S 2014 01 16

DON’T BAN SMOKING see Editorial, page 13

KINGS-ARENA

SHENANIGANS TURN SLEAZY see News, page 7

GET A FLU SHOT, ALREADY see Editor’s Note, page 3

TODD BARRY CRASHES MIDTOWN COMEDY SCENE see Arts&Culture, page 18

DEATH OF A

POT

SALESMAN? see News, page 9

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January 16, 2014 | vol. 25, issue 40

43

The best defense My husband started coughing shortly after Christmas. What began as an irritating throat scratch soon mushroomed into a full-fledged flu.

You know the one: that nasty viral infection that’s seemingly plagued everyone with incessant coughs, sneezing, fever and enough mucus to cover a small nation.

I experienced it myself in midDecember, but the bug seemed to pass relatively quickly then. Now, as I watch my husband finally return to the land of the living, I’m more worried whenever I start to sneeze. And for good reason: This winter, seven people have died from the flu in California—five in Sacramento, all via a new strain of swine flu, according to the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services.

Their ages: 37, 46, 53, 56 and 61. That’s damn scary. We think of the flu as something typically deadly to only the very young and the very old.

I’d probably feel better armed against illness if I’d gotten a flu shot, but the truth is until recently, I’d always been somewhat skeptical of such things. Not in a Jenny McCarthy, anti-vaccination, governmentconspiracy way; rather, I held strong to the belief that the best defense against a cold or flu simply meant eating healthy, exercising and getting plenty of sleep. If I did start feeling ill, I reasoned, it was nothing a day spent binge-watching Downton Abbey and sucking down some vitamin C drops couldn’t cure.

Now, I realize the best defense is offense. If you want to leave the house and head to the office, a store, restaurant or any other public space, then you’re at the mercy of other people’s germs.

We’re in the mucous thick of it—January and February are peak flu months, but it’s not too late to stay healthy. Type in your ZIP code at http://flushot.healthmap.org to find the closest place to up your defenses.

STREETALK

04 05 07 10 14 18 20 21 24 25 26 28 35 43

LETTERS NEWS OPINION FEATuRE STORy ARTS&CuLTuRE NIgHT&DAy DISH ASK JOEy STAgE FILM MuSIC + sound Advice THE 420 15 MINuTES COVER dEsign BY HAYLEY dOsHAY

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“It became a ritual that we would eat a pound of bacon.”

Asked at the Sunday farmers market on Eighth and W streets:

Where do you go for comfort food?

Ardis Bow

Christina McCloskey

Gabe Quillman

artist

ecologist

Hot Italian is great. There are not a lot of restaurants that even use arugula, but if you get that pizza [that] has a ton of arugula on it, it’s killer. What can I say?

You never feel a gut bomb.

I imagine some people think of comfort food as a gut bomb, but it’s not.

Deanna Seil

nanny

I go to my own kitchen. ...

Fried rice is a good one.

It’s something with a lot of carbs. My mom used to make this chicken dish with a lot of olives, but it didn’t have a name. It was chicken, olives and artichoke hearts over noodles. Pho is also a comfort food when I have a cold.

Jason Briggs

baker

I go to La Rosa Blanca [Mexican Restaurant] for Mexican food, at Fulton Avenue. … I go more for their family than for their food, but really, I go for both. The food is delicious, but I also know the family.

I’ve gone three times in the last week-and-a-half!

therapy intern

I would go to Delta of Venus in Davis. I like the chef. He’s this Jamaican guy, and he’s always singing in the back of the kitchen. It smells good. It’s a pretty hippie environment. My roommate has had her art [on display] there. I usually go for the morning breakfast burritos because you can make any of the scrambles into a burrito.

In my kitchen there’s usually something I can nibble on, fresh fruit or, especially right now, a sweet snack.

I’m pretty much a plain-Jane kind of guy. I’ll go with macaroni and cheese. Every time I go to my mom’s or my grandma’s, I’ll bust out the mac ’n’ cheese.

I like the three cheese from Trader Joe’s.

Russell Osborn permaculture design

[A friend and I] were running on the soccer team, so we were building mass.

Before soccer games, it became a ritual that we would eat a pound of bacon. Then it became a pound apiece. A couple of games went by, and we were splitting 3 pounds between us. That’s where we topped out.

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Don’t miss your opportunity to be seen in SN&R’s annual dining guide:

Indulge.

SPACE RESERVATION DEADLINE: JAN. 22 ISSUE ON STANDS: JAN. 30

Call 916.498.1234 to reserve your space and ask us about how you could be a part of our feature article!

Email your letters to sactoletters@newsreview.com.

Ban smoking on centralcity patios

from known toxins, and Sacramento will become a Fresh Air Dining destination as a result!

there is clear evidence that exposure to secondhand smoke is dangerous and puts Sacramento families and workers at risk.

The surgeon general has said there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke, and that includes outdoor smoking.

Lovelle Harris frames the article as if this is a controversial issue, but nearly 70 cities in California have already passed smokefree outdoor-dining ordinances. Certain cities have even reported an uptick in sales at restaurants following passage of the ordinance.

Sacramento has a vibrant eating scene.

As a parent, my choices are often limited when I go out with my family because I do not want to expose myself or my children to carcinogens. Secondhand smoke has been linked to lung cancer. There is also some evidence suggesting it may be linked with childhood leukemia and cancers of the larynx, pharynx, brain, bladder, rectum, stomach, and breast. Sacramento families should not be forced to make a choice between exposing their children to toxins and eating at some of Sacramento’s best restaurant patios.

Tim Gibbs senior director, government relations, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

Kimberly Bankston-Lee

p r ogr a m d i re c t o r, B re a t h e C a l i fo rni a o f S a c ra m e nt o - E m i g ra nt T ra i l s

Re “Where there’s smoke, there’s controversy” by Lovelle Harris (SN&R News, January 2): Should the city of Sacramento outlaw smoking on restaurant patios and outdoor areas that extend into the public space?

Yes! Tobacco smoke is not just a nuisance, it is a toxic air contaminant. Besides research done by Caliletter of fornia Air Resources the week Board and Stanford University, the U.S. surgeon general also reported there is no safe level of exposure to it—even in outdoor areas.

The fear is that a ban on smoking would cost restaurants revenue. Sixtynine other cities and counties in California have passed similar smoke-free laws and none have reported significant financial losses. In fact, revenues have gone up in some areas! The city of Beverly Hills is one example. Besides, there’s support for smoke-free outdoor dining. More than eight out of 10 Sacramentans don’t smoke, and 77 percent prefer dining in smoke-free outdoor areas. The city has a responsibility to protect employees and patrons

Bad rap?

Re “What Sacramento hip-hop sounds like in 2014” by Andrew Bell (SN&R Music, January 9): How cliché. Another hip-hop/rap article with none of Sacramento’s true rising talent. How about Rey y Kaye, The Gatlin, Penny, California Bear Gang, Dylan Phillip, the Kingdom? Of course not, though, right? Find the gayest artist acts nobody has heard of to put up on your site to represent the city.

Dylan Fremouw Sacramento

Ditto: ban smoking Re “Where there’s smoke, there’s controversy” by Lovelle Harris (SN&R News, January 2): The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network supports the proposed ordinance to prohibit smoking in outdoor dining areas in Sacramento, because

rib lovers

saturday

Bikes and sidewalks Re “Occupy niche awesomeness” by Raheem F. Hosseini (SN&R 15 Minutes, January 2): After reading 15 Minutes with Russell Rawlings, it’s all become clear. I’ll finally stop fighting against the tide and let the bicyclists have the sidewalk, and I’ll use the bike lane. It’s smoother, and there is less chance of being hit by an actual bicycle.

Jack Dever Sacramento

Arena hate equals hipster trend?

Re “Playing moneyball” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Bites, January 9): Your paper incessantly criticizes the city’s economic analysis for how the arena will effect the local economy. In order to know how your proposed “package of public goods” would effect our local economy, you say you would need the city to do an economic analysis? The same city whose economic analysis on the new arena you reject? Come clean: What do you have against the arena? Is it the latest trend among hipsters? Did basketball players steal your lunch money in middle school?

Tiberius Jabal via email

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Wealthy NIMBY wars See NEWS

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9

One-man election blues See BITES

11

Of Kings and jesters Arena shenanigans, sleaze on the rise as county nears completion of petition count “It’s possibly going to get all Florida 2000 around here.” by SN&R columnist Cosmo Garvin sent Nick Miller this admonition via email last Friday, and oh was he prescient: Two hours ni ck am@ newsr eview.c om later, Joshua Wood—unofficial mayoral attack dog and head of pro-Kings outfit The4000—announced a press conference at a very unusual location: an East Sacramento cemetery.

If you haven’t been keeping tabs, the fight over whether the Kings-arena-subsidy vote will go to the June ballot got as hot as Isaiah Thomas in the fourth quarter this past week. Lies, name-calling, sleaze—hanging chads and James Baker might enter the fray any second now.

Perhaps this is because a deadline looms: By next Thursday, January 23, the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters needs to complete its validation of “antiarena” petitions. Voters for a Fair Arena Deal and Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork, the two groups challenging the city’s $300 million-plus subsidy of the proposed new downtown Kings home, submitted nearly 35,000 signed petitions last month. If more than 22,000 are confirmed to be valid, an initiative asking voters whether public subsidies for a sportsarena should be approved by the public will be placed on the June ballot.

The county is also taking into account some 15,000 petitions submitted by DowntownArena.org; these are signaturewithdrawal requests signed mostly by Kings supporters, but also by some people who mistakenly inked the “anti-arena” petition.

It’s a confusing ordeal, yes—and it’s also replete with shenanigans.

Just this week, a judge deliberated whether to allow lawyers to depose a councilman as part of their lawsuit against the city; pro-arena groups blasted STOP for using voter petitions with what they called illegal language; and city officials told the county registrar to restart its validation of said petitions. Meanwhile, writers at The Sacramento Bee inked a scathing, but inaccurate, editorial slamming the “antiarena” camp, and Bee columnist Marcos Breton called Councilman Kevin McCarty a “weasel.” And, of course, there was that press conference at a local cemetery.

Six arena supporters— and a funeral Wood arrived at the East Lawn Memorial Park on Folsom Boulevard in East Sacramento just after 4 p.m. on Friday, BEFORE

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a time when most PR groups typically drop info they hope will fizzle out and die at the end of the weekly news cycle.

Standing behind a podium in front of tombstones and flanked by members of the pro-arena group Crown Downtown—and even the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce—he announced that STOP had submitted petitions with dead people’s signatures.

Quickly, both pro- and anti-arena advocates blasted Wood for using a cemetery as backdrop for a PR move.

Greg Wissinger at Kings-fan website Sactown Royalty called on Wood to apologize. “Using the dead as your backdrop for political gain... was a mistake.” he wrote.

Even arena supporter and Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna, who has family resting at East Lawn, called it inappropriate.

The city clerk informed reporter Ryan Lillis at the Bee that “every election” includes petitions inked by dead signatories.

A day after the ignominious press event, KCRA TV reported that Mayor Kevin Johnson’s office first reached out to East Lawn, requesting a “historical location” for a press conference featuring the mayor, according to a cemetery spokesperson. The mayor never showed up, of course, and his office refuses to comment on the allegation.

Critics cite the mayor’s involvement as both inappropriate and also a misappropriation of public resources.

“I apologize to those upset by the location of today’s event,” a representative of The4000 wrote on Twitter (presumably Wood). “That was in no way my intent.”

Dumb and numbers Downtown Arena’s ill-advised funeral was merely a buzzer beater in a week of the bizarre.

Foremost, lawyer Patrick Soluri, who is suing the city on behalf of Sacramento residents, says that the city made a “secret deal” with the Kings. He is hoping to depose Councilman McCarty as part of this case’s discovery, because the attorney says that the council member told him and his client, Sacramento resident Isaac Gonzalez, that officials orchestrated a behind-thescenes arena-subsidy sweetener for the Kings owners, who overpaid for the team early last year.

McCarty has not commented on this to SN&R or any other media outlet, and the city denies such back-door maneuvering. (As of SN&R’s Tuesday deadline, a Sacramento Superior Court judge had yet STORY

PHOTO COURTESY OF CROWN DOWNTOWN’S TWITTER PAGE

8

Death of pot salesman?

Holding a press conference at a cemetery wasn’t the best PR move for pro-arena group The4000.

to rule on whether to allow McCarty’s deposition.)

Over at the Sacramento Bee, scribe Breton blasted Soluri, Gonzalez and McCarty as a “sideshow of weasels doing weasely things.”

Days before, the paper also published an editorial titled “Let the public see all the petitions for arena ballot measure.”

Complaining that Sacramentans have been “left in the dark,” the editorial board blasted STOP and Voters for a Fair Arena Deal for “playing games with their petitions.”

Specifically, the-pro arena camp has criticized STOP for using up to nine different variations of petition language when soliciting signatures last fall.

The Bee said STOP denied to provide them with copies of the different types of ballot language. But Craig Powell, who leads the Voters for a Fair Arena Deal effort, said the Bee never actually requested to see the documents before writing the editorial.

“The next time you would like something from us, may I kindly suggest that you ask for it before editorially criticizing us for not providing it,” he wrote in an email to the Bee. The paper never retracted its editorial, but did run a small in-print correction for fudging its math on the petition count.

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

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Speaking of numbers: Of DowntownArena.org’s approximately 15,000 signature-withdrawal petitions, fewer than 10 percent of those submitted by Wood and Co. are turning out to be valid.

The county registrar spent a few weeks tallying and validating each withdrawal, at the request of Wood and the city. That’s appearing to be a waste of time.

“The registrar’s office took about three full weeks doing nothing but processing the more than 15,000 withdrawal requests submitted by Josh Woods and Downtown Arena (aka The4000),” Powell wrote. “Of the estimated $90,000 [to] $100,000 cost of validating the petitions and the withdrawals, a substantial portion of it has been wasted trying to validate massive numbers of bogus withdrawal forms.”

And, in the spirit of futile democracy, the city asked the registrar last Thursday to start its count over, separating each of the 35,000 STOP petitions by variance in language. The county has until next Thursday to validate all the petitions; they’ll will be working overtime and through the weekend.

So, it was a week of the unusual, even for Kings drama standards. But perhaps the strangest occurrence of all happened on the basketball court: The Kings won three games in a row. Ω

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Old argument

Claims that out-of-state money helped petition gatherers drum up phony opposition recycled through City Hall last week. But this time it had nothing to do with sports arenas. by Raheem In a unanimous vote on January 7, the Sacramento F. Hosseini City Council overruled the appeal of Ted Wells, an East Sacramento architect represented by a former politician, ra h e emh @ who claimed his neighborhood’s narrow streets and traffic ne w s re v ie w.c o m problems couldn’t abide a new three-story assisted-living facility for the elderly.

The senior-home applicant’s legal representative, Brian Holloway, characterized Wells, a traveling architect who occasionally resides in a house behind the property, as a deep-pocketed, Washington-state outsider who helped neighborhood petitioners gather 200-odd signatures against the 32-bed facility.

“The irony of this one is spellbinding,” he said. While Holloway quipped that the money wasn’t from hedge-fund billionaire Chris Hansen, “It is the same intent, and the intent is to prevent a needed and desired communityserving facility.”

More than a dozen residents voiced disapproval for the project at a planning commission meeting this past October. Last Tuesday, 14 speakers expressed similar worries to the city council during a 95-minute hearing.

Ironically, most were in the 60-and-up age bracket the facility is designed for.

Alberto Torrico, an ex-East Bay assemblyman turned registered lobbyist, appeared on behalf of Wells, whose H Street home sits behind the project site.

In one of the night’s meatier exchanges, Councilwoman Angelique Ashby pressed Torrico to explain how often his client actually resides in East Sac. “He doesn’t live in the home full time,” Torrico replied.

“He travels a lot for his business, which is all over the country. But it is one of his homes.” N E W S & R E V I E W B U S I N E S “So, is the home vacant?” Ashby asked.

DESIGNER ISSUE DATE Torrico: “No, it is not vacant. He uses it AL on occasion.”06.18.09 Ashby: “Like, on occasion, what?” FILE NAME Torrico: (Smiles.) “I don’t know. I don’t know how TRINITYCATHEDRAL061809R1 often he’s there.”

USP (BOLD SELECTI City planner Stacia Cosgrove said the city’s general PRICE / ATMOSPHERE / EXPE plan encourages the development of senior-care facilities, especially in neighborhoods with access to transit and PLEASE CAREFULLY REV health care. The building lot is on I Street, in what’s known ADVERTISEMENT AND VERIFY T as the Alhambra corridor, near Regional Transit, AD SIZE three (COLUMNS X INCHES) hospitals and a number of medical offices,SPELLING and a block from McKinley Park.

NUMBERS & DATES “This site ... will provide safe and proximate care for CONTACT INFO (PHONE, ADDR East Sacramento seniors in need of its services,” Cosgrove AD APPEARS AS REQUESTED said. “The very minor potential increase in on-street parking APPROVED BY: will not change the character of the neighborhood.”

Council members agreed, approving the project after a motion from Councilman Steve Cohn, who represents the neighborhood. Cohn brushed aside Holloway’s claim about paid petition gatherers and sympathized with residents’ desire to downsize the facility to two stories. But that idea was scrapped when it became clear it would result in the loss of a planned memory-care unit on the third floor.

There are six other residential-care facilities in East Sacramento, but none with a memory-care unit for those experiencing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Ω

Death of a pot salesman

BEATS

What will happen to black-market weed dealers if marijuana is legalized in California? This writer looks to Colorado.

In 1917, Denver was among the first U.S. cities to ban pot sales.

Colorado followed suit in 1922, and then the entire federal government in 1937. The first dealer arrested under the federal Marijuana Tax Act was Denver resident Samuel R. Caldwell, who was busted by the FBI and Denver cops for selling two joints.

Caldwell was sentenced to four years of hard labor in United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, and after serving his sentence, he died one year after his release.

What will become of the average black-market pot dealer?

“I don’t think anyone really cares,” scoffed Mason Tvert, an architect of Colorado’s legalization Amendment 64. “I mean, what about all those poor bootleggers that were hauling alcohol across the country?”

“Fuck ’em,” said one young gentleman at the back of 50-minute line to buy weed on Wednesday afternoon at the pot store Dank Colorado in Denver. The tall man with a goatee and red flannel jacket added, “I had a couple friends who are growers, and they voted against legalization. They said it would mess things up for them.

I mean, come on. Screw those guys.”

Twenty-one-year-old Denver resident Azzarias got off his night shift at 6 a.m. on Wednesday and came to stand in line at 3D Cannabis Center. The young man had previously bought marijuana from a street dealer. “He’ll probably have to cut his prices,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll go extinct soon.”

Since then, an estimated 26 million people have been arrested in the war on pot. About 750,000 people will be arrested on marijuana-related charges in America in 2014.

The drug war also has dumped billions of dollars into underground economies run by Mexican drug cartels and domestic growers, while turning the small-time local pot dealer into a popular icon. Movies such as Half Baked, Pineapple Express and the TV show Weeds all featured a typical young stoner who wants to smoke for free. Making some extra money on the side is a bonus.

The advent of medical marijuana in California in 1996 began to squeeze pot profits, though. Colorado went medical in 2000. And as prohibition ebbs and the risk of prosecution lessens, so will the price of pot, researchers say.

“The cost of production of marijuana has been reduced dramatically,” Tvert said. “Right now, marijuana is being sold medically for $25 per eighth or $150 per ounce.”

That’s down from late-1990s highs

PHOTO BY DAVID DOWNS

On January 1, at 8 a.m., the state of Colorado began allowing licensed businesses to sell marijuana to any adult 21 years by of age or older. No medical card is David Downs needed—just show your ID, and choose your weed from a broad selection of strains. Much like alcohol.

The story was splashed across the front pages of newspapers and websites around the world for the rest of the week, with photos of long lines of smiling customers waiting in cold weather. But amid the media circus, everyone overlooked a vital angle:

David Martinez, general manager of 3D Cannabis Center in Denver, prepared for the state’s first legal weed sales in nearly eight decades on January 1.

This story originally appeared in the East Bay Express.

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of $60 per eighth ounce and $360 for an ounce.

On January 1, 3D Cannabis Center in Denver was selling an eighth of an ounce for $48, but that price included a 21.22 percent tax.

“And that’s going to go down as their overhead goes down. Right now, they have to pay for all sorts of compliance and licensing fees,” Tvert said. “Competition will also pick up.”

Indeed, Ashley Kilroy, the marijuana-policy director of the city and county of Denver, said Denver had 18 stores open on New Year’s Day, and dozens more will open in the coming weeks.

Even if legal weed is pricier than expected because of taxes, people will willingly pay for convenience. “If you are going to get marijuana today after work, are you going to want to call around to see where you can score some illegal marijuana, or are you going to stop at the store and pay $10 more?” asked Tvert. “A person is going to go with the latter road.”

Furthermore, any adult over 21 in Colorado can legally grow up to three mature plants, which can each yield a pound. So while the stores out-compete on the high end of the market, the vibrant homegrown gift economy fills out the bottom end.

“The underground market is going to be virtually eliminated, much like alcohol,” Tvert said. “There won’t be any incentive to be illegally growing and selling marijuana, much like there isn’t much incentive to try and distill vodka in your basement and sell it to your friends.”

Beau Kilmer, a drug-policy researcher for the RAND Corporation, said what happens to the black-market dealers depends on Colorado regulatory decisions in 2014. “The markets are going to be in transition for a while,” he said. “It’s going to take some time.”

Weed dealers could presumably move into selling harder drugs, focus on under-21 sales, and compete for locations (campus dorms) and retail hours (late into the night). But any way you slice it, changes are coming.

“Naturally, the black market will be significantly impacted,” wrote UC Berkeley School of Law professor Robert MacCoun in an email. “But the story may get complicated.”

Or maybe it won’t.

“Dealers hate legalization,” another young man in line quipped, “just like the mob hated the end of Prohibition.”Ω

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Scoring at college A cross-country “listening” tour for President Barack Obama’s college-rating system huffed to its final stop last month at UC Davis, where a skeptical audience greeted the fledgling proposal.

Jamienne Studley, deputy undersecretary for education, acknowledged critics have dismissed the idea of a universal

score card to evaluate more than 7,000 accredited colleges and universities. During the December 17, 2013, roundtable discussion, she told attendees the goal of a national rating system is to “help us be clearer about what schools offer good value” to students based on access, completion, affordability, transparency and innovation.

UC Davis gives Obama’s But not everyone is sold on the rating plan an F. idea. Harold Levine, dean of the UC Davis School of Education, noted that the Association of American Universities already refused to endorse the rating system—one indication of “a lack of complete enthusiasm” in the higher-education community for the president’s proposal. And numerous faculty and students expressed hesitation about the long-term goal of the rating system: tying federal financial-aid dollars to score-card performance.

Studley reassured the panel that her goal is to hammer out a Consumer Reports-type “ratings system, not a ranking system,” to help parents and students swimming in a sea of brochures make apples-to-apples comparisons.

Edward Mills, Sacramento State’s associate vice president for enrollment management, noted that a good deal of existing college information isn’t particularly consumer-friendly.

The discussion often returned to a controversial idea to use graduates’ earnings as a measure of success. The proposal will have to avoid the unintended consequence of penalizing institutions that graduate more public-school teachers than stockbrokers, Studley said.

U.S. Reps. Dr. Ami Bera and John Garamendi, both California Democrats, also participated in the discussion, and said a rating system could play an important role in an era of rising higher-education costs. Bera graduated from the UC system in the 1980s with less than $10,000 in debt from undergraduate and medical degrees, while Garamendi’s daughter recently earned her medical degree with more than $225,000 of debt.

The Department of Education previously hosted round tables at CSU Dominguez Hills, George Mason University, University of Northern Iowa and Louisiana State University. A fuller proposal is expected later this spring. (Cody Drabble)

Litigious neighbors A group of residents from a small north Sacramento neighborhood sued the city on Monday to block a private psychiatric hospital from getting built nearby.

The Woodlake Neighbors Creating Transparency announced its environmental lawsuit during a late-morning press conference outside of City Hall on January 13. The lawsuit, expected to be filed that day by environmental attorney Don Mooney, concerns the Sacramento City Council’s approval last month of a 120-bed private psychiatric facility and outpatient treatment center on a grassy lot on Expo Parkway.

The suit contends that the city based its approval on an environmental analysis that was performed eight years ago, when the building site was slated for an office complex. The suit also cites the spotty regulatory history of the company behind the project, Signature Healthcare Services LLC. Signature, which operates as Aurora Behavioral Health Care, currently operates a chain of eight such facilities in four states.

A federal lawsuit concerning its psychiatric hospital in Pasadena is currently underway. (Raheem F. Hosseini) |

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by SN&R staff

SCORE KEEPER Sacramento’s winners and losers—with arbitrary points

Yabba dabba doo

Stop the presses

Apparently thieves are really into The  Flintstones and ice cream, because they  targeted two less-than-incognito rides over  the weekend. A Flintmobile—as in a model of  Fred Flintstone’s prehistoric car—was swiped  from an Arden Arcade comic store, and the  Popcycle Creamery bike—equipped with a  logoed ice chest—was taken from the owner’s  Midtown garage. This is a joyous story, though:  Both vehicles were recovered thanks to good  ol’ surveillance systems and law enforcement.

HBO has announced  the third season of  The Newsroom, Aaron  Sorkin’s melodrama that  members of the media  notoriously love to hate,  will be the show’s final  season. All Scorekeeper  can say is, finally.

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Never saw that on The Real World A South  Sacramento  Sacramento roommate roommate  brawl turned  turned violent this past  this past Monday when  when police arrested  arrested a suspect  suspect for hurling bricks at their  their housemate.  housemate.

Insert Kings  Kings field-goal field-goal  percentage percentage   joke here. here.

-.449 Heart-breaking

Sac State smoke

Sacramento’s one-of-a-kind safe  house for abused seniors could close  next month without a fast injection  of cash, Volunteers of America  Northern California & Northern Nevada  announced Tuesday. The program,  which receives no government funding,  has identified February 14—Valentine’s  Day—as its last day if it can’t close a  $200,000 budget deficit. Since opening  in August of 2009, the safe house has  provided 241 abused and neglected seniors shelter and relocation services.

Sacramento State University  is going stink-, er, smoke-free  next fall, if university President  Alexander Gonzalez has his way.  Last month, the prez directed  staff to begin outlining a policy  that would ban all tobacco use  on campus grounds, in buildings,  vehicles and leased spaces,  just like more than 1,000 other  campuses around the country.  No word on whether an exception  will be made for vaporizers and  e-cigarettes.

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One-man race Will there be an actual election to replace retiring county supervisor Jimmie Yee? Sacramento County Supervisor Jimmie Yee is retiring, and we’re supposed to have an election this spring to replace him.

The right candidate could move the board in a much more progressive direction on sprawl, affordable housing, and transportation. The wrong candidate will only cement the developers’ hold on the board.

Yee’s District 2 seat represents the Pocket, aRvin Greenhaven, South Sacramento, Valley

by COSMO G Hi and Vineyard. So far, the only person cosmog@ n ewsrev iew.c om to declare candidacy is Sacramento City Unified School District board-member and attorney Patrick Kennedy.

Kennedy has rolled up a long list of Democratic endorsements. Funny since, a) the guy has never won a competitive election, and b) he seems to struggle quite a bit with the idea of democracy.

Let’s recap. Kennedy pushed to fast-track school closures in poor neighborhoods, shortcircuiting the usual public process.

When SCUSD Area 1 member Ellyn Bell left the board suddenly, Kennedy voted to deny residents the chance to elect her replacement. He helped orchestrate the appointment of political player Jay Hansen to fill out Bell’s term. In good old-boy style, Hansen voted with Kennedy on the controversial closures.

Kennedy led the effort to pass school bond measures Q and R in 2012. But when asked, parents consistently listed class-size reduction as their first priority. There was support for a parcel tax, which would raise less money than bonds but which could be used to restore programs.

Kennedy knew better than his constituents.

The bonds will be a boon to the building trades—to which Kennedy has close ties—and to the technology vendors and consultants. They won’t do anything to reduce class sizes, or stem the loss of students to charter schools and other districts.

Kennedy worked for the law office of Gregory D. Thatch, the go-to lawyer for Sacramento’s big developers and a powerful force for shaping county policy. Kennedy’s done political work for the building trades and they have funded his campaigns generously. He’s got the endorsements of Thatch, and Region Builders, and Sacramento Association of Realtors.

He’s also got an intimidating list of endorsements from Sacramento’s Democratic political establishment, people like Phil Angelides, Darrell Steinberg, Phil Serna, Roger Dickinson and Kevin McCarty.

It’s enough to scare off most potential candidates. One possible exception is longtime SMUD board member and Florin Road Partnership executive director Larry Carr, who is considering jumping in.

It wouldn’t be the first time the two have squared off. Carr beat Kennedy 67 percent to 32 percent when Kennedy tried to take Carr’s SMUD seat back in November 2006. That’s BEFORE

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despite Kennedy raising about three times as much money.

In fact, Kennedy has never won a competitive election. He got onto the school board in 2008 by being the only candidate to file; there was no opposition and no election. In 2010, he somehow lost a Sacramento City Council race to Jay Schenirer (who is endorsing him now).

Kennedy’s big electoral victory to date is his 2012 re-election to school board, over a guy named Ralph Merletti. Merletti had no campaign, no money, no name-recognition, no endorsements. He was the only person to argue in favor of keeping white supremacist, slave-owning Indian-killer Jedediah Smith’s name on a district elementary school, and more recently spoke against new policies protecting transgender students. That guy got 35 percent of the vote against Kennedy.

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Kennedy may manage to coast into the supervisor’s seat, but it’s amazing that an office so important would be handed to a candidate with no contest.

As for Carr, he was skunked by Jimmie Yee—59 to 33 percent—when Yee first got the supervisor seat in June of 2006.

Back then, Carr was the alternative to the developer-backed candidate Yee. Carr was endorsed by the Environmental Council of Sacramento, and by both SN&R and The Sacramento Bee. The Bee called Carr a “bold voice for change,” and a “vote against sprawl and for building upward not outward.”

Bites talked to Carr recently, just as he was arriving at the County Registrar’s office to pick up paperwork for a possible run. He didn’t sound like a bold voice for change so much as a guy cautiously weighing his options.

Carr refused to critique the current board.

Bites asked how he would have voted on the controversial Cordova Hills project. Carr said he hadn’t looked at the details closely enough to say.

That’s not good. Plus, Carr is “absolutely” seeking Yee’s endorsement, which comes with its own sprawling baggage.

To be fair, Carr is still figuring out if he can mount a viable campaign; he hasn’t honed any talking points. But where is the candidate to stand up against developer power, to be a bold voice for change?

More troubling, will we have an election at all? Without at least one more strong candidate, this will be an anointment by the political establishment. This office is too important for that. Ω

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Nontraditional services at The Vibe Church

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Preaching unconditional love I have attended services at around 150 different Sacramento religious organizations. I do not know if this is a record, but I believe this much pew sitting gives me a certain expertise.

While each service is unique, The Vibe—a relatively new church in the Curtis Park neighborhood—is particularly special. I ended up there serendipitously, or perhaps it was divine intervention. I l ne ae was at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral when my nK Vo ff

by Je neighbor and fellow parishioner Jill Macdonell j e ffv @n e wsr e v ie w.c o m told me that she was headed over to the 10 a.m. services at her son’s church. I said, “Your son’s church?”

She told me that her son had established The Vibe Church, whose members were often homeless or in difficult situations. She clearly was proud of her son, John Macdonell, and really liked the services. I made a mental note to visit.

The Vibe started three years ago in the Old Soul I ended up there by Co. coffee shop in Oak Park. accident, or perhaps Then it moved to The Guild and recently to it was divine Theater, Sierra 2 Center for the Arts intervention. and Community.

Being an experienced churchgoer, I know it is important to pick the right clothes. At a Latter Day Saints service, wear a white shirt. At a Bayside Church service, wear weekend casual. For an African-American church, wear a suit. For The Vibe, I guessed: black jeans and a long-sleeve black T-shirt.

It worked. I arrived at the rented room with 100 folding chairs and an eight-member band that was already The Vibe Church’s 10 a.m. Sunday playing music. I found a seat next to a very pregnant service is at young woman whose baby was due in five weeks. The Sierra 2 Center congregation was a mix of young and old, many of for the Arts and whom appeared to have had a hard life. And there were a Community, 2791 24th Street lot of children.

Macdonell, The Vibe’s founder and unpaid head (at Third Avenue) in Curtis Park. Go to pastor, stepped away from the band to hug parishioners www.thevibe as they came in. He was clearly thrilled to see them. It church.com for information about appeared mutual. Like a large family gathering where other meetings you expect to move around and connect with all your and services. relatives, The Vibe members constantly got up to hug and sit next to others in the congregation. They ate snacks during the service and even left for smoke breaks.

The little ones were also delighted to be there. This is not surprising. First, like the adults, the kids could get drinks and baked goods during the service. It’s a wonderful improvement on most religious gatherings.

But the church is not just kid-friendly, it also is a kid Jeff vonKaenel is the president, celebration. The children were clearly loved by so many CEO and adults. The Vibe had this incredible sense of acceptance majority owner of and of unconditional love. It’s a message that I often the News & Review hear but rarely see so clearly demonstrated. newspapers in Usually when I go to services, I give $20 at collection Sacramento, Chico and Reno. time. This time, I put twice that amount into the plastic bucket with a hole cut in the top. I was moved. Ω

This Modern World

by tom tomorrow

Ban smoking?

Councilman Steve Hansen, whose district includes the Midtown-downtown “grid,” is working behind the scenes on an outdoor cigarette-smoking ban.

His goal is to prohibit smoking on restaurant and bar patios that extend into public spaces. Health is his No. 1 priority here; the dirty habit causes premature death in hundreds of millions We don’t agree of Americans annually and is a needless burden on our with either party. health-care system.

A majority of central-city business owners, however, have rebuffed Hansen’s efforts. They argue that an outright ban would be bad for business during volatile economic times, and that their existing approach of self-regulating customers on patios has been successful.

We don’t agree with either party: There’s something otiose about a government banning smoking at a bar patio where, say, people are already taking shots of alcohol. To that end, we’d like to see businesses in the urban core improve smokers’ conscientiousness and courteousness.

Hansen’s office and central-city business leaders should work together on this. A “task force” should strategize on progressive ways to get ahead of the issue and establish a visible, impactful campaign to change smokers’ habits. Such an effort would be an attractive marketing strategy for Midtown and downtown. And it would be one step closer to a smoke-free Sacramento. Ω

I wanna party just like Jesus Christ

Marriage equality and religion

I never cared much about birthday milestones. Sixteen, Years passed, but I never forgot the 21, 30—I can’t say with any certainty what I silly sketch of an idea tucked in the back by was doing when I turned those ages, but I’m of my agnostic brain. Those who heard it Raheem pretty sure it wasn’t my idea. (Olive Gardens either squished their faces in disapproval or F. Hosseini and strip clubs never are.) demanded invites. Nearly a year ago to the But ever since I was a high-school freshday, I gathered friends, family and heretics man, I knew I would get straight-up biblical for a last supper and comedic roast. I grew for my 33rd. Because, according to the applea crappy beard, donned a robe and drank cheeked Jesuit priest teaching theology, that holy spirits from a golden chalice. Instead was the age that Jesus Christ died. of pinning me to a wooden cross, six chosen I’m not sure why “apostles” crucified me with the thought of aping their jokes.

Nearly a year the alleged son of our Like this zinger, from alleged God appealed to my younger sibling: “The ago to the day, me. Ego, maybe, though Sacramento News & Review I suffer from straight actually is alternative in many I gathered comparisons—Jesus was ways. It’s an alternative to friends, family a carpenter, I struggle useful news and good writwith wrapping paper; ing. It’s an alternative to my and heretics for he favored sandals, I’m brother finding a real job. And An online version a last supper and it’s often an alternative form grossed out by feet; he of this essay can be of sheltering bums, whom my found at www.news rocks an indie-bandworcomedic roast. brother calls his ‘colleagues.’” review.com/ thy beard, I grow facial sacramento/page hair like a Megan’s Solid. burner/blogs. Law perp. I suppose I found it surreal that I All in all, it was a great way to mark could grow older than J.C. was when a bunch the end of my youth and, I feel, a superior of gladiators killed him for cheesing off Yul form of honoring the original hippie than by Brynner in the Roman bathhouse. (Right? I appearing in a snuff film directed by an antinever actually finished the Bible.)

Semite. Plus, I escaped without any permaThis particular milestone required its due nent stigmata scars, and my mom laughed and proper. loudest and longest. Tell me that isn’t what Jesus would do. Ω BEFORE

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There’s a certain irony in watching Utah deal with a similar legal-marriage system that some members of that state helped enforce in California back in 2008.

That year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints’ leadership rallied its troops to support California’s Proposition 8. And now, slightly more than five years later, Utah’s discriminatory marriage laws have been overturned, which resulted in more than 900 legal marriages between partners of the same sex.

Like the status of the 18,000 legal same-sex marriages in California that existed following the passage of Prop. 8, Utah will now go through a trying period of having some legally married gay and lesbian couples and many others that are deprived of that civil right.

Yet the tide has turned for marriage equality.

Some 900 Utah couples were married in public courthouses and in churches that support marriage equality. And, thankfully, Americans are—rather quickly—coming to see that marriage equality is no threat to religious freedom. In fact, marriage equality will actually strengthen the First Amendment rights to freedom of religion, as those religious organizations who support marriage equality will finally be free to practice it. Ω

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The Vietnamese soup is so popular, there’s even a local ‘Pho Nazi.’ Our writer goes good-pho hunting to discover the region’s best bowl.

14 | SN&R | 01.16.14

P

hiladelphia has the cheesesteak, Chicago has its deep-dish pizza.

And Sacramento has pho. It’s hard to find people who don’t love the Vietnamese noodle soup around this town. Almost as hard as it is to find Sacramento’s legendary Pho Nazi.

Sure, one angry Yelp reviewer called the south Sacramento restaurant Pho Anh Dao “Nazi Pho” after an experience there, but that’s going way overboard. Yet it was this offensive phrase—juxtaposed against years of word-of-mouth reputation that Anh Dao serves Sacramento’s best version—that piqued my curiosity.

So I searched for its address online and drove to a plaza near the corner of Stockton Boulevard and 65th Street in Sacramento’s Little Saigon neighborhood. Once there, it took 10 minutes to find parking—this on top of a 20-minute wait to be served.

For a moment, I almost agreed with the Yelp reviewer’s complaints, which included gripes about the restaurant’s limited menu and slow service, but eventually the dish arrived at the table and quickly made me forget about those criticisms.

There are other noodle dishes in the Vietnamese cuisine canon—bun bo Hue, hu tieu, sweet-and-sour fish soup, beef stew—but perhaps none is as simply delicious, or as popular as, pho: broth (chicken or beef), meat (chicken or beef), rice noodles and a pile of fresh herbs. It’s a “beloved food” in Vietnam, a whole meal in a bowl, says chef Mai Pham, who’s been cooking the dish in her Sacramento restaurants for 25 years.

I’ve come to love it, too. And thankfully, it’s not just available in Little Saigon anymore; it’s becoming trendy in downtown Sacramento, East Sacramento and surrounding suburbs.

On a personal journey to find the best bowl in town, I discover it’s more than just a delicious work of culinary art. Along the way, I meet with masters of the dish, find out how it’s linked to personal and national identity, and search for an elusive Pho Nazi chef.

A pho addiction Sacramento winters get chilly. Sometimes we get sick, aching with a nasty cold or flu. These are both perfectly good excuses to fuel my growing pho addiction.

It’s a habit that started for me sometime in the mid-2000s, when I attended college in Southern California, home to the largest Vietnamese community outside of the Southeast Asian country.

Thankfully, there’s now a pho restaurant within a few minutes’ drive pretty much anywhere in the Sacramento region. Near BEFORE

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my suburban home about 20 minutes east of downtown, there’s Pho No. 1, Pho 54 and Pho Viet—all of which opened in the last year.

Elk Grove is also experiencing a boom, with at least five such eateries now operating within its city limits.

That’s where I sit down to learn some of the cooking basics with Nghi Do, whose family opened Pho Lotus about five years ago.

The Dos stick to a very traditional “long way” of making beef pho: Fill an 80-quart stock pot with beef bones and simmer for 12 hours. The next day, take two smaller pots to cook flank steak and brisket until it’s all tender—a process that can take another four to six hours. The soup stock combines equal parts from both of those pots. Then, in the last few hours, herbs and aromatics such as ginger, onion and star anise are added, completing the soup base.

The end result is a complex aroma and flavor of bone marrow, fresh onion and cilantro emanating from a cloudy, dark bowl of soup. It’s a “slow food,” in the literal sense that it takes a half day to make, and Do’s family sources local produce and meat to make it.

“I think that most restaurants strive to keep it traditional,” says Do. “You might change some of the methods you prepare just to streamline it, but we don’t really try to change the recipe.”

Today, Pho Lotus’ recipe symbolizes a steadfast tradition that’s stayed the same over the years, despite an unpredictable family journey.

Do was born in Saigon. His family immigrated to the United States in 1975, when he was only 3. Over the next decade, the family moved several times before settling in the Bay Area, where they opened a restaurant in Cupertino. Do was 8 at the time and remembers his parents, first-time restaurant owners who also had jobs in the technology industry, dropping him off at the eatery to be baby-sat by the cook. Sometimes he’d take customers’ orders. The venture failed after two years.

The family eventually opened another, more successful restaurant in San Jose in 1991 and then, later, one in Sunnyvale. In 2000, Do’s parents ostensibly retired and moved to Elk Grove, where they eventually opened Pho Lotus with the help of Do’s brother. Do, splitting his time between Elk Grove and a Bay Area tech job, finally moved north and now shares management duties with his parents.

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“[My parents] are getting older. They should be retired, but a lot of the traditional Vietnamese thinking is that you work ’til you’re dead,” Do says.

Today, Do says he and his family feel settled at home in Elk Grove where the Vietnamese community is large, more than 7,000 residents—double the number recorded in 2000, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

Elk Grove’s actually one of the most diverse cities in the United States, and on a recent weekday inside Pho Lotus, it sure looks like it.

Mai Pham’s pho tastes vaguely like a Chinese soup I grew up eating: full of ginger and free-range chicken—something I’d imagine being incredibly soothing to eat when sick with a cold.

“We have all sorts of Asian customers—you name it, [plus] Mexican, AfricanAmerican, Caucasian,” says Do. Food, as always, is a great bridge between cultures, he says.

“We get cowboys down here from Galt, who’ve never had Vietnamese food. It’s great.”

Pho for everyone I’ve certainly had my share of Vietnamese food. And I’ve probably been eating Mai Pham’s pho since I was a kid. Her Lemon Grass Restaurant opened in 1989, and it’s my parents’ favorite restaurant: My mom has a signed copy of one of Pham’s cookbooks, and my dad had his 50th birthday party there.

Now, as I finally get the chance to talk with the chef at her latest restaurant—Star Ginger Asian Grill & Noodle Bar in East Sacramento—it becomes clear that Pham probably knows pho better than anyone in Sacramento.

Pham’s family emigrated from Vietnam in 1975 when she was 19 and settled in Washington, D.C. Pham earned a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland in 1983 and soon relocated to Sacramento to work at KXTV News10.

But after a growing ennui in her sevenyear journalism career, Pham says cooking pho reinvigorated her life. “[Opening a restaurant] was a longing to do something that would help me feel like I had become successful at assimilating with society and doing something that would help me feel more at ease or at peace with myself,” she says. “I lost my identity and who my family was and the stature that they had in Vietnam. I think that all of that was a great motivation for me to be successful, and I had to learn what to do.”

In the years that followed Lemon Grass’ opening, Pham worked up to 16 hours a day. The restaurant certainly succeeded: Customers requested cooking classes, so she taught them. Customers wanted cookbooks, so she wrote several, including Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table and The Flavors of Asia. She also taught at and earned an honorary master’s degree from The Culinary Institute of America in Napa.

The San Francisco Chronicle even hired her as a food columnist, and a 1997 article she wrote for the newspaper, titled “A Bowl of Pho,” earned her an award from the Association of Food Journalists.

“Even though my family first discovered pho in Saigon in the late 1950s, it actually originated in the north in Hanoi around the turn of the [20th] century,” she wrote in the piece. “[But] some Hanoi cultural experts with ancestors who are said to have witnessed the birth of pho believe this dish parallels the history of Vietnam, harboring both a Chinese and French connection.”

Her dedication is apparent as Pham explains that she’s traveled back to the country she once fled just to study the dish.

There, she studied trends. In rural north Vietnam, pho is often a simple farm-fresh dish that has very little spice in order to bring out the delicate flavor of the beef broth. In the south, it’s more like what diners find stateside: a bigger bowl packed with noodles, bean sprouts, herbs and condiments such as sriracha sauce, chili oil, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, pickled jalapeños.

Yet, it’s Pham’s pho ga, or chicken pho, that’s her calling card—clean, healthy and quick to assemble at the numerous Star Ginger locations currently operating across several states.

“Adventures in pho” continued on page

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PHOTO BY STEVEN CHEA

Nghi Do (left), mother Lang Do and Quan Do (not pictured) own and operate Pho Lotus in Elk Grove.

“Adventures in pho” continued from page

On a recent winter afternoon, Pham shows me into the kitchen and points out a huge pot of stock. In it are three or four whole chickens, several whole onions, ginger, star anise, cinnamon and assorted other spices. She eyes it carefully, explaining that it’s almost boiling and she’ll need to turn it down soon. Someone in the kitchen is instructed to keep constant watch and scoop off any sediment that floats to the top in order to keep it perfectly clear.

Back at the table, I taste the piping hot clear broth which hits me in the nose as I slurp noodles. It tastes vaguely like a Chinese soup I grew up eating: full of ginger and free-range chicken—something I’d imagine being incredibly soothing to eat when sick with a cold.

“You have to decide what you want to be good at,” says Pham. “We decided that our customers like chicken, so I didn’t want to make two [types of pho]; so I only make chicken.”

That decision made business sense. With beef pho, chefs need to boil beef bones overnight. But with Pham’s chicken pho, her restaurants can cook several pots of fresh chicken stock per day, for soup that’s fast and made to order. In 2003, she launched Star Ginger’s fastcasual concept restaurant at the University of 16

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In rural north Vietnam, pho is often a simple farm-fresh dish that has very little spice in order to bring out the delicate flavor of the beef broth.

Massachusetts, featuring Thai and Vietnamese food. Now, thanks to a 2011 partnership with Sodexo, her chicken pho can be found in places that might otherwise suffer from bland, corporate food, including Walt Disney World Resort and college campuses nationwide.

Back in Sacramento, Pham’s pho ga still exudes the warmth of her personality and culture. “[In Vietnam], food was symbolic.

It was love. It was a way to connect to Vietnamese culture,” she explains. “I see that some of the institutional food is not that great, and it’s not responding to what you see out in the streets necessarily, so I felt it was an opportunity for me to make a difference.”

All this, I’ve learned, is possible with just a bowl of soup.

The Pho Nazi By this point in my adventure, I’ve eaten a lot of pho and learned quite a bit. But I’ve also developed a nasty cold and still need to pay a visit to Little Saigon. That’s where a particular restaurant has been holding sway over Sacramento pho lovers for nearly a decade.

Despite its middling three-star average rating on Yelp, numerous complaints about poor service, atmosphere and wait times, Pho Anh Dao is consistently packed with customers.

I find a parking spot and take a seat inside where, after waiting 20 minutes for a bowl of beef pho, I finally get to taste the famous noodle soup. It’s a delicate broth, piping hot, warming the face and the belly with garlic and onion flavor—certainly worth the wait everyone complains about. Satisfied, full and finally able to breathe through a previously congested nose, I settle the check and ask if manager Henry Ha is working today.

“Yes, go back there and talk to him,” says the cashier, without hesitation.

Ha is in the back serving up bowls of pho.

We greet each other, but he tells me he’s “too

busy” for an interview right now. Instead, he asks for a business card, leaving me with, “Maybe I’ll give you a call.”

He seems like a nice guy, cracking a faint smile while scooping a strainer full of noodles out of a water bath. No one here’s a nazi after all.

Ha never does call—but that’s completely understandable. The restaurant seems to be packed all day, and aside from a team of servers and bus staff, it’s basically just a mom-and-son business, according to Do. Decades ago, when the Ha family operated a popular pho restaurant in San Jose, Do’s family was friends with them.

Now that both families reside in Elk Grove, Do still sees Ha—who’s a few years younger— every now and then.

“They’re more laid-back, and they don’t really care about promoting their business,” says Do. “They feel like they’ve already got their business. Everybody knows them, and so they’re like, ‘On our day off, we’re going to do something else.’”

There’s currently no website or working phone number for the restaurant, so it’s difficult to learn more—especially since the restaurant seems to be closed at odd hours.

But such a great bowl certainly deserves more than three stars on Yelp, I reason. So, I log in to the site and message another user who loved the restaurant.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MAI PHAM

Star Ginger Asian Grill & Noodle Bar chef, founder and owner Mai Pham says that pho is popular because of its warm and satisfying qualities.

Sacramento’s top 10 pho restaurants I couldn’t possibly try every pho restaurant in the Sacramento area, but these 10 serve up a really good bowl. The soup at each eatery changed from visit to visit, so I’ve included a small memory about each—but be warned, the descriptions are in no way representative of how it may taste on a daily basis. That’s sort of the magic of pho.

1. Pho Anh Dao 6830 Stockton Boulevard, Suite 165; (916) 428-2826

The entire experience here makes you feel like you’re on vacation: The slower pace of service, the bustling strip mall, sharing a table with strangers, the numerous languages spoken by other customers. Pho Anh Dao’s chicken and beef broth are both delicate in flavor.

2. Pho Lotus Vietnamese Restaurant 9600 Bruceville Road, Suite 100 in Elk Grove; (916) 686-9474; www.pholotus.com

The beef broth at Pho Lotus has depth, with equal parts marrow and standard beef stock. The homemade chili oil is a great condiment.

Andrea Tram, who gave the eatery four stars, says she’s been eating at Anh Dao since she was a kid growing up in San Jose. Before she moved to Sacramento at age 10, Tram’s family visited the Ha family’s restaurant in San Jose on a weekly basis.

Now Sacramento residents, the family still eats at Anh Dao every other week.

“The broth is just very different from the other pho places that I’ve been to,” says Tram. “Even my mom, she makes pho [at home], but she’d rather eat theirs than her own. She won’t eat pho anywhere else.”

But in the end, no one’s pho obsession seems as large as Ha’s own.

“I just saw him last week; he came in to eat [at Pho Lotus],” says Do. “I give him a hard time, like, ‘It’s your day off and you come in to eat pho?’”

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“I gotta eat pho every day,” Ha told Do. It becomes clear that declining an interview is possibly just another sign of Ha’s unwavering commitment to his culinary craft.

But is it the best pho in town?

That’s hard to tell. They all have subtle differences and, really, “best” is determined by personal taste. But it’s definitely one of the best. Plus, the experience of eating at Anh Dao is certainly the most memorable to me, thanks to its remarkable healing properties and its conscientious owners and devoted customers.

“It’s probably the most popular among us [pho] restaurants in Sacramento. They just basically open in the morning and close when they sell out,” says Do. “Don’t go in there expecting service, just go in there for the food.”

Especially if you’ve got a cold.

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3. Star Ginger 3103 Folsom Boulevard, (916) 231-8888, www.starginger.com

True to its name, there’s lots of star anise and ginger flavor here, which makes for a fresh and delicious bowl of chicken pho.

4. Pho Xe Lua 5331 Stockton Boulevard, (916) 451-8838

This place serves a tasty bowl for pretty cheap, and its portions are huge—a great overall value for hungry pho eaters.

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5. Pho Aroma 6434 Stockton Boulevard, (916) 393-9988

Like its name suggests, the broth here is very aromatic. It’s dark and features a lot of beef-marrow scent and taste.

6. Pho 54 Vietnamese Noodle House 6191 Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights, (916) 727-9123

It’s a dark, cloudy broth with intense beef flavor and lots of cilantro floating at the top of the bowl.

7. Pho Viet 5948 Auburn Boulevard in Citrus Heights, (916) 338-1868, www.phoviet916.com

There’s a lot of star anise flavor in Pho Viet’s beef pho. The chicken pho features tender chicken and a very clear broth.

8. Pho Saigon Bay various locations, www.phosaigonbay.com

This pho broth here is clear, and the chain is known for offering heaping piles of meat and veggie toppings.

9. Pho Bac Hoa Viet various locations, www.face book.com/phobachoaviet

A few of Pho Bac Hoa Viet locations are open late, so it’s perfect for a hankering for late-night pho. Some locations offer the Pho Challenge, a gigantic bowl that should only be attempted by really hungry customers.

10. Pho No. 1 5323 Sunrise Boulevard in Fair Oaks, (916) 966-2020; 7127 Elk Grove Boulevard, Suite 101 in Elk Grove; (916) 683-8384

The soup here has very soft noodles and delicate beef broth that’s relatively clear, yet flavorful.

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—J.M.

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PHOTO BY MINDY TUCKER

Barry’s biggest celebrity fan?

Apparently Nancy Sinatra. Maybe.

IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY

BY BECKY GRUNEWALD Comedian Todd Barry talks Twitter, drink minimums and why the Sacramento Comedy Spot is the perfect venue for his laid-back style of humor 18

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D

espite his prominence and his status as a comedian’s comedian, Todd Barry still likes to play small rooms sometimes—a factor that enticed him to return to perform in Sacramento for the first time in 10 years, to play four shows at the Sacramento Comedy Spot.

And he especially likes places such as the Comedy Spot that don’t enforce a drink minimum—if not necessarily for altruistic reasons.

Reached at his home in Manhattan, Barry explained his philosophy.

“You can tell people that when you promote the shows [that there’s no drink minimum], which makes you look like a great guy who cares about his fans,” Barry said. “And there’s less chaos in the room if the waitress doesn’t give them a check in the middle of your show.”

Fair enough.

It was a tip from friend and fellow stand-up comedian Kyle Kinane that brought the Comedy Spot to Barry’s attention. Kinane told him that he’s had a great time playing his sold-out shows at the venue and recommended it as a “UCB-type place” for Barry to play.

“UCB,” for the uninitiated, is the abbreviation for the Upright Citizens Brigade, a longtime sketch and improv troupe in Los Angeles that’s served as a farm team of sorts for Saturday Night Live cast members, including Amy Poehler and Horatio Sanz.

Barry’s assessment dovetails perfectly into Comedy Spot owner Brian Crall’s vision. Crall’s background is in improv, and he’s even taken sketch classes at UCB; he now offers the same kind of classes at his venue. He started the Comedy Spot in 2008 in a vacant storefront on Broadway, and then moved to the current, higher-profile Midtown spot in November 2009. In addition to classes, Crall also stages a mix of improv, standup and sketch comedy—with a decided emphasis on improv’s anything-goes nature.

“We are all about the comedy first,” Crall said. “We don’t have a two-drink minimum. … It’s $20, and that’s the price, and we don’t gouge you.”

In 2013, Crall shifted his vision somewhat, expanding to include three to four nationally touring comedians each year as a way to increase the club’s visibility—and perhaps to better introduce it to the kinds of fans who flock to see the “celebrity” marquee comedians who pack the Punch Line Comedy Club on Arden Way. The Comedy Spot’s first big get was Kinane, a UCB alum, whose 2011 comedy album debut Death of the Party was widely praised.

Now, the Comedy Spot should prove an ideal venue for Barry who is known BEFORE

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Good friend, bad friend See ASK JOEY

for his observational comedy and his measured, low-key delivery; unlike many, he’s never been an abrasive stand-up, but it’s hardly affected his career.

“Some club bookers are afraid to book a low-key guy and think they have to put you at the beginning of the show, [but] you just don’t worry about those people,” Barry said.

Barry’s also appeared on late-night TV countless times, including many stints on Late Show With David Letterman. In a twist, Barry has also appeared as an opening act for many bands, including They Might Be Giants, Mates of State and Yo La Tengo.

The 49-year-old’s epigrammatic style lends itself well to the punchy medium of Twitter, which likely explains why he has more than 230,000 followers. On the social-networking site, the comedian affects a puffed-up persona and often declares himself to have “won Twitter.”

See FILM

Barry’s also followed by many professional wrestlers, likely due to his role as Mickey Rourke’s snide deli boss in the 2008 Darren Aronofsky film The Wrestler. It’s a role he spoofed in an extremely popular Funny or Die skit that hinges on the conceit that Aronofsky’s next film, 2010’s Black Swan, originally started as a spin-off film starring the deliboss character.

Barry’s lengthy résumé also includes roles in Wanderlust alongside Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd and four comedy albums. The Onion A.V. Club named his debut, 2001’s Medium Energy, one of the best comedy albums of the 2000s.

In contrast to his tongue-in-cheek, boastful Twitter style, Barry’s stand-up is self-deprecating.

On his latest album, 2012’s Super Crazy (also available as a DVD), which the Onion A.V. Club called “impeccably sharp and amusing,” Barry does a bit in

“SOME CLUB BOOKERS ARE AFRAID TO BOOK A LOW-KEY GUY AND THINK THEY HAVE TO PUT YOU AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOW, [BUT] YOU JUST DON’T WORRY ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE.” Todd Barry comedian

An example of such featured a theoretical conversation between Barry and his fans. “‘Todd, when you don’t tweet a lot, the world isn’t happy a lot,’ - You guys,” Barry tweeted.

“Don’t be sad when I don’t tweet a lot. It just means I’m busy with one of my many amazing side projects,” Barry continued in a series of posts. “Sad when we live in a world where you get more attention for winning a marathon than I get for winning Twitter.”

“I reached 230k twitter followers the other day. Quietly. Without fanfare.”

“I’m not going to announce every time I win Twitter. It’s becoming ridiculous at this point.”

“I love to ‘win Twitter’ right before boarding a flight.”

Barry’s followers also include a few well-known names, including what is likely his strangest celebrity connection: Nancy Sinatra.

“Although she follows like 35,000 people, so it pretty unlikely she’s a fan of mine,” he admits.

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This ain’t no disco

which he pokes fun at the early, ’80s-era days of his career, imitating the phone message of a comedy club listing upcoming shows: “August 1st and 2nd, we have Chris Rock—special event. No free passes. … August 15th and 16th, we have Todd Barry—it’s gum-wrapper night. Bring a gum wrapper or a piece of a paper roughly the size of a gum wrapper. You and your entire party get in free. What, still not interested? First round of drinks on us. Not even remotely an appealing offer? All you can drink the entire night, helicopter ride home.”

Up next for Barry, guest-starring on episodes of Louie, Inside Amy Schumer and Jerry Seinfeld’s Web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, as well as continuing his weekly comedy podcast, The Todd Barry Podcast.

No gum wrappers required. Ω Catch Todd Barry on Friday, January 17, and Saturday, January 18, at the Comedy Spot at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets are $20, and Michael Patton, Nick Aragon and Keith Lowell Jensen are also on the bill. Visit www.toddbarry.com, https://twitter.com/ toddbarry or http://saccomedyspot.com.

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SCENE& HEARD Neon night at the museum Black lights, body art, craft stations and a psychedelic light show swirling with acid-flashback potential—all were on display during the Crocker Art Museum’s January 9 Art Mix / Neon Nite mixer.

Outside, John Sonderegger and Ted Ternes, two artists from the Rainbow Prism Atomic Lightshow collective, lit up the museum’s courtyard entrance with kaleidoscopic rainbows, hallucinogenic liquid suspensions and freaky fractals to go with that sustainably grown chardonnay.

From behind a black curtain on the balcony, the electrosorcerers beamed pools of prismatic light onto the ceiling and cloth screens.

Inside the museum, hanging from an aerial silk that spanned the length of three stories, Alice Karrasch and Matt Wright from West Sacramento’s Aerial Evolution twirled in the oscillating light show. They took turns ascending and star dropping as onlookers took in the aerialists’ arabesques, splits and cross-back straddles twice an hour from the balcony above and cafe tables below. Wright Lily Moon’s and Karrasch made sure to wear cosmic nebula-print characters yoga tights, the only attire apare depicted propriate for dancing in a sea of rainbows. as struggling In the auditorium, artist through every Kristen Hoard showed off her latest series of ocean-inspired phase of human light sculptures. From scraps life, from womb of metal wire and abandoned Weber grills, Hoard constructto tomb. ed a family of blue and green jellyfish lamps upon finding inspiration during a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

“That [first jellyfish] started as a fire sculpture, but then I got mad at it and I kicked it,” Hoard said of the project’s genesis.

“And then I saw the jellyfish. All the metal is recycled; I get it at scrap yards, even the Weber. I put the light on, thinking I’ll just light up the tentacles—how nice that will be.”

The result, she says, surprised her.

“When I turned off the lights in my studio, I screamed.

This was new, I had just started playing with light,” Hoard said. “I didn’t realize what the shadows would do. It was an accident.”

Hoard used a plasma cutter to puncture wavy holes in the jellyfish’s grill hood to project an undersea aura on the walls and ceiling.

At center stage, Hoard’s color-changing piece, “River of Possibilities,” looked like the Mariana Trench, a sliver of the Grand Canyon or an earthquake frozen in time, depending on what color setting was picked.

Elsewhere, local painter and illustrator Lily Moon’s installation included a meeting room filled with dozens of cardboard cutout figures illuminated by black-lightactivated ink that crisscrossed their naked bodies. Here, Moon’s characters are depicted as struggling through every phase of human life, from womb to tomb, tethered to destructive relationships and technological crutches.

During the event, Moon bopped across the room to Dizzy Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts” as she narrated a frenetic story acted out by her frozen figures.

“He’s reacting to his parents screaming at each other,” Moon told the crowd. “But they aren’t listening to each other anymore. The actions of his parents have caused him to be introverted, and someone needs to help him. But that’s not for me to tell you how to do that, that’s up to you.”

—Cody Drabble

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For the week of January 16

wEEKLy PICKS

Arts & Crafts From the Japanese American Internment Camps Sunday, January 19, through Sunday, May 11 The California Museum already had an informational exhibition about World War II-era ART Japanese-American internment camps, and now, it’s bringing a traveling exhibition of more than 120 artifacts made by prisoners.

It’s a pretty sad yet uplifting concept: art created under dire conditions. $6.50-$9 for admission, The California Museum, 1020 O Street; (916) 653-7524; www.californiamuseum.org.

—Jonathan Mendick

Don’t Fear the Fat! Monday, January 20 Chef Ame Harrington breaks down the good, bad and delicious options of fat, like butter and lard.

Learn how to use different fats for different dishes—including duck confit and biscuits—from the brain behind L Wine Lounge & Urban Kitchen.

CLASS $35-$45, 6:30 p.m. at Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op Community Learning Center, 1914 Alhambra Boulevard; (916) 455-2667; www.sacfoodcoop.com.

—Jessica Rine

Harlem Globetrotters Monday, January 20 With three of its team members fresh off a 2013 trip to North Korea with NBA Hall of Fame player Dennis Rodman, the Harlem Globetrotters now set their sights on the Sleep BASKETBALL Train Arena for their 2014 Fans Rule world tour. The supreme leader won’t be in attendance or anything, but at least there will be fan interaction. $17.50-$122.50, 2 p.m. at Sleep Train Arena, 1 Sports Parkway; www.sleeptrain arena.com.

—Jonathan Mendick

Cookbook-writing discussion

B

acon Fest Sacramento cofounder (and, full disclosure, SN&R co-editor) Nick Miller started a bacon-centric event two years ago with the playful idea to mess with people who make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. Well, since these “weight loss” plans don’t really strive to make anyone healthier anyway, why not just say, “Screw resolutions!” entirely? Below are three food-centric events in Sacramento this week that will help throw off everyone’s resolution to shed some pounds.

Nothing gets Sacramentans juiced about an event more than the lure of craft beer.

That’s exactly what you’ll get at Winterfest—plus wine

(Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi, Carvalho Family Winery and Michael David Winery), food (The Porch Restaurant and Bar, Dad’s Kitchen, Beach Hut Deli) and music (Sacramento rock group the Old Screen Door). All told, it’ll feature several-dozen craft breweries, including Ninkasi Brewing Company, North Coast Brewing Co. and Drake’s Brewing. It all benefits the Runnin’ for Rhett foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to youth fitness. It happens on Friday, January 17, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Red Lion Woodlake Hotel, located at 500 Leisure Lane. General admission tickets cost $40.

Visit www.sacwinterfest.com for more information.

Launching this weekend is the Urban Art, Food & Libations Walking Tour from Local Roots Food Tours. The 3-mile, threeand-a-half-hour tour will take you to see urban art murals in Midtown and downtown, plus stop six or seven times for food and wine. Tours are at 2 p.m. on Thursdays and Saturdays through February 22. Tickets cost $65, and each tour is limited to 10 people; thus, some days are already booked. Find out more at http://local-foodtours.com.

And, of course, there’s Bacon Fest Sacramento. Now in its third year, the annual event celebrates the cut of pork with a week of events happening from Sunday, January 19, through Sunday, January 26. Highlights

include opening night at the Grange Restaurant & Bar, featuring affordably priced small plates by chefs Oliver Ridgeway of Grange, Ravin Patel of Ella Dining Room & Bar, and Billy Ngo of Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine; prix fixe dinners at places like Enotria Restaurant Wine Bar, Magpie Cafe and Formoli’s Bistro; classes at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op; and the annual chefs’ competition—which sold out in 80 minutes (all’s not lost, though: Tickets are winnable at some Bacon Fest events)— featuring Patrick Mulvaney, Adam Pechal, Michael Tuohy and others. Check it out at www.baconfestsac.com.

—Jonathan Mendick

thurSday, January 23 This discussion features cookbook author Elaine Corn, food journalist Maryellen Burns and lawyer Bob Pimm on how to write cookbooks, how they’re researched and the intelCOOKBOOKS lectual property of recipes.

Food from one of Corn’s cookbooks will be served. $35-$45, 2:30 p.m. at Blue Prynt Restaurant, 815 11th Street; www.calawyersforthearts.org.

—Jonathan Mendick

Journey on: Ahrens-Flaherty thurSday, January 23, through Saturday, January 25 Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty have been writing music together for theater, film and television since 1988. This musical revue is a mashup of their best songs from works such as Schoolhouse Rock!, Ragtime, Once on This Island and Seussical. $12-$27, 7 p.m. Thursday, MUSICAL 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Saturday at the Wells Fargo Pavilion, 1419 H Street; (916) 443-6722; www.sactheatre.org.

—Jessica Rine

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The fresh and the unexpected FreshMed Mediterranean Cuisine 1120 Fulton Avenue, Suite I; (916) 486-1140; www.freshmed1.com To be honest, I don’t think I can provide a good definition of what Mediterranean food is. Before eating at FreshMed Mediterranean Cuisine, a small by Jonathan restaurant in a suburban strip mall, I thought Mendick that “Mediterranean” only referred to what people in Greece or southern Italy eat: a diet j o nathan m@ newsre view.c om heavy in olive oil, hummus, salad, pita and kebab. But this restaurant certainly broadened my definition. In addition to the food I’d imagined it would serve—gyros, falafel, salad with feta cheese—FreshMed also serves a variety of other dishes from across a wide range rating: of cultures.

HHH 1/2 That’s not a bad thing. FreshMed creates unique dishes that cater to everyone, not just dinner for one: $10 - $20 a single genre or style. Interestingly, within a few blocks from FreshMed, there are Lebanese, Indian and Persian restaurants, and FreshMed’s idea of Mediterranean includes all of these cuisines, plus more.

For example, the eatery’s Facebook page advertises Afghan, Pakistani and Chinese food.

But on a recent visit, there was a sign for an Indian and Pakistani lunch buffet for $6, so H FlAwed that’s what I chose. It’s a pretty good deal, despite not knowing what the dishes are—there HH hAS momentS were no labels—but they seemed to be a stir-fried eggplant dish, chicken tikka masala, HHH curry chickpeas, lentils, rice, a salad bar and AppeAlIng a few stir-fried dishes that I couldn’t identify.

HHHH The tikka masala, perhaps because I’m the most AuthorItAtIve accustomed to it, was my favorite: creamy, HHHHH spicy and hearty. epIc The salad bar featured a tomato-andiceberg-lettuce salad, with a spicy salsalike sauce and tzatziki sauce serving as dressing.

I’m pretty sure this salad is neither Indian nor Pakistani, but it was pretty good. Nevertheless, I decided not to revisit the buffet again, because some of the regular menu items wound up impressing me much more.

On several other occasions, I ordered takeout, and the experience was completely different. One smorgasbord of a dinner order included baba ghanoush, something called Still hungry?

Search Sn&r’s Mediterranean Nacho, a chicken panini, and a “dining directory” combination platter with Kuftakabob (mincedto find local beef kebab), chicken kebab, salad and rice. restaurants by name The baba ghanoush tasted a bit bitter. or by type of food.

Either the eggplant’s skin was burned before Sushi, mexican, Indian, Italian—discover it it was ground up, or this was purposeful, and all in the “dining” I’m not used to such bitterness in this dish. section at On the combination platter, the Kuftakabob www.news tasted delicious—it’s a spicy, juicy meat. review.com.

The chicken kebab, on the other hand, veered toward the dry side.

The Mediterranean Nacho and the chicken panini are examples of what the restaurant does well: culinary mashups that aren’t derivative, but instead rely heavily on flavor and innovation. The nachos are also a lesson on layering texture: a bed of lettuce and tomato, pita chips, hummus, tzatziki sauce, feta cheese, a special house sauce, and a choice of chicken, BEFORE

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eggplant, falafel or lamb. On separate occasions, I ordered chicken and lamb as toppings, and both shined—somehow playing nice with all the other savory flavors.

FreshMed’s paninis also stand out. The bread is sweet, thicker than one might expect, and pressed nicely on a grill, with char marks on both sides. On a takeout order, a grilled chicken panini somehow retained all the smell of a smoky grill for the car ride home, and tasted equally smoky and delicious once I consumed it. The lamb gyro panini isn’t as aromatic as the chicken, but offers adequate peppery spice. Each sandwich is served with a delicious house-made garlic aoli-style sauce.

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Still, after several visits, I’m still not really sure if I’ve seen or eaten any Afghan or Chinese food at FreshMed. I’m also confused about the real cultural or ethnic origin of any of these so-called Mediterranean foods. Still, most dishes have unique flavors, are somewhat healthy, and it’s refreshing that the restaurant focuses on having fun with a diverse menu. It’s worth visiting, even if you have no idea what you’ll get. Ω

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Like it or not, Bundt cakes are a current dessert trend. The crateral dome-shaped baked goods may elicit ’70s-style afterdinner-treat nostalgia, but these days, they’ve found a foothold in the 21st century: There’s even a Bundt-cake-only bakery national franchise. And it has a location in Sacramento. None of its cakes seem to be vegan, though. However, it’s got some competition in Sacramento-based Spirit of Jazz Cakes, which also only does Bundt, but it bakes a vegan one, too.

Of its several flavors, which all contain liquor and are all named after a jazz legend, just The Duke Ellington (banana rum) is dairy- and egg-free. Entire cakes can be ordered (via Facebook), or get a slice of the spirit for $2.50 at Queen Sheba Restaurant, you know, the Ethiopian eatery at 1704 Broadway that shows the best music videos in town and has been offering a vegetarian and vegan lunch buffet for years?

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Downtown Darna This Palestinian restaurant

Where to eat?

serves an excellent baba ghanoush that, instead of being blended into a smooth paste, is served chunky and studded with eggplant seeds. Its smoky, deep flavor is balanced out by a lemony brightness, and it’s good on the somewhat flabby pita bread with which it’s served, but it’s even better on the house-made za’atar bread. Chicken-breast kebabs are not particularly flavorful but have some char from the grill, while the falafel and chicken shawarma are underwhelming. Do order a side of tabbouleh salad, however. It’s pretty to look at—bright-green chopped parsley studded with white grains of bulgur—and tastes refreshing. Palestinian.

925 K St., (916) 447-7500. Dinner for one: $15-$25. HHH B.G.

Here are a few recent reviews and regional recommendations by Becky Grunewald, Ann Martin Rolke, Garrett McCord and Jonathan Mendick, Downtown & Vine This tasting room and wine bar spotlights the local updated regularly. farm-to-glass movement. Here, Check out diners can order 2-ounce tastwww.newsreview.com ing flights of wine. Choose three for more dining advice. from the same vintner to com-

pare styles, or mix and match to contrast similar wines from regional wineries. Wines are also available in larger pours and by the bottle. Wine is meant to be enjoyed with food, of course: The menu offers a wide selection of tidbits and hearty dishes.

Worth sampling: the goatcheese stuffed peppers, chilled Spanish-spiced shrimp, and a cheddar-and-apple melt. Or try the ambrosial Wine Country sandwich, with salty prosciutto, sweet fig jam, oozy mozzarella and peppery arugula on grilled

bread. There are also a variety of flatbreads loaded with topping combos like capicola, three cheeses, piquillo peppers and green onions. The bread for these is nicely crunchy but not too chewy and comes across as more than a pizza trying to be fancy. American. 1200 K St., Ste. 8; (916) 228-4518. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH AMR

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

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

Midtown

wine list includes entries from Spain and Israel; there are also draft cocktails and numerous beers on tap. The brunch menu is heavy on the eggs, prepared in lots of ways. One option is the Croque Madame, a hamand-Gruyere sandwich usually battered with egg. This one had a fried egg and béchamel, with a generous smear of mustard inside. The mountain of potato hash alongside tasted flavorful and not too greasy. The menu also features pizzas and housemade pastas, but one of its highlights includes an excellent smoked-eggplant baba ganoush, which is smoky and garlicky and served with warm flatbread wedges and oil-cured olives. The bananas foster bread pudding is equally transcendent, accompanied by very salty caramel gelato, pecans and slivers of brûléed bananas. American.

1630 S St., (916) 442-4885. Dinner for one: $20-$40. HHH1/2 AMR

The Coconut Midtown The food here travels a path between standard and inventive. Creamcheese wontons, for example, aren’t the epitome of culinary Southeast Asian traditions, but damn it if they aren’t delightful. Soft cream cheese and chives in a crispy wrapper and served with a sweet chili sauce? Nothing wrong with that. The fresh spring roll is at least fresh in ingredients, if not in creativity.

Mere cigarettes of lettuce and tofu are simply a means to getting the sugary peanut sauce into one’s mouth. The chicken larb—a spicy minced-meat salad—is fragrant and intense.

Mint, chilies, basil and iceberg lettuce are drenched in a spicy lime dressing punctuated with a heavy hand of fish sauce.

The Coconut has warnings in its menu about which dishes are spicy, but unless you’re a newborn kitten, trembling and mewling, you might not even be aware of the chilies in your food.

Thai. 2502 J St., (916) 447-1855.

Dinner for one: $10-$15.

HHH1/2 G.M.

Hook & Ladder Manufacturing Co. The restaurant, by the same owners as Midtown’s The Golden Bear, sports a firefighting theme (a ladder on the ceiling duct work, shiny silver wallpaper with a rat-and-hydrant motif, et al) and a bar setup that encourages patrons to talk to each other. An interesting

Thai Basil SN&R readers consistently vote this place among the city’s top Thai restaurants for this paper’s annual Best of Sacramento issue. And for good reason. The restaurant’s tom yum soup may be one of the best foods served in the City of Trees. It features an incredibly savory broth with layers of flavor. Likewise, the tom kha gai—a coconut-broth soup—is a veritable panacea against Delta winds and the morose rains that follow them.

Salads make up a large part of Thai cuisine and should not be overlooked. Larb gai consists of simple shredded chicken over mixed greens, cucumber

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and tomatoes. Fresh mint and a chili-laden dressing heavy with fish sauce and vigorous squeezes of lime juice pull it all together for an addictive and satisfying lunch. One of Thai Basil’s true highlights is its homemade curry pastes. These carefully balanced constructions of basil, lemongrass, shallots, chilies, kaffir lime leaves and other ingredients come together to form truly authentic pastes that, when roasted, have been known to drive hungry Sacramentans into a berserk craze. Service here is impeccable. Thai Basil has earned its reputation and will likely continue to keep it for years to come. Thai. 2431 J St., (916) 442-7690. Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHHH G.M.

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 AMR

South Sac A&A Tasty Restaurant and Bar This Little Saigon eatery boasts such an extensive menu of Chinese and Vietnamese dishes that it’s hard to pinpoint its crown jewel. Notable options include a salty fish and chicken-fried rice entree with stir-fried vegetables. The fried rice offers copious pieces of the diced salty fish. This may seem a bit weird to the uninitiated, but the reward is a unique, jolting pungent flavor that spruces up an otherwise boring chicken-fried rice. Elsewhere on the menu, the Vietnamese pork-chop rice plate, served with a small bowl of fish sauce, surprisingly stacks up to similar dishes from other strictly Vietnamese restaurants in the area. The pork is thinly sliced and tender, easily cut with a simple butter knife. Chinese and Vietnamese. 6601 Florin Rd., (916) 379-0309. Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHH1/2 J.M.

East Sac Istanbul Bistro Turkish chef Murat Bozkurt and brother Ekrem co-own this paean to their homeland, with Ekrem usually at the front of the house, infusing the space with cheer. Turkish cuisine features aspects of Greek, Moroccan and Middle Eastern flavors. The appetizer combo plate offers an impressive sampling. Acili ezme is a chopped, slightly spicy mixture of tomatoes, cucumber and walnuts that’s delicious paired with accompanying flatbread wedges. For entrees, try the borani, a lamb stew with garbanzos, carrots, potatoes and currants. The meat is very tender, while the veggies arrived nicely al dente. Also good is the chicken shish plate (souvlaki),

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West Sacramento Wicked West Pizza & BBQ This popular destination for kids’ sports teams and birthday parties also caters to adult diners with good food and healthy options, such as organic whole-wheat crusts.

Gluten-free and vegan choices are also available. With a texture closer to Chicago style than New York style, the pizzas are tasty but quite filling. Choose from house-made sauces and fresh toppings, or pick from one of the inventively named presets. The Old Lady is especially good, with pesto, potatoes, spinach, lots of veggies and a zingy balsamic drizzle. The biggest secret here,

though, is the barbecue. Wicked West delivers with shredded, tender meat that’s lightly smoky and tossed with a vinegar-based sauce. The pork ribs are dryrubbed and toothsome, while the tri-tip is well cooked but leans toward a dry texture. A bit of sauce on the side would fix that right up. The chicken is rubbed with olive oil and herbs and rotisserie-smoked to produce a moist and juicy result.

Pizza/Barbecue. 3160 Jefferson Blvd. in West Sacramento, (916) 572-0572. Dinner for one: $5-$10. HHH AMR

fattiest-sounding dish on the menu. That distinction most likely belongs to the hangovercuring Super Breakfast burrito, with bacon, chorizo, ham, fries, eggs and cheese—all wrapped in a tortilla. It’s incredibly rich and hearty. Mexican. 5116 Fair Oaks Blvd. in Carmichael, (916) 488-1416. Dinner for one: $5-$10. HHH1/2 J.M.

Ramen & Rice At Ramen & Rice, a ramen restaurant that also makes Korean dishes, it’s best to stick to the latter. Order the bibimbap with the brown rice—it imparts a delightful nutty flavor.

The sliced mushrooms add to the umami of this dish, and the shoyu, mustard and spicy sauces that come on the side should all be used liberally. Meat is very easily avoided here: The restaurant emphasizes the healthful aspect of its dishes, and tofu can be substituted for any meat, as can vegetarian broth in most of the soups. On the Japanese side of the menu, the ramen broth lacked a much-needed, salinated quality, the chashu lacked succulence and the hardboiled egg was served overcooked with an ugly green yolk. A steaming bowl of Japanese curry, however, boasted a comforting flavor, and, unusually, a bit of spice. Japanese and Korean.

807 Howe Ave., (916) 922-6227.

Dinner for one: $10-$15.

HHH1/2 B.G.

Arden/ Carmichael El Forastero Mexican Food Despite being an eatery founded by three brothers from Mexico, the menu here resembles the type of Mexican food found in Southern California: a blend of American fast food, Tex-Mex and traditional Mexican dishes.

There’s menudo on weekends, but also french fries hiding inside burritos and buried underneath steaming piles of carne asada. For a taco or torta filling, try the adobada, a pork marinated in a red chili sauce.

Or, try two of the most famous San Diego-style Mexican dishes, both delicious but full of calories: the California burrito and carne asada fries. The latter consists of a plate of fries topped with carne asada, cheese, sour cream and guacamole. A California burrito is basically an order of carne asada fries wrapped in a tortilla—which, surprisingly, isn’t even the

Stirling Bridges Restaurant and Pub This British- and Scottishthemed gastropub offers an adequate beer selection and an extensive menu that goes beyond standard deep-fried pub fare.

4pm - 6pm daily

Try the Irish onion soup, a French onion-styled soup kicked up with Irish whiskey and Guinness beer.

Or order the house-made veggie burger—it’s one of the tastiest black-bean patties around. The most unusual dish on the menu is the Scottish Mafia Pizza. Topped with turkey pastrami, potatoes, cabbage and Swiss cheese, it falls short with its too many flat flavors to actually benefit from their unusual pairing. Thankfully, there’s Tabasco sauce on the table. Pub. 5220 Manzanita Ave. in Carmichael, (916) 331-2337.

Dinner for one: $10-$20.

HHH1/2 J.M.

Auburn Carpe Vino This quaint wine shop and restaurant boasts excellent service and food. Try the musque de Provence pumpkin soup—it’s lighter than your wallet will be when you leave, but one bite and wallet be damned. The flavor is exquisite with whispers of vanilla and pops of pumpkin seed. A cider-brined pork chop, bejeweled in bacon and prune and sitting atop a bed of savoy cabbage, defies expectations.

A quartet of lamb meatballs corseted in harissa, mint sauce and yogurt is surely the dish to convert anyone who (confusedly) refuses lamb. The restaurant— being primarily a wine bar—does not serve anyone under the age of 21. Those of a legal drinking age, rejoice, for there will be no parent cooing to a child to settle down. American. 1568 Lincoln Way in Auburn, (530) 823-0320. Dinner for one: $50-$75. HHHHH G.M.

Wahoo for Wahoo’s

Wahoo’s Fish Taco will open its first Sacramento restaurant this

spring, land developer Bob Clippinger recently announced. That’s great news to me, since I’m a big fan of the place. I regularly ate at various Wahoo’s locations while at college in Southern California, and its food was unique despite being a chain restaurant with more than 50 franchises throughout the United States.

Even though its name suggests Mexican food, its founders are three Chinese brothers who grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, and their concept eatery blends Mexican, Brazilian and Asian food.

It’s quite a bit healthier than a standard fast-casual Mexican restaurant. Indeed, some of my favorite pre- and post-surf meals during college were Wahoo’s burritos, packed with plenty of protein and flavorful stir-fried veggies. Like its many Southern California locations, I expect Sacramento’s Wahoo’s to also offer copious vegetarian and vegan options. For more information, visit www.wahoos.com.

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(you won’t find dishes such as glutinous pancakes served with oysters and egg, or mushrooms steamed in hollow bamboo stalks, for example). This is, however, perhaps the only place in town that serves niu rou jian bing (sliced beef rolls)—a specialty of northern China—and the ones at Yang’s hit the spot.

This is basically the Chinese version of a burrito: meat (thinly sliced beef marinated in soy sauce) plus veggies (diced green onion, cucumber and cilantro) wrapped in a large, flat and circular carbohydrate crepe (a thin Chinese pancake made out of flour, water and green onion). Elsewhere on the menu, Yang’s eponymous noodles, featured in various dishes, are homemade, alkaline and chewy.

Chinese. 5860 Stockton Blvd., (916) 392-9988. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH J.M.

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A friend indeed A year ago, I befriended someone who mostly leaves me exhausted and in a bad mood. He talks mostly about himself, is a poor listener, has to be right, gets preachy about any topic and always one-ups me. Anytime I mention an accomplishment, he interrupts to downplay my accomplishment by telling me what he has or has done that is better. He wants to hang out often and is not going to

by Joey ga go away. I read a book that rcia said I should be compassionate toward him and try a s k j o e y @ne w s re v i e w . c o m to understand his behavior.

Well, I’m not sure I can or want to do this. I’m a social person with many friends. He annoys Joey me, but I don’t want to dump him blogs at because he’s not a bad person. www.joey What is the right thing to do? garcia.com.

Accept that you are a collector. You gather an assortment of different personalities and appreciate each one for the experiences and qualities they invite into your life. By embracing even the most difficult of people, you contribute to your sense of yourself as a social person.

Authentic friendship demands intimacy. In the fullness of friendship, we can reveal the truth of who we are and are met with the same.

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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.

Socializing also allows you one more occupied block of time in your personal calendar, likely girding a deep-seated belief that being with others is living fully. Translation: You think you are being “good” if you are busy sharing time with others. The challenge with equating a personal choice with black-andwhite thinking (good and bad, or right and wrong, etc.) is that it often blocks discernment. That’s why you arrive at the idea that you can only end a relationship with someone who is a “bad” person, and since this man does not qualify in your mind as “bad,” you cannot bring the connection to closure. Whew! That’s a lot of layers of thinking!

Authentic friendship demands intimacy. In the fullness of friendship, we can reveal the truth of who we are and are met with the same, allowing the relationship to mature and become more precious over

time. There are plenty of other kinds of friendship, however. In a recreational friendship, for example, two people bond because of a passion for a specific activity, like playing soccer or salsa dancing. Their shared happiness is grounded in the shared activity; conversation rarely dips below the surface of things. There are friendships centered in a passion for social justice or weathering a life crisis, too. Is something like this holding your friendship together?

To create a solution to your situation, forget about trying to understand this man, at least for now. Your job is to understand you. Explore what motivates you to tell him about your accomplishments. Do you need attention or expect admiration? How wonderful, then, that he fails to provide it. Now you can learn to celebrate yourself whether others one-up you or not. And he doesn’t listen to you? You may need more time in meditation to learn to listen to yourself. You also say he insists on being right. Do you possess that trait? Could it be why you resisted the message of the book you read?

If being social is one of your talents, and it certainly seems to be, accept that you won’t get your needs met in this relationship.

Focus on discovering why you are so bothered by this man. Or have a direct conversation with him about your interpretation of the conversations. Like this: “Sometimes I feel uncomfortable when I talk about an accomplishment. I realize I expect affirmation before hearing a new topic.” You might be surprised to learn that he feels the same way. Releasing the burden of expectations and black-or-white thinking will lift your energy. As you grow in self-awareness, it will be easy to determine how to proceed with this friend. Ω

Meditation of the Week After a successful career as a music producer, Saul Zaentz produced his first film. He was more than 50 years old. The 1973 film, Payday, was panned and made no money, but earned Zaentz a producer’s credit.

He produced nine more films, and three won Oscars for Best Picture.

Zaentz, who died January 3 at age 92, said all 10 films met his goal to produce intelligent films for adults.

So, was that first film a failure? Or an education?

Hypocrisy and aristocracy

Now playiNg

5

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches

Elemeno Pea In playwright Molly Smith Metzler’s Elemeno Pea, the help is busy keeping an expansive Martha’s Vineyard family compound neat, tidy and by Patti Roberts ready for whoever or whatever may drop on by. The grounds and buildings are so sprawling that when the sister of the family’s personal assistant comes to visit, she gets to stay in the family’s huge beachside guest house that she mistakes for the family’s main mansion.

It’s not exactly an East Coast modern Downton Abbey, but Elemeno Pea does explore the discrepancies of family fortunes vs. working for a living, new money vs. old, and the attitudes and expectations that come with both.

4

The Alternative Arts Collective pulls out the stops in this outstanding production of Tony Kushner’s masterwork about love, grief, death and hope in the plague years of the Ronald Reagan administration. Director David Blue Garrison is Prior Walter, with an outstanding cast that includes Steve Gold as a reptilian Roy Cohn. Plan ahead; it’s a small venue and will sell out. Th, F, Sa 8pm; Su 7pm. Through 1/18. $15. The Alternative Arts Collective in the Blue Box Theatre, 1700 Del Paso Blvd.; http://taac angels.bpt.me. K.M.

But what this production does offer up is the deft direction of David Pierini and the amusing cast, especially Altholz, whose physical humor is a match to her witty wry deliveries, especially when interplaying with the rest of the cast’s comedic timings. Ω

4 Closer than Ever

5

Young Frankenstein

At its best, Closer Than Ever—now on stage at Sacramento Theatre Company’s Pollock Stage—is a collection of musical short stories: character studies, incident reports, memory pieces. At its worst, it’s a selection of entertaining but ordinary New York-centric songs. The fact that several of its pieces were written for (and sometimes stricken from) other shows no doubt contributes to its lack of cohesion.

That said, there are worse things than entertaining, ordinary songs, especially when they are performed by such an engaging and talented foursome as Nick Adorno, Kristen Heitman, Jerry Lee and Andrea St. Clair.

With music by David Shire and lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr., Closer Than Ever is a “bookless” musical—all singing, no talking. Set in New York City in 1989, its “characters,” as revealed in song, are young adults of the period, grappling with such topics as insecurity, unrequited love, midlife crises and second marriages. Some express real, recognizable sentiment, while others veer into sentimentality.

Among the highlights: “You Want To Be My Friend?” (sung by Heitman to commitment-phobe Lee), “One of the Good Guys” (performed by Adorno, reflecting on a romantic fling not taken in order to remain faithful to his wife), the wistful “Life Story” (sung by St. Clair) and the sexy “Miss Byrd” (by Heitman). Samuel Clein’s piano and Rod Verette’s upright bass provide the singers with solid support.

PHoTo By JErry MonToya

Sacramento’s Runaway Stage Productions presents the classic story in a more intimate setting with exciting leads, striking sets and a great live orchestra. This community theater manages to breathe life and soul into the story and the big ol’ lovable green lug.

This production comes alive with funny lines, some clever song lyrics, talented musical actors, and creative costumes and sets. The gifted cast really delivers the goods: David Holmes is a very enthusiastic Frankenstein; Amy J. Jones is an enticing Inga; Eduard Arakelyan is the funny sidekick, Igor; Ruth Phillips is the fierce Frau Blücher; Jennifer Zimny is a funny, frigid fiancée; and Michael

Elemeno Pea, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, 2 and 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday, 8 p.m.

Thursday and Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; $23-$35. B Street Theatre, 2711 B Street; (916) 443-5300; www.bstreet theatre.org.

Through February 23.

BEFORE

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F E AT U R E

FoUL

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5

When the Rain Stops Falling

Andrew Bovell’s epic and complex play about an Australian family’s roots takes place over the course of 80 years—including a climate-changing disaster of a future—and covers geography as diverse as London, Adelaide, Coorong National Park and Alice Springs. Kudos to director Kirk Blackinton and assistant director Scott Divine for their insightful work to keep the story easy to follow and emotionally resonant.

Top-notch performances from an ensemble cast (including four actresses—Carrie Joyner, Linda Montalvo-Carbone, Kit Muñoz and Ruby Sketchley—playing two women at different life stages) and an excellent use of a spare set and multimedia on a screen (designed by Brian Harrower) make this a rave-worthy season opener for Big Idea Theatre. Th, F, Sa 8pm.

Through 2/8. $10-$16. Big Idea Theatre, 1616 Del Paso Blvd.; (916) 960-3036; www.bigidea theatre.com. K.M.

FaIr

3 GooD

4 WELL-DonE

5 SUBLIME–Don’T MISS

Short reviews by Kel Munger and Patti roberts.

This one makes you think “why?” and “whoa” at the same time.

Acrobatic art For as long as I can remember, “Chinese variety art” has always captured my imagination. Some of my formative memories include sitting in my Chinese grandparents’ apartment, watching Chinese acrobats on the television and wondering how anyone could possibly balance that many bowls on their head. And from the looks of it, Cirque Zíva is one of the best of the modern yet traditional Chinese acrobatic art troupes. Their performance-art routine includes heart-attack-inducing shticks such as: balancing a sword vertically on top of one’s head, riding around a stage with 10 people balanced on one bicycle and—one of my all-time favorites—performing a handstand on top of a chair atop a ladder. Sure, it’s little more than a glorified circus act, but it’s done so well that you should prepare to be impressed, anxious and thoroughly entertained—all at the same time. Saturday, January 18, 7 p.m., $21-$45. Harris Center for the Arts, 10 College Parkway in Folsom; (916) 608-6888; www.harriscenter.net.

—Jim Carnes

Closer Than Ever, 12:30 and 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; $31-$35. Pollock Stage at Wells Fargo Pavilion, 1419 H Street; (916) 443-6722; www.sactheatre.org.

Through February 16.

STORY

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PHoTo CoUrTESy oF HarrIS CEnTEr For THE arTS

Simone (Lyndsy Kail) is the assistant and paid friend of the family billionaire’s newest trophy wife Michaela (Melinda Parrett).

Simone, brought up blue collar, has taken up the snobbish attitude of the moneyed family much to the horror of her visiting down-on-her luck sister, Devon (Stephanie Altholz). Devon is a blunt-talking shit stirrer and truth seeker, ready to call out hypocrisies and bullshit at the tip of the hat, whether it be her sister’s newfound arrogance; her sister’s elitist employer; her sister’s aging playboy boyfriend, Ethan (Kurt Johnson); or the comic relief found in groundskeeper and token minority, Jos-B (Alex Robertson).

The play runs an hour and a half, no intermission, and for a good part of the story, it plays out like a sitcom, with funny, snarky dialogue, a comedic storyline and somewhat contrived characters. Though the audience is drawn to sister Devon’s sharp observations and even sharper tongue, each of the characters starts off a little unlikable and boorish, so it’s surprising to find out where the sympathies lie at the end of the play.

For the most part, the humor works, though at times some of the salty retorts feel forced and used mainly for shock value, while the characters can feel one-dimensional.

“Now, don’t say ‘yes’ unless his money is older than you are, young ladies.”

Cross is a most endearing Monster. F, Sa 8pm; Su 2pm.

Through 1/26. $18-$25. Runaway Stage Productions at the 24th Street Theatre, 2791 24th St.; (916) 207-1226; www.runawaystage.com. P.R.

—Jonathan Mendick

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What lies beneath The Great Beauty As giant and glorious and empty as a parade float, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza) boasts swooning visuals that are by Daniel Barnes sumptuously over-the-top, and every frame reels with grandeur and invention. The Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Great Beauty is a vision of modern-day Rome as a disco ball-lit crypt, a place where even youthful decadence is in decay. It’s as though the vapid La Dolce Vita partygoers only paused long enough to update their musical tastes and lifestyle accessories.

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“Isn’t it enough that I’m pretty? Now you want me to do something, too?”

1 POOR

2 FAIR

3 GOOD

4 VERY GOOD

5 EXCELLENT

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Director and co-writer Sorrentino is clearly in debt to Fellini here, but he and his cinematographer Luca Bigazzi (Certified Copy) do the maestro proud on a visual scale, making glorious use of color, composition and camera movement. You want to swim around in Sorrentino’s imagery, and not without coincidence, one of the most potent recurring images here is of the writer protagonist Jep Gambardella laying in bed and watching his ceiling dissolve into an endless blue sea of memories.

Jep (Toni Servillo, who also starred in Sorrentino’s 2008 film Il Divo) is a long-time lion of Rome’s fashionably debauched scene, a writer who only produced one highly regarded novel before wasting the next four decades as a sleazy journalist and professional party animal.

Upon turning 65—Jep’s outlandishly excessive birthday bash forms the film’s brilliant opening showpiece—he begins to question his life of nihilism, especially reflecting on the adolescent love he can barely remember.

In other words, Sorrentino and Servillo take the Marcello Mastroianni paparazzo from La Dolce Vita, age him several decades, stir in some 8½-like stylized self-analysis, and shoot it all with the lavish colors and swirling memory structure of later Fellini works like Amarcord.

However, Sorrentino’s take is icier than would have been possible for Fellini, whose movies tended to evoke a gregariousness of spirit often in contrast to the director’s jaundiced view of humanity.

Above all, The Great Beauty is a story of Rome, and the many dichotomies of the city that keep Jep simultaneously bewitched and benumbed. In Sorrentino’s eyes, Rome is a city of mold and debauchery, religious piety and unending decadence, culture and vapidity, deep spirituality and deep despair. It’s a place where the only people who take the pursuit of beauty and art seriously are deranged, pathetic, delusional, suicidal, or all of the above.

The Great Beauty works better as an absurdist sketch of an ancient city filled with ghosts and contradictions than it does as a full-fledged satire of modern-day depravity. Scenes self-consciously intended to be funny and skewering, such as a Gilliam-esque visit to a plastic surgeon’s chambers where the posh clientele blather about their “amazing dysentery” and the supremacy of Ethiopian jazz, more often than not fall flat.

On the other hand, Sorrentino performs miracles of storytelling and insight through purely cinematic means. Jep attends a surreal exhibition where an abused child celebrated as an avant-garde artist throws a tantrum on canvas, and then transforms her anguish into a work of transcendent beauty. A tracking shot of Jep strolling next to a gliding river cruiser, or the sudden and startling images of wildlife roaming the cityscape, have infinitely more potency than the script’s occasional cheap shots.

For all of its opulence and introspection, The Great Beauty ends up perversely reveling in its own beautiful vacuity.

As Jep’s journey through the city grows increasingly bleak and absurd, he sees that everyone around him is in decline. Fellini’s hard-partying gargoyles have become reality stars, mummified princesses, aging strippers, and social-media vampires. There is a sense that Jep’s Rome is stuck somewhere between a molding museum and a thriving mausoleum. It is a place where debased pseudo-royals will rent themselves for dinner parties, but only if it does not upset any centuries-old family rivalries.

For all of its opulence and introspection, The Great Beauty ends up perversely reveling in its own beautiful vacuity—the “blah blah blah” closing narration is the equivalent of a thumb to the nose. However, Jep’s ultimate embrace of insularity as a form of self-knowing fits perfectly with a film that produces some of the most stunning visuals imaginable, and then questions whether or not shallow beauty is its own reward. Ω

by DANIEL BARNES & JIM LANE

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about). Besides, the title is the ultimate spoiler, so there’s little suspense. We know only one will survive, and since only Wahlberg is billed above 2508 LAND PARK DRIVE the title… J.L.

12 Years a Slave

3

4THE GREAT BEAUTY “ANebraska DELIRIOUSLY ALIVE MOVIE.”- Manohla Dargis, New York Times

“I wonder what the Scarlett Johansson operating system update will offer?”

August: Osage County

Tracy Letts’ dark comedy of an Oklahoma family’s secrets comes to the screen severely trimmed (by Letts himself), but with a stellar cast. Some of the original’s depth and texture is sacrificed; what remains focuses on Meryl Streep as the drug-addled matriarch and Julia Roberts as her eldest daughter.

Others are flawlessly cast—Ewan McGregor as Roberts’ estranged husband, Abigail Breslin as their daughter, Margo Martindale as Streep’s sister, Chris Cooper as her husband, Benedict Cumberbatch as their son, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson as Streep’s other daughters—but without the prominence they had on stage. Those familiar with the play will be able to fill in the blanks; others may wonder why this soapy diva bitch-match won a Pulitzer Prize. Director John Wells imparts the air of a TV drama. J.L.

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American Hustle

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Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

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NEWS

Inside Llewyn Davis

Joel and Ethan Coen have made bleaker films than Inside Llewyn Davis, but never anything this melancholy. Set in a slightly fablelike version of the 1961 Greenwich Village folk scene, Inside Llewyn Davis is inspired by early Bob Dylan, yet exudes the Coens’ usual oddball comedic sensibility and stylistic verve. Llewyn is played by Oscar Isaac, who naturally inhabits the role in a way actors rarely do in the Coens’ films. More than anything, this gorgeous movie shows the Coens’ unique ability to visualize a particular time and place without resorting to cheap nostalgia. Given the abundance of T-Bone Burnett songs, many will compare this to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but the real ancestor in the Coen catalog is their excellent 1991 film Barton Fink. That film showed us “the life of the mind” while Inside Llewyn Davis presents us the lifelessness of a defeated heart. D.B.

After years of lucratively reimagining old properties like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast as live theatrical spectacles, Frozen is a blatant attempt by Disney to reverse engineer its own Broadway-bound cash cows.

Everything in the film feels constructed with an eye toward the inevitable splashy stage adaptation, right down to the big opening number, a sweeping ode to the awesome power of large blocks of ice (no, seriously). Frozen empties a promising box of mismatched characters, tones and plot strings on to the screen, including a genetic “curse,” magical trolls, a plethora of scheming royals and a wisecracking snowman, but never quite figures out how to fit them together. Much like recent Disney princess adventures Tangled and Brave, the limber visuals and appealing heroines can’t hide the smear of on-the-fly rewrites, as the film frequently loses track of its own moving pieces. D.B.

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Good news—there are more beheadings and fewer half-hour-long dinner parties in this second installment of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy. However, while it offers some technically impressive set pieces, the cartoonish visuals and watery characters don’t improve from last year’s An Unexpected Journey. Here Jackson pads the running time by tying this prequel’s storyline into his own Lord of the Rings films. He even gets Gandalf to play Middle Earth detective, the same tactic George Lucas used to occupy Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode II of the Star Wars prequels. Most of The Desolation of Smaug is unembarrassing entertainment, but unlike with The Lord of the Rings, we never fully identify with the magical critters skittering through the special effects. D.B.

Frozen

BEFORE

Grudge Match

Two boxers from the 1980s (Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone), long retired, miles out of shape, and befuddled by the age of YouTube, are lured into a publicity-stunt rematch, hoping to settle once and for all the rivalry that’s been unresolved for 30 years.

Despite its cursory script (Tim Kelleher, Rodney Rothman) and direction (Peter Segal), this latest geriatric-stars-on-the-loose comedy is more fun than it has any right to be. Much credit goes to the supporting cast: Kevin Hart as the promoter putting together the fight, Kim Basinger as a woman with a complicated history with both men, Jon Bernthal as her grown son by De Niro, Alan Arkin as Stallone’s cranky old trainer, LL Cool J as a gym proprietor. In that company (not to mention De Niro), even Stallone, so help me, rises to the occasion. J.L.

Anchorman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) strides into the 1980s, with the wind still rattling through his empty blow-dried head, his trusted (and equally dimwitted) news team at his side (Steve Carell, David Koechner, Paul Rudd), all intent on making their mark on a new 24-hour cable news channel. Fans of the 2004 hit won’t be disappointed—but then, if they liked the first movie, their bar wasn’t all that high in the first place. Truth is, Ferrell and co-writer and director Adam McKay squeezed all the laughs there were out of their tissue-thin premise the first time around; there’s nothing here but a handful of limp chuckles. Once again, there are multiple star cameos (Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn—oh, just about everybody), and once again the movie is about an hour and 45 minutes too long. J.L.

3

Her

The mope-y romantic that Joaquin Phoenix plays in Her is the direct opposite of his Freddie Quell from The Master, yet this is no less of a tourde-force performance. Spike Jonze’s graceful Her offers up a near-future metropolis where humans have fully integrated with their personal technology, living lives seemingly ruled by creature comforts, yet still mired in human fears and frailties. In an attempt to fill the void from a recent separation, Phoenix’s Theodore Twombly purchases a brand-new OS1, the world’s first artificially intelligent operating system. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, OS1 promptly sets about organizing Theodore’s life, but his disorganization is largely emotional, and she evolves to meet his needs so efficiently that they begin to fall in love.

Ultimately, Her develops into a kinky and affecting meditation on love’s limitless potential, and the human limitations which keep that potential out of reach. D.B.

David O. Russell’s ecstatically cinematic American Hustle tells a hypergroovy version of the late 1970s Abscam operation, in which the FBI enlisted con artists to help them catch corrupt politicians. Right from the opening shots of Christian Bale pasting and swirling an elaborate comb-over onto his bald forehead, this is a film all about false fronts and reinvention, the latter a subject Russell knows very well. Everyone in the overwigged ensemble is good, but Bradley Cooper is a revelation as a nakedly ambitious FBI agent. Buried under a dirtbag beard and a hideous nest of curls, Cooper is deprettied enough to let us fully see what an honest and forceful actor he has become. American Hustle might have even been great had Russell not tried to pull a hustle of his own, reaching a facile conclusion that hinges on emotional relationships we never knew existed. D.B.

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LAND PARK & BROADWAY FREE PARKING ADJACENT TO THEATRE

Director Steve McQueen and writer John Ridley tell the true story of Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man of color in 1841 New York who was kidnapped into slavery, finally freed in 1853, and wrote a book about his years of bondage. Ridley and McQueen take only minor dramatic license with Northrup’s extraordinary narrative—such abductions were all too common in pre-Civil War America; what’s extraordinary is that Northrup got free again— and the movie is searing and indelible. Even the most despicable characters are given their full dimension with no trace of 21st-century hindsight. The movie’s centerpiece is Ejiofor’s remarkable performance, giving it a core of unquenchable humanity. Newcomer Lupita Nyong’o shines as a tormented slave woman, as does Alfre Woodard in a striking cameo. J.L.

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The Invisible Woman

Romances involving legendary writers and the doomed loves that inspired their work have become a fecund subgenre of the “costume drama” ever since Shakespeare in Love, but Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman is the most complex and least gimmicky since Jane Campion’s 2009 film Bright Star, about the poet John Keats’ relationship with Fanny Brawne Fiennes also stars, giving his un-fussiest performance in years as Charles Dickens, seen here at the height of his literary and theatrical fame in Victorian-era London. The film is framed by the haunted remembrances of Nelly (Felicity Jones, understated but burning), an untalented actress from a family of female performers who became Dickens’ lover. Cinematographer Rob Hardy shoots The Invisible Woman as though it were illuminated by candles, gas lamps and window lights. Those dark, shadowy tones also suit the ambivalent mood of The Invisible Woman, a film about image maintenance and sexual negotiation in which no one emerges as villainous. D.B.

1

The Legend of Hercules

With its choppy action scenes, indistinct locations, blurry visual effects, and jittery narrative, not to mention a multinational cast failing to sync up their “movie Roman” accents, The Legend of Hercules has all the telltale signs of international co-production schlock. It feels less like a major motion picture than a tax break committed to film. The Legend of Hercules was directed by long-time hack Renny Harlin, but it’s insipid and unmemorable enough to make his earlier mediocrities like Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight seem like chestnuts from a bygone golden age.

Hercules is played by Kellan Lutz (best known for his superfluous role in the Twilight series), and it’s apparent from the first scenes of him grinning, cliff diving, and wrestling a CGI lion that we’re firmly rooted in Hercules in New York territory, only without the saving grace of camp. D.B.

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Lone Survivor

In 2005, a team of Navy SEALs (Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster) drops into the Afghan mountains to ambush a high-level Taliban warlord—but are ambushed themselves, unable to call in air support or rescue. Based on a real operation, the movie has grueling scenes of combat, some of the most realistic and harrowing ever seen.

But writer-director Peter Berg and writer Patrick Robinson (adapting the memoir by Marcus Luttrell, the “lone survivor” of the title) never get around to establishing the characters as individuals. This makes the closing array of names rather confusing (we’re never really sure who the movie is talking

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INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS “YOU’LL LAUGH TILL IT HURTS.” - Peter Travers,Rolling Stone

When a booze-addled old man (Bruce Dern) gets the idea in his head that he’s won one of those million-dollar publisher’s sweepstakes, his estranged son (Will Forte) huSTARTS FRI., 1/17 mors him, hoping they can reconnect on a road WED/THUR: 11:30AM, 2:00, 4:30, 7:15, 9:45PM FRI-TUES: 10:10AM, 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, 9:45PM FRI-TUES: 10:20AM, 12:30, 2:45, 5:10, 7:35, 9:55PM trip to Lincoln, Nebraska, claim the old boy’s NO to PASSES prize. Bob “ELOQUENT, Nelson’s script is a mine mordant POWERFUL ANDof PERFECT.” “MASTERPIECE!” - Richard Roeper, RICHARD ROEPER.COM humor and wry -insight, director Alexander Rex Reed,and NEW YORK OBSERVER Payne carefully brings out the best in the script and his actors, including Bob Odenkirk as Forte’s brother, Stacy Keach as Dern’s lifelong frenemy, 11:00AM, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50PM AngelaWED: McEwan as a long-ago sweetheart Dern THUR: 11:00AM, 1:10, 3:20PM WED/THUR: 11:10AM, 1:40, 4:20, 7:00, 9:40PM barely remembers, and (most especially) June FRI-TUES: 10:15AM, 2:55, 7:40PM FRI-MON: 12:25, 5:10, 9:50PM NO TUES 7:40PM TUES: 12:25, 4:50PM Squibb as Dern’s cantankerous wife (Oscar, are you watching?). The movie’s only drawback is 1/16@ 7 PM • BOLSHOI: LE CORSAIRE 1/21 @ 7PM EVANGELION Phedon Papamichael’s black-and-white cinemaADVANCE touch TICKETS CALL FANDANGO @ 1-800-FANDANGO #2721 tography, a pretentiousFOR artsy-fartsy that is flat, textureless and distracting. J.L.

PHILOMENA NEBRASKA

REEL

1

The Nut Job

In a city park, a maverick squirrel (voiced by Will Arnett) hatches a plot to rob a nut store—the same store that some humans are using as a front to rob a neighboring bank. Written by Daniel Woo, Lorne Cameron and director Peter Lepeniotis, this animated feature combines a dull, needlessly complicated story, uninteresting characters both human and animal (despite the presence of such voices as Katherine Heigl, Brendan Fraser, Liam Neeson, Maya Rudolph, Stephen Lang and others), lame sight gags and even lamer puns. It all adds up to a crashing bore, without a single frame worth watching. As if to confirm the basic problem with many animated features today—that they feel like over-extended cartoon shorts—this one was actually expanded (“distended” would be a better word) from an 11-minute short. J.L.

REVIEWS.

EVERY THURSDAY.

3

Saving Mr. Banks

In 1961, author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) reluctantly agrees to let Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) film her Mary Poppins books, and the script conferences prompt memories of her childhood in Australia and her loving but feckless father (Colin Farrell). Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith and directed by John Lee Hancock, the movie is as heartwarming in its way as Mary Poppins—and one senses, almost as much of a fantasy. Marcel and Smith include so many dubious touches in their script that it’s hard to take 01/16for anything. Travers’ lifelong loathing their word thurs for Disney is entirely glossed over, and Hancock can’t quite mesh the grim tone of the flashbacks with the seriocomic scenes set in 1961. The movie 9pm // $5 for Thompson’s tart //showcase beats dancebest works as a performance as Travers and Hanks’ folksy turn 01/17 Fri as Disney. J.L.

YOU’RE WELCOME, FILM GEEKS.

thirsty thursdays with dj oasis you front the band The kar Secretaok Life ofeWalter 9pm Mitty live James Thurber’s 1939 tale of the day-

2 death party

sat 01/18 dreaming milquetoast (Ben Stiller, also directing) comes again to the screen, with even less regard for its source than the 1947 Danny Kaye version. Steve Conrad’s script gives short shrift to Mitty’s fantasies before dispatching him on real adventures—and you needn’t wait for those to turn out to be simply more fantasy: // $5The movie hits 9pmthat. // for indie dance Conrad hasn’t rock the wit mostly01/19 sun false notes, beginning with making Mitty an employee of the defunct Life magazine. Worse, his real adventures are no more credible or interesting than his daydreams, and the charactercomedy himself7-9pm remains a dim cipher. // Free Stiller 9-12amDirector // talent leans heavily on stale CGI, and wastes a talented mon 01/20cast: Shirley MacLaine, Kathryn supporting Hahn, Sean Penn and (most Free of all) Kristen 8pm //wasted Wiig as Mitty’s office crush. J.L.

at the beach the silhouette era katie knipp

showcase sunday open mic karaoke

tues 01/21 The Wolf of Wall Street Director Martin Scorsese and writer dead // garcia Terence Winter go careening through the // Free Jordan Belfort revue // 8pm lifedylan of stock-market huckster

stories

atest ever told 2gre

(Leonardo DiCaprio), from his small-time beginwed 01/22 ning through his drug-addled reign as an amoral master of the universe to his downfall at the hands of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI. The obvious model is Scorsese’s masterpiece Goodfellas (1990), but it lacks the $5 9pm // drive—besides, narrative stockbrokers don’t have the same vicarious charge as gangsters, no matter how crooked they are. It’s a movie of great bits and pieces—Jonah Hill y asmess Belfort’s 01/23 turkuaz // big stick slimy partner, DiCaprio’s surprising flair for physical comedy—but the whole is less than the sum of its parts: The early energy dissipates almost completely over a seemingly endless three hours. This wolf huffs and puffs, but he doesn’t blow the house down. J.L.

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quality craft beers daily drink specials pool tables

thursday january 16 4pm | no cover

riot radio, the harbor, rebel punk dj kepi goulie 8pm | $6 cover

saturday january 18

cash prophets for shonda’s birthday 8pm | $5 cover

sunday january 19

retro crush variety show

The first time Jenn Rogar delved into activism, it struck the singer-songwriter as kind of strange.

It was the early 2000s, and Rogar, outraged by Rachel Leibrock by the government’s post-September 11 actions in Iraq, grabbed her guitar to join a protest. ra c h e l l @ “I got out there and sang and marched—I’d ne w s re v i e w . c o m never marched before,” she says now. “I felt kind of funny, like I was doing something wrong, but then it was also a liberating feeling.”

7pm | $5 cover

reggae djs

9pm | free before 10pm / $3 cover wednesday january 22

dirty queen trivia 8pm | no cover

friday january 25

surf night: tiki lounge lizards the funicellos dj populuxe, lava pops 8pm | $5 cover

1400 alhambra blvd 916.455.3400 www.bluelampsacramento.com

monday

trivia @ 6:30pm tuesday

taco tues

Have guitar, will change world.

$1 tacos, $2 coronas, 2–8pm wednesday

open mic sign-ups at 7:30pm thursday

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

live music

28 | SN&R | 01.16.14

Jenn Rogar’s folk songs encompass homelessness, global politics and affairs of the heart

happy hour blues jam

KaraoKe @ 7:30pm

2019 o street sacramento 916.442.2682

The personal is political

pHoTo By LiSa BaeTz

TAcOs - 2 fOr $2 live TriviA - 7:30Pm

cocktail lounge & concert hall

jan 17 jan 18 jan 24 jan 25

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feat. dylan crawford of massive delicious

jan 31 bell boys facebook.com/bar101roseville 101 main street, roseville • 916-774-0505

Jenn Rogar performs as part of the fourth Safe Ground benefit show on Friday, January 17, 7 p.m., at Luna’s Café & Juice Bar, 1414 16th Street.

Sal Valentino, Carly DuHain and Marty Taters are also on the bill. $7-$10 sliding scale, www.safe groundsac.org.

Certainly, it fit the path Rogar had already forged both creatively and intellectually.

“I’m a big Joan Baez fan,” she says of the ’60s-era activist folk singer. “I majored in history and dated a guy who was a Communist. I’m definitely left and I’m definitely a Democrat.”

In the years since that first experience, Rogar’s protested and marched for numerous causes, including women’s rights, domesticviolence awareness and homelessness. She got involved with the latter cause after a friend introduced her to Food Not Bombs, a collective that serves free vegan and vegetarian meals to those in need. Rogar volunteered with the group and also marched with Safe Ground Sacramento, a nonprofit that works to protect homeless residents. Rogar will perform as part of the fourth Safe Ground benefit on Saturday, January 17.

The singer-songwriter’s involvement with the cause grew, in earnest, in May 2013.

“I’d see the homeless day after day and decided [I needed] to do something,” she explains.

And so, with the help of some friends, Rogar organized a benefit at Luna’s Café & Juice Bar, with proceeds benefiting both Safe Ground and the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee.

Rogar’s also kept busy offstage, attending city council meetings to protest local government’s treatment of the homeless.

“They’re really not very responsible,” she says of the council. “Yes, there are people who don’t want to work and who abuse the system, but there are also people out there who are mentally ill.”

The Auburn native’s take on folk music, which recalls the likes of Holly Near, Woody Guthrie and, yes, Joan Baez, is a natural fit for her activist sensibility. Not all her songs, however, take on political causes. Some are deeply personal. On “The River,” for example, the title track from her 2013 album by the same name, Rogar addresses a friend’s drug addiction. “[When] I started writing, it became my personal therapy,” says Rogar, who first picked up a guitar in the ’90s.

At one point, however, she traded in the guitar for textbooks, studying at Lincoln Law School. Eventually she returned to music, and when she did, Rogar, who currently teaches high school, found new inspiration in the coffeehouse scene when she befriended guitarist Mike Farrell.

Rogar, who says she’d long been a fan of Farrell, says she was “smitten” with his talent.

The two, who were even roommates for a while, started playing together and, joined by a handful of musicians, recorded The River.

The experience, she says, proved rewarding.

“I became a better musician,” she says.

These days, Rogar plays with a full band comprising Steve McLane (guitar), Ken Rabiroff (bass), Darin Bradford (drums) and Kristine David (backup vocals). In the coming months, she says, the band is expanding its sound to encompass jazz and country.

“I’d see the homeless day after day and decided [I needed] to do something.”

Jenn Rogar singer-songwriter, on organizing a benefit for Safe Ground Sacramento “I just want to entertain,” she says.

To that end, Rogar adds that she plans to somewhat “depoliticize,” by shifting her focus away from activism and back to her music—at least in part.

“I’m learning that [I need] to focus on just one [cause]: homelessness,” she says.

“Otherwise, I can’t get my music done.”

It’s both a move toward personal balance and one aimed at furthering her various causes.

“If I go further musically and lighten up on the politics for a while, then I’ll have more money and influence to focus on helping others.” Ω

CIGARETTES © SFNTC 1 2014

Get out of the house already Have wish, will travel: The old lore goes that if you catch a genie, he’ll grant you three wishes. What they don’t tell you is that genies can also operate Kaoss Pads with their toes. On January 7, the crowd at LowBrau’s Le Twist Tuesdays was privy to a special lampless appearance

by San Francisco’s The Genie, creator and innovator of the “scratch guitar” technique. The crowd’s wishes must have been for a great beer selection, some awesome mustaches and a magical show.

Scratch guitar comprises a combination of live guitar and percussion looping that The Genie developed more than a decade ago in his San Francisco home. On this night, The Genie, soft-spoken and small in stature with a wild mane of dreadlocks, took to the stage and plugged into a myriad of effects pedals and looping devices that would make Tom Morello raise an eyebrow and nod in approval.

The Genie started making music armed only with a guitar, a microphone and a loop pedal, beatboxing to lay down percussion while livelooping bass and guitar riffs. Over the years his show has grown to include two loop pedals, a mini Kaoss Pad (controlled with his feet), a keyboard and a Fender Stratocaster with an attached iPod Touch, on which he plays beats by triggering BeatMaker, iMaschine and Traktor DJ apps.

If DJ Shadow and Jimi Hendrix could somehow be a one-man band, they would be The Genie.

His live set at LowBrau centered around a technique he calls G-mixing; it’s a style that mashes up classic hip-hop, rock, reggae and dancehall rhythms, melodies and lyrics. For example, on this night, he played Radiohead’s “Karma Police” over a Beastie Boys beat, layered in with some Bob Marley and electro cumbia.

As The Genie took the stage, there was a general curiosity in the air surrounding the maze of pedals and instruments. The Le Twist Tuesdays crowd quickly gathered around as he removed his shoes, sat down and started twisting knobs and pushing buttons. By the end of the first song The Genie appeared to go into as much of a meditative trance as one can while working several complicated pieces of musical equipment, playing over an hour of psychedelic remixes of everything from Sir Mix-aLot to the Bulgarian State Television Female Choir. It’s not every day one catches a genie. Here’s hoping this won’t be Sacramento’s last chance.

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Quit yer griping: When I flip through an upcoming local music calendar, I often stream through pages of music and event listings before sitting back and claiming, “There’s nothing to do!” Missing are the big-name touring artists and niche-genre blog darlings on their way to South by Southwest debuts—even though what they’re playing is just something we’ve probably heard before. In the end, it’s our myopic focus on these sorts of acts that blind us to the talent that regularly keeps Sacramento as a stop.

Last week, a friend and I stopped

by Momo Sacramento inside Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub for its weekly Cross-Pollination variety show, a fittingly weird display of the comical and musical. We arrived late, entering the room at the exact moment when the packed house erupted into applause and cries for “encore.”

The artist was Andy McKee. Maybe you’ve heard of him? It wouldn’t be unusual. A YouTube video of McKee performing his song “Drifting” has close to 50 million views. Fifty million.

And there he was in Sacramento, playing beautifully, playing amazingly.

A few days later, I made my way to Bows & Arrows for the last Classical Revolution show scheduled there before venue closes at the end of the month. I’d picked up fliers for some of these past gigs; I’d even told other people about the group and celebrated their motto, “Chamber music for the people.” Still, I’d yet to catch them myself. What I found at Bows that night was as with at Harlow’s, a packed house full of laughter, listeners and wonderful musicians. There were cellos and violins and amazing singers sharing love and passing around a donation jar. While it will be hard to match the living-room coziness that Bows has brought to all its events, Classical Revolution is in search of a new home, and when they find it, I’ll be there.

I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste another night absently browsing music blogs when there’s music to be had all over the city. For now, I’ve got my ticket to catch Tommy Emmanuel Sunday, January 19, at the Crest Theatre (1013 K Street). The Australian guitar virtuoso is known for his complex fingerpicking and, in 2010, a Guitar Player magazine reader poll named him “Best Acoustic Guitarist.”

If musicians with hobby-magazine subscriptions back him, you know it’s going to be solid. Tickets are $39.50 and the show starts at 7:30 p.m.

Hopefully I’ll see you out there, and if not, it’s your loss. www.thecrest.com.

—Andrew Bell

For more information on our organic growing programs, visit www.sfntc.com

—Julianna Boggs

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1/6/14 11:32 AM

17FRI

17FRI

17FRI

18SAT

Safe Ground Sacramento benefit

Chatham County Line

Slow Motion Dive

Crude Studs

Luna’s Café & Juice Bar, 7 p.m., $7-$10 Good music often has a good cause behind it.

That’s certainly the case with the fourth Safe Ground Sacramento benefit concert. This show features performances by G.P. Bailey, Nick Embly, Sal SINGER-SONGWRITER Valentino, Marty Taters, Carly DuHain, Joe Kye, Darin Bradford, Malorii Rainwater, Sandra Dolores, Jenn Rogar (pictured), Wasteland, the Jackie Carroll Jazz Trio and Steven Payan. Basically, it’s all singer-songwriters, except for the jazz trio and Payan, who’s an emcee in Mentes Diferentes. Proceeds will go to Safe Ground Sacramento and the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, both organizations that strive to help provide the Sacramento homeless population with a place to be.

1414 16th Street, www.lunascafe.com.

—Jonathan Mendick

The Palms Playhouse, 8 p.m., $15 North Carolina is bordered by four states and the Atlantic Ocean, suffers through hurricanes and is home to the Appalachian Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the four young guys who comprise Chatham County Line. Five of the band’s six albums are with Yep Roc Records, including IV (2008), featuring “Birmingham Jail,” written in memory of the four young girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Dave Wilson, John Teer, Chandler Holt and Greg Readling bring their state’s BLUEGRASS flag, a single microphone, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, pedal steel guitar, piano and some of the best harmonies since Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or Simon & Garfunkel. 13 Main Street in Winters, www.chathamcountyline.com.

—Trina L. Drotar

Shine, 8 p.m., $5

The Colony, 7 p.m., $5

Local indie trio Slow Motion Dive isn’t technically an instrumental band, but it’s close. The vocal work just really isn’t the centerpiece of the music. Some of the songs are completely instrumental, while others are just punctuated with occasional vocal INDIE lines. There is, however, still a lot going on. The interplay between the lush guitar arpeggios; the driving bass parts; and the vibrant, groove-rich drumming makes for an interesting concoction.

The sound is raw and minimalistic and marries psychedelic rock and ’90s twee pop. It’s almost shoegaze in how the trio tinkers with atmosphere and sound, but it has a lightheartedness to it not typically associated with the genre. 1400 E Street, www.facebook.com/ slowmotiondive.

Fueled by influences like the Stooges, Judas Priest and Thin Lizzy, and also featuring erratic jolts of aggression and in-your-face bravado is Sacramento thrash-punk band Crude Studs. With a voice unmistakably comparable to X-Ray Spex’ Poly Styrene, vocalist Sophia Flores leads this pack of musicians that includes Bobby Khan on guitar, J.B. Thomas on drums, and Nich Lujan on bass. Formed in 2012, Crude Studs perform anywhere and everywhere, from basements at punk-rock house shows to supporting longtime veterans in Youth Brigade last December at Midtown Barfly. Bad Daddies, THRASH PUNK Class System, Fiscal Cliff and Oakland’s No Business will also join. 3512 Stockton Boulevard, www.facebook.com/crudestuds.

—Aaron Carnes

—Steph Rodriguez

1000 K Street, Sacramento, CA 95814

FOr tIckEts tO aLL shOWs VIsIt assemblymusichall.com

For Rentals or Private Parties please contact AssemblyMusicHall@gmail.com

fri jan 24

fri jan 17 @ 6:30pm

sat jan 18 @ 9pm

!!! (chk chk chk)

sat jan 25 @ 8pm

Fine steps | 8pm

Upcoming ShowS

sun jan 26 @ 6pm 30 | SN&R |

01.16.14

ianc, k-ottic, mk smith, aileron

thu jan 30 @ 7pm

sat feb 1 @ 7pm

dj mustard

feb 07 feb 08 feb 09 feb 13 feb 15 feb 20 feb 22 feb 26 feb 28 mar 01 mar 02 mar 05 mar 11 mar 13 mar 14 mar 15 mar 22 mar 24 mar 25 apr 05

st lucia the siren show this or the apocalypse bobby coldwell the siren show rehab some Fear none paradise Fears incredible’ me baeza we butter the bread with butter sunny ledFurd we are the in crowd inFected mushroom rachel barton pine the siren show kumande’s live experience being as an ocean black lips headbang For the hwy

18SAT

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Dead Winter Carpenters

Philip H. Anselmo & the Illegals

Jonny Lang

Furschitzen Giggles

Auburn Event Center, 7 p.m., $10-$15

Ace of Spades, 7 p.m., $22

The Dead Winter Carpenters are like musical chameleons because their music fits comfortably into a number of genres. Take their newest release, the Dirt Nap EP, for example.

If you like a bit of bluegrass, then “Bootleg Jack” will be your cup of tea. If rip-roaring country is your thing, then “Long Arm of the Law” will do you just fine. And “West Shore Town” spends a sizable chunk of its five-plus minutes playing like a classic Americana number before taking on a sinister rock ’n’ roll edge toward the end. The Dead Winter AMERICANA Carpenters have a penchant for keeping you guessing, and Dirt does nothing to change that. 145 Elm Avenue in Auburn, www.dead wintercarpenters.com.

—Brian Palmer

Crest Theatre, 8 p.m., $45-$65

As Pantera and Down’s frontman, Philip H. Anselmo rode a savage metal steamroller whose thudding savagery was only ROCK matched by the deeply rutted grooves beneath. The volume and intensity remain with Anselmo’s latest project, which released its debut album, Walk Through Exits Only, in July. The difference is its adoption of a spazz-core approach that’s a roller coaster with frequent left turns, thunderous bursts erupting out of nowhere and a general spirit of chaotic fury that gets right up in your face and bellows.

PHATI is accompanied by Author & Punisher, an experimental industrial drone act that relies on machines instead of instruments to create a gloomy thrum. 1417 R Street, www.philanselmo.com.

Naked Lounge Downtown, 8 p.m., $5

Although it had been four years since his previous release (2009’s Live at the Ryman) and seven years since he put out any new material (2006’s Turn Around), Jonny Lang came back with a vengeance in 2013 with Fight for My Soul. The album featured a number of Lang’s trademark rock, R&B, blues and gospel sensibilities, all while singing with his trademark bluesy drawl with all the fervor of a preacher at a revival BLUES ROCK meeting. “Blew Up (the House)” is energy personified, “Not Right” brings some serious funk to the table and “We Are the Same” is incredibly soulful. Fight feels like a glorious punch to the devil’s face. 1013 K Street, www.jonnylang.com.

—Brian Palmer

Improvisational bands are generally very loose and fluid. Sacramento group Furschitzen Giggles does improvise all its songs, but manages to have a robotic sound. Drummer Peter Furgiuele (pictured) of the band Gringo Star, EXPERIMENTAL plays electronic drums, which adds to the angular quality, while T. “Firecracker” Johnson switches between synths, electronic guitar and bass. Together they sound almost like an electronic band, even industrial to a degree. Yet its roots in spacey jams and free-form qualities are never lost. There is a fluctuation between order and chaos, blending so many unlikely elements together (electro rock, free jazz, funk, psychedelia) that there’s always a bizarre quality to it. 1111 H Street, http://furschitzengiggles.bandcamp.com.

—Chris Parker

—Aaron Carnes

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

fri 1/17 ~ 9pm ~ no covEr

dJ dancE partY

-January 16 -

Come dance to all the hottest music!!! tHE place to enjoy the night!

Saturday, January 18th, 2014 7:00pm Harris Center - Three Stages Folsom, California

sat 1/18 ~ 9pm ~ $10

mErcY mE old school, funk Jazz and r&B

Tickets on sale now at

fri 1/24 ~ 9pm ~ no covEr

dJ dancE partY

harriscenter.net

916-608-6888

- January 19 -

Weedeater black cobra, horseneck taino salsa orchestra $12.50adv • 7pm

7:30pm • $8adv

- January 17 -

- January 22 -

tea leaf green moon taxi

nappy roots 8pm • $12adv

8pm • $17.50adv

Come dance to all the hottest music!!! tHE place to enjoy the night!

sat 1/25 ~ 9pm ~ $5

innEr souL

- January 23 -

r&B, sacramento old school, Latin dance

watcH aLL nfL gamEs

for more information about Cary farley and the mustard seed sChool visit Caryfarley.Com

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midnight players

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Coming Soon Jan 24 Jan 25 Jan 25 Jan 29 Jan 30 Jan 31 Feb 01 Feb 02 Feb 07 Feb 08 Feb 09 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb 14 Feb 15 Feb 16 Feb 21 Feb 22 Feb 23 Feb 24 Feb 28 Mar 01 Mar 02 Mar 04 Mar 10 Mar 14 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 21 Mar 23 Mar 26

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Stick Men Wild Cub (early) The Nibblers (late) Royal Southern Brotherhood Parade Of Lights Moonshiner Collective Tempest Cheeseballs James Garner’s tribute to Johnny Cash Steelin’ Dan Duncan Sheik Secret Chiefs 3 (members of Mr. Bungie) Bettye LaVette Denver J Band ALO Martin Luther The Duhks Tainted Love Tainted Love Man Man The Thermals / Colleen Green Diego’s Umbrella Zepparella The Wild Feathers Typhoon Larry & His Flask / Scott H. Brian Cayucas Majickat Galactic The Sword/Big Business Tommy Castro and the Painkillers Weekend Toubab Krewe

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AFTER

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NIGHTBEAT

THURSDAY 1/16

ASSEMBLY MUSIC HALL 1000 K St., (916) 832-4751

BADLANDS

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.

The Siren Show Presents...Boob Tube, 9pm, $15-$25 Saturday Boom, 9pm, call for cover

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

Fabulous and Gay Fridays, 9pm, call for cover

BAR 101

Karaoke, 7:30pm, no cover

ISLAND OF BLACK & WHITE, 9:30pm, $5 J RAS, 9:30pm, $5

BLUE LAMP

1400 Alhambra, (916) 455-3400

RIOT RADIO, THE HARBOR, REBEL PUNK, KEPI GHOULIE; 8pm, $6

Stake videos and punk rock bar night, 8pm, no cover

THE BOARDWALK

AENIMUS, APPARITIONS, THE KENNEDY

WRATH OF VESUVIUS, EVERY HAND BETRAYED, LIFEFORMS, VESTARA; 7:30pm

BOWS & ARROWS

TrueStory storytelling event, 7pm, call for cover

MOLLY PAUL, GARRETT GRAY, UNI AND HER UKELELE; 8pm, $5

SHELLY SHEPHERD, TOUCHEZ, KALLY O’MALLY; 8pm, $5

LOS PINGUOS, 8pm, $15-$18

ALBERT LEE, KATE TAYLOR; 8pm, $25-$30

9426 Greenback Ln., Orangevale; (916) 988-9247 VEIL, SOMA RAS; 8pm, $10-$12 1815 19th St., (916) 822-5668

CENTER FOR THE ARTS

314 W. Main St., Grass Valley; (530) 274-8384 Open-mic, 7:30pm, no cover

BILLY BUCKMAN, WILLIAM MOREBECK, KATHY BARWICK; 7:30pm, $8

DISTRICT 30

CAKEDUP, 9pm, call for cover

DJ TonyTone, 9pm, call for cover

DEV, 10pm, call for cover

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

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

HOT CITY, WEST NILE RAMBLERS; 9pm, $5

MATT SERTICH, PROFESSOR GALL, KEVIN SECONDS; 9pm, $5

DJ Crook One, 10pm, call for cover

DJ Whores, 10pm, no cover

THE TONE MONKEYS, 9pm-midnight, no cover

CITY CATS, 9pm-midnight, no cover MIDNIGHT PLAYERS, 10pm, $12

1016 K St., (916) 737-5770

FACES

2000 K St., (916) 448-7798

FOX & GOOSE

THE MIKE JUSTIS BAND, 8pm, no cover

G STREET WUNDERBAR

TOTAL RECALL, 9pm, no cover

THE GOLDEN BEAR

DJ Shaun Slaughter, 10pm, call for cover

1001 R St., (916) 443-8825 228 G St., Davis; (530) 756-9227 2326 K St., (916) 441-2252

HALFTIME BAR & GRILL

5681 Lonetree Blvd., Rocklin; (916) 626-6366

HARLOW’S

Trivia, 6:30pm M, no cover; Open-mic, 7:30pm W, no cover Get Down to the Champion Sound reggae night, 9pm-2am, $3

Trivia, 8pm W, call for cover

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me film screening, 7:30pm Tu, no cover

Dragalicious, 9pm, $5

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

Industry Night, 9pm, call for cover

Trivia night, W, call for cover Trivia night, 7:30-9pm Tu, no cover; Karaoke, 8pm-midnight W, no cover

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

DJ Rock Bottom and The Mookie DJ, 9pm, no cover

Hip-hop and R&B deejay dancing, 9:16pm Tu, no cover

1414 16th St., (916) 441-3931

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

MARTY TATERS, HANS EBERBACH, LARISA BRYSKI, BEN PERRY, JACKIE CARROLL JAZZ TRIO; 7pm, $7-$10 GRANT CHESIN; 8pm, $5

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

MARILYN’S ON K

DJ Oasis, 9pm, $5

Live karoake, 9pm, no cover

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

LEVEL UP FOOD & LOUNGE

RANCHO CORDOVA, CALIFORNIA

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Sin Sunday, 8pm, call for cover

TEA LEAF GREEN, MOON TAXI; 9pm, $17.50-$20

908 K St., (916) 446-4361

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MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 1/20-1/22

WEEDEATER, BLACK COBRA, HORSENECK; 8pm, $12.50-$15

LUNA’S CAFÉ & JUICE BAR

32

SUNDAY 1/19

2708 J St., (916) 441-4693 2431 J St., (916) 448-8768

Buy-in Buy-in

CASH PROPHETS, 8pm, $5

THE COZMIC CAFÉ

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

Hey local bands!

SATURDAY 1/18

MERCHANTS, OUTSIDERS, BEFORE YOU FALL, MAID OF THE MIST; 6:30pm, $10

2003 K St., (916) 448-8790 101 Main St., Roseville; (916) 774-0505

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 1/17

01.16.14

DEATH PARTY AT THE BEACH, THE SILHOUETTE ERA, KATIE KNIPP; 9pm, $5

TAINO SALSA ORCHESTRA, 7:30pm, $8-$10

Comedy and talent showcase, 7pm, no cover

NAPPY ROOTS, 9pm W, $12-$15

Karaoke, 8pm M; HOURLESS CHRONICLES, MERCEDES AVE; 9pm W, $5

THURSDAY 1/16

FRIDAY 1/17

SATURDAY 1/18

SUNDAY 1/19

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 1/20-1/22

NAKED LOUNGE DOWNTOWN 1111 H St., (916) 443-1927

DR. VELOCITY, MONONYMOUS; 8:30pm, $5

ROCCO, ONE EYED REILLY, HALFPENCE AND HAYPENNY; 8:30pm, $5

JULIE MEYERS, MARTIN PURTILL, MIXED TAPE ANTHEM; 8:30pm, $5

AMBER RUBARTH, JUSTIN FARREN; 8:30pm, $5

Jazz, 8pm M; TAJLYN, CAR CRASH HEARTS, WAYNE JETSKI; 8:30pm W, $5

OLD IRONSIDES

Bluegrass jam, 7pm, no cover

WILLIAM MYLAR, 5pm; WHOOPIE QAT, THE OTHER BRITTANY; 9pm, $7

Fascination: ’80s new-wave dancing, 9:30pm, $5

ON THE Y

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

WURMFLESH, THROUGH THESE GATES, FERAL DEPRAVITY; 8pm, $6

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

Open-mic comedy, 9pm, no cover

CHATHAM COUNTY LINE, 8pm, $15

WEST NILE RAMBLERS, BOCA DO RIO; 8pm, $10

JOHN MCCUTCHEON, 7pm, $25;

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

DJ Crooked, 9pm, call for cover

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

THE PALMS PLAYHOUSE

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

THE PARK ULTRA LOUNGE 1116 15th St., (916) 442-7222

PINS N STRIKES

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

Deejay dancing, 9pm, no cover

MERCY ME!, 9pm, $10

Karaoke w/ Sac City Entertainment, 9pm Tu, no cover; Open-mic, 9pm W, no cover Karaoke, 9pm Tu; KENNEDY VEIL, INANIMATE EXISTENCE, CYANIC; 8pm Tu, $6

Molly Paul with Garrett Gray and Uni and Her Ukulele 8pm Friday, $5.

Bows & Arrows Indie-folk

PJ’S ROADHOUSE

DJ Old Griff, 9pm, no cover

GREAT OGLEE MOGLEE, 9pm, $5

POINTDEXTER, 9pm, $5

POWERHOUSE PUB

614 Sutter St., Folsom; (916) 355-8586

SANDY NUYTS, SWEET REVENGE; 10pm, call for cover

8 TRACK MASSACRE, 10pm, call for cover

MR. DECEMBER, 3pm, call for cover; TRAGICALLY WHITE, 10pm, call for cover

THE PRESS CLUB

FLIP OFFS, SKRUNT, BENDER; 9pm, $3

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

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

Sunday Night Soul Party, 9pm, $5

MAD CONDUCTOR, ENLOWS; M, $8; DEVILS TRAIN, HYBRID CREEPS, 8pm W, $6

STONEY INN/ROCKIN’ RODEO

THE BUCK FORD BAND, 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

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

THE STATION

Salsa w/ Mike Del Campo and Mr. DJ Omar, 8:30pm, no cover; $5 after 9:30pm

Salsa with Mike Del Campo, 8:30pm, no cover, $5 after 9:30pm

Domingos Latinos with Mr. DJ Omar, 9pm, $5-$10

Blues jam session, 8:30pm Tu, no cover

TORCH CLUB

X TRIO, 5pm, no cover; FUNKDEFIED, 9pm, $5

JOHNNY KNOX, 5pm, no cover; DENNIS JONES, 9pm, $8

Blues jam, 4pm, no cover; THE GOLDEN CADILLACS, 8pm, $5

Acoustic open-mic, 5:30pm W, no cover; PETER PETTY BAND, 9pm W, $5

PEPPER, LIONIZE; 7pm, $20

PHILIP & CHRIS, AUTHOR & PUNISHER; M, $22; HOPSIN, DIZZY WRIGHT; 7pm Tu, $23

5461 Mother Lode, Placerville; (530) 626-0336

2030 P St., (916) 444-7914 1320 Del Paso Blvd., (916) 927-6023

1100 Orlando Ave., Roseville; (916) 728-1166 904 15th St., (916) 443-2797

PAILER AND FRATIS, 5:30-7:30pm, no cover; JOHNNY KNOX, 9pm, $7

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

All ages, all the time ACE OF SPADES

CODY CANADA AND THE DEPARTED, AMERICAN AQUARIUM; 7pm, $15

1417 R St., (916) 448-3300

BEATNIK STUDIOS

Nappy Roots 9pm Wednesday, $12-$15.

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub Hip-hop

THE TULGA BROTHERS, 7pm, call for cover

723 S St., (916) 443-5808

CLUB RETRO

COOL DOWN PLAN, DECIPHER THE FALLEN, BURIAL FOR TWO; 7pm

LUIGI’S SLICE AND FUN GARDEN

THE THREE WAY, THE DEAF PILOTS, A MILE TILL DAWN; 8pm, $6

1529 Eureka Rd., Roseville; (916) 988-6606 1050 20th St., (916) 552-0317

SHINE

THE AUXILLARY, THE COSMOPOLITES; 8pm, $5

1400 E St., (916) 551-1400

SLOW MOTION DIVE, ALL ABOUT ROCKETS, CALLOW; 8pm, $5

JOSEPH IN THE WELL, LP SESSIONS; 8pm, $5

Open jazz jam, 8pm Tu; Red Alice’s Poetry Emporium, 8pm W, no cover

Ace of SpAdeS friday, January 17

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

All Ages Welcome!

saturday, february 1

cody cAnAdA And the depArted

berner

SOON

spyda the boss - young gatlin bobby hooper

american aquarium

friday, february 7

sunday, January 19

02/15 The English Beat

the devil mAkeS three

pepper lionize

02/16 Escape The Fate 02/17 Attila

the brothers comatose

Monday, January 20

02/26 Dom Kennedy 02/27 J Boog

saturday, february 8

phillip h.

AnSelmo & the illeGAlS

too $hort reign & playah k

03/21 Memphis May Fire

breAthe cArolinA

dizzy wright

03/26 Moonshine Bandits & The Lacs 03/30 Reverend Horton Heat

mod sun - ghost town - lionfight

thursday, January 30

04/04 Yonder Mountain String Band

thursday, february 13

for todAy

kArl denSon’S tiny univerSe

like moths to flames - stray from the path the plot in you - fit for a king kingdom of giants

03/13 Umphrey’s McGee 03/20 The Wailers

wednesday, february 12

hopSin

03/01 Tierra 03/15 The Expendables

author & punisher - hymns

tuesday, January 21

COMING

04/21 The 1975 04/27 Julieta Venegas 05/21 Christina Perri

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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what’s on your

horizon?

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Stoner etiquette

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Hello. I am new to the whole weed-smoking thing, and I wonder if you could offer me any tips on stoner etiquette.

Please and thank you.

—Ned Newbdoobie Hello, and welcome to the wonderful world of weed!

Be aware: The cannabis-etiquette rabbit hole is full of traps and inconsistencies, as well as local customs and arcane superstitions.

Some general rules (pirate voice): “The code EALUM B IO is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual A G N by rules.”

Pass the dutchie to the left-hand side. Yes, it’s a song. The first joint or bowl or whatever should ’13 a s k420 @ ne wsreview.c om go to the left. If the circle is big enough and the weed is plentiful, someone may send another bowl or blunt counterclockwise—and it’s always funny when someone gets passed both joints at the same time. That person, of course, should attempt to smoke both joints at once.

Puff, puff, pass. This is America. The joint should proceed around the circle in a timely manner. If the joint is not being hit, it’s just burning weed. The rules are different in Spain, where the doobie is probably some mixture of hash and tobacco and burns hella slow, everyone is unemployed, “tranquilo” is the order of the day, and so it takes for-freaking-ever the joint to get back There are few for to you.

Don’t burn the whole things worse than bowl. When smoking being passed a from a pipe, one should soggy joint. Ew. endeavor to burn a corner of the weed in the bowl, thereby ensuring that the next person gets a “green” hit and a chance to savor the flavor of the weed. This is not always possible, but do your best. If the bowl is cashed when it gets to you, reload it.

Don’t slobber. Come on. There used to be a racially charged term for this sort of marijuana abuse, but times have changed. Suffice it to say, please keep your lips dry when hitting the joint or bowl. There are few things worse than being passed a soggy joint. Ew. Know your health. If you have a cold, don’t share Ngaio Bealum is a Sacramento a joint. Duh. If you have a cold sore or some sort of comedian, activist thing on your lip, please think about what you may be and marijuana expert. introducing to the circle. I have never heard of anyone Email him questions getting the herp from passing joints around, but still. at ask420@ Try to bring some weed with you every once in newsreview.com. a while. It’s not hard to get. New smokers get the benefit of the doubt, but if you keep showing up to a session empty-handed, people will start to talk.

Introduce yourself. When approaching a group of people smoking weed, a friendly smile and a “hello” work wonders. I have met some cool people while standing in the circle or sneaking around the corner to smoke a bowl. Use a nickname if you want, but it’s always better smoking with friends than with strangers.

Most of all, just be polite and kind, and most issues will take care of themselves. Ω

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www.Sac420Doc.com BEFORE

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NEWS

|

F E AT U R E

STORY

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

|

AFTER

| 01.16.14

|

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WInTER SpEcIal

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BEFORE

|

NEWS

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FEATURE

STORY

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

| 01.16.14

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FEATURE

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

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Whenever doing business by telephone or email proceed with caution when cash or credit is required in advance of services.

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

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by COdy dRabble

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Whose

enemy are you? Are you anyone’s adversary or obstructionist or least favorite person? Answer honestly, please.

Don’t be in denial. Next question: Do you derive anything useful from playing this oppositional role? If your answer is yes, that’s fine. I won’t try to talk you out of it. Continue to reap the benefits of being someone’s obstacle. But if, on the other hand, you get little value out of this negative relationship, now would be a good time to change it. You have more power than usual to free yourself from being an antagonist.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You

Tauruses are customarily more grounded than the rest of us. But this week, I’m wondering if you will be tempted to escape the laws of gravity and rebel against the call of duty. I suspect that your dreams, at least, will feature uninhibited forays into the wild blue yonder. While you’re sleeping, you may float weightlessly in an interplanetary spaceship, become an eagle and soar over forests, wear a futuristic jet pack on your back and zip through the sky, sail across the Serengeti Plain in a hot-air balloon, or have a picnic on a cloud with a feast of cotton candy and sponge cake and mint tea. Would you consider bringing this kind of fun into your waking life?

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): What part

of your life is too small, and you want to make it bigger? Is there a situation that’s overly intense and dramatic, and you wish you could feel more lighthearted about it, less oppressed? Are you on a quest that has become claustrophobic, and you’d love to find a way to make it more spacious and relaxed? If you answered yes to any of those questions, Gemini, there’s good news. Very soon now, you will have a close encounter with the magic you need to open what has been closed and expand what has been narrow. Be alert for it. Be crafty as you gather it in and harness it for your use.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In her

poem “Catch a Body,” Ilse Bendorf says she dislikes the advice “Don’t ever tell anybody anything.” On the other hand, “Tell everyone everything” isn’t the right approach, either, she says. Judging from your astrological omens, Cancerian, I surmise that you’re wavering between those two extremes. You’re tempted to think you’ve got to do one or the other. Should you cultivate the power that comes from being silent, and keep people guessing about your true feelings? Or should you seek greater intimacy but risk giving away your power by confessing all your inner thoughts? I suggest you take a middle path. Tell the vivid truth, but carefully and incrementally.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): If a substance has

been burned, it can’t be burned again.

There’s no flammable stuff left to feed a fire. That’s simple physics. Now, as for the question of whether a person can be burned more than once—we’re speaking metaphorically here—the answer is, unfortunately, yes. Some folks don’t learn from their mistakes and don’t have enough emotional intelligence to avoid the bullies and manipulators who burn them again in the future. But I’m confident that you aren’t one of these types, Leo, or that at least you won’t be in the coming days.

You may have been burned before, but you won’t be burned this time.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “People who

don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year,” said author Peter Drucker. “People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”

In general, I agree with that assessment.

But I think it needs to be altered for your situation in the coming months. Here’s the adjusted version of the formula: Virgos who don’t take risks in 2014 will make an average of 3.1 big mistakes. Virgos who do take risks in 2014 will make, at most, a half a big mistake.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “You know

what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?” asks novelist Terry Pratchett.

“It’s all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they’re really good at. … It’s all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be.” If that description applies to you even a little, Libra—if

BEFORE

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NEWS

pHoTo BY LisA BAETz

by ROb

For the week of January 16, 2014

bRezsny

you’re still not completely sure what you’re good at it and what you want to do—the coming months will be prime time to fix that problem. Start now! How? Open your mind to the possibility that you don’t know yourself as well as you someday will.

Take vocational tests. Ask smart people you trust to tell you what they think about your special aptitudes and unique qualities. And one more thing: Be wildly honest with yourself about what excites you.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In his book Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition, Ben Schott dreams up new compound German words for use in English. Here’s one that would serve you well in the coming week: “Fingerspitzentanz,” meaning “fingertips-dance.”

Schott says it refers to “tiny triumphs of nimble-fingered dexterity.” His examples: fastening a bracelet, tightening a minuscule screw, unknotting, removing a recalcitrant sticker in one unbroken peel, rolling a joint, identifying an object by touch alone, slipping something off a high shelf. Both literally and metaphorically speaking, Scorpio, you now have an abundance of this capacity. Everything about you is more agile and deft and limber than usual. You’ll be a master of Fingerspitzentanz.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

The four elements that compose cocaine are the same as those that make up TNT, caffeine and nylon: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. The combinations and proportions of elements are different in each substance, of course. But the point, for our purposes, is that the same raw materials lead to different results. I foresee a similar drama unfolding in your own life, Sagittarius. How you assemble the ingredients you currently have at your disposal could produce either a rough and ragged high, a volatile risk, a pleasant stimulation, or a useful resource.

Which will it be?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

Metaphorically speaking, you have recently come into possession of some new seeds. They are robust. They are hardy. They have the potential to grow into big, strong blooms. So when should you plant them, metaphorically speaking?

I’m going to suggest that you wait a while longer. It wouldn’t be bad for them if you sowed them right now, but I think their long-term vitality will be even greater if you postpone the planting for at least a week. Two weeks might be better. Trust your intuition.

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

Flemish artist Jan van Eyck (1390-1441) was renowned for his innovative mastery of oil painting. He signed many of his works not just with his name but also with his motto: “Als ich kan.” Its idiomatic translation is “The best I can do.” What he meant was that he had pushed his talent and craft to the limit, and then stopped and relaxed, content that he had given all he could. I invite you to have a similar attitude as you wrap up the projects you’re currently involved in, Aquarius.

Summon all your passion and intelligence as you create the most excellent outcome possible, but also know when to quit. Don’t try too hard; just try hard.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): It’s an

excellent time to rise up and revolt against conventional wisdom. I urge you to immunize yourself against trendy groupthink as you outwit and outmaneuver the status quo. Have fun and activate your playful spirit to the max as you create workarounds to the way things have always been done. At the same time, Pisces, stay acutely attuned to your compassion and common sense. Don’t be a quarrelsome intransigent. Don’t be rebellious just to please your ego. If you follow these guidelines, you will be able to pull off a graceful insurrection that both soothes and stimulates your soul.

You can call Rob Brezsny for your Expanded Weekly Horoscope: (900) 950-7700. $1.99 per minute. Must be 18+. Touchtone phone required. Customer service (612) 373-9785.

And don’t forget to check out Rob’s website at www.realastrology.com. |

F E AT U R E

STORY

Art school confidential Lily Moon is a painter and illustrator who blurs the lines between fine art and street art. She currently has works on display at the Kennedy Gallery Art Center (1931 L Street) and also hosts a free “chalk therapy” session in front of the gallery every second Tuesday of the month, where participants can talk about art and express themselves on the sidewalk.

SN&R caught up with Moon to talk about deadlines, debt and the art of pizza boxes.

Did you go to art school?

The closest thing that comes to art school was once I took one figure-drawing class when I was 15 years old at Cosumnes River College. I realized I was good at it. I only passed with a C, but that’s because I hate turning in homework. Deadlines were not my thing. I was pretty much on my own at 18. I went to the International Academy of Design and Technology [in Sacramento] for one semester, and it was not for me. Now I’m $20,000 in debt, but I know my passions will someday pay for it. Art schools can [cost] $100,000, and I didn’t feel the need to go to school to become an artist. For anything to be successful, you have to have a passion for it. You learn it yourself. You pick up a book if you need to.

I use YouTube for everything.

Why do you create?

It really helps that I’m a bipolar person.

I didn’t realize it until I was probably 17 years old. It’s a very hard feeling. Since I can’t articulate myself sometimes, it really helps that I’m an artist, because with the visual, people don’t need to talk; they feel it. You don’t know why you like a piece, you just do. You can finally figure it out if you

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ask yourself a billion questions, but initially, when you look at a piece, you can tell if you like it or not. You walk up to it, and there’s a gut feeling, and either you go to the next one, or you stop and you can’t walk away from it even though it’s a hideous thing.

This is how I feel—“My husband makes me feel this way,” “my wife makes me feel that way,” or “I look like this in the mirror, I can never get better than that.” When you see [the pieces] visually, you work your problems out constantly. It’s almost like writing yourself a little note. It pushes you further.

What do you like about making black-lightactivated line art?

You can create an illusion with it. Art itself is an illusion. You try to create 3-D [effect] or a different perspective with it. Black lights are so much fun. I’m a big fan of the ’70s and ’80s, all of that, but you can actually make a serious picture and make it feel very soulful.

Explain “chalk therapy.”

I draw chalk people on the sidewalks, and people come talk to me. It helps that I have that personality; I’ve always been able to make people laugh.

What themes do you explore in your art?

Being bipolar, you can look at each one in my [series of face illustrations] with two halves. There’s an inside and an outside in each face. The series is kind of like a period diary, actually. One piece is half spun up, stretched thin, the other is a voluptuous face that says

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“I am a woman.” The eyes are closed, like, “Please, just let me be. I know I’m going to bleed for a week.” It’s called “Molotov.”

Tell me about pizza boxes.

Each [piece] is about how I feel when I eat pizza. My brother had a few around the house and wouldn’t throw them away, so I said, “Fuck it—that’s my new canvas.” I love to draw on anything. As an artist, you have to pick up whatever is around when it has the right texture and weight, and just go for it. I used colored pencil and ink, and I sealed it with a clear gel. They were never intended for show, but people came over to my house and really liked them, so they went up in the gallery. [The character Pizza the Hutt from] Spaceballs is definitely an inspiration for the pepperoni-face boy. I left the scraps and crumbs in the box to represent the character’s only legacy.

Ever surprise yourself with a piece?

You have to attach a meaning to the image. Sometimes an artist doesn’t know anything about the piece while it’s all subconscious. After, I’ll sit down, look at it, analyze it with other people who come into the gallery and tell me what they think, almost like a therapist would. A lot of my work is my own therapy. Then, I’ll finally see, “Oh my God, it all makes sense. That’s what I was feeling.” Ω For more on Lily Moon, visit http://kalilily.wix.com/rebateillustrations.

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