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22

Breaking binge A friend recently shared that, because they’re so used to binge viewing episodes on Netflix, Breaking Bad “isn’t any good” now that they’re forced to watch the final season in weekly doses.

That’s messed up—but I kind of agree.

Not unlike the self-satisfaction arrived at shoveling down a dozen Jimboy’s tacos, binge viewing is blissful. Sure, it’s pathogenic—and, yeah, my predilection for mass-consumption of TV probably stems from my mom’s strict monitoring thereof as a kid—but it feels so healthy.

I’ll tread lightly on the spoilers.

But let’s just say I’d rather eat ricin than wait six more weeks to discover Walter White’s fate. Because it’s not really TV if it’s not a season of Friday Night Lights in a single Friday night. Who has the time to twiddle thumbs over jejune Breaking Bad cliff-hangers? What’s Jesse Pinkman gonna do next week? I bet he gets his act together and Netflixes Orange Is the New Black.

The TV binging is so bad, my Breaking withdrawals lead to spoiler websites, so I can sate that craving to find out what happens next.

Pathetic. We all know uncontrollable binge viewing is not without long-game complications: obesity, diabetes, heart disease—just like binge eating and drinking. But I’m less worried about dying from cardiac arrest before Hank finally puts Walt behind bars, and more concerned about ruining good things.

As a binge culture that can’t get its face out of Facebook, each bingification summons a little devastation.

Just like those of us who think one of TV’s best serial dramas is no longer “any good” simply because we can’t have it now. What else does our orgy culture lay to waste?

I wouldn’t know, because I spent the last three hours on Twitter.

05 07 11 17 18 22 25 27 33 34 36 38 51

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“I do Google embarrassing baby stuff: babies, constipation, ... poop color.”

Asked at 20th and J streets:

What do you wish you could hide from the NSA?

JT Kelley

Ray Grogan

Christian Villero

barista and stand-up comic

student

Which music I download.

It’s not like Aesop Rock or Kid Cudi. It’s like Miley Cyrus’ new song about her doing cocaine. I’m jamming to that shit right now. Rihanna’s song “Stay” makes me want to cry. I don’t want them to know about that. I wish they just saw, like, country music and rock ’n’ roll.

self-employed

My nude pictures.

Seriously.

I’ve paid a lot of attention to this [National Security Agency] thing going on. ... As far as search history ... [there’s] a lot of adult entertainment. But I don’t really care. I don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. It upsets me more that it’s even happening. ... My Facebook is pretty clean. I’m pretty boring in that aspect.

Kate Soltero

Christopher Cabaldon

social worker

Nicole Valdez

mayor of West Sacramento

I’m uncomfortable with it in general. I do Google embarrassing baby stuff: babies, constipation, “my baby’s not talking enough,” poop color. ... I’m pretty political. Organizations will send me emails, so they’d probably decide I’m a terrorist. I’ll look up why are they doing so many drone strikes, stuff like that.

Nothing. I’m not entitled to any privacy, anyway, so my strategy is to [be] open for all to see. I’m in public office, so it’s just easier to say everything, so that nobody can say, “See, he’s trying to hide this. That one time he was dancing without a shirt on,” and I’m like, “No, no, I already showed you that. That’s not news.”

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I don’t think there’s anything embarrassing.

I Google stuff all the time.

The only thing I look up excessively would be tattoos. I have just one big one, but I want so many of them.

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Email your letters to sactoletters@newsreview.com.

SN&R wrong on NSA surveillance Re “NSA surveillance necessary” (SN&R Editorial, August 15): I think that you’ve completely missed the point. We don’t know whether this kind of surveillance is necessary or not, because the government hid the program and then lied about it, and continues to lie about it. You swallowed the 54-terroristthreats myth hook, letter of line and sinker. Many the week reputable news sources have discounted this statistic. ... Our government is out of control, and we seem helpless to bring it under control.

That is the point. If the government actually felt and had proof that the program was necessary, they could have explained that to the American people and gained their support. That they lied and continue to lie about it says that they know this is not true—rather, that it is an unacceptable intrusion on our freedom that would not be tolerated by the American people.

Dan Allison

S acr am en t o

Damaging to democracy

Weed in West Sac

Re “NSA surveillance necessary” (SN&R Editorial, August 15): Perhaps you should stick to subjects you have expertise in, like Sacramento food and music. Clearly, you haven’t stayed up-to-date in the [National Security Agency] spying revelations when writing your courageous, unsigned editorial. ...

You state that wiretapping is not happening without court approval. As we have learned, court approval is often overbroad. Court approval can often target keywords or behaviors, rather than just individuals. Edward Snowden said, “I, sitting at my desk could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.”

And speaking of courts, should we actually be satisfied with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? They are a secret court, and have denied only 11 out of over 33,000 requests since 1979. One such request, renewed every three months, gives access to all call records from Verizon, foreign and domestic. ...

Do some research before you put ink to paper on issues that matter again. Your misinformation is damaging to democracy.

Stu Chuang Matthews via email

Re “What’s up with West Sacramento’s outdoor medical-marijuana garden ban?” by Ngaio Bealum (SN&R The 420, August 8): Ngaio Bealum states, “[C]ities shouldn’t be able to ban a small medical garden.” I won’t even go into the subject of how most “gardens”—at least in my neck of the woods—have nothing to do with medicine or with being small. I also find it a curious statement, given California is skirting federal law. I guess Ngaio and his buds (pun intended) are lucky the feds don’t say, “States shouldn’t be able to ignore federal law regardless of what the citizens of those states want.” That argument can cut both ways, my friend.

Enjoy your weed!

Jack Hamlin via email

Forget arena nonsense Re “Sacramento should vote on the arena” (SN&R Editorial, August 1): Some weeks back, I signed a petition demanding that the proposed new downtown arena be put to a vote by the citizens of Sacramento. I signed on because I see that as a basic principle,

before our elected officials commit to a project of this magnitude, we the people should have an opportunity to have our voices heard.

Now there’s a campaign to get people who signed that petition to withdraw their signatures. ... Yesterday, someone left a slick, full-color door hanger [flier] on my door, urging me to withdraw my signature from the original petition, and included a postcard I could send in to do so. The name of the sponsoring organization is given as “DowntownArena.org,” but who is that? It couldn’t have been cheap to print up thousands of these fancy door hangers and distribute them all over the city, so there must be some deep pockets behind this effort, too, but I don’t see them putting their names out in public.

So, let’s forget all this nonsense about who funded which petition for what motives, and stick to the point: Should the citizens of Sacramento have a say in whether the city moves forward with this enormous and controversial project? I think we should.

David Urman via email

@SacNewsReview

Facebook.com/ SacNewsReview

@SacNewsReview

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building a

HealtHy S a c r a m e n t o

taking a Stand

School district combats bullying with prevention program by m i k e b lo u n t

a

s many as half of all children are bullied at some point during their school years, according to a study by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and 52 percent of students reported they had been bullied online, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center.

Teachers and faculty at Sacramento City Unified School District, along with key community members, hope to put an end to this pervasive problem in Sacramento schools through an anti-bullying program implemented in 2011.

“If wE wanT TO gET TO THE aCadEmIC wOrk, wE nEEd kIdS TO BE aBlE TO fOCuS, and THEy Can’T fOCuS In an EnvIrOnmEnT wHErE THEy arE fEElIng frIgHTEnEd, dISrESpECTEd Or THEy’rE nOT SHOwIng up fOr ClaSS BECauSE THEy dOn’T fEEl SafE.” lawrence Shweky, coordinator of integrated support services The program is partly funded by the Building Healthy Communities Grant of The California Endowment, a 10-year initiative to promote healthier neighborhoods throughout the state.

As the coordinator of integrated support services for Sacramento City USD, Lawrence Shweky oversees a variety of programs to support students social and emotional needs, including the anti-bullying program. Shweky says at its core, the program aims to promote an overall climate of respect and inclusion beginning in elementary school through high school.

“We’re in about nine schools now with our curriculum called Steps to Respect, and we’re going to be adding four more and increase it each year” Shweky says. “Working with kids at early ages and helping them learn respectful behaviors, inclusive behaviors, how to negotiate conflict — that’s all of the basic elements of bullying prevention.”

within the community. One of the largest at-risk populations for school bullying is the LGBT community, and to help prevent bullying of those students, Sacramento City USD is supporting the development of gay-straight alliance clubs within schools.

“If we want to get to the academic work, we need kids to be able to focus, and they can’t focus in an environment where they are feeling frightened, disrespected or they’re not showing up for class because they don’t feel safe,” Shweky explains. “I think this is among one of the most important goals we have as educators.”

Shweky says Steps to Respect largely consists of scripted curriculum that teachers follow and exercise-based scenarios that students take part in to help raise awareness and assist them in their decision making. Shweky says students are given an opportunity to share their own personal stories and build bridges and relationships with their classmates. The curriculum is spread out over 20 weeks for about two hours a week.

BuIldIng HEalTHy COmmunITIES In 2010, The California Endowment launched a 10-year, $1 billion plan to improve the health of 14 challenged communities across the state. Over the 10 years, residents, community-based organizations and public institutions will work together to address the socioeconomic and environmental challenges contributing to the poor health of their communities. lawrence Shweky speaks with a student about Steps to respect, a new anti-bullying program at Sacramento City unified School district.

Teaching young students about respectful behaviors helps to prevent bullying. photo by mike Blount

Students also have access to a hotline they can call to anonymously report bullying on or off campus. Faculty encourage parents, students and community members to call the hotline and help prevent students from suffering prolonged harassment and damage to their reputation.

Shweky adds that a large part of bullying prevention also relies on developing partnerships

your ZiP code shouldn’t predict how long you’ll live – but it does. Staying healthy requires much more than doctors and diets. Every day, our surroundings and activities affect how long – and how well – we’ll live.

Health Happens in neighborhoods. Health Happens in Schools.

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Phonies and bagmen See BITES

See GREENLIGHT

16

17

Climate-change reality check See EDITORIAL

PHOTO BY STACY SWINEHEART

15

War on drugs reform

Budget cuts and state-park bushwhacking The feds sliced and diced funding, and now California’s wilderness and outdoors reveal years of neglect Summer is winding down, but if you’re planning on making one or more trips to California by wilderness areas before Labor Day, be Robert Gammon forewarned: Years of budget cutbacks have delivered a serious blow to our state and national parks.

Things have gotten so bad that many wilderness areas are now difficult to explore, because hiking trails have become choked with poison oak and other vegetation. In some of the more remote spots, hiking on trails that were once well-maintained is now more akin to bushwhacking.

In short, California’s wildlands, once the envy of a nation, are growing increasingly hard to enjoy.

Sequestration—the across-the-board federal budget cuts that took effect earlier this year—added to the woes of national parks, in particular.

According to U.S. National Park Service figures, Congress and the White House slashed $140 million in funding for park operations nationwide this year, and funding levels for park operations are down $165 million since 2010.

In fact, cutting national parks funding has been a long-term trend. Since 2002, Congress has rolled back funding for national parks operations by 22 percent, or nearly $700 million when accounting for inflation, according to data compiled by the National Parks This story originally Conservation Association, a nonprofit appeared in the East that works to improve national parks Bay Express. Read more at www.eastbay throughout the country.

“It’s been going on for years; the express.com. budget cuts have been drastic,” noted Neal Desai, Pacific Regional Office associate director of NPCA. “And sequestration has led to a lot of staff being reduced” in national parks.

BEFORE

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Nice view—but be warned: Budget cuts are devastating California’s state parks.

Here in Sacramento, funding on the local-parks front mirrors trends nationally.

City council opted to up its budget for the first time in five years this past spring. Local parks had experienced cuts since 2007, when the budget peaked at $54.4 million; today, that number is $33.8 million. Not unlike state parks and wilderness, this means fewer people tending to local recreation areas—less mowing of lawns and cleaning of facilities.

“It’s been going on for years; the budget cuts have been drastic.”

Neal Desai Pacific Regional Office associate director of the National Parks Conservation Association

Sacramento County Regional Parks recently added more rangers to patrol the American River Parkway, but its parks budget also has plummeted since the 20072008 budget year.

During a recent hike at Point Reyes National Seashore, this writer had to bushwhack through poison oak and other dense vegetation on two trails that used to be well-maintained.

Over the past decade, both the national- and state-park systems have attempted to cope with the deep budget

STORY

cuts by relying on volunteers and nonprofit organizations to help care for the parks and maintain trails. However, for numerous reasons, volunteers and charitable groups can’t always be counted on to keep the parks in good shape every year. In addition, less popular parks and ones in more remote areas tend to receive much less help and funding from volunteer groups, Desai said.

California state parks include about 3,000 miles of trails, and 70 to 80 state parks have significant trail systems.

And while state funding for parks has remained level for the past two years, budget cutbacks in previous years exacted a major toll.

The backlog of deferred maintenance in state parks is now mountainous—$1.3 billion.

And state funding for maintenance and operations pays for just 7 percent of what’s needed, which means that the maintenance backlog will keep growing, said state parks spokeswoman Vicky Waters.

“Our park system has been impacted by years and years and years of budget cuts,” she said.

The trails at Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur are almost as bad as those at Point Reyes National Seashore.

If you haven’t been there, Andrew Molera is one of the most breathtaking parks in California, with trails that

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

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snake through a redwood forest and hug the Big Sur coast amid purple and gold wildflowers. My wife and I also recently hiked there, and have been doing so for years. But this year, we had to hike through poison oak, and because we were wearing shorts and T-shirts (which is what we always wear), we both got rashes—even though we washed immediately afterward with a poison oak cleansing agent.

And it may be that way for years to come. Obtaining more funding for state parks to hire staff and maintain trails could be a tough sell, politically, at least for now, because of last year’s financial scandal, which included the revelation that parks personnel had squirreled away $20 million in a secret account for decades. Yet while that money is now being used properly, it’s still just a drop in the bucket of what’s needed to maintain the state’s 280-park system.

California’s state parks, in fact, are a mere shell of their former selves.

Starved of funding because of anti-tax measures like Proposition 13, state parks have deteriorated significantly since the 1970s, and are now much like California’s once-vaunted public-school system: defunded and degraded.

So, if you’re planning on doing some hiking in the next few weeks, wear long pants and a long-sleeve shirt—and bring some poison-oak remedies along, too. You’re going to need them. Ω

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As Cosmo Garvin so pointed out in this week’s Bites (see page 15), media pundits and “arena bros” lost it when the California Fair Political Practices Commission announced on Friday that Seattle investor Chris Hansen was bankrolling the arena-vote signature gathering. As Garvin also noted, we knew some out-oftowner was footing the bill for this; Scorekeeper would’ve been stunned if the money was actually from the 916.

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Fat cat madness

Norm Lopez, the central-city’s own furry tub of love, has been a neighborhood staple for two years, but this month, he made international headlines after a well-meaning resident sent him to the animal shelter—because the passerby thought he was pregnant.

He was returned to his owner. We love you, Norm.

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If you ever wanted to see square dancers face off against martial artists, this is the event.

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NRA ratchets up arms race

BEATS

Gun association goes after anti-firearms bills in Capitol In a mailer sent to GOP and independent voters earlier this month, during the week of August 12, the National Rifle by Association says California lawmakGreg Lucas ers would “steamroll” the rights of ca plowdown@ gun owners by passing six measures, newsre view.c om which include a ban on magazines with more than 10 rounds and requiring background checks for ammunition purchases.

“Politicians in Sacramento are debating new restrictions on your Second Amendment rights but they’re not being honest about the real stakes in this debate. They’re not only trying to ban certain rifles but also ban handguns, erode hunting and strip your right of self-defense in the home,” the mailer says.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN BRENEMAN

A spree of gun-regulation bills at the Capitol has the National Rifle Association on attack.

Greg Lucas’ state-politics column Capitol Lowdown appears every-other week in SN&R. He also blogs at www.californias capitol.com.

BEFORE

Three of the bills targeted by the NRA are part of a package of seven measures that Senate Democrats say would reduce gun violence.

One of the bills, Senate Bill 374

by Sacramento’s Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, “expands the failed California gun ban to cover millions of more guns, including all semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines,” the NRA mailer says.

“True to form, the NRA again resorts to fear mongering rhetoric,” said Rhys Williams, Steinberg’s press secretary. “The NRA lost whatever little credibility it held in California when it opposed a bill that keeps guns out of the hands of convicted felons.

With no regard for the safety of our kids and our families, their motive is singular: perpetuating a profitable urban arms-race.”

Steinberg co-authored a previous bill, S.B. 140, opposed by the NRA, increasing funds to confiscate weapons from persons such as felons and the mentally ill who are prohibited from owning guns. S.B. 140 was signed in May by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The 8-and-an-half by 11 inch, folded-in-two mailer targets six bills the group says impinge on gun owners. |

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The first bill cited by the NRA—S.B. 108 by Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat—would require that “guns be locked away regardless of whether anyone is present” in a residence, according to the mailer.

Yee’s bill originally made it a crime for a gun owner not to lock up firearms before leaving their home.

But on August 14, Yee gutted his bill. Now it simply calls on the Department of Justice to “determine effective firearm safe storage measures.” Dan Lieberman, Yee’s press secretary, said the previous version couldn’t pass the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

“We didn’t have the votes to move forward so we’re hoping with a study bill we can find out more and get people more OK with the idea,” Lieberman said.

The only Assembly bill on the NRA’s hit list is A.B. 711, which bans the use of lead bullets in hunting.

Or what the bill by Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, a Lakewood Democrat, calls “the taking of all wildlife.”

Rendon’s bill “erodes hunting in California by mandating the use of

F E AT U R E

STORY

The Walmart fallacy

ammunition that is not widely available,” the NRA mailer says.

The analysis of Rendon’s bill by the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water says 37 manufacturers make hunting cartridges with non-lead bullets.

Prices are comparable: A box of lead-free cartridges runs $30 to $33 while a box of lead cartridges are $26 to $37, the analysis says.

Citing a November 2012 study appearing in AMBIO, an environmental journal published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the analysis says “virtually all lead bullet calibers used for hunting are available in non-lead versions, as are the hunting cartridges themselves.”

In the objections it lodged with the Senate committee on Rendon’s bill, the NRA says lead poisoning of wildlife continues despite a partial ban on the use of lead bullets in California.

“There are serious questions about the purported nexus between traditional ammunition and lead poisoning and the mortality in California condors and other wildlife,” the group’s opposition letter says.

In addition to Steinberg’s bill, the mailer objects to two of the other six bills in the upper house’s so-called LIFE Act: “Lifesaving Intelligent Firearms Enforcement,” which is pending in the Assembly.

“The NRA lost whatever little credibility it held in California.”

Rhys Williams spokesperson, Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg One of the measures is S.B. 396

by Sen. Loni Hancock, a Berkeley Democrat, which bans magazines of 10 rounds or more.

The mailer says Hancock’s bill “criminalizes the possession of standard, factory ammunition magazines.”

Also included in the Senate package is S.B. 53 by Sen. Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat, which requires a permit and background check before purchasing ammunition.

De Leon’s bill “strips away the privacy rights of ammunition buyers by requiring a purchase permit, registration and thumbprint for all ammunition purchases,” says the mailer. Ω

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Because of SN&R’s print deadlines, we don’t know how a proposal that could plant Walmart and its big-box brethren in downtown Sacramento went Tuesday night. But we do know how Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn felt about it.

In a phone interview, Cohn said he saw no merit in claims that the city loses fat sales-tax revenues to neighboring communities with big-box-friendly regulations.

“The interesting thing is these big-box stores [contribute] the lowest tax revenues per acre of land use,” he told SN&R “Now, I grant you, they do generate more tax revenues than empty land, [but] that’s the only [thing] that they beat.”

Cohn said he opposed full-on repeal of an ordinance that’s kept superstore retailers from the grid the past eight years, but he and Councilman Jay Schenirer edged toward a compromise that could contain superstores to new-growth areas.

A coalition of business interests supports staff’s recommendation to scrap a wage and benefit analysis for retail developments of 90,000 square feet or more. They say the city’s ability to request conditional-use permits on a case-by-case basis is enough of a regulatory headache.

Always low sales-tax Plenty of folks disagree. revenues. Always.

Of the 15 public comments registered at the August 13 council meeting, only two supported superstores, and at least one was an industry lobbyist.

Opponents included residents and two state lawmakers who registered their dismay in writing. Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson’s letter, read by a staffer, deemed the proposed repeal premature, with the assembly weighing tighter superstore regulations for California.

Cohn sees an undeniable link between low Walmart wages and the need for affordable homes. Rather than requiring big-box applicants to pay for economic reports, Cohn floated the idea of investing that developer money into an affordable housing trust fund. (Raheem F. Hosseini)

Park Place do-over Developers of an unincorporated south Sacramento subdivision inadvertently voted against their own project moving forward last month.

Because of 1996’s Proposition 218, a majority of property owners has to OK proposed service-charge increases beyond a state-set cap through a mail-in ballot process.

In this case, ballots came from two landowners of a lot south of El Paraiso Avenue. They want to divide the 206,000 square-foot property into 48 residential parcels for a planned subdivision called Park Place. Bob Davidson, an engineer with the community development department, told Sacramento County supervisors last week the applicants responded with “a surprise ‘no’ vote.”

The county proposed increasing the service charge from $17.88 per parcel to $49.68 per parcel to cover street lighting for the planned subdivision. Davidson said the applicants didn’t want to pay the increased fees, but also didn’t realize opposition would keep their project from moving forward.

After several phone calls, Davidson said the owners are willing to work with the county. “We have to start from the beginning,” he said. “And, presumably, with the new knowledge, the outcome could be different.”

Chuckling supervisors approved the request to restart the process, which entails a 45-day waiting period and the mailing of a new notice and protest ballot. (R.F.H.)

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D I S C O V E R T H E N I G H T O N A W H O L E N E W L E V E L

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14 | SN&R | 08.22.13

First, congratulations on another banner year.

It appears from the list we’ve been provided that there are at least 96— and counting!—legislative-fundraising events during the final weeks of the Legislature’s 2013 session.

Very impressive, particularly for a nonelection year.

We don’t know what percentage of the proceeds pays for your services, but with a minimum campaign contribution of $1,000 S A C U L

by GREG and a maximum of $4,100 to nibble hors d’oeuvres and sip wine or a caplowdown@newsreview.com watery cocktail with a legislator or wannabe legislator, profit potential seems high.

We trust this level of success allows all of you, as you have in the past, to renew your annual membership.

Greg Lucas’ state-politics column Capitol Lowdown will appear every-other week in SN&R. He also blogs at www.californias capitol.com.

It has been mentioned by some of our other members, however, that the economic stimulus of these fundraising events is too localized.

Obviously, the broader in scope the economic benefit, the greater the number of happy chamber members— including you.

For example, more than 70 of the events during August and the first two weeks of September are concentrated within a few blocks of the state Capitol.

That’s terrific for Mayahuel, one of our newer members, or Esquire Grill or Magnolia Grill along K Street on the way to 12th Street.

Chops Steak Seafood & Bar and Chicory Coffee & Tea at 11th and L—both members in good standing—seem to get most of the overall business, presumably because they’re the shortest distance from the Capitol.

Not to be blunt, but couldn’t some of the wealth be shared?

Maybe GOP Sen. Joel Anderson could switch his August 28 breakfast reception at Chicory to Pancake Circus on Broadway. There are any number of intriguing culinary possibilities all along Broadway, including Iron Steaks and New Canton Restaurant for dim sum.

Yes, it’s probably going to require a car ride from the Capitol to Broadway, but Democratic

Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra is already hosting an “intimate” dinner at $2,000-a-head at The Kitchen all the way out on Hurley Way. Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, who is running for the Senate seat Darrell Steinberg vacates at the end of next year, is charging $1,000 to attend a Sacramento River Cats game this Monday, August 26. Only $1,000 because it’s half as “intimate” as Assemblyman Bocanegra’s dinner?

(Just joking.)

Not to hit this too hard, but there are scads of other eateries—some near the Capitol, others not—who could use an economic shot in the arm.

One possibility is a menudo crawl, in which participants visit each of the half-dozen or so Mexican restaurants on Fruitridge Road between Interstate 5 and Highway 99. Six businesses would cash in from one event.

Also, other members ask: Why are all these events held at restaurants? Is it forbidden to have a fundraiser at The California Museum at 10th and O streets?

It also seems somewhat narrow to have these entire events center on eating. We’re in the midst of an obesity crisis, the media routinely tells us. Perhaps a 5k run or other fundraiser celebrating physical fitness?

Our most popular administrative assistant here is participating in an exercise program based on pole dancing.

Taking a page out of Dickinson’s playbook, how about other sportsrelated fundraisers? Bowling, for instance. Sacramento’s lanes are eager for business. Bocce ball. Badminton.

Knitting. Macramé. Toss a few clay pots. Jewelry design. Origami.

Any number of local business owners would be very happy to help expose your clientele and their supporters to these and other fascinating pursuits.

If drinking is crucial to each fundraiser, perhaps a microbrewery sampling. That way, three or four struggling small-business owners get a chance to sell their suds and garner some free publicity among opinion leaders.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation—and assistance—in broadening the economic impact of your future events.

Looking forward to receiving your membership-renewal checks. Ω

Watchdogs and phonies Rich guys are always trying to jam each other up Bites did a double take when charter-school advocate Penny Schwinn resigned her elected post on the Sacramento County Board of Education last month in order to take a high-paying job in the bureaucracy of the Sacramento City Unified School District.

She’s now SCUSD’s new assistant superintendent of performance management—which comes with a $133,617 salary. The job is one of vin ar G many, many six-figure gigs in the adminO SM

by CO istration, and is described as being “the cosmog@ n ewsrev iew.c om accountability leader” for the district, which is also the job description of the district’s chief accountability officer ($149,914).

Schwinn is qualified for the big bucks because she was at Teach for America for three years, a St. Hope administrator for two years and, of course, she founded her own charter school, Schwinn was executive director of the school. It was her baby. But she had to give it up to take the Sac city job.

Sort of. Perhaps as an added perk, the district is appointing Schwinn to Capitol Collegiate’s governing board. According to district policy, Schwinn will be the district’s “eyes and ears” and help provide oversight of the school she founded.

Who better to be the public’s watchdog over a charter school than the person who started that charter school, hired its staff and created its culture? Surely, if there were anything wrong over at Capitol Collegiate, Schwinn will let us know, pronto. Right?

Nevertheless, Bites asked district spokesman Gabe Ross, “Couldn’t there be a conflict of interest there?”

“The role on the board is not a conflict of interest,” he replied. So, there you go.

Speaking of checks, it turns out that d-bag billionaires act like d-bags. A couple months ago Bites worried the folks at Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork might be “inadvertently doing the dirty work of some other billionaire would-be Kings (or Royals or Sonics) owners in another town.”

And now we know that Seattle billionaire Chris Hansen did indeed give an $100,000 check to the paid signature-gathering campaign that has paralleled STOP’s effort. All the excitable arena bros are lining up to say, “I told you so.” Because, arena bros.

Sacramento media lost their collective mind, naturally. The press ate up California state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s one-word press statement. “Unbelievable.”

Please. What’s unbelievable is the unbelievable volume of phony outrage being ginned up by the phony-outrage machine in this town— which, otherwise, routinely shrugs off low-grade corruption and bribery of the very politicians now acting so scandalized. What’s unbelievable is the daily media’s abandonment of even the pretense of fairness on this story.

For some perspective, check out former Sac Bee opinion page editor Mark Paul’s blog The California Fix. Last week, he posted a reminiscence of the time in 1990 when Kings owner Gregg Lukenbill, along with political consultant David Townsend (the man later pulling the strings on Johnson’s bid for City Hall), and others were accused of sabotaging a publicly financed stadium for the San Francisco Giants. Lukenbill helped raise some money for the stadium’s opposition, figuring if the Giants left, that would give Sacramento a better shot at landing a pro baseball team.

Sacramento Tomorrow was supposed to be a new, fresh look at Sacramento’s governance.

But every time Bites checks in, up pops another crony from the old Boss Johnson brigade.

Here’s an excerpt from the fundraising email for Sacramento Tomorrow sent out by developer Jon Bagatelos—or “The Bag Man,” as he’s sometimes called (in this column). Bagatelos is a big Kevin Johnson fundraiser and one of the money guys behind previous strong-mayor plans.

“In the past few years we have made a lot of changes to the City Council for the betterment of the business environment here in Sacramento— the new Downtown Sports Arena being a huge, visible result of that Council transformation,” Bagatelos says in his email, adding, “Reforming the City’s Charter will be the last step in putting together a business-friendly environment in the City which will help business development here.”

Did he mention business? Take over the city council? Check. Push through the arena? Check.

Rewrite the city charter for a “business-friendly environment”? Check. Doesn’t that all sound refreshingly new and different?

What’s unbelievable is the unbelievable volume of phony outrage being ginned up by the phony-outrage machine in this town.

Voters turned the subsidy down, and were better off for it in the long run, since the Giants wound up building their own lovely privately funded park.

But the S.F. district attorney and Mayor Art Agnos tried to have “The Ballpark 5” convicted of a criminal conspiracy aimed at stealing their team. Of course, the charges were tossed.

The point is that rich guys are always trying to jam each other up and steer the public process, and public money, toward their own interests.

Sucks. Bites figures we can let the rich guys decide, or we can let the voters decide. Ω

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War on drugs reform

THINK FREE.

U.S. attorney general changes course—what are Sacramento district-attorney candidates’ priorities?

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I was stunned a few weeks ago to hear U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder call for reduced sentencing for drug crimes.

In a speech before the American Bar Association in San Francisco, he pointed out that “since 1980, the federal prison population has grown at an astonishing rate—by almost 800 percent. It’s still growing. … Even though this country comprises just 5 percent of the world’s population, we incarcerate almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. ... Almost half of them are serving time for drugrelated crimes.”

Holder said that “draconian mandatory minimum l sentences” should no longer be required for low-level,

by JEff VonKAEnE nonviolent drug offenders. j e ffv @ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m Holder is right. Clearly something has to be done.

He spoke of the country’s failed war on drugs. Which never really was a war on drugs. Drugs are chemicals. You can’t put a drug in prison. The failed war on drugs was and is a war on us, our neighbors, our families, our loved ones and the majority of the American people that have used drugs, including “[S]ince 1980, the federal our recent presidents.

Holder took a brave and prison population has important first step in the grown at an astonishing rethinking of United States’ rate—by almost drug policies. Clearly, he was nervous, like a junior-high boy 800 percent.” asking a girl to a dance. He made this announcement on a U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder slow news day. If the reaction was negative, he could always backtrack. Shocking to those who have made their political fortunes by being tough on crime, there was little negative reaction to Holder’s announcement. In this incredibly polarized time, the Obama haters are less excited about this than the president’s birth certificate.

But I’m confused. This is the same badass Holder who To read Eric Holder’s entire supports prosecuting landlords who rent space to medicalspeech, go to marijuana dispensaries, even though they are legal under state http://tinyurl.com/ HolderPrios. law. This is the same Holder whose San Diego U.S. attorney suggested that media companies should be prosecuted for running ads for medical-marijuana dispensaries, even though they are legal under state law. (I take this personally.) I’d like to hear him announce an end to these failed policies as well.

We also need to reform our law-enforcement priorities here in Sacramento. Just as the U.S. attorney generals have poorly prioritized their resources, so has Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully. For instance, even though county health officials had warned that blood-borne infections such as HIV and hepatitis would increase without Jeff vonKaenel is the president, a needle-exchange program, Scully prosecuted Sacramento CEO and residents who were volunteering for needle-exchange majority owner of programs, while she couldn’t find the resources needed to the News & Review focus on prosecuting white-collar crimes. newspapers in But Scully is retiring. Here’s the question I’d like to ask Sacramento, Chico and Reno. both district-attorney candidates, Anne Marie Schubert and Maggy Krell, who have already raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars for the 2014 race: How would you change the priorities of the current District Attorney’s office?

I will let you know their answers. Ω

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This month has—so far—brought two disturbing new reports on the effects of climate change on California.

First, the 2013 “State of the Lake Report” on Lake Tahoe, from the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, did have a ray of good news: Clarity has improved for the second year in a row, no small thanks to the efforts of environmentalists.

But the bad news is that one of the factors in a clearer lake is lower precipitation and less runoff, as well as less “deep mixing” in the winter—when colder water sinks, bringing nutrients (algae, food) to the surface and clouding the water.

Last year, the lake’s average temperature of almost 53 degrees was the highest on record.

And that brings us to more bad news: The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment released an update to its 2009 report “Indicators of Climate Change in California.” In 240 pages, the agency provided evidence that the warming trend is continuing with significant changes in every part of the state. The lakes are warmer, the average temperatures—even when extremes are accounted for—are hotter, and wildfires are trending upward in both frequency and intensity.

Just since 2000, California wildfires have burned twice the acreage that was destroyed in all fires between 1950 and 1999, as the report points out.

We’re now heading toward the peak of what’s already been a dangerous and deadly fire season, and as the science in these reports make clear, the trends are continuing. While the good news in the OEHHA report is that California businesses and residents are making greater efforts to decrease their carbon output, we’ve still got a lot of work to do—including preparing to live in a California that is very different from the one we have today. Ω

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It has now been more than a month since California prisoners began a hunger strike to protest the practice of solitary confinement—called Security Housing Unit in prison parlance. So far, one man has died, though officially, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation lists the cause of death as suicide.

There have also been news reports that this hunger strike is orchestrated by a convicted murderer who is high in the hierarchy of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

While we are concerned for the safety of both CDCR employees and other prisoners, it’s also worth noting that solitary confinement is a form of torture. Isolation is employed to break down the mental health of those being tortured; the deprivation of human contact for social animals like humans is, frankly, inhumane.

Given the lengthy list of issues with our prison system— the federal receivership of CDCR’s health system, the news last month that female inmates had been coerced into sterilization, and the current difficulty the CDCR has with moving prisoners at risk of contracting valley fever—we’re not inclined to “just trust them” when it comes to prisoner welfare.

Convicted criminals, no matter how heinous the crime, should not be tortured, and solitary confinement meets that definition. We encourage Gov. Jerry Brown to negotiate an end to this hunger strike and to put serious effort into ending or modifying the practice of SHU, so that inmates are not constantly deprived of socialization.

Torturing the “worst of the worst” only makes us worse, and it should not be tolerated. Ω BEFORE

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“On the batterfield, the military pledges to leave no soldier behind. As a Nation, let it be our pledge that when they return home, we leave no Veteran behind.”

– Dan Lipinski

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photos by steven Chea

by Raheem F. hosseini r a h eemh@n e w s re vie w . com

J o s h u a W o o d s l a y s a r e n a o p p o n e n t s a n d f i g h t s f o r m o r e W a l m a r t s . I n S a c r a m e n t o , h e ’ s polarizing, but also admired. Who is this kid?

J

oShua Wood hardly lookS lIke the moSt feared man In Sacramento.

In fact, at the moment, the young political operator with the Jekyll and Hyde reputation can’t even scare up a seat at a downtown coffeehouse.

It’s an unseasonably tolerable August afternoon, and Wood wants to escape the metallic whine of coffee beans being milled to dust. A towheaded boy scooting a plastic car nearly trundles over Wood’s heels as the 31-year-old looms in the entryway, calculating his options. The tight-jeans crowd sitting outside doesn’t look up, but there’s a whole region that’s taking notice of Wood.

Over the past year, he’s championed suburban sprawl near Rancho Cordova, lobbied for Walmarts in Sacramento and applied Breitbartian tactics to the Sacramento Kings arena battle.

Rumors swirl that he’s eyeing a scrum to enhance Kevin Johnson’s mayoral powers, even as he’s persona non grata in West Sacramento.

“We’ve gotten a little bit of prominence,” Wood deadpanned.

And in a relatively short amount of time. Three years ago, while heading the area’s biggest construction association, Wood fashioned Region Builders Inc. to be its political arm. After splintering off from the Sacramento Builders Exchange Inc. in 2012, that arm sprouted a fist. Now, as Region Builders wades into sprawl politics and arena battles, Wood’s profile is sparking like phosphorous. Which is appropriate, given that his critics accuse him of scorching the earth with every campaign.

Those wanting a vote on publicly funding a downtown arena learned that lesson when Wood and his partners dogged petition gatherers with video cameras and forced their secret-in-Seattle benefactor out of the shadows.

West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, who tussled with Wood over sustainable-growth policies, likened his approach to a “fatal death match.”

Others disagree. “I like that we’re bringing up things that make people think,” said Region Builders board member Cathy Skeen. “Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable. Why? Because they want sheeple.”

Joshua Wood’s preferred nickname is “The Smiling Assassin.” It fits—he united city leaders behind big-box stores and suburban sprawl. In many cases, he also slayed his opposition.

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Wood isn’t sheeple. But he is polarizing. Quick to laugh, difficult to pin down, the self-described “smiling assassin” has got labels for days: political wunderkind or overeager young gun, jobs cheerleader or liability, opportunist or puppet—Wood ignores the establishment whispers and takes his seat at the table.

“Just remember,” Wood joked in a later email, “no one has ever blamed us for being ineffective. :)”

Hustle and grow The sun stretches its Sunday morning legs as Wood pulls a white Crown Downtown T-shirt over his 5-foot-11-inch frame and heads for a bustling farmers market shaded beneath a freeway overpass in downtown Sacramento.

But the married father of four isn’t shopping for farm-tofork produce. He’s plucking the fruits of labor.

Not too long ago, it seemed imminent that a fuzzy alliance would ride a familiar wave of taxpayer anxiety to the ballot for a potentially crippling arena referendum. But because of Wood’s relentless full-court press, thousands of petition-signers now know Seattle investor Chris Hansen, a spurned Kings poacher, bankrolled anti-subsidy forces.

As a result, a caucus of business and labor interests operating as DowntownArena.org has racked up 1,700 petitionwithdrawal signatures and counting at events like these.

“We’re killing it,” he enthused.

The question of whether to publicly fund a multimillion-dollar sports and entertainment complex anchored

by the Sacramento Kings is almost as old as Arco (sorry, Power Balance Pavilion; sorry, Sleep Train) Arena itself.

Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork says voters should decide whether to chip in some $250 million in public funds, and recently claimed it had more than half the 22,000 signatures needed by mid-December to force a ballot showdown.

Predictably, things got big nasty.

Last week, the California Fair Political Practices Commission exposed Hansen as the source of an unreported $100,000 donation benefiting the signaturegathering campaigns of STOP and the Orange County-based Taxpayers for Safer Neighborhoods. The donation, which Hansen made through an O.C. political action committee, funneled through a Los Angeles law firm that counts former Kings-owners the Maloofs as clients, The Sacramento Bee reported. Hansen lost his bid in May to scoop the Kings out of Sacramento.

While he apologized in a statement for getting “caught up in the heat of battle,” Hansen made his donation on June 21, weeks after NBA owners turned down his bid.

Wood filed the FPPC complaint that led to these revelations. Aided by his gotcha recordings and 56,000 robocalls, the pro-arena coalition shifted the spotlight from the message to the messengers.

Even veteran shit-stirrers like R.E. Graswich took note. “I was cynical & figured FPPC would not push too hard,” he tweeted August 16. “Josh Wood & Region Builders went for jugular. Incredible.”

“I can only marvel at Josh’s talent for distracting people from the real issue,” chuckled Craig Powell, president of Eye on Sacramento, a political watchdog group pushing for an arena vote. “I guess you could call that a backhanded compliment.”

It’s also a big win for Wood, an early graduate of the school of hard knocks. Raised in a foster home until the age of 6, with nearly a dozen other kids, the halfblack, half-Jewish son of a longtime smoker first chased grassroots action as a high-schooler volunteering with the American Lung Association. At Sacramento State University, where he studied music before majoring in graphic design, Wood ran for student-body president, winning a title that also kick-started the political careers of Elk Grove Mayor Gary Davis and Woodland City Councilman Art Pimentel, among others.

Toward the end of his formal education, Wood ground out a hectic internship at a public employee labor union, which he credits for teaching him how to build alliances and flat-out work. He then filled

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a one-year fellowship with former Republican state Assemblyman Tim Leslie of Roseville.

“From a labor union to a conservative,” Wood laughed.

That philosophical dexterity has served him well.

“Part of it was learning myself who I was politically,” explained Wood, who describes himself as both probusiness and green friendly. “But a lot of people look at everything as a battle. And sometimes, you’re going to disagree, but [it’s important] to move on. ‘OK, we’re not on the same side of this issue. Wanna grab a beer?’”

Powell would. He called Wood a “talented, smart, high-energy individual.”

He and others credit Wood with a multiyear effort to streamline the city’s building permits and zoning codes and lower development fees. Wood’s chipped away at similar regulations in Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova.

Along with a successful effort to stop council call-ups— a policy that allowed individual council members to pull projects for review after they already won planning approval—Wood called the policy streamlining his group’s “crowning achievement.”

“It seems like such a small deal, but it was a huge issue in attracting development to Sacramento,” Wood said.

Region Builders accomplished most of this work under the radar. But then, Wood hitched his organization’s wagon to the 8,000-home beast known as Cordova Hills, and the low profile vanished.

SACOG cows In mid-March, what was expected to be another dull meeting of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments devolved into confused dickering. Wood set it off with a typed letter.

SACOG is a partnership of some of the region’s top political leaders. The association applies a macro view to development projects—it can’t tell a city or county what project to approve or dump, but can decide how state and federal transportation dollars are spent.

So when SACOG CEO Mike McKeever told Sacramento County supervisors in January that a sprawling subdivision on the county’s eastern edge could possibly overwhelm emissions-reduction targets and endanger future transportation income, Wood charged the respected group with meddling in local land-use decisions and asked the SACOG board to check itself.

“You would think we desecrated something,” Wood recalled months later. “I had no idea how big of a crapstorm that would make.”

Wood’s notorious letter, received 10 minutes before the March meeting, provoked a debate that divided council members, like Folsom’s Steve Miklos and Jeff Starsky, who helped pen competing op-eds about whether SACOG was protecting the region or sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.

But the “crapstorm” didn’t hit categoric levels until May, when West Sacramento’s Cabaldon ended his state of the city address at a local chamber of commerce with a fiery rebuke for Region Builders.

“If you are a member of Region Builders, you are threatening the safety of West Sacramento citizens,” he warned, “and I know I’m going to be fighting to

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Joshua Wood earned kudos this past weekend for leading the charge that exposed Seattle billionaire Chris Hansen as the bankroller of the anti-Kings arena signature-gathering effort.

ensure that not one penny of our community’s construction dollars, not one penny of the hundreds of millions of dollars we are launching right now, not one penny’s going to go to companies that use those proceeds to destroy this city. Not a single penny.”

It was the equivalent of a veteran gunslinger challenging the new kid in the corral. Wood got his group a big-name Republican Party lawyer, and Cabaldon eventually walked back what many took for an outright blacklist.

“They’re not cowed by political fear,” Powell complimented. “They didn’t back down when Mayor Cabaldon made his bullyish statements.”

But the SACOG board also reasserted its support of McKeever with an official resolution, leaving the two sides knotted in a draw.

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McKeever declined to comment on the matter, and other board members downplayed the dispute.

“I think some people probably said some things they wish they could retract,” offered Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn, a SACOG board member. “The whole controversy was blown out of proportion.”

Be that as it may, a few months later, in the same coffeehouse that Wood uses as his base of operations, the outspoken Cabaldon explained why the fight still matters.

Bad old days Ten years ago, environmental groups and development interests were pitted against each other, state and federal officials scrutinized every project, and growth—especially

within urban boundaries—squealed to a record-scratching halt.

A breakthrough arrived in 2008 through a document dubbed the “Blueprint for the Future.”

Co-authored by then-SACOG chairman Cabaldon, it got developers, politicians and environmentalists mostly on board with how to steer regional growth responsibly.

Sacramento was lionized as a smartgrowth leader, and dozens of state and federal agencies backed off. The lawsuits stopped. Shovels hit dirt.

Relative peace ensued.

Cabaldon described it as “a Galapagos problem”: “Over the years, because of the blueprint, there have been no predators,” he said. “So when Region Builders set foot on the island and started to attack violently, everyone froze. Folks did not know how to respond anymore.”

Wood doesn’t dispute the importance of the blueprint, but rejects the premise that Region Builders pounced on it.

“A lot of people think this is about the blueprint. Our thing has nothing to do with the blueprint,” Wood said.

Cordova Hills still needs SACOG’s blessing if it wants to tap into state or federal transportation funds. After a long-promised university tenant dropped out of the project in 2011, that tough sell became tougher. Developers are meeting with a “panoply of education consultants around the country” to find a replacement, said spokesman Doug Elmets, but there are no candidates yet.

“We’re going to take every opportunity to explain the benefits of the project,” Elmets added.

In the meantime, Wood has other irons in the fire.

Fr i e n d s a n d known associates A member of both Mayor Johnson’s Think Big Sacramento and Here We Build committees, Wood stood beside K.J. during a July 2011 press conference on what to do with then-Power Balance Pavilion once a new arena was built, while his group hosted Think Big’s March kickoff campaign on why the Kings should stay.

Two years later, Wood carries this torch on his own.

Asked for people to speak on his behalf, one of the individuals Wood offered was Dennis Rogers.

Rogers went to work for Roger Niello at the Sacramento Metro Chamber after he left the North State Building Industry Association, a powerful organization that lobbied heavily for Cordova Hills under his tenure, back when a university was still attached.

In a phone interview, Rogers seemed reluctant to say much about the man who suggested him as a character witness.

Beyond saying there are “conversations,” Rogers won’t describe the current alliance between Sac Metro, Region Builders and other business groups to repeal Sacramento’s big-box ordinance, for fear of revealing tactical secrets heading into a crucial council hearing (scheduled for this past Tuesday, August 20, which was after SN&R’s deadline).

Asked to describe a past partnership with Wood, Rogers can’t name one. “I don’t know,” he said. “There have been so many issues. I would have to go back [and look].”

“To me, it feels like a World Wrestling match.”

For his part, Wood said he’s not into “fake wrestling.” But he’s a “big MMA fan.”

Behind the curtain One of the criticisms Wood fields on the regular is that his group lacks transparency when it comes to whose interests Region Builders represents.

Speculation runs rampant that it’s a Chinese democracy run by Wood and a few wealthy developers rather than middle-class builders who make up the bulk of its membership.

“The feeling I got is there’s one or two major financers that use the shell of Region Builders,” Cabaldon said. “And probably Cordova Hills is connected, but I don’t know.” (“It seems like the tail is wagging the dog,” is how one elected official who spoke on background put it.)

To diffuse some of this chatter, Wood recently published a list of Region’s board members on the group’s website.

“I heard that criticism, so I put it up there,” he smiled.

“They’re noT cowed By poliTical Fear.”

Craig Powell president Eye on Sacramento

“What we said was, ‘Staff shouldn’t oppose projects unless there’s some kind of controls.’ … That was it.”

McKeever didn’t so much oppose the Cordova Hills project as explain how math works.

On January 29, McKeever appeared at the invitation of Supervisor Phil Serna to answer questions about how a 2,700-acre home and retail explosion could comply with California’s tightening emissions standards for the region.

His answer was simple: It probably couldn’t.

“I’m here because you also live within a region,” he told supervisors.

“And people don’t just travel within political jurisdictions, and air emissions don’t occur within a political jurisdiction. … And so all I’m asking is that you seriously consider what those potential impacts would be on the region.”

Supervisors approved the project by a 4-1 vote, with Serna dissenting.

Cabaldon described that as “phase one.”

“This is not over,” he promised.

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Wood said K.J. “has nothing to do” with the new DowntownArena.org effort, though Johnson and his wife appeared at the August 11 signaturewithdrawal gathering on their way back from the farmers market.

Nor is Johnson directly involved in the latest strong-mayor push, from a group calling itself Sacramento Tomorrow.

While Region Builders played a role in past executive-mayor campaigns, Wood said they’re not part of this one just yet. Region Builders does support the concept, and Wood counts himself a K.J. admirer. “The mayor has this incredible ability to bring together people,” he said. “I mean, he’s a star.”

And stars are plenty busy.

Contacted to discuss Wood, a Johnson representative didn’t reply by deadline.

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Asked if Wood ever called him to discuss Cordova Hills, Rogers paused.

“Hmm, yeah, you have conversations with people, but I have those same conversations with numerous people,” he said. “It’s that old saying: Politics make strange bedfellows.”

And sometimes familiar ones.

Political consultant Tab Berg ran Niello’s unsuccessful campaign for county supervisor, as well as Roberta MacGlashan’s successful one.

MacGlashan voted for Cordova Hills, a project supported by the BIA under Rogers. Wood took up that cause after Rogers left the BIA. Until recently, Berg represented STOP. He left following the donation scandal. Berg didn’t return a request for comment. Wood said they have a “friendly relationship.”

“Tab and Josh are like this,” Cabaldon said, twisting his fingers.

“I’m just highly skeptical when two best friends stand to gain this much publicity and fundraising capacity from each other playing this off.

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But thus far, he’s rebuffed attempts to obtain a full roster of members.

Asked why, Wood shrugged.

“We’ve never done it,” he said. “Do other organizations?”

Actually, they do. Wood belonged to at least two of them—Think Big and Here We Build.

There are those who say Wood shouldn’t have to show all his cards.

Rogers said Region Builders has a “constitutionally protected” right to set agendas without prying eyes, referring to Region Builders’ 501(c)(6) taxexempt status, which limits what they have to reveal following the Citizens United ruling.

“That’s their internal business,” Rogers added. “I assume if the board was unhappy, they’d let him know.”

Skeen and fellow board member Randy Hudson, both of whom run insurance companies, don’t know how many total members Region Builders has.

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Wood told SN&R he doesn’t know, either.

What is public are the names of the 13 different trade associations that pay dues, mostly representing midsized contractors and architects. Most pay $250 to join and $500 a year, Wood said, but there are secret members who fork over $1,000.

And then there’s onetime parent association SBX, which provides “a quarter” of Region Builders’ funding, according to Wood. “They’re huge.

They’re the sugar daddy,” he laughed.

Or at least used to be.

Region Builders split from SBX more than a year ago, though the two associations remain entangled, sharing members, money and even office space. Wood still has a modest desk inside SBX headquarters, but mostly takes meetings at downtown coffeehouses.

“It was an awkward relationship, and eventually, it proved too weird of a structure to work,” Wood said. “I mean, we work together closely. I’m in their building.”

SBX is giving less money than in years past and has yet to renew its latest funding contract with Region Builders. In July, Region Builders laid off its only other full-time staff person besides Wood, according to an internal email.

SBX executive vice president Peter Tateishi described “a strong working relationship” between the two groups.

“Having said that, there are also times where we do disagree or choose not to engage on the issues and priorities Region Builders presents and tackles,” he continued. “We take things issue by issue.”

And the affable Wood takes them in stride.

Back in the coffeehouse, Wood peeks at his cellphone to check the time. The 16-hour days haven’t dimmed his hazel eyes, but he is wary of his growing profile. The self-described problem solver says he prefers discussing efforts that don’t rate headlines, like lowering kitchen-remodel fees and dismantling permitting obstacles for mom-and-pop businesses.

But now Wood is on the main stage and taking all the heat that comes from the klieg lights.

Development sprawl, big-box booms, big-money arena campaigns—Wood paddles in billion-dollar waters and carries the hopes of an embattled industry. And if he’s made some missteps, well, even his detractors say they’re the errors of a hungry up-and-comer.

But Wood won’t take the bait when asked about future ambitions.

“Honestly, I just hope we keep doing what we’re doing,” he demurred.

Then, rising from his chair, he pockets his bleeping cell and remarks, “Let’s grab a beer next time.”

Next time. Ω

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b Time for some Tough news, saCramenTo: It’s late August. Meaning summer will be over in a few weeks. Meaning you need to start thinking about wearing actual shoes again. Rompers will need to be packed away quite soon, as will your microbrewery tank-top collection. But the upside is this: It’s also almost back-to-school season, and even for those no longer living the life of JanSport backpacks and Trapper Keepers, it’s a good time to stock up on new gear. And, though Sacramento may not be an international shopping destination just yet, the community of local vendors appearing at the various craft fairs, farmers markets and boutiques around town is primed to take off. The following are five local companies whose keen eye for design and attention to craftsmanship and environmental issues are well-deserving of patronage by those getting ready to restock this fall.

fashion, accessories and more

summer with this guide to local

and start the long goodbye to

Feisty duds Break out the Pee-Chee folders

back to school local

a

by deena drewis d e e na d @ ne w s re v ie w .com 22 | SN&R | 08.22.13

It may be that Sacramento is not ready for designer Noelle Tavares. Born and raised in the area, she’s been an active presence in the local fashion scene since 2004 with her clothing line Faedrah and has been producing her line FineTuned Threads since 2009. But Tavares’ work—bold, custom-made pieces intended to be a trophy in one’s closet—has usually flourished elsewhere: the Bay Area, down south, back east. Even the United Kingdom and Africa. “It’s a different ball game [in Sacramento], stylewise. You’ve got your Capitol crowd, and then—I hate to use this word, but you’ve got the hipsters. I feel like I fall somewhere in between.”

That area in between manifests itself as embellished cutoff jean shorts; crop tops created out of old T-shirts featuring the logos of baseball teams; a screen-printed T-shirt that reads, in a sophisticated typeface, “classy mother fucker,” and one printed with that ever-NorCal word, “hella.” The vivacious 33-year-old spent time in San Diego, Los Angeles and New York before coming back to the capital city, where she’s worked continuously on her own clothing lines in addition to working as a stylist and visual merchandiser and at various retail spots.

SN&R got an exclusive first look at the forthcoming fall collection consisting of crew-neck sweatshirts with jeweled collars, and elbow patches (“grandma swag,” Tavares calls it), tunics created out of oversized T-shirts, and camouflage spliced with plaid. Prices range from $18 to $150. Select pieces are available at Heart Clothing Boutique (1903 Capitol Avenue) and through Tavares’ Etsy shop online at www.etsy.com/shop/ finetunedthreads.

tasteFul suds In 2011, Denise Sergent and her husband decided to sell the home they built in Sonoma—a gorgeous, light-filled place in the woods straight out of Sunset magazine—and move to Wilton, where they established a fiveyear plan to become self-sufficient homesteaders. Two years in, the couple is raising chickens, drawing water from a well, growing their own food and creating products for the Old Homestead Hideaway shop—mainly soap and rustic crates, along with the organic produce they sell at area farmers markets. The bars of soap, made from all-natural ingredients with either an olive-oil or shea-butter base, look and

smell good enough to eat—Sergent said she has actually seen people take a bite out of it. But what, aside from giving off a false impression of edibility, makes the soap so special? “The glycerin is still in it,” Sergent explained. “The big manufacturers have ‘beauty bars’ because they can’t legally call it soap. They remove the glycerin, which is a key ingredient, perhaps for a longer shelf life.” This fall, keep an eye out for the lemongrass-goat’s-milk soap Sergent is bringing back by popular demand. Prices start at $5. Available at the Good: Street Food + Design Market (1409 Del Paso Boulevard) on the first Sunday of every month through December 8, and online at http://ohhshop.com.

a green, good samaritan Origin Recycled Goods founder Scott Westbrook was in college when the idea of waste really started to bother him—so much so that he and his younger brother started “upcycling” other peoples’ trash into usable items.

Eventually, the Sacramento-born-and-raised Westbrook, an avid bicycler, translated this into repurposing discarded bike inner tubes—along

Just keep drinking, OK? See NIGHT&DAY

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See DISH

a. Ana Apple Designs

founder Ana Manzano recently moved into a Midtown studio space and hired two seamstresses to help with the company’s growing output.

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Effed in Elk Grove See THE 420

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B. FineTuned Threads

designer Noelle Tavares’ creative philosophy: “I want someone to look in their closet and be like, ‘This is dope.’”

c. Pieces from the

FineTuned Threads Fall 2013 collection encompass what Tavares refers to as “grandma swag.”

d.Each Ana Apple piece is

hand cut from felt made out of recycled bottles.

e e. Ana Apple donated a

part of the proceeds from its Cali Love series to rebuilding East Sacramento’s McKinley Park playground after it was destroyed in a fire last year.

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Photos by Lisa baetz

with trimmings from old dress shirts, seatbelts and repurposed zippers—into the bags, watches and accessories that now make up the ORG line.

And Westbrook doesn’t stop his eco-friendly mission at just the product itself. Aside from collecting materials by bike, he makes all local deliveries on two wheels, too. Shipping is done in recycled packaging, and even his business cards and product tags are made out of seed paper that Westbrook makes himself. “There are many points where I can cut corners,” he said, “but I am committed to doing what is environmentally responsible. Even if it is harder.” Prices range from $25 to $130. Available at Flywheel (545 Downtown Plaza, Suite 1047), Article Consignment Boutique (5704 Elvas Avenue), and online at www.originrecycledgoods.com.

Wearing Whimsy Formerly designing under the separate brands of Archradish and Sensible Apparel, the BEFORE

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now-affianced artist couple Dan Aguilar and Rita Okusako are currently in the process of merging their clothing and art lines into one brand, ThoughtLion. Okusako’s designs tend toward the more ethereal and intricate.

Her latest, a depiction of a theme park in Uruguay, is simultaneously whimsical and eerie: “There’s a big mechanical hand yanking a constrained skeleton in the front of the building, and instantly, it conjured up feelings of a lack of control,” she said.

Aguilar, who got his start designing shirts for bands he’d previously played in, shows a slightly more playful (though still fantastical) side. His latest design is of a crab whose shell is a castle, something he attributes to his longtime fascination with crustaceans.

The shirts themselves are printed on American Apparel T-shirts, and some of them are organic cotton—a choice Aguilar knew would raise the price point, but quality and comfort were a top priority. Eventually, the

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couple hopes to expand the line into prints and paper goods. Available at Cuffs (2523 J Street, Suite 101), and Bows & Arrows (1815 19th Street) and online at http://thoughtlion.com.

green apple Spend a few minutes browsing Ana Apple merchandise, and the urge to buy one of the baby bibs that reads “nom nom” or a onesie sporting a turntable made out of recycled-bottle felt is almost irrepressible—even if there are no little bitties in your life. In addition to producing hip, eco-conscious kids’ wear, the line also offers some pretty nifty nerd-chic stuff for adults: women’s tanks that have a bow tie and buttons cut out from limited-edition fabrics, and men’s T-shirts that get a similar treatment with a cutout tie and shirt pocket.

The handcrafted pieces are pretty rad in and of themselves, but the sprinkles on the icing on the cake? Founder Ana Manzano is sincerely

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invested in her brand not just as a company, but as a part of the community. Last year, through sales of her Cali Love series, she generated several hundred dollars for the rebuilding efforts of the McKinley Park playground after it burned down, and two years ago, she began the Sharing is Caring program in which a portion of all proceeds go to area organizations, like the Getty Owl Foundation (which promotes spinal muscular-atrophy awareness) and The Mustard Seed School. Next on the docket? Manzano recently launched an Indiegogo campaign for the Little Eco-Hearts series: green-themed superhero-costume sets aimed at promoting Earth-friendly awareness in our youngest citizens (www.indiegogo.com/projects/litte-eco-herosets). Available at Exhibit S and Flywheel at Downtown Plaza (545 Downtown Plaza), the Good: Street Food + Design Market, the This Midtown street fair (1050 20th Street) on Saturday, September 14, and online at www.anaapple.com. Ω

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916.245.COOL

• Seven pools and spas • Lounge/nightclub • Full-service lakefront restaurant • Basic to luxury rooms & cottages

24

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SN&R | 08.22.13

• RV and tent camping • Lake and river with sandy beaches • Deluxe fitness center • Game room • Archery Range

• Tennis & Pickleball courts • Volleyball - water & hard court • Theme events & entertainment • Day visits & annual memberships

For the week of August 22

wEEklY PICkS

Hair & Fashion Battle Expo Saturday, auguSt 24 If you care to take a day off from volunteering at the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too, make your way down to the Hair & Fashion Battle Expo, hosted by Sacramento-based FASHION designer (and season 11 cast member of Project Runway) Richard Hallmarq. It will pit some of the area’s leading fashion figures against one another. $30-$80, 6 p.m. at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center, 6151 H Street; (916) 271-2351; www.hairandfashionbattle.com.

—Dave Kempa

Race for the Arts Saturday, auguSt 24

Grab your kids, grab your spouse and get another 5k under your belt. Run or walk for your favorite performing-arts charity, group SPORTS or school program, and then stick around for the Arts Festival, where there will be entertainment, refreshments and interactive booths.

It’s a great way to hang out with the family and support the arts. $15 to $30, registration at 7 a.m.; 5k at 8:30 a.m.; Children’s Fun Run at 9:30 a.m.; 3800 S. Land Park Drive, www.raceforthearts.com.

—Jessica Rine

RetroCrush Saturday, auguSt 24 What better way to fill the Mad Men-sized void in your life than enjoying throwback laughs. Robert Berry hosts the all-ages RetroCrush—a monthly variety show in the style of old-school Dean Martin and Johnny Carson sets of yore. If you’re one of the first 40 people through the door, you COMEDY receive free bacon. Enjoy the bacon and laughs, courtesy of Jimmy Earll, Claire Fischer, Junior Bruce and Chadd Marty Beals. $8, 8 p.m. at Sacramento Comedy Spot, 1050 20th Street, Suite 130; (916) 444-3137; www.saccomedyspot.com.

OF THE DOG M

idtown Cocktail Week is still upon us (through Sunday, August 25, to be exact). If you wake up one morning in a stranger’s bed, on your front lawn or right where you’d planned—but with a splitting headache—then it’s probably time for some hairof-the-dog-style remedies. Even if you don’t partake in any cocktail drinking whatsoever this week, that’s fine, too: SN&R has you covered with a few beer-related events happening this week, so even the beer snobs can stay thirsty.

Davis is currently celebrating a citywide Davis Beer Week, which lasts through Sunday, August 25. One of the highlights: de Vere’s Irish Pub and the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame (located in Davis) team up for the Bike & Brew Fest on Saturday, August 24. Happening from 3:30 to 8 p.m. in Central Park (401 C Street in Davis), the festival will have unlimited beer sampling (from places such as de Vere’s and Sudwerk Brewing), food trucks and live music. Tickets are $35 in advance, $45 at the door, and $10 for designated drivers. Head to http://davisbeerweek.com/bikes-brewfest for more info.

—Cody Drabble

Big Lebowski Party Sunday, auguSt 25

Just a bit further east, West Sacramento offers ales on rails with the Sacramento Beer Train on Saturday, August 24. A special program of the Sacramento RiverTrain, the Beer Train will serve eight tastings from four Northern California breweries (Auburn Alehouse Brewery, Wildcard Brewing Co., River City Brewing Company and Two River Cider Company). Tickets ($45-$65) for the three-hour train excursion include a souvenir glass, but food and additional drinks will cost extra. Designated-driver tickets are $25. It starts at 6 p.m. at Sacramento RiverTrain, 400 N. Harbor Boulevard in West Sacramento. For more information, call (800) 866-1690, or visit www.sacramentorivertrain.com.

Finally, for its Dog Days of Summer beer class, Total Wine & More will serve up beer that’s both summer themed and features the word “dog” in its name. OK, that’s kind of limiting, but this store has so many types of beer, it’ll be hard to resist just picking up something else after the class. The event happens Thursday, August 22, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Total Wine & More locations in Sacramento (2121 Arden Way) and Roseville (5791 Five Star Boulevard). It costs $15. For more information, visit www.totalwine.com.

—Jonathan Mendick

Dude, let’s go bowling. Here’s the best way to relive that one film from 1998 that everyone still makes PARTY obscure references to—you know, The Big Lebowski. Don a hairnet, shine that bowling ball and throw some gutterballs with people dressed as The Dude, The Jesus and The Stranger. This party features trivia, drink specials and a costume contest. $65-$75, noon at Capitol Bowl, 900 W. Capitol Avenue; (916) 371-4200; www.capbowl.com/the-big-lebowski-party.

—Jonathan Mendick

Follow the Chef WedneSday, auguSt 28 Sacramento is the “farm-to-fork” capital of America (so says the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau, anyway), but jumping straight into farmers markets can be intimidating for the uninitiated. Join a tour of the Cesar Chavez Plaza farmers market with chef Oliver Ridgeway of Grange Restaurant FOOD & Bar. He’ll provide tips on picking the best produce, followed by a three-course lunch at Grange. $39, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Grange Restaurant and Bar, 926 J Street; www.grange sacramento.com/follow-the-chef-is-back.

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French Tea Service $2 5 per person

our homemade pastries and breads are baked fresh daily Estelle’s Patisserie is a charming, warmly lit French-style bakery and espresso bar in the heart of Sacramento, dedicated to quality and our community.

Using fresh, local ingredients to make our pastries and desserts from scratch every day, Estelle’s also offers breakfast and lunch items.

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2110 l street | sacramento, ca | 916.441.4151 | skyboxgrillsac.com

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Anatolian Table Turkish Bistro 2319 K Street, Suite B; (916) 737-5767; www.anatoliantable.com

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The beyti kebap, or ground lamb in a wrap, resembled a tasty lamb burrito, and I’ll be a monkey’s aunt if it wasn’t actually wrapped in a flour tortilla.

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The desserts were a horror show. The rice pudding came directly out of the refrigerator and had crusty drips down the side, as well as a thick membrane on top that I struggled to pierce. The kadayif, or shredded wheat vermicelli topped with “light” (read: heavy) house syrup and pistachios was stale.

We left both on the table. The Anatolian Table Restaurant in Rocklin is acclaimed—this publication gave it a four-star rating in 2008. The menu at this “bistro” is much less interesting, which is odd—it’s likely that Midtown diners are more adventurous than those in Rocklin. The restaurant has been largely empty all three times I’ve visited. It better up its game to survive in Midtown’s competitive restaurant atmosphere. Ω

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Well, technically, an 8-ounce plastic tub, but whatever. With hummus variations including artichoke, avocado-cilantro, jalapeño-cilantro and spicy-pepper (my favorite, so far), it may be enough to drag anyone out of the garbanzo-bean-spread doldrums. Seek out Zena Foods’ booth at the Midtown Farmers Market Sacramento (2020 J Street) from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays, or check out the company’s website: www.zenafoods.com.

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single Turkish meatball and two chunks of juicy breast meat, one kefta and a few shreds of doner.

In fact, all of the plates are on the stingy side. For the same amount of money you could get kebabs, plus hummus, tabbouleh, pita and a pile of rice at Maalouf’s and probably have enough for lunch the next day.

Truxel Rd

Here’s a question: If you’re reviewing a restaurant and you visit three times, and on two of the times you have unremarkable service and on one by Becky Grunewald visit you have the lights turned out on you at 8:58 p.m. and are practically pushed out the door, how much weight should that third time be given in the review?

Any restaurant can have a bad day, or a day when everyone needs to get home early to watch America’s Got Talent, but on the flip side, many people only give a restaurant one chance. On my third visit to Anatolian Table Turkish Bistro, the server was certainly rating: polite, but there was a constant undertow of H 1/2 pressure urging my party out the door. The restaurant closes at 9 p.m. We convened a dinner for one: bit before 8 p.m. At 8:35 p.m., when we had $20 - $30 just started on our entrees, we were told that we had to put in our dessert order because the kitchen was closing. At 8:45 p.m., the check was dropped off. At 8:50 p.m., the server hovered in a way that clued me in that I had to stop chatting and pay right away. As mentioned above, the three of us ended up out on the sidewalk before the stroke of 9.

Without the hard sell, I estimate we would H have been done by about 9:15 p.m., but we flawed would have had a relaxed, convivial experience HH instead of one that was frustratingly truncated. haS momentS But, again, anyone can have an off night.

HHH So, let’s move on to the food. We ordered appealing the appetizer platter and zucchini pancake to start. The appetizer plate is uninspiring. Perhaps HHHH authoritative it’s not fair to judge Turkish baba ghanoush against the baba ghanoush at Maalouf’s Taste HHHHH epic of Lebanon, because one is Turkish and one Lebanese, but I missed the smoke of the latter.

As it was, the dip had very little taste. Both the spicy and regular hummus were also bland, and grainy to boot. An eggplant tapenade and a carrot yogurt dip were much better. The fried zucchini pancake, studded with scallion and dill, was moist—almost soggy inside. The soft Still hungry? texture was a pleasant surprise, however. The Search Sn&r’s entrees all arrived with a refreshingly crisp “dining directory” to find local salad and a side of lightly pickled cabbage.

Let’s get the vegetarian entree out of the restaurants by name or by type of food. way: It was one of the worst dishes I have had Sushi, mexican, indian, in a while. Cafeteria-line-style veggies—big italian—discover it all in the “dining” watery chunks of zucchini, red and green bell section at pepper and even McDonald’s-esque crinklewww.news cut pickles swimming in a soup of that bland review.com. eggplant dip. I ordered it as takeout, and for $13.95, there was no pita included. This dish was very sad-making, and half went into the trash, despite my hunger. Insert frowny-face emoticon here.

The beyti kebap, or ground lamb in a wrap, resembled a tasty lamb burrito, and I’ll be a monkey’s aunt if it wasn’t actually wrapped in a flour tortilla. Either that or it was the most tortillalike lavash ever. A plate of mixed kebabs was tasty, but for $19.95 was small and served with only a

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4261 TRUXEL RD, STE A7 | SACRAMENTO

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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.

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

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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.

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-andhydrant 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 ham-and-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.

Another highlight includes an excellent smoked-eggplant baba ganoush, which is smoky and garlicky and served with warm flatbread wedges and oil-cured olives. American.

1630 S St., (916) 442-4885. Dinner for one: $20-$40. HHH1⁄2 A.M.R.

Capital Dime Sacramento foodies can finally eat chef Noah Zonca’s food without having to cough up rent money. The menu is split up into “Dime plates,” “rabbit food,” sandwiches and “plates.” The dime plates and rabbit food both go for $10. This, and the idea that every dish is supposed to be a “perfect 10” is the idea behind the restaurant’s name. One simple dish, the clams chorizo, is something you’d stab your mother with a seafood fork over, should she attempt to pluck one of its delightful bivalves from your plate. Here, seared chorizo is drowned in white wine and garlic, creating a silky palomino-colored broth in which the teeniest clams ever are cooked.

The kalua-pork slider is also a thing of beauty, with flavorful pulled pork tender as a bruise.

The fries are fried in rice oil with their skins on—which always means more flavor. Delicate, crisp and fantastic to munch on. American. 1801 L St., Ste. 50; (916) 443-1010. Dinner for one: $15-$25. HHH1/2 G.M.

LowBrau This place specializes in 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

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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, 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.

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

South Sac Blue Moon Cafe and Karaoke In Sac, most people equate Hong Kongstyle 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.

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

Arden/ Carmichael Taqueria Garibaldi One of this restaurant’s biggest pulls is its choice of meats. The chorizo is

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Land Park/ Curtis Park Burgess Brothers’ Burgers This burger joint’s motto is “Committed to Service,” and that’s evidenced in its outstanding customer service. The food is also exceptional.

There are plenty of burgers on the menu—all smoked before they’re grilled. The one-third pound Tactical Blue Burger is served with blue cheese, tomato, lettuce and fried onions.

With a generous slathering of the “Patrol” sauce, it’s full of flavor but not too smoky. Don’t miss the barbecue, though. The pulled-pork sandwich is nicely smoked and shredded, piled on a garlic roll. There are also kidsized sliders and the Code 4 vegetarian burger, made with a portobello mushroom.

Barbecue. 2114 Sutterville Rd., (916) 209-0277. Dinner for one: $5-$10. HHH1⁄2 A.M.R.

the spicier ceviche de aji amarillo—both are exceptionally piquant and hearty. Entree recommendations include the arroz chaufa, a dish that resulted from the Chinese immigrants’ influence on Peruvian cuisine.

Here, it’s served with shrimp and crispy fried pork. The lomo saltado oozes 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 isn’t the duck or the rice, but rather a house-made salsa criolla, consisting of pickled onion and cilantro. Whatever you order, La Huaca’s attention to detail makes it the ideal place to be introduced to the complexities found in this regional cuisine.

Peruvian. 9213 Sierra College Blvd., Ste. 140 in Roseville; (916) 771-2558. Dinner for one: $20-$40. HHHH1/2 J.M.

The Hideaway Bar & Grill This bar fills a niche Sacramento might not have known it lacked with its vague rockabilly vibe, lots of greased hair on the men, brightly dyed hair in retro styles and cat-eye glasses on the ladies, and an abundance of black clothes and tattoo sleeves for all. The liquor selection is basic (no craft cocktails here).

The menu’s heavy on fried appetizers, salads, sandwiches and burgers, the latter of which are architectural, towering assemblages. Happily, the fluffy charred buns are sturdy enough to hold up when the tower is squeezed to a more realistic height. A meaty veggie burger gets crunch from fried pickles and sweet heat from barbecue sauce. Overall, the Hideaway offers cheap beer, adequate bar food and a comfortable place to hang with out friends. American. 2565 Franklin Blvd., (916) 455-1331. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHH1⁄2 B.G.

Lotus 8 The menu here is organized with sections such as “Our Most Popular Dishes,” “If You’re Feeling Adventurous” and the “Chef’s Special” tasting list, which offers dishes less familiar to American diners. Worthy options include the fried-milk appetizer, which is made of sweetened milk that’s been battered and fried and tastes like pillows of the lightest cheesecake.

Pair it with the sweet-andsour sauce, or top it with powdered sugar for a dessert.

The salted egg with pumpkin arrives as lightly battered, fried half-moons topped with hard-boiled egg. With classic sweet and salty complements, the flavor is even better with a drizzle of hot chili sauce. The fried tofu with salt and pepper is exceptional. Cubes of fried, silky tofu taste like custardy goodness. This is the kind of tofu that could almost make one give up meat. Chinese.

199 Blue Ravine Rd., Ste. 100 in Folsom; (916) 351-9278. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH A.M.R.

Back Wine Bar & Bistro Back has

La Huaca This Peruvian eatery offers an experience decidedly upscale in every way: décor, art, lighting, presentation, price and—most importantly—taste.

Peru’s national dish is ceviche, seafood cured in lime, salt and chili, and it’s a must-have starter. Try the mixto version, which features fish, shrimp, octopus and calamari, or sample

THAI ONE ON IN MIDTOWN

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.

Folsom

Roseville

IllustratIon by Mark stIvers

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.

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 finding out he’s a terrible kisser: greatly disappointing. In the end, a little refinery needs to

Très quiche It’s the time of year when tomatoes are ripening, and vines are sagging as they bear the last fruits of the season. But there’s only so much one can do with extra sacks of homegrown tomatoes. Some of the routes I’ve taken in the past include making heirloom-tomato salads, a bunch of pasta sauce and pickled tomatoes (which taste similar to the kind found in local Slavic grocery stores). But a Tuesday-evening class sounds like the tastiest option: a Tomato Tart Workshop taught by Tracy DeVore. The hands-on class teaches participants how to create tomato quiches and tarts, which can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It happens at 6 p.m. at Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, 1900 Alhambra Boulevard.

The class costs $40 for co-op members and $49 for the public. For more information, visit www.sacfoodcoop.com.

—Jonathan Mendick

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BEFORE

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8 s end

Heavenly Mountain Resort Kirkwood Northstar-at-Tahoe Sierra at Tahoe Resort Squaw Valley USA

People & Personalities Best meteorologist to trust for your weather forecast Darla Givens, News10 Dave Bender, CBS 13 Dirk Verdoorn, KCRA 3 Kristina Werner, Fox 40 Mark Finan, KCRA 3 Monica Woods, News10

Best reporter David Bienick, KCRA 3 Jared Goyette, Sacramento Press Ryan Lillis, The Sacramento Bee Carla Meyer, The Sacramento Bee Bob Moffitt, Capital Public Radio

Best public servant Councilwoman Angelique Ashby Mayor Kevin Johnson Councilman Kevin McCarty Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg

Food & Drink Best chef Pajo Bruich, Enotria Restaurant Wine Bar Brad Cecchi, Grange Restaurant & Bar

STORY

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3 1 .

9 2

Michael Fagnoni, Hawks Restaurant Aimal Formoli, Formoli’s Bistro Kelly Hogge, Magpie Cafe Patrick Mulvaney, Mulvaney’s Building & Loan Billy Ngo, Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine Kevin O’Connor, Blackbird Kitchen & Bar Ravin Patel, Ella Dining Room & Bar Adam Pechal, Restaurant Thir13en Oliver Ridgeway, Grange Restaurant & Bar

Best happy hour Blackbird Kitchen & Bar Bows & Arrows Cafeteria 15L The Hideaway Bar & Grill Kasbah Lounge Lucca Restaurant and Bar R15 Riverside Clubhouse The Red Rabbit Kitchen & Bar Shady Lady Saloon Skybox Grill and Bar

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Arts & Smarts Best place to see art Axis Gallery Beatnik Studios Bows & Arrows Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento Crocker Art Museum Elliott Fouts Gallery Fe Gallery & Iron Art Studio John Natsoulas Gallery Sol Collective La Raza Gallería Posada Little Relics Verge Center for the Arts Vox Sacramento

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ARTS&CULTURE

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08.22.13

Best professionaltheater company B Street Theatre California Musical Theatre Capital Stage New Helvetia Theatre Sacramento Theatre Company

Best novelist Jodi Angel Doug Rice Pam Houston Christian Kiefer William T. Vollman

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Drink your dessert

Birdland

Stoli Salted Karamel vodKa Dessert-flavored vodka isn’t typically my beverage of choice, but I’m down to try anything once. Stoli COCKTAIL Salted Karamel vodka (available for around $24 at Total Wine & More, various locations) isn’t syrupy sweet and has a nice caramel flavor, with a hint of smoke—it may not ever be my go-to, but it’s a fun changeup from the usual wine or beer fare. Take it on the rocks, or mix it with some apple juice and cream soda for a tasty caramel-apple cocktail. www.stoli.com.

—Jessica Rine

Time and time again time traveller watch This $200 watch tells the hour of several time zones simultaneously (analog, of course, not digital) by using silhouettes of well-known landmarks to mark different zones. The Eiffel Tower marks the time in GADGET Paris, for instance, while the Statue of Liberty marks the hour in New York City. Because it indicates the time in multiple zones at once, the watch covers a full 24-hour cycle, instead of the standard 12. So, it takes a single day to complete one revolution.

A pretty cool gadget—even if you rarely leave California. www.mrjoneswatches.com/ time-traveller.

—Aaron Carnes

The song as history mo’ meta BlueS By using songs as a trigger mechanism of memory, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the 42-year-old cofounder of the Roots and musical director for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, has penned an animated memoir that enhances linear detail with BOOK stream-of-consciousness ruminations. In Mo’ Meta Blues (Grand Central Publishing, $26), the drummer, producer and cultural curator chronicles his formative years in West Philly and on the road with his doo-wop and soul-singer father and modeldancer-vocalist mother. There are also short bursts of commentary from Roots co-manager Richard Nichols and co-writer Ben Greenman. The bumpy personal and professional journey includes Questlove’s interactions with such players as Prince, members of Kiss, Dave Chappelle, D’Angelo and Al Green, as well as his spin on musical creationism vs. evolution, music criticism, what he considers the most influential moment in hip-hop. It’s probably not what you think.

—Mark Halverson

32 | SN&R | 08.22.13

Shane Murphy, a 33-year-old Sacramento artist, has created a mysterious, melodious world. Murphy launched a Kickstarter COMIC campaign earlier this summer to bring together jazz, the Great Depression and birds as part of an effort to publish his independent comic-book series, Birdland.

It worked—just 12 hours after the campaign was launched on the peer-based financing website, Murphy’s $3,000 comic was fully funded. The Kickstarter effort officially ends Thursday, August 22, and the first issue is set for publication in early 2014.

Birdland tells the story of anthropomorphic bird detective Rezno Piano (named after Italian architect Renzo Piano), a green heron attempting to solve a murder that’s clouded in musical clues. He enlists the help of a trumpet-playing owl, Benny (after legendary jazz musician Benny Goodman), and becomes entrenched in a mystery straight out of a Humphrey Bogart film.

Murphy, a lifelong fan of comic books, draws inspiration from noir films of the 1940s, and imbues his work with a dark, brooding quality. Large birds in trench coats and fedoras walk slowly from panel to panel as smoke drifts up from long cigarettes, wisping away into the night sky.

“I [was] hitting a lot of [creative] dead ends,” Murphy told SN&R. “So, I decided to do something really simple, tried and true: noir.”

The next step was all too logical—replace humans with a vast array of bird species.

“I liked the imagery of birds in 1930s automobiles,” Murphy said. “It stuck, and I went from there.” www.kickstarter.com/ projects/1221541041/birdland.

—Adam Khan

Try, fail and try again I have been starting and stopping different education programs and jobs for many years, and it is exhausting. I know the reasons why I am unsettled, but don’t know what direction to take next. I am in my 40s and feel panicked and embarrassed for not having started a career. I work part time, I volunteer and I am responsible.

I’ve seen counselors to deal with my abusive childhood,

by Joey ga and they were somewhat rcia helpful, but not for career issues. I have also seen career a s kj o ey @ ne wsreview.c om counselors, but they didn’t help much, either. I feel stuck and hopeless.

Joey Who told you that you had to have a career? Or that it is necessary is in awe of the origami on to complete everything you start? exhibit at the Carrying someone else’s expectaCrocker Art tion for your life is exhausting.

Museum.

If someone you admire, like your mother, father or high-school history teacher, suggested a particular path, you might walk that road in an attempt to gain approval.

Along the way, your own dream for a delicious life is trampled underfoot. This is one of the most common ways to kill ambition.

If you’re unhappy, investigate what your current life is a metaphor for. The answer reveals your true calling.

In his book, Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work, Steven Pressfield writes: “Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls.” Pressfield also writes brilliantly about shadow careers, the work we accept to avoid facing our true calling. He notes that the shadow career is a metaphor for our real work but is risk-free. “If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us,” he writes. The high-school English teacher who yearns to be a novelist but focuses on getting her students published, or the coverband musician who gets stoned instead of writing original music are examples of people entrenched in shadow careers.

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.

BEFORE

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NEWS

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So, if you’re unhappy, investigate what your current life is a metaphor for. The answer reveals your true calling. Once you connect your career with the compass in your heart, you will be motivated to follow through on education plans and training. That’s because you will have awakened to a special life purpose that only you can fulfill.

That doesn’t mean your path will be without obstacles. Resistance, in the guise of a fear of success, will continue to interject itself (although it grows weaker when you don’t give in to it). Remember this: Fear of success is just a fancy way of admitting a fear of being authentic.

Becoming who we are meant to be requires that we swim against the tide of other people’s opinions. It feels so unnatural at first, that we will often fail. Failure provides the opportunity to improve skills in problem-solving, in demolishing resistance and in accepting rejection as a normal human experience.

The most innovative new education programs, like Draper University in San Mateo, Calif., encourage failure. At Draper, students in the entrepreneurial-training program accumulate points “for heroic acts and spectacular failures.”

Founder Tim Draper, a venture capitalist, points out that his program is the antithesis of a traditional school where, “you get an A only if you make no mistakes.” In a recent interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, Draper said, “The world needs more heroes who are willing to break out of those constraints.”

How would your life be different if you had been encouraged to explore the height and width of your creative, entrepreneurial self, and to value your failures as courageous attempts to reach success? Try that new mindset now and thrive. As the writer George Eliot once wrote: “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” Ω

Meditation of the Week Students at Draper University recite the “Superhero Oath” every morning, and it rocks. Here’s the final clause: “I will accept the lifelong obligation to hone my Superhero powers, and apply those Superhero powers to the good of the universes.” Are you ready to be the person God intended you to be?

F E AT U R E

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STORY

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Alec Baldwin

Cate Blanchett

Bobby Louis C.K. Cannavale

Andrew Dice Clay

Sally Michael Peter Hawkins Sarsgaard Stuhlbarg

“Grade A. Powerful and Enthralling.”

(Highest Rating)

-Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Written and Directed by Woody Allen BLUE OAKS 16 6692 Lonetree Blvd, Rocklin (916) 797-3456 CENTURY STADIUM 14 1590 Ethan Way, Sacramento (800) FANDANGO CENTURY 16 GREENBACK LANE 6223 Garfield Ave, Sacramento (800) FANDANGO

CENTURY FOLSOM 14 261 Iron Point Rd, Folsom (800) FANDANGO CENTURY 14 ROSEVILLE 1555 Eureka Rd, Roseville (800) FANDANGO MAGIC THEATRE 107 Argall Way, Nevada City (530) 265-8262

PALLADIO 16 240 Palladio Parkway, Folsom (916) 984-7469 REGAL EL DORADO HILLS STADIUM 14 2101 Vine St, El Dorado Hills (800) FANDANGO REGAL NATOMAS MARKETPLACE 16 3561 Truxel Rd, Sacramento (800) FANDANGO

TOWER THEATRE 2508 Land Park Dr, Sacramento (916) 442-4700 UA LAGUNA VILLAGE 8755 Center Parkway, Sacramento (800) FANDANGO VARSITY THEATRE 616 2nd St, Davis (530) 758-5284

Dysfunctional family memoir

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Personal memoirs can offer a compelling glimpse into someone’s life, but they also have co-stars who may not be so enthusiastic or have by Patti Roberts a differing perspective about the author’s reveals. Such is the case of Brooke Wyeth (Dana Brooke), who carts her autobiography back to her parents’ home in Palm Springs, hoping for a blessing from her family, but gets a blasting instead.

5

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Other Desert Cities

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the compelling tale and strong performances produce a winning combination.

The most compelling relationship in Other Desert Cities is the caustic chemistry between daughter and mother Polly, with talented actors Brooke and Joan Grant creating a sparring team where each displays amazing, accurate aim at each other’s hearts—mom throwing brittle barbs and daughter passiveaggressive darts. Dad Lyman (David Silberman), a Hollywood veteran with strong ties to Reagan, tries to be the peacemaker, while Aunt Silda (Stephanie McVay) is happy to stir up some sibling shit, and brother Trip (Mike DiSalvo) tries to distance himself from all the family dramas.

The B Street set is spot-on: an aging Palm Springs palatial home that looks stuck in the 1970s—just like the Wyeth family and their deep, dark past.

5 The Drowsy Chaperone

a

Party for the Animals

“My parents and I clearly don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

August 23, 2013 | 6-9pm | California Auto Museum $30 in advance | $40 at the door Live Music | Silent Auction | Great food, wine & beer from local vendors To benefit the animals at the City of Sacramento Front Street Animal Shelter

To purchase tickets visit www.Sacpetsearch.com or call 916.808.8166

2200 Front Street, Sacramento, CA 95818

34 | SN&R | 08.22.13

Other Desert Cities, 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday; 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; 6:30 p.m. Tuesday; 2 and 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday; $23-$35.

B Street Theatre, 2711 B Street; (916) 443-5300; www.bstreet theatre.org. Through September 29.

In Other Desert Cities, playwright Jon Robin Baitz combines conflicting family dynamics with blunt sarcastic humor, which puts some fun in dysfunctional. Though the play starts out with wry, dry humor, it proceeds to get darker as the audience is pulled down the Wyeth family rabbit hole, where family secrets and resentments are revealed.

Brooke, who has one successful novel and a couple battles with depression in her past, confronts her family with self-righteousness and her tell-all manuscript that reveals a dark family past. The first half of the play deals with the strained relationships between the proudly liberal daughter, her Ronald Reagan-Republican parents, her wild-and-free aunt, and her producer brother. But it’s the second half that packs a punch when family relations explode after Brooke’s mother reads the memoir that includes family damnations and inner conflicts regarding a third child’s criminal past and death.

There are moments when the story timeline is confusing and the tonal shift abrupt, but

Short and sweet—that’s how we like our entertainment. And that’s just what this second production of the Fair Oaks Theatre Festival is: two hours, including intermission, and the happiest of happy endings.

The Drowsy Chaperone is both a valentine to and a sharp parody of 1920s Broadway musicals, when anything and everything might get thrown into the plot. Gangsters? Conniving producers? Scheming starlets? No problem.

This is a musical encased in an ingenious narrative framework—a musical that springs to life on stage from the mind of the Man in Chair as he listens to a recording of his favorite show.

Bob Irvin directs this fantastical frolic that boasts perhaps the perfect cast, most arresting stage and prop design, and the crystal-clear sound one always hoped the amphitheater would deliver. Daniel W. Slauson seems born to be the Man, delivering arch asides and pointed commentary on the rambunctious play in his head. Analise Langford-Clark is all charm as Janet Van de Graaff, a Broadway darling who is about to give it all up for love; and Deane Calvin couldn’t be better as the tipsy title character. Other standouts include Brianne Hidden-Wise as the ditsy dowager, Mrs. Tottendale; Joe Hart as her longsuffering butler, Underling; and Corey D. Winfield as Aldolpho, the “Latin lover.”

—Jim Carnes

The Drowsy Chaperone, 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Sunday; $5-$15.

Fair Oaks Theatre Festival at the Veterans Memorial Amphitheatre, 7991 California Avenue in Fair Oaks; (916) 966-3683; www.fairoakstheatrefesttival.com. Through September 8.

Now Playing

5

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

5

The Lieutenant of Inishmore

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.

4

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

1

Big Idea Theatre’s production is full of violence, curse words and stupidity, with spot-on Irish accents and outstanding performances guaranteed to produce uncomfortable laughter. Directed

by Brian Harrower and with Justin Muñoz as the eponymous lieutenant, the show never misses a beat as it drums out this truth: An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind. Th, F, Sa 8pm.

Through 8/31. $10-$16. Big Idea Theatre, 1616 Del Paso Blvd.; (916) 960-3036; www.bigidea theatre.com. K.M.

FOUL

2 3

3

This production features lots of interaction between Kevin Kirtlan (Sherlock Holmes) and Brandon Rapoza (Dr. Watson). And the ladies also leave a favorable impression in their supporting parts: The estimable Kelley Ogden shines as a woman of mystery, Georgann Wallace romps as the dowdy housekeeper Mrs. Hudson. Scott Adams rounds out the cast as the plodding Inspector Lestrade. Director Julie Anchor mitigates much of the script’s convoluted plotting and longish speeches. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for picnicking. F, Sa 8pm. Through 9/7. $12-$17.50. Main Street Theatre Works at Kennedy Mine Amphitheatre, 1105 N. Main St. in Jackson; (209) 295-4499; www.mstw.org. J.H.

For tickets or reservations:

916.207.4420 | info@freefallstage.com

FAIR

Sherlock’s Last Case

Green Valley Theatre Company presents a well-done but kind of messy musical about the life and political career of America’s seventh president.

(Hint: His name is in the title.)

Jacob Montoya, in tight pants and eyeliner, embodies the savvy and savage nation-building, Indian-nation-decimating Old Hickory. Spunky and subversive at its best, it’s juvenile and offensive at its worst. But it has a good beat, and you can dance (and cringe) to it. F, Sa 8pm; Su 7pm. Through 9/1. $18. Green Valley Theatre Company at The Grange Performing Arts Center, 3823 V St.; (916) 736-2664; http://greenvalleytheatre.com. J.C.

ds Weekensom in fol 15 ep Aug 8 - s 15 $12 - $

GOOD

4 WELL-DONE

5 SUBLIME–DON’T MISS

Short reviews by Jim Carnes, Jeff Hudson and Kel Munger.

PHOTO COURTESy OF WET THE HIPPO

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FROM THE CREATORS OF

AND

“THE MOST ENTERTAINING MOVIE OF THE YEAR!”

This promo photo makes about as much sense as the title of the show its promoting.

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

“++++!”

Think the unthinkable

SLANT MAGAZINE

If you’re sick of the same ol’ types of improv (sports themed, trivia, game show), here’s a totally free-form group that promises to be “unthinkable,” according to its flyer: Wet the Hippo is presented by the Los Angeles-based improv group the Idiot Workshop, and directed by John Gilkey, once a lead clown in Cirque du Soleil—at least according to a press release. The show features nine Los Angeles performers, plus one concert violinist (or perhaps just a regular violinist—this fact is unclear based on the unreliability of the troupe’s website biography). One thing we do know is that Wet the Hippo was nominated for Best Comedy at the 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival (there is actual sourcable evidence for this) and that a press release calls the 18-and-over production an “edgy, improvised show”—whatever that means. Wet the Hippo, 9 p.m. Friday, August 23; $10. Smith Flat House, 2021 Smith Flat Road in Placerville; www.wetthehippo.com.

NEWS

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F E AT U R E

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

“MY FAVORITE OF THE THREE. FUNNY AND HIGHLY ORIGINAL. I LOVED IT.”

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PETER JACKSON

SIMON PEGG

—Jonathan Mendick

BEFORE

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Check local listings for theatre locations and showtimes

STORY

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A RT S & C U LT U R E

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AFTER

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SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW THUR 8/22

08.22.13

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SHAUN OF THE DEAD & HOT FUZZ NOW AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY™ & DVD!

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Sutter's gold The Spectacular Now Just when you think you’ve had it to here with movies about teenagers and their damn problems, along comes The Spectacular Now to redeem by Jim Lane the whole debased genre. There hasn’t been a movie quite like this since Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything, and that was 24 years ago.

The Spectacular Now is written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (from Tim Tharp’s novel) and directed by James Ponsoldt.

Neustadter and Weber were the authors of 2009’s supercharming sleeper hit (500) Days of Summer. The two men bring the same freshness and quirky vision to Now that they did to Summer, although they’re telling a much more conventional story, without the earlier movie’s freewheeling time-out-of-joint structure.

5 meditation sant mat

Sant Baljit Singh

on the inner light and the inner sound Introductory talk given by an authorized speaker followed by optional free vegetarian lunch and discussion Sunday, September 1, 12 noon Sierra 2 Center, 2791 - 24th St. Curtis Hall, Sacramento Admission free

Know

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Love, captured by the light of Donkey Kong.

1 Poor

2 Fair

3 Good

4 Very Good

5 excellent

36 | SN&R | 08.22.13

Miles Teller plays Sutter Keely, a highschool senior and hard-drinking party boy (in Tharp’s book, the setting is suburban Oklahoma City, but the movie leaves its precise location blank). Sutter’s a glib charmer, the life of every backyard kegger, and it seems everybody likes him. We first see Sutter as he wrestles with the essay question on a college application: “What is a particular problem or challenge you’ve faced in your life, how did you deal with it, and how has it prepared you for the future?” Sutter doesn’t think in those terms; he lives entirely in the moment, and all he can think to type on the application is what an awesome pair he makes with his girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson).

Then, Cassidy dumps him. The reason for the breakup is due to such a simple misunderstanding and is so easily straightened out, that it’s clear to us, if not to Sutter, that she’s been looking for the excuse for some time. When he crashes a party to try to get her back, she’s already with Marcus (Dayo Okeniyi), the school football star. After the usual awkward confrontation, Sutter retreats with elaborately tipsy dignity and launches himself on a serious drunken binge—though it takes a few stops before he finds a bar where they’re not too serious about seeing his ID. A

quartet of college girls drink and flirt with him before ditching him for greener pastures. The night becomes a smoky, boozy blur.

When Sutter wakes up, he doesn’t know where he is or what happened to his car. Leaning over him, relieved to learn that he’s not dead, is a vaguely familiar face. It’s Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley), a classmate he barely knows, but who knows him well—by reputation.

It’s 6 a.m., and Aimee is on her way to deliver the morning papers, so Sutter offers to help if, as she drives around, she’ll help look for his car.

What develops from there is a change for them both. The slick show-off Sutter, who seems always to be trolling the waters for his next girlfriend, sees Aimee as a lunch buddy and math tutor; romance (or his idea of it) is the last thing on his mind.

Aimee, more easily smitten, is surprised to have the attention of an “important” guy like Sutter.

(Not all her friends are as easily impressed. One, when Sutter tries to glad-hand her by introducing himself, ignores his outthrust hand with an icy, “Yeah, I know who you are.”)

Teller and Woodley have a remarkable chemistry, and it’s no surprise they shared a special acting award at the Sundance Film Festival. This shows especially in what must surely be one of the most tender and sensitive losing-your-virginity scenes in movie history. Director Ponsoldt’s hand is particularly sure here, as the couple’s urgent whispers mingle with the suddenly intensified sounds all around them.

(Somebody run this scene for Judd Apatow to show him there are other ways to treat sex.)

This film depicts what must surely be one of the most tender and sensitive losing-your-virginity scenes in movie history.

The psychological suspense of The Spectacular Now is simple: Will Aimee pull Sutter up to her level, or will he drag her down to his? It’s one of the mature beauties of the movie that in the end, we don’t know exactly where the two will go from here. Ponsoldt’s last shot is a long close-up of one of his two young stars. The face is mobile and expressive, yet we can read into it almost anything we want to see—and probably a few things that we don’t. At the very least, Sutter Keely has begun to understand that there can be things even more spectacular than “now.” Ω

by daniel barnes & JiM lane

3

Blue Jasmine

•

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

A snooty New York socialite (Cate Blanchett), left penniless when her crooked financier husband (Alec Baldwin) goes to prison, moves in with her working-class sister in San Francisco (Sally Hawkins). Critic Walter Kerr once wrote, “Neil Simon didn’t have an idea for a play this year, but he wrote one anyway.” Well, Woody Allen didn’t have an idea for a movie, so he did a riff on A Streetcar Named Desire. But Allen never gets the colored lights going. The role of Stanley Kowalski is drained of sexual energy and divvied up between the sister’s ex-husband (Andrew Dice Clay) and present boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale); without that conflict, Streetcar lacks a core, and one is missing here. The whole is less than the sum of its parts, though some parts (especially Blanchett’s performance) are well worth watching. J.L.

3

“FUNNY AND TOUCHING.”

NOW

Blue Jasmine “WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD.”

THE WAY WAYBACK FRUITVALE STATION - David Edelstein, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

WED/THUR: 10:30AM, 12:45, 3:00, 5:15, 7:40, 9:55PM FRI-TUES: 2:20, 4:40, 7:00PM NO SUN 2:20, 4:40PM • NO TUES 7:00PM

ENDS THUR., 8/22 WED/THUR: 10:35AM, 12:30, 9:20PM

LA TRAVIATA ON SUNDAY 8/25 AT 2PM & WEDNESDAY 8/27 AT 7PM

Sorry, no refunds.

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

Elysium

3

Fruitvale Station

2

Writer Matt Whiteley and director Joshua Michael Stern skate through highlights in the career of Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher)—first his introduction of the iPod in 2001, then flashing back to his hippie days inventing Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad). Kutcher is a physical match for Jobs, and he does his best, but Whiteley and Stern let him down. They gloss over Jobs’ selfish, unpleasant side, of course, but they even shortchange his virtues—visionary, entrepreneurial genius, charismatic leader.

Instead, the movie focuses on the corporate struggles with moneymen played by Dermot Mulroney, J.K. Simmons, Matthew Modine, etc. (This movie takes place in too damn many boardrooms.) Russell Carpenter’s washed-out photography adds to the feeling that the whole project was hasty and ill-planned. J.L.

Jim Carrey plays the lantern-jawed vigilante Colonel Stars and Stripes in the stomach-turning sequel Kick-Ass 2, although he famously and pompously distanced himself from the film, due to its gun violence.

Without Carrey’s star wattage, though, this threadbare, by-the-numbers offering would feel like a straight-to-video knockoff instead of a late-summer tentpole sequel. The 2010 cult hit Kick-Ass was a violent sociopath’s puerile revenge fantasy, but in the vicious schoolgirl vigilante Hit-Girl, it at least offered an original, if troubling, creation. Kick-Ass 2 foolishly shoves Hit-Girl to the sidelines, retiring her from the disembowelment of “bad guys” to play the Lohan in an atrocious Mean Girls subplot.

Kick-Ass 2 fails on every level imaginable, as well as a few levels heretofore unimaginable (CGI diarrhea is a new one). D.B.

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NEWS

2

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

2

Paranoia

A teenager (Lily Collins) learns that she comes from a long line of Shadowhunters, an army of young half-angels waging a secret war against the forces of evil. The first of Cassandra Clare’s series of young readers’ novels comes to the screen in a form that may please Clare’s readers, who have already immersed themselves in her insanely complicated story.

For the uninitiated, however, it’s a muddled bore, standard teenagers-with-awesome-power stuff and a shameless effort to tap into the Twilight phenomenon. Collins is torn between two lovers, Shadowhunter hunk Jamie Campbell Bower and mortal nerd Robert Sheehan, with various other hangers-on making puppy eyes at each other between fights with CGI demons. Jessica Postigo’s garbled script shows her inexperience; Harald Zwart’s limp direction doesn’t help. J.L.

Kick-Ass 2

BEFORE

Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Lee Daniels’ The Butler was “inspired by true events” much like John Hinckley Jr. was “inspired” by The Catcher in the Rye. Actually, it’s adapted from a Washington Post article about an African-American butler who served at the White House during some of the most turbulent times in recent history.

Daniels expands that idea into a Gump’s-eye view of the civil-rights era that is Oscar chum at its most pandering. Forest Whitaker, looking like an audio-animatronics figure at Disneyland Presents Great Moments With Lee Daniels’ The Butler, plays Cecil Gaines, son of a murdered cotton farmer reborn through servitude. Whitaker is strong, as usual, but the U.S. presidents are portrayed in a series of distracting cameos by Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower and Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan. D.B.

Jobs

1

The World’s End

A 40-year-old boy who never grew up (Simon Pegg) dragoons four pals (Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan) into returning to their hometown and repeating the epic pub crawl they got too drunk to finish back in their youth. The others have all moved on with their lives, but his enthusiasm brooks no denial. Still, all misgivings seem justified when they find the old town eerily changed. The script by Pegg and director Edgar Wright begins as a fast-paced British working-class comedy, with jokes coming almost too fast to catch. Then, it suddenly (and seamlessly) morphs into a latter-day Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with our boys battling an invasion of passiveaggressive aliens. It’s high old fun, though it plays as a bit too much of a rehash of Pegg and Wright’s Shaun of the Dead. J.L.

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-yearold daughter. J.L.

2

“A MEATY, FULLY REALIZED DRAMA.” - Justin Chang, VARIETY

WED/THUR: 10:45AM, 1:00, 2:30, 3:20, 4:45, 5:40, 7:00, 8:00, 10:00PM • FRI-TUES: 10:00AM, 11:00AM, 12:10, 1:10, 3:25, 5:40, 8:00, 9:20, 10:00PM • NO MON 10:00AM NO TUES 10:00AM, 9:20PM

STARTS FRI., 8/23 FRI-TUES: 10:55AM, 1:00, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 9:55PM “ENDEARINGLY SWEET.” - Peter Debruge, VARIETY

In 2154, Earth is populated by billions of have-nots, and all the haves are living on Space Station Elysium, hogging all the nice houses, clean air and miracle medicines for themselves. On the surface, an ex-convict (Matt Damon) gets a fatal dose of radiation, and his only hope is to get to Elysium, where he can be cured. That means a desperate return to crime—but he winds up embroiled in a coup on Elysium. Writer-director Neill Blomkamp combines the gritty atmosphere of his surprise 2009 hit District 9 with a loopy Occupy Wall Street political statement that gives the movie the air of a hectoring social conscience to lend depth and pertinence to all the high-tech shoot-’em-ups that are Blomkamp’s real business at hand. Jodie Foster takes on the thankless role of a Machiavellian Elysium official. J.L.

5

- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

THE SPECTACULAR

Gary Oldman has spent decades swirling his tongue around garish Southern, Russian and New York stock villain accents, but in the comatose “thriller” Paranoia, he gets the rare opportunity to revel in his natural Cockney tones. His tech titan Nicolas Wyatt is all refinement and slither, and he’s well-matched

by Harrison Ford as Wyatt’s chief competitor.

Too bad neither of them is the star of Paranoia, and in fact, they’re both barely in the picture.

The real star is Australian Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games) as an ambitious washout recruited for corporate espionage. Playing a knockoff of a knockoff of Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox from Wall Street, Hemsworth struggles to project any sort of personality. It doesn’t help that the script is overly familiar and flat, or that director Robert Luketic lacks the tools to ratchet up tension. D.B.

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F E AT U R E

STORY

2

“

A PERFECT MOVIE!” “

A PURE GEM… GRACED WITH SPARKLING ACTING.” SHAILENE WOODLEY IS MARVELOUS AND MILES TELLER IS EXCELLENT.”

Planes

“

A lowly crop-dusting airplane (voice by Dane Cook) cherishes an ambition to participate in an around-the-world air race, and by a combination of pluck and luck, he succeeds. Yes, it’s Turbo with planes instead of snails, but it’s also an unimaginative rehash of every other follow-your-dream movie, with little more than some stunning animation to distinguish it from all the rest. The story trudges through its predictable formula with excruciating precision, hitting every beat right on schedule. With no suspense or surprises, we have to pass the time by trying to identify the celebrity voices (which include Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Stacy Keach, Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, John Cleese and Cedric the Entertainer) and contemplating the inevitable Disney theme-park attraction. At least the ride will be over more quickly. J.L.

3

Red 2

3

We’re the Millers

+++++

“

A SUMMER LOVE STORY LOADED WITH POWER AND FEELING. I COULDN’ T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT.” SALON FROM THE WRITERS OF (500) DAYS OF SUMMER

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.

A small-time pot dealer (Jason Sudeikis), having been strong-armed into smuggling tons of weed in from Mexico, hires a stripper (Jennifer Aniston), a teen runaway (Emma Roberts) and the dweeb next door (Will Poulter) to masquerade as a straight-arrow family and avoid suspicion at the border. The writers’ credit (Sean Anders, Steve Faber, Bob Fisher, John Morris) is studded with numerous “ands” and “&s,” indicating rewrites without collaboration, and the unevenness shows in story sags and digressions. On the plus side, the whole thing plays to Sudeikis and Aniston’s comic strengths, and they have good chemistry. The humor is often raunchy (watch out for that spider-bite scene!), but most of the gags hit the target, and some hit the bull’s-eye. Rawson Marshall Thurber directs with a game (if at times unsteady) hand. J.L.

|

A RT S & C U LT U R E

© 2013 TSN VENTURES, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENTS START FRIDAY, AUGUST 23

ROSEVILLE Century Roseville 14 & XD (800) FANDANGO #920

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EVERY THURSDAY.SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW

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08.22.13

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SN&R

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37

BUDDY GUY

with special guest

14 Year olD BlUes phenom

qUinn sUllivan

Humble servant of song Andrew Belle finds the sweet spot between writing and singing

saturDay, aug 24th reD lioN hotel

Singer-songwriter Andrew Belle is humble to the point of being self-deprecating.

“I don’t have the audacity to call myself a by Brian Palmer musician, because I’m not really particularly good at any one instrument,” Belle says. “I can sort of play the piano and the guitar, and I can sing enough at this point. I had to teach myself how to sing my songs, but I’m not really a singer, either.”

pHoTo CouRTeSy of D’ARTpHoTogRApHie

saturDay, aug 31st assembly

Keep busy, and check your ego at the door.

beN sollee

jake shimabukuro

otmar liebert aND luNa Negr a

Dougie mcleaN

aug 30 · harlows

sep 10 · crest theatre

sep 3 · harlows

sep 18 · assembly

the loNe bellow

gorDoN lightFoot

tab beNoit

leoN russell

sep 4 · harlows

sep 9 · harlows

oct 2 · crest theatre

oct 20 · assembly

eD asNer as FDr Nov 4 crest theatre

FOR ALL TICKETS VISIT SBLENTERTAINMENT.COM 38 | SN&R | 08.22.13

anthemic lyrics (“Pieces”). Belle was looking for a new direction with this record, and he certainly found it.

“I knew I didn’t want to go in the singersongwriter, folk, acoustic direction this time,” he says. “I was tired of that. So, that’s where the new, big, alternative, electronic, ambient vibe comes from.”

The change wasn’t necessarily sudden, however.

“I had always wanted to make music like that,” Belle says. “My tastes have shifted over the years to more of an alternative genre of music, so I decided I’d rather make the kind of music I really enjoy listening to.”

Relationships are the lyrical focus of this record with Belle dealing with the likes of God (“I Won’t Fight It”), family (“Sister”) and his new marriage (“Pieces”). The sometimes uncomfortable relationship dynamic between artist and fan is also examined closely in “The Enemy,” which stands as one of many deeply honest moments on this record.

“I feel like doing what I do and traveling around to play music and everything that comes along with it—social media, the glory and people bombarding me with compliments—I’m always super flattered and humbled by that, but I often start to feel like people sort of put me on a pedestal,” Belle confesses. “I’m very aware of my shortcomings and failures, so the message of this song was sort of like, ‘Don’t view me as the perfect person.’”

Catch Andrew Belle Sunday, August 25, at 7 p.m. at Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub (2708 J Street).

Tickets are $10. Visit http://andrewbelle.com for more info.

It’s a bit of a surprising statement. Over the last five years, Belle, who performs Sunday, August 25, at Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, has released two EPs, three live albums, and a critically acclaimed first LP, 2010’s The Ladder, after all.

It’s not a question of productivity, Belle explains.

“I’ve always been good at writing, and I felt like I could write these poems, and I liked the idea of setting them to music,” he says. “So, early on, I just started replicating and imitating what I was hearing and [taught] myself music.”

For Belle, writing is key and music merely the method by which he gets to share his stories with others. He’s very particular, in fact, about the songs he writes, and says he prefers not to waste time on those which do not strike an emotional chord.

“The litmus test for me when I write is that a song has to resonate to that spot that I can identify with when I first discovered music that really touched me,” says Belle. “If it doesn’t strike that chord, then I don’t keep it. I keep moving on and searching.”

“Moving on” and “searching” are apt descriptors for Belle’s just-released record, Black Bear.

Gone are the traditional folk, acoustic sensibilities that filled his previous releases, replaced by a more ambient, alternative, electronic-heavy sound. Now, his songs are wrapped up in echoing atmospherics (“Dark Matter”), skyscraping rock ’n’ roll and vocals (“Black Bear”), and

“ Traveling around to play music and everything that comes along with it … I’m always super flattered and humbled by that, but I often start to feel like people sort of put me on a pedestal.”

Andrew Belle Despite his work’s serious tone, Belle isn’t afraid to make fun of himself, and that is perhaps what endears him to so many fans.

“For being a songwriter, I haven’t written a lot,” Belle says with a laugh. “I have maybe 30 or so songs in the entirety of my catalog, but I know guys who write 30 songs a month.” Ω

American Red Cross 9/11 Memorial Golf Classic Tournament Friday, September 6th!

Honor the heroes of 9/11 and support Red Cross disaster relief services in your local community.

Visit RedCross.org/CapitalRegion to register, or call (916) 354-3416 for more information.

Capital Region Chapter

BEFORE

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NEWS

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FEATURE

STORY

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ARTS&CULTURE

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AFTER

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08.22.13

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SN&R

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39

21wed

23FRI

24SAT

24SAT

Punch and Pie Fest 2

Melvins

Freeport

The Knockoffs

The Press Club, 9 p.m., $5 Punch and Pie Fest 2 is spread out over five days at four venues and involves a variety of bands and genres, including the reggaeinspired band Storytellers and 20-year punk-rock veterans the Knockoffs; and Banner Pilot is even traveling from Minneapolis to perform. The festival’s opening night is a tribute show dedicated to post-punk pioneers the Replacements, where Bastards of Young (pictured), Drive-Thru Mystics, 50-Watt Heavy and more are all set to rekindle a variety of familiar tunes. The following days of the festival take ROCK place at various venues throughout Midtown. Visit the festival’s website for additional show times and lineups.

2030 P Street, www.punchandpiefest.com.

—Steph Rodriguez

Ace of Spades, 7:30 p.m., $18 They’re consummate weirdos responsible for popularizing a sludgy punk-grind sound (think Black Sabbath at half-speed) and ROCK inspiring fellow Aberdeen, Wash., resident Kurt Cobain. Though the Melvins explore different styles, for three decades, ominous down-tempo throb has remained the group’s calling card. Even at slow tempos, there’s a clamorous intensity to the band’s music, reminiscent of Swans and Butthole Surfers. Behind the musical brutality hides a caustic wit, particularly evident on the cover of Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee.” The group’s latest album, Everyone Loves Sausage, is nothing but covers, including an explosive take on Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” and a saccharine version of Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend.” 1417 R Street, www.themelvins.net.

—Chris Parker

40 | SN&R | 08.22.13

Shine, 8 p.m., $6

Old Ironsides, 9 p.m., $5

If you close your eyes and imagine a ship of drunken pirates singing sea shanties—but in some sort of surreal David Lynchesque alternate universe—then you might have an idea of what Freeport is about.

Freeport calls its sound “seagaze.” It’s part traditional Americana, part old-timey sing-alongs, but played as though it were INDIE textured, reverb-drenched, late-1980s post-punk. The trio— which plays two guitars and a keyboard— creates not just a wall of sound musically, but also vocal melodies that are rich in harmony, and at times, haunting. It’s not particularly dynamic, but Freeport leans much heavier on mood than anything. And it can get pretty eerie. 1400 E Street, www.facebook.com/freeportmusic.

—Aaron Carnes

Originally formed in 1993, Sacramento group the Knockoffs has been playing punk-rock music—reminiscent of the Ramones and Sex Pistols—for 20 years. But with its large PUNK catalog of simple, energetic songs about broken hearts, summer and fights—and several corresponding goofy music videos—the Knockoffs seem to be having more fun than those punk pioneers ever did. Expect a raucus anniversary show with plenty of “One, two, three, four!” counts, simple-yet-effective crunchy power chords and choruses that are shouted by all four members of the band’s current lineup (Tom Hutchinson, Tom Anderson, Bobby Jordan and Danny Secretion). Openers include Bright Faces, Arts & Leisure, and Dr. Frank. 1901 10th Street, www.facebook.com/theknockoffs916.

—Jonathan Mendick

24SAT

25SUN

27TUES

28WED

Selah Sue

On Air

Deerhunter

Gary Numan

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, 9:30 p.m., $15-$18 If Adele had a reggae cousin, Selah Sue would be her. In her younger days, Sue aspired to become a ballerina, and her petite frame would have suited it. But the Belgian-raised singer-songwriter poured her anxieties into writing music and gained notice from acclaimed artists such as Prince and CeeLo Green with her lyricdriven songs, funky reggae melodies and a sexy, raspy voice reminiscent of Nelly Furtado. For Sue, music has no boundaries, but she sticks to SOUL/REGGAE her roots, insisting on performing the songs she wrote in high school when she was just a girl with a guitar. 2708 J Street, www.selahsue.com.

—Jessica Rine

William Curtis Park, 6 p.m., no cover

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, 8 p.m., $17

If you can’t quite put your finger on what attracts you to the sounds of Chicago or Tower of Power, once you hear the horn section of the 11-member band On Air, you’ll know it’s the horns. Those trumpets and trombones remain forever in the shadows, CLASSIC ROCK yet so important in songs like “Saturday in the Park” or “You’re Still a Young Man.” Let’s not forget the baritone and tenor sax. Whether performing covers of J. Geils Band, Van Morrison or Carlos Santana, or pulling Motown and R&B hits, On Air is sure to entertain. Also on the bill is Music Matt, who introduces children to music and instruments, one letter at a time.

3349 W. Curtis Drive, www.onairband.com.

Ace of Spades, 8 p.m., $25

Deerhunter is one of those bands that makes you wonder if you’ll still see the irreverent charm once you’re all grown up and perhaps have unruly adolescents of your own. The indie rockers, originating from Atlanta circa the turn of the century, play music that runs the gamut from garage punk to melodic, spacey pop. Sometimes described as “shoegaze,” the band members do indeed spend a lot of stage time looking at their feet, but this show of introspection translates into a subtlety that sometimes explodes. The May release of Monomania is a return to a more garage-rock sound INDIE ROCK over the ethereal atmosphere of 2010’s Halcyon Digest. 2708 J Street, http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com.

—Trina L. Drotar

Many people only know Gary Numan for his iconic hit “Cars.” Certainly, with its opening swell of keyboard notes, the song—featured on Numan’s 1979 album The Pleasure NEW WAVE Principle—stands as one of synth pop’s greatest. But Numan’s influence reaches far deeper, of course. The English-born artist cut his musical teeth on punk, but he inarguably helped to define the post-punk genre with brooding tunes that are almost muscular in their leanness. His “Down in the Park,” from his other 1979 release Replicas, is a perfectly spooky, gloomy and cold gem—all those other 1980s-era new wavers only wish they could have mastered that sound.

1417 R Street, www.numan.co.uk.

—Deena Drewis

Ace of SpAdeS

—Rachel Leibrock

1417 R Street, Sacramento, 95814 www.aceofspadessac.com

All Ages Welcome!

COMING

Friday, sepTember 6

Thursday, augusT 22

(Hed)pe

Berner

diamond dez – jg madeumlook – cplus

sunday, sepTember 8

Friday, augusT 23

THe MeLVInS

cHIef Keef

Honkey

plus special guests

saTurday, augusT 24

KILL THe precedenT (cd Release sHow)

will Haven - deatH valley HigH - lesdystics - sex Rat

Wednesday, augusT 28

Tuesday, sepTember 10

Mc rUT

new politics - lite bRite Wednesday, sepTember 11

GArY nUMAn

AdAM AnT

cold cave

pRima donna

saTurday, augusT 31

THe AcAcIA STrAIn witHin tHe Ruins – xibalba Fit FoR an autopsy – ameRican me

SOON

mettal maFFia - dead in seconds zeRoclient - dedvolt

Thursday, sepTember 12

THe SLAcKerS RiotmakeR (Feat. jeFFRy oF sHakedown)

09/13 09/14 09/19 09/20 09/21 09/25 09/27 09/28 10/01 10/03 10/04 10/11 10/12 10/17 10/18 10/19 10/20 10/22 10/25 10/26 11/11 11/12 11/14 11/30 12/08 12/11

Steel Panther Dizzy Wright Iration Terraplane Sun IAMSU! Tech N9ne Dance Gavin Dance Frightened Rabbit Between the Buried and Me Twiztid Senses Fail Andre Nickatina & Krazie Bone Arden Park Roots Story Of The Year Roach Gigz Gwar Attila Streetlight Manifesto Parmalee Jonny Craig Clutch Mayday Parade Misfits Great White 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

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NEWS

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F E AT U R E

STORY

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

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AFTER

| 08.22.13

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SN&R

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41

NIGHTBEAT ASSEMBLY 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.

THURSDAY 8/22

ISLAND OF BLACK AND WHITE, 9:30pm, no cover

BLUE LAMP

1400 Alhambra, (916) 455-3400

STEP JAYNE, DEAD WESTERN; 8:30pm, call for cover

RISK EVERYTHING CREW, LIVE MANIKINS, LANTZ LAZWELL, ELEPHANT SUITE, CENTURY GOT BARS; 9pm, $5 ROB DEAN; 9pm, call for cover

THE BOARDWALK

SKY SCHOLAR, I-80 PLAYERS,

ANIMISM, FORCE OF HABIT, WHITE MINORITIES, IN THE SILENCE; 7pm

OLEANDER, SEVENTH UNION, SIX WEEKS SOBER, EGOSTALL; 7:30pm

BOWS & ARROWS

Movie Night: Friday and Half Baked, 8pm, no cover

BACK ALLEY BUZZARDS, FONTAINE CLASSIC, MACHINE CITY; 8pm, $5

DAVE LYNCH GROUP, ROSS HAMMOND; 8pm, $5

9426 Greenback Ln., Orangevale; (916) 988-9247 ROOSTER, KALI STREETZ, BLAZEE; 8pm 1815 19 St., (916) 822-5668

Community Music Jam, M; DIVISION THRESHOLD, N.O.W.; 8:30pm W, $8-$10

THE COZMIC CAFÉ

Open-mic, 7:30pm, no cover

DISTRICT 30

EDM deejay dancing, 9pm, call for cover

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

THE MIKE JUSTIS BAND, 8pm, no cover

THE MCCOY TYLER BAND, 8:30pm, $8 DJ Louie Giovanni, 9pm, call for cover

DJ Matt Cali, Nick Willrich and drummer Justin Barnes,9pm, call for cover

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

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

ALICE WALLACE, WOLFGANG VEGA, 8 BALL AITKEN; 9pm, $5

CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS, BRIAN STEVENS, SESSION; 9pm, $5

G STREET WUNDERBAR

DJs Billy Lane, Elements, JB and Loui Giovanni, 9pm W, call for cover Queer Idol, 9pm M, no cover; Latin night, 9pm Tu, $5; DJ Alazzawi, 9pm W, $3

Dragalicious, 9pm, $5

Open-mic, 7:30pm M, no cover; Pub Quiz, 7pm Tu; Northern Soul, 8pm W, no cover

THE CROOKED WOODPECKER, DJ Dillon; 9pm, no cover

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

HALFTIME BAR & GRILL

5681 Lonetree Blvd., Rocklin; (916) 632-8200

JOE FRIDAY, 9pm-midnight, no cover

WHO TOO, 9pm-midnight, no cover

Trivia night, 7:30-9pm Tu, no cover

HARLOW’S

THE STORYTELLERS, THE DIVA KINGS, DUST BOWL DAWN; 9pm, $5

THE BROTHERS COMATOSE, 9pm, $12-$14

SELAH SUE, BUSHWALLA; 10pm, $15-$18 ANDREW BELLE, 7pm, $10

DEERHUNTER, 8pm Tu, $17; KYLE, 6:30pm W, $12-$15

LUNA’S CAFÉ & JUICE BAR 1414 16th St., (916) 441-3931

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

THE SIGNIFIERS, SALT WIZARD; 8:30pm, $6

PENNY HARDING & JEFF SEARS, KATHY BARWICK, STEVE MCLANE; 8pm, $10

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

MARILYN’S ON K

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

TRIBUTE TO POSITIVELY 12TH AND K, 9pm, call for cover

DELTA CITY RAMBLERS, 9:30pm, $7

1111 H St., (916) 443-1927

THE SWEET BY AND BY, LADY CROONERS, LUCKY LASKOWSKI; 8:30pm, $5

BROKIN JUG BAND, SOUTH SAC JOOKS, WRINGS, REGGIE GINN, GIMMIE 5; 8:30pm, $5 GAYLE SKIDMORE; 8:30pm, $5

Jazz, 8pm M; NAGUAL, FLATLANDER, SOUND CREW, ROCCO; 8:30pm W, $5

OLD IRONSIDES

JENN ROGAR, 5pm, no cover

WHISKEY AND STITCHES, TATTOOED LOVE DOGS, SOUTH LOT; 9pm, $6

THE KNOCKOFFS, BRIGHT FACES, ARTS & LEISURE, DR. FRANK; 9pm, $5

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

ON THE Y

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

EMBODIED TORMENT, CURSED, SOLANUM, ART OF CHAOS; 9pm, $5

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

2708 J St., (916) 441-4693

908 K St., (916) 446-4361

NAKED LOUNGE DOWNTOWN 1901 10th St., (916) 442-3504 670 Fulton Ave., (916) 487-3731

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

- August 22 -

- August 25 -

The sTorYTellers The diva Kings dusT Bowl dawn

andrew Belle Grizfolk

$10 • 5:30pm

$5 • 8pm

- August 23 -

The BroThers ComaTose

- August 27 -

deerhunTer

MerryGold $12ADV • 8pm

- August 24 -

selah sue Bushwalla

$15ADV • 8:30pm

08.22.13

Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug 30 Aug 31 Sep 03 Sep 04 Sep 05 Sep 06 Sep 09 Sep 10 Sep 11 Sep 12 Sep 13 Sep 14 Sep 17 Sep 18 Sep 19 Sep 20 Sep 21 Sep 25

$17 • 7pm

|

BELLYGUNNER, CAVE WOMEN, HANS! AND THE HOT MESS; 8pm W, $5

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

1001 R St., (916) 443-8825

SN&R

Trivia, 6:30pm M, no cover; Open-mic, 7:30pm W, no cover

CENTER FOR THE ARTS

FOX & GOOSE

|

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 8/26-8/28 Bully-Mia, a one-woman comedy show, 8pm W, $15

Karaoke, 7:30pm, no cover

101 Main St., Roseville; (916) 774-0505

2000 K St., (916) 448-7798

42

SUNDAY 8/25

BAR 101

FACES

Hey local bands!

SATURDAY 8/24

1000 K St., (916) 832-4751

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 8/23

Pure Freakquency EDM deejay dancing, 8pm, $10-$15

- August 28 -

KYle All ages $12 • 6pm

Casey Abrams Ben Solee Bumptet Joy and Madness Ottmar Liebert The Lone Bellow The Dodos / Two Sheds Tainted Love Tab Benoit The Moondoggies Cheryl Wheeler Orgone/Monophonics Brubaker Close to You (A Carpenters Tribute) BoomBox Acorn Project Octopus Project Tyron Wells Lindsey Pavao Unknown Mortal Orchestra

follow us hArLOWSniTeCLUB

Karaoke, 8pm M, no cover; HOLLYWOOD TEXAS BLUES, 8pm W, $5

Blues and comedy, 5pm, $10

Open-mic comedy,9pm, no cover

Karaoke, 9pm Tu, no cover

RESTAURANT ss BAR BAR CLUB ss RESTAURANT COMEDY COMEDY CLUB

VOTED BEST COMEDY CLUB BY THE SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW!

THURSDAY 8/22 - SUNDAY 8/25 FROM SHAQ’S ALL STAR COMEDY JAM AND BET’S COMIC VIEW!

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THURSDAY 8/29 - SUNDAY 9/1 FROM E!’S CHELSEA LATELY!

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2100 ARDEN WAY s IN THE HOWE ‘BOUT ARDEN SHOPPING CENTER

2 DRINK MINIMUM. 18 & OVER. I.D. REQUIRED.

thurs 8/22

kar aoke 9pm // FREE Fri 8/23

TribuTe To PosiTively 12Th and k bob dylan TribuTe 9:00 pm / $7 (adv) sat 8/24

Jackie Greene afTerParTy

delTa ciTy ramblers

amERicana//BluEgRass // 9:30 pm //$7 sun 8/25

sPeakeasy sunday BluEs//comEdy // 5:00 pm mon 8/26

karaoke 8pm // FREE tues 8/27

GseT

classic rock & blues review 8pm // FREE Wed 8/28

heros lasT mission delTa blues inc. hollywood Texas blues BluEs//Rock // 8:00 pm // $5

UPcOMING sHOWs: 8/31: Oh! the band

908 K Street • sac 916.446.4361 wwwMarilynsOnK.com

THURSDAY 8/22

FRIDAY 8/23

SATURDAY 8/24

THE PALMS PLAYHOUSE

SUNDAY 8/25

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 8/26-8/28

STRANGE MENTAL BLANK SPOT, FRANK JOSEPH G.; 8pm, no cover

Open-mic, 10pm-1am Tu, no cover; Trivia, 9-10pm W, no cover

RED MEAT, 8pm, $15

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

PINE COVE TAVERN

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

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

PINS N STRIKES

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

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

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

MIDNIGHT PLAYERS, 9pm, $10

MERCY ME!, 9pm, $10

PJ’S ROADHOUSE

DJ Michael Johnson, 9pm, no cover

DOG PARK JUSTICE, 9pm, $5

REBEL PUNK, 9pm, $5

POWERHOUSE PUB

TOM DRINNON, 10pm, call for cover

FOREVERLAND, 10pm, $10

STEVE GATZ, 3-6pm, no cover; SPAZMATICS, 10pm, $12

NOTHING PERSONAL, 3pm, call for cover

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

THE PRESS CLUB

2030 P St., (916) 444-7914

SETTING SONS, CIVIL WAR RUST, COLD FEELINGS, PEACEKILLERS; 9pm, $5

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

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

Sunday Night Soul Party, 9pm, $5

DJ Epik presents ECLECTIK, deejay dancing, 9pm W, no cover

SAMMY’S ROCKIN’ ISLAND

RADAR LOVE, 8pm, $5

PARTY RUMOR, 10pm, $5

ROCKSLIDE, 10pm, $5

SHENANIGANS

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

PJs and Pinups: A Burlesque Event, 8pm-midnight, $10-$20

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

238 Vernon St., Roseville; (916) 773-7625 705 J St., (916) 442-1268

SOL COLLECTIVE

SUNNY DARKO, POCKET FIXED MOB, $MOOV3 TH3 R3B3L; 6pm, $13

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

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

VANDELLA, PAIGE & THE THOUSAND; 9:30pm, $5

SERA CAHOONE, YASSOU BENEDICT, YOYA; 9:30pm, $5

Microphone Mondays, 6pm M, $1-$2

STONEY INN/ROCKIN’ RODEO 1320 Del Paso Blvd., (916) 927-6023

JACKSON MICHELSON, GEORGIA RAIN; 9pm, $5

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

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

Country dance party, 8pm, no cover

SWABBIES

KDOG, 6:30pm, no cover

CARAVANSERAI, 7pm, $8

BUMP CITY, 4pm, $8

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE, 3pm, $8

TORCH CLUB

X TRIO, 5pm, no cover; FAR WEST, 9pm, $5

PAILER AND FRATIS, 5:30, no cover; PARLOR TRICKS, 9pm, $7

JOHNNY KNOX, 5pm; BIG EARL AND THE CRYIN’ SHAME, 9pm, $7

Blues jam, 4pm, no cover; THE BONGO FURYS, 8pm, $5

5871 Garden Hwy, (916) 920-8088 904 15th St., (916) 443-2797

Diamond Dez with Berner, JG Madeumlook and C Plus 6:30pm Thursday, $20.

Ace of Spades Pop and hip-hop

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

ISLAND OF BLACK & WHITE, 9pm Tu, $5; Open-mic, 5:30pm W, no cover

All ages, all the time ACE OF SPADES

BERNER, DIAMOND DEZ, JG MADEUMLOOK, C PLUS; 6:30pm, $20

1417 R St., (916) 448-3300

KILL THE PRECEDENT, WILL HAVEN, DEATH VALLEY HIGH; 6:30pm, $10

THE MELVINS, HONKEY; 7:30pm, $18

Oleander with Seventh Union, Six Weeks Sober, Egostall and Misamore 7:30pm Saturday, call for cover.

The Boardwalk Rock

GARY NUMAN, COLD CAVE; 7pm W, $25

COFFEE GARDEN

KEVIN SCHLERETH, 8pm W, no cover

2904 Franklin Blvd., (916) 457-5507

LUIGI’S SLICE AND FUN GARDEN

THE KELPS, THE HAGUE, SUN VALLEY GUN CLUB; 8:30pm, $5

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

SHINE

Sac Valley Guitar Recital, 7pm, call for cover

1400 E St., (916) 551-1400

ANNER PILOT, BASTARDS OF YOUNG, DEAD DADS, CALL ME SNAKE; 8pm, $10

HAIR OF THE DOG, GILLIAN UNDERWOOD, CHRIS CHACE; 8pm, $5

FREEPORT, BLUE OAKS, AMY REED; 8pm, $6

PLOTS, HABIT, BASSREEVES, 8pm Tu, $5; TALKLATIVE, MUFASSA; 8pm W, $5 Jazz jam w/ Jason Galbraith & Friends, 8pm Tu; Poetry, 7pm W, call for cover

free

US.

GO TO FACEBOOK.COM/SACNEWSREVIEW

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midnigHt pLaYErs

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tuesday

taco tues

sign-ups at 7:30pm thursday

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Rock-N-Roll

Aug 24

WHO TOO

open for lunch & dinner 7 days a weeK doors open at 11:30

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Who TRibuTe baNd

Aug 30

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3600 Power inn rd suite 1a sacramento, Ca 95826 916.455.1931

Medical marijuana goes Elk Grove I live in Elk Grove. I’ve developed a condition called spondylosis.

It’s 24 hours a day of sharp back pain. I’ve been buying Headband indica to use for the pain, and it’s working perfectly. It’s allowed me to get off [nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs].

My question is this: What is Elk Grove’s official position on growing weed right now? I’m tired of paying 20 bucks a gram when I should be able to grow it myself, according to state law.

Thanks for all you do for us.

BEALUM

by NGAIO —Lee Like I told the guy from West Sacramento a few weeks ago: You are effed.

Elk Grove is in Sacramento County, and Sac a sk420@ ne wsreview.c om County has had a ban on all outdoor marijuana growing since 2010. Your point about being able to grow your own medicine is very important. Maybe we could band together and do some sort of class action? I will look into our options and report back.

I know some people who have a good garden going. While they’re good at growing and caring for plants, they’re shitty at teaching me anything.

I could “adopt” a plant and teach myself about the growing process, but I don’t know where to start. The plants are well underway, about 2 feet tall, but I’m sure it’s not too late to jump in and learn something.

How would you embrace this opportunity if you were a noob like me? I have Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/ Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible by Jorge Cervantes, but it’s a little too densely written. Can you recommend a different book, something a little more “paint by numbers”?

Elk Grove is in Thanks for any insight you can offer.

Sacramento County, and —T.B. the county has had a ban It’s never too late to learn. on all outdoor marijuana I am assuming this is an garden? At this point, growing since 2010. outdoor the plants should be just starting to flower. You will want to give them a little more phosphorus and a little less nitrogen. Some people like to add a little molasses to the water to encourage large bud growth. In a few weeks, you will want to use only plain water (no nutrients or other stuff) to flush all the chemicals out of the plant. Cannabis that has not been properly flushed tastes terrible. If you have ever smoked weed that crackled when you burned it, you have smoked weed that wasn’t flushed well. As for books, Green Ngaio Bealum is a Sacramento Candy Press publishes a book called Marijuana Outdoor comedian, activist Grower’s Guide that is simple and easy to use. Outdoor and marijuana expert. gardens aren’t too complicated. Keep pests away, watch for Email him questions mold and mildew, and enjoy your harvest. at ask420@ newsreview.com.

I applied for a job in San Diego, and this was on the application: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony? You may omit any marijuana-related violations of any of the following sections of the California Health and Safety Code: 11357(b) or (c), 11360(c), 11364, 11365 or 11550, or a statutory predecessor to these sections.” You ever seen this before?

—Violet I have never seen that on an application before. More proof that we are winning. I hope you get the job. Ω BEFORE

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NEWS

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FEATURE

STORY

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ARTS&CULTURE

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AFTER

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08.22.13

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SN&R

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49

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ARIES (March 21-April 19): An Indian

student named Sankalp Sinha has invented the Good Morning Sing N Shock. It’s an alarm clock that plays you a song and gives you a small electrical jolt when you hit the snooze button. The voltage applied is far less intense than, say, a Taser, and is designed to energize you rather than disable you. I encourage you to seek out wake-up calls like the kind this device administers, Aries: fairly gentle, yet sufficiently dramatic to get your attention.

The alternative would be to wait around for blind fate to provide the wake-up calls.

They might be a bit more strenuous.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If you

Google the statement “I can change overnight,” most of the results that come up are negative, like “It’s not something I can change overnight,” or “I don’t think I can change overnight.” But there’s one Google link to “I can change overnight.”

It’s a declaration made by Taurus painter Willem de Kooning. He was referring to how unattached he was to defining his work and how easy it was for him to mutate his artistic style. I wouldn’t normally advise you Tauruses to use “I can change overnight” as your battle cry. But for the foreseeable future, you do have the power to make some rather rapid and thorough transformations.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “The artist

is by necessity a collector,” said graphic designer Paul Rand. “[H]e accumulates things with the same ardor and curiosity [with which] a boy stuffs his pockets.

He borrows from the sea and from the scrap heap; he takes snapshots, makes mental notes, and records impressions on tablecloths and newspapers. … He has a taste for children’s wall scrawling as appreciative as that for prehistoric cave painting.” Whether or not you’re an artist, Gemini, this would be an excellent approach for you in the coming days. You’re in a phase when you can thrive by being a gatherer of everything that attracts and fascinates you. You don’t need to know yet why you’re assembling all these clues.

That will be revealed in good time.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Can you

remember the last time you bumped up against a limitation caused by your lack of knowledge? What did it feel like?

I expect that sometime soon you will have that experience again. You may shiver with worry as you contemplate the potential consequences of your continued ignorance. But you may also feel the thrill of hungry curiosity rising up in you. If all goes well, the fear and curiosity will motivate you to get further educated.

You will set to work on a practical plan to make it happen.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “My story isn’t …

sweet and harmonious like the invented stories,” wrote novelist Hermann Hesse. “[I]t tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” As interesting as Hesse’s declaration is, let’s not take it as gospel.

Let’s instead envision the possibility that when people reduce the number of lies they tell themselves, their lives may become sweeter and more harmonious as a result. I propose that exact scenario for you right now, Leo. There might be a rough adjustment period as you cut back on your self-deceptions, but, eventually, your folly and bewilderment will diminish as the sweet harmony grows.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Novelist

James Joyce once articulated an extreme wish that other writers have probably felt but never actually said. “The demand that I make of my reader,” said Joyce, “is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.” Was he being mischievous?

Maybe. But he never apologized or issued a retraction. Your assignment, Virgo, is to conjure up your own version of that wild desire: a clear statement of exactly what you really, really want in all of its extravagant glory. I think it’ll be healthy for you to identify this pure and naked longing. (P.S. I’m not implying that you should immediately try to get it fulfilled, though. For now, the important thing is knowing what it is.)

BEFORE

|

NEWS

PHOTO BY KEITH MILLER

by Rob bRezsny

For the week of August 22, 2013

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Now and then,

a British Libra named Lloyd Scott dresses up in funny costumes while competing in long-distance races. He does it to raise money for charity. In the 2011 London Marathon, he wore a 9-foot snail outfit for the duration of the course. It took him 26 days to finish. I suggest you draw inspiration from his heroic effort. From a cosmic perspective, it would make sense for you to take your time as you engage in amusing activities that benefit your fellow humans.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): What

will you do now that you have acquired more clout and visibility? Will you mostly just pump up your self-love and bask in the increased attention? There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But if those are the only ways you cash in on your added power, the power won’t last. I suggest you take advantage of your enhanced influence by engaging in radical acts of magnanimity. Perform good deeds and spread big ideas. The more blessings you bestow on your fellow humans, the more enduring your new perks will be.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

You’ve been pretty wild and uncontained lately, and that’s OK. I’ve loved seeing how much permission you’ve given yourself to ramble free, experiment with the improbable and risk being a fool. I suspect that history will judge a majority of your recent explorations as tonic. But now, Sagittarius, the tenor of the time is shifting. To continue being in alignment with your highest good, I believe you will have to rein in your wanderlust and start attending to the care and cultivation of your power spot. Can you find a way to enjoy taking on more responsibility?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

“The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot,” said the founder of surrealism, writer André Breton. I wouldn’t go so far as to call such an imagination-deprived soul an idiot, but I do agree with the gist of his declaration.

One of the essential facets of intelligence is the ability to conjure up vivid and creative images in one’s mind. When daily life has grown a bit staid or stuck or overly serious, this skill becomes even more crucial. Now is one of those times for you, Capricorn. If you have any trouble visualizing a horse galloping on a tomato, take measures to boost the fertility of your imagination.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “I want

to be with those who know the secret things, or else alone,” wrote the eccentric ecstatic poet Rainer Maria Rilke. That wouldn’t be a good rule for you Aquarians to live by all the time. To thrive, you need a variety of cohorts and allies, including those who know and care little about secret things. But I suspect that for the next few weeks, an affinity for those who know secret things might suit you well.

More than that, they may be exactly the accomplices who will help you attend to your number one assignment: exploratory holy work in the depths.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): To launch

your horoscope, I’ll steal a line from a Thomas Pynchon novel: A revelation trembles just beyond the threshold of your understanding. To continue your oracle, I’ll borrow a message I heard in my dream last night: A breakthrough shivers just beyond the edge of your courage.

Next, I’ll use words I think I heard while eavesdropping on a conversation at Whole Foods: If you want to cook up the ultimate love feast, you’re still missing one ingredient. And, to finish this oracle, Pisces, I’ll say that if you want to precipitate the trembling revelation, activate the shivering breakthrough and acquire the missing ingredient, imitate what I’ve done in creating this horoscope. Assume the whole world is offering you useful clues, and listen closely.

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.

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F E AT U R E

STORY

Total knockout Brieta “Tank Girl” Carpenter once wanted to become an astronaut, then an anesthesiologist, then a scientist. Eventually, however, she realized college wasn’t for her, so Carpenter turned her attention to the world of mixed martial arts where she found success—she currently boasts an undefeated record. On Saturday, August 24, Carpenter will vie for the Ultimate Reno Combat’s women’s bantamweight title (visit www.ultimatereno combat.com for details). She also hopes to go pro within the next year and make cage fighting a career.

Between her current day job as a barista at a Midtown cafe, training five nights a week and attending team fights, Carpenter’s had to sideline her other hobbies: playing guitar and acting. The 19-year-old fighter recently took a break to chat with SN&R about pain, the rules of hitting and why she wouldn’t advise other young women to follow in her fighting footsteps.

How did you transition from taekwondo practitioner to a mixed martial arts fighter?

When I was younger, I didn’t like fighting at all. When I got older, I really started to love sparring, [but] taekwondo schools, in general, just don’t train hard enough. I wanted instructors yelling at me. I wanted to hit people for real. I wanted to be a real fighter, not just a points-sparring fighter.

What’s a pointssparring fighter?

You wear a bunch of [protective gear], and you’re not supposed to hit each other very hard. If you kick them in the chest, that’s a point, hit them in the head, that’s two

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A RT S & C U LT U R E

points. You can’t punch to the head. There [are] a lot of rules.

Aren’t there rules in MMA? In MMA, you can do basically whatever you want, with the exception of some safety rules. So, you can take a person down and wrestle them, or you can stay on your feet and hit them with all the different parts of your body. I like to be on my feet, as opposed to being on the ground, rolling around.

You can do anything and you’re not wearing protective gear—what about injuries?

There’s so much adrenaline. Like when I got this cut [on my forehead], I didn’t even know it was there. I just saw blood dripping, and I thought it was my nose. The only pain I fear in a fight is pain that would make me end up losing, pain that I can’t fight through.

Or getting knocked out. If I walk out of that cage black and blue and limping, that’s a victory to me. … There [are a lot] of injuries. After I cage fight, I kind of feel like dying. My last match was only 30 seconds long, and I got hurt worse than in my first fight, which [lasted] almost three minutes.

I don’t know how to describe it. They call it an adrenaline dump. Your body just feels sick. I like it, though. [In] my title fight, I’m fighting this pretty tough girl … and I’m hoping, for the sake of experience, that it’s a tough fight. I want to leave that cage hurt, knowing that I had a good fight and learned something from it and put everything out there, instead of just knocking her out.

What was your first fight like?

A huge, huge part of the fight is a mental battle. I remember in my first fight, I was

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AFTER

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prepared, but I’d never been in that situation before, so my mind was going nuts.

I was having conversations with myself: “Ah, this is stupid.” “I’m tired.” “You know, I gotta keep fighting.” “What are you doing?”

“Why am I here?”

What’s next?

I figure I’ll have a few more amateur fights, however long it takes for me to feel ready, then I’ll go pro.

Advice for young women interested in MMA? Don’t do it. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. What I suggest, do kickboxing or wrestling. That way, you have a background in something applicable [in other areas of professional fighting]. Don’t let the boys push you around too much.

Don’t take any sexism crap from your instructor. Believe in yourself.

Have you always believed in yourself?

It’s kind of something I’ve forced myself to do. I’ve always relied on what other people have told me or the outcomes of my fights to judge how good I am. ... You have to be confident, otherwise you’ll believe that you can’t do it, and you’ll go out there, and the other person will show you that you can’t do it. So, if you go out there believing in yourself and being confident, you’ll put up a better fight.

You have the right attitude, but I don’t know about all that getting hit.

The first time I got hit, I liked it. I didn’t want to tell anybody. It was like an adrenaline rush—[but] I’m not saying that I love getting hit in the face. Ω

08.22.13

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