researchers are all welcome to attend this open lab. Learn how to build your family tree and discover your ancestors. Fri, 1/11, 11:30am-2pm. Free.

Elizabeth Sturm Library, Truckee Meadows Community College, 7000 Dandini Blvd., (775) 674-7600.

HANDS ON! SECOND SATURDAYS: Nevada

EVEnTS

CONTRA DANCE: Sierra Contra Dance Society holds its monthly event featuring live music and a caller to walk you through the moves. There will be a beginner’s walk through at 7:15pm. Sat, 1/12, 7:30pm. $8-$10. Southside Cultural Center, 190 E. Liberty St., (509) 595-1136, sierracontra.org.

ART AFTERNOON WORKSHOP AND SOCIAL FOR SENIORS: Enjoy a guided tour and a studio art class along with light refreshments.

Monthly tours and projects are designed for participants of all levels of experience and offer an engaging and interactive experience. Advance registration is recommended. Fri, 1/11, 1pm. $6-$10. Nevada Museum of Art, 160 W. Liberty St., (775) 329-3333.

D & D FOR TEENS: Learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons with a group of teens who know the rules and can guide you through the learning curve. Open to youth ages 13-18. Wed, 1/16, 3pm. Free.

North Valleys Library, 1075 North Hills Blvd., (775) 972-0281.

COFFEE WITH CASA: Learn about the Washoe CASA Foundation and how you can become a volunteer or a Friend of CASA. Thu, 1/10, 11:30am. Free. Swill Coffee & Wine, 3366 Lakeside Court, washoecasafoundation.com.

DISCO TUBING: Families can spin, slide

COLORING NIGHT: All coloring levels are welcome to this monthly event. The group will meet at the tables near the Nevada collection. Materials will be provided, but feel free to bring your own. Tue, 1/15, 6pm. Free. Carson City Library, 900 N. Roop St., Carson City, (775) 887-2244.

24 | RN&R | 01.10.19

and speed down the snow tubing lanes to vibrant DJ tunes as the night is illuminated with colorful lights and lasers splashed on the mountainside.

Must be 40 inches tall to ride and able to independently get in and out of the tube. Sat, 1/12, 5-8pm. $51 for 55 minutes.

SnowVentures Activity Zone, 1651 Squaw Valley Road, Olympic Valley, (800) 4030206, squawalpine.com.

Museum of Art’s monthly event offers free admission, hands-on art activities, storytelling, a docent-guided tour, live performances and community collaborations. Sat, 1/12, 10am-6pm. Free.

Nevada Museum of Art, 160 W. Liberty St., (775) 329-3333.

HISTORY OF LGBTQ RENO: Jeff Auer, historian and LGBTQ scholar, discusses the LGBTQ presence as far back as 1882, from the late 19th century through the Great Recession. Wed, 1/16, 5:30pm. Free.

Northwest Reno Library, 2325 Robb Drive, (775) 787-4100.

LEARN ABOUT RADON IN WASHOE COUNTY: Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that can seep into your home from the ground, increasing your risk for lung cancer. Learn how to test for radon and get a free radon test kit.

Sat, 1/12, 2pm. Free. Sierra View Library, 4001 S. Virginia St., (775) 827-3232.

PANIQUE: Artemisia MovieHouse presents a screening of the 1946 drama directed by Julien Duvivier and based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Panique is a twisted tale of murder, subterfuge and revenge from “beyond.” In French with English subtitles. Sun, 1/13, 6pm. $5-$9. Good Luck Macbeth Theatre Company, 124 W. Taylor St., artemisiamovies.weebly.com.

PBR VELOCITY TOUR: The Professional Bull Riders’ national tour showcases elite and up-and-coming bull riders. Fri, 1/11, 8pm; Sat, 1/12, 7pm. $10-$100. Reno Events Center, 400 N. Center St., (775) 335-8800.

RIVERSIDE FARMERS MARKET: Find organic veggies, fruits, eggs, meats, honey and flowers from our region’s sustainable growers, along with drinks and eats from Thali’s Food Truck. Sat, 1/13, 9amnoon. Free. Riverside Farmers Market at McKinley Arts & Culture Center, 925 Riverside Drive, www.facebook.com/ Premafarms.

SALSA SOCIAL DANCE: Have fun and get some exercise by taking an hour-long dance lesson. After the lesson, head across the street to the Battle Born Social. Call or text Tiffany for more information. Wed, 1/16, 6pm. $10 for lesson, free for dance.

Yaple’s Ballroom, 315 N. Carson St., Carson City, (775) 400-2952

SECOND THURSDAY TALK: Historian and author Steve Frady presents “Fire Fighting in the 1890s—The Calm Before the Revolution.” Thu, 1/10, 1:30pm. $5$12, free for museum members. National Automobile Museum, 10 S. Lake St., www.automuseum.org.

STATE CAPITOL GUIDED TOURS: Docents from the Nevada State Museum will lead guided tours every Saturday. Tours typically take an hour and include the exterior of the building and nearby memorials, as well as the interior of the building. Tours are available for up to 20 people on a first-come, first-served basis. Sat, 1/12, 10:30am & 1:30pm. Free.

Nevada State Capitol, 101 N. Carson St., Carson City, (775) 687-4810, ext. 237.

WEEKEND NATURE WALKS: The May Arboretum’s Weekend Nature Walks are designed for families with children 10 years and younger who want to learn more about different aspects of the environment. The walks are led by Alexis Tarantino, an environmental studies student at the University of Nevada, Reno. Registration is not required. Sat, 1/12, 10am. Free. Wilbur D. May Center, Rancho San Rafael Regional Park, 1595 N. Sierra St., (775) 785-4153.

WINTER BIRDS OF THE GALENA FOREST: Join Alan Gubanich of the Lahontan Audubon Society as he shows slides and taxidermy mounts of over 20 species of birds that you can see in the Galena Forest when you hike the trails this winter. Sun, 1/13, 1pm. Free. Galena Creek Visitor Center, 18250 Mount Rose Highway, (775) 849-4948.

aRT ARTISTS CO-OP GALLERY OF RENO: Annual January Sale. The show and sale contains many paintings as well as art supplies, how-to and art biography books and craft items. Thu, 1/10-Wed, 1/16, 11am4pm. Free. Artists Co-Op Gallery of Reno, 627 Mill St., (775) 322-8896.

HOLLAND PROJECT MICRO GALLERY: Trasher: Amateur Portraits of Professional Skateboarders. A small group art exhibition featuring the comical work of local artists Mikey Chanez, Marijam Hall and David Hall inspired by some of their favorite skateboarders. The show is on view from through Feb. 8 with an opening reception on Friday, Jan. 11, from 6-8pm. Thu, 1/10-Wed, 1/16. Free. Holland Project Micro Gallery at Bibo Coffee Co., 945 Record St., www.hollandreno.org.

TRUCKEE MEADOWS COMMUNITY COLLEGE: Whose Art is it Anyway? The Truckee Meadows Community College Main Gallery presents this group art exhibition by Rose Barry, Tenessa Melvin, Mona Al Saglab and Luke Ramsdell. The exhibit will be on display through Jan. 16. Thu, 1/10-Wed, 1/16. Free. Main Gallery, Truckee Meadows Community College, 7000 Dandini Blvd., (775) 673-7111.

OnSTaGE THE ARTIFICIAL JUNGLE: Restless Artists Theatre presents Charles Ludlam’s suspense thriller. Chester Nurdiger lives in the back of his pet shop with his mother and his bored wife. One day a drifter comes along and they hire him to work in the shop. Sparks are ignited between the bored wife Roxanne and the slick Zachary Slade. They plot to murder Chester and feed him to the piranhas. Fri, 1/11-Sat, 1/12, 7:30pm; Sun, 1/13, 2pm. $8-$20. Restless Artists Theatre Company, 295 20th St., Sparks, (775) 525-3074, rattheatre.org.

BRRR-ROQUE MASTERS: TOCCATA–Tahoe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus will begin the 2019 season with Baroque chamber music masterpieces by Bach, Handel, Teleman and Vivaldi. Sat, 1/12, 3pm. $0-$40. Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 357 Clay St., Reno; Sun, 1/13, 3pm. $0-$40. St. Patrick’s Church, 341 Village Blvd., Incline Village, toccatatahoe.org.

COME IN FROM THE COLD FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT SERIES: The 2019 season kicks off with a performance by the NNBA Monday Night Volunteers. Sat, 1/12, 7pm. $3 suggested donation per person.

Bartley Ranch Regional Park, 6000 Bartley Ranch Road, (775) 828-6612.

FOR LOVE OF A COMSTOCK GIRL AUDITIONS: Piper’s Players holds auditions for For Love of a Comstock Girl, a romantic comedy set in 1860s Virginia City.

Everyone auditioning must bring one minute of a song to sing and read from a sample of the script. The choreographer will also teach a short dance. Email the director at jhunt@pipersplayers. com. Fri, 1/11, 6pm; Sat, 1/12, 2pm. Piper’s Opera House, 12 North B St., Virginia City, (775) 847-0433, pipersoperahouse.com.

SHEEP DIP: The 55th and final “parody for charity” dips local newsmakers in a satirical vat of comedy, skits, singing and dancing to cleanse them of their past deeds. Fri, 1/11-Sat, 1/12, 8pm. $40.

Eldorado Resort Casino, 345 N. Virginia St., (775) 786-5700.

by AMY ALKON

Gramping her style My friend just joined a dating site for elite creative professionals.

Unfortunately, it grabs your age from Facebook, so you can’t shave off years. At 50, she’s outside of most men’s search parameters— even older men’s. What gives?

A study by psychologist Jan Antfolk and his colleagues looked at sex differences in the preferred age of romantic partners. They found—as have other researchers—that “women are interested in same-aged to somewhat older men” throughout their lives. Men, on the other hand, “show a tendency to be sexually interested in women in their midtwenties,” a preference that emerges in their teen years and remains consistent as men age.

Men’s continuing attraction to 20-something women makes evolutionary sense, as, the researchers note, “the highest fertility” in women “has been estimated to occur in the mid-twenties.” However, when older men are asked to think practically—when asked not which women are running naked through their mind at the checkout stand but whom they’d have a relationship with—women more similar in age have a shot. For example, research led by evolutionary social psychologist Abraham Buunk found that “men of 60 years old would marry a woman of 55.”

Unfortunately, the online dating world—with the seemingly endless stream of hot 20-something women—is not exactly fertile ground for practicality and realism.

It isn’t that men on dating sites who are aging into the grandpa zone could necessarily get the 20-something chickies. But I suspect that these women’s mere presence— hordes and hordes of them—has what’s called an “anchoring effect.”

This is a term from research on decision-making by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. They found that a person’s “initial exposure” (to a particular price, for example) “serves as a reference point and influences subsequent judgments about value.” Accordingly, in online dating, I suspect there’s a reference point that gets set—and it is 22 and bombshellicious and has yet to have a whole lot of meaningful contact with gravity.

Putting this in a less depressing way, in seeking male partners,

context matters. Your friend will have more interest from men when she’s in a room—in real life—where the female competition is limited in number and is around her age. She might have better luck in online dating at a site specifically for older people.

Debt Valley I’m a single chick in my early 30s, and I’m having financial difficulties. I got laid off, and, depressingly, it’s really hard to find work. Though I want to talk to my friends about it, I’m afraid they’d think I was trying to borrow money, so I’ve been keeping to myself.

When you’ve been unemployed for a while, it becomes awkward to propose get-togethers.

However, avoiding your friends is probably making things worse— or at least keeping you from feeling better—because social relationships seem to buffer stress, including stress from one’s currently grim “socioeconomic status.” This term, explains social psychologist Emily D. Hooker, refers to “an individual’s relative rank in society based on their income, education and employment.” Hooker notes that lower socioeconomic status—whether measured by such things as income and occupational prestige or mere perception of one’s own status—is associated with higher mortality and poorer health.

But there’s good news from Hooker’s research. When participants were exposed to social stress in a lab situation, those who perceived themselves to have lower socioeconomic status but felt they had social support from others in their lives had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

People who care about you want to know what’s going on with you.

Ask your friends to join you in activities that don’t cost money, like gallery openings, and they’ll get that you’re just looking for company, not moocher-tunities. Ω

ERIK HOLLAND

Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave., No. 280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com).

01.10.19 | RN&R | 25

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FRee will astRology

Call for a quote.

(775) 324-4440 ext. 2

For the week oF January 10, 2019

Phone hours: M-F 9am-5pm.

Deadlines for print: Line ad deadline: Monday 4pm Display ad deadline: Friday 2pm

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Computer-generated special effects used in the 1993 film Jurassic Park may seem modest to us now, but at the time, they were revolutionary. Inspired by the new possibilities revealed, filmmakers including Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and Peter Jackson launched new projects they had previously thought to be beyond their ability to create. In 2019, I urge you to go in quest of your personal equivalent of Jurassic Park’s pioneering breakthroughs. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you may be able to find help and resources that enable you to get more serious about seemingly unfeasible or impractical dreams.

All advertising is subject to the newspaper’s Standards of Acceptance.

Further, the News & Review specifically reserves the right to edit, decline or properly classify any ad. Errors will be rectified by re-publication upon notification. The N&R is not responsible for error after the first publication. The N&R assumes no financial liability for errors or omission of copy. In any event, liability shall not exceed the cost of the space occupied by such an error or omission. The advertiser and not the newspaper assumes full responsibility for the truthful content of their advertising message. *Nominal fee for some upgrades.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I’m a big proponent

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by ROb bRezsny

of authenticity. I almost always advise you to be yourself with bold candor and unapologetic panache. Speak the truth about your deepest values and clearest perceptions. Be an expert about what really moves you, and devote yourself passionately to your relationships with what really moves you. But there is one exception to this approach. Sometimes it’s wise to employ the “fake it until you make it” strategy: to pretend you are what you want to be with such conviction that you ultimately become what you want to be. I suspect now is one of those times for you.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The students’ dining

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hall at Michigan State University serves gobs of mayonnaise. But in late 2016, a problem arose when 1,250 gallons of the stuff became rancid. Rather than simply throw it away, the school’s sustainability officer came up with a brilliant solution: Load it into a machine called an anaerobic digester, which turns biodegradable waste into energy. Problem solved! The transformed rot provided electricity for parts of the campus. I recommend you regard this story as a metaphor for your own use. Is there anything in your life that has begun to decay or lose its usefulness? If so, can you convert it into a source of power?

CANCER (June 21-July 22): If you grow vegetables,

fruits and grains on an acre of land, you can feed twelve people. If you use that acre to raise meat-producing animals, you’ll feed at most four people. But to produce the meat, you’ll need at least four times more water and twenty times more electric power than you would if you grew the plants. I offer this as a useful metaphor for you to consider in the coming months. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you should prioritize efficiency and value. What will provide you with the most bang for your bucks? What’s the wisest use of your resources?

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Modern kids don’t spend

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much time playing outside. They have fun in natural environments only half as often as their parents did while growing up. In fact, the average child spends less time in the open air than prison inmates. And today’s unjailed adults get even less exposure to the elements. But I hope you will avoid that fate in 2019. According to my astrological estimates, you need to allocate more than the usual amount of time to feeling the sun and wind and sky. Not just because it’s key to your physical health, but also because many of your best ideas and decisions are likely to emerge while you’re outdoors.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): NASA landed Oppor-

tunity, its robotic explorer, on Mars in January 2004. The craft’s mission, which was supposed to last for 92 days, began by taking photos and collecting soil samples. More than 14 years later, the hardy machine was still in operation, continuing to send data back to Earth. It far outlived its designed lifespan. I foresee you being able to generate a comparable marvel in 2019, Virgo: a stalwart resource or influence or situation that will have more staying power than you could imagine. What could it be?

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In 1557, Welsh

mathematician Robert Recorde invented the equals sign. Historical records don’t tell us when he was born, so we don’t know his astrological sign. But I’m guessing he was a Libra. Is there any tribe more skillful at finding correlations, establishing equivalencies and creating reciprocity? In all the zodiac, who is best at crafting righteous proportions

and uniting apparent opposites? Who is the genius of balance? In the coming months, my friend, I suspect you will be even more adept at these fine arts than you usually are.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): There’s a modest,

one-story office building at 1209 N. Orange St. in Wilmington, Del. More than 285,000 businesses from all over the United States claim it as their address. Why? Because the state of Delaware has advantageous tax laws that enable those businesses to save massive amounts of money. Other buildings in Delaware house thousands of additional corporations. It’s all legal. No one gets in trouble for it. I bring this to your attention in the hope of inspiring you to hunt for comparable situations: ethical loopholes and workarounds that will provide you with extra benefits and advantages.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): People in

the Solomon Islands buy many goods and services with regular currency, but also use other symbols of worth to pay for important cultural events such as staging weddings, settling disputes and expressing apologies. These alternate forms of currency include the teeth of flying foxes, which is the local species of bat.

In that spirit, and in accordance with current astrological omens, I’d love to see you expand your sense of what constitutes your wealth.

In addition to material possessions and funds in the bank, what else makes you valuable? In what other ways do you measure your potency, your vitality, your merit? It’s a favorable time to take inventory.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In 1984, singer-

songwriter John Fogerty released a new album with “The Old Man Down the Road” as the lead single. It sold well. But trouble arose soon afterward, when Fogerty’s former record company sued him in court, claiming he stole the idea for “The Old Man Down the Road” from “Run Through the Jungle.” That was a tune Fogerty himself had written and recorded in 1970 while playing with the band Creedence Clearwater Revival. The legal process took a while, but he was ultimately vindicated. No, the courts declared, he didn’t plagiarize himself, even though there were some similarities between the two songs. In this spirit, I authorize you to borrow from a good thing you did in the past as you create a new good thing in the future.

There’ll be no hell to pay if you engage in a bit of self-plagiarism.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Rudyard Kipling’s

The Jungle Book is a collection of fables that take place in India. Many movies have been based on it. All of them portray the giant talking snake named Kaa as an adversary to the hero Mowgli. But in Kipling’s original stories, Kaa is a benevolent ally and teacher. I bring this to your attention to provide context for a certain situation in your life. Is there an influence with a metaphorical resemblance to Kaa; misinterpreted by some people, but actually quite supportive and nourishing to you? If so, I suggest you intensify your appreciation for it.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Virginia Woolf

thought that her Piscean lover Vita SackvilleWest was a decent writer, but a bit too fluid and effortless. Self-expression was so natural to Sackville-West that she didn’t work hard enough to hone her craft and discipline her flow. In a letter, Woolf wrote, “I think there are odder, deeper, more angular thoughts in your mind than you have yet let come out.” I invite you to meditate on the possibility that Woolf’s advice might be useful in 2019. Is there anything in your skill set that comes so easily that you haven’t fully ripened it? If so, develop it with more focused intention.

You can call Rob Brezsny for your Expanded Weekly Horoscope: (900) 950-7700. $1.99 per minute. Must be 18+. Touchtone phone required. Customer service (612) 373-9785. And don’t forget to check out Rob’s website at www.realastrology.com.

by JERi ChADwEll

Old soul

sounds like there’s more to it, more positive stuff.

No, it’s not just addressing the problems.

It’s showcasing the brilliant, wonderful personalities—the love, the passion for life that our senior community has. Yes, aging is challenging, but there are ways to stay aging and awesome.

Ky Sisson and his family own the in-home senior care firm Lend-AHand, opened in 1992. He was also a reporter and personality on Reno’s Channel 2, KTVN. On Jan. 5, Sisson launched a new television show on the channel to combine his passions.

Aging & Awesome airs weekly on Saturday evenings at 7 p.m.

Your co-host, Jo Dellaripa, is 86?

PHOTO/JERI CHADWELL

Tell me more about Lend-A-Hand.

My mom, dad and grandparents founded Lend-A-Hand in 1992, when I was in the womb. … My mother had a vision for in-home senior caregiving, which now is a mega-industry—whereas 26 years ago, it wasn’t. She was a pioneer in the industry and across the state. We were the first in Reno, and later on she was the lobbyist who [obtained] legislation to ensure the protection of seniors, of a vulnerable population, from agencies that were frivolous.

employees, and so I do a really thorough, four-step process. … I was doing marketing and PR early on. And then this show came to mind. I thought, well, if I could do this, it would be an amazing outreach for this company, but I wanted it to be about other providers, too. I didn’t want it to be the Lend-A-Hand show. …

What is your mother’s name?

How long were you on television?

Tammy—Tammy Sisson. She’s a pioneer in assisted living, group homes, adult day centers. She’s has an amazing heart for seniors. … Lend-A-Hand has really been our platform—we call it our ministry—to help people who are unable to do the activities of daily living.

What’s your role in Lend-A-Hand?

I do day-to-day operations. I talk to clients.

I hire our caregivers. … I’m constantly hiring. We don’t hire just anybody with a pulse. … Everyone’s hurting for

I worked freelance for three years, and I worked at Channel 2 for two years.

My personality, my mantra was always outgoing, energetic, outgoing. … I like the really energetic, more talk show, lifestyle type of television. So, I said, “OK, I can combine two of my passions here—senior care … and then also that aspect of being Aging & Awesome.

That’s the name of the show, right? You mentioned talking about problems seniors face, but that

She’s 86, and she is kind and loving and positive and optimistic—and so she embodies what I want others to see. I’m just a dude who is young and likes to tell stories and has the energy to do two full-time jobs. … I want the audience to see Jo. I want the audience to see Jo and go, “Wow! If she can do it, I can do it!” …

Give me some details on topics you’ll cover.

The biggest thing is that we want people to take away tangible information, substance they can use in their lives to meet the challenges that will come. Everybody is getting older. Everyone is going to have an aging mother or father. We want people to go, “OK, I learned on Aging & Awesome that when mom is doing x, y and z, we should get her to a doctor to be evaluated for Alzheimers.” … No one wants to talk about that. No one wants to talk about mortality. Nobody wants to talk about things like “What is ageism?”—and ageism is a horrible, discriminatory, very widely accepted form of discrimination. How can we be aware when we’re being ageist?

Those are some topics that no one really knows about. Ω

by BRUCE VAN DYKE

Panicking a calm nation Please. If the federal government shutdown is still in effect as you read this, then, please, somebody— close down the national parks. All of them. Lock them up, and put up barricades. Do whatever is necessary, but, please, keep people out. This insane damage and abuse that’s taking place because there are no rangers and supervision is unbearable. Americans are acting like cretinous pre-schoolers. Why are these places even open? Trevor Noah nailed it last week while showing pics of trashed National Park bathrooms—“Who’s the shithole country now?

Please. When new Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said what she famously said last week, just fess up—she didn’t say anything you hadn’t said yourself 17 times that week. Hell, 17 times that morning.

So Agent Orange went on TV this past Tuesday and lied his ass off. Great. Wonderful. Who cares?

Fuck him. He’s making shit up.

Daily. He’s making shit up so he can have a “crisis” that will be immediately tossed by the courts.

He’s making shit up so that he can momentarily forget about Mueller.

He’s making shit up so that Ann and Rush will think he actually has a pair of actual testicles. It’s beyond pathetic, truly. I hope we saw at least a few networks roll with live fact checking while The Mad Idiot burped up his rank, toxic swill. As none other than Bette Midler tweeted—“Networks should air Trump’s ‘speech’ ONLY if they have the technology for an instant bullshit-to-English translation.”

Another good tweet, from Republican journalist Bill Kristol— “There is no security crisis at the border. There’s a security crisis in the White House.” And one more, from Republican strategist and Never Trumper Stuart Stevens—“There are numerous

examples of presidential addresses made to calm a frightened public. This will be the first to frighten a calm public.”

Please. Will one Republican senator take his thumb out of his ass and tell Dum Dum to go piss up a rope?

Call me an insane, pie-eyed optimist if you will, and I might well be, but, goddammit, I really do think the pressure is building and building and building, and it could well mean that sometime in the next month or two, a Retrumplican senator or maybe even two (imagine!) will experience some kind of magical collection of calcium growing in a somewhat vertical and cylindrical shape in his dorsal region and that this strange physiological phenomenon will mark the beginning of a genuine reluctance to continually suckle Trump’s hideous mottled ass. And when that dam breaks... Ω

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