Issuu

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THE BATTLE FOR

SOLAR ENERGY see News, page 9

ARENA DESERVES

A VOTE see Editorial, page 15

STRONG MAYOR

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SACRAMENTO’S NEWS & ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

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Think like a tourist It’s only the first day of our trip, and my mind is officially blown as I stare at rows of crumbling white bricks and stone benches. These are ancient Roman bathhouses, circa A.D. 140, our host informs. A.D. 140 . And we’ve only started our history lesson. Later, we’ll gawk at the remains of a defensive Roman fort, circa A.D. 100; lean against the foreboding stone buttress of a 15th-century medieval Scottish highland castle; sit in the pews of an epic seventh-century cathedral; drink pints of beer in a 16th-century-era Glasgow, Scotland, pub; and wander through a monastic Belgian crypt with tomb engravings that mark its history as far back as the 11th century. As we take in the sights, California’s history seems to pale in comparison: 1800s-era buildings no longer impress. At least, not until the flight home from Brussels, as I listen to a young foreign exchange student excitedly tick off the American attractions she plans to visit. “I really want to see Sutter’s Fort,” the Sacramento-bound girl tells her seatmate. Sutter’s Fort? Really? The structure was built in the 19th century, and most of what remains isn’t even original, I want to tell her. Think of what you’re leaving behind: castles! Cathedrals! Meandering city canals once guarded by knights! Her enthusiasm, however, also strikes a wistful nerve. Sitting on that plane, still miles from home, I suddenly find myself newly appreciative of it. Most historical attractions here— Sutter’s Fort; the foothills’ gold-rush settlements; Old Sacramento, with its legendary underground streets—are relatively new, but if you think of them like a tourist, eager to experience their stories in person, they take on fresh importance. History—and home—is what you make it.

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BEFORE

August 1, 2013 | vol. 25, issue 16

F E AT U R E

STORY

A RT S & C U LT U R E

Executive Coordinator Jessica Takehara Director of First Impressions Alicia Brimhall, Matt Kjar Street Team Jolynn Conrad, Charissa Isom, Anna Lovas, Ashley Ross, Colton Stadtmiller Distribution Manager Greg Erwin Distribution Services Assistant Larry Schubert Distribution Drivers Mansour Aghdam, Walt Best, Daniel Bowen, Russell Brown, Nina Castro, Jack Clifford, Lydia Comer, John Cunningham, Lob Dunnica, Chris Fong, Ron Forsberg, Joanna Gonzalez-Brown, Wayne Hopkins, Brenda Hundley, Greg Meyers, Kenneth Powell, Wendell Powell, Lloyd Rongley, Duane Secco, Lolu Sholotan, Jack Thorne President/CEO Jeff vonKaenel Chief Operations Officer Deborah Redmond Human Resources Manager Tanja Poley Business Manager Grant Rosenquist Accounting Specialists Renee Briscoe, Tami Sandoval Accounts Receivable Specialist Nicole Jackson Systems Manager Jonathan Schultz Systems Support Specialist Joe Kakacek Web Developer/Support Specialist John Bisignano

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“Taking a nap at midday. It’s about the heat; it’s a summer survival skill.”

Asked at 21st and H streets:

What’s your survival skill?

Shahera Hyatt

Jonathon Villavicencio

researcher

entrepreneur

I have so many. My survival skill is foraging. I decided I wanted to learn about it, so I bought books on the subject, and I have taken a few classes. And learning to cook the things I find. I mostly forage by myself.

BEFORE

NEWS

teacher

Taking a nap at midday. It’s about the heat; it’s a summer survival skill.

F E AT U R E

Chakira Parsons

STORY

Gabriel Herrera

unemployed

First of all, I am a vegan, but I will eat anything if I am hungry. Also, I like to ferment foods. I can ferment some vegetables. I like to make yogurt and kefir. If I was [forced] to survive, I would ferment everything to preserve it. You set it up, and the food does the work for you.

Bruce Fairbanks I think a big survival [skill] this time of year is staying near air conditioning. ... Living in Sacramento without air conditioners is insane. Stay in a cool place that has air conditioning, [like] the movies [or] inside a coffeehouse.

A RT S & C U LT U R E

Erik Perez

attorney

psychology student

I think I could talk my way out of any situation.

AFTER

08.01.13

I think it is more like a reflex, like an instinct, almost: I talk to myself and that keeps me sane. It helps me solve the problem and get out of it. It comes naturally to me. I just go into that state of mind and tell myself, “This is what is going on. This is what you should do to make sure everything will be all right.”

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Email your letters to sactoletters@newsreview.com.

Is SN&R anti-arena, or just antiSacramento?

that we have finally moved beyond that antiquated way of thinking. Bert Beattie

via email

Good boulevard—and damn good burgers

Re “Kings arena debate gets nasty” by Nick Miller (SN&R Editor’s Note, July 25): I don’t understand why Nick Miller can’t leave this issue alone. Are you simply anti-arena, or anti-Sacramento? I guess it is true that there are no guarantees that letter of once the arena is the week built, the downtown area will be revitalized. But can you give me one example of a city that has built a new NBA arena and not gone through a major revitalization? Just one is all we need. The answer to that question is that there isn’t one. None. Period. Stop wasting our time by using what will never happen to try and scare those people on the fence. The city will be fine. Better, even. The problem hasn’t been the uncertainty about the details of the arena. The problem has been that people that think like him have been the ones in charge and thus kept the city of Sacramento stuck. I, for one, am happy

Re “On the rise and fall (and rise and fall, again) of Franklin Boulevard” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Feature Story, July 18): I’m glad that SN&R saw fit to mention Scott’s Burger Shack in its article about Franklin Boulevard. Scott’s is definitely one of our neighborhood gems. Health food it ain’t, but for cheap and tasty, you can’t beat it. Their signature Fatboy Burger is a whopping half-pound bacon cheeseburger with all the trimmings, and at just under five bucks, it’s better than a lot of burgers you get elsewhere for twice the price. Plus, Scott Hackett and his family, who not only own the place, but also actually work there every day, are good, solid folks who know their regulars by name and make everybody feel welcome. The rest of Franklin Boulevard is a lot more appealing than your article makes it sound, too. Nobody would call it pretty, especially the stretch between Sutterville and Fruitridge roads; it’s not shady or

treelined, like lots of the beautiful streets we have here in Sacramento. But it’s an urban corridor bursting with vitality, home to many thriving small-business establishments, including a muffler shop where they do good work quickly at a fair price (Muffler Man); an award-winning Thai restaurant (Siam [Restaurant]); a plumbing-supply store; a locksmith; a large, spanking-new supermarket (La Superior Mercados); numerous terrific little taquerias (including La Favorita Taqueria); a larger and more upscale Mexican restaurant (El Novillero); a branch of Planned Parenthood; a costume shop; a couple of bakeries (including La Esperanza Mexican Food Products); a couple of doughnut shops; a furniture store or two; some thrift stores; and much more. A few blocks farther north on Franklin Boulevard are the best ice-cream shop in town (Gunther’s Ice Cream, still packing them in after more than 60 years in business) and a couple of newer hip spots, the Pangaea Two Brews Cafe microbrewery and the Coffee Gardens coffeehouse. As for safety, I’ve lived in this neighborhood for over 20 years and ... never had a problem. So let’s give Franklin Boulevard some love! It’s a wonderful big-city street in a wonderful city. David Urman Curtis Park

online buzz

On the signage fOr the starlite lOunge, which replaced the fOrmer tOwnhOuse lOunge:

It needs some star twinkles scattered around it. Maybe a planet or two. Brian Huck

v ia fa c e b o o k I think it looks great, it was time for a change. People complain that “it’s not the townhouse anymore” but cities need updating and need change, if they don’t move up and move on and get updating they end up like Stockton, Mad Max style wastelands full of crappy buildings nobody wants anything to do with and crime. I wish the new owners luck.

@SacNewsReview

Chris Keith

v ia fa c e b o o k I think it’s a shame that they took down the old “Townhouse” sign that was a midtown icon for decades. Ray BrotherRay Terlesky

v ia fa c e b o o k

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There goes the sun The future of solar energy in California is bright and uncertain Even though the market for solar power has never been better, the future is still by uncertain as the state’s energy policy Cody Drabble undergoes major reconstruction this summer. Solar energy is at a tipping point. State subsidies from the California Solar Initiative are drying up. The Legislature is considering a bill that would give regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission authority to tinker with how much Californians will pay for electricity. And federal tax credits for solar-panel systems may fall drastically, or disappear, unless Congress extends them. But industry experts say the battle over “net metering”—or how much to offset a solar user’s energy bill as their system generates power into the grid—will cast the longest shadow over the future of solar power in the state. As the summer heat forces Californians to blast their air conditioners, spiking their energy bills, many homeowners are seizing the last chance to sign up for rebates for a rooftop solar system. The solar industry owes its rapid growth partly to this mix of state and federal rebates and tax credits. But the CSI’s $2.167 billion program budget is winding down (or running out of money, depending on whom you ask) almost four years ahead of schedule. It has accomplished its goal of kick-starting the solar-power industry in California and driving down costs. Since 2007, solar blossomed from an expensive niche technology to an affordable consumer product embraced by almost 156,000 homes and businesses. Cody Drabble is There will still be subsidies for a summer intern new homes—the New Solar Homes at SN&R. Partnership program provides incentives for new construction similar to the CSI—but its impact has been limited by sluggish growth in the housing sector. But few are saying that the end of these subsidies is a sky-is-falling scenario. Andrew McAllister, commissioner of the California Energy Commission, said this is how the program was designed. “[The tiered subsidy] tapers off and allows the market to get

BEFORE

NEWS

F E AT U R E

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN BRENEMAN

Arena deserves a vote

As more and more residential and commercial panels go up, increased energy goes into the small solar-power grid. This has the state’s big utilities worrying about how to pay for the big master grid in years to come.

adjusted for a no-incentive future,” he told SN&R. McAllister added that there are also hopeful signs when it comes to solar systems on new homes. “Builders are also seeing that solar homes sell quicker,” McAllister said. “In many cases, they command a premium.” There’s also a federal tax credit for solar, which drove demand for panels before the CSI started. The feds allow solar users to write off 30 percent of a system’s cost with no maximum limit. But this could drop to 10 percent if Congress doesn’t extend it. Still, experts say that solar will continue its stellar growth, even as state and federal subsidies decline or expire. Sara Birmingham with the Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents more than 1,000 solar companies nationwide, sees hopeful signs. “But it is a little bit too soon to tell. It kinda feels like we’ll know once we get there,” she said. According to PG&E spokesman Denny Boyles, all this poses no risk to stalling the nascent solar industry. “Even as the incentives have shrunk,” he said, “the number of installations each month and the number of applications each month continue to grow.” Other solar-industry representatives also see a bright future. “There is still a large market opportunity in residential [solar],” said Channing Chen, with solar developer SunEdison. “We do forecast very high growth, just like the other developers are seeing.”

STORY

One reason experts forecast more growth is because private investment is stepping in as public investment is winding down. “More and more capital is coming into this space—new investors, new lenders, new [financing] structures— and that helps drive down the cost,” Chen said.

“Builders are also seeing that solar homes sell quicker. In many cases, they command a premium.” Andrew McAllister commissioner, California Energy Commission, on new homes that have solar-energy systems In just six years, the CSI has improved solar-energy costs dramatically. According to McAllister, medium- and large-scale solar projects can currently generate energy at a cost equal to or less than existing power plants. On top of that, emerging technologies promise to drive down costs further. Despite all signs pointing to more and better solar projects across California, the state’s net-metering policy remains the top hotly contested issue among renewable-energy stakeholders.

| A R T S & C U L T U R E

AFTER

At the center of the net-metering debate are two questions: How should utilities pay to maintain the big power grid as the small solar grid expands; and two, how much should solar users pay compared to nonsolar ratepayers? Industry-owned utilities like PG&E regard residential solar as an expensive but inevitable—and necessary—infrastructure upgrade to satisfy statemandated renewable energy goals. But PG&E and other investor-owned utilities argue that net metering lets solar users zero out their energy bills, which unfairly shifts the costs of maintaining grid infrastructure to nonsolar customers. Boyles pointed out that not everyone who wants solar panels can have them, since some areas receive too little sunlight to make it worthwhile. Meanwhile, solar advocates insist that California should make net metering more generous, because residential rooftop systems benefit nonsolar ratepayers more than those shifted costs. The CEC’s McAllister offered an optimistic forecast, despite the utilities skepticism. “There’s a lot of good technology that’s going to help regulators and utilities make that happen,” he said. But this won’t be easy for some utilities. “We have some challenges to make sure that our electric grid can process in the long term, maintain reliability and keep costs as low as reasonable,” he said. Ω

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Bearing Fruitvale

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Sacramento State University alum talks about making the perfect movie for our racially charged times Ryan Coogler is getting a lot of love from his old Sacramento stomping grounds, but the young filmmaker would probably by settle for an Egg McMuffin. In town Raheem F. Hosseini last week to discuss his powerful first feature, Fruitvale Station, Coogler r aheemh@ was in high demand with the local newsreview.c om press corps and his Sacramento State University alma mater.

it. It affected everybody, though. It made people feel incredibly helpless, more than anything. And a lot of people, that sense of helplessness turned into anger, and they went out and protested. Some people rioted. What inspired me to make this film was I wanted to talk about who

Troubled home Three years ago, late one May night, a female runaway turned up on Jan Gibson’s doorstep in Wilton. In the dead of a country night, the 17-year-old clambered over a 3-foot hogwire fence that ran along one side of a Milhous Children’s Services group home and trudged a hundred yards to a stranger’s doorstep. Before she could call 911, Gibson’s barking dog scared the girl off. It would be another month before the teenager returned to the group home on Pond Lane, armed with a steel pipe and heavy chain and muttering violent threats. She went to a hospital and, eventually, back to the juvenile hall in Riverside County where she arrived from. The girl is a memory. So too is the 27-year-old group home, which officially closed its doors in June after a fitful relationship with the surrounding community, which complained of lax supervision. Senior program director Dan Petrie said the decision to close the Wilton location was due to Milhous shifting its focus from troubled children to aged-out foster youth. As of late 2011, all of Milhous’ 62 beds in Sacramento and Nevada counties were dedicated to the latter population, who are eligible for continued services under Assembly Bill 12. The six beds in Wilton were reassigned to Nevada County, where Petrie said public transportation allows an older—but still dependent— clientele to take advantage of educational and job-training opportunities. “Pond Lane was our least accommodating facility with these issues,” he said. Gibson, meanwhile, still wonders about the girl. Days after that whole ordeal in 2010, in a crawl space beneath her home, Gibson found the makings of a crude camp: pillows, a handmade quilt, books and photos of other Milhous children, as well as containers of human waste. Gibson also found a notebook. It told the story of a child abandoned on a doorstep at the age of 2, and parked at 17 different facilities in 15 years. “‘All I ever wanted was a mother and a family,’” Gibson read. (Raheem F. Hosseini)

different. He’d be the person that they expected him to be, he’d be the person that they wanted him to be, and I wanted to show all of those things as much as I could in the context and the scope of the day.

Can you talk a little bit about the music you hear Oscar listening to in his car? Is it all Bay Area hip-hop? PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

It is. It’s specifically stuff that he liked and that his friends liked to listen to at the time. I think that was important to get every level of authenticity, from getting what the Bay Area sounds like through the music the guys listen to, through the sounds of our traffic, the sounds of our BART trains going above ground, and the sounds of the ocean. That’s always there. All of those things, it was very important to bring his world to life in a real way.

There’s foreshadowing. There are moments of dramatic irony. Were you deliberately putting things in there that upped that anxiety? There was little time for food. The 26-year-old should be used to the feast-and-famine whirlwind. The on-call probation officer in San Francisco has been on an “indefinite” media tour ever since his timely drama wowed Cannes Film Festival audiences in January. The movie dramatizes the final day of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, whose 2009 death at the hands of a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer outraged the community. The film entered wide release on the heels of the controversial George Zimmerman acquittal in Florida. The Weinstein Company will likely keep Coogler in rotation until the Academy Awards. The hungry filmmaker better eat now.

Director Ryan Coogler (far right) discusses a scene with actors Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer while filming Fruitvale Station.

This is your first feature film. It doesn’t have lots of huge stars, it’s an indie, it’s about a pretty sensitive subject: What made you think you were the right guy to tell this story? Ryan Coogler: For me, when I first heard about the event, I was back in the Bay Area. I felt a close proximity to it, in terms of the guy being my age, being from a place that was close to where I was from, and I was affected by BEFORE

NEWS

this guy was before he was shot, who he was to the people who knew him the best, who he was to himself, because nobody was talking about those things. That kind of got lost.

As you got to know him more through your research, were there things that surprised you? Some things that surprised me about him was finding out how close his relationship was with his daughter, me finding out that he had been recently released from prison and that he was making steps toward getting his life together. But I also found that he was also taking steps backward simultaneously.

In the movie, you portray him as this guy trying to figure it out. He’s being pulled between the world he just came from and the world he wants to be in. How did you capture all these different elements? Oscar was the type of person where, if you talked to different people about him, you got different stories. That’s kind of the same with most people. What I learned is he was someone who was trying to keep everyone around him happy, so when he was with certain people, he would be

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I think it was rare that I put things in. But it was interesting talking to his family members. All of them—especially [girlfriend] Sophina, [daughter] Tatiana, [mother] Wanda—they all kind of blamed themselves for this happening. And they all talked about those moments where they kind of felt like they interacted with him in a way that led to this happening. Sophina talks about how he didn’t want to go out. Wanda talks about how she told him to take the train. And Tatiana talks about that last night, when she was trying to get him to stay. Those things, because I’m telling the story through those relationships, I felt like it would have been wrong to have left those moments out. Those moments aren’t inherently ironic, but that’s also how they see that stuff happening. So, I decided to leave them in, let them play.

Brown … out? California state senators are weighing whether to roll back conservation and affordable-energy reforms passed in the wake of last decade’s energy crisis. Assembly Bill 327 flew through the assembly on a 66-4 floor vote and unanimously passed the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. It’s currently before the Senate Appropriations Committee. Investor-owned utilities like PG&E heartily support the proposed law, because it empowers the Public Utilities Commission to enact utility-friendly “rate reform” measures—like fixed fees for infrastructure-maintenance costs—regardless of a ratepayer’s income or use of renewable-energy measures, like rooftop solar panels. PG&E spokesman Denny Boyles pointed out that shareholder profits for investor-owned utilities are not tied to ratepayer revenues. Investors are guaranteed a 12-percent rate of return, based on capital asset valuation. But if the bill passes, investor-owned utilities would likely urge the PUC to exercise its authority to pass the costs of utility-scale solar projects and maintaining the power grid to ratepayers. The utilities could also cash in on taxpayer subsidies offered through the California Solar Initiative. Solar-industry stakeholders will have to wait and see if A.B. 327 lands on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk later this summer, before they can hammer out revisions to a state policy that compensates solar users who put energy back into the grid. (Cody Drabble)

Were Oscar’s friends and family initially skeptical about someone doing a movie about him? I think there was some of that, for sure. And I never wanted to push them into anything. ... I told them it wasn’t about making money for me. I just wanted to tell the story. Ω

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phone messages often sent by political campaignsâ€”re-emerged this past weekend in Sacramento. Thatâ€™s right: The pro-arena contingent doesnâ€™t want Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork to succeed in their signature-gathering effort, which would place an arena-subsidy referendum on the June 2014 ballot. So supporters paid to robocall 56,000 registered voters. This â€œArena-ramaâ€? is already anarchicalâ€”and we still have some 10 months till a possible vote.

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It seemed like love at first click. Two guys and two women met over the Internet, got together for a midnight drive, and then stuff got weird. According to Sacramento police, the foursomeâ€™s car stopped on the 1500 block of W. El Camino Avenue early Monday morning so one of the men could make a call. But that guy ran off instead, and the second man robbed the women of their money and cellphones at knifepoint. The eHarmony commercials never tell you about these dates, do they?

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Developers and business types for years have wanted to tweak Californiaâ€™s oldest environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act. So, like any good lawmaker, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg whipped up a bill that would both finesse CEQA and make it harder to file suits against development projects. But on Monday, the California Chamber of Commerce and other biz bigwigs released a letter panning Steinbergâ€™s CEQA streamlining efforts. Really? Figure it out, business community.

Itâ€™s hard being the only local-media outlet on the north side of the American River. Oh, wait. Whatâ€™s this, you say? Sacramento Magazineâ€™s left its East Sacramento digs for a new home on Lathrop Way in north Sac, near the Costco? Welcome to the â€™hood.

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Capital idea According to a new research paper from a trio of respected university professorsâ€”including one from Harvard Universityâ€”states with isolated capitals are prone for more political corruption and mismanagement than those whose capitals are near population and financial centers. Think Tallahassee, Florida; Trenton, New Jersey; and, yes, Sacramento. In places like these, politicians spend more on themselves and less on citizens, and the newspapers do a poorer job of informing people whatâ€™s going on, the researchers found. Tell you what, Sacramento: We promise to do our job, if you promise to do yours.

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Who’s the boss? The latest strong-mayor push features different players—but still presumes to know the answers Call it Strong Mayor 4.0. Some of the players are different, but the gist is the same: Backers want an executive mayor with greater power to write the budget and control the city bureaucracy. Organizers of the new initiative—now going by the name Sacramento Tomorrow— say beyond that basic principle, their initiative is a blank slate. Arvin “We are trying to be really genuine by CoSMo G in saying none of this is preordained,” said cos mog@ n ewsrev iew.c om David Nagler, a former lobbyist and biotech executive who was hired on to organize the effort. How strong should the strong mayor be? How deep into layers of the bureaucracy should his power to hire and fire reach? Should other reforms, such as a redistricting commission or an ethics commission, be part of the package? These are all to be determined in Sacramento Tomorrow’s outreach process, said Nagler. “We are going to go out in a broad-based way, talking to folks who have been excluded from the process in the past,” he explained. Only after that will the Sacramento City Council be asked to put a strong-mayor proposal on the ballot next year. This time, the votes will probably be there. Nagler said this effort is not related to Kevin “Boss” Johnson or his previous attempts to push strong mayor through. Certainly, there are some holdovers from Johnson’s old gang on the Sacramento Tomorrow advisory board. But there are also strong opponents of earlier strongmayor schemes. For example, Heather Fargo’s former fundraiser, Ruth Gottlieb, will be money wrangler for Sacramento Tomorrow. Poke around a bit more under the hood, and some other key parts start to look very familiar. The legal team is from the firm Nielsen Merksamer, which helped craft previous strong-mayor language for Johnson. Sacramento Tomorrow has also hired a company headed by Matt Eagan, once digital-media guy for Arnold Schwarzenegger, to build its website. That company lists the same address as David Townsend, Kevin Johnson’s campaign consultant. Said Nagler, “Does David Townsend know about it? Absolutely.” But added neither Townsend nor Johnson are involved. To their credit, The Sacramento Bee editorial board hasn’t gone gaga for Strong Mayor 4.0 yet and have rightly expressed concern that Sacramento Tomorrow has formed a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which only discloses its expenditures once a year, and doesn’t have to disclose its donors at all. Nagler told Bites the Sacramento Tomorrow advisory board is deciding now how much information the group will voluntarily make public. “We want to find a way to disclose the big donors, while not discouraging the small donors.” BEFORE

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That doesn’t wash. In election campaigns, small individual donations are legally required to be disclosed—right along with the big money from unions and developers and major PACs. There’s no good reason for Sacramento Tomorrow to use a nonprofit structure to keep any of its donors secret—not if it wants to claim more openness than past strong-mayor bids. Didn’t voters say pretty clearly that they aren’t interested in charter reform when they rejected Measure M last year? Nagler says no, it wasn’t the idea of charter reform but the mechanism of an elected charter commission that voters were uncomfortable with. “At best, it confused voters. At worst, it scared them.” On this, Nagler is probably right, though Bites would argue that The Sacramento Bee and certain city council members like Angelique Ashby did a lot of the confusing and the scaring.

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And the charter commission was, by definition, an open and democratic process, laid out in the California Constitution. A way for citizens to offer competing visions for better government, and a chance to write a city charter with broad support. Bites appreciates the show of openness and inclusion by Sacramento Tomorrow. But it may mask just how preordained its proposal really is. When Nagler was asked to step back and describe the problem his group is trying to solve, he replied, “The mayor cannot propose his vision for the city through the budget.” That’s not a problem. That’s a particular policy solution desired by a small group of prominent citizens. Problems are things like: Crime is too high. It’s too hard to start a business. Too many people need homes. It’s too hard to get to work on public transit. There aren’t enough good jobs. Could these problems be better addressed with better governance? Almost certainly. Is Sacramento Tomorrow’s approach to reform the only one worth considering? Absolutely not. But when one group wants to get its way in politics, the best place to start is by narrowing the debate. A truly public process, like a charter commission, starts with the question: How could city government be made better? As with all the strong-mayor plans before, Sacramento Tomorrow presumes to know the answer already. Ω

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Our community cares Sacramento hosts a dialogue on mental health I am not sure what I expected when I agreed to go to a daylong workshop called “Creating Community Solutions: Part of a National Conversation on Mental Health.” Maybe it would consist of some mental-health providers sharing their perspectives? Maybe a long list of informed speakers talking to audience members who are looking at their smartphones under the table? But I can tell you what I did not expect: around 350 people, primarily young people, willing to sit in a windowless room at the Sacramento Convention Center on l a beautiful Saturday, talking with each other about by Jeff VOnKaene mental-health issues for six hours. j e ffv @n e wsr e v ie w.c o m But it wasn’t just talk. People were listening. At each of the tables of eight, there was a dialogue, a dialogue about something important. Something that mattered or something personal. Or something liberating once it was brought out into the open. It was very refreshing. The idea for this day came from President Barack Obama, who proposed in January that we have a national conversation on mental health to help reduce the shame and associated with mental With a sparkle in secrecy illness. This was one of many her eye, she told me such events that will be held around the country. that it gave her hope When I hear politicians that society cares. suggest dialogue instead of funding programs, I am usually skeptical. But mental health, like many issues, needs dialogue. The misunderstandings, the misconceptions and the history need to be explored before there can be effective action. The event organizers ran a tight ship, with the proper Sacramento youth talk about what proportions of informed speakers, interesting questions and mental health cool mobile devices. But the real stars at the event were the means to them at http://youtu.be/ young people. There is a gigantic generational difference in l8ZzZfR-1Y8. attitude on mental illness. The younger people were much more accepting of others with mental illness and much more open to the idea of seeking treatment. At one table, I spoke with Clarissa, a nursing student who facilitated the group discussion. Her mother, Kim, told me that she was the one with the mental illness that her family was dealing with. Both mother and daughter were very comfortable with the group discussion. Five hours into the event, I asked Kim what she thought of the day so far. With a sparkle in her eye, she told me that it gave her hope that society cares. Does society care? I don’t know. But there was a large Jeff vonKaenel is the president, room full of people that cared. And, by the end of the day, CEO and they cared even more.The group filled out a survey. One of majority owner of the News & Review the questions was: “How confident are you that the particinewspapers in pants in today’s discussion can develop an effective plan Sacramento, to address mental-health challenges in our community?” Chico and Reno. Forty-seven percent said “extremely or very confident.” Thirty-eight percent said “somewhat confident.” Wow. That is a lot of confidence. Ω

THIS MODERN WORLD

BY TOM TOMORROW

Electing to vote We want the Kings to stay in Sacramento. But we want it to happen as a result of a community consensus that the city’s plan to subsidize a new downtown arena for the team will benefit everyone, and not as a product of fast-and-loose deal-making between city officials and a small group of well-connected developers. That’s We encourage why we support the efforts of Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed readers to sign to Pork, or STOP, to put the arena the STOP petition plan to a public vote on the June 2014 ballot. to help make Many legitimate questions that happen. have been raised about the plan, including the true cost of the project (anywhere from $258 million to $334 million—or even more, depending upon whom you ask), its environmental impacts, how it will affect city parking rates, whether it will produce the promised downtown development and how arena spending will impact other city services. The best way to make sure these questions will be answered to the community’s satisfaction is to put the plan to a public vote. We encourage readers to sign the STOP petition to help make that happen. Ω

Immigration reform and the GOP Local Congress split on spying

America’s immigration system is broken. We have more than 11 million immigrants living here without legal permission who are in a kind of legal limbo. Businesses need immigrant workers to fill jobs Americans can’t or won’t do, yet don’t have the legal means to accommodate their needs. Border states, frustrated with a lack of federal action, are taking immigration law into their own hands. This can’t continue. The immigration-reform bill passed with bipartisan support in the Senate addresses these problems, providing a path to citizenship for those without legal permission to live in the country, an upgraded system of employment-eligibility verification for businesses, more visas for workers in industries that need them, and improved security for border states. A prime example of the sort of compromise that was once the norm in Washington, D.C., the bill enjoys support from immigration advocates, business leaders, labor unions, law-enforcement groups and the American people. The measure also enjoys enough support from Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass the House of Representatives. But in a discouraging reminder of how gridlock has become the new normal there, House Speaker John Boehner has vowed to block any vote on the bill until a majority of House Republicans support it—a near impossibility, given the presence of 49 Republican Tea Party Caucus members. That’s unacceptable. Immigration reform is too important to be held hostage by Boehner and a rigid minority of GOP extremists. Republicans in Congress need to understand the options: Pass immigration reform, or face a severe voter backlash in the next election. Ω

Reps. Doris Matsui (6th District) and John Last week, the House of Representatives narrowly Garamendi (3rd District) supported Amashdefeated a bipartisan effort to rein in the by National Security Agency’s sweeping metadata Conyers, along with Tom McClintock (4th Cody Drabble dragnet of just about anyone with a phone line. District) and Doug LaMalfa (1st District). Reps. Ami Bera (7th District) and The Amash-Conyers amendment to the Jerry McNerney (9th District) opposed the Defense Department appropriations bill would amendment. have defunded the NSA program and limited Rep. Garamendi said in a press release, collecting phone records to only active law“If everyone’s phone records are a ‘tangible enforcement targets and suspected terrorists. thing’ for the purposes of a terrorism invesBut the Obama administration joined with tigation, then our governHouse Republican ment sees everyone as a leaders to shoot down The debate over potential suspect. That’s the amendment, nowhere in the Constitution sponsored by a coalithe National I swore an oath to defend.” tion of progressive Security Agency’s Jonelle Trimmer, a Democrats and libertarspokeswoman for Rep. ian Republicans, in a broad powers is Matsui, told SN&R that 205-217 floor vote. not over yet. more than 50 Sacramento But the debate over constituents “flooded” the NSA’s broad powers Matsui’s phone lines urging is not over yet. support for the amendment. The electronic spying program authorized Cody Drabble is Though Bera and McNerney voted against a summer intern by Section 215 of the Patriot Act is set to the amendment, they signed an open letter at SN&R. expire by 2015 unless Congress reauthorizes by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to it. Even Patriot Act architect Rep. James President Barack Obama (along with 150 other Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin expressed doubts House Democrats) urging the White House to that it should continue in its current form. As for this latest effort to curb Uncle Sam’s work with Congress on a compromise. The letter stated, “Although some of us spying, SN&R contacted Sacramento-area voted for and others against the amendment, congressional representatives, who were split we all agree that there are lingering questions on the amendment. and concerns about the current 215 collection program.” Ω BEFORE

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FEAR to

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JONATHAN BUCK

FORK BY CHRIS PARKER

HOW MONSANTO IS TERRIFYING THE FARMING WORLD

HEN YOU’RE GOOD

at something, you want to leverage that. Monsanto’s specialty is killing stuff. In the early years, the biotech giant helped pioneer such leading chemicals as DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange. Unfortunately, these breakthroughs had a tendency to kill stuff. And the torrent of lawsuits that comes from random killing put a crimp in long-term profitability. So, Monsanto hatched a less lethal, more lucrative plan: The company would attempt to take control of the world’s food supply. It began in the mid-’90s, when Monsanto developed genetically modified, or GM, crops such as soybeans, alfalfa, sugar beets and wheat. These “Frankencrops” were immune to its leading weed killer, Roundup. That meant that farmers no longer had to till the land to destroy weeds, as they’d done for hundreds of years. They could simply blast entire fields with chemicals, leaving GM crops the only thing standing. Problem solved. The so-called no-till revolution promised greater yields, better profits for the family farm and a heightened ability to feed a growing world. But there was one

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small problem: Agriculture had placed a belligerent strongman in charge of the buffet line. Monsanto knew that it needed more than genetically modified crops to squeeze out competitors, so it also began buying the biggest seed businesses, spending $12 billion by the time its splurge concluded. The company was cornering agriculture by buying up the best shelf space and distribution channels. All its boasting about global benevolence began to look much more like a naked power grab. Seed prices soared. Between 1995 and 2011, the cost of soybeans increased 325 percent. The price of corn rose 259 percent. And the cost of genetically modified cotton jumped a stunning 516 percent. Instead of feeding the world, Monsanto simply drove prices through the roof, taking the biggest share for itself. And rapidly increasing seed and pesticide costs were tamping farmers’ incomes. To further corner the field, Monsanto offered steep discounts to independent dealers willing to restrict themselves to mostly selling Monsanto products. And the arrangements brought severe punishment if independents ever sold out to a rival. Intel Corp. had run a similar campaign within the tech industry, only to be drilled by the European Union with a record $1.45 billion fine for anti-competitive practices. Yet U.S. regulators showed little concern for Monsanto’s expanding power. “They’re a pesticide company that’s bought up seed firms,” said Bill Freese, a scientist at the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit public-interest and environmental-advocacy group. “Businesswise, it’s a beautiful, really smart strategy. “It’s just awful for agriculture and the environment.”

Today, Monsanto seeds cover 40 percent of America’s crop acres—and 27 percent worldwide. “Less competition in the seed industry for growers means less diversity, and for consumers as well, and in the long run, it means higher prices,” said Raoul Adamchak, an agriculture professor at UC Davis. “At some point, it’s really more of a government-regulation issue than anything else. There are some industries the government really tries to foster competition. But the seed industry isn’t one of them.”

SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION It didn’t used to be like this. At one time, seed companies were just large-scale farmers who grew various strains for next year’s crop. Most of the innovative hybrids and crossbreeding were done the old-fashioned way, at public universities, and the results were shared publicly. “It was done in a completely open-sourced way,” said Benbrook. “Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture exchanged all sorts of seeds with other scientists and researchers all over the world.” The first crack appeared in 1970, when Congress empowered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grant exclusive marketing rights to novel strains, with two exceptions: Farmers could replant the seeds if they chose, and patented varieties had to be provided to researchers. But a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1980 allowed the patenting of living organisms. The decision was intended to increase research and innovation. But it had the opposite effect, encouraging market concentration. Monsanto would soon go on its buying spree, gobbling up every rival seed company in

sight. It patented the best seeds for genetic engineering, leaving only the inferior for sale as conventional, nongenetically modified brands. Biotech giants Syngenta A.G. and DuPont both sued, accusing Monsanto of monopolistic practices and a “scorched-earth campaign” in its seed-company contracts. But instead of bringing reform, the companies reached settlements that granted them licenses to use, sell and cross-develop Monsanto products. (Some DuPont suits drag on.) It wasn’t until 2009 that the Justice Department, working in concert with several state attorneys general, began investigating Monsanto for antitrust violations. But three years later, the feds quietly dropped the case. Historically, farmers have been able to save money on seeds by using those produced by last year’s crops for the coming year’s planting. But such cost-saving methods are largely a thing of the past. Monsanto’s thick contracts dropped like shackles on the kitchen tables of every farmer who used the company’s seeds, allowing Monsanto access to farmers’ records and fields and prohibiting them from replanting leftover seed, essentially forcing farmers to buy new seed every year—or face up to $3 million in damages. Armed with lawyers and private investigators, the company has embarked on a campaign of spying and intimidation. Farmers call them the “seed police,” using words such as “gestapo” and “mafia” to describe the company’s tactics. Monsanto’s agents fan out into small towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners and co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants. Some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors; others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them into signing papers that give Monsanto access to their private records.

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“There are some industries the government really tries to foster competition. But the seed industry isn’t one of them.” Raoul Adamchak professor UC Davis In 2006, the Center for Food Safety estimated that Monsanto had pressured as many as 4,500 farmers into paying settlements worth as much as $160 million. Yet Monsanto wanted even more leverage. So, it naturally turned to Congress. Earlier this year, a little-noticed provision was slipped into a budget resolution, which granted the company an unheard of get-out-ofjail-free card widely known as the “Monsanto Protection Act.” Despite indications that GM foods could have adverse health effects, the feds have never bothered to extensively study them. Instead, they’ve basically taken Monsanto’s word that all is kosher. So organic farmers and their allies sued the company in 2009, claiming that Monsanto’s GM sugar beets had not been studied enough. A year later, a judge agreed, ordering all recently planted GM sugar-beet crowps destroyed until their environmental impact was studied. The Monsanto Protection Act was designed to end such rulings. It essentially bars judges from intervening during lawsuits—a notion that would seem highly unconstitutional. Not that Congress noticed. Monsanto has spent more than $10 million on campaign contributions in the past decade—and another $70 million on lobbying since 1998. These days, the company has infiltrated the highest levels of government. It has ties to the Supreme Court (former Monsanto lawyer Clarence Thomas), with former and current employees in high-level posts at the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration. (Monsanto declined an interview request for this story, as did the Department of Justice.) But the real coup came when President Barack Obama appointed former Monsanto vice president Michael Taylor as the FDA’s 18

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new deputy commissioner for foods. It was akin to making George Zimmerman the czar of gun safety.

A BIGGER PROBLEM At the same time that Monsanto was cornering the food supply, its principal products—GM crops—were receiving less scrutiny than a National Security Agency contractor. Monsanto understood early on that the best way to stave off bad publicity was to limit research. Prior to a recently negotiated agreement with major universities, the company had severely restricted access to its seeds; 95 percent of genetic-engineering research is paid for and controlled by corporations like Monsanto. Meanwhile, former employees embedded in government make sure the feds never get too nosy. Michael Taylor has turned that into an art form. He’s gone back and forth from government to Monsanto enough times that it’s no longer just a revolving door, it’s a Batpole. During an early ’90s stint with the FDA, he helped usher bovine growth-hormone milk into the food supply and authored the decision that kept the government out of Monsanto’s GM crop business. Known as “substantial equivalence,” it declared that genetically modified products are essentially the same as their non-GM counterparts—and therefore require no additional labeling or testing for food safety or toxicity. “It’s simply a political calculation invented by Michael Taylor and Monsanto and adopted by U.S. federal policymakers to resist labeling,” said Jim Gerritsen, a farmer in Maine. “You have this collusion between corporations and the government, and the essence is that the people’s interest isn’t being served.”

The FDA is a prime example. It approves GM crops by doing no testing of its own; it simply takes Monsanto’s word for their safety. Meanwhile, it appears that the GM revolution has done little more than raise the cost of food. A 2009 study by Doug Gurian-Sherman with the Union of Concerned Scientists looked at four Monsanto seeds and found only minimal increases in yield. Since GM crops cost more to produce, their economic benefit seemed questionable at best. “It pales in comparison to other conventional approaches,” said Gurian-Sherman. “It’s a lot more expensive, and it comes with a lot of baggage ... like pesticide use, monopoly issues and control of the seed supply.” Use of those pesticides has soared as weeds and insects become increasingly resistant to them. Since GM crops were introduced in 1996, pesticide usage has increased by 404 million pounds. Last year, Syngenta, one of the world’s largest pesticide makers, reported that sales of its major corn-soil insecticide more than doubled in 2012, a response to increased resistance to Monsanto’s pesticides. Part of the blame belongs to a monoculture that developed around farming. “It’s a no-brainer that if you have an herbicide-tolerant crop planted in the ground year after year, you’re going to get resistance to weeds and possible environmental contamination,” said UCD’s Adamchak. “It’s not just genetically engineered technology, but how it’s used.” But when corn prices are high, who wants to grow a less profitable crop? The result has been soil degradation (heavy glyphosate use damages soil microbes that impact plant nutrients), increasingly static yields, and an epidemic of weed and insect resistance. Weeds and insects are fighting back with their own law: that of natural selection. Last

year, 49 percent of surveyed farmers reported Roundup-resistant weeds on their farms, up from 34 percent the year before. The problem costs farmers more than $1 billion annually. Pests like Roundup-resistant pigweed can grow as thick as your arm and more than 6-feet high, requiring removal by hand. Many farmers simply abandon weed-choked fields. In order to kill the pests, giants like Monsanto and Dow Chemical Co. are developing crops capable of withstanding even harsher pesticides, resulting in an endless cycle of greater pesticide use at commensurate financial and environmental cost. “We are not making our agriculture more resistant to environmental stress, not lowering the amount of pesticides and not creating a sustainable agricultural system that works,” said Mary-Howell Martens, an organic grain farmer in New York. “There are so many things that are short-term, quick-buck kind of things, without any kind of eye to if this is going to be a good deal long-term.”

NEXT STOP: THE WORLD! The biggest issue for Monsanto’s global growth: It doesn’t have the same juice with foreign governments as it does with ours. The countries that need GM seeds often can’t afford them (or don’t trust Monsanto). And the nations that can afford them (other than us) don’t really want them (or don’t trust Monsanto). Ask Mike Mack, CEO of the Swiss biotech giant Syngenta. The Swiss, he argues, are more interested in environmental safety and food quality than in saving a few pennies at the grocery store. “Switzerland’s greatest natural resource is that it is a beautiful country that brings in a lot of tourism,” he said. “If the Swiss could lower their

UC Davis agriculture professor Raoul Adamchak says it’s a “no brainer” that herbicide-tolerant crops like Monsanto’s would eventually lead to weed resistance and environmental contamination. consumption spending by 1 percent by applying high-productivity farming, they probably would not do it if it requires changing their approach to how they think about food.” Although the European Union imports 30 million tons of GM crops annually for livestock feed, it’s approved only two GM crops for human consumption. In April, biotech companies took another hit when the European Union banned neonicotinoids—a.k.a. “neonics”—one of the most powerful and popular insecticides in the world. It’s a derivative of nicotine that’s poisonous to plants and insects. German giant Bayer CropScience and Syngenta both make neonics, which are used to coat seeds, protecting crops in their early growth stages. In America, 90 percent of the corn crop comes with the coating. The problem is that plants sweat these chemicals out in the morning dew, where they’re inadvertently picked up by bees. Last year, Christian Krupke, a professor of entomology at Purdue University, did one of the first studies linking neonics to the collapse of bee colonies, which threatens the entire food system. “Honey bees are responsible for the production of one-third our daily diet in our society,” said nationally recognized UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen. “And in California, proper [beepollinated crops] make over $6 billion.” These mysterious collapses—in which bees simply fly off and die—have been reported as far back as 1918. Yet over the past seven years, mortality rates have tripled. Some U.S. regions are witnessing the death of more than half their populations. “We’re looking at bee kills, persistently during corn-planting time,” Krupke explained. “So, what was killing these bees at corn planting?” His study links the rise to Monsanto’s GM corn, which has been widely treated with neonics since 2005. BEFORE

NEWS

Is it causing bee deaths? The European Union ban should tell us a lot, but in the meantime, the U.S. government is content to let its citizens serve as guinea pigs. Similar worries apply to contamination from GM crops. This became abundantly clear in 2010, when a federal judge demanded that all U.S. farmers stop planting GM sugar beets. Farmers were surprised to find that there was very little non-GM sugar beet seed to be had. Since the GM variety was introduced in 2005, Monsanto had driven just about everyone else out of the market. Frank Morton’s organic sugar beet farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley is just 2 miles from a GM sugar beet farm. Unfortunately, beet pollen can travel as much as 5 miles, cross-pollinating other farmers’ fields and, in the case of an organic farmer, threatening his ability to sell his crop as organic and GM free. The contamination can arrive in the most benign ways. Morton recalls how a landscaper bought potting soil from a nearby GM beet farm, then sold it to homeowners throughout the area. A scientist from Oregon State University discovered the error. Morton claims the landscaper was forced to retrieve the soil—lest nearby farms become contaminated—paying his customers $100 each to not say anything. It’s especially galling because GM crops have perverted longstanding property law. Organic farmers, for example, are responsible for protecting their farms from contamination, since courts have consistently refused to hold GM growers liable. Kansas farmer Bryce Stephens had to stop growing organic corn and soybeans for fear of contamination; he has 30-foot buffer crops to protect his organic wheat. (Wheat pollen doesn’t travel far.) “Monsanto and the biotechs need to respect traditional property rights and need to keep

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their pollution on their side of the fence,” said Maine farmer Jim Gerritsen. “If it was anything but agriculture, nobody would question it. If I decided to spray my house purple, and I sprayed on a day that was windy, and my purple paint drifted onto your house and contaminated your siding and shingles, there isn’t a court in the nation that wouldn’t in two minutes find me guilty of irresponsibly damaging your property.” Contamination isn’t just about boutique organic brands, either. It maims U.S. exports, too. Bayer grew unapproved, experimental GM rice at test plots around Louisiana State University for just one year. Within five years, these plots had contaminated 30 percent of U.S. rice acreage, and Bayer’s rice was found as far away as Central America and Africa. Within days of the announcement, rice futures lost $150 million in value, while U.S. rice exports dropped by 20 percent during the next year. Last month, a Monsanto test of GM wheat mysteriously contaminated an Oregon farm eight years after the test was shut down. Japan and South Korea immediately halted imports of U.S. soft white wheat—a particularly harsh pill for the Japanese, who have used our white wheat in nearly all their cakes and confectionery since the 1960s. Monsanto’s response? It’s blaming the whole mess on ecoterrorism.

JUST LABEL IT Trust, unfortunately, has never been Monsanto’s strong suit. It’s become one of the main motives behind the push for GM labeling. “If they’re going to allow the American people to be lab rats in an experiment, could they at least know where it is so they can decide whether they want to participate or

A RT S & C U LT U R E

AFTER

not?” asked Lance Harvell, a Republican state representative from Maine. “If the FDA isn’t going to do their job, it’s time we stepped in.” Last month, Harvell’s GM-labeling law overwhelmingly passed the Maine House and Senate and awaits the governor’s signature. That makes Maine the second state (nine days after Connecticut) to pass a GM-labeling law. The right-to-know movement has picked up steam since chemical companies defeated California’s labeling initiative, thanks to a $46 million publicity campaign. UC Davis agricultural economists Daniel A. Sumner and Julian M. Alston wrote a study supporting opponents’ claims that Proposition 37 could result in $1.2 billion in higher costs. It and a report by fellow UCD professor Colin Carter drew fire for its inaccuracies and assumptions. Much of the report was based on the testimony of food manufacturers and their assumption (shared by the researchers) that a GM label would be such a kiss of death, leading to exaggerated guesstimates. “It could well be the case that the foodprocessor folks are overreacting,” Sumner told SN&R. “And it’s certainly possible over time they would say we don’t see consumers caring very much, this GM label doesn’t matter to the average consumer.” He acknowledges that it’s hard to even know how many products use GM crops or how essential they are to the process, which, of course, is sort of the point. A recent ABC News poll found that 93 percent of Americans surveyed support GM labeling. When Vermont raised the issue a year ago, a Monsanto official indicated that the company might sue. But the states are smart. The new laws in both Maine and Connecticut won’t take effect until other states pass similar legislation, so they can share defense costs. What’s interesting is that Harvell, by his own admission, is a very conservative Republican. Yet on this issue, left and right have the same quest for greater caution. “God gave the seed to the earth and the fruit to the trees,” Harvell said. “Notice it didn’t say he granted Monsanto a patent. The human body has developed with its seeds. You’re making a major leap into Pandora’s box—a quantum leap that maybe the human body isn’t ready to make yet.” Meanwhile, new studies show that non-GM crops in America and Europe are increasing their yields faster than GM crops. “All this talk about feeding the world, it’s really PR,” explained Wenonah Hauter, author of Foodopoly and executive director of Food & Water Watch. “The hope is to get into these new markets, force farmers to pay for seed, then start changing the food and eating habits of the developing world.” Since farming is such a timeworn tradition, there’s a tendency to take it for granted, and that worries a lot of people. But as much as he hates GM, Bryce Stephens is sanguine. “I’ve seen changes since I was little to where it is now,” the Kansas farmer said. “I don’t think it will last. This land and these people here have gone through cycles of boom and bust. We’re just in another cycle, and it will be something different.” Providing we don’t break it irreparably first. Ω A version of this story originally appeared in the Village Voice.

08.01.13

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Louis stanfill hopes to lead the usa Rugby team, the Eagles, to a victory over Canada later this month.

S a c r a m en t o ru g by playe r wo rkS o n t a k i n g h i S g ame —and th e co u ntry’S— t o th e ne xt le ve l

Louis stanfiLL

works up a sweat at Capital Athletic Club on a recent weekday morning, pushing, pulling and squatting hundreds of pounds in the weight room. For Stanfill, summer vacation comes second to his goal of being picked up next season by a professional rugby club overseas. Weighing in at around 250 pounds, the 28-yearold must maintain strength, power and muscle in order to tackle other players and shove opponents backward during a scrum. “I do a lot of the hard work,” says Stanfill. “I hit a lot, I tackle a lot, and if I get the ball in my hands, I usually just run straight. And I don’t pass very often.” Now in his off-season—during which he’s also been playing for the USA Rugby team, the Eagles—Stanfill is at a crossroads: He lives with his parents, has no health insurance and no club contract. Yet, if—like last year— he gets picked up by a team overseas, he’ll quickly pack a suitcase and spend the next eight-month rugby season training, traveling and playing his beloved sport. On top of that, if he can help the Eagles outscore Canada in a pair of qualifying matches later this month, Stanfill might also punch his ticket to the Rugby World Cup in 2015. Stanfill started playing rugby somewhat by accident during his days at Jesuit High School. He played basketball, football and baseball, but lost a baseball mitt given to him by his dad. Rather than “incur the wrath” of his father, he decided to change things up and say, “I want to start playing rugby.” With the help of supportive parents and the Jesuit team, which had a

by Jonathan Mendick jo n a th a n m@n e w s r e v ie w . c o m photos by taras garcia

22 | SN&R | 08.01.13

good track record of preparing players for the collegiate level, Stanfill excelled. After graduating, he joined brother Jake at UC Berkeley, where the Golden Bears were collegiate rugby champions from 2004 to 2008. Unfortunately, Jake—just 23 months older than his brother—injured a knee during a rugby match in his last season at Berkeley, and was never able to never able to play again. A few years later, Jake settled into a career in property management, where he remains today. The younger Stanfill, on the other hand, caught a bit of luck: He made his debut for the Eagles in 2005—while still a student—just shy of his 20th birthday. He got the chance because the assistant coach at Berkeley turned out to be the head coach of the national team. It wasn’t too long before Stanfill decided to commit himself to the sport. “After the 2007 World Cup, I made the conscious decision to say, ‘OK, the next four years, I’m going to dedicate my life to rugby,’” he says. “All my choices in life revolved around: ‘Is it the best move for my rugby career?’” After graduating from Berkeley in 2008, he played on two nonprofessional teams (the New York Athletic Club and an Australian team called the Canberra Royals Rugby Union Football Club) before earning paid one-year contracts on Italian teams Rugby Mogliano (part of Italy’s top rugby league, the National Championship of Excellence) and Rangers Rugby Vicenza (in Italy’s second-tier of professional rugby, Serie A). During the 2012-2013 season with the Rangers, Stanfill received free lodging and was provided a car. He lived in Italy for eight months with his girlfriend, needing only to pay for food and whatever leisure activities he wanted. But life isn’t just fun and games for American professional rugby players. First off, it’s a sort of a lonely, “nomadic” life, says Stanfill, who has lived out of a suitcase and traveled from team to team for the last several years. Plus, there’s still no professional league in the United States, and foreign teams aren’t often looking to sign Americans. “I think Louis is a great player, [but] the thing is, foreign teams are only allowed so many foreign slots per team,” says Eagles and former Golden Bears teammate Chris Biller, who just completed a year contract on an English club team. “So, do [they] take a guy like Louis, or are they going to go after some speedster who’s really fast and athletic and young from New Zealand [who is ranked No. 1 in the world] or something? That’s the dilemma Americans run into.” Now that Stanfill’s contract is up, he has no job or car and lives at home with his parents. And though he just finished playing

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SCENE& HEARD City of brunch

Stanfill is spending his off-season summer training for upcoming games with the USA Rugby team and trying to get picked up by a club team overseas.

in the International Rugby Board’s Pacific Nations Cup with the Eagles (during one of the matches, he captained the team), the national team doesn’t provide much pay or health insurance. Chatting with SN&R several weeks after the tournament, Stanfill still felt a bit sore from the four games, all of which were losses. “The fact that the players don’t have health insurance is absolutely preposterous,” says Jake Stanfill. “They’re never going to crack the top 10 until the current board starts putting money into the team.” Despite the fact that the current management doesn’t offer great incentives to its players—merely a per diem salary and a “win bonus”—there could still be hope for the future of the Eagles. “The caliber of rugby players each year gets a little better,” says Louis Stanfill, who has played 43 matches with the national team over the course of eight years. Sacramento and the Bay Area, in particular, seem to be producing a large number of talented rugby players, says Stanfill. Sacramento-born Blaine Scully, another alumnus of both Jesuit and Cal, plays for both the Eagles and the national BEFORE

NEWS

“ I do a lot of the hard work. I hIt a lot, I tackle a lot, and If I get the ball In my hands, I usually just run straIght.” Louis Stanfill professional rugby player

rugby union sevens team, a faster-paced seven-person variant of the more-popular 15-player game. So, when rugby sevens appears in the Olympics in 2016, expect to see Scully, an up-and-coming star, on the team. In fact, there’s some relevant backstory regarding the United States and Olympic rugby: The Americans are two-time reigning Olympic champions. And the last two times rugby was an Olympic sport, in 1920 and 1924, the team was made up of mainly Californians—many players coming from

F E AT U R E

STORY

Stanford University, UC Berkeley and Santa Clara University. Though the Eagles are currently ranked 18th in the world, Stanfill isn’t worried about beating their biggest rivals Canada, ranked 15th, to qualify for the World Cup this month. “We’re in a position where we have an American coach [Mike Tolkin], and he’s very good, creating this … cooperative effort on all levels—much more so than in the past,” says Stanfill. “If you want it bad enough, you can make it happen.” Ω A RT S & C U LT U R E

Sacramento loves it some brunch. Come Sunday morning, it enjoys nothing more than rolling out of bed and into a loose-fitting sundress, and eating something doused in hollandaise, while taking swipes at its hangover with a bottomless mimosa. There’s something magical about this meal that convinces you you’re doing something productive with your day— something that amounts to more than what it really is, which is consuming decadent food in a quantity that would be depressing on a Monday, but is somehow respectable on a Sunday. Come 2 p.m., you may be wobbly kneed and saltswollen from too many Bloody Marys, but it’s your right as a brunching citizen of Sacramento, and hardly anyone is going to judge you for it. It may result in you spending the rest of the day lying supine on the couch watching baseball instead of writing an article that’s due first thing the next morning, but so goes the miracle of Sunday brunch: Guilt weighs less in the wake of a breakfast burrito the size of a small dog. Indeed, Sacramento is a brunch city, and we’ve got the waiting lists to prove it (Tower Cafe, you tease). I’ve almost never met an eggs Benedict I didn’t get along with, but Tuli Bistro’s (2031 S Street) version is top-notch, as is the kingcrab benny at Mama Kim Eats (1616 Del Paso Boulevard). Orphan Breakfast House’s (3440 C Street) soy chorizo breakfast is so good, I don’t even get sad that it’s not real chorizo. Elixir Bar & Grill (1815 10th Street) dishes a mean Spam fried rice, and if you’ve never experienced the hubbub of eating dim sum on a Sunday at New Canton Restaurant (2523 Broadway), all five of your senses are missing out. The choices in and around downtown are many and sundry, and whatever the reasons for Sacramento’s low selfesteem, brunch shouldn’t be one of them. The most recent addition to the scene is Capital Dime, in the spot where L Wine Lounge & Urban Kitchen used to be (1801 L Street, Suite 50). The restaurant opened quietly about two weeks ago, and by the time I got there, around 1:30 p.m. on this particular Sunday, the crowd had thinned to a handful of tables. The back patio, surrounded on all sides by the 1801 L apartments, is not exactly scenic, but it is massive, which bodes well for Dime morphing into a bustling brunch spot. Because, really, brunch is an outdoor sport. The restaurant itself, both inside and out, exhibits the same minimal, urban-chic aesthetic of its predecessor, designed, one might assume, to let the food be the focal point. As for the food, a slightly hangover-queasy stomach convinced me to order the cheese fries with lardons to begin. Rather than the melted cheddar one might expect, the fries were drizzled with a cheesy béchamel-like sauce, and sizable hunks of lardon played companion; the fries themselves were crisp and singular, the product of consideration rather than a lazy succumbing to a potato and fry cutter. For the main event, I ordered a croque-madame and stole bites of my companion’s City Eggs Benedict, both of which were strong showings of the traditional dishes, while we eavesdropped on a couple utterly confounded by a dish that paired melon with mozzarella. They went on to gently chide their server on the importance of communication. It’s times like these that you’re reminded of the dark side of brunch, of the considerable privilege it represents, and you want to tell them, for their sake and for the sake of your own middleclass guilt, “Excuse me, but your bougie is showing.” The takeaway for Dime? It’s a promising addition to the brunch scene, one where you’ll easily be able to squander an afternoon with white linen cocktails and experience the progression of thought from “I’ll do the laundry later” to “Clean socks are for suckers.” Just be sure to tune out the squares.

AFTER

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to have secretly colluded to make you laugh harder to have secretly colluded to make you laugh harder than usual this weekend. Don’t just take our word than usual this weekend. Don’t just take our word for it, take a look at the (mostly stand-up) comedy lineup it, take a look at the (mostly stand-up) comedy lineup planned at various venues in town. planned at various venues in town. At 8 p.m. on Thursday night, August 1, local comedian At 8 p.m. on Thursday night, August 1, local comedian Ray Molina headlines at the Punch Line Comedy Club Ray Molina headlines at the Punch Line Comedy Club (2100 Arden Way, Suite 225) along with opener Freddy (2100 Arden Way, Suite 225) along with opener Freddy Rainbow; it’ll cost $15. The following night at the Punch Rainbow; it’ll cost $15. The following night at the Punch Line is a doubleheader that features Drew Carey Line is a doubleheader that features Drew Carey (of The Drew Carey Show The Drew Carey Show,, Whose Whose Line Is It Anyway? Line Is It Anyway? and and The Price Is Right The Price Is Right fame) performing at 8 p.m. for $35, fame) performing at 8 p.m. for and local comedian Mike E. Winfield (pictured, of and local comedian Mike E. Winfield (pictured, of The The Office and and Off Off Beat Beat fame) performing at 10:15 p.m. fame) performing at 10:15 p.m. for for $16. Carey will also perform at the Punch Line $16. Carey will also perform at the Punch Line Saturday, Saturday, August 3, at 7 and 9:15 p.m. August 3, at 7 and 9:15 p.m. The The Sacramento Comedy Spot (1050 20th Street, Sacramento Comedy Spot (1050 20th Street, Suite 130) kicks off its weekend Friday at 9 p.m. with Suite 130) kicks off its weekend Friday at 9 p.m. with

Neil Hamburger, whose stand-up is sweaty, off pace and hilariously neurotic. Tickets cost $12. Then, throughout the weekend, the venue hosts a full lineup of sketch comedy, improv and games, including AntiCooperation League, Bro Time and Test Kitchen, and I Challenge You. Check out www.saccomedyspot.com for the full schedule. Lastly, stand-up comedian and host of MTV’s Disaster Date, K-von, appears at Tommy T’s Comedy & Dinner Theatre (12401 Folsom Boulevard in Rancho Cordova) from August 1 to August 4 (7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday); tickets are $10 for general admission, $20 for reserved seats. The multitalented comedian’s stand-up routine often blends voice impressions, self-deprication and humorous anecdotes about being half-Persian and half-Scottish.

—Jonathan Mendick

wEEkLy PICkS

California Automobile Museum Car Cruise

The Lieutenant of Inishmore Friday, auguSt 2, thrOugh Saturday, auguSt 31

Saturday, auguSt 3 Before “thinking green” and seat belts were things, cars were made to be seen and CARS heard. The California Automobile Museum brings on the nostalgia this Saturday with a classic-car parade down Fair Oaks Boulevard. Show up at 5 p.m. (post cruise) at Fulton and Marconi avenues and find food trucks, a beer garden, live music and some rad cars. Free to watch, $34-$39 to cruise; cruise starts at 4 p.m. at 6000 J Street and ends at Fulton and El Camino avenues; (916) 442-6802; www.calautomuseum.org.

Big Idea Theatre presents The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Academy Award-winning Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, the screenwriter and director of In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012). McDonagh’s uproarious black comedy follows THEATER an IRA agent who learns that his beloved cat has died. Enjoy dark irony and buckets of stage blood as the lieutenant shoots and stabs his way to revenge and romance in this comedy of errors. $10-$16, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; Big Idea Theatre, 1616 Del Paso Boulevard; (916) 960-3036; www.bigideatheatre.com.

—Jessica Rine

BYOB (Bring your own babe) Cornhole Tournament Saturday, auguSt 3 Break out the beanbags, pack a cooler, grab the wife and take them all to Miller Park (the Fair Oaks one), where SPORTS OV Cornhole & Games hosts its first-ever couples cornhole tournament. Don’t know how to play cornhole? It’s as easy as throwing a beanbag into a piece of wood with a hole in it. No, really, that’s actually how you play. $25 per couple, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; 8480 Sunset Avenue in Fair Oaks; (916) 607-8043; www.facebook.com/ ovcornhole.

—Jessica Rine

—Cody Drabble BEFORE

NEWS

Lear

Festa Italiana Saturday, auguSt 3, and Sunday, auguSt 4

OngOing thrOugh auguSt 24

It may be the case that I’ve watched too much of The Sopranos, but I assume that like myself, most people that are not descendents of “The Boot” wish they were at least a little bit Italian. Whether you’re an italiano or not, the 28th annual Festa Italiana is your chance to live la dolce vita: FESTIVAL Cannoli and meatballs will abound, along with a classic Italian car show and folk dancing. Mix in some vino and a salami toss, and it’s got the makings of a perfetto weekend. $12, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, August 3; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday, August 4; Croatian American Cultural Center, 3730 Auburn Boulevard; www.festaitalianasacramento.com.

King Lear is one of William Shakespeare’s most ambitious tragedies: A mad king loses everything, including THEATER himself and his faith in God. Pretty rad. No stranger to mad ambitions, The Alternative Arts Collective has dared to mess with greatness, allowing first-time director David Blue Garrison to update the play’s iconic dialogue and replace old-man Lear with a female queen. The updated Lear premiers Thursday, August 8, for a three-week run. “Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once / That make ingrateful [wo]man!” $15, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday; The Alternative Arts Collective at Blue Box Theater, 1700 Del Paso Boulevard; (916) 538-8013; www.taactheatre.com.

—Deena Drewis

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Peruano clandestino La Huaca 9213 Sierra College Boulevard, Suite 140 in Roseville; (916) 771-2558; www.lahuacarestaurant.com Amid the vast sprawl of shopping centers in Roseville, it’s easy to miss La Huaca, which serves fine Peruvian food. Tucked between a fitness by Jonathan club and a Goodwill Industries store in a Mendick mid-2000s cookie-cutter plaza, the restaurant is named after a Quechua (indigenous South j o nathan m@ news review.c om American) word that describes revered spiritual objects. Fittingly, a few visits here by this SN&R reviewer are near-spiritual ventures into the nation’s cuisine. This eatery offers an experience that’s decidedly upscale in every way: décor, art, lighting, presentation, price and—most importantly—taste. Rating: Peruvian restaurants are rare in the HHHH 1/2 Central Valley: The other Peruvian restaurant in Sacramento, Koricancha, doubles as dinner for one: Waffle King. And a bit farther away is the $20 - $35 Pan-American (but heavy on Peruvian food) Bistro Sabor in Napa. So, it’s nice that La Huaca, which opened in 2012, focuses solely on Peruvian cooking and highlights the diversity of dishes found in Peru. The national dish is ceviche, which is seafood cured in lime, salt and chili, and it’s a must-have starter at La Huaca. During my first visit, I sampled the mixto version, which H features fish, shrimp, octopus and calamari. flawed On the second, I tried the spicier ceviche de HH aji amarillo, which translates to “ceviche with haS momentS yellow pepper.” Both were exceptionally HHH piquant and hearty. Even the octopus was appealing tender and flavorful after getting the ceviche treatment, a rare feat for generally the chewiest HHHH authoRitative seafood around. The other type of appetizer La Huaca serves HHHHH epiC is called “causa,” which the menu says is “the most popular plate to export in all Peruvian cuisine.” Basically, it’s a cold square of yellow mashed potatoes topped with various chilled toppings (chicken, shrimp, octopus, vegetables). While visually stunning, they lacked the intensity and complexity of the ceviche. La Huaca’s dinner entrees, on the other Still hungry? hand, were hefty, flavorful and well-balanced. Search Sn&R’s All four plates ordered at my family’s table “dining directory” to find local (perhaps due to earlier overindulging on cevirestaurants by name che de aji amarillo) required boxes for leftovers: or by type of food. arroz chaufa (fried rice), lomo saltado (beef Sushi, mexican, indian, tenderloin with fried potatoes and rice), arroz italian—discover it all in the “dining” con pato (cilantro-flavored rice with duck), and section at medallón de lomo con salsa de champiñones www.news y pastel de papa (filet mignon with mushroom review.com. sauce and potato cake). Nevertheless, each one exceeded expectations and featured subtle touches that made the dishes shine. The arroz chaufa, a result of Chinese immigrants influencing Peruvian cuisine, came with shrimp and crispy fried pork. Aji amarillo paste was the perfect condiment to kick the spice up a notch. The lomo saltado oozed with an incredibly smoky flavor—apparently the result of cooking the beef in pisco, a type of brandy popular in Peru. The star of the arroz con pato wasn’t the BEFORE

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duck or the rice—which were both good—but rather a house-made salsa criolla, a Peruvian salsa consisting of pickled onion and cilantro. And while the filet mignon in the medallón de lomo con salsa de champiñones y pastel de papa was a little bit too well-done, it was still tender. Additionally, the richness of the mushroom sauce and potato cake more than made up for the slightly overcooked meat.

The lomo saltado oozed with an incredibly smoky flavor—apparently the result of cooking the beef in pisco liquor. Dessert was another opportunity for the restaurant to show off ingredients native to and popular in Peru. The tres leches cake was soaked in pisco, and the ice cream was made out of Peruvian lúcuma, a fruit that resembles and tastes like acorn squash. Passion fruit, or maracuyá, common in Peruvian desserts, found its way into the flan here, as well as a fruit-juice drink; and both popped with fresh-from-the-tropics passionfruit flavor. The restaurant’s attention to detail makes La Huaca the perfect place to introduce the complexity found in Peruvian cuisine—a style that blends culinary traditions of indigenous South American people and Peru’s European and Asian immigrants—to Sacramento-area diners. My prediction: It won’t be long before most Sacramentans start to worship La Huaca. Ω

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Pork fetish Oh, the pork fanatics, decked out in “Keep calm and eat bacon” T-shirts. Is it weird that they fetishize the corpse of a pig? But they’re just animals, and humans are superior to them, right? “They are perhaps the smartest, cleanest domestic animals known—more so than cats and dogs,” reported NBCNews.com. OK, so they roll in mud to keep cool because they have no sweat glands, but they were made by the Notorious G.O.D. or something for people to eat, no? Well, none of us asked to be born, but does that make it right to exploit pigs in concentration-camp-style conditions, for short, miserable lives just so some dude in bacon-patterned knee-high socks can geek out over a little pork slider?

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Downtown Grange Restaurant & Bar You

Where to eat?

Here are a few recent reviews and regional recommendations by Becky Grunewald, Ann Martin Rolke, Garrett McCord and Jonathan Mendick, updated regularly. Check out www.newsreview.com for more dining advice.

won’t find any “challenging” dishes on this menu—just delicious local and seasonal food such as the Green Curry & Pumpkin Soup, which has a Southeast Asian flair. A spinach salad features ingredients that could be considered boring elsewhere: blue-cheese dressing, bacon, onion. But here, the sharply cheesy buttermilk dressing and the woodsy pine nuts make it a salad to remember. Grange’s brunch puts other local offerings to shame. The home fries are like marvelously crispy Spanish patatas bravas. A grilled-hamand-Gruyere sandwich is just buttery enough, and an eggwhite frittata is more than a bone thrown to the cholesterolchallenged; it’s a worthy dish in its own right. American. 926 J St., (916) 492-4450. Dinner for one: $40-$60. HHHH B.G.

Zia’s Delicatessen Zia’s Delicatessen isn’t really about trying every sandwich: It’s about finding your sandwich. In addition to a large selection of salumi, there’s the worthy eponymous offering, served with a wedge of zucchini frittata, a slice of provolone, romaine lettuce, grainy tomato, and a simple dash of vinegar and oil that adds tang. Order it hot, so that the provolone melts into the bread. Also tasty: the hot meatball sub with small-grained, tender meatballs bathed in a thin, oregano-flecked tomato sauce that soaks into the bread. A tuna sandwich

is sturdy, if not exciting. It is just mayonnaisey enough, with tiny, diced bits of celery. A rosemary panino cotto with mozzarella could benefit from a more flavorful cheese. For a meatier option, try the Milano: mortadella, salami, Muenster; all three flavors in balance. The turkey Viareggio has a thin spread of pesto mayo, and the smoked mozzarella accents rather than overpowers. American. 1401 O St., Ste. A; (916) 441-3354. Meal for one: $5-$10. HHHH B.G.

Midtown 24K Chocolat Cafe This cafe serves a solid, if very limited, brunch and lunch menu. One offering is a firm wedge of frittata with a strong tang of sharp cheddar that almost but doesn’t quite jibe with the slightly spicy mole sauce on the plate.The spinach curry, made creamy by coconut milk rather than dairy, comes topped with cubes of tofu and tiny diced scallion and red bell pepper and rests atop a smooth potato cake. A side of garbanzobean salad is well-flavored with the surprising combination of mint and apricot. The place, located inside Ancient Future, has “chocolat” in the name, and chocolate is in many of the menu offerings, including a tiny cup of hot Mexican drinking chocolate, and chocolatecherry scones served crisp and hot, studded with big chunks of bittersweet chocolate and tart dried cherries. American. 2331 K St., (916) 476-3754. Meal for one: $10-$15. HHH B.G.

Hook & Ladder Manufacturing Co. The restaurant, by the same owners as Midtown’s The Golden Bear, sports a firefighting theme (a ladder on the ceiling duct work, shiny silver wallpaper with a rat-and-hydrant motif, et al) and a bar setup that encourages patrons to talk to each other. An interesting wine list includes entries from Spain and Israel; there are also draft cocktails and numerous beers on tap. The brunch menu is heavy on the eggs, prepared in lots of ways. One option is the Croque Madame, a hamand-Gruyere sandwich usually battered with egg. This one had a fried egg and béchamel, with a generous smear of mustard inside. The mountain of potato hash alongside tasted flavorful and not too greasy. The menu also features pizzas and housemade pastas, but one of its highlights includes an excellent smoked-eggplant baba ganoush, which is smoky and garlicky and served with warm flatbread wedges and oil-cured olives. The bananas foster bread pudding is equally transcendent, accompanied by very salty caramel gelato, pecans and slivers of brûléed bananas. American. 1630 S St., (916) 442-4885. Dinner for one: $20-$40. HHH1⁄2 A.M.R.

The tacos are perfection, filled with beans and gooey American cheese. But it’s all about the tortillas. They are fried shells, crispy but still yielding. A dusting of Parmesan officially puts them over the top. I’ve eaten at Jimboy’s for 17 years, and until recently, a dish containing meat had never passed my lips. Turns out, my prior vegetarianonly path was wise: The meat is a disappointment. Sure, the Tacoburger is an amusing novelty—mayo and pickles inside a tortilla makes for a mindbender. Five stars for the bean tacos, two stars for everything else. Fast food. 1420 29th St., (916) 452-6451. Dinner for one: $5-$10. HHHH B.G.

LowBrau This place specializes in

Jimboy’s Tacos Jimboy’s was founded by a Swedish couple in Grass Valley, and the first one operated out of a trailer in North Lake Tahoe in 1954. The food has only a passing resemblance to Mexican, but sometimes nothing hits the spot like Jimboy’s, particularly as a post-hangover dinner.

beer and bratwursts. Both are done smashingly. The sausage is wrapped in a tight, snappy skin like a gimp suit, which gets nicely charred by the chefs. Within it lies a beguilingly spicy and juicy piece of meat. Get it with a pretzel roll for a truly exciting experience. There are vegan options, too: The Italian, an eggplant-based brat, has a surprisingly sausagelike texture that no self-respecting carnivore will turn it down for lack of flavor. Toppings include sauerkraut, a “Bier Cheese” sauce and caramelized onions. The idea behind Duck Fat Fries is a glorious one, yet somehow still falls short. You just expect something more when you see the words “duck fat.” The beer

selection is epic. If you’re lost and confused, the staff will help guide you to the right brew via questionings and encouraged tastings. German. 1050 20th St., (916) 706-2636. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH G.M.

The Rind This is a fromage fanatic’s delight with a menu that changes frequently. A chalkboard by the bar lists the daily suggested trios for cheese boards, but order the Diving Board to choose your own combo. Each arrives with six crisp toasts and two sides, like dried fruit and honey. The rations are small, but reasonable for two people. Buy any of the cheeses by the pound. Ask for the list at the bar. There are also many grilled-cheese sandwich choices and several versions of mac ’n’ cheese, including Not Your Mom’s Mac with Parmesan, Gruyere and cheddar. It’s silky smooth, without any excess oil. A richer version includes blue cheese and prosciutto for overthe-top indulgence. American. 1801 L St., Ste. 40; (916) 441-7463. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH A.M.R.

East Sac Hot City Pizza This East Sacramento eatery is probably better known for its beer than its food, but its pizza is pretty darn good. Each slice is made with a unique multigrain crust that’s soft, airy and helps soak up a belly full of beer. There are also interesting topping combinations, notably a section full of chicken-topped pizza,

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plenty of vegetarian options and handful of Pacific Islanderthemed pies, such as the Hawaii on Fire, which comes topped with sweet Thai chili sauce, Canadian bacon, pepperoni, green peppers, pineapple, jalapeño and mozzarella cheese. Of course, beer is the real draw here, and Hot City gets an extra star for its fine selection. With so many choices—there are several fridges full of bottled beer and a handful of rotating taps—selecting a brew can be a tremendously difficult but worthwhile undertaking. Pizza. 5642 J St., (916) 731-8888. Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHHH J.M.

Istanbul Bistro Turkish chef Murat Bozkurt and brother Ekrem co-own this paean to their homeland, with Ekrem usually at the front of the house, infusing the space with cheer. Turkish cuisine features aspects of Greek, Moroccan and Middle Eastern flavors. The appetizer combo plate offers an impressive sampling. Acili ezme is a chopped, slightly spicy mixture of tomatoes, cucumber and walnuts that’s delicious paired with accompanying flatbread wedges. For entrees, try the borani, a lamb stew with garbanzos, carrots, potatoes and currants. The meat is very tender, while the veggies arrived nicely al dente. Also good is the chicken shish plate (souvlaki), which features two skewers of marinated grilled chicken that’s moist and succulent. There are also quite a few choices for vegetarians, including flatbread topped like pizza, with spinach and feta or mozzarella and

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North Sac Asian Café Asian Café serves both Thai and Lao food, but go for the Lao specialties, which rely on flavoring staples such as fish sauce, lime juice, galangal and lemongrass, lots of herbs, and chilies. One of the most common dishes in Lao cuisine is larb, a dish of chopped meat laced with herbs, chilies and lime. At Asian Café, it adds optional offal add-ons—various organ meats, entrails, et al—to three versions of the dish: beef with tripe, chicken with gizzards, or pork with pork skin. The beef salad offers a gentle respite from aggressive flavors, consisting of medium-thick chewy slices of eye of round with red bell pepper, chopped iceberg and hot raw jalapeño. The single best dish here is the nam kao tod, a crispy entree with ground pork that’s baked on the bottom of the pan with rice, then stirred and fried up fresh the next day with dried Thai chilies and scallions. Thai and Lao. 2827 Norwood Ave., (916) 641-5890. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH B.G.

South Sac Blue Moon Cafe and Karaoke In Sac, most people equate Hong Kong-style cuisine with dim sum, but this restaurant, which also features private karaoke rooms, serves up tasty, familiar food by way of rice plates, sandwiches,

noodle bowls, soups and stirfries. A few random Japanese (ramen, fried udon), French (sweet or savory crepes), Russian (borscht), Korean (beef and kimchi hot pot) and Italian (various pastas) foods add to the feeling that whatever your cultural background, you’ll find a comfort dish from your childhood to wrap its arms around you and give you a hug. Cultural diversity aside, one of Blue Moon’s best dishes is the braised pig ear with soy sauce and peanuts. Asian. 5000 Freeport Blvd., Ste. A; (916) 706-2995. Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHH J.M.

Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHH1⁄2 J.M.

Taqueria Garibaldi One of this restaurant’s biggest pulls is its choice of meats. The chorizo is red, crispy and greasy in all the best ways. The lengua (tongue) is soft and dreamily reminiscent of only the most ethereal bits of beef. The fish is fine and flaky and the cabeza and pork are herculean in flavor options worthy of note, too. Tacos are small and served on two tiny tortillas (flour or corn, your call) with a bit of house salsa that has all the kick of a pissed off Girl Scout who’s just tall enough to nail you right under the kneecap. Or, feel free to customize, too, courtesy of the fully loaded salsa bar. Be sure to pick up a glass of the homemade horchata, which is sweet and milky with seductive whispers of cinnamon. You will want seconds. Mexican. 1841 Howe Ave., (916) 924-0108. Dinner for one: $8-$10. HHH G.M.

Arden/ Carmichael Skip’s Kitchen You know you’re at an American restaurant when a cheeseburger is one of the healthiest items on the menu. Sure enough, Skip’s Kitchen features a lot of calorie-rich items, such as fried macaroniand-cheese balls, ravioli, chicken strips, chicken wings and shrimp, plus creamy Oreo milkshakes. There are salads, too, but the best dish on the menu is the burger. All five styles (original, mushroom and Swiss, bacon and cheddar, three-cheese, and Western) are served on a brioche bun and cooked “medium,” unless otherwise specified. The kitchen offers a house-made veggie burger as well. If there’s such a thing as a “gourmet” burger that can rightfully sell for $10, this is probably it. American. 4717 El Camino Ave. in Carmichael, (916) 514-0830.

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Folsom Back Wine Bar & Bistro Back has nuzzled itself into a comfortable niche with an eclectic wine selection and—albeit unfocused—menu that draws an upscale crowd. The bruschetta plate arrives with four types of toppings, two of each: goat cheese, avocado, caramelized onion and tomato. They don’t suck, but they aren’t great. A rib-eye steak with a basil-andtomato compound butter is served cooked to perfection. But the chocolate soufflé is like having a hot date and then

IllustratIon by Mark stIvers

egg. Turkish. 3260 B J St., (916) 449-8810. Dinner for one: $15-$20. HHH1⁄2 A.M.R.

finding out he’s a terrible kisser: greatly disappointing. In the end, a little refinery needs to happen to make the food at Back unique enough for the average Sacramento diner to find it worth the trip, but for the Folsom diner who feels Grange Restaurant & Bar is too far, then Back will do right enough. The wine selection is strong, and pairing recommendations are practical. American. 25075 Blue Ravine Rd., Ste. 150 in Folsom; (916) 986-9100. Dinner for one: $25-$50. HHH1/2 G.M.

Land Park/ Curtis Park Buffalo Pizza & Ice Cream Co. The eatery, which offers take-out only, keeps the menu simple. Customers can choose from two types of pies: breakfast or lunch. Breakfast pizzas consist of standard pizza dough, on top of which rests a thin layer of egg, cheese and toppings. One pepperoni-and-jalapeños morning pie starts off well, but then the dough disappoints. It doesn’t quite fit in either the “thick” or “thin” category. Lunch pizzas here are less unique, but still hit a nice mark via a few standout ingredients. The garlic pizza reaches a nice balance of sweet and salty with a creamy white sauce, mushrooms, onions, pepperoni and sausage. Buffalo also offers Gunther’s Ice Cream, side salads, fried chicken and canned sodas, but here, it’s breakfast pizza for the win. American. 2600 21st St., (916) 451-6555. Meal for one: $10-$20. HHH1⁄2 J.M.

Ice cream cakewalk It’s not summer in Sacramento until you’ve eaten a sufficient amount of ice cream. If you didn’t get enough of the cold stuff in July—which, by the way, was National Ice Cream Month (thanks, President Reagan, for accomplishing something so truly important for America)—here’s an event for you: the Sacramento Walking Sticks’ annual Hot Walkin’ Nights Ice Cream Walk. Here’s the scoop (sorry, folks, for the blatant pun): The free event starts at Vic’s Ice Cream (3199 Riverside Boulevard, www.vicsicecream.com) and ends at Gunther’s Ice Cream (2801 Franklin Boulevard, www.gunthers icecream.com). It’s a pretty informal, easygoing affair: Dogs are welcome at the event and you can pick between a 5K or 10K, and choose to walk or run at your own pace. For those who want to double down, there are two event times: Wednesday, August 7, at 6 p.m. and Thursday, August 8, at 9 a.m. For more information, visit www.sacramentowalkingsticks.org. —Jonathan Mendick

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FIND OF THE WEEK

Tube-adour The Porch SeSSionS

My body, my alien self The humanS Matt Haig, a successful British author of children’s and young-adult books, offers an engaging look at the BOOK foibles of humanity in his first novel for grown-ups, The Humans (Simon & Schuster, $25). Professor Andrew Martin, a mathematician, is the narrator—except it’s not really Martin; rather, the storyteller here is an alien who has taken over Martin’s body to study the supposedly mythological creatures known as humans. Proving once again that it’s often necessary to take an outsider’s view into consideration to fully understand something familiar, The Humans is a treatise addressed to the alien’s race, describing the messy, repulsive, delightful and humane nature that makes us human. The alien, who actually prefers a dog to people—a perfectly sensible decision to many humans—discovers one of the greatest dangers of anthropology: the temptation to go “native.” —Kel Munger

Advice, please Sac STaTe confeSSionS “It seems like the types of guys I’m interested in always have girlfriends or are not interested in me.” And so reads yet another another outpouring of the academic heart on the Facebook page Sac State Confessions. Here, Sacramento State University students reveal their myriad insecurities, fears, crimes and misdemeanors and then wait for other students to chime in with advice, encouragement and insight. Of course, because it’s the Internet, there’s also plenty of judgment, skepticism and WEBSITE poor spelling. Good times. Really need help? The page also points users toward the university’s various counseling and psychological resources. www.facebook.com/SacStateConfessions. —Rachel Leibrock

Refresh your ears Tunein Internet radio apps are awesome for exposing tired ears to new music. But even with the endless number of tunes, at some point, these high-tech APP stations start to repeat the same songs over and over. Nostalgia for good ol’ AM/FM sets in. TuneIn, a free app, accesses local and worldwide radio stations (yes, they still exist) and plays them through your iAccessory (or, also, via your desktop or laptop). Walk the dog and listen to some NPR without having to lug around an actual radio. http://tunein.com. —Jessica Rine

As a 2012 Sammies winner in the R&B/Soul category, James Cavern is making a name for himself in the music scene. But the Sacramentan-by-way-of-England is now also a director. Since July 2012, the troubadour has been regularly uploading footage of (mostly) local artists’ acoustic performances on his (now-former) porch onto YouTube. His video series, known as The Porch Sessions, sometimes features Cavern colWEB laborating with the other musicians. Mostly, though, his guests include full bands (Musical Charis, Walking Spanish, Honyock) and solo artists (Autumn Sky, Hans Eberbach, Lindsey Pavao)— usually singer-songwriters with an acoustic guitar. The footage is recorded on an iPhone and often put through various filters—indeed, these videos could be considered a bit amateurish. But that’s exactly what makes them endearing: Instead of being encumbered by sets, plots and overdubs, these clips just display pure local talent in a raw, informal live setting. They’re videos for music nerds and hard-core fans, but also for people wanting to get to know local artists a little better. Watching them gives you the feeling that you’re just hanging out and jamming with your friends— even if, in reality, you’re just distracting yourself at work and watching YouTube videos. The Porch Sessions Vol. 1—an album consisting of audio from 20 videos from the series—can be downloaded for free at Cavern’s Bandcamp site (http://james cavern.bandcamp.com). And the entire video series, 31 sessions long at the time of this writing, is available via Cavern’s YouTube page. www.youtube.com/user/ jamescavern. —Jonathan Mendick

Transitional lover I’m dating a man who is separated and has filed for divorce. After four months, I’ve made it clear that I want a relationship, not just a few sweet kisses. He never responds in our conversations about commitment; he leaves. After a few days, he calls to invite me out again. My friends think he’s lonely. What do you think? You’re blessed with smart friends. Count me in that by Joey ga group: Your love interest rcia enjoys your company, no a s kj oey @ ne wsreview.c om doubt about it. What he has with you now is all he wants. How do I know? Not by checking my Magic 8 Ball, but by Joey reviewing the facts: He has not is applying the pushed you for a commitment, three-strikes law to and he flees when you request a the state of Florida. future with him. But, hey, who could blame him? His marriage is a jumble. His divorce is on the horizon, yet still out of reach. He’s a tween, stuck in the purgatory of separation. It’s exactly the right spot to process and release the grudges and obstacles to intimacy that cost him his marriage. It’s not the right emotional space for a new romance to bloom.

He’s a tween, stuck in the purgatory of separation. So, why would anyone feel driven to date during separation? Loneliness is a popular motivation. Another is the desire to feel desirable (also known as an ego boost), or to be distracted from responsibility for the demise of the marriage. And, for those people who say, “Our marriage was over long before we split,” there is the surprise of discovering that it ain’t over till it’s over. Yes, that means there’s nothing quite like the emotional release of holding that divorce decree in your hands. If you enjoy this man’s company, date him. But stop pushing for more than he is capable of giving you. (No, you don’t get to decide if he is capable of opening his heart.) This isn’t a Hollywood film; he’s unlikely to suddenly gape at you with the awestruck expression of a man who realizes you are “the one.” You are more likely his transitional partner, helping him learn how to date

Got a problem?

Write, email or leave a message for Joey at the News & Review. Give your name, telephone number (for verification purposes only) and question—all correspondence will be kept strictly confidential. Write Joey, 1124 Del Paso Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95815; call (916) 498-1234, ext. 3206; or email askjoey@ newsreview.com.

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again. His emotional distance may also be why his marriage died. Either way, your choice is clear: Accept the relationship, as is. Or end it and find a man divorced for at least two years who has spent a chunk of that time getting to know himself instead of dating. A woman I work with is so loud in conversation and on the phone that we can hardly get any work done when she is in the office. Her language, in general, is vulgar and not appropriate for a professional setting, but the managers (mostly male) just laugh. I don’t report to her, but am frequently in meetings with her. Is there a way to handle this that won’t backfire? Ever watch Animal Planet? The next time you’re sitting in a meeting and the cuss queen shoots off her mouth, remember that her behavior is the human animal’s equivalent of a baboon thumping his chest and hollering. Yes, you can laugh. I would. (If anyone asks why you’re laughing, say the scene reminds you of something you read in the Ask Joey column). When your co-worker is in her office decibel busting, shut her door. I would. If she demands to know why you did, tell the truth, “Sometimes it’s difficult to hear anything except your conversations.” It’s also important to talk to someone in human resources. Anyone can accidentally let a swear word or two slip when frustrated, but no one should be assaulted by foul language daily. I vote that you ask a senior manager with manners to chat with her and then with all employees about respect in the workplace. Ω

Meditation of the Week “Where are the heroes and the saints, who keep a clear vision of man’s greatest gift, his freedom, to oppose not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the dictatorship of the benevolent state, which takes possession of the family, and of the indigent, and claims the young for war?” wrote Dorothy Day, a Catholic activist. How do you employ your freedom?

F E AT U R E

Jazz in the

COURT YARD

From May through September, every third Thursday evening features the hottest stars in a wide range of jazz styles. Each concert begins at 6 PM in the E. Kendell Davis Courtyard. Don’t miss the last two concerts in this series. LE JAZZ HOT t AUGUST 15 THE JURASSIC t SEPTEMBER 19 The 2013 jazz series is dedicated to the memory of long-time Crocker supporter and jazz devotee, Miles Treaster. SUPPORTING SPONSOR

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to save or not ave toto 6s 0% off these up ets! upcoming theatre tick

Jun 30 – aug 11

aug 24 – sep 15

aug 2 – 3

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CloSet Door theatre ComPany PreSentS: the normal heart $20 tix For $10

The San Francisco Mime Troupe—still poking fun at the powers that be (after more than 50 years) through pointedly political “street theater,” by Jeff Hudson presented via free performances in public parks—will bring its summer show to the Sacramento area next week, courtesy of lastminute fundraising that made the tour possible.

oVation Stage PreSentS: time StanDS Still $18 tix For $9

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aug 7 – sept 1

Oil & Water

PhoTo by DaviD M. allen, www.DaviDallenSTuDio.coM

B Street theatre PrenSentS: VenuS in Fur $35 tix For $14

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For more information on the San Francisco Mime Troupe, visit www.sfmt.org.

newsreview.com 32 | SN&R | 08.01.13

The SFMT’s double bill Oil & Water will play on Saturday, August 10, at the Community Park in Davis (1405 F Street; music at 6:30 p.m., show at 7 p.m.) and on Sunday, August 11, at Southside Park in Sacramento (2115 Sixth Street; music at 3:30 p.m., show at 4 p.m.). Though the performances are free, the Mime Troupe “passes the hat” for donations. Why a double bill? “Climate change, pollution, water scarcity and fossil fuel dependency are issues too big to be dealt with in just one story,” the group’s press release maintains. So, it’s presenting a pair of pointed one-act musicals, Crude Intentions (money-grabbing oil companies messing around in the Ecuadorian rain forest) and Deal With the Devil (set in the White House, after the president is found dead on the Fourth of July before a major speech).

What’s that? A mime troupe doing musicals? Calm down. It doesn’t do the silent mime associated with Marcel Marceau. It’s “mime” in the old sense: “to mimic.” And mimic they do, with four actors (plus two musicians) doing quick costume changes, singing and dancing. The political commentary is served up in a style reminiscent of 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte (in which masked actors would play clever servants outwitting miserly merchants and pompous aristocrats). This being 2013, you can expect the troupe to lampoon dodgy corporations, crooked politicians, unethical bankers and the like. You know, the sort of targets that the San Francisco Mime Troupe has been gleefully lampooning since the 1960s. Ω

Curtsies and jazz hands California Musical Theatre’s Music Circus heads into August with the final two shows of its season: The King and I and Chicago. One’s a familiar old favorite returning to “the tent,” while the other is brand new to it. The King and I, which opens Tuesday, August 6, and plays through Sunday, August 11, is a Rodgers & Hammerstein classic about a domineering king bumping up against a strong-willed English woman he has hired to teach the children of the court, who learns some lessons of his own. Only Show Boat and Oklahoma! have been presented as many times (13) as The King and I at the Music Circus. With such lovely songs as “Getting to Know You,” “Shall We Dance?” and “We Kiss in a Shadow,” it’s no wonder the play is so popular—so much so, that a Sunday matinee has been added to the schedule. Chicago will get its first performance at Music Circus, and it will be a new “in-theround” staging just for the venue. Chicago is as fine a contemporary musical as The King and I is a traditional one. It’s a sexy John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, with original choreography by Bob Fosse. A story of sin, betrayal, lawyers and women behind bars, its songs include the infectious “Razzle Dazzle,” the touching “Mister Cellophane” and, of course, “All That Jazz.” Chicago will play Tuesday, August 20, through Thursday, August 29. Tickets range from $30 to $74, and show times vary, so visit the website, www.calmt.com, or call the Wells Fargo Pavilion box office at (916) 557-1999, for more information. —Jim Carnes

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“

THIS SUMMER’S ‘LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE’.” -Claudia Puig,

“

Now Playing

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity

Kristoffer Diaz’s incredible story of the intersection of art, power, wrestling and politics, deserves the bells, whistles and action-packed moves it gets in this Capital Stage production. In addition to the incredible Andrew Joseph Perez (Macedonia “The Mace” Guerra)—whose performance is mind-bogglingly good—it has an all-star cast in Randall King, Donald Paul, Rushi Kota and James Long.

W 7pm; Th, F, Sa 8 pm; Su 2pm; Through 8/11. $22-$35. Capital

Stage, 2215 J St.; (916) 995-5464; www.capstage.org. K.M.

The Normal Heart

-Joe Morgenstern,

She Creatures

Barnyard Theatre presents Sarah Saltwick’s She Creatures, a mythological menagerie including a mermaid, two unicorns, a fiery dragon and snake-haired Medusa. Each creature gets her own scene; the independent panels share common themes. While not a strictly linear sequence, it’s a striking and very theatrical grouping of monologues and dialogues. Th, F, Sa 8:30pm. Through 8/3. $15-$18. Barnyard Theatre in the Schmeiser Barn, 35125 County Rd. 31 in Davis; (530) 574-1318 ; www.barnyard theatre.org. J.H.

FOUL

2 FAIR

GOOD

Venus in Fur

Playwright David Ives springs plenty of surprises in this masochistic comedy of dark intent in which a weary writer-director is coming off a long, fruitless day of auditions, about to head home. In comes a breathless actress, begging for a chance at the part. She says her name is the same as the character in writer-director’s script, and she seems eerily right for the role. Th, F 8pm; Sa 5 & 9pm; Su 2pm;

T 6:30pm; W, 2 & 6:30pm. Through 8/11. $25-$35. B Street Theatre,

4 WELL-DONE

NOW PLAYING AT SELECT THEATRES CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATRES AND SHOWTIMES

REEL REVIEWS.

ON NEW STANDS 09.12.13

Shawn B. O’Neal shines as the complicated Ned Weeks in this production of Larry Kramer’s play about the early days of the AIDS epidemic. With strong supporting performances from Chris Bogard, Mark Brown and Wade Lucas, the production offers a bird’s-eye view of how community denial and government

A JOYOUS MOVIE , THE BEST ONE I’VE SEEN IN A VERY LONG TIME.”

prejudice slowed the response to the AIDS crisis. The show runs long, though, due to burdensome set changes. F, Sa 8pm. Through 8/3. $12-$20. Closet Door Theatre Company at the Ooley Theatre, 2007 28th St.; (916) 222-4932; www.closetdoortheatre.org. K.M.

BEST OF SACRAMENTO

Director Charlie Fee cleverly blends this evergreen Shakespeare comedy into the modpsychedelic setting in London in the mid-1960s, replete with tunes of the time. Add starlight, a lakeside venue and a professional cast, and it makes for a lovely summer show. Bring a sweater. Tu, W, Th, F, Sa, Su 7:30pm. Through 8/25. $15-$85. Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival at Sand Harbor State Park, 2005 Highway 28 in Incline Village, Nev.; (800) 747-4697; www.lake tahoeshakespeare.com. J.H.

WAY, WAY WONDERFUL.

SUBLIME–DON’T MISS

2711 B St.; (916) 443-5300; www.bstreettheatre.org. J.H.

Short reviews by Jeff Hudson and Kel Munger. PHOTO By ROBERT R. SANDERS

“Anyone in here got a fan?”

Hot and bothered According to the organizers of Verse on the Vine’s Hot August Nights event, hot temperatures and hot poetry “just naturally go together.” If you agree that sweat and steamy verbiage are a perfect pairing, then you’d be remiss to skip the event, featuring Poetica-Erotica (featuring Shawn Aveningo, Lytton Bell and Cynthia Linville), NSAA the Black Root (Lawrence Dinkins Jr.) and Kelly Freeman. Since the 18-and-over event happens in the Petra Vineyard Wine Gallery, attendees 21 and older will have the option to pair poetry with a glass of wine. There will also be an open-mic for those who want to test out some lusty limericks, sensual sentences, vivacious verses and, well, you get the picture. Too risqué? Check out a different edition of Verse on the Vine, a bimonthly poetry series hosted by Shawn Aveningo of The Poetry Box. Wednesday, August 7, 7 p.m.; no cover. Petra Vineyard Wine Gallery, 627 Sutter Street in Folsom; (530) 409-0721; www.thepoetrybox.com/verse onthevine.html.

EVERY THURSDAY.

SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW THU 8/1 2 COL(3.9”) X 5” ALL.WWB.0801.SNR

4 COLOR

2013

—Jonathan Mendick

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I’m So Excited!

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First things first, let’s try to get past this movie’s wretched title. Yes, multiple-Oscar-winning Spanish by Daniel Barnes filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s flighty airborne farce features a centerpiece musical number set to the titular Pointer Sisters jam, one of the songs that made the early ’80s so memorable for those of us too young to snort coke. Furthermore, as has been the case with several Almodóvar films, the original title of I’m So Excited! was Spanish wordplay that didn’t particularly translate into English. In this case, it was called Los amantes pasajeros, a

Very Good

5 excellent

winking combination of “passing lovers” and “passenger lovers.” Of course, none of that lessens the dread that moviegoers will experience as they approach the box office intending to say, “I’ll take two tickets to I’m So Excited!” Even if Almodóvar’s titles don’t always translate, he’s still produced some of the most translatable foreign-language films in recent memory, and has been embraced stateside like few European masters. This broadly fun, bodyfluid-soaked comedy should only increase his aura of accessibility. The obvious first instinct is to categorize this movie as a self-reflexive throwback to Almodóvar’s “earlier, funnier” stuff, especially Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Now past 60 years old, Almodóvar has been understandably engulfed in nostalgia of late— his 2009 film Broken Embraces even more explicitly referenced Women on the Verge. Unlike that unusually pedantic failure, though, Excited! waxes nostalgic without sacrificing entertainment value. In its barest outline, Excited! appears excessively vapid for latter-day Almodóvar, but this frothy concoction is spiked with the radical Spaniard’s unique sexual politics. Trust Almodóvar to turn what is essentially a voyageof-the-damned ensemble (think Ship of Fools meets The V.I.P.s or Boeing Boeing) into a horny, pastel-hued, mescaline-laced pansexual satire on moral lassitude among the upper classes. Above all, this mostly set-bound movie is an easy excuse for Almodóvar to indulge his

long-dormant comedic provocateur side, as well as reunite with collaborators like Cecilia Roth, Lola Dueñas and Antonio Banderas. Even so, Excited! can’t help but feel slight, especially compared to his previous release, the sublimely unsettling The Skin I Live In. The director warns us before the opening credits: “Everything in this film is fantasy, and bears no relation to reality.” Sure enough, the tarmac-set first sequence that introduces the central crisis is deliberately detached low comedy, derailed by distracting star cameos. We then cut to inside a plane, originally en route to Mexico but now circling over Spain, as the flight crew and first-class passengers learn that a technical malfunction won’t allow them to land safely. The first-class passengers (the masses in coach have been drugged into submission) are a colorful lot, among them, a middle-aged soapopera actor, a notorious dominatrix and a mob hit man. They’re unified only by their mysterious, unresolved pasts and by their desperate flight from Spain to what they hope will be a fresh start in Mexico. Impending tragedy reroutes the group back to their homeland, forcing them each to contemplate a path to salvation. At least they do, until a trio of gay male flight attendants, the film’s strongest source of comedic inappropriateness, lace everyone’s drinks with mescaline and perform cabaret numbers until the group is incited into a sexual frenzy. Almodóvar piles on the partner-swapping complications from there, culminating in the de facto rape of a comatose male passenger by an overeager female virgin.

Trust Pedro Almodóvar to turn what is essentially a voyage-of-the-damned ensemble into a horny, pastel-hued satire. Beyond the outré farce, the virgin psychics and acid-dropping flight attendants, there is an acute political conscience at work. Almodóvar is saying that the corrupt lackeys of Europe’s amoral upper-class—celebrities, high-level functionaries and the people elected to sit in the cockpit and steer the ship—are literally and figuratively in bed with each other. Meanwhile, the general populace is distracted into a comalike slumber, unaware that their lives are in imminent peril. While American moviegoers may not catch all of the stealthy political jabs hiding out among the semen and sphincter jokes, Excited! is still one of Almodóvar’s most audiencefriendly films in years. Ω

by DANIEL BARNES, JONATHAN KIEFER & JIM LANE

The Conjuring

•

This film is purportedly pulled from the files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, real-life “demonologists” best known for their involvement with the events that inspired the 1977 book (and subsequent 1979 and 2005 films) The Amityville Horror. That case, in which a family’s new house was possessed by demons and subsequently exorcised, has since been exposed as a hoax and the Warrens as charlatans. The Conjuring however, paints them as credible and concerned experts, and thus the film plays like an unofficial Amityville prequel, only with amplified shrieks and the now necessary Paranormal Activity-era verisimilitude. Director James Wan (Saw) delivers effective scares, showing more interest in sinewy camera moves and building a slow creep than in mindless gore, but the performances are a mixed bag, and the script repeatedly seeks refuge in the familiar. D.B.

2 5 0 8 L A N D PA R K D R I V E L A N D PA R K & B R O A D WAY F R E E PA R K I N G A D J A C E N T T O T H E AT R E “FLAMBOYANT FUN.”

I’M SO EXCITED - Betsy Sharkey, LOS ANGELES TIMES

STARTS FRI., 8/2

“ENDEARINGLY SWEET.”

“BOTH ACCESSIBLE AND THRILLING.”

WED/THUR: 10:00AM, 12:15, 2:40, 5:05, 7:30, 9:00, 9:50PM FRI-TUES: 11:00AM, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50PM

WED/THUR: 10:15AM, 12:25, 2:35, 4:45, 7:00PM FRI-TUES: 11:00AM

THE WAY WAYBACK FILL theVOID

Disbelief, indeed.

Fill the Void

Fruitvale Station

GO TO FACEBOOK.COM/SACNEWSREVIEW

Writer-director Ryan Coogler’s first feature is an auspicious debut, portraying the last day of Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan), the Hayward man who was shot dead in an altercation with police officers for Bay Area Rapid Transit in Oakland on New Year’s Day 2009. The shooting sparked protests, both peaceful and violent. Coogler’s movie is a protest, too, but more in sadness than anger. It’s that rarest of movies (these days, anyhow): one that’s “based on a true story” and actually has the ring of truth (some names are changed for either dramatic or legal reasons). Jordan’s performance is muted but earnest and strong, and there’s fine work from the supporting ensemble, especially Melonie Diaz as Grant’s girlfriend Sophina, Octavia Spencer as his mother, and little Ariana Neal as his 4-year-old daughter. J.L. vs. Megalon, but with a CGI grandeur those 1960s Japanese filmmakers could only dream of. (Or, for that matter, Michael Bay, whose Transformers movies were never this much fun.) Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi and Idris Elba acquit themselves well amid the mayhem. J.L.

Girl Most Likely

Red 2

It still stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous,” just as in the 2010 movie and the comic books it was based on (by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner). This time, courtesy of writers Jon and Erich Hoeber and director Dean Parisot, the emphasis is on “comic” as well as “dangerous,” as retired CIA agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), his sweetheart Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) and colleague Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) swing into action to find a lost nuclear bomb—and dodge the assassins set on their trail. Helen Mirren and Brian Cox return from the original; new this time are Korean star Byung-hun Lee as one of those killers, Neal McDonough as another, Anthony Hopkins as a daffy scientist and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a KGB agent. The action is solid, the pace headlong, the dialogue saucily tongue-in-cheek. J.L.

Only God Forgives

R.I.P.D.

Whatever you think about Will Smith, he squeezed three Men in Black movies out of a one-sentence premise based solely on his natural charisma and easy audience connection. Robert Schwentke’s sci-fi/comedy/buddy-cop/zombie/ghost love story (high-concept enough yet?) instead offers the ironically detached comedic flop sweat of Ryan Reynolds, who gets blown off the screen by every lame special effect he encounters. Reynolds and Jeff Bridges, whose inexplicable enthusiasm is the film’s only saving grace, play deceased cops from different centuries partnered to lock up the living dead. Based on a Dark Horse Comics comic book, the thoroughly unappealing R.I.P.D. collects lazy writing like a corpse attracts flies. The whole story is predicated upon its villains acquiring, assembling and activating an object they cannot possibly know exists. D.B.

Pacific Rim

Monsters from another dimension invade Earth through the ocean floor, and humanity invents an army of huge robots to fight them. Director Guillermo del Toro and his co-writer Travis Beacham indulge their inner child, the one who always wanted to dress up in a Godzilla costume and kick the bejesus out of an elaborate scale-model city. In the process, they give other kids of all ages a movie for their guiltypleasures list (the older, the more the guilt, but the pleasure’s still there). It’s like the fights in King Kong vs. Godzilla and Godzilla

The To Do List

Fresh out of high school, an uptight brainiac (Aubrey Plaza) makes a list of the sexual exploits she intends to get out of the way before college. Writer-director Maggie Carey indulges the dubious ambition of making a sex comedy for girls just as crude and dimwitted as the boy-themed

US.

OR ELSE.

comedies that have blighted screens for decades. But her timing’s bad—by having her heroine spend the summer working at a public pool, she invites comparison to The Way Way Back, which has all the humor, truth and insight her own raunch fest lacks. As for Plaza, she can’t make her character even slightly likeable, but it’s doubtful if anybody could pull it off; this girl is a dreary little drip at best, a nasty schemer at worst (which is most of the time). A parade of 20-something “teenagers” lends feeble support. J.L.

YOU AND A GUEST ARE INVITED TO ATTEND A SPECIAL ADVANCE SCREENING OF

The Way Way Back

Writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, the Oscar-winning adapters of The Descendants, here co-direct their earlier script, another melancholic beach-house comedy of sympathetic middle-class white folks whose failed marriages are hard on their adolescent kids. Producers and actors from Little Miss Sunshine complete the cutely movie-ish family-dysfunction formula. An awkward, inward 14-year-old (Liam James), drifting apart from his divorced mom (Toni Collette) and her douchey new beau (Steve Carell), endures a strained summer vacation with help from a friendly water-park manager (Sam Rockwell), who helps the kid come of age. Consequently, he does all right with the perfectly available pretty blond girl (AnnaSophia Robb) next door. The supporting cast includes Allison Janney, Amanda Peet, Rob Corddry and Maya Rudolph, all generously doing their duty to nudge both the awkward and the feel-good moments forward. But Rockwell is the highlight here, exuding great warmth, wit and just enough irony to make even the bromides seem savory. J.K.

The Wolverine

In 1945 Nagasaki, a Japanese soldier is ominously warned by Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine that “you can’t outrun what’s coming.” Within seconds, the same Japanese soldier literally outruns a nuclear blast that in real life killed tens of thousands. If that doesn’t offend your intelligence enough, there’s also some Wolverine crucifixion imagery here, as well as the most inexplicable samurai robot imaginable. It’s clear that at one point, The Wolverine had ambitions to be a character-driven superhero film, but all coherence and motivation were apparently bled out in preproduction. The result is a dull origin story (again!) that forces Wolverine to refrain from acting like Wolverine 90 percent of the time. Jackman shuffles along with zombie obligation, as though he can’t believe how much money he’s been paid to go through these motions. D.B.

FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN WIN, E E-MAIL MAIL YOUR NAME, ADDRESS WITH ZIP AND DATE OF BIRTH TO: UNIVERSALSCREENINGSSF@GMAIL.COM KICK-ASS 2 has been rated R (Restricted - Under 17 Requires Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian) for strong violence, pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and brief nudity. Please note: Passes received through this promotion do not guarantee admission and passes received through this promotion do not guarantee you a seat at the theater. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Theater is overbooked to ensure a full house. No admittance once screening has begun. All federal, state and local regulations apply. A recipient of tickets assumes any and all risks related to use of ticket, and accepts any restrictions required by ticket provider. Universal Pictures, Sacramento News & Review and their affiliates accept no responsibility or liability in connection with any loss or accident incurred in connection with use of a prize. Tickets cannot be exchanged, transferred or redeemed for cash, in whole or in part. We are not responsible if, for any reason, winner is unable to use his/her ticket in whole or in part. Not responsible for lost, delayed or misdirected entries. All federal and local taxes are the responsibility of the winner. Void where prohibited by law. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Participating sponsors, their employees & family members and their agencies are not eligible. NO PHONE CALLS!

IN THEATERS AUG AUGUST 16

www.KickAss-TheMovie.com •

BEFORE

NEWS

- A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES

F O R A D V A N C E T I C K E T S C A L L FA N D A N G O @ 1 - 8 0 0 - F A N D A N G O # 2 7 2 1

In Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive followup, Ryan Gosling strips the craft of acting down to the bare essentials of sitting down, standing, walking slowly, staring at a vacant middle distance, and not reacting to things. Refn’s script is even more minimal, with its kinky revenge hook disguising a bizarre and often mesmerizing exercise in nightmare atmosphere, mythological doom, and delayed bloodlust. Gosling plays Julian, a Bangkok-based gangster with a bad temper and some seriously oedipal sex issues. A dirty cop murders Julian’s pedophile brother, and soon enough, their mother and boss (Kristin Scott Thomas) arrives looking for revenge. The neon-drenched style and impeccably composed ultraviolence are even more pointless here than in Drive, but Only God Forgives is the more hypnotic and challenging film. D.B.

FRUITVALE STATION

- Peter Debruge, VARIETY

A failed New York playwright (Kristen Wiig) loses her boyfriend and her job—then, after a fake suicide attempt, she’s remanded to the custody of the mother she can’t stand (Annette Bening). Writer Michelle Morgan and directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini serve up an urban bachelorette comedy reminiscent of Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha earlier this year—only this one’s goofier, funnier and less even-keeled. Wiig’s patented weary-and-put-upon shtick fits easily in the semiscrewball surroundings, and the directors smoothly finesse the script’s frequent (and deliberate) changes of tone. The result is a real charmer, full of surprises. Darren Criss makes an appealing match for Wiig, and there’s a star-making turn by Christopher Fitzgerald as Wiig’s socially challenged brother. J.L.

- David Edelstein, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

FRI-TUES: 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00PM WED/THUR: 10:45AM, 1:00, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 9:55PM NO SUN 1:00, 3:00, 5:00PM•NO TUES 7:00, 9:00PM FRI-TUES: 11:15AM, 1:15, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, 9:15PM

In the Hasidic community of Tel Aviv, Israel, an 18-year-old girl is pressured to marry the widowed husband of her sister who died during childbirth. This is writerdirector Rama Burshtein’s first feature, so it’s no surprise that her intentions are hard to ascertain. Did she mean for the orthodox community she portrays to look like such a dreary, joyless place? Even weddings and kindergarten songs have an air of drudgery, as if participants are dispirited by some permanent misery. Maybe it’s just poor filmmaking—blank-faced acting, leaden pace, gaping pauses that pad the running time until it feels much longer than its modest 90 minutes. The film won multiple awards in Israel, so it clearly plays differently there. Here, however, it’s, frankly, dull; the characters uninteresting, the story lacking insight and drama. J.L.

“WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD.”

F E AT U R E

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A RT S & C U LT U R E

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/KickAss •

08.01.13

@KickAssTheMovie • #KICKASS2 |

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36 | SN&R | 08.01.13

“[We] can set up anywhere, anytime and just go,” said Croen. “That’s awesome, and that’s definitely an aesthetic, visually and audibly.” Smith’s instrument of choice—an old metal washboard with several gadgets screwed and nailed to the face—also adds to that vibe. All of the washboard’s tin and brass trinkets were scavenged from different thrift stores throughout Midtown until Smith was finally satisfied with its overall sound. “There’s a cymbal, a little tiny frying pan, a cool metal cup that we found and took apart. It makes this really cool ding noise,” said Smith of the anatomy of her instrument that she wears on her chest during performances. Earlier this year during a live performance at The Press Club, Smith’s fingers, covered in silver pointy thimbles, tapped and scraped against the washboard’s features as the band played songs such as Clarence Williams’ “Jerry the Junker” and Merle Travis’ country tune “Fat Gal.” Whatever the songs, the band’s members say they strive to capture the energy of the upbeat, toe-tappers recycled throughout the 1900s and into the revival of the ragtime movement well into the ’40s. Although the Stompers mostly perform popular songs from that era, they also blend bluegrass, country and even a little bit of gypsy into the old-time genre. photo by lovelle harriS

ARE YOU A HEALTHY WOMAN AGE 20-28?

What’s the modern, quintessential Sacramento sound? Some might say it’s a little punk, a bit indie and layered with plenty of hip-hop influence. by Steph Rodriguez Perhaps, but there’s one current band camped out in an old, gray house in the Oak Park neighborhood that instead draws on the syncopated rhythms and high-energy jigs of early 1900s ragtime.

Miss Maddy’s F Street Stompers embody influences from the likes of Leon Redbone and Peggy Lee, and even take note from groups like the Memphis Jug Band and its upbeat dance numbers. Maddy Smith wears the washboard and is on lead vocals in this five-piece outfit; the rest of the F Street Stompers offer a front-row seat to the past with Max Peterson plucking the banjo, Brent Vallard pulling twang from a steel guitar, Robin Croen on upright bass and Matt Paige garnishing the ragged tempos on mandolin. As the sun settled into the earth on a recent Sunday evening, Vallard and Peterson’s cozy home played host to the band’s weekly practice. It’s a fitting space, too, with wide living-room quarters and instruments littering every square inch of the carpeted area, including violins and trombones mounted on walls. A couple of corrugated washboards leaned against an entryway, while a single banjo and an old accordion, once belonging to Peterson’s grandmother, claimed space amid the array of noisemakers. As an all-acoustic band, the Stompers say the perks of such are no cords to untangle, no heavyweight amps to lug around and never having to stress about finding a power source. Whether playing the wooden-planked walkways of Old Sacramento, various venues throughout town or even the banks of the river, the band members say they enjoy the freedom no cords attached offers.

“ It’s so natural to dance to this music.” Brent Vallard Miss Maddy’s F Street Stompers “Our songs are mostly ’20s renditions [of older tunes] that we’ve changed,” said Peterson. “We’ve added verses here and there to suit our needs if we can’t figure out what they’re saying. [This is] an old, lost form of music that nobody plays anymore, and it’s mostly what we listen to at home.” The Stompers are currently recording their first four-track EP, set for release by the end of summer. Live, they keep the mood playful, encouraging audience members to jig along to the vintage sounds they revive from the past. “It’s just good music, and they’re all toetappers still. I just feel like it’s so natural to dance to this music,” said Vallard. “That kind of energy is something that we strive to put into our performances.” Ω

WILLIE NELSON

RESTAURANT ss BAR BAR CLUB ss RESTAURANT COMEDY COMEDY CLUB

State of music scene is sausage

VOTED BEST COMEDY CLUB BY THE SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW!

THURSDAY 8/1

RAY MOLINA

& FAMILY

FRIDAY 8/2 - SATURDAY 8/3 FROM WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY AND THE PRICE IS RIGHT!

WItH SPECIAL GUESt

DREW CAREY

The Wild Feathers

DAVE ANTHONY, BLAINE CAPATCH

platinum dust—with his reputation, Danceteria goes German: If your FRIDAY 8/2 • 10:15 PM but no label to call home. morning news traditionally begins AS SEEN ON LETTERMAN! After playing in his father Johnny with Gorilla vs. Bear before The MIKE E. Otis’ band in the 1980s, Shuggie New Yorker, and you weren’t at WINFIELD remained essentially forgotten LowBrau at least twice last week— until David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label specifically for Rainbow Arabia SUNDAY 8/4 reissued his 1974 LP Inspiration and Soft Metals—there’s a chance JHP SHOWCASE Information to renewed enthusiasm you’re a blog-gone hermit. THURSDAY 8/8 - SUNDAY 8/11 and acclaim. Find Otis in Midtown As part of Le Twist Tuesdays, the FROM IN LIVING COLOR AND SCARY MOVIE! this Thursday, August 1, at 7 p.m. at always free and hip-minded EDM KEENEN IVORY Harlow’s Restaurant and Nightclub night, Los Angeles’ Soft Metals WAYANS (2708 J Street). Tickets are $30; see played an industrial synth-wave set THURSDAY 8/15 SUNDAY 8/18 www.harlows.com for more info. spanning its self-titled debut and FROM 30 ROCK AND this year’s highly lauded Lenses SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE! Straight outta Chiraq: Kids these LP, both on Captured Tracks. Two TRACY MORGAN days, with their mixtapes and their TRENTON DAVIS days later, a $5 cover scored an rap tours. Chance the Rapper is a additional “danceteria” with the THURSDAY 8/22 - SUNDAY 8/25 20-year-old Chicago native whose dance-punk motorik of Seventeen FROM SHAQ’S ALL STAR COMEDY JAM AND BET’S COMIC VIEW! “early life” section of his Wikipedia Evergreen and Rainbow Arabia’s GARY OWEN page goes all the way back to 2011. ever-entrancing disco-house elecRegardless of his age, his tronica. We’re supposed to be there FOLLOW US ON TWITTER! for the beer and brats, but LowBrau first mixtape 10 Day, created ;>0;;,9 *64 7<5*/305,:(* -(*,)662 *64 73:(* WWW.PUNCHLINESAC.COM during a 10-day suspension for as a music venue is rewiring the skipping school, garnered more mainframe of our long-stagnant than 500,000 downloads, showing music scene. CALL CLUB FOR SHOWTIMES: (916) 925-5500 2100 ARDEN WAY s IN THE HOWE ‘BOUT ARDEN SHOPPING CENTER the public-school system the true Remember the town meeting of 2 DRINK MINIMUM. 18 & OVER. I.D. REQUIRED. potential of truancy. Chance saw booking agents, venue owners and TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE CLUB BOX success at South By Southwest and promoters that mostly amounted OFFICE WITH NO SERVICE CHARGE. Lollapalooza before releasing his to dumping old baggage on the second mixtape this April, Acid floor—but no one offered to repack Rap, a 54-minute vicarious experiit, or better yet, burn it all and get ence of adolescence in staggeringly a new wardrobe? The state of the violent Chicago, delivered with a music scene was ugly back then. mix of emotional detachment, ennui Now, we have a sausage house thursdays and nostalgia. where the shows are free, the rock on live According to blog Crime in booking reflects an increasingly band kar aoke Chicago, 2,670 people were shot blogcentric savvy, and we’re not rock-n-roll // 9pm // FrEE down in the Windy City last being herded into a stank hole or Fri 8/2 year, numbers that have earned it gaudy ultra lounge after being JUkebox Johnny the sobriquet “Chiraq” and given groped like criminals to enjoy it. all reqUest covers Chance something to reflect on. The greatest reward, though, is the 9pm // $5 What Acid Rap lacks in straight patio, for it allows socialites an delivery or solidity it gains in outdoor space to blast their white sat 8/3 dream-state points andNEWS is a refreshnoise into the night sky rather thanNEWSPAPER: SAC & REVIEW clark reese ing step away from the overproannoy the devoted and honest who cd release party PUBLISH ducedDATE: beats and8/1/2013 simple hooks that came for the music. 9pm // $7 hip-hop top grossers The next time the music scene ART DUE: 7/29are want to be. sun 8/4 & mon 8/5 has a meeting of the minds, it better Radio-ready Chance is not, but he happy hoUr creates a sound and soundscape that CONTENT: PUNCHLINE come with big ideas, because what all day will likely translate into a creative, happened then doesn’t matter now. 4pm SIZE: 1.87” X 5.67” pulsing live show. This is a Midtown for visionaries. Catch him downtown thisPFEIFER (720) tues 8/6 239-3411 —Blake Gillespie ART PRODUCTION: SACHA Saturday, August 3, at 8 p.m. at gset NOTES: classic rock Assembly (1000 K Street). Tickets Find your inspiration info: Shuggie are $15 to $18; check out & blUes review Otis is one of those great musicians 8pm // FrEE www.assemblysacramento.com for of yore that fell through the cracks more info. of the music industry. His song Wed 8/7 —Julianna Boggs “Strawberry Letter 23” was covered doUglas & the fUrs by the Brothers Johnson and Jay shaner band produced by Quincy Jones in 1977, 9pm // $5 appearing on their platinum album Right on Time. It should have made UPcOMING sHOWs: Otis a star, but it left him in their 8/09: the silent comedy

wednesday, august 21 sacramento community center theater

BUDDY GUY WItH SPECIAL GUESt

14 YEAr OLD BLUES phENOM

qUINN SULLIvAN SAtURDAY, AUG 24tH RED LIoN HotEL

tICkEtS oN SALE FRIDAY 8/2 At 10AM PRE-SALE CoDE “MotHER”

SHUGGIE otIS

AUG 28 · HARLoWS

WANG CHUNG

PSYCHEDELIC FURS

AUG 4 · ASSEMBLY

AUG 31 · ASSEMBLY

LIvERS oF StEEL

tHE LoNE BELLoW

FEAtURING RECkLESS kELLY AUG 14 · HARLoWS

NEWS

FEATURE

STORY

ARTS&CULTURE

SEPt 4 · HARLoWS

MIkE StUD

JAkE SHIMABUkURo

kEIko MAtSUI

GoRDoN LIGHtFoot

AUG 15 · ASSEMBLY

SEPt 10 · CRESt tHEAtRE

oCt 2 · CRESt tHEAtRE

AUG 19 · HARLoWS

ED ASNER AS FDR Nov 4 CRESt tHEAtRE

908 K Street • sac 916.446.4361 wwwMarilynsOnK.com BEFORE

kYLE

AUG 1 · HARLoWS

FOR ALL TICKETS VISIT SBLENTERTAINMENT.COM AFTER

08.01.13

SN&R

02FRI

03SAT

Clark Reese

Kahali Oden

The Prince & Michael Experience with DJ Dave Paul

International Blues Music Day

Shine, 8 p.m., $5

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, 10 p.m., $10

Singer-songwriter Clark Reese and his band are a folk-meets-blues-meets-alternativemeets-early-1920s group. Reese plays guitar, drums, mandolin, banjo, harmonica and a bit of piano. Local musicians Andrew Little, Mark McCoubrey and Willie Condrey complete the band that formed in 2012, and their first album together, Control and Expectations, drops August 3. Opening the show is Sacramento singer-songwriter Thomas Hatch, who recently released The Earth & the Moon pt. 1, and traveling from FOLK/BLUES Texas on the western leg of her 2013 solo acoustic summer tour is Susanne Abbott. These three artists’ roots reach deep into folk, rock, country and blues. 1400 E Street, http://clarkanthonyreese.bandcamp.com.

—Trina L. Drotar

He’s a man with many names—Doey Rock, Mean Doe Green, Kahali Oden—but the local HIP-HOP rapper, whatever you want to call him, is the real deal. He mixes banging club beats with clever lyrics and, more recently, words that are truly open and honest. Oden’s new album It Ain’t My Fault (the first of three albums set to be released in the upcoming three months) talks a lot about his struggles with alcoholism. The album cover—an actual picture of him at 8 months old being fed beer by his father—is unsettling and poignant. Some folks have reacted as though it was advocating children drinking alcohol. It’s quite the opposite. 2708 J Street, www.facebook.com/doegreen.

—Aaron Carnes

Assembly, 10 p.m., $10 Allegedly, you can have too much of a good thing, but does a deejay spinning all Michael Jackson and Prince songs all night fall into that category? If it does, the blisters on your feet are but a pittance to pay for what promises to be a rug-cutting session of epic proportions. DJ Dave Paul DANCE (pictured) of San Francisco will spin tracks from both pop gods in addition to songs from the Jackson 5, Sheila E. and Vanity 6. All those marathon sessions of dancing to “P.Y.T.” and “Little Red Corvette” in your room by yourself are about to pay off. 1000 K Street, www.bombhiphop.com/PvsM.html.

—Deena Drewis

Lions Gate Hotel, 5 p.m. $25-$150 Blues music is one of the great quintessential American art forms, and it helped set the foundation for other musical genres such as rock, country and jazz to flourish internationally. This Saturday, the blues will be the star of an all-ages BLUES day of music featuring four bands: Island of Black and White (pictured), Earl Thomas and the Blues Ambassadors, Cole Fonseca and the Phoenix Jubilee, and the Candye Kane Band with Laura Chavez. The best part? Funds raised by the show will go toward sending the Sacramento Blues Society’s winning entrance into the 2014 International Blues Challenge in Memphis. 3410 Westover Street, www.sacblues.com.

—Jonathan Mendick

on new stands 09.12.13

38 | SN&R | 08.01.13

on new stands 09.12.13

BEST OF SACRAMENTO

2013

04SUN

The Cheeseballs

Masked Intruder

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, 10 p.m., $15 Look past the cheesy name and discover a cover band that morphs itself into whatever POP it needs to be and always involves the audience, whether its playing The Fillmore, a wedding or an ice-skating exhibition. The Cheeseballs doesn’t cover one act or genre. The troupe plays rock, disco, 1980s hits and the current top 40. This group of seven, which includes three primary lead singers and some very flashy clothes, crosses all genres and covers Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” and Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)” with equal aplomb. Bring some dancing shoes and identification for this 21-and-over event. 2708 J Street, www.cheeseballs.com.

PHoTo by KATiE HovLAND

03SAT

07WED

08THURS

Panteón Rococó

Captured! By Robots

Luigi’s Fun Garden, 7 p.m., $10

Ace of Spades, 7 p.m., $25

There’s more than one reason to show up to this all-ages event. One: To see the Fat Wreck Chords label’s power-pop four-piece Masked Intruder. And two: Just for showing up, you qualify for a chance to win free passes to this year’s Punch and Pie Fest 2, taking place August 21 through August 25. Self-described as the “best pop-punk band you hope never gets out of prison,” Masked Intruder further adds to its gimmick by sporting colorful ski masks (red, yellow, blue and green)—all with coordinating Chucks. Also on the stage will be the Sacramento punk band the Secretions, POWER POP and Elway and Sam Russo of Red Scare Industries. 1050 20th Street, Suite 150; www.facebook.com/maskedintruder.

—Trina L. Drotar

The Press Club, 8 p.m., $5

Mexico City legends Panteón Rococó will stop by Ace of Spades on its tour across North America. After more than a decade and nine releases, Panteón Rococó defies as many labels as it embraces. Don’t forget your zapatos de baile for a caliente whirlwind of ska, punk, reggae, mariachi and salsa. Dr. Shenka’s vocals will cure SKA your Wednesday-night doldrums. Mexican indie surf rockers Lost Acapulco will warm up the crowd with their signature mosh-worthy tunes and luchador masks. Ace of Spades will need to stock up on tequila to keep up with Panteón Rococó and Lost Acapulco’s fan base. 1417 R Street, www.panteonrococo.com.

—Cody Drabble

just announced - August 14 -

Livers of steeL tour Featuring Reckless Kelly $20ADV • 8pm

- August 7 -

shuggie otis Dinner Show $30ADV • 5:30pm

crossing the river DA Project • Guero $5ADV • 8pm - August 9 -

- August 3 -

youth Lagoon

the cheesebaLLs

NEWS

- August 16 -

fiLLigar w/ Torches $10ADV • 7pm All Ages

$15ADV • 8:30pm - August 11 -

$5ADV • 8pm

TIARAS (ex-Ganglians) Roxanne (of The Sandwitches)

$15 • 9pm

BEFORE

CFR • Tao Jiriki

- August 8 -

C-Plus • Riz $10ADV • 9pm

the beLL boys

Moksha

be brave boLd robot

Craig D’Andrian • Adrian Bellue $15ADV • 6pm

- August 2 -

Jesi naomi & The Trippers $8 • 7pm

- August 15 -

antoine dufour

- August 1 -

- August 4 -

—Aaron Carnes

—Steph Rodriguez

2708 J Street Sacramento, CA 916.441.4693 www.harlows.com

doey rock

The story of Captured! By Robots goes: Man builds robots. Robots come to life. Robots enslave man, forcing him to tour NOISE-PUNK the country as they spew hatred at all of humanity. In short, it’s an odd show. And, yes, it really is just one human and a bunch of robots onstage performing. The music falls in the noise-punk-metal category, but really, it’s the live show that’s where it’s at. Currently, Captured! By Robots is on its C!BR Is Trippin’ Balls tour, which is an attempt to make the show more like an acid trip, or at least to show what it’s like when robots go through an acid trip. 2030 P Street, www.capturedbyrobots.com.

Coming Soon Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 25 Aug 27 Aug 28 Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug 30 Aug 31 Sep 03 Sep 05 Sep 06 Sep 09 Sep 10 Sep 11 Sep 12

Midnight Players Keiko Matsui Brothers Comatose Selah Sue Andrew Belle Deerhunter KYLE Casey Abrams Ben Solee Bumptet Tipsy Hustlers Ottmar Liebert The Dodos / Two Sheds Tainted Love Tab Benoit Moondoggies Cheryl Wheeler Orgone / Monophonics

- August 16 -

aLkahoLiks

For Sayle • Freeport

HArLOWSniTECLuB HArLOWSnigHTCLuB

Casual • Cali Agents $15ADV • 10pm

HArLOWSnigHTCLuB

$5ADV • 6pm • All Ages

F E AT U R E

STORY

| A R T S & C U L T U R E

AFTER

| 08.01.13

SN&R

NIGHTBEAT

THURSDAY 8/1

ASSEMBLY

1000 K St., (916) 832-4751

List your event!

Post your free online listing (up to 15 months early), and our editors will consider your submission for the printed calendar as well. Print listings are also free, but subject to space limitations. Online, you can include a full description of your event, a photo, and a link to your website. Go to www.newsreview.com/calendar and start posting events. Deadline for print listings is 10 days prior to the issue in which you wish the listing to appear.

BADLANDS

SUNDAY 8/4

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 8/5-8/7

CHANCE, J.SIRUS; 8pm, $15

WANG CHUNG, 9pm, $25

CARSON ALLEN, 7:30pm W, $5

Sin Sunday, 8pm, call for cover

Mad Mondays, 9pm M; Latin video flair and Wii bowling, 7pm Tu; Trapacana, W

Tipsy Thursdays, Top 40 deejay dancing, 9pm, call for cover

Fabulous and Gay Fridays, 9pm, call for cover

Saturday Boom, 9pm, call for cover

BLUE LAMP

THE SESSION, 9pm, call for cover

STRANGELOVE, 9pm, call for cover

CARDBOARD RINGO, MONOMYTH, RACE TO THE BOTTOM; 8:30pm

THE BOARDWALK

WITHOUT AN ANSWER, DECIPHER THE

AXIS, EDEN VIEW, HIGHWAY 12, LAST CALL, PRYLOSIS, STATIONARY; 8pm

MISERY SIGNALS, THE COLOR MORALE, ELITIST, THE KINDRED; 6pm, $12-$14

BOWS & ARROWS

DEAD WESTERN, COVE, HALCYONAIRE; 10pm, $5

1400 Alhambra, (916) 455-3400

9426 Greenback Ln., Orangevale; (916) 988-9247 FALLEN, CENTER OF OWN; 8pm 1815 19 St., (916) 822-5668

CENTER FOR THE ARTS

314 W. Main St., Grass Valley; (530) 274-8384

RANDY MCKEAN, GOGGLE QUARTET, COMA; 8pm W, $5

LORRAINE GERVAIS, 8pm, $22-$25

Community Music Jam, 6:30pm M, no cover

Open-mic, 7:30pm, no cover

JONNY MOJO, 8pm, $8

SIMMS BAND, 8pm, $5

DISTRICT 30

TOM SWOON, 9pm, call for cover

DJ PV, 9pm, call for cover

Deejay dancing, 9pm, call for cover

Hip-hop and Top 40 Deejay dancing, 9pm, $5-$10

THE AFTERLIFE, MISS MADDY’S F STREET STOMPERS; 9pm, $5

OL COTTON DREARY, SANDS, JUNE & JOHNNY NATION; 9pm, $5

594 Main St., Placerville; (530) 642-8481

2000 K St., (916) 448-7798

FOX & GOOSE

ODD OWL, JAY SHANER; 8pm, no cover

1001 R St., (916) 443-8825

G STREET WUNDERBAR HALFTIME BAR & GRILL

5681 Lonetree Blvd., Rocklin; (916) 632-8200 SHUGGIE OTIS, 7pm, $30

2708 J St., (916) 441-4693

DJs Benji & Luigi, 9pm W, call for cover Dragalicious, 9pm, $5

Queer Idol, 9pm M, no cover; Latin night, 9pm Tu, $5; DJ Alazzawi, 9pm W, $3 Open-mic, 7:30pm M; Pub Quiz, 7pm Tu; Northern Soul, 8pm W, no cover

22 KINGS, 10pm, no cover

228 G St., Davis; (530) 756-9227

HARLOW’S

GODDAM GALLOWS, 9pm W, call for cover

I.L.A.M., 7:30pm, $8

THE COZMIC CAFÉ

FACES

Hey local bands!

SATURDAY 8/3

The Prince & Michael Experience w/ DJ Dave Paul, 10pm, $10

2003 K St., (916) 448-8790

1016 K St., (916) 737-5770

Want to be a hot show? Mail photos to Calendar Editor, SN&R, 1124 Del Paso Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95815 or email it to sactocalendar@ newsreview.com. Be sure to include date, time, location and cost of upcoming shows.

FRIDAY 8/2

JASON BUELL, 9pm-midnight, no cover

DYER MAKER, 9pm-midnight, no cover

DOEY ROCK, 10pm, $10

THE CHEESEBALLS, 10pm, $15

Trivia night, 7:30-9pm Tu, no cover; Car show, 5-8pm W, no cover MOKSHA, JESI NAOMI AND THE TRIPPERS; 8pm, $8

ANTOINE DUFOUR, CRAIG D’ANDREA, ADRIAN BELLUE; 6pm W, $15

LUNA’S CAFÉ & JUICE BAR

Joe Montoya’s Poetry Unplugged, 8pm, $2

MARILYN’S ON K

“Rock On” Live Band Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

SAL VALENTINO, HENCE PHILLIPS, PARIE WOOD; 9pm, $10

CLARK REESE, 9pm, $7

NAKED LOUNGE DOWNTOWN

CLARK REESE, BAND BUTLER, HART BOTHWELL; 8:30pm, $5

HONYOCK, MADISON AVENUE, BETTER OFF BLUE; 8:30pm, $5

TJ MCNULTY, CHELSEA HUGHES, JIM RAINES; 8:30pm, $5

Jazz, 8pm M; BROKEN VOICE CLUB, MRS. HENRY, BASKET HOUSE; W, $5

OLD IRONSIDES

1901 10th St., (916) 442-3504

JENN ROGAR, 5pm, no cover; Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

MAJOR POWERS AND THE LO-FI SYMPHONY, SPIDER HEART; 9pm, $5

Lipstick Weekender w/ DJs Shaun Slaughter and Roger Carpio, 9:30pm, $5

Karaoke w/ Sac City Entertainment, 9pm Tu, no cover; Open-mic, 9pm W, no cover

THE PALMS PLAYHOUSE

PATRICE PIKE, 8pm, $15

JIMMY THACKERY & THE DRIVERS, 8:30pm, $20

1414 16th St., (916) 441-3931 908 K St., (916) 446-4361 1111 H St., (916) 443-1927

13 Main St., Winters; (530) 795-1825

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Nebraska Mondays, 7:30pm M, $5-$20; Comedy night, 8pm W, $6

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BILL MYLAR, 5pm, call for cover

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WANTED: NEW TATTOO ARTIST

Youth Art Exhibit • 5k Run • Walk Contests Live Music • Great Food • Vendors Pancake Tickets purchased on Eventbrite or at event Event details at bananafestival.sojoarts.net Saturday, Aug 10th 10am–7pm & Sunday Aug. 11th 10am–5pm Village Green in William Land Park Come try the Banana Fritters!

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502 29th St., (916) 446-3624

PINS N STRIKES

3443 Laguna Blvd., Elk Grove; (916) 226-2625

PJ’S ROADHOUSE

5461 Mother Lode, Placerville; (530) 626-0336 614 Sutter St., Folsom; (916) 355-8586

No Diggity: ‘90s Night, 9pm, no cover

2030 P St., (916) 444-7914

SAMMY’S ROCKIN’ ISLAND

238 Vernon St., Roseville; (916) 773-7625

SHENANIGANS

705 J St., (916) 442-1268

Comedy Night and DJ Selekta Lou, 9pm, $5

SOL COLLECTIVE

Skratch Pad, 9pm, call for cover

2574 21st St., (916) 832-0916

SOPHIA’S THAI KITCHEN 129 E St., Davis; (530) 758-4333

STONEY INN/ROCKIN’ RODEO

GEORGIA RAIN, 8pm, $5

1320 Del Paso Blvd., (916) 927-6023

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5871 Garden Hwy, (916) 920-8088

TORCH CLUB

X TRIO, 5pm, no cover; CHRIS ZANARDI & HIS HIGH BEAMZ, 9pm, $5

904 15th St., (916) 443-2797

SUNDAY 8/4

DJ Eddie Edul, 9pm, call for cover

DJ Peeti V, 9pm-2am, $15

Asylum Downtown: Gothic, industrial, EBM dancing, 9pm, call for cover

Karaoke, 9pm-1:30am, no cover

Karaoke,9pm-1:30am, no cover

CLEAN SLATE, 9pm, $10

SOLSA, 9pm, $10

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 8/5-8/7

Battle of the Musicians, 9:30pm Tu; Open-mic, 10pm Tu; Trivia, 9pm W

MELONNEE DESIREE & CAUZIN’ A RUCKUS, 9pm, $5

DJ Michael Johnson, 9pm, no cover

POWERHOUSE PUB THE PRESS CLUB

SATURDAY 8/3

TAINTED LOVE, 10pm, $15

SIERRA LEONE’S REFUGEE ALL STARS, ROY ROGERS, 3pm, call for cover 8:30pm; ZUHG, DANNY SECRETION; 10pm

Country Karaoke, 9pm M, call for cover; DJ Alazzawi, DJ Rigatony; 10pm Tu, $3

Top 40 w/ DJ Rue, 9pm, $5

Top 40 Night w/ DJ Larry Rodriguez, 9pm, $5

BE BRAVE BOLD ROBOT, THE KITCHEN, SAFE WORD; 8pm M, $5

THE TONE MONKEYS, 10pm, $5

REBEL YELL, 10pm, $5

Sunday Night Soul Party, 9pm, $5

DJs Gnarwal, Isturite, Lazer Tooth and Freddy Silva, 9pm, $5-$10

Parie Wood with Erin & Naomi and Ben Perry 8pm Saturday, $5. Shine Alt-folk

Blinded by Laughter w/ DJ Oasis and JG Madeumlook, 8pm-2am W, $10-$15 BATHYSPHERE, T-SHIRT TUXEDO; 6:30pm, $11-$13

Microphone Mondays, 6pm M, $1-$2; Liberation Permaculture, 6pm Tu

DOE EYE, CITY LIGHT, JARED CACHO; 9:30pm, $5

ADVENTURE GALLEY, BEHIND SAPPHIRE; 9:30pm, $5

Open-mic, 8pm W, no cover

Country dancing, 7:30pm, no cover; $5 after 8pm

Country dance party, 8pm, no cover

NIGHT MOVES, 7-10pm, $5

MACH 5, PLAYBACK; 3:30-9:30pm, $5

RENEGADE, 3-7pm, $5

PAILER AND FRATIS, 5:30-7:30pm, no cover; HARPER, 9pm, $10

JOHNNY KNOX, 5pm, no cover; MERCY ME!, 9pm, $12

Blues jam,4pm, no cover; TESS MARIE & THE POOR MAN BAND, 8pm, $8

Comedy open-mic, 8pm M; Bluebird Lounge open-mic, 5pm Tu, no cover

LEW FRATIS, 9pm Tu, $5; Open-mic, 5:30pm W; HOWELL DEVINE, 9pm W, $5

All ages, all the time ACE OF SPADES

J BOOG & HOT RAIN, AARADHNA; 6:30pm, $22

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DOGFOOD, ELEMENT OF SOUL, HUMBLE ONE MORE TIME, BLACKHEART; 8pm, WOLF, THE THREE WAY; 6:30pm, $10 $12

COFFEE GARDEN

2904 Franklin Blvd., (916) 457-5507

LUIGI’S SLICE AND FUN GARDEN BASKET HOUSE, SEACATS; 8pm, $5

1400 E St., (916) 551-1400

OCTOBER GOLD, 8pm, no cover

SHANI, MARTIN PURTILL; 8pm W, no cover

PARIE WOOD, ERIN & NAOMI, BEN PERRY; 8pm, $5

Open jazz jam w/ Jason Galbraith & Friends, 8pm Tu, no cover

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars 8:30pm Saturday, call for cover. PowerHouse Pub Reggae and afrobeat

EXQUISITE CORPS, MISTER LOVELESS, GHOSTPLAY; 8pm, $5

1050 20th St., (916) 552-0317

SHINE

PANTEON ROCOCO, LOST ACAPULCO; 7pm W, $25

CLARK REESE, SUSANNE ABBOTT, THOMAS HATCH; 8pm, $5

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ALL AGES WELCOME!

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08/20 08/21 08/24 08/24 08/28 08/31 09/05 09/06 09/11 09/12 09/13 09/14 09/19 09/21 09/25 09/28 10/01 10/03 10/04 10/22 10/25 10/26 11/11 11/14 12/08 12/11

Queensryche Animals As Leaders The Melvins Kill The Pecedent Gary Numan The Acacia Strain Launch Festival Kick-Off Party Bam Margera Adam Ant The Slackers Steel Panthers Dizzy Wright Iration IAMSU! TechN9ne Frightened Rabbit Between the Buried and Me Twiztid Senses Fail Streetlight Manifesto Parmalee Jonny Craig Clutch Misfits Metalachi Blood on the Dance Floor

Tickets available at all Dimple Records Locations, The Beat Records, and Armadillo Records, or purchase by phone @ 916.443.9202 BEFORE

NEWS

FEATURE

STORY

A RT S & C U LT U R E

AFTER

08.01.13

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Pens and e-highs Is California really gonna outlaw vapor pens? —Vinny the Vapor The state isn’t trying to outlaw vapor pens: It is trying to keep you from using your pen indoors. California Senate Bill 648 would treat using an electronic cigarette or vapor pen just like a real cigarette, making it a misdemeanor to vaporize in nonapproved areas. No more vaping at the movies or on the elevator or at your desk at work. This bill is ostensibly aimed at the e-cigarette industry, but EALUM B IO A cannabis users also have skin in the game. G N by The California branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws issued a letter to the Assembly, stating that S.B. 648 “would adversely a sk420 @ n ewsreview.c om impact public health by discouraging safer alternatives to smoking. ‘Medical cannabis users already find it difficult to find a legal place to medicate under current anti-smoking laws,’ says California NORML Director Dale Gieringer. ‘Precluding the use of vaporizers will only make matters worse. The state should encourage, not discourage, the substitution of vaporizers and e-cigarettes for smoking.’” I can see both sides. People love the convenience of being able to “light up” without having to stand in the wind and rain. But for other people, the idea of anyone doing drugs in their vicinity is upsetting. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the Committee on Governmental Operations on Wednesday, August 7. Call or email your representative if you have an opinion. I would like to start a collection of books about marijuana. Where should I start? —Billy Budd the Bookworm Good question. There are oodles of good books about weed. I know I mention Jack Herer’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes every eight columns or so, but it’s one of the best books about the history of weed ever. When it comes to books about growing weed, I like The Secrets of the West Coast Masters by Dru West, Marijuana Buds for Less from Ed Rosenthal and Marijuana Outdoors; Guerilla Gardening by Jorge Cervantes. If you like the picture books, check out the offerings at Green Candy Press (www.greencandypress.com) and Rosenthal’s Quick Trading Company (www.quick trading.com). Dank 2.0, from renowned West Coast cannabis cultivator Subcool, is especially good. Wait. I just used the Internet to look for books about weed, and it turns out that Amazon.com has a pretty good list. I may not agree with the order, but I like all the books on the list. Look it up. Enjoy yourself. Ngaio Bealum is a Sacramento comedian, activist and marijuana expert. Email him questions at ask420@ newsreview.com.

BEFORE

Have the feds figured out what they are going to do about Washington and Colorado? —Curious Sam Not yet. However, on July 21, the California Democratic Party passed a resolution asking the feds to leave Washington and Colorado alone. To wit: “The California Democratic Party requests: President [Barack] Obama to allow the newly enacted marijuana legalization laws in Colorado and Washington to go into effect with no federal interference.” This is awesome sauce with hash on it. The fact that a mainstream political party has passed a resolution supporting marijuana means we are winning. Ω

NEWS

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STORY

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ARIES (March 21-April 19): To add zest

to mealtime, you might choose food that has been seasoned with red chili peppers, cumin or other piquant flavors. Some chimpanzees have a similar inclination, which is why they like to snack on red fire ants. Judging from the astrological omens, I’m guessing you are currently in a phase when your attraction to spicy things is at a peak—not just for dinner but in other areas of your life, as well. I have a suggestion: Pursue rowdy fun with adventures that have metaphorical resemblances to red chili peppers, but stay away from those that are like red fire ants.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The 19th-

century English artist John Constable specialized in painting landscapes. The countryside near his home especially excited him. He said, “The sound of water escaping from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things. They made me a painter, and I am grateful.” Take a cue from Constable, Taurus. Spend quality time appreciating the simple scenes and earthy pleasures that nourish your creative spirit. Give your senses the joy of getting filled up with vivid impressions. Immerse yourself in experiences that thrill your animal intelligence.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): This is

Grand Unification Week for you Geminis. If your left hand has been at war with your right hand, it’s a perfect moment to declare a truce. If your head and heart have not been seeing eye to eye, they are ready to find common ground and start conspiring together for your greater glory. Are there any rips or rifts in your life? You will generate good fortune for yourself if you get to work on healing them. Have you been alienated from an ally, or are you at odds with a beloved dream or separated from a valuable resource? You have a lot of power to fix glitches like those.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In an

episode of the TV show Twin Peaks, special agent Dale Cooper gives the following advice to his colleague Harry: “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it, just let it happen.” Now I’m passing this advice on to you, Cancerian. It’s a perfect time for you to try out this fun game. You are in a phase of your astrological cycle when you’ll be wise to intensify your commitment to self-care—and deepen your devotion to making yourself feel good—and increase your artistry at providing yourself with everything you need to thrive.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Sergei Diaghilev

was a Russian ballet impresario who founded Ballets Russes, one of the 20th century’s great ballet companies. At one point in his career, he met French playwright Jean Cocteau. Diaghilev dared Cocteau to write a piece for a future Ballets Russes production. “Astonish me!” he said. It took seven years, but Cocteau met the challenge. He created Parade, a ballet that also featured music by Eric Satie and sets by Pablo Picasso. Now, let’s pretend I’m Diaghilev, and you’re Cocteau. Imagine that I’ve just told you, “Astonish me!” How will you respond? What surprising beauty will you come up with? What marvels will you unleash?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Since 1948,

the chemical known as warfarin has been used as a pesticide to poison rats. Beginning in 1954, it also became a medicine prescribed to treat thrombosis and other blood ailments in humans. Is there anything in your own life that resembles warfarin? A person or an asset or an activity that can either be destructive or constructive, depending on the situation? The time will soon be right for you to employ that metaphorical version of warfarin in both capacities. Make sure you’re very clear about which is which.

bRezsny

from your heart as more trustworthy than any other part of you—wiser than your head and your gut and your genitals put together.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The holy

grail of skateboarding tricks is called the 1080. To pull it off, a skateboarder has to do three complete 360-degree revolutions in midair and land cleanly. No one had ever pulled it off until 12-year-old Tom Schaar did it in 2012. Since then, two other teenage boys have managed the same feat. But I predict that a Scorpio skateboarder will break the record sometime soon, managing a 1260, or three-and-a-half full revolutions. Why? First, because your tribe is unusually geared to accomplish peak performances right now. And second, you have a knack for doing complex maneuvers that require a lot of concentration.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

Can you think of ways that you have been colonized? Have any powerful institutions filled up your brain with ideas and desires that aren’t in alignment with your highest values? For instance, has your imagination gotten imprinted with conditioning that makes you worry that your body’s not beautiful enough or your bank account’s not big enough or your style isn’t cool enough? If so, Sagittarius, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to get uncolonized. There has rarely been a better time than now to purge any brainwashing that puts you at odds with your deepest self.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): An

old Chinese poem tells us that “the true measure of a mountain’s greatness is not its height but whether it is charming enough to attract dragons.” You and I know there are no such things as dragons, so we can’t take this literally. But what if we treat it as we might a fairy tale? I suggest we draw a metaphorical meaning from it and apply it to your life. Let’s say that you shouldn’t be impressed with how big and strong anything is; you shouldn’t give your mojo to people or institutions simply because they have worldly power. Rather, you will be best served by aligning yourself with what’s mysterious and fabulous. You’re more likely to have fun and generate good fortune for yourself by seeking out stories that appeal to your soul instead of your ego.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The

questions you have been asking aren’t terrible. But they could be formulated better. They might be framed in such a way as to encourage life to give you crisp insights you can really use rather than what you’ve been getting lately, which are fuzzy conjectures that are only partially relevant. Would you like some inspiration? See if any of these inquiries help hone your spirit of inquiry. 1. What kind of teacher or teaching do you need the most right now? 2. What part of you is too tame, and what can you do about it? 3. What could you do to make yourself even more attractive and interesting to people than you already are? 4. What is the pain that potentially has the most power to awaken your dormant intelligence?

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “There

are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.” So says Ishmael, the hero of Herman Melville’s 19th-century novel Moby Dick. He is ostensibly referring to whale hunting, which is his job, but some modern critics suggest he’s also talking about the art of storytelling. I suspect his statement applies to a certain enterprise you are currently engaged in as well. Can you wrap your mind and heart around the phrase “careful disorderliness,” Pisces? I hope so, because I think it’s the true method. Here are some other terms to describe it: benevolent chaos, strategic messiness, purposeful improvisation, playful experiments.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “My heart

was a hysterical, unreliable organ,” wrote Vladimir Nabokov in his novel Lolita. We have all gone through phases when we could have uttered a similar statement. But I doubt that this is one of those times for you, Libra. On the contrary. I suspect your heart is very smart right now— poised and lucid and gracious. In fact, I suggest you regard the messages coming

BEFORE

NEWS

pHoTo BY CodY dRABBlE

by Rob

For the week of August 1, 2013

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.

F E AT U R E

STORY

Painted dream Sacramento artist Susan J. Silvester’s current show at Gallery 21Ten—a series of paintings, digital illustrations and felt figures—leaves the viewer feeling lost in the woods of a dream, wondering who or what is watching over his or her shoulder. See Silvester’s work at the gallery, located at 2110 K Street, through August 3.

How was it working on Pee-wee’s Playhouse? I started in the first year, when they got all the awards [in 1986]. I met [Paul Reubens] many times. ... I worked on the “Penny” cartoons with Nick Park and, specifically, the opening credits. All the animals you see there are things I sculpted: the beaver, the deer, the birds, the monkeys, the little squirrels and the Pee-wee that walked under the little house. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was a great experience. It’s one of the best jobs I ever had.

Tell me about working on the Back to the Future: The Ride at Universal Studios Florida. I created more toxic waste than anyone could ever imagine. I was feeling guilty at the time: The man who came [to work on it] was wheezing, he had bad skin, while he sprayed this stuff onto the tree forms that we made. There’s a set that had a dinosaur in it, and I built that set. I think it was 30 feet by 70 feet. It was huge, with these forms painted with this disgusting material. I filled a Hudson sprayer with paint—it was so much fun spraying it all.

Describe the first time you went to a gallery and it changed your perspective. I was about 16. My dad brought us to see the [Marcel] Duchamp exhibit. We drove from New York to Pennsylvania to see “Étant |

A RT S & C U LT U R E

donnés.” It’s this one where you’re a peeping Tom. You actually look through a little hole and see a woman that’s naked. It’s a sculpture that has pig skin, so it’s very realistic. It was shocking, and I didn’t realize that was art.

Where do your ideas come from? I think of a story in my head, and it just unfolds. I don’t plan it. These are places that I live in, and I go there in my head until I become part of that place.

What about medieval painting excites you? It’s so alien, so different from the way we see things. But it’s also beautiful at the same time. The colors were very jewel-like when they painted; they used really pure blues and reds and golds.

Which contemporary artists do you follow? In Sacramento, I love Gale Hart’s work. She shows at the Elliott Fouts Gallery. Outside of Sacramento, Laura Owens is who I looked at when I was in school. She’s a printmaker and a painter. She did this giant monkey thing that showed me I could do whatever I wanted. Peter Doig is an amazing painter; I love his work, too.

What musical mixtape should people listen to while looking at your work? Cat Power. I listen to Lily Allen and Kate Nash. A lot of women singers. I like the female voice.

Why is the subject wearing faux fur in “Faux Furry Things”? I’m vegetarian, and I like to think of [the child’s costume] as faux. I don’t want to think of the idea of skinning anything. |

AFTER

I wanted to imply that they’re not, since I’m vegetarian; I just wanted to spout my own views about these things.

Before starting a painting or series, do you follow a ritual? I have to clean up and start fresh. When I’m starting a new series, everything has to be organized. I clean my space and think about the piece. I have to get into a quiet place, and if there’s chaos, [it distracts me]. I’m very visual.

Where do you begin with a new painting? I work the whole painting. When I bring stuff up, there’s a point where everything is sort of blocked in, and then I start going into some detail, then more detail, and then finally, I’ll do the face. If you finish [an element] too soon, you may change it a million times. As a painter, you really should, to me, work the whole painting. Pull back, get a whole feel for it, make sure the structure is working.

How does the felt sculpture fit into your series? These felt sculptures are the outcome of all this painting. I was laid up with my back, and I couldn’t paint. I was just so frustrated. You take the felt off a big skein, and then you fold it, roll it and start pouncing on it with this barbed needle. It really hurts when you stab yourself. It’s very strange, and I’m very new to it, but I love it. It’s so much fun—a great contrast to painting. It’s scalable, too: I have visions of working on pieces that are half-life-sized. I like the idea of setting them up in an environment with digital pieces behind it for a diorama effect. Ω Find out more about Susan J. Silvester at www.susansilvester.com.

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