s-2018-11-29

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In need of a Green New Deal

Re: “Apocalypse on the Ridge,” by Ashiah Scharaga and Melissa  Daugherty (News, November 15):

The heartbreaking devastation of the Camp Fire is just one example of how climate change is already impacting, and in some cases ending, our lives. Now, climate scientists tell us that we have just 12 years to move our country off fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic climate disaster. We have the technology and the money to do so. All we need is the political will.

It is incredibly frustrating to watch the lackluster responses to and outright  denials of the reality of climate change from our government. The World Health  Organization states that climate change is the biggest threat to human health  in this century, but our leadership seems more concerned about the “threat” of refugees. If only climate change had dark skin and a foreign accent, we’d surely  be using 100 percent renewable energy by now.

We need a Green New Deal to create millions of green jobs, move our country off fossil fuels, and protect working people of all backgrounds. As of now, 11  Congress members have announced their support for Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez’s resolution to create a House Select Committee for a Green New Deal in  Congress. I call on my representative, Doris Matsui, to do the same. Our health  and safety, and the health and safety of our children, is at stake.

Gabri ElE Quill M an Sacramento via sactoletters@newsreview.com

A window of opportunity

Re: “Standing with the climate kids,” by Dylan Svoboda (News, November 15): With all due respect, I think [President] Trump and other individuals need to stop beating around the bush, acknowledge climate change and address solutions in a comprehensive manner. Accordingly, we need to stop boxing climate change as a liberal or conservative polarizing issue and acknowledge the dangerous effects it has on all of us. This is not a red or a blue partisan issue, this affects everyone red, white and blue and should be treated according to such. We can all see how climate change is affecting us right now, but not everyone wants

to acknowledge it or act upon it. I cannot imagine how severe climate change is going to affect future generations. Our window of opportunity to act is closing and there is no turning back, which is why we need to urge others to take action now.

Marya M Shabir Sacramento via sactoletters@newsreview. com

Follow the public transit path

Re: “Turning the wheel,” by Dylan Svoboda (News, November 21): I think it is more likely the routes and the inability for the schedules to be adhered to [have caused a ridership drop]. I would recommend the [Regional Transit] board and surrounding areas meet

with Denver’s [Regional Transportation District] and see how an excellent public transportation is run. Then follow through to the end not just halfway.

Elizab E th b urn S id E Sacramento via t witter

Correction

Due to an editing error, the story “Turning the wheel” (News, November 21, 2018) incorrectly reported that Sacramento Regional Transit ridership declined despite lower fares. Ridership declined 7.6 percent between September 2017 and September 2018. SacRT lowered its fares starting October 1. SN&R regrets the error.

Waiting for an alert that never came

Camp Fire evacuation complicated by the age of residents and an alert system that didn’t reach everyone

Three days after the Camp Fire broke out and sent tens of thousands of people out of the hills, Butte County sheriff’s investigator Mic Kelley was going door to door in Magalia, checking for survivors and pets that may have been left behind.

by Meredith J. Cooper

A familiar pattern emerged: He’d knock, no one would come to the door. That is, until someone did.

“I was startled when I knocked and she happened to answer,” he told N&R. “She was 87 years old, and she had no clue why

meredithc@newsreview.com

no one was around.”

Kelley said he asked the woman why she had stayed home by herself. She’d yelled for help as people filled their cars and drove away, she replied, but no one had heard her. She lived in

a part of Magalia, north of Paradise, that had largely survived the fire; she had survived off of food defrosting in her freezer and a drip of water from her faucet.

“She was from England,” Kelley said with a smile, “and she told me that after a meal [since the evacuation], she had a bit of cooking sherry with some chocolate.”

Kelley called for an ambulance that took her to a nearby hospital for care, then resumed his knocking. He found four others who answered their doors, but those four had chosen to stay.

Kelley’s rescue story is an illustration of the devastating reality of the Camp Fire evacuation. Not everyone was able to escape; many of them, like the woman in Magalia, were very old.

“People ask, ‘Why didn’t someone grab her?’” he said. “What they don’t understand is that this fire was moving at 80 football fields a minute—there was no time to save yourself and your neighbors.”

Photo by Meredith J. Coo P er

Butte County sheriff’s investigator Mic Kelley, at a site in Magalia where workers are searching for human remains, recounts a story of finding an elderly woman alive days after the fire erupted.

And some may have not received an alert that the fire was racing toward them.

Behind kelley, in a neighborhood in Magalia that had been ravaged by the fire, a crew in hazmat suits sifted—literally—through the ash of what used to be a house. They were looking for human remains, he confirmed.

“Unfortunately, we’re just scratching the surface,” he said. As of Tuesday, there were 88 fatalities and more than 200 people still missing.

Of the 203 people listed as missing, many do not list ages. Those that do skew high—a majority are over the age of 60, with many in their 80s and 90s. The youngest is 14; the oldest, 100.

“The median age [in Paradise] was 50,” said Jody Jones, Paradise mayor, notably using the past tense. “But that had come down a bit in the last few years. There were quite a few older, retired people, but we also had a lot of young families with children.”

In characterizing the town, Jones said the large number of retirees meant a lot of opportunities to volunteer.

“There were a lot of service clubs, a very active senior center, there was the Moose Lodge and the Elks, there was a garden club,” she said. “When you’re retired, you look for things to do and ways to give back.”

Jones has been on the Paradise Town Council since 2014, but she was a resident 10 years ago when the Humboldt Fire threatened her town. Since then, she said, there have been many efforts to ensure a safe and orderly evacuation. That included opening up an escape route to the north, through Magalia and Stirling City, as well as implementing a zone system, in which specific neighborhoods can be evacuated without sending the whole town into pandemonium.

“I got an emergency alert on my cellphone at 8:31 [a.m., November 8],” Jones said. Those with a land line are automatically opted in to the reverse-911 system, but cellphone users must opt in.

“We did some drives to ensure that people would sign up,” she explained. “We’d send them things in the mail, advertise that you have to sign up, and a lot of people didn’t.

“For the people that got [the alert], it worked,” she added. “But no one anticipates having to evacuate an entire town at the same time. It overwhelmed the transportation system.”

thing is, the town had anticipated evacuating the entire town. In fact, that was part of the reasoning behind creating an alternative route out—north.

Notably absent from the Camp Fire evacuation notice was the lack of use of the emergency alert system, or EAS, which reaches anyone with a radio or television on.

“We were actually kind of surprised, because we didn’t realize [the fire was happening] until after we’d gone into coverage mode, just being here,” said Paul Boris, operations manager at Thunder 100.7 FM, the area’s primary radio station, from which all other frequencies rebroadcast emergency alerts.

During the evacuation of the region surrounding the Oroville Dam in early 2017, for instance, an EAS apprised all area residents of the situation, which roads were open, which areas were not safe, which direction to go.

Not so on November 8.

“Later in the day, we wondered if an EAS ever went out,” Boris recalled. “But no, apparently they’re using some kind of opt-in system.”

When it comes to an older population, many don’t have cellphones.

Some are bed-bound or rely on wheelchairs or walkers to get around, and others have medical equipment like oxygen that hinders mobility, explained Amanda Brogan, lifestyle director at The Terraces, a retirement home in Chico. Her facility, as with the others in town, has welcomed a number of new residents, Camp Fire evacuees.

On the morning the fire broke out, The Terraces’ executive director asked that its two buses be sent to Paradise to retrieve residents in facilities there.

“We were on it,” Brogan said.

The drivers, both from the Ridge, spent all day in Paradise picking up residents and stuck in traffic.

“People were just leaving their cars, knocking on the bus doors,” she said, “so they ended up picking more people up.”

The Terraces, being so close to Highway 32, where the fire was creeping the evening of November 8, ended up having to evacuate itself.

“All day, we were calling family members, letting them know that we’re not on alert or warning, but if you want to bring your loved one home for a couple of days, do so,” Brogan added. “A lot of people did come pick them up. We had our residents get a bag together. And our nurse gathered medication. Then, around 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, the fire was getting close to 32, so we got a Greyhound and our two buses and brought everyone to Roseville.”

For Brogan, the evacuation of just one facility was an undertaking. She said she struggled to think of trying to evacuate an entire town where many of the residents are older.

“Being in this business and working with seniors for 15 years, I’ve been thinking of the residents who didn’t get that alert,” she said. “Or not even having transportation because they don’t drive, maybe not having family that was around to assist them, and some of them not even having any idea what was going on.

“It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around it, it’s so devastating.” Ω

Conservation groups won a major victory against the oil industry in early November after a judge halted all fracking permits in federal waters off California’s coast.

The injunction came after two years of legal battles involving the California Coastal Commission, the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological Diversity, and federal regulators working for the trump administration. Specifically, the plaintiffs were suing President Trump’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement for trying to process some 50 new fracking permits off the shores of santa Barbara.

During a November 5 hearing in the U.S. Central District Court of California, attorneys for the conservation groups argued that the OEM had not consulted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about what chemicals, acids and fluid pollutant discharges from fracking would do to a host of endangered species, including the blue whale, the southern sea otter and the western snowy plover seabird.

Attorneys for Trump’s regulators presented an elaborate argument in the hearing that the California groups had no legal standing for procedural reasons. That was an assertion that federal Judge Philip S. Gutierrez called “too clever by half” in his ruling. Gutierrez then issued an injunction to halt all fracking and acidizing permits off the coast until more analysis is done on the consequences for ocean habitat.

Maggie Hall, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Center, called Gutierrez’s decision a big win against “risky practices” threatening endangered wildlife. (Scott Thomas Anderson)

something rotten?

The city of Sacramento is facing a new lawsuit that was filed after it approved an environmental report for a sewage and stormwater facility to be built under mckinley Park

A group calling itself Citizens for a Safe & Sewage-free McKinley Park brought the legal action on November 9. It’s seeking undisclosed damages, according to county court records.

The project, which the city intends to break ground on in May, would include a 300-foot-long, 240-foot-wide storage facility capable of holding as much as 1 million cubic storage feet of sewage and stormwater under the historic park. The vault would be some 20 feet underground, according to a report by the city.

Officials have promised to restore the park after construction.

Sacramento Utilities Director Bill Busath told SN&R that he’d just learned of the lawsuit, but that the city intends to move forward with its design. Busath added that city staff analyzed four to five alternative sites, but that McKinley was the most cost effective. He estimated the project’s total price tag at $35 million Busath had touted the project to City Council, leading to a 5-0 vote to approve its environmental report on October 9.

“This McKinley vault is the most cost effective and efficient way to solve the flooding issues in the neighborhood,” Busath told council members. “This project, as you can see, responds to a real and immediate problem.”

East Sacramento resident Will Green has been leading the opposition to the sewer vault. He said a better solution for the city would be separating its antiquated, combined sewer and storm drain systems. Green called the McKinley Park project “the mother of all water sewer vaults.”

Green also said Councilman Jeff Harris told residents last year that their utility bills would increase by 300 percent if they didn’t approve the sewer project.

“We’re not a neighborhood that likes that very well,” Green said. (Graham Womack)

“What they don’t understand is that this fire was moving at 80 football fields a minute—there was no time to save yourself and your neighbors.”

Mic Kelley investigator, Butte County Sheriff’s Office

Farm to ‘we’re all forked’

When the temperature spiked into the 100s for several days in June, farmer Ed George’s younger tomato plants—one of his more important crops—couldn’t take the heat. Their delicate blossoms wilted, and with them the stream of revenue that George was banking on for October.

While crop failures are a routine part of business for farmers, George, who owns and operates The Peach Farm in Winters, says a pattern of destructive weather is limiting his ability to grow food.

“We’re seeing more extremes—more extreme heatwaves, more extreme rains, later frosts,” said George, who also grows peaches, nectarines and figs. “We aren’t having our typical springs anymore.”

George believes he is witnessing the front end of global warming as it begins

by Al A st A ir Bl A nd

to take effect on the state’s farmers, who produce some $50 billion in food every year. If that’s the case, the conditions may magnify over time until growing certain crops in certain places will be impossible. In fact, that is exactly what researchers who have closely analyzed climate trends say will happen.

An alarming study published in the journal Agronomy in February predicted that, by 2050, farmers in most of the Central Valley will be unable to reliably grow stone fruits and walnuts— currently major crops in terms of both acreage and value. As early as 2041, the authors found, it might be impossible to consistently grow cherries, apples and pears virtually anywhere in the Central Valley.

At California’s Department of Conservation, chief science adviser Jeff Onsted said it seems likely farmers will need to shift to new crops as the weather warms and conditions become more volatile.

“What worked in the past might not work in the future,” said Onsted, who was not involved in the new research. “You can’t grow the same crops forever in a changing climate.”

A new report on Sacramento County’s agricultural economy showed fluctuations in some of the crops researchers have flagged.

On November 7, Agricultural Commissioner Juli Jensen told the Board of Supervisors that the gross value of all agricultural products in the county reached $495 million last year, 2.2 percent lower than 2016’s record value of $507 million.

The decrease was primarily blamed on Sacramento’s most valuable crop— grapes—experiencing both a lower harvest and value, even though nearly 2,000 more acres were harvested in pursuit of the environmentally-sensitive fruit.

“When you have so much of your value tied up in one crop, as that crop goes so goes your economy,” Jensen told supervisors. “The loss in grapes, that amount, could cover the entire loss.”

Meanwhile, cherries, another fickle fruit, more than doubled in value, thanks to per-acre yields that exploded by 81 percent and were perhaps due to welltimed rains, Jensen said.

It can take time for changes in the climate to be felt in the earth. For instance, Jensen noted, the county’s agricultural economy saw its best year in 2016, California’s fifth straight year of drought, and dipped in 2017, a relatively wet year. While the science calls for what might seem like the end of days for many farmers, not everyone who grows food is unnerved by the predictions.

“I’m not disputing the data, but I’m just not seeing any trends yet,” said Thaddeus Barsotti, who co-owns Capay Organic, a farm about 15 miles north of Winters.

Barsotti said that he has been able to reliably count on having no more frost after March 15. The date has served as a key guideline for row crop planting schedules, and he says it has not changed a day.

“That rule is still for working for us like it always has,” Barsotti said.

Nor is Delta farmer Brett Baker worried by the gloomy crop and climate forecast. Baker grows 30 acres of pears near the town of Courtland. He said the economic market—not especially friendly to pears—is of more concern to him than the climate. Baker said he believes the increasing carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is warming the planet, but he suspects some researchers feel pressured to publish “doomsday scenarios” simply to generate interest in their work.

“They want us to say, ‘Oh, the sky is falling and there’s nothing we can about it!’” he said. “The climate will change, but the vast majority of farmers will be able to find new varieties and new rootstocks. Science will adapt.”

The Agronomy paper warned that, even before changing climate takes certain crop species past their physiological limits, the stress of increasingly erratic weather patterns will draw down crop productivity and yields. In other words, the regional death of industries could be a long and painful one. The researchers predicted that most crop yields will decline by anywhere from 5 to 40 percent.

The crux of the problem, according to the research, is not monster heatwaves or epic floods. It is a subtler impact. Specifically, the wintertime low temperatures that many crop species depend on for proper budding and blooming will not occur in the future, as winters grow generally warmer.

The paper also presented data showing startling upward temperature trends. For instance, California’s summertime mean temperature increased at a rate of 6.4 degrees Fahrenheit per century in the 36-year span between 1975 and 2011. Summertime highs increased at a rate of 6 degrees per century in the same time period, while wintertime lows increased at a rate of about 2 degrees per century. The data also shows that warming rates are accelerating rapidly.

Baker isn’t fazed. Farmers, he said, make adjustments “constantly,” and he thinks growers will be able to evolve with a changing climate. If it truly becomes too difficult to grow pears as an income source, he said he’ll simply find something else to plant.

“No one is going to go hungry in California because we can’t grow enough food,” he said. Ω

Raheem F. Hosseini contributed to this report.

Central Valley farmers are starting to notice climate change affecting their crops

A rejected inheritance

Midtown Radio is here!

by

When the time comes, much sooner than anyone expected, Jessica Mae Orozco’s ashes will be interred in Reno, Nev.—not in Sacramento, where she grew up, and not in Arizona, where her friends thought the 31-year-old botanist escaped the perils that haunt many of her indigenous sisters.

But then October 27 came, with her knock on a door and the bullet that answered.

“She ended up being killed,” said Morning Star Gali, a friend who lives in Sacramento County. “You do everything you’re supposed to do and that doesn’t keep you from being murdered as a native woman.”

For Gali, it feels like a cruel tilt toward inevitability—that she and her peers can make all the right choices and still not outrun a 600-year history of colonization, subjugation and handed-down abuse. There’s not enough comprehensive data telling her otherwise and too many stories to the contrary, including her own.

Looking for a safe town to put some distance between her and the ex-partner who pulled a knife on her, Gali said, she arrived in Elk Grove less than a year ago. A historic preservation officer with the Pit River Tribe and a fellow with the progressive leadership fund Leading Edge, Gali said one of her many goals is to create a safe space for indigenous women to discuss and confront trauma.

“There’s a rule that we don’t talk about what happens in our families, what happens in our communities,” Gali told SN&R.

epidemiology center in Seattle, this month published its report, “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls.”

UIHI cross-referenced law enforcement records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests with state and national databases, media coverage, social media posts and other sources to weave a snapshot of death and disappearance of American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls in urban centers, where the majority of indigenous people live. In the 71 cities studied, including 12 in California, UIHI identified 506 cases—most since 2000—including 153 cases that hadn’t been recorded by law enforcement.

Star Gali fellow, Leading Edge Fund

Morning

It can be difficult when the mainstream doesn’t ask to hear those stories. The piecemeal information that exists suggests a pattern of trauma, as prolific as it is normalized. According to an eight-year-old federal survey on domestic and sexual violence, 83 percent of indigenous adults experienced some form of violence in their lifetimes.

A lack of media coverage was also a common theme. UIHI only found news stories in 14 percent of the cases it identified. Zero were recorded in California’s capital: Of the 10 killings and three unsolved disappearances that UIHI says it identified in Sacramento, none received media coverage.

Annita Lucchesi, a coauthor of the report and a doctoral student of cartography, cautioned in an email that the records from Sacramento police were difficult to interpret, “in part because they sent records of at least 5 cases regarding IndianAmerican victims (last names like Prasad and Singh).

“When we asked for clarification, the agency responded by saying that those people may have

Navajo woman from Sacramento achieved her dream in Arizona— then met an all-toocommon end

Raheem F. h osseini raheemh@newsreview.com

Jessica Mae Orozco with her nephew James following her graduation from Claremont Graduate University.

“You do everything you’re supposed to do and that doesn’t keep

from being murdered as a native woman.”

been biracial (Indian American and American Indian),” continued Lucchesi, who is creating an online database chronicling missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in North America dating back to 1900. “That’s a compelling example of the kind of misclassification issues the report addresses.”

Indeed, the California Department of Justice doesn’t include an ethnic classification for American Indians in its annual homicide report, restricting its racial categories to white, black, Hispanic or other.

One of the few local statistics available focuses on domestic violence. Since opening in July 2016 and through August of this year, the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center has served 30 clients of American Indian or Alaska Native descent, according to a recent report to the Board of Supervisors. That amounts to 1.3 percent of the center’s more than 2,300 total clients, which is on par with Native American representation in Sacramento County’s population, census figures show.

Though Orozco’s life started in Sacramento, it was taken in Arizona, where UIHI catalogued 54 cases of missing or slain indigenous women, the third highest total among the 10 states UIHI examined. (California ranked sixth with 40 cases.)

Orozco was shot once just before midnight on October 27, a Saturday. According to news reports and interviews with friends, Orozco was dropping off her adopted son’s friend at a house in Kingman after they had celebrated the son’s birthday. The alleged shooter, Gerald Richardson, 57, of Golden Valley, reportedly told investigators he was asleep inside the home and wasn’t expecting anyone when he heard what he believed was an intruder trying to get in just before midnight.

Richardson was being held in Mohave County jail on Tuesday. He faces one count of second-degree murder, online court records show.

Orozco’s Facebook page says she studied science at American River College in Sacramento and later attended San Francisco State University before obtaining her master’s degree in botany from Claremont Graduate University in Southern California.

Gali described her friend as an unequivocal success story, someone

who managed to avoid the volatile relationships that are uncommonly common within tribal communities, a nasty postscript to colonization.

“She didn’t put herself in violent situations,” Gali said.

Orozco still faced struggles, however. Friends said Orozco lost the grandmother who raised her and her mother within a year of each other. She adopted a nephew from her sister, who battled addiction and homelessness. The nephew was placed in foster care following Orozco’s death, with surviving family members trying to regain custody, according to social media posts. A GoFundMe page for Orozco’s memorial expenses and her adopted son had raised nearly $33,000 toward its $75,000 goal as of November 27.

Knowledge of Orozco’s death quickly spread beyond the northwestern Arizona borders of the Hualapai Nation, a federally recognized tribe that employed Orozco as its rangeland specialist. Three days after the fatal shooting, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said on its Facebook page that it had received “a high volume of phone calls” regarding the incident and was referring further questions to Orozco’s next of kin.

Friends remembered Orozco as filled with a contagious wonder for the natural world. One told SN&R that Orozco always has a magnifying glass connected to her beaded necklace, and couldn’t walk two feet without stopping to examine the plants sprouting up around her.

A celebration of life was to be held at Indian Canyon in Hollister.

In a Facebook post, the Native American Rangelands Advisory Committee remembered Orozco as an emerging leader within the Society for Range Management.

“There are no words to describe how we felt about belonging to her,” the post read. “While we mourn her loss, please join us in celebrating her bright countenance and brave perseverance, and let us be torch-bearers for her contagious enthusiasm.”

Gali said she was helping look for a missing indigenous girl in Oakland when she learned the friend who had “done everything right” had been killed. When she spoke to SN&R, she was still coming to terms with the news.

“These were her family and friends,” Gali said of the alleged killer. “These weren’t strangers.” Ω

Help the victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise and Butte County

tH anK you to our Heroes !

Thank you to the firefighters, EMS personnel, first responders of all varieties, nurses, neighbors in Chico and Paradise, and all of the many people, businesses and organizations helping evacuees and the Butte County community during the Camp Fire.

donate to H e LP tHe V iC ti Ms

There are many worthy organizations raising money. Please donate to the organization of your choice If you’d like to “give to a fund that’s going to be in this for the duration, then the foundation is your answer.” -Alexa Benson-Valavanis, CEO of North Valley Community Foundation, as quoted in the CN&R. To donate to the NVCF, go to www.nvcf.org .

oP en your H oMe

If you  have a home that you’re willing to list for evacuees (any time through December 14), visit www.airbnb.com/welcome/evacuees/buttecounty.

My mission statement

by Foon Rhee foonr@newsreview.com

So why did I leave The Sacramento Bee, where I spent more than eight years writing editorials and columns, editing opinion articles and working with great colleagues?

As I told family, friends and colleagues, I’ve never been in the same job for that long, and I was looking for a new challenge. But I have more important reasons: I want to make sure there’s strong local news coverage. And I want to help make Sacramento a better and fairer place.

I decided the News & Review is where I can make the biggest difference. And I’m betting that a lot of people in Sacramento and beyond want a news source produced by a staff that is deeply rooted in the community and cares deeply about its future.

SN&R has a proud history and a clear mission: To speak truth to power. To give voice to the voiceless. To tell untold stories.

That isn’t changing. In the months ahead, we also expect to expand coverage of schools, faith, the arts. And we plan to add more voices with commentaries, essays and interviews. Our goal is to become an even larger presence and more prominent forum in the community.

Sacramento is much more than the capital of the most populous state in the nation. It’s not San Francisco, but it’s also not Fresno or Modesto. Sacramento is its own unique, diverse city with its own issues and priorities. It deserves to be covered that way.

SN&R has long been known as an “alternative” weekly. Today, that means something very different. In the evolving media landscape, the lines between “alternative” and

“mainstream” media have blurred. Today, the real distinction is between facts and lies, real journalism and fake news (and not the kind President Trump talks about).

There can be so much division, hate and misinformation out there, it’s just overwhelming. Some days, after the latest Trump meltdown or yet another mass shooting, it can seem like things are spinning out of control. It can be tempting to throw up our hands and retreat to our own safe places.

Here’s a more constructive response: We should focus on what we can control, on what we can do to improve this little corner of the world. In that effort, the importance of local news has never been more important—to push public officials to make wise decisions for all of us and to help people understand each other, even if we disagree.

How can you help us in that mission?

You can recommend us to your family and friends. You can support our advertisers. And if you want to make a direct contribution, you can go to independentjournalismfund.org.

If you have ideas or comments as SN&R moves forward, send me an email at foonr@newsreview.com. And, as always, thanks for reading. Ω

Foon Rhee has been a reporter for The Charlotte Observer and an editor for The News & Observer and The Boston Globe. Since 2010, he was an associate editor and editorial board member at The Sacramento Bee.

has long been known as an “alternative” weekly.

that means something very different.

At SN&R, new evolves from old

by Jeff vonKaenel jeffv@newsreview.com

This column is about the future of the News & Review. In this week’s paper, we introduce our new executive editor, former Sacramento Bee associate editor and editorial board member and Boston Globe deputy national political editor, Foon Rhee, who will apply his many years of experience to helping us figure out how SN&R should respond to the changing landscape of news media in Sacramento.

But the new evolves from the old. Nearly 30 years ago to the day, after my wife Deborah and I had worked together for eight years at the Chico News & Review (CN&R), we moved down to the capital city with our 6-month old baby, set up a little office in our dining room and began preparing for an April 1989 launch of the Sacramento News & Review.

In 1989, The Bee was dominant in the community. It was the second best daily in the state, after the Los Angeles Times, with one of the country’s best publishers, C.K. McClatchy, who led the effort to dominate the competing Sacramento Union newspaper and created a paper with an excellent liberal reputation.

The Bee had a large circulation and hundreds of reporters and editors, producing excellent state and local coverage. They were making an obscene amount of money. And they were all around us. We lived on McClatchy Way. Our son would go to McClatchy High School. We checked out books at McClatchy Library. We saw plays at Sacramento Theatre, which received considerable funding from Eleanor McClatchy. McClatchy and The Bee were everywhere.

With the daily Sacramento Union on its last legs, The Bee was inhaling almost all the newspaper oxygen, otherwise known as ad revenue. It was a fierce competitor, launching Neighbor sections to prevent smaller community newspapers from gaining ground. When Sacramento

that way for the last 29 years—1,544 issues. I am proud of what we have done. Many of our stories have had a significant impact on Sacramento. Stories such as Kevin Johnson’s Strong Mayor Campaign and our PG&E-SMUD election coverage. Coverage of Sacramento’s homeless and housing crisis, and our ongoing celebration of local artists.

it also has problems. There’s information overload, and so much of the information online is not reliable. Newspapers may not always get it right, but we intend to. Online, we go head-to-head with groups ranging from those with an underlying agenda to those whose goal is actually to spread false information.

Bee publisher Frank Whittaker heard we were coming to town, he took me out to lunch and told me he intended to put us out of business. This was the goal of their Ticket section, launched one year after our arrival.

This was the media landscape when we arrived in town. We wanted to do great journalism, and we believed our free weekly could develop an audience. We soon realized the Bee had a weakness. At the time, it was more focused on the Bay Area art scene than the developing Sacramento art scene. We were pretty excited about the idea of building up the local arts and music scene. We had a niche!

I spent the months between December and April meeting with 300 local business owners, politicians and community activists, asking them for advice and learning about Sacramento. We found office space at 20th and V streets, blocks away from The Sacramento Bee offices. We persuaded founding editor, Melinda Welsh, to join our small team—one of my best sales jobs ever. We scheduled our April launch.

The weekend that we put out news racks in preparation for our Thursday launch, C.K. McClatchy died unexpectedly of a heart attack while jogging. Our first issue came out the same day as his funeral. That morning I helped pass out newspapers and muffins from La Bou at light rail stops all over Sacramento. Later that same day, I attended C.K.’s funeral. I did not know him, but had tremendous respect for him, as a newspaper man and as a person who understood the impact that a newspaper could have on a community. That night, KCRA-TV anchor Stan Atkinson linked the two stories: the renowned Bee publisher’s funeral and the birth of a new weekly in Sacramento. It was surreal.

But the next issue was a week away and we had work to do. And it has been

We put on events. The weekly downtown summer concert series started as an SN&R SAMMIES showcase. We helped organize Second Saturday and provided the initial publicity for it. Our interfaith Call for Unity concerts raised money to build Habitat for Humanity’s homes.

Our paper over the last three decades grew in a space that was dominated by The Sacramento Bee. But this has changed. The Bee is a shadow of its former self. How can we be an alternative newspaper when there is nothing to be an alternative to?

I am not happy about this. I much prefer the days when The Bee had a $29 million editorial budget and more than 350 reporters and editors. And we had a bigger paper filled with ads from Tower Records.

But what now? What does Sacramento need? And given available resources, what can we provide?

I don’t know the answer, but perhaps our future will resemble what’s happened to CN&R. We started there as an alternative paper, but as the media market changed, our editorial coverage evolved.

CN&R now has a weekly circulation of more than 40,000 while the very weak daily paper has a weekday circulation of less than 10,000.

While a weekly can’t provide 24/7 news coverage, CN&R is an excellent weekly read, covering most significant issues, providing superb arts coverage and including a spirited community dialogue on critical issues within its pages. As a result, CN&R is now the go-to paper in Butte County.

So, is print dead? If you come by our offices on Wednesday morning and see our distribution drivers loading up their cars to deliver thousands of SN&R newspapers out to more than 300,000 readers, you might not think so.

Newspapers obviously play a different role in today’s world. The internet is a faster and cheaper delivery system. But

The second big problem with the internet is the echo chamber approach created by the likes of Google, Facebook and cable news. These outlets reinforce existing opinions instead of challenging views, leading to polarization rather than illumination.

Every media has its strengths and weaknesses. During disasters, and on election night, certainly television and the web are the way to keep up with the changing 24/7 news. But when there is no major news story, they tend to focus on the latest viral social media trend, or Donald Trump’s last tweet. I’ve never found that learning about Starbuck’s holiday paper coffee cups or the president’s views of how fires get started has provided me with a better understanding of the world.

And, after TV and the web have moved on, a weekly newspaper continues to help the reader and the community better understand the issues. Information is not the same as understanding. If you are making choices about what to do, you need more than just information.

By definition, we can only tell stories that will interest people a week in the future. That eliminates a lot of stories. Just as in music, where the silence between notes is as important as the notes themselves, much of gaining understanding is deciding what to ignore and what to pay attention to. Sometimes less is more.

The media world is very different today than it was when we put out our first issue in April of 1989. Our paper must respond to these changes. I’m looking forward to having Foon Rhee, our new editor, help us find our way. Stay tuned.

Newspapers obviously play a different role in today’s world.

Jeff vonKaenel is the president, CEO and majority owner of the News & Review newspapers in Sacramento, Chico and Reno.

For those who like to take a walk on the sweet side, desserts are a delightful way to end a meal, to celebrate an accomplishment or to simply treat oneself. Sacramento is home to some of the most favored original recipes and their popularity is measured by the residents who continue to satisfy their sweet tooth, no matter the occasion. Whether it’s a goblet’s worth of ice cream sundae from a local mom-and-pop shop or a towering slice of famous banana cream pie from a historic restaurant, Sacramento’s best desserts are plentiful and just as diverse as the city that’s served them for decades, a la mode.

SN&R’s guide to the sweet side of life

By Steph Rod R iguez stephr@newsreview.com

Desserts are more than just sweet stacks of layered cake, delicately frosted and studded with candles. In fact, the assortment of our most favored confections are often tied to some of the more significant moments in our lives. Whether it’s a classic chocolate malt shared on a first date, the aroma of spice cookies that spark memories of grandma, or the very first time a mother and child measure and sort ingredients on a flour-coated countertop, desserts evoke memories for all of us. In this issue, SN&R highlights the iconic sweet stops that have cooled us down on hot summer days or comforted us on cold

winter evenings. Our writers track down where to find authentic Middle Eastern delicacies with as much flavor as there is history, share the story behind delectable mini-cheesecakes and even indulge in the savory side of sweets that go way beyond bacon and chocolate. From stacked banana cream pies and crisp macarons, to towering strawberry sundaes and fluffy Japanese pasties, indulgence is found throughout these pages. After all, it’s the desserts that make life and the memories we hold dear all the sweeter.

A Slice

By Steph RodRiguez stephr@newsreview.com

Enough For two

Leatherby’s Family Creamery opened its doors on Arden Way in 1982, and since then the old-fashioned ice cream parlor has built a reputation known for one thing: enormous ice cream sundaes. Rita’s Strawberry Cake sundae, however, is no easy feat. Served in a glass goblet, the towering mountain of vanilla ice cream, shortcake, fresh strawberries, strawberry glaze, fresh whipped cream and a cherry on top for good measure is pure, sweet gluttony. Bring a friend. 2333 Arden Way, (916) 920-8382,  leatherbys.net

Photos by Reid FowleR

s ave room for pie

Since 1939, Frank Fat’s has fed the capital city and its residents with its original recipes for piping hot Chinese fare. Drawing politicians, state workers and the like, Frank Fat’s continues to serve its customers almost 80 years later at 8th and L streets. But there is one menu item in particular that many Sacramentans swear by—the Banana Cream Pie. It’s stacked: a buttery, flaky crust, followed by sliced bananas, rich yellow custard, yet another layer of sliced bananas and topped with a mound of fresh whipped cream. This famous pie is made from scratch daily using the same recipe that originated in the 1940s. Don’t change a classic. 806 L Street, (916) 442-7092,  frankfats.com

Come, pi Ck me up

Desserts really do come in all shapes and sizes, and there’s nothing more classic than an old-fashioned doughnut. Whether it’s an early morning pick-me-up dipped in black coffee, or a late-night excursion to this little doughnut hut in the middle of the night, Marie’s Donuts is definitely a treasured Sacramento staple. On your next visit, order the Old Fashioned: a dense, cake-y, glazed doughnut with just a hint of vanilla. It’s simply sweet just like the memories it rekindles. 2950 Freeport  Boulevard, (916) 444-5245

taste the sun

Have you ever seen a Green Tea Sunrise? Better yet, have you ever tasted one? Sacramento’s only Japanese bakery, Mahoroba, specializes in authentic pastries that come in both savory and sweet varieties. Owner Naruske Monguchi moved from Japan more than a decade ago and chose Sacramento because its spelling reminded him of the word “sakura,” which means cherry blossom in Japanese. Here, he bakes hundreds of pastries in the early morning hours, including the Green Tea Sunrise. Comparable to a Mexican pastry known as a concha for its shell-like appearance, the Green Tea Sunrise is soft, flaky and buttery like a croissant topped with a sweet and crunchy icing made from Japanese green tea that gives this local favorite it’s unique look and earthy flavor. 4900 Freeport  Boulevard, (916) 454-1879

s no W daze

In a city filled with old-school desserts, there’s always room for the next wave of inventive sweets. Brothers Leo and Paolo Angelo San Luis are the founders of Vampire Penguin, a shaved ice dessert shop that now has more than 13 locations with plans for Davis and Berkeley in the near future. Unlike Hawaiian shaved ice, Vampire Penguin offers varieties of light and fluffy “shaved snow” in chocolate, strawberry, mango, cookies & cream, and taro flavors sprinkled with a smorgasbord of toppings like drizzles of condensed milk and caramel sauce, graham cracker and Oreo cookie crumbles, fresh fruit and more. 6821 Stockton Boulevard, Suite 110,   (916) 421-1304, vampirepenguin.com

Worth a toast

There’s nothing more elegant in appearance than a Champagne Cake from Freeport Bakery. This iconic bakery has its stamp on a number of favored desserts in the Farm-to-Fork capital: Fruit Basket Cakes, Lemon Coolers and Tiramisu. Still, the layers of golden buttermilk cake doused in a little champagne and layered with a sweet, strawberry custard mousse is to die for. After it’s frosted in a light pink buttercream, it’s finished with white chocolate shavings and sliced strawberries. Each bite is sweetly satisfying with spongy, creamy moments and the hint of bubbly makes this dessert a real toast of the town. 2966 Freeport Boulevard, (916) 442-4256,  freeportbakery.com.

Just a bite

Sacramento is home to a variety of authentic bakeries from a diverse array of cultures, and ABC Bakery is one spot that’s divvied up Hong Kong-style Egg Tarts for decades. Known for its dim sum, ABC Bakery is also popular for these individual-sized, mini desserts that sell out daily. Keep in mind, desserts are a nice way to end a hearty meal, but it doesn’t always have to be mounds of ice cream or thick slices of pie. In fact, bite-sized desserts can be just as satisfying. 1309 Florin Road,  Suite F, (916) 421-4259

continued on page 16

A  sampling of Sacramento’s most popular desserts of sacramento

continued from page 15

by Rachel l eib R ock

Icons of sweet

In the last decade or so, Sacramento has evolved into a foodie town with adventurous chefs and daring cuisines galore. Foodie-centric desserts, of course, are a big thing, too, and around here that usually means something seasonal and Farm-to-Fork. That’s a good thing, obviously, but what of comfort treats? It’s easy for some of this town’s sweet standbys to get overlooked in the rush to gush over trendy concoctions. Not anymore: SN&R has whipped up this list of five of the area’s most iconic dessert stops. Some have been open for at least a quarter decade, but regardless of their timeline all have proven their enduring popularity.

Gunthe R’s Ice cReam

Opened in 1940, there’s a reason you’ll often find a line wrapped around Gunther’s Ice Cream. From its whimsical neon Jugglin’ Joe sign to its hand-operated “Batch Freezer Method,” Gunther’s virtually defines Sacramento ice cream. Try old favorites such as Butter Brickle, Pecan Praline or the superbly simple French Vanilla, or get a little extra with the likes of Thai Tea or Coconut Pineapple. Gunther’s also offers sundaes, milkshakes, freezes, and Hawaiian shaved ices and, if you’re craving a savory base upon which to build, there are more than a dozen sandwiches from which to choose.

2801 Franklin Boulevard, (916) 457-6646, gunthers icecream. com.

t owe R c afe

Tower Cafe, open since 1990, is probably better known for its eclectic, global cuisine-inspired menu, but it’s also a sweets haven. Its dessert display, tucked in the back behind an array of leafy potted plants and trees, teems with an array of delectable treats. There are towering cakes, fruit-studded tarts, creamy custards and so, so much more. Overwhelmed? The German Chocolate Cake, Crème Brûlée and Black Bottom Cupcakes are menu mainstays for a reason. And, with the Tower Theatre as its neighbor, this is the logical post-movie stop for treats and good conversation. 1518 Broadway, (916) 441-0222, towercafe.com.

Sacramento’s seminal dessert destinations

about Sacramento’s dessert landscape. It’s essentially so iconic that it’s taken for granted. Rick’s originally opened in 1986 at 24th and K Streets; in 2014 it relocated one block on J Street. Whatever its location, Rick’s has spent 30-plus years crafting its reputation as a go-to for a scrumptious array. There are the usual cakes and pies, as well an impressive menu of cheesecakes and pastries, tortes and tarts. The abundance of choice coupled with Rick’s retro ’50s vibe makes for a delightful visit. Bonus, it’s open until 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. 2401 J Street, (916) 444-0969, ricksdessertdiner.com

stelle’s Bake Ry & Pât I sseRI e

A relative dessert newcomer, Estelle’s Bakery & Pâtisserie opened in 2011 and has been charming Sacramentans ever since with its Instagramworthy sweets. The bakery, which recently moved out of its original downtown spot to expand into two new locations, sells a gorgeous array of cakes, tarts, petit fours and macarons. Also on the menu: croissants, scones, muffins and, even, doughnuts. Make the dessert experience even more magical by booking a tea party. David J. Stern Walk, Suite 100 and 2530 Arden Way, (916) 551-1500, estellebakery.com

fRee PoRt Bake Ry

Long before Freeport Bakery became social media famous for its LGBTQfriendly “Ken Doll” cake, it has ruled hearts (and stomachs) for its selection of cakes, pies, cookies and more. Under the same ownership since 1987, the tiny bakery is beloved for its well-stocked grab-and-go case. Still, don’t miss a chance to order a custom cake. Be it a graduation, wedding, anniversary or other event, Freeport’s made-to-order confections liven up any celebration. The Fruit Basket Cake (buttermilk cake layered with whipped cream, strawberries and banana) and Vegan Cake (an impossibly rich chocolate and fudge delight) are local treasures. 2966 Freeport Boulevard, (916) 442-4256, freeportbakery.com.

Rick’s Dessert Diner has its own delicious version of a Fruit basket cake (pictured left).

a Gunther’s 50/50 Fruit Freeze is a staple menu item at the historic ice cream parlor that wedges vanilla ice cream between fruity flavors.

Photos by Reid Fowle R

Beyond baklava

story and photo by Shoka

Dazzling chickpea cookies, decadent Turkish delights, the sweet-sour joyride of faloodeh: Middle Eastern desserts are full of history and flavor discoveries—and they’re vegan.

They look like massive inverted ice cream cones in the middle of the desert. And inside these ancient Persian earthen structures, built around 400 B.C., is dessert. The structures, called yakhchals, were the analog precursor to electric refrigerators, and the frozen dessert stored inside was another ancient Persian invention: faloodeh, the precursor to ice cream. And the (sour) cherry (syrup) on top? It’s totally vegan. It turns out, there are actually many sweets from the Middle East of Asia that are vegan. The flavors and textures may be “adventurous” to uninitiated palates, but open minds and open mouths will find themselves on a delicious trip. Since these desserts can be purchased at international markets, one just needs to know which ones to look for.

Probably the most well-known Middle Eastern sweets are baklava and Turkish delight. A lot of baklava—layers of crispy phyllo dough with cinnamonspiced ground walnuts and pistachios drenched in sugar syrup—is made with butter and honey, but not Diamond Bakery’s; it uses vegetable oil and sugar. Made in Fremont, owner Adel Mougharbel says it sells thousands of units of baklava every week. His family started the business in 1986 when they immigrated to the United States from Lebanon, but the history of baklava may go as far back as 200 B.C.

Less ancient is Turkish delight. Lore has it that it originated in Anatolia in the 18th century when a sultan wanted a new sweet to impress a lady he was sweet on. The delightful treat we have now comes in many variations, but in general, it’s a bite-size jellylike cube made of cornstarch, not gelatin, flavored with rose water, with bits of pistachio, covered in powdered sugar. Besides being vegan, it’s wheatless.

Another celiac-safe sweet is noon nokhodchi, or chickpea cookies, made of roasted chickpea flour and cardamom. These also originate from Iran and are usually an inch in size and clover-shaped. These golden cookies are mouth gold: Despite being delicately powdery, they are rich and melt in your mouth. A few bakeries make these, but don’t mess with any other than B.B. Sweet Factory’s. Made in Pomona, B.B. makes the smoothest, creamiest version.

Then there is the cotton candy. Called in Turkish and pashmak in Farsi, it translates to a different fiber: wool. The dense, decadent stretched-sugar treat is often in hairy, vanilla ivory clumps—that’s right, no crazy

All of these desserts are meant to be consumed with black tea—the tannic bitterness and sugar balance each other out—except for the frozen dessert mentioned, faloodeh. Faloodeh is an icy rose-water sorbet with white vermicelli rice noodles that is doused with lemon juice or sour cherry syrup. “It’s older than ice cream,” says Mitra Golnazar, owner of Gol Ice Cream. Her San Ramon-based company has been making the frozen treat since 1947 when her father, Hussein Golnazar, founded Saffron Ice Cream in Iran. The family brought the business to the United States in 2006. It’s sweet, tart and refreshing, and Golnazar assured, “It is 100 percent vegan.” But please eat it from a bowl, not an ice cream cone. Ω

All of these desserts are carried at Mediterranean Market, 1547 Fulton Avenue, Suite B; (916) 972-1237.

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continued from page 17

Global sugarrush

Indulge (or avoid) these imported junk foods

You can be useless and make money on YouTube. Play video games. Shop for groceries. Take a nap. Silly videos rack views.

I appreciate one related subgenre, where popular, melodramatic personalities including Alonzo Lerone eat candies from other countries and dish an honest, ethnocentric opinion of the taste. It’s cultural exploration lite. You discover, vicariously, what citizens in other hemispheres crave.

So I ventured to the Asian and European candy aisles at KP International Market in Rancho Cordova (10971 Olson Drive), where rows were stacked with wafer boxes and chocolates wrapped in cartoons of overjoyed cows which, apparently, is a global symbol for dairy treats.

Come, get YouTube useless with me. Let’s discover some of the world’s junk food:

supeR leMon

It’s got sensational packaging: A newspaper headline cries “New Release!!” A comic-book woman pops a yellow star in her mouth and exclaims, “Oh! Juicy!” A scientific diagram outlines the flavor comet’s three distinct layers of puckery. Is this Japanese lemon drop dangerously sour, or is it fake news? Verdict: Chew it immediately. It’s coat of lemon anthrax will terrorize your mouth. How is this different from biting on a lemon slice? Good question.

Russian ChoColate elite

Nothing says Russian chocolate better than a snow-covered statue of Peter The Great. The “Bronze Horseman” graces this candy bar, implying royal sensibilities, which means bitter, dark chocolate. Can I hang with the oligarchs and their 70-percent cacao? Verdict: This chocolate has pores! Surface-of-the-moon air bubbles intend to make the flavor richer and more refined. But this bar of fragile, crumby meteorite doesn’t cut it. Lick a penny if you want this brand of bitter. For an equally restrained flavor, chew on brick.

Donan FuRano Melon CaRaMel

More weird Japanese packaging. This box has a flatulent child, lightning, a ball of yarn, champagne, a cat. Does it make sense when you eat it? Verdict: The two players oddly co-exist. If you want melon, caramel adds a sugary kick. If you crave caramel, that flavor is subdued by the fruit.

ChoCo pie

You’ve heard about Orion Choco Pies through international news. In 2014, 10,000 of them were launched via balloons into North Korea. A moon pie, the South Korean marshmallow biscuit is a banned capitalist symbol in the North. Pyongyang factories once paid workers Choco Pies in lieu of raises, and it sold as an inflated black market item before the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea manufactured its own knock-off. Verdict: The chocolate shell mirrors Hostess cakes, only softer. The marshmallow center submits like an orthopedic pillow. So many crumbs! I wouldn’t take them over a pay raise (we can talk about Almond Joys), but they’re quite good!

ali baba

Don’t know why these coconut sprinkled chocolate wafers from Palestine are named after the protagonist from the Arabian Nights folk-tale. I’ll surmise: Themes of greed and glutton weave throughout Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. The humble woodworker even loses a family member to overindulgence: When his brother Cassim infiltrates the thieves’ secret cave of treasure (“Open sesame!”), he gets so caught up in gold and jewels that he forgets the password to escape, and is murdered. Hey, it’s a dessert. A temptation story makes a lot sense. Verdict: Your nose will taste it before your tongue does. The coconut scent foreshadows an intense four-layer mixture of coco-crunch, wafer crunch, and soft chocolate inside and out. What’s the password again?

CaRaMel CoRns peanuts snaCk

Back in the Asian candy aisle, children were possessed by this old-west-styled, Korean snack bag. A gunfight ensues between two peanut cowboys around a photo of fluffy corn bits. I root for the sly, mustached villain. But would I root for this treat?

Verdict: Close your eyes. Imagine Cracker Jacks. Caramel popcorn with the occasional peanut. Except in airy, cereal corn form. Partner, where I’m from, we call that a good chew!

itesized confections

by John Flynn

Cayla Jordan’s cheesecakes are a sweet success

Cayla Jordan is Sacramento’s cheesecake queen. After launching a pop-up shop on Mother’s Day last year, where she sold her bite-sized sweets, she opened three brick-and-mortar locations, including one on R Street across from the Warehouse Artist Lofts and another that opened two weeks ago in the Westfield Galleria at Roseville for the holiday season.

When she was 4 years old, Jodan began baking with her mother, an activity the two enjoyed together. This pastime morphed into an obsession, as Jordan says she works tirelessly every day, oftentimes from sunup to the late-night hours, to craft the Instagram-ready mini-cheesecakes that are the center of her fast-growing dessert empire, Creamy’s.

“I just like little baby things,” Jordan says of her cheesecakes baked in mini-muffin pans.

“Like, they’re so cute. Plus, cheesecake is such a dense and rich dessert that you don’t really need a lot.”

Each month, Jordan debuts a new flavor of cheesecake such as Circus Animal Cookie and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. These flavor experiments complement her far-and-away bestseller: the Chocolate Chip Cookie Cheesecake with an Oreo crust and a chocolate chip cookie topper.

A relentless taste-tester, Jordan workshops four flavors each month before choosing one winner. For November, it’s Hot Cocoa topped with what she calls “unicorn sprinkles.” She’ll pair the seasonal cheesecake bite with cups of hot cocoa and serve them out of a small shop on wheels next to downtown Sacramento’s pop-up ice rink for the entirety of the season.

Another standout dessert innovation from Jordan is the substitution of frozen cheesecake

similar to ice cream, but texturally, cheesecake

making it the perfect vessel for kids and even

Follow Cayla Jordan on Instagram @creamysbycaylajordan and keep up with her vlog on YouTube: Cayla Jordan TV.

Cayla Jordan’s mini cheesecakes will put a smile on your face and a twinkle in your eye.

continued from page 19

of

&

by Amy Bee

salty saccharine

The cashier at 85°C Bakery in South Sacramento didn’t believe what I wanted existed until another cashier pointed toward a darkened corner. “Over there,” she said. In a lone case sat what I had come to see and eat—Pork Sung Half Moon. I thanked the cashier, scurried to the privacy of my car and stared at the daunting half-moon of vanilla sponge cake covered in copious amounts of dried shredded pork. I scrunched my face and took a giant bite. Yup, that’s pork. And, yup, that’s definitely vanilla cream. Was it delicious? Well ... yes. People are eating it. But I will caution: It’s not for the savorysweet novice.

From bacon, beer and potato chip cookie bars to “Everything Bagel” flavored ice cream, savory-sweet desserts are capturing the attention of trend-conscious foodies and permitting chefs to flex creative muscles with fun concoctions that puzzle and delight. Whether it’s merely tempering the sweetness of ice cream with bits of basil, frying goat cheese and drizzling it with honey—or even more gutsy—sponge cake topped with shredded pork, people are ready to expand their conceptions of what defines dessert.

Ready to explore Sacramento’s savory-sweet desserts? Here’s a sampling to get you started:

The r ind

Cheeseboards are a favored item as a good starter for those new to exploring savorysweet desserts. The Rind offers a delicious Chocolate & Cheese Board that pairs Ginger Elizabeth bonbons with a variety of cheese. Try the dark chocolate truffle with aged gouda for nutty-sweet overtones, or with blue cheese for a friendly version of salty-sweet. 1801 L Street, Suite 40, (916) 441-7463, therindsacramento.com.

p izza roCk

When customers ask for the “dessert pizza” at Pizza Rock, staff know it’s the Cal Italia they’re after. Start with sweet fig preserves and add asiago, gorgonzola, Prosciutto di Parma and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It’s topped with a tangy-sweet balsamic reduction. No sauce allowed on this gooey, cheesy, sweetie-pie.

1020 K Street, (916) 737-5777, pizzarocksacramento.com.

Magpie Café

Magpie Café offers a rich, Chocolate Avocado Mousse sprinkled with cinnamon and sea salt. Avocados and chocolate are whipped together into a creamy, thick consistency which starts sweet enough but careens into a hearty, buttery mouthfeel. Cinnamon restrains any potential avocado overload, while sea salt flakes add one last flavor zap that cleanses the palate just in time for the next chocolaty spoonful.

1601 16th Street, (916) 452-7594, magpiecafe.com.

The Waffle e xperien Ce

The Strawberry Fields at The Waffle Experience is full of contradicting sensations. A lardon-studded herb waffle is slathered with a sugary strawberry crème cheese. Then, it’s piled with bitter arugula, fresh strawberries and cherrywood-smoked bacon tossed with blue cheese crumbles, candied almonds and a balsamic drizzle. Flavors pingpong from hearty to sugary and keep taste buds on-their-toes excited.

4391 Gateway Park Boulevard, Suite 650, (916) 285-0562 thewaffleexperience.com.

Mulvaney’s B& l

As zesty fall flavors take center stage, olive oil is the star in the Rosemary Olive Oil Cake served at Mulvaney’s B&L. Flecked with fresh rosemary and coated in a custard-like mandarin curd, this simple cake delivers sophisticated flavors. A dollop of mascarpone whipped with mandarin plays sidekick, enhancing the floral aromatics and further elevating the dessert into superior savorysweet status.

1215 19th Street, (916) 441-1771 mulvaneysbl.com.

Takes

by ST eph Rod R iguez

the cake

Explore the craft and deliciousness of Maria Tulchevska’s Art Dessert creations

The contents of one of Maria Tulchevska’s white pastry boxes are anything but vanilla. Her specialty: immaculately decorated petite mousse cakes in vibrant colors of yellow, pink and varied shades of purple, all crafted under the name Art Dessert.

The attention to detail Tulchevska devotes to her desserts is equal parts artistic and whimsical. Presented on gold pastry board, each round cake showcases the complexities of her pastry talent.

One, a bright yellow dome, bears tiny grooves comparable to the impressions left in a mini Zen garden. Another, a glossy, hot pink, heart-shaped cake, is so sleek it reflects sunlight. But, it’s the geometric-shaped cakes in the box with an array of angles and indentations that truly illustrate the stunning touches Tulchevska bakes into all of her sweets.

“The first time when you see it you say,

‘Oh, wow! It’s beautiful,’ and you feel satisfaction that you’ve created all these details,” Tulchevska says of her creations. “But the most important thing is when you taste it for the first time.”

A wife, mother of twins and a former auditor in the Ukraine, Tulchevska and her family moved to California four years ago after her husband accepted a new job opportunity here. After working in a world full of numbers, she yearned for a creative outlet and says she was influenced by the likes of pastry chef Dinara Kasko, who’s known for her use of 3D printers to make elaborate silicon molds for cakes.

Tulchevska’s cake fillings, on the other hand, are inspired by French pastry chef Cédric Grolet, known for works that focus on fruit and are oftentimes shaped like the very fruit from which they’re made.

A slice down the center of one of Tulchevska’s cakes reveals the perfect ratio of mousse, fruit-filling and spongecake. The yellow dome-shaped cake is really a tempered white chocolate shell followed by a creamy passion fruit

Rachel Mayfield

For my third birthday, we had muffins for dessert. Legend has it, our family holds a tradition of serving muffins on every child’s third birthday—at least that’s how a mystifying caption beneath a photo of myself in an early scrapbook explains it.

Except, this isn’t exactly true. What really happened was this: My older brother asked for muffins when he turned three, and since I copied everything he did, I asked for the same on that birthday.

I didn’t actually want muffins, however. It was less a time-honored tradition and more a case of confusing muffins for cupcakes. (They are the same shape!) I hadn’t yet put it together that the frosting-topped treat and the glorified breakfast bread were two different things. One was definitely dessert and the other, it seemed, up for debate. Today I still have a hard time trusting either muffins or cupcakes.

My experience with such dessert memories is hardly unique. A meal’s final course can be rich with a tradition and history that varies from culture to culture. Dessert is a treat that pops up all across the globe in a variety of unique and meaningful ways. Fly on over to Italy, where Christmas is almost synonymous with panettone, a popular bread studded with raisins and candied fruits. Or there’s China, where

mousse, a sweet, but delicate mango filling with tender pieces of fruit, a little passion fruit puree and a fluffy spongecake finished with a bit of white chocolate.

The glossy, heart-shaped cake is filled with dark chocolate mousse made from cherry, walnut and brandy, followed by a cherry-walnut sponge. Its mouthfeel hits on all the texture notes: silky glaze, smooth mousse, crunchy walnuts and tender cherries.

Tulchevska says these artfully crafted desserts are unique to the United States because she’s yet to see Americans latch on to the trend as they did with the macaron or the cronut a few years ago.

“It’s just pure satisfaction when you create something and you can see the result. I just wanted to create something. To make something that I can see and that I can feel,” Tulchevska says. “Here in America, it’s just started. It’s like a fashion. They still don’t know that this exists.”

Sweet

Sweet traditions

Why we savor our family dessert customs

folks eat tangyuan—sugary rice dumplings with fillings such as bean paste or sesame seeds. Often served during festivals and family ceremonies, their round shape symbolize unity and togetherness. Pretty cool. This is, of course, is just a small sample. There’s a whole world of desserts and cultural traditions out there to recognize, explore and celebrate, some of which can be found within our own lives.

For many, desserts are attached to family traditions and cultural customs—birthdays, holidays, weddings, funerals. They’re intrinsically tied to the people we share them with, the memories we create and the feelings they evoke. Maybe you have fond memories of visiting Grandma and eating her nutty holiday fudge,

though you always picked out the nuts because, “ew, nuts!” Or maybe there was a time when you tried making homemade ice cream for your family, only to end up with a miserable, soupy mess. Now, whenever you get together and eat sundaes, you all can’t help but laugh at your failed, but well-meaning attempt.

Most of us can look to some memory or tradition unique to our own family experience, and that’s what makes dessert all the more special.

Aside from muffins, my family has another tradition: A birthday dessert my mom sometimes prepared. I still think of it often. Clipped from a

above: a 3-year-old Rachel Mayfield with her birthday muffin. left: The original recipe for a childhood favorite.

women’s magazine circa 1979, for “Layered for honey graham pudding, Cool Whip and cherry pie filling. While it was clearly created to sell Jell-O brand pudding, that didn’t detract from the fact that it was utterly delicious. My mom used chocolate graham crackers because, according

to her, “chocolate is better.” It was a perfect alteration that transformed the recipe into a family tradition. I loved making it with her. Breaking up graham crackers, blending pudding with Cool Whip, my mom watching carefully to make sure I spread the pudding mixture equally to cover every corner of the pan. After, we poured the canned cherries on top as the final touch. It was always fun sharing this treat with friends who’d never tasted it before. Suspicious at first, they were usually won over by the first two bites. It didn’t really matter what it looked like, it was the flavor profile (an overwhelming amount of processed sugary sweetness) that mattered. And, it’s one of those dishes that, when I eat it now, reminds me of those times spent in the kitchen bonding with my mom.

Next time you bring out your favorite dessert, take some time to reflect on what it means to you. Or, if nothing strikes a chord, consider forming new traditions of your own. All it takes is a little imagination and a room full of hungry people, eager to share your new dessert experiment and form lifelong memories.

See Maria Tulchevska’s beautiful desserts at facebook.com/SacArtDessert.

artfully created, Maria Tulchevska’s petite mousse cakes taste just as good as they look.

ThaT Guy EyEwEar

acramento | 916-226-0257

give the gift of a new outlook with an updated “eyedrobe” from that guy eyewear! with its unique and ever-changing frames — including vintage — there’s always something new to see, such as brands and models like Michel Atlan Vintage Edition Aristide ($195) and Jonathan Cate Hotsy Totsy ($250)

Blumoon Books & Vinyl

4128 el camino ave., #6 Sacramento

1-800-709-9461 www. blumoonbook S -vinyl.com

Shake off suburban ennui with a hardback copy of “The Portable Jack Kerouac” ($9.50). Featuring autobiographical insight into the mind of american novelist, poet and father of the beat Generation this posthumously published book goes beyond “on the road,” and includes novel excerpts, poetry and essays.

MediuMrare / kicksville a vinyl & vintage collective

1104 r st. #140, s acramento | 916-706-0536 | 916-442-5344

www.digmusic.com | www.kicksvilleshop.com

step back in time at mediumrare/kicksville located in wal public market and pick up an original copy of The Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Thee Mighty Caesars on 45. whether you’re into Jazz, Blues, garage, metal or rock, you can find it among the thousands of lps and 45s they have in stock, along with a cool vintage portable record player to play it on!

incredible Pets

Sacramento, auburn, carmichael, graSS valley and ro S eville www.incredpet S .com

the adage “it’s better to give than receive” is never more true than while watching your pup tear open their presents with squeaky gusto! leave them a Go Dog Chew Guard Flying Pig ($12.99) or Mr. Marvin Squeak & Play ($8.99) under the tree and keep them happily occupied while you watch the game.

blue diamond almonds nut & Gift shop

701 C St., Sa C ramento 916-446-8438

www.bluediamond. C om

Have your almonds holiday style with Blue Diamond’s Santa Pants ($39.95), available for a limited time only! each “pair” comes filled with yogurtcovered and milk-chocolatecovered almonds, Jordan almonds and almond roca, as well as cans of roasted Salted and Smokehouse almonds.

Kamp-Rite

400 14th Ave., S A cr A mento | 1-800-709-9905 www.k A mprite.com

camp in comfort with an Oversize Single Tri-fold Tent Cot ($219.99) from kamp-rite. it sets up easily in minutes, comes with a waterproof kamp-rite rain Fly and carry Bag, and can be converted into a lounge chair or standard cot.

mention this ad and save $50 off this item until December 23 (in store only)

by AArO n C A rne S

The California Automobile Museum does its best impression of a dimly lit, prohibitionera nightclub. People are dressed in snappy suits and colorful dresses. The bartender pours copious drinks for thirsty patrons while the evening’s dancers stroll through the crowd.

On stage, three women do a peculiar routine to No Doubt’s “Spiderwebs.” Two of them take turns lip-syncing and interjecting burlesque dance moves. The third enters in a semi-scary spider outfit. A fight ensues with tossed oranges (an homage to the song’s famous ’90s music video) and silly string retaliation. It manages to be weird, sexy and really creative.

It’s one routine of many that night, on September 29, the premiere pop-up event for The Siren. The imagination was consistent throughout each performance. There are many more Siren pop-ups on the way, including one at The Comedy Spot on November 30, called 3-2-1… Sizzle, where burlesque will inspire improvised comedy.

At the front of the show, Jay Siren, the festivities’ figurehead, came onstage. She explained that the event was about more than just a single night of entertainment that included burlesque, comedy, music and performance art.

“I’m here to share a vision with you of unifying Sacramento’s alternative arts scene,” she told the crowd. “Being here tonight is the only thing that gives this a chance to scale and fly.”

She’s talking about opening an actual venue called The Siren, along with her business partner Jay Sales, that would not only fill a midsized venue void in Sacramento (500-600 capacity), but would focus on art forms that don’t have much of a home in town: burlesque, carnival acts, magic, drag, variety.

Music and comedy will play a role, but Siren’s really concerned with giving a larger space to alternative artists who are struggling to find a consistent audience.

“Sacramento touts the claim of being a worldclass city. You look at other great cities as examples. That unique, authentic embraced local arts scene is there,” Siren tells SN&R. “We have pieces of that everywhere, but there hasn’t been that unifying force to bring it all together. The heart of The Siren project lies in the idea that by mobilizing our greater artistic community and encouraging everyone to scale together, we can achieve dazzling, sustainable results.”

Siren has been a part of Sacramento’s art scene since 2008. During that time, she’s led the Sizzling Siren Burlesque Experience, a troupe she created after moving to Sacramento in 2007. That night, many of the dancers from the troupe, as well as from the Darling Clementines and artists from other non-burlesque scenes, came out and

did individual and/or collaborative pieces. Burlesque was the primary focus, but overall it was a diverse night of entertainment. This premiere pop-up served two purposes. It gave folks a sneak peak of what The Siren venue might be like and how it could provide Sacramento a larger, more consistent stage for the alternative artists who are already here, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to perform for people. Siren hopes it will open sometime next year. It also gives people a chance to get involved on the ground level.

Pop-ups will continue in random locations, as well as a regular spot at The Sophia every third Saturday.

“This isn’t New York City, this isn’t even San Francisco. Sacramento is a unique and special place,” Siren says.

“One thing that will be a constant in all of the events is an element of direct audience engagement. I think everybody in that room walked away understanding that something is happening. If they come back to the next event, and they talked to a friend about it and bring them to the next show, then we’re winning.” Ω

If The Siren graduates from pop-up show to midsize venue, Sacramento’s alternative arts could finally have a  home

“By mobilizing our greater artistic community and encouraging everyone to scale together, we can achieve dazzling, sustainable results.”

Jay Siren co-founder, The Siren

Sac artists like Deaja Girl On Fire don’t offer your typical performance: She mixes fire manipulation, acrobatics and burlesque.

Jay Siren, a burlesque dancer herself, wants to bring the city’s variety acts together. Check out the Siren’s next pop-up show, 3-2-1...SIZZLE!, Friday, November 30, at The Comedy Spot downtown. It includes improv comedy mixed with burlesque performances. $20 cover. Shows at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. 1050 20th Street, Suite 130. For more info, visit thesirenevents.com.

Losing love

now playing

5Steel Magnolias

Sacramento Theatre Company’s production of Steel Magnolias is like comfort food with top-notch ingredients. The staging is in STC’s smaller venue, a wise choice since it provides an intimacy that’s needed. There’s nothing groundbreaking in the play, rather it’s the simple stories of women who have found friendship and family in each other. Thu 7pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 2pm & 7pm, Wed 7pm. Through 12/9; $15-$38; Sacramento Theatre Company, Pollock Stage, 1419 H St., (916) 4436722, sactheatre.org. P.R.

1

Visitors

thu 8pm, fri 8pm, sat 8pm, sun 2pm, 12/9. through 12/15; $12-$18; Big idea theatre, 1616 Del Paso Boulevard; (916) 960-3036; bigideatheatre.org.

In a remote English farmhouse, a husband and his wife sit side-by-side, trading an easy banter and sweet wit honed over 40 years of marriage. But as the conversations continue over the course of days, it becomes evident that the wife’s mind is slowly slip-sliding away while her husband desperately tries to hold onto their lives and his love.

Visitors by playwright Barney Norris is a heartaching and heartwarming story of how a family tries to cope with dawning dementia and all the decisions that swirl around the tragic disease. Through the sharp humor and tragic truths of the script and the unflinching performances by Big Idea Theatre’s four-person cast, this production is as uplifting as it is sentimental and softly sad.

The story revolves around farmer Arthur and his wife Edie, but it also involves a young caretaker, Kate, hired by son Stephen who lives too far away for day-to-day care of his parents.

Adrienne Sher and Michael O’Sullivan are perfectly in sync as the two main characters, each giving strong individual performances, as well as synchronized interplays as long-wedded partners.

Kaley Saari brings a spunky vitality as the young caretaker Kate, and Brent Randolf carefully balances the conflicting emotions of son Stephen. Directors Russell Dow and Liz Frederick orchestrate not only the right tone throughout, they also provide an added sweetness by making the scene changes a natural part of the story.

Splendid fun

If you enjoyed the MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis, you’ll love the Woodland Opera House stage version. This production is crisply directed by Rodger McDonald, beautifully costumed by Denise Miles, vibrantly choreographed by Darryl StrohlDeHerrera and topped with a first-rate cast.

The book by Hugh Wheeler differs slightly from the movie, giving daughter Esther (the Judy Garland character) a smaller role and the rest of the family larger roles, but it all works as we follow the Smith family in St. Louis throughout the year leading up to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition.

Kirsten Myers, as Esther, has a warm and mellow voice, splendidly giving life to the young girl in love with the boy next door, John Truitt, played by Skyler King. Jori Gonzales is Esther’s older sister Rose, while young Lilac Buckser is irresistible as the mischievous Tootie.

Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, who wrote wonderful songs for the movie such as “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” composed 10 additional songs for the stage, including “Touch of the Irish,” a fun chance for the housekeeper Katie (Charlotte French) to shine.

This is a lovely production, and anyone who liked the movie will thoroughly enjoy it. Anyone who has not seen the movie will simply enjoy the story as it unfolds (and will likely join in the “Meet Me in St. Louis” sing-along at the end!)

—Bev Syke S

Meet Me in st. Louis: fri 7:30pm, sat 7:30pm, sun 2pm; through 12/16; $7-$25; Woodland opera house, 340 2nd street in Woodland; (530) 666-9617; woodlandoperahouse.org.

4The Legend of Georgia McBride

An Elvis impersonator in a dinky Florida bar loses his job to a drag queen show in Matthew Lopez’s sweetly humorous—if somewhat sentimental comedy. Jon Kovach is remarkable as Casey, the King-turned queen—but Cameron Folmar, Kevin Kantor, Danielle Mone Truitt and Dave Pierini are all excellent. Jerry Montoya directs. Thu 8pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 5pm & 9pm, 6:30pm Tue, 2pm & 6:30pm Wed. Through 12/9; $28-$47; B Street Theatre at the Sofia, 2700 Capitol Ave., (916) 443-5300, bstreettheatre.org. J.C.

short reviews by Patti roberts and Jim carnes. see the “on stage” section of the calendar on page 31 for more live performances.

fouL 2 fair 3 GooD 4

WeLL-Done 5 suBLiMe–Don’t Miss

Does sacramento state have talent? Well, they’re sending their best onstage to find out.

Stingers and singers

If you could go back to college for one night, wouldn’t you get yourself onstage to show off your eerily good impersonation of character actor Willem Dafoe? Well, if that’s not your dream, you can live vicariously by attending the inaugural year of Sac State’s Got Talent. Two months have passed since auditions took place, and it’s nearly time for a live display of skills from 28 different student acts, each vying for audience applause. This event, which is free and open to the public, features dancing, singing, music, poetry and more. Come see what chops Sacramento’s newest generation of scholars has on the stage. Thu 7pm, 11/29. No cover; University Union Ballroom, 6000 J Street, (916) 278-6997, theuniversityunion.com/unique.

—Maxfield Morri S

Photo courtesy of y arcenia Garcia

B y Patti Robe R ts

edie and arthur, played by adrienne sher and Michael o’sullivan, embrace in one emotional moment out of many.

Photo courtesy of Devin c ook

Molding gloves

2Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald

Why can’t J.K. Rowling just take her billions, buy an island somewhere and retire? Must she keep writing? She has forgotten (or never understood) that what made the Harry Potter books great wasn’t all the magic or monsters or Voldemort, it was Harry and Hermione and Ron. Her script here is the worst thing she’s ever written—incomprehensible if you haven’t seen Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (or even if you have), saddling the actors with endless pages of indigestible exposition, an inert, lifeless setup for the next movie (with, God help us, two more scheduled after that). As if the stagnant story weren’t bad enough, the series is burdened with the reptilian presence of Eddie Redmayne as its so-called hero; he’s like one of his own fantastic beasts, and a poor substitute for Daniel Radcliffe. J.L.

2The Front Runner

Creed ii

In his 2015 film Creed, Ryan Coogler refurbished the Rocky franchise in much the same way that J.J. Abrams reinvigorated Star Wars later that year with The Force Awakens. He gave the moth-eaten boxing franchise a youthful energy and a new cultural expansiveness while loyally adhering to a familiar formula. It wasn’t profound stuff, mostly amounting to nonstop pastiche and callback, but it was effective franchise management, and the Rocky-verse felt fresh for the first time in decades.

It offered a new take on an old thing, but the inevitable sequel Creed II offers an old take on an old thing. Coogler has since elected to spend his prime making Marvel product, and so the franchise has been turned over to 30-year-old director Steven Caple Jr., who brings nothing particularly fresh or original to the table. Even Michael B. Jordan already seems bored with the role of boxer Adonis Creed, who lost a light heavyweight title fight at the end of Creed but wins the heavyweight belt in the opening scenes of Creed II

My major problem with Coogler’s Creed is that the film created compelling new characters in Adonis and his musician girlfriend Bianca (Tessa Thompson), but kept turning the focus back to franchise figurehead Rocky Balboa, the character created and played by Sylvester Stallone. If there was any hope that Stallone would cede the spotlight to the next generation in this sequel, his eighth onscreen turn as the Philadelphia palooka turned heavyweight champ and Communist scourge, it gets dashed quick.

We are not two minutes into Creed II before Rocky begins the first of many long-winded life

by Daniel Barnes

lesson speeches, and the film never stops obsessing over Balboa from there. I know the “Where’s Poochie?” comparison is a critical cliche by now, but almost any time that Rocky is not onscreen, someone in the scene asks about Rocky. Ironically, most of Creed II deals with Adonis’ concerns that he will never escape the shadow of his famous father, but he’s clearly worried about the wrong person’s shadow.

Even the plot of Creed II is recycled from 1985’s Rocky IV, as defeated Russian contender Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) emerges from decades in exile with a vengeance-minded son named Viktor (Florian Munteanu). Ivan killed Apollo Creed in the ring in Rocky IV but was defeated by Balboa, and now Viktor has come to reclaim his family’s honor by beating Adonis, who feels the pressure to exceed his father’s legacy and possibly exact some measure of revenge.

There is some raw potential in the setup, but the film is so intent on creating subplots for Rocky (including a nonsensical estrangement with his son and the grandchild he never met that makes Rocky seem like a neglectful jerk) that Viktor never gets developed as a character, while Adonis is once again pushed to the margins of his own film. Whatever you think about Rocky IV, it is inarguably a mid-1980s time capsule. Creed II isn’t a time capsule, but it should get buried.

Hugh Jackman sports one of the most mesmerizingly bad wigs in cinema history to play Senator Gary Hart, the Colorado Democrat whose 1988 presidential campaign was destroyed by allegations of an extramarital affair. Based on the book All the Truth is Out by Matt Bai, The Front Runner is one of the most inane and gaseous political biopics in recent memory—the entire film seems like it was assembled by children at a Build-aSorkin Workshop. Director and co-writer Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) once again managed to create a film that is simultaneously robotic and sloppy, and you constantly feel him borrowing moves and moments from better movies without any concept of why they ever worked. The Front Runner is unbelievably naive in its cynicism about the tabloidization of the political process, ultimately (and possibly by accident because of ineptitude) making an anti-transparency argument that would appease the “fake news” dingbats. D.B.

2Instant Family

A suburban couple (Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne) volunteer as foster parents, then find themselves in over their heads when they take on a troubled teenager (Isabela Moner) and her younger siblings (Gustavo Quiroz, Julianna Gamiz). Director Sean Anders, who co-wrote with John Morris, reportedly based his script on his own experience, but it’s filtered through the schlocky style of his (and Morris’) past movies, things like Daddy’s Home 2 and That’s My Boy. The movie has amusing moments, but they feel prepackaged with everything but a sitcom laugh track. When Anders isn’t extracting laughs like a dentist pulling teeth, he’s pushing our emotional buttons or congratulating his characters (and presumably himself) for being so heroic. Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro add some nice moments as foster agency reps. J.L.

3Maria by Callas

The life of world-famous 20th-century opera singer Maria Callas gets the Amy treatment in this serviceable documentary from director Tom Volf. Rather than rely on “expert” testimonials, Volf goes the in-herown-words route, assembling Maria by Callas from period clips and recordings of Callas, as well as her own letters and telegrams (contemporary opera singer Joyce DiDonato voices Callas, who died in 1977 at the age of 52). Maria by Callas rushes through the American-born, Greek-educated soprano’s early life, largely focusing on the tabloid controversies that dogged Callas at the height of her fame, including her affair with Aristotle Onassis and her public image as a temperamental diva. Nearly two hours long and loaded with performance sequences, Maria by Callas is more for opera diehards, and the most striking revelation here is that once upon a time, people became famous for being the best at something rather than the worst. D.B.

3Overlord

Julius Avery directs this high-energy, low-imagination genre mashup, a combination of Inglourious Basterds and Planet Terror that is not nearly as fun as that description might imply. On the eve of D-Day, an American plane carrying a platoon of movie soldier stereotypes gets shot down over occupied France, with the few surviving men finding shelter in a nearby, Nazi-controlled village. The soldiers quickly discover that a Nazi scientist is performing disturbing experiments on the French villagers, all to create a soulless army of the undead for Hitler. While Americans Boyce (Jovan Adepo) and Ford (Wyatt Russell) dodge zombies and attempt to carry out their mission, Nazi officer Wafner (Pilou Asbæk) stalks peasant girl Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) and her little brother. Working from a perfunctory script by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith, Avery proves adept at crafting loud, high-energy action sequences, but less skilled with nuances like pacing and tone. D.B.

3

Ralph Breaks the Internet

When a new Wi-Fi is installed in their arcade, classic video game characters Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and Princess Vanellope of Sugar Rush (Sarah Silverman) get their first glimpse of the internet—which comes in handy when Vanellope’s game loses a discontinued steering wheel and they turn to eBay to find a replacement before old Mr. Litwak (Ed O’Neill) unplugs the game for good. This sequel has the strengths of the original—nice rapport between Reilly and Silverman; brilliant, visually witty animation (this time portraying the web as a teeming megalopolis); good supporting voice work (Gal Gadot, Jane Lynch, Taraji P. Henson, Alan Tudyk, etc.). But it’s all too clever by half—or rather, by about 20 minutes; its feathery charms are hard put to support nearly two hours’ running time. J.L.

1 Robin Hood

The legend of Robin Hood gets made over into a mashup of The Hurt Locker in its first half, then morphs into V for Vendetta in its second. The script is by first-timers Ben Chandler and David James Kelly, and the rotten fruit of their misbegotten labors is moronic and sub-literate. Otto Bathurst directs as if hoping to be the next Guy Ritchie. Meanwhile, the latest actor to embark on the fool’s errand of filling Errol Flynn’s tights is Taron Egerton, who fares no better (indeed, worse) than Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe before him. (The less said about Jamie Foxx and Eve Hewson as this movie’s idea of Little John and Maid Marian, the sooner their careers will recover.) “Forget history,” says the narration, “Forget what you think you know.” Better advice would be to forget this godawful movie. J.L.

4 Widows

When their husbands are all killed in a robbery gone wrong, three women (Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki) are on the hook for the lost money; their only option is to follow through on the robbery the gang planned to commit next. A 1980s British miniseries gets reworked by writers Gillian Flynn and Steve McQueen (who also directed) into an all-American story about organized crime and political corruption in Chicago. It’s like Ocean’s 8 for grownups—with all the stylish fun of a good heist movie, but thickened and enhanced by a real-world desperation that makes the caper more than a simple lark. Davis’ powerhouse presence is complemented by Rodriguez and Debicki (in a starmaking turn), plus an equally powerhouse supporting cast: Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall and Bryan Tyree Henry among others. J.L.

“This was supposed to be my movie,” Michael B. Jordan (left) glares at coach and screen hog sylvester stallone (right).

Sweet, sweet music

The best damn dessert songs that aren’t about your honeypie

by Maxfield Morris

is one of the bigger hits that’s really about “cool cherry cream, a nice apple tart,” though it’s also technically about tooth decay. It still makes the dessert list.

There’s a number of sweet hits that permeate the American songbook. It’s a songwriting convention as old as metaphor, and the “desserts” people sing about aren’t always literally about sugary confections. As an example, the “milkshakes that bring all the boys to the yard” don’t use real ice cream, and the female-gendered pie from Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” doesn’t “taste so good [as to] make a grown man cry” because of someone’s expert pie-baking.

Music has gotten sweet foods all tangled up with sexy times—which is fine, no one should yuck your yum—but it leaves a void for honest-to-goodness dessert enthusiasts. Looking through a compilation of the 1,000 biggest hits on tsort.info, there were only a handful about sweet romances, and none about actual sweets. Here’s a list of some of the dessert-themed songs that are what they say they are; because not everything is about sex. Some things are simply about cake.

“Savoy Truffle” performed by the Beatles. George Harrison’s song about chocolate seems like it’s about chocolate treats, and it so refreshingly is. As Harrison told Crawdaddy Magazine in 1977, the rocking song that opens with drums, an organ and the line “Creme tangerine and montelimar” is about Eric Clapton and his love for chocolate. “He’s got this real sweet tooth and he’d just had his mouth worked on,” Harrison said of Clapton. “His dentist said he was through with candy.” This

“Never Come Down (The Brownie Song)” performed by CunninLynguists. If you ignore the suggestive play on words in the artists’ name, this song avoids romance altogether. Instead, it opens with distinctive clarity, and it’s difficult to misinterpret when the vocalist says, “Too much pot in the brownie pan / got me baked faster than the brownies, man.” The lyrics then go on to explain just how potent the brownies were. Yes, it may be about marijuana, but in the universe of this song, someone ate an actual pan of brownies—and that’s a rare accomplishment for a catchy song.

“MacArthur Park” performed by Richard Harris in 1968. An overly dramatic take on a breakup, this song written by Jimmy Webb doesn’t fit in the category perfectly—it’s about a failed romance, after all. That said, the chorus of the song commits so wholly to earnest, bizarre cake imagery that it merits a mention. Almost beyond comprehension, the titular park is described as melting in the dark—“All the sweet, green icing flowing down,” and someone has left a cake out in the rain. The “cake,” Harris sings, “took so long to bake … and [he’ll] never have that recipe again.” It’s a can’t-miss dessert cameo in a song voted “Worst Overall Song” in Dave Barry’s 1992 voter’s poll.

“The Candy Man” performed by Aubrey Woods. This song, written for the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, is one about the magic of a chocolatier who can take a rainbow and make a groovy lemon pie out of it. He’s a person who can make the world taste good. Yep, it’s pretty clearly about an actual confectioner. Compare it to other sweet professions featured in song—Van Halen’s “Ice Cream Man,” for instance. The singer explains to someone he calls “babe” that he’s her ice cream man, and that all his “flavors are guaranteed to satisfy.”

everything is about

Some things are simply about

This song involving scrumdiddlyumptious bars is actually a metaphor for... nothing. it’s about a candy man. right?

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mUSiC

THURSdaY, 11/29

THE TEN TENORS—HOmE FOR THE HOliDAYS: Combining wordplay with a tenor ensemble, these vocalists from Australia are not going to be “Home for the Holidays,” as they’re from Australia. Instead, they’ll be on tour. 2pm & 7:30pm, $38-$78. Harris Center, 10 College Parkway in Folsom.

JAZZ BANDS OF UC DAViS: The bands will be performing music by Aretha Franklin as well as some jazzy compositions and something new from Jacám Manricks, director. 7pm, $12-$24. UC Davis, 1 Shields Ave. in Davis.

Climbing to a performance hall near you!

Romantic climbs Brunelle Performance Hall, 7:30Pm, $14

Dangling from sheer rock faces, traveling  to the harshest climes on the planet and  pushing the boundaries of the  sport, talented rock climbers  featured in four new documentaries will  be screened at Reel Rock 13. Adam Ondra,  pictured, is a talented climber taking the  sport to new heights in Age of Ondrea Up  to Speed explores the addition of climbing

to the Olympic games in 2020, Queen Maud  Land follows the exploits of six climbers  in Antarctica (including Sacramento  superstar Alex Honnold), and Valley of the  Moon explores new routes on sandstone  walls in the deserts of Jordan. Interest  piqued? Then show up to get a peek at  some major peaks. 315 W. 14th Street in  Davis, reelrocktour.com.

TiCKET WiNDOW Buy, buy, buy! The ticket market is hot.

KRS-OnE The New York rapper from the Bronx famous for Criminal Minded and who mistakenly paid a memorial tribute to a living Beastie Boy is playing in Sac. 12/9, 8:30pm, $25-$30, on sale now. Harlow’s, ticketfly.com.

BEnEFiT ROCK SHOW FOR JERRY PERRY

Little Guilt

Shrine, 99 Tales, Nothing but a Nightmare, The Trouble Makers, The Rosebuds, Matranga, Kevin & Allyson Seconds plenty more come together to support local promoter Jerry Perry. 12/2, 3pm, $25-$30, on sale now. Harlow’s, ticketfly. com.

THE

nUTCRaCKER

Pamela Hayes Classical Ballet Theatre brings the Tchaikovsky ballet to Folsom, all the from El Dorado Hills. 12/13-12/16, various times, $18-$36, on sale now. Harris Center, harriscenter.net.

PUddlE OF mUdd

If Wes Scantlin, founder of the Pudd’, were to say of your mother, “She Hates Me,” it might be a good idea to leave her at home.

and company are powerful, just like their appeal with large audiences with discretionary income. 2/28, 7:30pm, $75-$120, on sale now. Golden 1 Center, ticketmaster.com.

ania The famous ABBA tribute is coming to Sacramento, with the way Mamma Mia performing in the public spotlight, you might want to rush for tickets. 3/8, 7pm, $25$35, on sale now. Ace of Spades, eventbrite.com.

lOvERBOY The band famous for “Working for the Weekend” is still working for their weekend. Don’t miss the seminal ’80s band. 3/29, 7:30pm, $59.95-$69.95, on sale now. Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, ticketmaster.com.

Philosophize, KRS.

Online listings will be considered for print. Print listings are edited for space and accuracy. deadline for print listings is 5 p.m. Wednesday. deadline for nightlife listings is midnight Sunday. Send photos and reference materials to calendar editor maxfield morris at snrcalendar@newsreview.com.

STATE CAPiTOl HOliDAY mUSiC PROGRAm:

Starting on this day and running daily at 11 a.m. through December 23, free music will be played at the rotunda. There will be a number of performances to choose from—get a dose of holiday music in the most legislative venue there is. 11am, no cover. California State Capitol, 1315 10th St. TESTAmENT: The thrash metal band used to be called Legacy, but things have changed. They’re performing albums The Gathering and The New Order from start to finish, and bands Niviane and Hatriot will also be there. 7pm, $29.50-$35. Ace Of Spades, 1417 R St.

PiliTA CORRAlES & SONNY TURNER: The voice that replaced Tony Williams in The Platters, Sonny Turner, joins Filipino pop singer and consummate professional, Pilita Corrales for a night of music. 7:30pm, $69.95. Thunder Valley Casino, 1200 Athens Ave. in Lincoln.

FRidaY, 11/30

THE NUmBER 12 lOOKS liKE YOU: The screaming band will play with Arsonists Get All the Girls, Rolo Tomassi and Enter: Villain. 6:30pm, $15. Holy Diver, 1517 21st St.

JmSN: The R&B musician with smooth sounds and multiple talents is joined by the Philharmonik and August 08, the musician whose gigs get confusing in the summer. 9pm, $15-$20. Harlow’s, 2708 J St.

CHRiSTmAS CONCERTOS BY CANDlEliGHT: Sacramento Baroque Soloists bring some Baroque music by Corelli, Charpentier, Corrette, Torelli and Locatelli. 7:30pm, $25. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1430 J St.

THE DAN BAND-HOliDAY SHOW!: Come see a band started by Dan Finnerty that does covers of songs, but with a unique twist—they add some much needed expletives to the tunes. Famous for appearances in The Hangover and Old School. 7pm, $12.50-$25. Ace Of Spades, 1417 R St.

DAViS JAZZ NiGHT: Twelve people who play jazz music come together every month to play some jazz, and if that doesn’t appeal to you, consult the rest of the calendar for more options. 7pm, no cover. John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st St. in Davis.

GONZO’S BiRTHDAY SHOW: It’s Gonzo’s birthday show—I know I definitely spaced on a  present last year—come celebrate with music by Halcones, Watt Ave. Soul Giants and Last Action Heroes. 8:30pm, $5. Old Ironsides, 1901 10th St.

mOONAliCE: Funky rock ’n’ roll and jams are the name of the game whenever Moonalice has something to say about it—and at this gig they’re playing, they’ll certainly have something to say as they play with The Higgs. 7pm, $15-$20. Auburn Odd Fellows Hall, 1226 Lincoln Ave. in Auburn.

PETER CASE: Sure, there are, like, 400 Grammy nominees in 84 categories every year, but Peter Case has grabbed nominations thrice. In that spirit, come see the songwriter post up for some potentially Grammy-worthy music. 7pm, $20. The Side Door at The Fifth String, 2900 Franklin Blvd.

TRANS-SiBERiAN ORCHESTRA: If you want a  holiday concert presented by a greeting card company, this is your ticket. Get the only symphonic seasonal experience that recently prompted a friend at a party to ask me, “Do you like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra?” 3pm, $36.75. Golden 1 Center, 500 David J. Stern Walk.

SaTURdaY, 12/1

7TH ANNUAl SACRAmENTO SAXOPHONE

CHRiSTmAS: Nothing says Christmas quite like 50 saxophonists coming together to play holiday tunes—except perhaps the Bible, if that’s your kind of Christmas—so come out to the seventh year of this reedy seasonal performance. 2pm, no cover. Fountains in Roseville, 1013 Galleria Blvd. in Roseville.

PAlAYE ROYAlE: The rock band with a bent for the dramatic will play with Bones and Dead Posey. 6pm, $17-$20. Holy Diver, 1517 21st St.

HOliDAY SPiRiT: Various holiday songs come to life via musical performance. Doug LaBrecque, a tenor, is the lead soloist. 7:30pm, $25-$59. Harris Center, 10 College Parkway in Folsom.

WiNTERDANCE: Molly’s Revenge, Christa Burch and the Rosemary Turco Irish Dancers are coming together for a show that combines dancing and music. It will all have a very Celtic feel. 8pm, $23-$27. Sutter Creek Theatre, 44 Main St. in Sutter Creek.

SUndaY, 12/2

DOm KENNEDY: The American rapper is showing up for his Win or Lose Tour. 7pm, $27$85. Ace Of Spades, 1417 R St.

THE GOTHARD SiSTERS: They’re a trio of sisters who play Celtic music, and it’s Christmas time. This is their bread and butter. 7pm, $26. The State Theater in Auburn.

PETAlUmA: The last show from local electronic band Petaluma also features Lillian Frances, Topograf and New Spell. 8pm, $10. Blue Lamp, 1400 Alhambra Blvd.

SQUiRREl NUT ZiPPERS: The swinging jazz band that’s gone through a few hopping iterations is coming to Holy Diver for a  holiday spell. 7pm, $29.50-$35. Holy Diver, 1517 21st St.

Log onto www.newsreview.com and visit the calendar section to add your next event, show, fundraiser or exhibit. You’ll have access to nearly 200,000 viewers who might be your next donor, fan or guest! it’s just that easy.

wedneSday, 12/5

LEann riMEs: If you want to spend some time with Riems, see the event highlight on page 31. 7pm, $69-$99. Harris Center, 10 College Parkway in Folsom.

FeStivalS

Friday, 11/30

davis arts CEntEr annuaL HoLiday saLE: The Center is coming alive with 50 different vendors vending gifts that are handmade with care. Perfect for the enterprising giftgiver without enough time on their hands to master soap-making, sculpting or glassblowing. noon, no cover. Davis Arts Center, 1919 F St. in Davis.

HoLiday FEast! a bountiFuL MusiCaL buFFEt: Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus presents a veritable feast for the senses, minus the sense of taste. There will be music, dancing and dialogue, so show up for one of three performances this weekend. 8pm, $25-$40. First United Methodist Church, 2100 J St.

JurassiC QuEst: While Google reviews paint a less than stellar picture of the Jurassic Quest experience, citing disappointments and poor value and a generally sad vibe, this could be your weekend, walking among the dinosaurs and paying extra for face paint. 3pm, $18-$34. Cal Expo, 1600 Exposition Blvd.

wEst saCraMEnto wintEr wondErLand trEE

LiGHtinG: West Sacramento’s City Hall is about to become about one tree’s worth more festive—yes, it’s a tree lighting! Show up for some coffee, cocoa and snacks and get free glamour photographs with Santa Claus, all free. 6pm, no cover. West Sacramento City Hall, 1110 West Capitol Ave. in West Sacramento.

Saturday, 12/1

2nd annuaL MaKEr’s MarKEt at barrio

CaFE: Spend some of your precious time and hard-earned money at Barrio Cafe’s

Saturday, 12/2 Eco Holiday Market

Upcycle pop, noon, no cover

It’s a holiday market made for people who believe in gift reincarnation. Crafts at this event come from discarded items that have been repurposed, so come see the art, clothing and furniture you need to furnish your life and stock your season with a bevy of environmentally conscious gifts. Also, there’s live music and drinks, interactive artwork, panel discussions and more. It’s more than just your average holiday market—check it out, maybe. 7300 Folsom Boulevard, upcyclepop.com.

continued offerings from makers. There are wares for perusal and foods for you to chew on while you make up your mind about which of your family members would most want a succulent display. noon, no cover. Barrio Cafe, 1188 35th Ave.

3rd annuaL PLaCEr County sHEriFF’s and PoLiCE aCtivitiEs LEaGuE Crab FEEd: It’s a crab feed for a fundraiser, as they often are. Come out and eat some hardshelled, scuttling animals for the benefit of activity leagues, which offer programs for youth. 5pm, $50. The Grounds, 800 All America City Blvd. in Roseville.

Sunday, 12/2

Mini PEaCH FEst: Stop by the final Peach House show that has music from PART TIME, Spendtime Palace, Brazen Youth, Munechild, Animals in the Attic and Mediocre Cafe. There’s art by Esther and Claire, as well as vendors doing just what you’d expect them to do. 8pm, $12-$17. Red Museum, 212 15th St.

ECo HoLiday MarKEt: Check out this repurposed gift event below. noon, no cover. Upcyclepop, 7300 Folsom Blvd.

Food & drinK

Saturday, 12/1

dECK tHE HaLLs-Lodi winE tastinG: Want a  little wine to go with your season? Well join this all-inclusive (except for tasting fees and lunch) shuttle trip around Lodi. It’s apparently Lodi’s most popular wine shuttle, and their website asks the question “Can you think of a better way to spend your weekend?” We hope your answer is yes, but this could still be fun. 11am, $55. Lodi Wineries in Lodi.

uGLy swEatEr bEEr train: If you want beer and you want to wear an ugly sweater while you drink that beer, see the fortuitous highlight on the following page. 7pm, $50$70. Sacramento River Train, 400 N. Harbor Blvd. in West Sacramento.

SATURDAY, 12/1

Ugly Sweater Beer Train

saCramento

river train, 7pm, $50-$70

Nothing goes better with beer tasting than ugly  sweaters, except maybe a dance-off. This event  doesn’t advertise a danceoff, but you could probably  get one started. Bomba  Fried Rice, the Davis-based Latin band will be  performing on this breezy jaunt of a train ride  along the river. You’ll spend two and a half hours  on the train, tasting craft beers, stopping at a  park and mingling with other people dressed just  as poorly as you are. 400 N. Harbor Boulevard in  West Sacramento, sacramentorivertrain.com.

WILKERSON THEATRE: Enfrascada. Tanya

FOOD & DRINK

CALENDAR LISTINGS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 30

SUNDAY, 12/2

BLENDING WITH THE WINEMAKER: Do you have any idea what it takes to blend wine? Do you? It takes heart, soul and a few tricks of the trade. Matt Cline will share the secrets he’s learned throughout the years. If you’ve always had wine blends and never thought about why or how they exist, this event might titillate you. Also there’s a cheese reception at the end of class. Noon, $50. Old Sugar Mill, 35265 Willow Ave. in Clarksburg.

BRUNCH CHICKEN ‘N’ PANCAKES & DARK ‘N’

STORMY’S: Stop by Strapping Store for some chicken and pancakes by Oakhaus and some Dark ’n’ Stormy cocktails by Beers in Sac. There’s no cover, so stop by and see what’s what in Sacto’s boppin’ brunch scene. 10am, no cover. Strapping Store, 3405 Broadway.

FILM

FRIDAY, 11/30

REEL ROCK 13: Are you ready to sweat from your palms? Stop through for four new films about climbing, featured on page 29. 7:30pm, $14. Brunelle Performance Hall at Davis Senior High School, 315 W. 14th St. in Davis.

MONDAY, 12/3

A CHRISTMAS STORY: The somewhat holidayrelated movie about Ralphie is returning to the screen, this time coming to Tower Theatre. And above all, remember to (editors: insert reference to A Christmas Story here.) 7pm, $9. The Tower Theatre, 2508 Land Park Drive.

COMEDY

BLACKTOP COMEDY: Camp Fire Relief Comedy Fundraiser. In light of the devastating Camp Fire, comedians are coming together at Blacktop Comedy for a comedic fundraiser for the North Valley Community Foundation Camp Fire Relief Fund. There will be standup comedy, sketch writing and improv. Get ready to laugh for a good cause. Friday 11/30, 8pm. $15. 3101 Sunset Blvd., Suite 6A in Rocklin.

CREST THEATRE: The Pump and Dump. It’s a  show about mothers, parenting, laughing and making people laugh. It’s the Denverbased comedy show by mothers for mothers. If you’re a mother who’s in need of a laugh about your situation, consider watching Shayna Ferm and Tracey Tee dish on childbirth. Friday 11/30, 7:30pm. $35. 1013

K St.

TAKE ACTION

Saracho’s work about relationships, magic and friendship takes the stage at Teatro Espejo. Through 12/22. $18-$23. 1725 25th St.

WOODLAND OPERA HOUSE: Meet Me In St. Louis. The free-wheeling show that hops through time and space and eventually lands at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair is coming to the Woodland Opera House. Through 12/16. $67$128. 340 Second St. in Woodland.

SPORTS & OUTDOORS

FRIDAY, 11/30

PUNCH LINE: Beth Stelling. If somewhat deadpan humor from a funny person is your thing, this show might just be your thing. Stelling cuts to the core of whatever is on her mind, delivers some stand-out punchlines and has a piercing wit. Through 12/1.

$18.50. Christmas With Leaf. Anthony K is the headlining comedian of this show that benefits needy kids by sharing holiday toys. Other comedians include Mike Betancourt, Tom Bomb and Budman and Booger. Monday 12/3, 8pm. $20. 2100 Arden Way, Suite 225.

STAB! COMEDY THEATER: The Apple Tree Comedy Competition. Judges have apples in their mouths and comedians are trying to get the judges to drop their apples. That’s the premise—but it’s also a great excuse to watch people in public eat apples. Friday 11/30, 9pm. $7. Dual Duel 3. ComedySportz Sacramento and STAB! Comedy Theatre collab for this 12-team improv-aganza that runs through December 14. Through 12/14.

$8. 1710 Broadway.

TOMMY T’S COMEDY CLUB: Brandon T. Jackson. The stand-up comic you’ve almost definitely seen or heard in a television or movie role (Tropic Thunder, BoJack Horseman ring any bells?) is coming to Rancho Cordova to show off the comedic chops he’s got in stock. Through 12/2. $20-$30. 12401 Folsom Blvd. in Rancho Cordova.

ON STAGE

AMERICAN RIVER COLLEGE THEATRE: In Love and Warcraft. American River College shares a comedic story about a gamer nerd and Raul—a total hottie. The play then ensues. Through 12/9. $12-$15. 4700 College Oak Drive.

BIG IDEA THEATRE: Visitors. This play about a woman losing her mind and the family’s efforts to keep things together is fun, tough and beautiful. See review on page 26. Through 12/15. $12-$22. 1616 Del Paso Blvd.

CAPITAL STAGE: Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley. This imagined sequel to Pride and Prejudice explores the role of Miss Bennet in a frustrating situation—frustrating, that is, until someone shows up for dinner. Will they be all Miss Bennet has been looking for? Maybe, I don’t know. Through 12/30. $25-$42. 2215 J St.

LAUGHS UNLIMITED COMEDY CLUB: The Funky

Good Time Poetry Event. It’s a night of poetry to be enjoyed by everyone. Spoken word will be performed. Thursday 11/29, 8pm.

$5-$10. 1207 Front St.

MIDTOWN BARFLY: Midtown Moxies Burlesque. Get your monthly dose of the burlesque show put on by the Midtown Moxies. 7:30pm. Through 8/3. $10-$20. 1119 21st St.

PUNCH LINE: Roger Howarth and Michael Easton from General Hospital. If you’re like the many people who enjoy the soap opera General Hospital, you’ve probably always wanted to meet Roger Howarth and Michael Easton, who play Franco and Dr. Silas Clay, respectively. Saturday 12/1, 2pm. $49.50. 2100 Arden Way, Suite 225.

SACRAMENTO STATE: Sac State’s Got Talent. Spend a bit of time with Sacramento’s college students. They’ll show you what they’ve got, talent-wise, so show up ready to be impressed by tens of local students. Thursday 11/29, 7pm. No cover. 6000 J St.

SACRAMENTO THEATRE: A Christmas Carol. Get the dose of Christmas you don’t know if you need—inspired by Charles Dickens. Follow Scrooge as he follows a neat, three-chapter story arc that is sure to entertain even the most unentertainable of viewers. Through 12/15. $30-$40. 1419 H St.

UC DAVIS: Jessica Phillips. The very same Phillips who plays the mom in the hit musical Dear Evan Hansen is soon to be the Phillips who stops in to UC Davis with her husband Tad Wilson to perform and discuss stage on stage. This free event is not to be missed, it is to be attended. Monday 12/3, 5pm. No cover. 1 Shields Ave. in Davis.

UC DAVIS CAMPUS: World According to Sound Perspectives of the Blind in California. This live radio show with Sam Harnett from KQED and Chris Hoff from KALW shares a unique perspective with the audience. Wednesday 12/5, 5pm. No cover. Wright 120A, 1 Shields Ave. in Davis.

SATURDAY, 11/10

Leann Rimes

FRIDAY RIDE DAY: Get some bicycle riding in in the great outdoors, land of bicycles. It starts on the north side of Hoagland hall and will end there, as well. Noon, no cover. UC Davis, 1 Shields Ave. in Davis.

SATURDAY, 12/1

KIDS DAY PRESENTED BY SACRAMENTO KINGS

KIDS CLUB: The Kings’ own Slamson the Lion takes to the ice rink, as will the team’s dancing squad. It makes one calendar editor wonder if Kings’ players are contractually allowed to strap on ice skates. 2pm, $6$13. Downtown Sacramento Ice Rink, 701 K St.

SACRAMENTO 5K HAPPY HOUR RUN: Slap on some sweats, tie on some sneakers and get ready to traverse 5 kilometers of horizontal distance, though the speed is not important. Every registrant gets a drink of their choice: margarita, wine or beer. Noon, $5-$20 William Land Park, 3800 W. Land Park Drive.

VIKING DASH TRAIL RUN SACRAMENTO: Pretend to be a viking and them go run a race. If that’s not nearly enough viking activity for your Scandinavian blood, there’s also a costume contest, a barbecue after the race and some fun, themed medals to appeal to your inner child. 8:30am, $29-$89. Sacramento, 1901 Hazel Ave. in Gold River.

SUNDAY, 12/2

DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO ICE RINK: It’s a Silent Disco event on the ice rink, meaning you’ll be able to hear music in headphones while skating. Sound appealing? Then attend. I  really shouldn’t have to spell this out for you by now, you should understand the basic premise of the calendar. 10am, $6$15. Downtown Sacramento Ice Rink, 701 K St.

MONDAY, 12/3

MUSTACHES AND MULLIGANS GOLF TOURNAMENT: El Dorado Hills Firefighters host this charity golf tournament to benefits the Movember Foundation. 11am, $125. Serrano Country Club, 5005 Serrano Parkway in El Dorado Hills.

CLASSES

THURSDAY, 11/29

ELEGANT APPETIZERS AND WINE PAIRINGS: Want to show off how great you are at throwing parties? Of course you do—so come revel in Gruyere and bloviate about a musky Cabernet. You’ll learn, partake and laugh, laugh, laugh. 6pm, $33. Community Learning Center & Cooking School, 2820 R St.

HISTORIC NEGRO BAR-170TH ANNIVERSARY

YEAR PLANNING WORKSHOP: It’s the 170th anniversary of Negro Bar. Come out to see what activities are planned for the year and the celebration of the historic mining district. 8pm, no cover. Sojourner Truth Museum, 2251 Florin Road, Suite 126.

SATURDAY, 12/1

FRUIT TREE CARE: Get the lowdown on how to keep your fruit trees in good repair and prospering well, just like you want for them. They grow up so fast—but they need your support. 1pm, $25. Soil Born Farms’ American River Ranch Schoolhouse, 2140 Chase Drive in Rancho Cordova.

HERBS FOR HEALTHY DIGESTION: You like traditional medicine? Well, come out and see what some people claim are the right herbs to be eating. 9am, $30. Soil Born Farms American River Ranch, 2140 Chase Drive in Rancho Cordova.

TUESDAY, 12/4

OPEN URBAN FARM DAYS: Spend some time working on an urban farm—for free! Seriously though, you’ll learn a thing or two about how to make a garden grow, and that’s a transferable skill. 10am, no cover. The Yisrael Family Urban Farm, 4505 Roosevelt Ave.

Harris Center, 7pm, $69-$99

You’d better not whine, you’d better not shout— because Leann Rimes is coming to town to play holiday tunes. Awards she’s got by the dozens. Records? She’s sold tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of tens of them. All that adds up to mean it’s time for a Christmas music tour with Rimes, the country crossover star who was the youngest ever to win a Grammy, at age 14. If holiday music appeals to you, this could be your night. 10 College Parkway in Folsom, harriscenter.net.

MUSIC

PHOTO COURTESY OF BEN WICKS

PHOTO BY YAHOO! BLOG, CC BY 2.0

ArmAdillo music

207 F ST., DAvIS, (530) 758-8058

BAdlAnds

2003 k ST., (916) 448-8790

BAr 101

Sleepspent, 6pm, no cover Epiphany Monet, 7pm, no coverDelta Kings and Break, 7pm, no cover

Poprockz 90s Night, 7pm, call for coverFierce Fridays, 7pm, call for cover Spectacular Saturdays, 7pm, call for cover Holiday Show Tree Lighting with Kennedy and Chi Chi, 8pm, $10-$20 Karaoke Night, 9pm, T, call for cover; Trapicana, 10pm, W, call for cover

101 MAIN ST., ROSEvIllE, (916) 774-0505 Steve Stizzo Trio, 6:30pm, no coverJ.W. Teller: On Tour, 9:30pm, no coverMike PZ, 9:30pm, no cover

Pint Night and Trivia, 6:30pm, M, no cover; Open-Mic, 7:30pm, W, no cover

Blue lAmp

1400 AlHAMbRA blvD., (916) 455-3400

piTol GArAGe

1500 k ST., (916) 444-3633

cresT TheATre

1013 k ST., (916) 476-3356

(916)

pAddY’s irish puBlic house

In the Whale, Ghost Mesa and Flight Mongoose, 8pm, call for cover Castle, OWL and more, 8pm, $10

N-Men Party, the Faction and the Boneshavers, call for cover Petaluma, Lillian Frances, Topograf and New Spell, 8pm, call for cover Rebel Holocrons, Viqueen and Danger Inc., 8pm, T, call for cover The BoArdwAlk 9426 GREENbAck lN., ORANGEvAlE, (916) 358-9116

The Pat Travers Band, Ariminius and Never 4 Naught, 8:30pm, $20-$40

Capitol Fridays, 10pm, no cover before 10:30pm

The Pump and Dump Show: 2018 Parentally Incorrect Tour, 7:30pm, $35

Hot 103.5 Holiday Party with Gashi, Nate Curry and more, 9pm, $20-$25

Dinner and a Drag Show, 7:30pm, $5-$25

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According to Bazooka, 7pm, no cover The Storytellers and Empress Niko & the Lions Paw, 9pm, $5 Kentucky Trust Fund and Band of Coyotes, 9pm, $5

Trans-Siberian Orchestra, 3pm & 7:30pm, $36.75-$66

Live and Let Die: The Music of Paul McCartney, 7:30pm, $37-$57

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The Darling Clementines Variety Show: Gotham Girls, 7:30pm, $15-$20

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11.29.18 SN&R 33

cBD for your P-E-T

Molly McGhee faced certain restrictions while searching for a new dog in early 2016. She and her wife wanted to keep their renting options open, so the dog couldn’t be too big. McGhee had also noticed her allergies worsened around mutts, so they opted for a pure breed and ended up with a miniature Australian shepherd named Wall-E.

“I chose the breed because they’re smart, high-energy breeds,” she said, holding the wiggly, blue-eyed dog in her lap on the patio of a Midtown coffee shop.

Soon after McGhee got Wall-E that spring, she noticed ongoing pain in his leg when he exercised. This was caused by a luxating patella—a kneecap that often slips out of place. McGhee, who previously worked for the cannabis dispensary RCP Sacramento and holds a medical marijuana card, turned to an increasingly popular treatment—CBD— the non-stoney compound to its sister

cannabinoid, THC. It’s preferred by people who want the medicinal benefits of cannabis to try to relieve pain, anxiety and seizures without the buzz.

Dr. Jamie Peyton, chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, has seen more patients trying CBD treatments for pets in recent years in the form of treats, tinctures and topicals—all available over the counter. But due to the federal government’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug, veterinary research of CBD treatments is limited and vets cannot legally prescribe it. So when a patient starts that conversation, Peyton’s cautiously optimistic response is: “We don’t have a lot of information but I have … clients that have tried it and it looks promising.”

Last year, Peyton and her team took the first steps toward what she hopes to be the future of science-based

by Kate Gonzales

conversations around animals and CBD. In an anonymous online survey, pet owners who treated their animals’ ailments with over-the-counter CBD products were asked to share details of their experiences.

“It’s sort of the ‘it’ topic,” Peyton said. “It’s also important to be part of the group that says we do see there’s potential, but we also need to take a step back and get true scientific evidence and guide owners to do the right thing.”

Survey questions included what types of animals were treated with CBD (mostly

dogs and cats), what products do owners use and where do they get them. About 1,700 people responded and while results are tentative, Peyton said a few things stood out. Mirroring the reasons humans use CBD, people are largely trying to alleviate their pets’ physical pain and anxiety. The research also showed that although vets can’t prescribe CBD, people will access it if they think it can help.

“Regardless, they are going to find someone to help them get CBD and cannabis products,” Peyton said.

Some dispensaries like All About Wellness, Abatin Wellness Center and 1841 El Camino, carry CBD products for pets. Along with Western Feed and Pet Supply, which offers over-the-counter biscuits, jerky and oils infused with CBD. In his experience as a sales associate, Ian Powell said he’s seen a rise in customer interest and in manufacturers.

“We’re selling it the most during Fourth of July weekend,” he said. “We sold a ton of it.”

When searching for the right treatment for Wall-E, McGhee first tried doggy edibles at Pet Club Elk Grove. She then discovered the brand Herbal Wellness Journeys during a pop-up medical cannabis show and tried the businesses’ tinctures in Wall-E’s food and said it quickly improved his condition.

“[A luxating patella] can develop into needing surgery, but with the CBD it doesn’t seem like it’s going to continue to get worse,” McGhee said. “His leg doesn’t pop out hardly at all anymore.”

In September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 2215, which allows vets to discuss cannabis-related treatments with pet owners without fear of legal repercussions. Still, they can’t prescribe it. Peyton’s hope is that the survey will lead to more open conversations about CBD treatments and, after jumping through federal hoops, more research.

“It’s always exciting to be part of something that I think will really help a lot of animals as long as we get the information and do it the right way,” Peyton said. Ω

“It’s always exciting to be part of something that I think will really help a lot of animals as long as we get the information and do it the right way.”

Dr.

Jamie Peyton Integrative Medicine Service, UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital

A new law allows veterinarians to—at least—speak to pet owners about cannabis-related treatments

Molly McGhee’s Australian shepherd, Wall-E, gets relief for his aching kneecap through CBD tinctures.

Photo by Kate Gonzales

Where is bad dessert taken? Into custard-y!

By Ngaio Bealum ask420@newsreview.com

Pot in the glitter gulch

Heard you were in Vegas. How was it?

—Hy Rolle R

It was … OK. I attended the Marijuana Business Conference and Expo, which is probably the biggest canna-conference in the world. (And, most expensive. Tickets were like $800 bucks for all three days, and that price didn’t include side panels, or luncheons or anything like that.) The event’s producers expected around 25,000 people, but I heard that around 30,000 folks went. It was your standard business conference, with exhibitors hawking gadgets and geegaws, just on a huge scale. A friend pointed out that if you wanted to visit every vendor booth, you would only get to spend 45 seconds at each.

It was cool to meet people from around the country, though. There were growers from Maine, hemp farmers from North Carolina, and all sorts of trimming and extraction and packaging machines for sale. (By the way, there’s a new U.S. farm bill under consideration that would allow farmers to grow hemp, but would prohibit anyone with a drug conviction from working in the industry, which is B.S.). I was pleasantly surprised that this conference didn’t have very many scantily clad women enticing people to various booths, and while the demographic is still mostly white dudes, there seemed to be a decent amount of women and minorities milling about.

As for the quality of Nevada weed: Meh. Maybe I didn’t hit the right spots, but I found the dispensary

weed to be expensive ($18 a gram, plus about a 20 percent tax) and fairly average. I bought a gram of Mojito (a sativa dominant that had a piney, Trainwreckish aroma) and a gram of Grape Stomper (lots of myrcene and a “purple” flavor) and it cost me $42, but I wasn’t really impressed. Also, I have a huge issue with not being able to smell the cannabis before I buy it. Smelling weed before you buy it is a tradition and a necessity for me. How can I tell if the weed is good if I can’t smell it first? I can’t just take the budtender’s word for it; I don’t know them. It’s so frustrating. Fortunately, all the Californians and a few Oregonians brought some good weed.

(Harvest season is in full swing, so the West Coast outdoor weed is killing the game right now.) I was able to save some money and still smoke good. The after-parties were amazing; big ups to High Times Magazine for getting 2Chainz to rock the mic. And even though venues in Vegas wouldn’t let us smoke weed inside, or even outside the venue, we did anyway, but on the downlow, like living in California in the ’90s. All in all, it was a good conference, and I expect the Vegas weed to be better in about a year or two. Ω

Ngaio Bealum is a Sacramento comedian, activist and marijuana expert. Email him questions at ask420@newsreview.com

Why don’t teddy bears ever order dessert? Because they’re always stuffed.

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What’s Bill Gates’s favorite dessert apple turnover

Commit and shift

I’m a 22-year-old guy and I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’m afraid to talk to girls, so I avoid them. Even thinking about talking to a girl freaks me out. I do have social anxiety, but would like to get over it. How can I get into a relationship with a girl?

Break up with your social anxiety and create room in your life for a new relationship. Right now the connection between you and your anxiety is the primary relationship in your life. Let’s shift. Social anxiety ranks as the third most common psychological disorder, following depression and alcoholism.

The good news is, it’s treatable. Cognitive behavioral therapy has helped millions.

So it’s possible for you to significantly reduce and even eliminate anxiety’s hold. Commit to being consistent and persistent in guiding your brain to alter its habituated approach to social situations. Decide every day that your dream of being in a loving relationship is more important than social anxiety. When you feel anxious, remind yourself it’s an overused physiological experience and you have the power to choose a different response.

possibilities to exist in every moment? That’s living in reality, instead of in your head. Keep true love, in every healthy variation, among those possibilities and breaking up with anxiety will be easier.

My boyfriend and I have been together for three years. We were engaged but broke it off because he cheated. We made up and moved in together. I thought he cheated again (he insists he didn’t). I moved out. After a month apart we got back together. He’s been promoted, is moving outof-state and invited me to come. I love him, but think it might be good to break things off. Should I go with him?

What if you allow all possibilities to exist in every moment?

From one angle, anxiety is unused energy seeking an outlet. Exercise expends energy. Creative endeavors help, too. Writers who don’t make time to write will concoct dramatic stories in their heads, act as if those stories are true, begin to feel anxious, stressed or depressed, and create chaos in their relationships. So find time daily for exercise and creative expression. Dance, paint, play an instrument—any artistic endeavor counts.

The other curious thing is that social anxiety is an avoidance pattern intended to protect oneself from being judged. But assuming a woman is not safe to chat with is a judgment, right? Yes, it’s possible a woman you approach won’t be interested. She might even say something unkind. It’s also possible she will smile, chat a bit and still not be interested because she’s not attracted to you, or she already has a man. Rather than only believing something awful will happen, what if you allow all

Go with your man after two years together without emotional earthquakes opening sinkholes beneath your feet. Or go because you want the steady drip of adrenaline coursing through you from this rollercoaster relationship. Stay, if you don’t trust him. If you’re beginning to understand that the two of you are attached, but not in love, stay. When you do break it off, don’t go back. Returning to him undermines your ability to trust yourself and to love, honor and care for you. Ω

MEdItAtIon of tHE WEEk

“Sometimes letting go is an  act of far greater power than  defending or hanging on,” said  spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle.  Can you see the ways other  people have changed and you  have not?

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I tried making dessert, but I only had sour milk. It was quite off pudding.

For tHe Week oF NoveMber 29, 2018

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Every year, the bird known as the Arctic tern experiences two summers and enjoys more daylight than any other animal. That’s because it regularly makes a long-distance journey from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again. Let’s designate this hardy traveler as your inspirational creature for the next eleven months. May it help animate you to experiment with brave jaunts that broaden and deepen your views of the world. don’t necessarily mean you should literally do the equivalent of circumnavigating the planet. Your expansive adventures might take place mostly in inner realms or closer to home.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): When the American Civil War began in 1861, the United States fractured. Four years later, the union was technically restored when the northern states defeated the southern states. At that time, African-American slavery became illegal everywhere for the first time since the country’s birth, decades earlier. But there was a catch. The southern states soon enacted laws that mandated racial segregation and ensured that African-Americans continued to suffer systematic disadvantages. Is there a comparable issue in your personal life? Did you at sometime in the past try to fix an untenable situation only to have it sneak back in a less severe but still debilitating form? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to finish the reforms; to enforce a thorough and permanent correction.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Does an elusive giant creature with a long neck inhabit the waters of Loch Ness in northern Scotland? Alleged sightings have been reported since 1933. Most scientists dismiss the possibility that “Nessie” actually exists, but there are photos, films and videos that provide tantalizing evidence. A government-funded Scottish organization has prepared contingency plans just in case the beast does make an unambiguous appearance. In that spirit, and in accordance with astrological omens, I recommend that you prepare yourself for the arrival in your life of intriguing anomalies and fun mysteries. Like Nessie, they’re nothing to worry about, but you’ll be better able to deal gracefully with them if you’re not totally taken by surprise.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Does moss really “eat” rocks, as Cancerian author Elizabeth Gilbert attests in her novel The Signature of All Things?

Marine chemist Martin Johnson says yes. Moss really does break down and release elements in solid stone. Gilbert adds, “Given enough time, a colony of moss can turn a cliff into gravel, and turn that gravel into topsoil.” Furthermore, this hardy plant can grow virtually everywhere: in the tropics and frozen wastes, on tree bark and roofing slate, on sloth fur and snail shells. propose that we make moss your personal symbol of power for now, Cancerian. Be as indomitable, resourceful, and resilient as moss.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Let’s shout out a big “THANKS!” and “HALLELUJAH!” to the enzymes in our bodies. These catalytic proteins do an amazing job of converting the food we eat into available energy. Without them, our cells would take forever to turn any particular meal into the power we need to walk, talk and think. I bring this marvel to your attention, Leo, because now is a favorable time to look for and locate metaphorical equivalents of enzymes: influences and resources that will aid and expedite your ability to live the life you want to live.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground,” writes author Judith Thurman. I’m guessing you will experience this feeling in the coming weeks. What does it mean if you do? It may be your deep psyche’s way of nudging you to find an energizing new sanctuary. Or perhaps it means you should search for fresh ways to feel peaceful and well-grounded. Maybe it’s a prod to push you outside your existing comfort zone so you can expand your comfort zone.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Venice, Italy consists of 118 small islands that rise from a shallow lagoon. A network of 443 bridges keeps them all connected. But Venice isn’t the world champion of bridges. The American city of Pittsburgh, PA holds that title, with 446. I nominate these

two places to be your inspirational symbols in the coming weeks. It’s time for you build new metaphorical bridges and take good care of your existing metaphorical bridges.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): To aid and support your navigation through this pragmatic phase of your astrological cycle, I have gathered counsel from three productive pragmatists. First is author Helen Keller. She said she wanted to accomplish great and noble things, but her “chief duty” was “to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” Second, author George Orwell believed that “to see what is in front of one’s nose” requires never-ending diligence. Finally, author Pearl S. Buck testified that she didn’t wait around until she was in the right mood before beginning her work. Instead, she invoked her willpower to summon the necessary motivation.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Blackjack is a card game popular in gambling casinos. In the eternal struggle to improve the odds of winning big money, some blackjack players work in teams. One teammate secretly counts the cards as they’re dealt and assesses what cards are likely to come up next. Another teammate gets subtle signals from his card-counting buddy and makes the bets. A casino in Windsor, Ontario pressed charges against one blackjack team, complaining that this tactic was deceptive and dishonest. But the court decided in the team’s favor, ruling that the players weren’t cheating but simply using smart strategy. In the spirit of these blackjack teams, Sagittarius, and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to better your odds in a “game” of your choice by using strategy that is almost as good as cheating but isn’t actually cheating.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): What has become of the metaphorical seeds you planted during the weeks after your last birthday? Have your intentions flourished? Have your dreams blossomed? Have your talents matured? Have your naive questions evolved into more penetrating questions? Be honest and kind as you answer these inquiries. Be thoughtful and big-hearted as you take inventory of your ability to follow through on your promises to yourself. If people are quizzical about how much attention you’re giving yourself as you take stock, inform them that your astrologer has told you that December is Love Yourself Better Month.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): If you want to play the drinking game called Possum, you and your friends climb up into a tree with a case of beer and start drinking. As time goes by, people get so hammered they fall out of the tree. The winner is the last one left in the tree. I hope you won’t engage in this form of recreation anytime soon—nor in any other activity that even vaguely resembles it. The coming weeks should be a time of calling on favors, claiming your rewards, collecting your blessings and graduating to the next level. trust your policy will be: no trivial pursuits, no wasted efforts, no silly stunts.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In his song “Happy Talk,” Academy Award-winning lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II offered this advice: “You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?” Where do you stand in this regard, Pisces? Do you in fact have a vivid, clearly defined dream? And have you developed a strategy for making that dream come true? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to home in on what you really want and hone your scheme for manifesting it.

(P.S. Keep in mind Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s idea: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”)

Doctor Chocolate

Michael Grofe, cultural anthropology professor at Sacramento City College and bona fide Maya archeologist, has a sweet tooth for all things chocolate, especially if that chocolate is fair trade and ecologically sustainable. That cocoa tooth took root when a  seemingly random opportunity to explore life as a chocolatier crashed headlong into Grofe’s tireless capacity for anthropological curiosity. Like chocolate and peanut butter, a  love affair was born. From that day forward, Maya mythology, chocolate, and Grofe’s sincere commitment to inform, honor, teach and protect the ancient culture forever intertwined— like twin fish of Maya lore—into what would become and still remains as his life’s calling.

Oh, yeah, and did we mention he makes chocolate?

A beautiful box of chocolate, in fact, replete with realistic castings of the Maya calendar glyphs. Handmade and filled with different flavored centers, these chocolates are made to aid the fundraising for Maya to translate the writings of their ancestors and be the recoverers of their own histories.

SN&R chatted with the chocolatier about Maya folklore, his history with chocolate and more.

How did you become an apprentice chocolatier?

Rewind to 1995. I was a master student in cultural anthropology in San Francisco. I needed a side job. My partner at the time, his friends, owned a chocolate factory they’d started about 12 years before. Tom was looking for additional apprentices, and he threw me right into it. It was an entirely mail-order business.

Did you have any interest in chocolate before this?

How did your passion for Maya mythology grow from your early experiences with the chocolate industry?

I was thrust into this job as a chocolatier and wanted to connect to it … That led me to the relationship between humans and ecology, which led me to the ancient Maya. My father wanted to be a Maya archaeologist, and I kind of lived out his dream by becoming one.

How did that lead to making Maya glyphs with the chocolate?

the entire profits to MAM. It’s helping Maya people learn how to read and write in the script that was taken away from them 500 years ago.

What kind of chocolate do you like to eat?

I like dark chocolate. In the past, I’ve eaten too much. When I first started as an apprentice, working in the factory all by myself, I could eat as much chocolate as I wanted to, and ate about a pound. I will never do that again.

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 realastrology.com.

It wasn’t something that I sought out … About a year after I started working there, Tom sold the business to me. I didn’t want to be a businessman, because I was very concerned about capitalism. After I bought the factory, I decided to study chocolate for my master’s thesis … My master’s thesis ended up being about the chocolate industry. I did an ethnography of the industry and found out about their horrible practices. It eventually led me to closing the company, because I felt like I could not justify making money off chocolate, which came from unsustainable, socially irresponsible and ecologically irresponsible ways.

I finished up my grad degree in Australia, and I remember in the library getting this book called Maya Hieroglyphs Without Tears, by J. Eric S. Thompson. I opened the pages, and I fell in love with those glyphs. … I thought, I’m going to close my company now, but maybe one day I’ll reopen it and teach people about the Maya story of chocolate by sculpting calendar glyphs and casting them into chocolate. I’d assumed somebody had already translated them. But the glyphs hadn’t been translated! That just completely intrigued me.

So, the biz closed, but you’re still making chocolate.

In 2015, I was selected to be the president of a nonprofit called Mayas for Ancient Mayan. One thing I do for MAM is fundraisers. … I wanted to make these chocolate boxes out of chocolate grown by the Maya fair trade, so they would make money from it and help to teach the world about how the Maya came up with chocolate and about their sophisticated astronomy. I give

Does anyone ever call you Professor Chocolate?

Doctor Chocolate! Or Willy Wonka. I get that too. Once people find out, I am forever woven together with chocolate in their minds. If they hear anything about chocolate, they will send it to me. It’s fun.

It seems like chocolate has a special significance for you.

I feel intimately interwoven with chocolate. Chocolate is part of my story now. It took me by the hand because I was curious. And it led me to where I am today. I would not be a Maya archaeologist were it not for chocolate. It brought together a confluence of my interest in ecology, social justice, biology, astronomy and science. All these things coalesce in the story of chocolate. The real crux of the story for me is the interconnectedness that the story is meant to teach people: “We are related to the cosmos.” Ω

Find more information at discovermam.org and visit xibalbacacao.com to order a chocolate box.

by Amy Bee

PHOTO By NICOLE F Ow LER

Michael Grofe is gaga for cocoa stuff. And fair trade.