Desert Companion - November 2014

By George KNapp

11 November

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g et your

ip to It's hsquare. be t these n Ge eads o thr PAGE

Gu i de

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License to chill Lo c a l t i ta n s o f t e c h

The war over hypnotherapy

Georgian Restaurant at Harrods, London, by Christopher Guy

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EDiTOR’S Note

Revenge of the nerds

W

e used to call them geeks, nerds, dorks, spazzes. Now we call them visionaries, CEOs, disrupters. It’s crazy when you consider how much revenge the nerds have had since those intrepid Tri-Lams Gilbert and Lewis rocked a frat festival and won the hearts of America with electric violins and some sweet kickworming. In today’s wild, wired world, the erstwhile geeks are the men and women shaping our new hybrid existence that doesn’t straddle so much as blend the real and the virtual. Forget revenge. We’re living in the apotheosis of the nerds.

And while Silicon Valley is still the tech world’s Fertile Crescent with its critical, boiling mass of venture capitalists and unshaven software shamans, good ideas know no geographic bounds. But there are greenhouse conditions that can encourage them. Las Vegas, with its cheerful spirit that embraces risk and bankrolling by Tony Hsieh and others, is maturing into a city where the phrase “tech scene” may end up being more than a mere wishy meme. For proof, check out our suite of profiles on p. 78, which features innovators and entrepreneurs who are doing everything from launching a global network of virtual currency ATMs (Robocoin) to ginning up homegrown apps aimed at helping the working family shave a few bucks off their grocery bill (Grocery411.com). And if you want to learn how to solder a servomotor into your robot butler, we have a place for you, too, with the makers at Syn Shop. Whether Next MOnth Vegas can seriously diversify into a real tech sector depends on numerous iffy ’Taste the excellence factors (such as, oh, fixing our education — in our system), but these restless visioneers sig18th annual nal a promising start.

Restaurant Awards Of course, geeking out is about having

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fun, too — enter the geek map (p. 84), which features our hand-picked collection of three dozen places and events in the valley for brain-flexing play, from hacker conventions to science fiction clubs to shops that sell games with twenty-sided dice. If you that reference gave you a nerdgasmic flashback, then you’ll enjoy “Mage Against the Machine” on p. 88, James Joseph Brown’s memoir of growing up playing the classic — and widely misunderstood — role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Where parents saw a bunch of gawky teens around the table flirting with occult fantasies, Brown reflects upon how the stereotypically uber-nerdy pastime taught him all the stuff we thought football did before learning it turns brains into tapioca: teamwork, persistence, strategy. Indeed, when the number of people streaming World of Warcraft gamecasts on Twitch rivals NFL viewership, you know the geeks have won the game of thrones.

Even the meaning of the word has changed. These days, geek connotes not so much social ineptitude as the kind of obsessive devotion that nearly guarantees success -- and that devotion, tinged with a gleam of mania, is what truly defines this issue, whether it’s comic book store owner Ralph Mathieu creating a home for visual storytelling, or photographer Marshall Scheuttle snapping in the shadow of Las Vegas’ neon candy shell. In an age when the Internet celebrates everyone’s niche passion, we are all geeks now.

Andrew Kiraly editor

Follow Desert Companion www.facebook.com/DesertCompanion www.twitter.com/DesertCompanion

the will is strong, the results are

WONDROUS Since 2002, the Caesars Foundation has directed millions of dollars in support to social service organizations nationwide, from groups that help older individuals live healthier, more fulfilling lives to those that make higher education accessible to students from all backgrounds.

In every case, we’re guided by the values of fairness, inclusion and equal opportunity – qualities that truly represent the best our nation has to offer.

Changing lives. Transforming communities.

Creating a brighter future for all. That’s what our will to do wonders™ is all about.

® The will to do wonders®

November 2014

letters@desertcompanion.com

Vo lU m e 1 2 I s s u e 1 1

1 920

It presents a curious challenge for the year

In HONOR of this month’s NEVADA

that marks Nevada’s 150th birthday: Can

SE SQU IC EN TENNI AL we look at

the

HISTORY OF NEVADA

Desert Companion reflect the story of our city

in

and our state through objects rather than the words and deeds of people? Turns out, we can.

And, as with people, selection is key: We chose these 25 items, but could have told a wholly different, equally valid story with 25 different ones, so rich is our history. For assistance, we brain-picked a dream team of historians: Dennis McBride, Claytee White, Geoff Schumacher, Bob Stoldal, Mark Hall-Patton, Danielle Kelly, Michael Green, Alan Palmer, Eugene Moehring; then we tapped our many museum curators, as well as several businesses, nonprofits and individuals. The result: this lively virtual pop-up museum that celebrates the Silver State.

RAILROAD LAMP That Las Vegas exists at all has a lot to do with the railroads. After two battling railroad barons — one of them being William Clark, after whom our county is named — merged their Southwestern lines, a way station was needed. Las Vegas fit the bill, though, according to Southern Nevada: The Boomtown Years, “One can easily read in railroad correspondence J. Ross Clark’s (William’s brother and partner) lack of enthusiasm for ‘booming’ a town at Las Vegas, because he feared that land would fall into the hands of speculators.” So the railroad laid out its own town and, in the celebrated 1905 auction, sold off the lots — “mostly to real estate speculators from California” — and Las Vegas was born. — SD

1 9 10

PAIUTE BASKET Though it dates from the last century, this lovely artifact reminds us of the Paiute presence in Nevada well before traders, trappers, miners, Mormons, railroaders, ranchers, mobsters and tourists showed up. But once they began — when, for instance, the Old Spanish Trail brought increasing numbers of people — it was only a matter of time until that traffic, in the words of the tribe’s website, “brought an end to the Paiutes’ free movement and traditional way of life.”

Around the time this basket was created, rancher Helen J. Stewart, an admirer of the Paiutes’ desert hardiness, deeded the tribe 10 acres of her ranch. The Las Vegas Paiute Tribe is still based there. — SD

written by

SCOTT DICKENSHEETS HEIDI KYSER LAUNCE RAKE GEOFF SCHUMACHER

OBJECTS 48

BY FREDERICK S. DELLENBAUGH

There’s a reason this painting is more at home in a history museum than an art one — it’s not a great painting. (That cowboy in the lower right — is he rolling his bedding, performing CPR or …?) But it’s the first known image of the Las Vegas Valley, painted when Dellenbaugh, a noted explorer, paused here on his way to California. This is the prelapsarian valley, well before America took notice of the place, other than the original inhabitants and the few settlers who’d tried, with varying success, to live here. It’s a place pretty much lost to our imagination now without a visual aid like this one. — SD

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Timed to last month’s Nevada sesquicentennial — a word, thankfully, that we’ll never have to use again — the October issue’s cover story sought to parse this city’s and state’s history through their epic thingness. Specifically, 25 objects from throughout time … time … time … that collectively add up to our story. A ceramic bird here, a giant dam pipe there, some mining equipment and a showgirl costume: voila, Vegas! To arrive at our 25, we enlisted the help of historians and curators, one of whom you’ll meet in the next sentence. “We just love your thoughtful work with ‘The History of Nevada in 25 Objects,’” says Nevada State Museum curator Karan Feder. She and her NSM colleagues (along with the staff at the Clark County Museum) patiently fielded our numerous requests for information and access to important items. “The selected objects are so wonderfully unexpected — thank you for including a few artifacts from the Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas!”

“I like the 25 Objects package quite a lot,” says reader — and, as you’ll note on p. 73, occasional contributor — Greg

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2

Also for the October issue, Deputy Editor Scott Dickensheets spent an evening with The Illiterati, a fun group of ambitious writers of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and dark fiction, who meet weekly to critique one another’s work-in-progress.

In that spirit, we asked them to critique the resulting article, titled “Write Club.”

“Scott, I saw what you were attempting with this piece, and it mostly worked real well,” judged Mason Ian Bundschuh. “Especially the parts between each word where you put a space.

Lots of emotional resonance there.” [*Dickensheets beams appreciatively*] Matt Czarnowski likewise found something to like in the piece: “This article oozes potential,” he writes. “I am impressed by your ability to portray our critique group in such a positive light, despite the obvious cultish attributes not mentioned (animal sacrifices, blood rituals, etc.).” [*Dickensheets beams appreciatively*] Mercedes M. Yardley, however, had a different take: “I wanted to hear more about the night. It was unusual and full of rain. The sky was oddly illuminated. … When we stepped through the door, it was into the bosom of safety from the 1 8 76

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Thilmont, who adds that he “learned numerous new facts.” That hearty endorsement was not a condition of his work on p. 73.

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jaws of that inhuman darkness. That contrast juxtaposed with the light and life of the critique group could add drama and a touch of surreal madness.”

Bundschuh agreed: “What if you opened with, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’?

“All in all a solid start,” he avers.

“With a few revisions (and maybe a fight scene featuring futuristic robot bears) I think you’ll have something worth submitting to your editor.”

“Do not listen to Mason,” Czarnowski counters. “Boxing T-Rexes would suit the story much better.” Those are just suggestions, he allows, but Dickensheets should follow every one if he wants to see his article in print. [*Dickensheets beams appreciatively*]

3

Reader Lizbeth Bostrom seemed to find the subject of Heidi Kyser’s report on rooftop solar energy (“Power to the people,” October) inspiring: “(It’s) an indication of how clean, affordable and abundant electricity can be generated at the micro level,” she commented on Facebook. “At the macro level, what would be the possibility of acres of desert land being used to furnish the energy to distill seawater to freshwater?” Powering desalination without fossil fuels would provide necessary water without ecological damage. “It is past time that Nevadans need to push our politicians to respond to the thorny fact that with the current population, the water supply is dwindling much faster than nature can keep up.”

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106.5

NOVEMBER 2014

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Features

From the fanboys and -girls who power our pop culture to the techno wizards who shape our future, this is the time of the geek — just as the ancient prophecies foretold!

We celebrate their spirit.

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78 Profiles in tech Meet some folks who’re geeking up Vegas

By Andrew Kiraly & Heidi Kyser

84 the geek Map Thirty-seven places you can nerd out at

By Andrew Kiraly & Brent Holmes

88 D&D and me How Dungeons & Dragons changed my life

By James Joseph Brown

94 the 2014

holiday guide

Time to ramp up your holiday spirit! Check out gift suggestions that’ll wow even the Ghost of Christmas Presents; a listing of events to keep you elf-busy; a guide to fulfilling volunteer opportunities; and holiday tales from three great writers.

S u z H i n t o n : A a r o n M ay e s

77 Geek It up!

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NOVEMBER 2014

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Vo lU m e 1 2 I s s u e 1 1

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74

departments All Things

45 HIstory

69 Dining

112 The Guide

19 politics Tax break

Twenty-five years ago, he began reporting on Area 51 — and life got strange

By George Knapp

70 The Dish There’s

More culture than your phone’s calendar app can handle!

jamboree!

22 social Help, with a

side of dignity 24 zeit bites Turning

54 Health

soap into hope

Hypnotherapy can help patients — but there’s a battle brewing over who’s allowed to use it

By Heidi Kyser

26 Profile A graphic

encounter 28 style Stuff for your

hairy face 30 Streetwise Going

with the flow on Water Street

62 ART

nothing third-place about Bronze Café

By Zach Moldof 73 Eat this now

Someone tell Elmer Fudd— here’s the way to eat some rabbit!

74 at first Bite The protein cathedral of José Andrés

By Debbie Lee

120 End note In the spirit of the season, we at Desert Companion are thankful for stuff.

Cookies, mostly. But other things, too. We’ve prepared a list.

By Andrew Kiraly, Heidi Kyser & Scott Dickensheets

Shooting the unseen side of Las Vegas

By Scott Dickensheets

Selected Homme check jacket, $150; red tartan short sleeve shirt, $50; tweed bow tie, $16, all available at TOPMAN Fashion Show

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on the cover Model Dwayne Kennedy Photography Robert John Kley Styling Christie Moeller grooming Zee Clemente

F o o d p a n t r y : C h r i s t o p h e r S M i t h ; I l l u s t r a t i o n : B r e n t H o l m e s ; K i d n a p p e d : ma r sha l l sch e u t t l e ; R e s t a u r a n t : S ab i n o r r

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Mission Statement Desert Companion is the premier city magazine that celebrates the pursuits, passions and aspirations of Southern Nevadans. With awardwinning lifestyle journalism and design, Desert Companion does more than inform and entertain.

We spark dialogue, engage people and define the spirit of the Las Vegas Valley.

Publisher Melanie Cannon Associate Publisher Christine Kiely Editor Andrew Kiraly Art Director Christopher Smith deputy editor Scott Dickensheets

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MYACCOUNT, HELP IS NEVER FAR AWAY.

staff writer Heidi Kyser Graphic Designer Brent Holmes Account executives Sharon Clifton, Tracey Michels, Favian Perez, Markus Van’t Hul NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Couture Marketing 145 E 17th Street, Suite B4 New York, NY 10003 (917) 821-4429 advertising@couturemarketing Marketing manager Lisa Kelly Subscription manager Chris Bitonti Web administrator Danielle Branton traffic & sales associate Kimberly Chang ADVERTISING COPY EDITOR Carla J. Zvosec

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Contributing writers James Joseph Brown, Mélanie Hope, George Knapp, Debbie Lee, Christie Moeller, Zach Moldof, Steve Sebelius, Greg Thilmont, T.R. Witcher, Mitchell Wilburn, Carla J. Zvosec Contributing artists Brandon Lin, Aaron Mayes, Chris Morris, Sabin Orr Editorial: Andrew Kiraly, (702) 259-7856; andrew@desertcompanion.com Fax: (702) 258-5646 Advertising: Christine Kiely, (702) 259-7813; christine@desertcompanion.com Subscriptions: Chris Bitonti, (702) 259-7810; subscriptions@desertcompanion.com Website: www.desertcompanion.com Desert Companion is published 12 times a year by Nevada Public Radio, 1289 S. Torrey Pines Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89146.

It is available by subscription at desertcompanion.com, or as part of Nevada Public Radio membership. It is also distributed free at select locations in the Las Vegas Valley. All photos, artwork and ad designs printed are the sole property of Desert Companion and may not be duplicated or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher.

The views of Desert Companion contributing writers are not necessarily the views of Desert Companion or Nevada Public Radio. Contact Chris Bitonti for back issues, which are available for purchase for $7.95.

ISSN 2157-8389 (print) ISSN 2157-8397 (online)

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Board of Directors Officers Susan malick Brennan chair Brennan Consulting Group, LLC

Our Passion, Your Space.

cynthia alexander, ESQ. vice chair Snell & Wilmer TIM WONG treasurer Arcata Associates Florence M.E. Rogers secretary Nevada Public Radio

Directors kevin m. buckley First Real Estate Companies Dave Cabral emeritus Business Finance Corp.

A

Louis Castle emeritus

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Patrick N. Chapin, Esq. emeritus Richard I. dreitzer, Esq. Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, LLP Elizabeth FRETWELL emeritus City of Las Vegas Jan Jones Blackhurst Caesars Entertainment Corporation

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John R. Klai II Klai Juba Wald Architects

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gavin isaacs Scientific Games

President of Schilling Horticulture Group and co-host of KNPR’s Desert Bloom

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kathe nylen Anthony j. pearl, esq.

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas MARK RICCiARDI, Esq. emeritus Fisher & Phillips, LLP Mickey Roemer emeritus Roemer Gaming

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14 A Hendo-riffic crawl of Water Street page 30

a real power pl ay

politics

Thanks for giving!

As Tesla unwraps its $1.3 billion gift from Nevada, it’s unclear whether such breaks will result in economic growth — or giver’s remorse

By Steve Sebelius

D

o government subsidies really help bring new industry to suffering states, creating jobs and jump-starting economic development?

Or are they insidious crony capitalism, paying private companies with taxpayer dollars that states can ill afford to lose?

Consider the former through the eyes of Steve Hill, director of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s Office of Economic Development.

Hill is the man charged with helping Nevada emerge from the recession and prevent it from falling into another. His job: bring new businesses to Nevada and reduce the state’s 7.7 percent unemployment rate. He was key to the recent Tesla Motors deal, which will see the electric-car maker build a huge battery factory in Northern Nevada, a project that will bring an estimated 6,500 jobs in exchange for about $1.3 billion in incentives — the biggest such deal in state history.

So, is it worth it? And how can we tell upfront, when the terms of most incentive deals extend for a decade or more?

Hill says one key is to make sure all the state’s incentives are performance-based; the company applying for tax considerations must do something in order to get a benefit. In Tesla’s case, the company must build its factory and create jobs in order to access tax credits.

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ALL Things

tech

“The quality of the jobs matters a lot,” Hill said. “The whole idea of economic development is to bring dollars from outside Nevada to inside Nevada.”

Nevada’s incentives are aimed at good-wage jobs: If your company pays an average wage of less than 75 percent of the state’s average wage, you’re only eligible for half (at most) of the state’s potential tax rebates or abatements.

Hill rejected the idea, proffered by some critics, that the state always operates from a weaker position than the private company. Companies have something the state wants badly ( jobs, a more diverse economy, the potential that a game-changing business such as Tesla might spark an entirely new manufacturing sector). But they tease various governments, holding something of a public auction to get the best deal.

Hill denied feeling any pressure in the Tesla negotiations. “You really should not allow yourself to feel that way,” he said.

“You need to allow yourself to lose the deal.” In fact, Hill said, there were many times during the Tesla negotiations when the deal appeared to have fallen apart, when he had to remind himself that he might have to let the big prize go.

“Don’t fall in love with the deal,” he said.

“You get in trouble when you do that. You can chase it off the edge of the cliff.”

The mental checklist that grounded Hill during months of negotiations: The fact that there were limits on what the state could offer, both financially and constitutionally. Making sure that the company would give back credits if it failed to produce jobs or live up to its commitments. Keeping the state’s $6.5 billion general fund intact.

That checklist led him and Sandoval to say no to some Tesla demands (such as $500 million, either in cash or a state loan, both of which are prohibited under Nevada’s constitution). And there were times when offers from other states looked like they’d trump Nevada’s.

“It’s a competitive situation. That’s just reality,” Hill said.

Auctions are bad Now, consider the same question from the stance of a critic: Greg LeRoy, execu-

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tive director of the watchdog group Good Jobs First. LeRoy — author of the seminal book Great American Jobs Scam — says states can’t possibly win when governments start bidding for corporate favor.

“The system is rigged in favor of companies and against local governments and taxpayers,” he said. Nowhere is that more true than when companies publicly mull just where they might put their plant. “We never know what they’re really thinking about site location. We just have to trust them,” LeRoy said.

When it comes to what makes a bad deal, LeRoy has a mirror image of Hill’s checklist, and such public auctions are at the top of it. The Tesla deal is a good example, LeRoy said, but examples can also include Boeing, which was quite public about moving its new 787 manufacturing plant from Seattle to South Carolina.

Boeing, by the way, holds the top spot on Good Jobs First’s “Subsidy Tracker,” a listing of public dollars flowing to private companies nationwide. With 137 public subsidies worth $13.1 billion, Boeing dwarfs the No. 2 company, Aloca, a relative piker with subsidies worth $5.6 billion.

There are two companies with Nevada links on the list: No. 15 Berkshire Hathaway, with 310 subsidies worth just more than $1 billion. (Berkshire Hathaway is headed by Warren Buffet, and a subsidiary recently acquired NV Energy.) And Apple Computer is No. 38, with six subsidies worth $446.4 million, including $89 million from Nevada in a deal that saw the company set up an outpost in Reno.

But those aren’t the only companies that have benefitted from incentives in Nevada.

According to a New York Times analysis published in 2012, the state spends $33.4 million annually on incentive programs, mostly through sales tax abatements, but also property and payroll tax breaks.

(That’s about $12 per person, or 1 cent per dollar of the state’s budget.)

According to the Times, companies that benefitted included data-storage giant Switch Communications, solar panel maker Amonix (which closed a North Las Vegas facility in 2012 after about a year), paint giant Sherwin-Williams, Harley Davidson and Ocean Spray.

The second warning on LeRoy’s list is

the quest for the “trophy deal,” landing a big new industry or unique company. The prestige of having Apple, Tesla or Boeing locate in your state — to say nothing of the jobs and political advantages — can push officials to make ill-considered deals, LeRoy said. And smaller states with less population and high unemployment rates (sound familiar?) are especially vulnerable.

Finally, he said, bad deals are rushed.

The Tesla package was worked out over months of painstaking talks, but was announced just a week before the Nevada Legislature approved the deal in a two-day special session. Only minor changes to the negotiated framework were made.

LeRoy said one problem with incentive deals — including Tesla’s — is that if they do bring new jobs and residents to local communities, there are impacts not paid for by the new corporate citizen. Those burdens tend to fall on taxpayers — or they go without essential services.

“It’s got to pay for itself somehow,” he said.

Subsidies are one of the ironic issues that unite left and right — liberals dislike handing tax money to for-profit corporations, and conservatives don’t think government should be picking winners.

“Free market people would say those are risks. And Tesla should take those risks,” LeRoy said.

He’s not alone: Forbes contributor David Brunori, writing in March, expressed surprise that incentives don’t draw more ire. “But, more importantly, those [top] economic development programs are almost all the result of insidious cronyism.

Narrow business interests manipulate government policymakers, and those interests prosper to the detriment of everyone else.

Free markets be damned,” he wrote.

Brunori was reacting to a Good Jobs First report, released in February, which foundthat since 1976, 75 percent of all state economic development subsidies went to just 965 corporations. The Fortune 500 companies alone collected $63 billion in tax breaks.

“Think about that. The largest, wealthiest, most powerful organizations in the world are on the public dole,” he wrote.

“Where is the outrage?”

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ALL Things

doing good

Soul provider: Catholic Charities’ food pantry serves struggling families in need.

social

Spirit of service Already one of the valley’s largest homeless service providers, Catholic Charities is upping its game A n d r e w K i r a ly

T

he Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada campus, all beige stucco and brown tile, blends into the streetscape when you drive by. You might miss it among the mix of apartments and businesses on this stretch of North Las Vegas Boulevard.

It’s an apt metaphor for Catholic Charities itself: It generally goes unnoticed.

That’s too bad. Because over nearly 75 years, it’s quietly blossomed into one of the valley’s largest — and most vital — source of services for the poor, homeless and displaced in Las Vegas.

You might expect the 8-acre site that contains everything from a food pantry and bed barracks to English classes and computer labs to be a nexus of bleakness and desperation. But no. For instance, check out the cafeteria on an typical weekday morning: Not surprisingly, it’s bustling. But it’s a calm, cheerful kind of bustling, people eating and chatting at long tables as pop music plays in the background. The music, the

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newish paint job (the serene purple-gray replaced an outdated salmon-and-teal color scheme) are intended to turn what might otherwise be a doleful repast into a pleasant communal meal.

“Our security here has no weapons, no mace, no tasers,” Peggy Caspar, vice president of development, points out.

“And it’s an open campus — anyone can walk in for this free community meal.

It fosters an atmosphere of trust. So, how you do deal with 2,000 people on this campus every day, people who are probably stressed out and hungry?”

Dawn Davis, chief operations officer, chimes in: “By treating them with dignity and respect. There’s no yelling, no screaming. The security guards do have handcuffs, but if they have to subdue somebody, it’s the exception, not the rule.”

The openness is practical as well as philosophical. “A lot of people are what we call ‘client-resistant,’” Caspar explains. “They’re afraid to come in, to

seek services. If you make it open and welcoming, maybe they’ll come in for a meal first. Maybe they’ll have a pleasant conversation, maybe get a smile. Maybe they’ll come back tomorrow.” And ideally, start to take advantage of the charity’s myriad services to get them back on the road to a stable, self-sustaining life.

The relaxed, cheerful vibe of the place belies a restless ambition. With a nearly $24 million annual budget, Catholic Charities today has more than 20 programs. Sure, they feed and shelter the homeless. They also offer legal counseling for immigrants, find jobs for refugees, deliver meals to homebound seniors and even run an adoption agency.

(Fun fact: Oscar and Carolyn Goodman adopted their four children from the organization.) And they’re hoping to do more — raise their profile, conscript more volunteers and expand their services (for instance, their Meals on Wheels program for seniors currently has a waiting list of 800). They’ve even recently hired a marketing agency to overhaul their website and tell their story. “People know our name, but many don’t truly understand the breadth of our services,” says CEO and President Deacon Tom Roberts. “We wanted to add some horsepower to our message.”

They could use the help. So obsessed with the day-to-day details of feeding, sheltering and educating, even the staff sometimes might forget what the charity means to the valley’s disadvantaged. Caspar shares an anecdote: After starting at Catholic Charities, she was working late one evening when she looked out her window and saw waves of people walking onto the campus.

“I thought, ‘What are all these people doing? Where are they going?’” she says.

“Then I realized. They’re coming home.”

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ALL Things

zeit bites

It’s National Novel writing month!

three questions

HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL IN (GULP!) 30 DAYS

Mr. Clean

2) set up your ideal writing space

1) PICK SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT ...

• Sturdy table • Laptop (if you’re writing a techno-thriller zombie caper) or legal pad and quill (if you’re writing Literature) • Plenty of natural light • A good dictionary • Nearby cat • Numerous desk tchotchkes to inspire creativity

CHARACTER • Vampire • Achingly self-aware Brooklyn guy • Comically put-upon career woman • Maybe another vampire?

• Nicholas Sparksstyle character

GENRE • Dystopian teen romance • Achingly meta bildungsroman • Alternate history techno-thriller • Something with zombies • Chick lit

3) eliminate all distractions

What does “dystopian” mean, anyway?

4) okay, you’re almost ready to begin writing But first, it’s time to procrastinate!

A Look at all the

Sorry — prose before bros, bro!

5) now, let it sink in: you only have 30 days to write a whole, entire novel! do you know how long a whole, entire novel is? long!

9) write some more

This is awesome!

12)

pANIC! 10) check your work

This sucks!

RESOLVE TO FINISH!

Your achingly meta dystopian vampire chick-lit bildungsroman is complete!

THE

DesertCompanion.com

This is awesome!

#icantdothis

13) Type furiously ... pots of coffee ... etc.

15)

VAMPIRE’S ROAD TRIP

N ov e m b e r 2 0 1 4

11) face the hard truth

Cross day after day off the calendar, until, on Nov. 30 ...

14) You’re done!

24

all about your NaNoWriMo project, hashtag icandothis!

look at all this laundry, too!

6)

7) type furiously! drain pot after pot of coffee! compulsively look up definition of “dystopian”!

8) check your work

C Tell social media

B And wow,

dishes that need to be done before you begin!

alert social media!

Accept the accolades of friends — because you’ll never hear from an actual publisher!

The meaning of Shawn Seipler’s life coalesced in a bar of soap. By his early 30s, Seipler was a software salesman, husband, father of four and owner of two homes and a BMW 750. One night on the road, he sat looking at a bar of soap and wondered, “What happens to it after I check out?” It began a spiritual journey that would lead him to quit his job and sacrifice his wealth for the greater good. Clean the World, the nonprofit Seipler founded in 2009, collects used toiletries from hotels and repurposes them for distribution in developing countries to help stanch the spread of hygiene-related diseases. It has operations in Orlando and Las Vegas and reaches people in 95 countries. This summer, it got $1 million from Las Vegas Sands.

What was the “Ah ha!” moment in your conception of Clean the World?

I came across a study conducted in a Bangladesh village that had a very high death rate from diarrheal disease. The researchers divided the village in half: Half got soap and education on how to use it; the other half did not. There was a 60 percent reduction in mortality rates among those with the soap. I remember lying on my bed reading that study, and the light bulb went off.

Was there a moment when you considered giving up?

Oh, yeah. We started all this in the middle of the recession, making recycled soap in our garage with family helping out. From the very beginning, we were thinking the Gates Foundation had to be the place that’s gonna give us money, because one of their pillar issues is diarrheal disease. So we filled out an 18-page grant application, paid somebody to do it, were very meticulous.

And I remember when we hit send, we were all high-fiving, like, “This is it!” Eight hours later, we got a rejection notice. It said, “Please do not reapply for three years.”

What kept you going?

We had started with distributions in Orlando to homeless shelters and relief organizations. There was one called Central Care Mission that had ties to Haiti through a gentleman named Pastor Brutus. In 2009, he took us to Cape Haitian, Haiti, and I remember going into our first church. There were 10,000 Haitians in this church, and all we had was 2,000 bars of soap. It barely made it through the first two rows of people.

They dug into it like it was food and they hadn’t eaten for weeks. I remember getting on the mic and telling them, “We’ll come back. We’ll bring more soap.” — Heidi Kyser

four out-of-context excerpts from ...

A new Vegas mystery Writer Cathy Ace’s heroine, criminologist and foodie Cait Morgan, visits Vegas in The Corpse with the Platinum Hair (TouchWood Editions, $14.95). The book unfolds in the private dining room of a Strip hotel.

Tom smiled. “Yeah, maybe you’ve seen the ads on those trucks that drive up and down the Strip. You can go there and shoot all sorts of cool stuff. It’s a real tourist trap. Popular with stag parties, even couples. Though we haven’t been.” He sounded disappointed.

Everyone in the private dining room heaved a sigh of relief when the backup lighting kicked in.

Everyone except Julie Pool, who screamed, “Oh, no … Look! Somebody’s skewered Miss Shirley to her seat with a silver saber.”

The Diva’s mask slipped for a moment, and I saw her as an aging woman, frightened of spending the rest of her life unadored and unloved. Her terror of being murdered might have subsided momentarily, but it had been replaced by the vision of a lonely future. I wondered how she would react to Jimmy’s declaration of his feelings for her when she’d had a chance to process what he’d said.

“Stray dogs,” said Carl.

“A gun range?” Now it was Bud’s turn to sound puzzled.

“I want you to marry me, Cait. Now. Here in Vegas. As soon as we’re done with the cops.”

buildingsroman

beyond the book barn On the 20th anniversary of michael graves’ flamingo library revamp, some thoughts on library design

We’re on a journey to redefine the experience of school.

Now enrolling Infants - Kindergarten

Call today to tour and learn more about our program!

310 S 9th Street, Las Vegas 702.724.1436 9thBridgeSchool.com

Open House

Bishop Gorman Sunday, November 23, 2014 High School Prospective Student

CLARK COUNTY LIBRARY

LIED LIBRARY

LAS VEGAS LIBRARY

1404 E. Flamingo Road

On the UNLV campus

833 Las Vegas Blvd. N.

“I’ve always questioned the

The “soaring openness and

Designed by Southwestern

impact star architects have on

honesty” of this 2001 building

starchitect Antoine Predock,

our city,” says architect Eric

by Pugsley Simpson Coulter

this was the valley’s first

Strain. They don’t always do

Architects “bequeaths to the

(1990) high-style library. It still

their best here, he argues. Ex-

user an enlightened spiritual

holds up. “Predock demon-

ample: Graves’ 1994 upcycling

dimension,” Tracy says — “a

strated a new way to think

of the Flamingo Library — to

spatial development that

about the history of a site,”

Strain, it doesn’t measure up

enables one’s thirst for knowl-

Strain says — by not wiping

to the “ceremonial presence

edge within this sanctuary of

the slate clean. A water ele-

and intimacy” of, say, Graves’

preserved ideas.” Monumen-

ment in the design refers to

library in San Juan Capistrano.

tal in form, yet articulate in

a stream that actually flowed

UNLV art prof Robert Tracy,

its details, “it creates a sense

there. The building’s stone

on the other hand, finds it

of place within the university

and stylized desertlike forms

“open, accessible and inextri-

setting,” Strain says.

anchor it here. “This project

cably humanistic. What more

established a sense of place

would you want for a library!”

for this valley, unlike any to

OPen HOuSe Sunday, november 23, 2014

1:00 – 3:00 PM www.bishopgorman.org

that point,” Strain says.

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ALL Things

people

profile

Ralph Mathieu Owner, Alternate Reality Comics

D

oesn’t matter what age or gender you are. If you’ve got the faintest blip of imagination, you’ll get a heady dose of comic-store buzz when you walk into Alternate Reality Comics — you know, that juvenile surge of anticipating fantastic escape into other worlds.

Stories seem to riot for your attention from the shelves — here a superhero smash-’em-up, there a bloody noir tale of crime and lust, here a moody, sprawling space opera, there a poignant, personal retelling of an epic historic event.

“For anyone who likes to read, there’s a comic,” says owner Ralph Mathieu. “Autobiography, history, humor, horror, crime fiction ... I’ve designed my store in such a way that people can see the different kinds of stories that comics can tell.” Indeed, it might be more accurate not to call Mathieu’s shop a comic book store — that sounds so niche, so outdated — but rather a shrine to visual storytelling.

(And yes, there are action figures, too.)

Once the geeky realm of hypertrophic heroes and villains, comic books have gone through several revolutions.

With the ’60s came counterculture comix that skewered square America; in the ’90s, comic books gained literary cachet with graphic novels, such as Pulitzer-winning Maus, grappling with serious subject matter. Today, the medium’s commercial impact ripples across the pop-culture spectrum. If you’re a fan of “The Walking Dead,” Guardians of the Galaxy or even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, thank comics for the inspiration — that’s how they originated.

Mathieu himself used to troll local 7-Elevens to get his fix of pow! bang! bam! fare, but soon started to crave something more sophisticated. “One of my first favorite writers who showed me that comics could be something other than superhero slugfests was Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck.” That would be the misanthropic man-duck who was the mouthpiece for Gerber’s social satire of the ’70s.

“Howard was just out of sync with the rest of the world, and that really spoke to me.”

You might say Mathieu was out of sync with the world, too, until comics came to the rescue. In the ’90s, he was

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doing the slacker thing, clerking at a convenience store, taking classes here and there at UNLV. His lifelong love of comics had inspired him to try his own hand at writing and drawing but, he says, “I quickly realized I didn’t have the chops.” He set his sights instead on someday owning his own shop. When an opportunity arose to buy a local comic book store, he leapt at the chance, opening Alternate Reality Comics (alternaterealitycomics.net) in the University District in 1995.

There’s an art to selling comics. The elfin Mathieu is charmingly diffident and halting in casual conversation, but as soon as customers come through the door, he turns into something like an English butler — subtly ever-present but never hovering — peppering them here and there with questions about their favorite movies, stories and comics. He darts away to take a phone call; the customer, a regular, is calling to riff on the latest issue of Thor, in which a female protagonist wields the legendary hammer. Diversity in the world of comics reflects the same trend among readers. “Comics have a much more diverse readership today,” says Mathieu.

“The superhero movies are drawing both guys and girls, and younger people are coming back into comics as well. It’s also really fun to see people who were kids as customers bringing their own kids in.”

Mathieu’s personal kryptonite? Not enough time in the day for all those countless page-turning adventures. “The number of TV shows I watch is minimal, and I don’t play video games. Reading comics takes so much of my time. I really live and breathe comics,” he says. An understanding sidekick helps. “Fortunately, my wife enjoys the medium, too, so I can take my work home with me.” — Andrew Kiraly

P h oto g r a ph y BRENT HOL M ES

ALL Things

style

trend alert

Art of Shaving beard and mustache wax, The Art of Shaving in the Fashion Show Mall and The Forum Shops at Caesars

What’s growing on?

The latest men’s fashion trend is written all over your face

By Christie Moeller

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Mister Beard Wash revitalizer trio, $49, misterbeardwash.com

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. Just grow it. First, let that bad boy

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the mirror (literally) and ask yourself what

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Scissors? Check. But there are plenty

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gentlemanly arts,

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E. La ke Me ad

explore

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9

Water St

ALL Things

Pkw y

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76 7

Pacific Ave

8

Navy St

5

E. Texas Ave

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9

3 E.4 Army St

Atlanti c Av e

8

2 1

2 atmosphere is genial and there

streetwise

Heart of Hendo Change is fluid on Henderson’s Water Street

By Scott Dickensheets

T

eight years, owner Shereen Hale

was some definite talent on the

knows what she’s doing. “You just

walls when we visited. 3 E. Army

get a feel for the right books,” she

St., citylightsartgallery.com

says. 19 W. Pacific St., facebook.com/nvbookboutique

THE COFFEE HOUSE

5

This space, next to a vaping lounge, has changed hands sev-

ROBERT BECKMANN MURAL

8

The keynote of a long-

here may not be an eccen-

of tenant changes in the building

eral times. In its latest incarnation, it

tric millionaire terraforming

and along the street, and not much

seems less like a creative-class hang

Beckmann’s brawny five-panel

downtown Henderson into an ani-

walk-in traffic, though the opening

spot than a pleasant eatery with

depiction of Henderson’s earliest

mal-shaped urban hepscape — but

of Berwick’s has helped. But if you’re

sandwiches, crepes and windows

years feels throwbacky in more

the area is changing anyway. Amid

a crafter, this place is your bliss.

opening onto the laconic pageant

than subject matter — it owes no

some empty storefronts, new places

155 S. Water St., # 130,

of Water Street. Tip: Bring your

debt to trendy street art. But that

are joining older businesses in a pro-

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cess that feels a little like potential.

RAINBOW CLUB

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French-English dictionary, as the

just gives its storytelling a timeless

new owners are still learning the

feel. Intersection of Pacific and

lingo. 117 S. Water St.

Water streets

CHEF FLEMMING’S BAKE SHOP

Newly opened on the ground

3

Coo Coo’s Gourmet

floor of the three-story Pinnacle

— there’s something enjoyably

Coffee Café

BERWICK’S URBAN LOUNGE

ago “city of murals” project,

The centerpiece of this small casino is Images restaurant

The name is bigger than the

9

place — but so is the menu.

adequately describe these pastry

There aren’t enough syn-

Building, this cozy restaurant and

David Lynchian about its aura of

bar has an easygoing white-collar

small-town swank (wall draperies,

6

feel, damn good cheeseburgers

video screens cycling beautiful

What Coo Coo’s lacks in seat-

cases. Individual bread puddings?

and live entertainment. Water

scenery), and you couldn’t spend

ing capacity, it makes up for in

Yes. Frog-shaped treats? Yes. Tarts,

Street’s needed a place like this.

$40 on dinner for two if you tried.

versatility. From breakfast items

cookies, cupcakes? Yes, all quite

203 S. Water St., (702) 826-3122

You may not have to fend off the

to sizable sandwiches to wraps

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foodies, but the comfort food

and frappes, this tiny kitchen

THE DOWNTOWN SEWING

goes down just fine. Next to Boyd

overachieves. 19 W. Pacific St.,

any left. Before his 16 years at the

MACHINE COMPANY

Gaming’s Eldorado Casino. 122 S.

coocooscafe.com

Golden Nugget, Chef Flemming

BOOK BOUTIQUE

where pastry-making utilizes a

2

Anything your sewing passion

Water St., rainbowhenderson.com

requires — Pfaff equipment,

thread, workshops — store manager Carrie McDonald can help you with.

“Water Street is tough,” she says. Lot

4

— try the onion-walnut, if there’s

Pedersen came from Denmark,

Visual-art co-ops can be hit-

7

or-miss qualitywise, but the

usually yields surprise finds — after

CITY LIGHTS ART GALLERY

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lot less sugar. A sweet addition to

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Henderson. 7 Water St., chefflemmings.com/index.html

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History

Out there Twenty-five years ago this month, the author opened the door on Area 51. The story could hardly have been stranger had he found the aliens B y G e o r g e K na p p

A

buzz was building inside the Kulturhuset, a community center built on Islands Brygge, the historic property on the waterfront of Copenhagen’s harbor. Inside the hall, an audience of more than 120 Danes, Norwegians, Germans and Brits were waiting to hear about a mystery that first surfaced on Las Vegas television 25 years ago. What’s the latest about Area 51, they wanted me to tell them — and whatever happened to that flying-saucer guy Bob Lazar?

Few people know better than I do how outlandish the Lazar story sounded when his tale of a secret Nevada base housing UFOs exploded onto the scene back in November 1989. To this day, it is still a bit befuddling to me that educated professionals, artists, musicians and retirees from all around Europe would gather to hear the latest scuttlebutt about the flying saucers supposedly housed in a secretive facility in the Nevada desert.

The Exopolitics Denmark conference, a two-day gathering in October, wasn’t the first to focus on the subject, and it won’t be the last. Area 51 is known around the world. Every day I receive letters, emails or phone calls from curious people in Ecuador, Iceland, Hong Kong, Russia or other far-flung places asking about Area 51 or the bookish whistleblower who put it on the map.

And that’s exactly what Lazar did. Today, Area 51 is an oxymoron of the highest order — the world’s best-known se-

cret base. It has been mentioned in such Heck, even the Kardashians visited the blockbusters as The Da Vinci Code, Na- outskirts of the base for their reality show. tional Treasure, an Indiana Jones sequel There are several businesses named afand Independence Day, in which Earth- ter Area 51 — a rock ’n’ roll band, a couple lings used the base to fight off an alien of bars, a video game, a fireworks cominvasion. It’s been featured in “X-Files” pany, jerky stores, inflatable love dolls, a episodes, inspired dozens of books, hun- dance troupe, art exhibits and the Las Vedreds of magazine articles, songs, car- gas triple A-baseball team. After my first toons, poems and business enterprises. televised interview with Lazar, the most Earlier this year, former President prominent business in Rachel, Nev., wisely Clinton talked about his interest in aliens changed its name from the Rachel Bar and and Area 51 on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Grill to the Little A’Le’Inn, selling T-shirts, President Obama became the first sitting posters, Groom Lake wine and Bob Lapresident to mention the name of the zar Christmas tree ornaments, along with base — during a ceremony honoring Shir- “Beam Me Up, Scotty” drinks at the bar and ley MacLaine.

Alien Burgers in the kitchen.

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history The story as told by Lazar has not only persisted but has blossomed, despite overtly hostile treatment by major media outlets and some of the best-known honchos of Ufology. Many of my journalism colleagues have worked their ink-stained panties into pretzel-thick bunches by fretting about the story. Nonetheless, since the saucer stuff burst into the public consciousness, every major media organization, program and paper in the world has, sometimes reluctantly, beaten a path to Area 51’s once-obscure door.

The attention has irritated some of my fellow reporters to the breaking point.

The nonexistent military base

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Ship hits the fan: above, a young Bob Lazar; right, a satellite photo of Groom Lake

the Tikaboo Valley. The guards, nicknamed “camo dudes,” who patrol the perimeter of Area 51 were overwhelmed by all the attention, and ticked off, too.

Before that first broadcast, the only people familiar with the name of the base were folks who worked there or at the Nevada Test Site, or who lived in one of the remote communities of central Nevada. A few journalists had written bits and pieces about the base in the ’60s and ’70s. Aviation magazines speculated about spy planes that might be flying out of Groom Lake: the sleek SR-71 Blackbird, the gangly and magnificent U-2 and a strange craft rumored to be nearly invisible to radar. Among the handful of Nevada journalists with an interest in the base were two Las Vegas muckrakers, Bob Stoldal and Ned Day, who years later would become my bosses.

Acting on a tip from a former CIA pilot and Area 51 watcher named John Lear, Day and Stoldal broke a big story about the existence of the stealth fighter, which, they reported, had been developed and tested at Area 51. Federal lawmen hauled Day in for questioning about the source of his information. Stoldal was nabbed by military security on the outskirts of the base. In the early ’80s, when they hired me to work at KLAS-TV, they told me intriguing stories about the ominous military base known by many names — The

Ranch, The Box, The Watertown Strip and, best of all, Dreamland. By then the base had vanished from maps of the Test Site. The government began to pretend it didn’t exist, even though it had been acknowledged by the military as early as 1955 and had been photographed by Russian satellites. It became readily apparent that intelligence agencies and the military were flat out lying to the public, and, as lies go, it wasn’t very convincing.

'there is no delusion'

I

n Copenhagen, I told the audience that it no longer matters to me whether anyone believes Lazar’s wild tale.

(That’s almost true.) For years after the

l a z a r p h ot o c o u r t e s y g e o r g e k n a p p

“S

ometimes I really do regret it.” On the media screen inside the Denmark hall, attendees are intently watching an edited clip of an interview with Lazar. “I almost feel like apologizing to them, saying, ‘I’m sorry. Can I have my job back?’”

It’s far too late for that — assuming he ever had a job out there in the first place.

Whatever anonymity Area 51 enjoyed evaporated forever the moment Lazar spoke into a TV camera.

That first interview was broadcast in May 1989. Lazar’s face was hidden and he used a pseudonym, Dennis. He claimed he worked intermittently at a location called S-4, south of Groom Lake, the main facility of Area 51. He said nine aircraft hangars had been built into the side of a mountain, adjacent to Papoose dry lake, disguised to look like the desert floor. Inside were nine flying saucers of alien origin. “Dennis” said the program was controlled by the U.S. Navy and that he and other scientists were taking the saucers apart to figure out how they worked — “reverse engineering,” he called it.

Eight months later, on Nov. 10, KLASTV identified Lazar by name and showed his face as part of a series called “UFOs: The Best Evidence.” To this day, it ranks as the highest rated, most-watched local news program ever produced here. Within days, Lazar’s claims had spread to Europe and Japan. TV crews and tabloid outfits flocked to Nevada. Tour buses filled with UFO enthusiasts staked out the deserts of

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story broke, it was a burning priority for me to try to convince the public — and my skeptical colleagues — that the story was legitimate and true. Not anymore.

These days, I focus on explaining why we took the story seriously in the first place, why we put our credibility on the line and how the tale subsequently took on a life that no one could have imagined. Like it or not, the Lazar meme is alive and well.

“Look, I’m not out there giving UFO lectures or producing tapes. I’m not in the UFO business,” Lazar told me in an interview recorded this year at my home.

“I’m trying to run a scientific business, and if I’m The UFO Guy it makes it really difficult for me. It is to my benefit that people don’t believe the story. So when somebody says that they don’t believe my story, I say, ‘Great. Pass it around. I don’t want you to believe it because it makes life difficult for me.’”

These days, he owns a scientific supply company in Michigan. He doesn’t grant interviews and has done his best to put the whole episode behind him. He makes an occasional exception for me, mostly because of the strange road we have traveled together and the wars that have been fought in the odd little universe of Ufology.

“Look, I know what happened is true,” Lazar says. “There is no doubt. Period.

There is no delusion.”

“Bob wouldn’t go to the trouble to make up a story to lie to people and then perpetuate that lie,” adds his close friend Gene Huff, a Las Vegas real-estate appraiser. “I mean, he lives in his own world and doesn’t care what people think. Bob has no idea who won the Super Bowl last year, or the World Series. He’s busy doing scientific stuff in Bob Lazar World and would not waste his time perpetuating a lie about UFOs.” When KLAS decided to pursue Lazar’s claims, we spent eight months looking into his background and the larger story about UFOs at Area 51. On the surface, Lazar seemed an unlikely person to bring into such a sensitive program, assuming such a program exists. He likes machine guns and hookers, builds jet-powered cars, operated an outlaw fireworks spectacular and flies a skull-and-crossbones

flag over his house. Hardly the profile of a stuffy government scientist. What’s more, the claims he made about places he worked and the school he attended could not be verified.

But instead of scaring us away from the story, the lack of records is what hooked us.

Lazar said that prior to S-4, he had worked as a physicist on classified projects at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. The lab told me it had no record whatsoever of

Lazar. After I found a lab phone book listing his name, and a front-page Los Alamos newspaper article that named him as a lab physicist, Los Alamos still denied having any records. A headhunting company confirmed to me that it had hired Lazar to work at the lab and would send me copies of his records — but then clammed up, refusing to return phone calls or respond to letters, later denying it ever told me that it had the records.

I interviewed four people who had personal knowledge of Lazar working at Los Alamos on classified projects, and I even took a tour of the lab with Lazar as my guide. Something was clearly wrong with this picture. Later, after Lazar got into legal hot water, I asked Nevada Rep. Jim Bilbray for help tracking down Lazar’s employment records. The congressman’s office said it was stonewalled by several agencies and had never seen anything like it.

The second thing that hooked us was Lazar’s knowledge of how things worked at Groom Lake. He says he spent very little time at Groom itself, but he knew, for instance, that a company called EG&G handled hiring. (Lazar claimed he had been sent to EG&G on a recommendation from physicist Edward Teller, whom he had met at Los Alamos.) Lazar knew that employees were flown to the base in unmarked planes or driven to Groom on

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history buses with blacked-out windows — all true. He told us he had been interviewed by a guy who might have worked for the FBI as part of a background check for his security clearance. The agent’s name was Mike Thigpen. As it turned out, Thigpen was a real person, but he worked for something called the Office of Federal Investigation, which conducts background checks on people hired to work at the former Test Site. That part of Lazar’s story turned out to be true.

We also confirmed the existence of a location called S-4 on the Nellis range. There had been no references anywhere to such a place, but the public affairs office at Nellis confirmed to me that S-4 was a location at which the Air Force “tested certain equipment.” (If you ask them today, they will tell you they are “unable to find any such designation on any maps” of the range.) How did Lazar know it existed?

The most important information Lazar had was the location and time of test flights of the saucerlike craft. Three weeks in a row, he escorted a group of people out to the desert east of the Papoose range, and they witnessed a glowing saucer-shaped object rise above the mountains and perform dramatic maneuvers. One of the sightings was captured on videotape. I interviewed each of the people who went along, and they told me the same story. Again, how did Lazar know? There had been no reports of aerial activity at Papoose. To this day, the official story is that the government has never had a facility at that location (even though satellite maps show a road leading from Groom Lake to the spot where Lazar says the hangars were located).

As an aside, earlier this year, a UFO researcher found images on Google Earth that appear to show the outline of what

could be nine hangar doors on the side of Papoose dry lake.

After an inconclusive result on one polygraph test — the examiner thought Lazar was too frightened — he easily passed a second test, administered an ex-cop named Terry Tavernetti, who quizzed him about his core claims. No attempt at deception was detected. Not long after we reported Tavernetti’s findings, his office was burglarized and the charts from Lazar’s test were stolen.

Yet another reason we gave Lazar the benefit of the doubt is that we found witnesses to back up at least parts of his story. I’ve interviewed more than two dozen people who worked at Groom Lake at various times from the 1950s through the ’80s who have told me they saw saucerlike craft being tested or stored or taken apart in the vicinity of Area 51.

Most telling of all are those witnesses

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who were subsequently visited and threatened by various Men In Black types. Six people who offered to tell me their stories say they were visited immediately afterward and ordered to keep their mouths shut. If it had happened only once, I wouldn’t think much about it. But these six people were solid citizens, not UFO nuts.

One woman says she her life was threatened. Another man says he was warned about imprisonment if he talked. What this told me was that someone was listening to my phone calls. In the days before Edward Snowden’s revelations, before we took for granted that the government is listening to every call and reading every email, this knowledge really pissed us off. Years after the story broke, I spoke to two former spooks who admitted that their job was to follow me, Lazar, Lear and Huff to see who we met or spoke to, at our workplaces, homes or bars. If Lazar’s tale was baloney, why were we being followed?

Nonetheless, my approach to the Lazar material changed in the mid-’90s, for a couple of reasons. One is that I was concerned that I had crossed into advocacy instead of merely reporting on it.

The fact is, it became personal. So many weird things happened during those first few years, things that are hard to explain if you weren’t there.

Second, I reluctantly came to realize that I would never be able to prove Lazar’s claims, no matter how many witnesses came forward to verify parts of his story. The folks who run Area 51 are simply better at this stuff than I am, and

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All your base: Images from the legendary Area 51

were always able to deflect stories about what goes on there. So I changed my focus to merely explaining how the story played out and why I remained interested over the years. amazing and ridiculous

I

n the years since the stories broke, I’ve read the most amazing and ridiculous things about Area 51 and the saucer stories in local and national publications.

Quite a few articles have poked fun at the story or at me. I’ve been the subject of at least three terrifically funny editorial cartoons in the Review Journal — all three now hang on my bathroom wall. The RJ media critic speculated that people were “rushing home at night to see my UFO reports” because they wanted to see the moment when I finally went “bull-goose loony on the air.” One columnist bestowed on me the title of “grand mullah in the church of cosmic proctology.”

Some of this stuff was pretty funny, but it bothered me that so many journalists had made up their minds about the Area 51 stories without ever doing a bit of work on it or without interviewing any witnesses. They seemed to know ahead of time, perhaps through psychic visions, that the story was bunk. To my mind, that isn’t how journalism is supposed to work.

The most troubling failures by my colleagues has been their willingness to accept whatever stories are promulgated by the Air Force or CIA, as long as the end result is to poke fun at crazy UFO buffs.

In the years since the Lazar story broke, I’ve met scores of men who worked at Groom Lake on classified projects who have told me they never saw any saucers, and I believe them. But those same men have told me they would see co-workers in the chow line every day and never know what they were working on because they couldn’t talk about it. They were reportedly ordered to lie about their work to their own spouses.

The other explanation that has been swallowed by those who don’t want the story to be true is that maybe the tale told

by Lazar is part of a disinformation plot, devised by the CIA or Air Force, as a way to distract attention away from something else flying around out there.

If that was the plan, it was a miserable failure.

As a result of the saucer tales, tens of thousands of people have made the trek out into the desert to watch the skies.

Media crews are out there every week.

Congressional investigators have asked tough questions. No one at Groom Lake ever wanted this much attention, regardless of what they are doing these days.

Critics of the story, or of Lazar, are welcome to laugh at it all they want. But the fact is, the debate is effectively over.

Area 51 is now permanently carved into the public consciousness. Area 51 is now the yin to Roswell’s yang, and the UFO stories are never going to be divorced from the base itself.

The UFO crazies won the battle. Long live Area 51.

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License to chill A battle is brewing over who can perform hypnotherapy, and who can’t. At stake: the careers of hypnotherapists — and the mental health of their clients B y H e i d i K ys e r

B

y the time Rachel Blanchette turned to hypnotherapy for help, she’d been cutting herself for nearly a decade. The self-destructive compulsion started when Blanchette was 16. By her mid-20s, she wasn’t just embarrassed by it; she was sick of it — sick of avoiding relationships and situations that could expose her secret.

“I was at a point where I was stuck,” Blanchette says today. “As an adult, I felt I was dealing with a teenage problem. I wanted to grow up and move on with my life.”

She’d done talk therapy before, and it didn’t work. But in her desperation, Blanchette decided to give counseling another shot. An Internet search and a few phone calls led her to a Las Vegas marriage

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and family therapist she clicked with. The therapist listened to Blanchette’s story, and then told her she might benefit from hypnosis. Cutting, the therapist explained, is like an addiction. A long-term solution would require addressing more than just the behavior; she’d need to get to the root cause of the behavior — something hypnosis could help with — and work on that.

Blanchette knew a little about hypnosis from an aunt who’d used it to quit smoking. “In my family, we used to tease her about it,” she says. “But she never picked up another cigarette.”

Blanchette decided to go for it. She had several months of sessions, in which the therapist used hypnosis in addition to other techniques (“It was just one tool in her

toolbox,” Blanchette says). But she knew early on it was working. She recalls one early session, in particular: “While I was in the hypnotic state, I went back to childhood and forgave people I had problems with and even myself. … It was really powerful. I was finally able to move on. It felt like a miracle.”

That was five years ago, and Blanchette hasn’t cut herself since. This year, she got married and moved out of state.

Someone with similar issues might have trouble finding a hypnotherapist in Nevada now. That’s because the hypnotherapy done on Blanchette — performed by a marriage and family therapist — is illegal, at least according to the state’s Board of Psychology Examiners. Based on an obscure 2009 Nevada Supreme Court

I l lu st r at i o n C h r i s m o r r i s

opinion, early this year the psychology board started sending cease and desist letters to a variety of professionals telling them, essentially, that unless they’re licensed psychologists, they’re not allowed to practice hypnotherapy.

“Basically, I’m unemployed, as are all of our graduates,” says Robert Bud James, who runs hypnotherapy training school New Vistas International in Reno. “That’s the severity of the impact. … My business partner, who’s a marriage and family therapist, used hypnotherapy at a pain clinic for four years. These are legitimate professionals who are helping people.”

As of this writing, the situation is in limbo. Attorneys representing unions for people who practice hypnotherapy have asked the psychology board to lift its cease and desist order. (The practice of biofeedback is also included in the ban, but has been the subject of less pushback by professionals.) The psych board, in turn, has asked the state’s attorney general to render her own interpretation of the law. As they await the AG’s opinion, expected to be delivered in November, a panoply of licensed and unlicensed professionals are holding their breath; from drug and alcohol counselors to sociologists, guidance counselors to life coaches, they believe their livelihoods — and the well-being of Nevadans like Blanchette — depend on what happens next.

You are (not) getting very sleepy

B

y the time you arrive for your first face-to-face appointment with hypnotherapist Kevin Cole, he’s already started working on you. Over the phone, he’s spent time getting to know you, helping you articulate your goals and making sure you’re ready for his service. So, when you finally do step into his small, warm office tucked in an outof-the-way professional park on South Pecos, you have a pretty clear idea why you’re there.

Still, Cole doesn’t rush into things. He has you fill out an intake form that makes it clear that he doesn’t diagnose or treat illness and doesn’t prescribe medication.

He carefully explains what hypnosis isn’t

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HEALTH (sleeping, for instance, or doing things you won’t remember later) and what it is: a state so relaxed that your chatty, critical mind pipes down and lets your more suggestible mind open up. In this state, you’re receptive to changing well-established patterns, replacing negative habits with positives ones.

Cole explains how the process works and answers your questions. If you bring up the entertainers who make “volunteers” quack like a duck for audiences’ amusement, he assures you that unconscious triggers would jar you out of the hypnotic state should deeply held morals or ethics be violated. He takes pains to create a safe environment: You need to be able to relax, after all.

Then, you begin. He may simply show you how to sit comfortably and breathe.

If you’re there for help with something like weight-loss or smoking cessation, he may teach you techniques for neutralizing cravings. In a soothing, rhythmic voice, he lulls you into a trance. Once you’re there, he makes suggestions tailored to your intention. When he’s done, he gently talks you back into alertness — no abrupt clapping or gong-ringing.

He gives you a few moments to take in what’s happened, then answers any questions, plans any necessary follow-up.

“Very seldom do I work with someone just once, but very seldom do I do as many as five,” Cole says. “I want to

empower them, not get them to just talk about it all the time. I want to teach them practical life skills.”

A large body of research suggests hypnosis isn’t just the stuff of hippie communes and risqué Strip shows anymore. Studies indicate it’s effective in helping people with eating disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, pain management, test anxiety and other problems. Although there’s still a lot of research to be done about its long-term effectiveness, the greater health care community is gradually embracing it.

Along with mainstream acceptance has come a diverse and thriving industry.

There are people like Cole who see themselves as offering a specific mental health support service — one meant to complement the work of licensed professionals, such as psychologists. In fact, psychologists often refer clients to hypnotists.

Cole says such referrals have helped grow his business and are partly why he was so shocked to receive the psychology board’s cease and desist letter in July.

Here’s an excerpt: “Please be advised that the practice of biofeedback/hypnosis is part of the practice of psychology as defined in NRS 641.025.

Therefore it’s unlawful to engage in either activity unless and until you are licensed as a psychologist. … Please immediately cease practice and or advertising the above activities.”

Hear more

The letter goes on to say that the board may get court orders against practitioners who don’t comply. Hypnotherapy represents 100 percent of Cole’s business.

If he’s forced to stop practicing it, he says, he’ll have to return to San Diego, where he moved from in 2011, in order to pursue his livelihood unfettered.

A niche service

H

ypnotists like Cole aren’t the only ones who stand to be affected.

There are others who use hypnotism, like Blanchette said about her own therapist, as one technique among many.

Some, such as drug and alcohol counselors, marriage and family therapists (MFTs), and sociologists, are licensed professionals. Others, such as guidance counselors, life coaches and spiritual advisers, are unlicensed professionals.

How can we fix our mental health system? Hear discussion on “KNPR’s State of Nevada” at desert companion. com/hear more

But hypnotherapy is a vital part of their overall practices.

American Council of Hypnotist Examiners President John Butler says he has 25 practicing members in Nevada, but this may be only a fraction of the total number of people actually doing hypnotherapy in the state. Reno attorney Hal Taylor, who represents the Hypnotherapists Union Local 472 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, estimates the number of people practicing hypnotherapy in Nevada to be in the “hundreds.”

But Butler and Taylor argue that the community’s commitment to ethics is more important than its size. Trainers drill into student hypnotherapists’ heads that they are not to pass themselves off as physicians (hence, Cole’s intake dis-

claimer). A hypnotist can offer his services to a mental health patient who’s under the care of a licensed professional or refer a client who exhibits signs of mental illness to a licensed professional, but he’s not — and is warned never to pretend to be — a psychologist. He’s a hypnotist, with his own specific skill set and expectations.

“One thing we see, for instance, is test anxiety,” says New Vista’s Bud James.

“That’s something we can work with, very simply by helping the client walk through the mental exercise — like a basketball player, who can close his eyes and mentally shoot hoops. We can have the individual mentally take the test. You repeat it enough times and it becomes a new learned behavior. … Now, let’s say we saw them a few

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Health times and it didn’t help. They have a deeper-seated issue. They should see a professional, who can do whatever they do to find the roots of that anxiety and deal with it.”

The ethics message being taught at schools like James’ seems to have gotten through to practitioners. Both Butler and Taylor said they’re aware of no complaints or legal actions against their members in Nevada.

So, if licensed professionals rely on hypnotists to provide a niche service, and if hypnotists aren’t hurting anybody, then why is the psychology board going after them?

Mind the money

N

obody involved seems to think the psychology board is making a financially motivated move, apart from a few angry individuals venting on NV

Hypno and Biofeedback Pros, a Yahoo group created to discuss the situation.

The community’s leaders say they think that practicing psychologists don’t really want to “own” hypnotherapy, because it’s below their pay grade.

Then why the threatening cease and desist letters? The psychology board declined requests for an interview and answered all factual questions with a blanket “No comment.” The attorney general’s office also declined to comment, citing ongoing legal action.

This litigation, the hypnotherapy community believes, is where the trouble started. One morning in March 2005, at Jack and Terry Mannion Middle School in Clark County, a teacher named Roger Phillips got into an altercation with some students. As he was going out one of the school’s doors, a group of kids tried to go in. Phillips told them they weren’t al-

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lowed in yet, but they blocked the door and shoved each other to get past him. A boy named Eric Webb pushed a friend into Phillips.

What happened next, according to court documents, depends on who you ask. In Phillips’ version, he sternly takes Webb to task (and to the principal’s office); in Webb’s version, the teacher inappropriately lays hands on the child, traumatizing him.

In any case, Webb ended up being examined by a doctor and getting treatment from a physical therapist and a licensed drug and alcohol counselor named David Hopper. Hopper saw Webb for five months in 2005 and, among other things, performed biofeedback on him (in this treatment, the practitioner attaches sensors to the patient as a means of gauging and helping him control nervous-system reactions to stimuli). His total bill was $5,700.

In September, Webb’s parent and guardian sued the school district and Phillips. An arbitrator in the case awarded the plaintiffs fees to cover their medical and physical therapy expenses — but not the biofeedback. The arbitrator deemed Hopper’s services unnecessary and unreasonable, because he was not qualified to perform them and his credentials were not adequate to qualify him as a psychologist. In other words, the school district didn’t owe the family money, the arbitrator said, because the family had sought psychological services (specifically, biofeedback) from someone who’s not a licensed psychologist. The Webbs appealed, but in October 2009, the Nevada Supreme Court agreed with the arbitrator’s original conclusion: no reimbursement for Hopper’s biofeedback sessions.

The complex case turns on Nevada Revised Statute 641.025, which defines the practice of psychology as a practice that “includes, without limitation, such specialized areas as” psychological testing, counseling, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, hypnosis, biofeedback and several others. But does that “includes” mean that only psychologists can do these things?

Not according to leaders of the movement that has coalesced to fight the psychology board’s cease and desist action.

Taylor and James attended the board’s Aug. 5 meeting, along with other members of the hypnotherapy community, who made their case during public comments. Following the meeting, Taylor wrote a lengthy brief outlining the Local 472’s concerns and demands. “That these ‘specialized areas of competence’ are available to psychologists does not mean that they may only be used by psychologists,” he wrote. Butler joined Taylor in asking the board to open a discussion that would resolve the conflict and, in the meantime, to immediately withdraw its cease and desist orders, “which have caused such distress to Nevadan hypnotherapists and their clients.”

The board replied that it would make a decision after receiving the attorney general’s opinion on NRS 641.025. Deputy

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HEALTH Attorney General Sarah Bradley is working on the case and is expected to report at the psychology board’s Nov. 7 meeting.

But the elephant is still in the room: Why did the psychology board act now on a case that the Nevada Supreme Court decided four years ago?

Those from the hypnotherapy community can only speculate. But the minutes

from the board’s August meeting contain a clue. Item 15 reads in part: “The board is currently in the middle of an ongoing court case involving an individual who practices biofeedback without being a licensed psychologist. The case against this individual brought up raising concerns of other’s [sic] possible harmful practice of hypnosis and biofeedback in

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Nevada without regulation. Many individuals expressed concerns with NRS 641.025 … stating that they could no longer practice hypnosis and biofeedback unless licensed as psychologists.”

The case in question is the psychology board’s district court complaint against Hopper for “injunctive relief.” It is the board’s attempt to stop Hopper from practicing what it calls psychology without a license.

Of one mind

O

ne irony of the situation is that the Webb’s lawsuit turns on the practice of biofeedback, and hypnotherapists got caught up in it by association. But James says it hasn’t pitted one faction against the other; on the contrary, it’s banded practitioners of alternative therapies together.

In September, Butler, James and a Minden, Nev., hypnotherapist named Nancy Epstein met up at an American Council of Hypnotist Examiners conference in Pasadena, Calif. They planned a unified strategy for getting through the impasse.

They began calling legislators and government officials to see what they could do. Along the way, they learned that the deputy attorney general was on track to finish her opinion in time for the November meeting, and that her office wouldn’t enforce the cease and desist letters in the meantime. This meant members who’d put their practices on hold were now free to go about their business — at least for a couple months. A collective cheer went up in the Yahoo group, with hypnotherapists from around the state thanking the individuals who had agitated on their behalf.

Unlike the psychology board’s decision, the newfound unity of biofeedback and hypnotherapy practitioners can’t be undone. And it’s a weapon they intend to wield going forward.

“We want the attorney general to determine that the psychology board has overstepped its bounds and prevent them from doing it again,” James says. “From that point, the next thing I’d like to see, honestly, is this fence mended. We’re an excellent adjunct to the psychology community, and they need to realize that.”

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Art

Box populi: With his analog camera, Marshall Scheuttle captures the sin beneath the city.

High contrast

Y

es, you know intellectually that there is a seedy side of Vegas, a hard, pitiless, transient, vergeof-despair aspect to this city. But have you seen it? Have you seen the gun on the altar, the blood on the sidewalk, the prostitute on the bed, the desert sunlight slanting into a charmless, joyless bedroom? Have you seen it up close, intimately?

Photographer Marshall Scheuttle has.

And then some: “I hid in the back of the car when they kidnapped him. I went along with them through the whole process. … He didn’t know I was there. I was in the room with him for about a half-hour with the door closed and the lights off, and I just

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got to arrange portraits and compositions of this guy duct-taped into a chair, blindfolded. He had earplugs in, so he couldn’t hear me. It was like being in college: Here, make a still life — but here’s a grown man duct-taped to a chair, who’s just been tasered.”

The image Scheuttle ultimately extracted from that experience roils with moral, ethical and aesthetic complication: In a documentary style that might be termed fluorescent vérité, the victim is seen through the half-open door of a cheap, soulless office suite, the kind that might’ve recently been abandoned by a barely legal telemarketing scheme. Bound to his chair, he’s utterly alone with whatever thoughts fill the head of a man so desperate for …

something … that he’s consented to be roughly (but not too roughly) "kidnapped" by people whose business it was to pull off faux kidnappings. (That business is closed now.) Manhandled by forces he can’t see but has somehow agreed to, stranded in this spiritually vacant setting by his need for some extreme form of meaning, he has become a metaphor, the very picture of the modern human condition.

Now: Was Scheuttle’s presence in this scenario exploitative? Where in the vast moral savannah between right and wrong does this sort of thing fall? Does the fact that he’s making art from the situation alter the specific gravity of those questions?

These are some of the challenges presented by many of Scheuttle’s technically

P h oto g r a p h y B R E N T H O L M E S

scheuttle portrait by brent holmes

Photographer Marshall Scheuttle sheds light on the more chaotic side of Vegas — in a startlingly beautiful way B y S c o t t D i c k e n s h e e t s

adept, often undeniably beautiful images — challenges not only for you, but for the photographer himself.

“It’s something I wrestle with a lot,” Scheuttle says. “Am I being sadistic, am I being masochistic, am I being misogynistic with the things that I’m showing? That’s always a very prominent voice in the back of my head.” Good to hear: A morally concerned voice in the back of your head is probably a prerequisite when you’ve set out to explore, in a large-scale, ongoing photo project, the anxious, insecure, sometimes touching, sometimes violent lives of people at the fringes of society. (Though, as we’ll see, that’s not all he’s up to.)

“It’s funny,” says VAST Space Projects gallerist Shannon McMackin, who met Scheuttle at the Velveteen Rabbit downtown, where he bartends — he overheard her talking about the arts scene and later emailed an introduction. “It’s photography, so it’s expected to be straightforward documentation,” she says, “but these aren’t that.” They’re more deeply layered. “I don’t get it all at first glance, and I like that.”

Midwest, where he photographed young people “who were playing into specific strange archetypes of, I guess, traditional Americana mysticism.” Kids in the grip of religious ideologies that told them they were outcasts from a better place — “it’s very much a Garden of Eden parable,” he says of Borderlands, the photo exhibit that eventually resulted from those trav-

els. It appeared in 2013 at the prestigious Contemporary Photography and Visual Arts Center in Buffalo.

The subject of his Vegas work was essentially dictated by the manner in which he came here — “to just live it out,” he says, uprooting his whole life and bringing it here.

He arrived with no real plan, just like every other inbound transient.

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Fortress of escape

I

n person, Scheuttle doesn’t seem sadistic or exploitative. A friendly, articulate, generally low-key 29-year-old, tattooed arms dangling from his sleeveless shirts, Scheuttle came to Las Vegas from Buffalo, N.Y., a year ago, lugging an 8-by-10 camera and a determination to shoot the hell out of this city. He says he’d been making yearly trips here for about a decade, since he first visited as a 19-yearold roadie for the band It Dies Today. The city he saw then — a singular “fortress of escape” — captivated him. How weird to have a place you flee to in order to become something else. He’d known people who’ve interluded here but wouldn’t talk about what happened to them. Even more captivating! “I’ve been so enamored of the place that I’ve just been waiting for my chance to come out here and do a photographic series on it,” he says.

It’s not Scheuttle’s style to arrive on some artistic residency or fellowship. He plays things closer to the ground. One reason he toured with bands is that it took him around the country, in particular the

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Art

Move toward the light: This image of the Luxor light was one of the first Scheuttle took after arriving in Vegas.

“My headspace those first few months was pretty isolated,” he recalls. “I remember sitting outside somewhere in Vegas, drinking a bottle of Scotch and staring off into the middle distance, and I was like, Well, I guess this whole Kerouac thing is happening.”

And so the way he lived drove his project. He naturally gravitated toward people of a disposition similar to his. People in marginal (snap), often vulnerable (snap) or tenuously legal (snap) circumstances.

“A lot of the work deals with my experience coming to the city as a transient, and the things I’m experiencing and seeing.”

In an odd way, his vibe — the tattoos, the gonzo commitment to his work — breaks the ice with potential subjects.

“They see me and how I look, and I’m

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almost as much of a character to them as they are an interesting subject to me.”

Once people see him as a particular person with a story of his own, they tend to want to share something of themselves — even if they’re running a fake-kidnapping business. “Access is given to me a lot of times very quickly when they understand that I’m just as crazy in what I do.” his other side

H

ere’s Scheuttle popping out of the “underbelly photographer” pigeonhole we’ve just put him into: “I drove up and down the street for about two weeks, different times of day, and came to the conclusion that there was no way to shoot it except to stand in the middle of the street, at” — indicating the light level in the photo — “this time of day.”

He’s talking about photographing Lux-

or. That’s right: overexposed, over-mediated, nothing-fringe-about-it Luxor, that visual cliché, about which there can’t be much left to say. Except that it’s actually sort of a fascinating-looking, meaning-rich building. In his photograph, Scheuttle has recused the pyramid from its aura of Strip glamour by shooting it in daylight, from an adjacent neighborhood.

From, to be perfectly accurate, the middle of the street, at 6 a.m.

“I made one of the bartenders I work with stand in the middle of the street with a cone to keep taxis from hitting me,” he says with a laugh. In his image, Luxor rises above the humdrum box homes of the middle class with a formal visual rigor; the composition is more solid than Luxor’s foundation. This is Scheuttle’s serious artschool training at work (Purchase College, SUNY); he’s not just some guy freed by the

simplicity of digital-camera technology to faces corrugated by erosion. That is, oldcall himself a photographer. (An 8-by-10 school landscapes. camera is a righteous tool.) “I could have If Scheuttle didn’t know exactly what done it in a more zany way,” he says of idea would guide his art when he got here, Luxor, “but to do it in a more formal way is he does now (McMackin jokingly calls it somehow more powerful.” Nothing under“the Marshall Plan”). In whatever final form belly about this. this project takes, gallery show or maybe a Shall we allow him even farther out of book, he intends to pair the landscapes with the pigeonhole? some of his fringe-culture portraits and Along with visions of the Sin still lives, so that each one’s very City demimonde — a “protection different expressions of beauty altar” with a gun on it; a scarily and chaos mingle — the geologiHear more large splash of blood on a sidewalk; cal-scale turmoil of the landscapes Meet a phoa ruined mattress from an abanpoised against the many varieties tographer doned brothel (yes, that’s a roof human narrative. “It’s meant to who capmance novel sitting in the middle play into this idea that it’s all kintures mining of it) — he’s taken deep-focus shots da connected together,” he says, booms and busts on of nearby desert mountainscapes, “chaos on top of chaos, if you will.”

“KNPR’s some wreathed in mist, their surIt’s a large-format vision. He figState of Nevada” at desertcom panion.com/ hearmore

People, places: From a fake kidnapping victim to military training in the Mojave, Scheuttle probes lives that hint at chaos.

ures he’s got about half of what he needs, which means more months of wandering the city, hauling the cumbersome 8-by10 everywhere he goes, just in case. It’s not a prospect that distresses him.

At press time, McMackin planned to include three suites of Scheuttle’s work in VAST’s portion of the art program at the Life is Beautiful festival: “All from a project on the American West and its cinematic iterations,” she says, “but done freshly, in a big way.

“I’m so glad he packed up his things and came here,” she adds. “I can’t wait for people to see Marshall’s work so I have more people to engage and look deeper into it with.”

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When the community works together, the community works At Bank of America, we’re committed to giving back to the neighborhoods where we live and work. That’s why we contribute our time, energy and support to these area organizations: ALS of Nevada American Red Cross Big Brothers Big Sisters Boys & Girls Clubs Candlelighters for Childhood Cancer Catholic Charities Communities In Schools Community Services of Nevada Discovery Children’s Museum Foundation for an Independent Tomorrow Gay and Lesbian Community Center Girl Scouts of Southern Nevada Goodwill Industries Habitat for Humanity Las Vegas HELP of Southern Nevada HomeAid of Southern Nevada Housing for Nevada JDRF Junior Achievement Las Vegas Natural History Museum Las Vegas Rescue Mission Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada Lutheran Social Services of Nevada Make-A-Wish Foundation

Nathan Adelson Hospice Foundation Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth Nevada Public Radio Olive Crest Opportunity Village Rebuilding Together SCORE Shade Tree Special Olympics Spread the Word Nevada Teach for America The Financial Guidance Center The First Tee of Southern Nevada The Huntridge Teen Clinic The Public Education Foundation The Smith Center for the Performing Arts Three Square Transitional Services United Way of Southern Nevada University of Nevada Las Vegas Foundation Vegas PBS Women’s Development Center Trauma Intervention Programs YMCA of Southern Nevada

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ANTIQUITIES

VICTORIA’S SECRET

The Dish 70 eat this now 73

11

14

on the plate 73 at first bite 74

Our c i ty's be st sp ots to eat & drink

Have a cow: Bazaar Meat's updated beef tartare

P hoto g ra ph y Sabin Orr

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Dining out The dish

Third-place mettle Driven by a mission as much as a menu, Bronze Café proves you can be everything to everyone B y Zach Moldof

“W

hat what!”

The five people behind the counter at Bronze Café shout it as a chorus in response to a sandwich order.

(Confession: I couldn’t help but echo in suit.) It’s one of the last things you expect to hear when ordering a sandwich — okay, maybe at some novelty restaurant where the food’s an afterthought.

Bronze Café is no novelty restaurant.

And whether it’s an unrepentant carnivore craving the What What (a turkey and pepperoni sandwich stacked with mixed greens dressed in lemon vinaigrette, tomato and onion, and slathered with optional-but-seriously-you-really-have-to-have-it bacon jam), a PETA activist in need of The Bizness (a mountainous chopped kale salad with a tangy lemon vinaigrette) or fitness freaks seeking optimal fuels (look no further than the Vegan Real Results Fitness for me, and it’s gratifying to know that Blended, a mighty smoothie that fea- we’re making a place that all these peotures kale, peanut butter and a bumper ple feel comfortable.” crop of various superfoods), people are Given Mozes’ mission-minded, feeldefinitely coming to Bronze Café for good philosophy, it’s a little ironic that the food. But that shout of “What what!” the restaurant came about in a somewhen you order a sandwich — that bois- what happenstance manner. The brainterous, cheerful shout — shows that this child of Mozes and Executive Chef and downtown café is offering an experi- owner Peter Bastien, Bronze Café was ence that goes well beyond an opportune and natural food: an experience of genuevolution of their catering Bronze ine warmth and almost radibusiness. While they were C afé cal inclusiveness. volunteering at The Gay and 401 S. Maryland “We have to be a place that Lesbian Center of Las VeParkway, makes a difference in the gas, they learned there’d be (702)202-3100 community,” says General a kitchen in the main lobby Manager David Mozes. “See- HOURS available to rent. Mozes and Mon-Fri, ing the regulars connect with Bastien made their move.

7a-10p; each other, as well as the staff, “We envisioned a really good Sat 8a-9p; is really rewarding. All those coffeehouse with quality Sun 10a-8p smiling faces are like trophies sandwiches,” says Mozes.

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Restrained decadence You might say they aimed low. They’ve created one of the best sandwich spots in town — one that happens to serve amazing coffee, and one that doubles as a dynamic central point for numerous communities. Sure, they’ve got what seems like a standard café menu: sandwiches, salads, juices, smoothies, pastries. But everything is made with a little — okay, a lot — more intention than you might expect of café fare.

Bastien’s menu is an inspired collection of familiar ingredients in unusual combinations. The key, though, lies in restraint — even in the menu’s more decadent touches. You won’t find any bacon-wrapped hot dogs served inside bacon bowls with edible bacon forks here, but their bacon jam does invite you to spread it over every bite of a sandwich

Ph otograph y Sabin Orr

Table 34 Featuring Chef Wes Kendricks’ contemporary American cuisine including fresh fish, wild game, duck, lamb, Certified Angus Beef, and comfort food classics. Conveniently located off the 215 and Warm Springs.

Dinner Tuesday - Saturday 5pm until closing (around 10pm)

Getting fresh: far left, the Loving v.

Virginia brownie/ cookie; above, the What What sandwich; left, The Bizness salad

a dessert made of two desserts. (When they ask if you want it heated, the answer is always a feverish yes.)

“Everything I create has to be split 50-50 between tasting good and being healthy,” says Bastien. “Meals should be filling but not heavy. The way I cook, all the flavor is coming from plants, the meat is texture, and no matter what’s happening, there has to be acidity.” Flavor from plants, from … kale? You’ll understand when you try The Bizness.

Rule of thirds

— say, the California turkey with roasted red peppers on toasty ciabatta. On the dessert side, the standout is the Loving v. Virginia, a cookie-brownie hybrid with a center that oozes with the kind of chocolate profundity you expect from

But back to that shout of “What what!” and what it means. It’s a thoughtful deviation that serves a greater purpose. When they shout “What what!,” they’re letting you know you’re not just a customer, they’re not just employers, and you’re not alone in space. It also means that 18 people working here feel comfortable enough to shout “What what” at strangers who don’t tend to

600 E. Warm Springs Road Las Vegas, NV (702) 263-0034

You ReALLY LoVe ouR MAGAZINe. Now you caN Love it virtuaLLy, too.

Visit us at desertcompanion.com and check out our website. Between editions of our Maggie Award-winning magazine, you’ll get webexclusive stories, breaking cultural news and fresh perspectives from our writers.

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Dining out remain strangers for very long. Between Mozes, Bastien and Yishay Rojas — he answers the phones and holds down the front end — they seem to know about half the customers by name. That’s not just a happy side effect of running a small business; it’s part of a conscious approach to building culture and community.

The name bears this out. Bronze refers to bronze medal — the icon of third place.

But in this instance, third place is a good place to be. Here, bronze is intended to conjure a different Third Place, an idea set forth by sociologist Ray Oldbenburg.

The Third Place isn’t home or work; it’s a crucial area where people gather, meet and socialize — think plazas, parks, bars and cafés. People come to Bronze Café to eat, but they also come because it’s a watering hole where every species of Las Vegan comes and every species of Las Vegan is welcome. The fact that Bronze

Café is inside The Center means they’re explicitly supportive of the LGBTQ community, but it also makes them an attraction for a wealth of people who might not otherwise interact with that community.

Indeed, waiting in line with you may be a homeless man, a TV producer, a trans teen and the guy who built the mid-rise condo where you live. Bronze Café embraces the reality of where we’re at.

Also in that line: Lots of happily willing human guinea pigs hoping for a taste of what Bastien is working on next.

“Right now I’m crazy about sesame,” he says. He’s testing a vegan, gluten-free sesame cookie in both a soft and crunchy version. “I know how I want it, but ultimately, it’s up to the customers, so I’ll let a bunch of people try both versions and go off what they think.” The line is forming, but there’s plenty of room for you.

May we Recommend ...

The Bizness, David’s Special Style The Bizness is a bed of kale dressed in lemon vinaigrette with three toppings of your choice. For a dollar more, you can get your Bizness with all the choices made for you, and copious amounts of hook-ups. It will come topped with chickpeas, beets, quinoa, avocado, shredded carrots and caramelized sunflower seeds. It’s usually between 2 and 3 pounds of food — but you won’t feel stuffed, you’ll feel energized.

Loving v. Virginia Billed as “the legal marriage between a brownie and a cookie,” this dreamy, Inception-style dessert is not for the faint of tooth. It’s best eaten in half-portion increments. Eat half now, and save half for later or tomorrow.

When they ask if you want it heated, the answer is always yes. ZM

Give the gift of music education this holiday season... sponsor a student at our Youth Concert Series!

More than 15,000 students in fourth and fifth grades, many from at-risk schools in Clark County, will attend our free annual Youth Concerts in January 2015.

For just $25, you can sponsor one child’s attendance at this inspirational music education program. Please consider making a gift today!

Visit lvphil.org to give online or call 702-258-5438 for more information.

Las Vegas Philharmonic is a 501(c) 3 organization. Donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law.

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on the plate

Upcoming foodie events you don’t want to miss

HOT PLATE

Eat this now!

Black spaghetti at Echo & Rig

440 S. Rampart Blvd., (702) 489-3525, echoandrig.com Of all the pastas, some of the most alluring are those al nero di seppia, or colored with squid ink. Locally, I’ve been reeled in by the black spaghetti at Echo & Rig in Tivoli Village. It arrives as a bowl of dusky semolina strings strewn with nuggets of bright color. Strips of roasted peppers and sun-dried tomatoes complement slices of Portobello mushrooms and slivers of shallot. The noodles cradle liberal amounts of sauteéd calamari (including the best part, the tentacles), a couple of sizable shrimp and a few mussels. Everything is topped with a verdant crown of basil chiffonade. And then there’s the “secret sauce” — the broth. Instead of Italianate, frutti di mare flavors, a Japanese-inspired yuzu-shiso-soy essence bumps up the dish’s already substantial umami quotient. Bonus: This is one of the prettiest pasta dishes in town. — Greg Thilmont

Bacon-wrapped rabbit B l a c k S p a g h e tt i : C h r i s t o p h e r s m i t h

at Sage

3730 Las Vegas Blvd. S., (877) 230-2742, aria.com Rabbit is one of the most underappreciated meats in American dining. Many chefs claim to love it, but only the most adventurous truly experiment with it. The new chef de cuisine at Sage, Christophe De Lellis, is one of them. In this dish, he marinates rabbit thigh and loin in a spiced French mustard called Savora, then wraps it into a log and sous-vides it, making the meat so tender it’s almost creamy. Wrapped in a thin layer of smoked bacon, it’s plated along with red wine-braised plums, smoked baby chanterelle caps and two little crispy horseradish polenta cakes, whose fruity and earthy notes pair perfectly with the rich meat. The result: a wonderfully balanced dish that truly highlights the humble rabbit. — Mitchell Wilburn

Wolfgang puck book signing nov. 18 Meet award-winning chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck as he signs copies of his newly released cookbook, Wolfgang Puck Makes It Healthy: Light, Delicious Recipes and Easy Exercises for a Better Life. With more than 100 health-conscious recipes, the book includes healthful, easyto-prepare and delicious dishes accompanied with nutritional information, tips, and tricks. Free; book available for $30. 11a-1p, 10955 Oval Park Drive, wolfgangpuck.com plastic food drive through nov. 25 To make it easier for homeless teens during the holidays, Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth is launching their eighth annual Plastic Food Drive, and new online component #pickupthetab. The Plastic Food Drive asks individuals and local businesses to donate $5 or $10 fast food or $25 grocery store gift cards until Tuesday, Nov. 25, so homeless teens can have a warm meal during Thanksgiving. There are many ways to participate, from donating online to dropping off gift cards in person. Visit nphy.org for more information. vegan month at panevino through november In November, guests who purchase any entrée from Panevino's plant-based menu will receive a complimentary vegan dessert.

Vegan items include spinach and ricotta gnocchi; grilled vegetable lasagna; and organic “meatloaf” and mashed potatoes with a meatless-blend of organic legumes, wild mushrooms and herbs on a bed of garlic and rosemary mashed potatoes, served in a fresh tomato and Kalamata-style olive sauce. 246 Via Antonio Ave., panevinolasvegas.com

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Dining out at FIRST Bite

Flesh for fantasy Bazaar Meat by José Andrés makes protein the main player — but with a captivating sense of whimsy and wonder B y D e bb i e L e e

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f you think pork rinds are best left on the shelf of a gas station convenience store, I implore you to sample the “super-giant pig-skin chicharrón” at Bazaar Meat by José Andrés. The pork crackling arrives at the table in dramatic fashion: a single blistery sheet, almost as large as Wilbur himself, is seductively unwrapped from butcher paper — just long enough for you to “ooh” and “ahh” — before being smashed to bits with a wooden mallet. You may be struck with crispy shrapnel in the process, but it’s a risk worth taking.

Served with a cooling, za’atar-spiced he provides flavor and flamboyance in yogurt dip, it makes a fine introduction equal measure. for a playful, interactive and meat-cenTake his classic beef tartare. By “clastric meal to come. From the first sip of sic,” I expected a sad-looking pile of an Aladdin Manhattan, poured from a raw hamburger meat, but Andrés’ take smoke-infused decanter, to a final palate comes with a sexy twist: Diced sirloin cleanser made tableside with grapefruit, dressed with mustard, HP sauce and anrum and liquid nitrogen, the razzle-daz- chovies arrives in a giant marble mortar zle quality of my recent dinner at the for a striking presentation. A heavy hand restaurant filled a void that I’ve long felt of capers and pungent mustard brought in our local dining scene. life to the perfectly cubed sirloin, and a Is it innovative? Not necessarily. Fine side of warm Parker House rolls burst dining aficionados have enwith buttery sweetness. joyed (or suffered, depending A raw bar included BazaaR on whom you ask) their share Asian-influenced bites (the Me at of foams, dusts and spheres pristine sea urchin sushi at Inside SLS Las Vegas, since the early aughts. But the next table elicited shamethere’s no question that Ba- 2535 S. Las less stares), traditional caviVegas Blvd., zaar Meat’s executive chef, ar service, and classics such 702-761-7610, José Andrés, has the cred as shrimp cocktail and King slslasvegas.com to back up his wizardry. A crab legs. However, this beJames Beard award winner ing an Andrés production, we HOURS and protégé of legendary cu- Sun-Thu opted for the “Smoke & Ice” 5:30-10p, linary innovator Ferran Adria, Kushi oysters, topped with Fri-Sat 5:30p-11p

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foam and served in a glass dome full of applewood smoke. The flavor was simultaneously aggressive and refreshing — a welcome upgrade on the usual plate of shucked bivalves. A five-piece serving is hardly enough.

And then there was THE foiffle — capitalization intentional. An impossibly crispy-yet-delicate shell of a waffle was filled with an airy foie gras espuma, and then garnished with a shower of chopped peanuts. Peanut butter and honey add a nostalgic quality. Cut into this crispy waffle with a fork and watch the delicate filling of foie gras foam flow forth like lava. It could have used a fruity foil to cut through the richness, but it still remains the best preparation of foie I’ve ever had.

A slightly less successful offal dish was the tortilla Sacromonte. I had expected some iteration of the traditional Spanish tortilla, made with potatoes and eggs. What I got was an omelet without

P h oto g r a p h y S ABIN O RR

course is a mixand-match selection of miniature bites. Guests can sample the exotic (yuzu, rose) or familiar (chocolate, bacon) in the form of individual tarts, marshmallows and creampuffs. But after feeling as if I had pillaged Noah’s Ark for dinner, a scoop of chocolate mint sorbet sufficed.

Bazaar Meat deserves credit for executing an extensive menu without sacrificing quality. For every creative option, there is also a safe one: you can choose between foie-flavored cotton candy or simple stuffed olives; morcilla (blood sausage) with fresh uni or roast chicken with potatoes; grilled baby corn with “popcorn powder” or an honest plate of grilled asparagus. Unlike other hotel restaurants, it caters to a diverse clientele without spreading itself too thin.

There was only one turn-off about this dining wonderland, and that was an in-house pit for table games. The commingling of beef and blackjack lent a certain soullessness to what would otherwise be a lovely space. However, it’s a feature I’m willing to overlook, because in a city oversaturated with designer burgers and hot dogs, I’d say the experience was the most exciting I’ve had this year.

Yes way, José: Opposite page, the super-giant chicharrón; delicate dessert bites; left, the "Smoke & Ice" Kushi oysters

the spuds. Nuggets of sweetbreads, kidney, and beef marrow — all cooked until pleasantly crisp — studded the fluffy curds, while a raw egg yolk served as a sauce. It was flawlessly executed but just too rich for my taste.

Entrees arrived in a more straightforward fashion. A minimalist construction of Wagyu beef cheeks, cumin-heavy mojo sauce, and orange segments required nothing more than a fork for cutting. And braised lamb neck, served with golden cubes of potatoes and briny fried oysters, was a solid, stick-to-your-ribs plate of food — a crockpot dish gone glam.

In place of composed desserts, the last

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From the fanboys and fangirls who power our pop culture to the techno wizards who shape our future, this is the time of the geek — just as the ancient prophecies foretold! Let's celebrate their spirit.

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Upgrade in progresS These Las Vegas tech entrepreneurs are out to change the way you bank, shop, give, ride and eat

p or t r a i t s B y A a r o n M ay e s

Jordan Kelley

CEO, Robocoin

He’s mashing up cutting-edge crypto-currency with the good old-fashioned ATM machine

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h, banks. Remember banks? Those quaint 20th-century financial institutions with their tellers and checking accounts and PIN numbers? They’re still around, sure, but to Robocoin CEO Jordan Kelley, they’re living relics of a bygone age. No wonder he talks about them in the past tense.

“Banks offered a hugely valuable service,” he says. “They securely stored people’s wealth and provided comfort for people. But we look at Bitcoin and Robocoin as a sound alternative way to store wealth.” And a way to invest it, transmit it and move it around.

Haven’t caught Bitcoin fever yet? It’s likely Bitcoin fever may catch you instead. Once considered the shadowy scrip of hackers and techies, Bitcoin is rapidly going mainstream. Today, you can spend Bitcoin at websites such as Overstock.com, Expedia. com and Wordpress.com, and online retail giants like Amazon and eBay aren’t far be-

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hind. But, as Kelley sees it, the real obstacle in the way of mass mainstream adoption of Bitcoin isn’t online retailers. It’s, well, the fact that Bitcoin is just still kind of weird and confusing to your average person. Kelley’s company, Robocoin, marries this new kind of money to something we all recognize: the ATM. “The Robocoin machines familiarize people with Bitcoin in a way that brings some tangibility to it, which never existed before,” says Kelley. “Now we’re building into those machines the services that people are familiar with — walking up to a machine, buying Bitcoin or withdrawing money or sending it anywhere.” Robocoin’s “wallet” software means that even Luddite Joe can stroll up to a machine, enroll for an account and start buying and sending Bitcoin. “The problem was that prospective customers had to have a prior understanding of Bitcoin to get some utility out of it. Our Robocoin machines are that missing link.”

Indeed, the function of Robocoin is just as much cultural and educational as it is financial. Robocoin machines say: See, you, too, can use fast, convenient digital money.

Since the launch of their first machine in October 2013 in Vancouver, Robocoin has built a network of 70 machines, from the Strip to Tel Aviv to Tokyo. The company sells the machines to independent owner-operators — the basic model runs about $15,000 — and gets 1 percent of every transaction; the owner-operators take a percentage, too.

The consumer advantages hyped by Kelley: speed and security. Since Bitcoins are essentially information, transactions are nearly instantaneous — none of this threedays-to-process-your-transaction stuff.

The Robocoin security system glues the account to the account holder with a cell phone number, PIN number and a biometric scan of a user’s palm veins. “We want to unshackle people from the idea that Bitcoin is just used by hackers and crypto-enthusiasts,” Kelley says.

This brave new ATM network does lack some old-school elements of traditional banking. For instance, Robocoin accounts aren’t insured, but Kelley says any account holder can easily audit the transparent system at any time for a confirmation of “provable reserves.”

Nextdoor.com Won’t you be my e-neighbor?

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n an age when neighborhood barbecues have been replaced by tense HOA meetings, it seems like the communal spirit of the tight-knit ’hood has gone the way of the 5-cent lemonade stand. Or maybe it’s just gone digital. Nextdoor. com, a free social network for neighborhoods, hopes to be the new backyard fence where residents gather — virtually — to discuss community issues or just find a good plumber. The service started in October 2011 in San Francisco. Since then, it’s launched 41,000 neighborhood websites. Southern Nevada has been an aggressive adopter, with 113 websites in Vegas, 59 in Henderson, 31 in North Las Vegas and three in Boulder City. Cranky luddites are welcome: Company spokesperson Kelsey Grady characterizes Nextdoor.com as a virtual addon to traditional neighborliness, not a replacement.

“People are really good at knowing the people who live to their left and right, and across the street,” she says. “This is a lightweight way to break the ice with people beyond who you might not meet otherwise.”

It’s free to use and easy to sign up for (they nudge you a few times to spam your neighbors and email contacts with invites, but you can skip it). A Nextdoor.com test drive of my own ’hood reveals helpful residents swapping tips on handyman services and a vigilant-bordering-on-paranoid eye on sketchy characters. Bolstering Nextdoor.com’s cred are partnerships with local governments. The City of Las Vegas recently signed, allowing it to broadcast news alerts and PSAs to members. Welcome to the e-neighborhood. A.K.

Half of Robocoin’s 10-person team work in San Francisco, the other half in Las Vegas. That’s due in part to Kelley’s Vegas roots: He’s a graduate of The Meadows School and his father, Kevin Kelley, is a veteran gaming executive who most recently served as executive vice president of Station Casinos. But that Vegas presence may also have to do with strategic positioning. While the younger Kelley passed on a casino career in favor of building a crypto-currency ATM network, he’s keenly aware of the next frontier where digital currency becomes the de facto payment method that powers online gaming.

“Bitcoin and gaming?” Kelley says. “Like peanut butter and jelly.”

— Andrew Kiraly

Pololu Robotics and Electronics The place to start building your robot army

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olo-wha? Unusual name for a robotics company. Pololu President Jan Malasek explains: Inspired by Pololu Valley on the Big Island of Hawaii, where Malasek and buddy Ben Schmidel (now VP of product development) flew remote-control gliders together in high school, it’s pronounced like the game “polo” plus the name “Lou,” with equal emphasis on all syllables. What does Pololu do? It manufactures and sells specialty electronics, such as those used to make robots. But don’t head to company’s Pilot Road location in south-central Las Vegas expecting a storefront where you can browse motherboards and sensors; Pololu (pololu.com, 702-2626648) does its business online (you can order something on the website and pick it up there, but Malasek says most of his customers are out-of-state). It is, however, the occasional gathering place of tinkerers, most notably robotics club LVBots, which has been meeting there for 10 years. H.K. N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 4

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Bill Guerra

Founder, Grocery411.com He crunches data (and haunts grocery stores) to highlight food deals and steals

H Big Skeleton Turning night riders into light riders

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mily Hartnett will have plenty of different scenarios in which to test future prototypes of her LED-lit motorcycle vest. Between them, she and her boyfriend have racing, road, dirt, dual sport and vintage models, along with a 1976 custom Harley — seven total bikes.

Hartnett’s Ninja 250 illustrates a situation in which the vest, which has 72 integrated lights, is needed. “I’m not super tiny, but my bike is pretty small,” she says. “If you have a black jacket on, it’s hard to see, because the back has a slim profile.” Regardless of bike size, though, she believes visibility is on the mind of every motorcycle rider, especially in city traffic.

A few years ago, her boyfriend had the idea for lights that turn off when a bike stops running. Later, Hartnett wondered if there was a more fashionable and functional alternative to the fluorescent yellow vests worn by construction workers. The idea for what would become Big Skeleton was hatched.

Drawing on her UNLV physics degree and five years of working at Pololu, a robotics company, Hartnett developed technology that allows the lighting to change flashing patterns and color based on the movement of the wearer. When you slow down, for instance, it turns red, like a brake light. But the vest is completely independent of the bike. It has its own power source, and Hartnett says the production version will be rechargeable. She’s gotten some help from the Stitch Factory on the design, which is tailored to fit over a heavy motorcycle jacket.

“I took a sewing class last December, and that was when I decided I wanted to quit my job and do this full-time,” she says. “I’ve known since I was 7 years old that I wanted my own business; I just didn’t know what path would take me there.”

The bike path, apparently. Hartnett says the motorcycle community has already shown interest, and her next target market will be bicycle commuters and kids. H.K.

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ere’s a tip for your next grocery shopping trip: Avoid buy-one-get-one-free deals. If you calculate the per-pound cost including the freebie, you’re probably overpaying, says Bill Guerra, founder of Grocery411.com. How does he know? From spending the past four years meticulously tracking sale prices of groceries all around the Las Vegas Valley and logging them into a database.

Guerra and his lead price researcher, Deb Steva, pointed out this example of the BOGO trap on a recent trip to a Henderson grocery store: boneless, skinless chicken breast cutlets for $7.99 per pound. A good sale on these, according to Grocery411 data, would be $1.49 per pound — less than half the BOGO price, even counting the free item. (We were at Albertsons, but Guerra and Steva assured me all food retailers use this marketing tactic.)

So, how do you know what a good sale price is? That’s what Grocery411.com is for.

The site, which charges $6.95 a month or $54 a year for subscriptions, offers a couple key services. Every Wednesday, Steva scours newly released grocery store circulars and finds the 350 best advertised deals in the region (Grocery411 doesn’t include individual in-store sales — say, if your neighborhood Smith’s puts its overstock of bananas on special). Guerra rounds them up in a newsletter that subscribers can either print or access via the mobile website.

That’s weekly. There’s also the online list, available year-round, that’s arranged by category — bakery, dairy, meat, etc.

— and alphabetized by product. As she’s doing her weekly sales research, Steva updates the database to reflect any prices she finds that are lower than existing ones.

The list, thus, provides an ongoing baseline of the best deals local consumers can expect to find.

After four years of doing this, Steva is a font of institutional knowledge. Strolling through the produce section, I point to one sale-tagged item after another and ask, “Is this a good deal?” Cantaloupe for 15 cents a pound? Yes. Red seedless grapes for $1.99 a pound? Not so much. The Grocery411 price is 99 cents a pound.

“Think about a family of four,” Guerra says. “They’d eat, say, 3 pounds of grapes.

That’s $9 versus $3.” A savings of $6 on one item is nothing to sneeze at. Based on U.S. Department of Agriculture averages of families’ monthly grocery spending, Guerra estimates his guides can help people save as much as 70 percent on their food costs.

But there’s a catch: They have to be willing to shop at multiple stores. No one place will have all the best deals — otherwise, it’d go out of business. To get the most

out of the Grocery411 list, then, consumers have to go where the sales are, getting chicken breasts at Smith’s, but cantaloupe at Albertsons, for instance. Guerra encourages his subscribers to work store visits into their other errands. Stop by one place on the way home from work, another after church. He also puts a cultural spin on it by including Asian, Mexican and seafood markets and challenging shoppers to try exotic fare.

Another potential obstacle for Grocery411 is the lack of a smartphone app.

While Guerra points out that using the weekly list on one’s phone requires only a login and two or three clicks, he also says an app is on his wish list for the company’s next phase. A full-time RN who works in a busy hospital, Guerra launched Grocery411 on the side. But he’s taken it as far as he can

on his own budget; now, he says, it’s time for an investor to give it that extra boost.

“We’re approaching year five of a 10year plan,” he says. “I knew it would be a long-term project, and believe me, there have been times I wanted to give up. But I really believe in it.”

Why? Altruism, with a little entrepreneurialism thrown in. The idea came to Guerra one day as he scanned the 3-footlong receipt from a shopping trip for his own family. “How do I know these are good prices?” he thought. “What would I compare them to?” And, more importantly, he wondered how low-income families could afford the fresh fruits and meats he was taking home.

“If this matters to me,” he says, “how much more critical must it be to those who are short on cash?” — Heidi Kyser

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Suz Hinton

Founding member, Syn Shop She’s helping makers, hackers and tinkerers to better understand the possibilities of technology — and create their own

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he traffic light in the display window at the front of Syn Shop’s downtown location is lit red when I meet Suz Hinton there on a hot September afternoon. That means the hacker space is closed, except to

Nomic Think globally, network hyperlocally

founding and vetted members who have keys, like Hinton. Regular hours are around dinnertime most weekdays plus Saturday afternoons, and key-holders may open the space to the general membership while they’re working, if so inclined. But the reconfigured stoplight serves as more than a practical “open/closed” sign; it’s also an example of what’s going on at 117 N. Fourth St. “We’re a big room full of awesome tools that everyone can share, and people who can teach you to use them and inspire you to do cool stuff with them,” Hinton says. “It’s a club for tinkerers.”

The awesome tools include a heavy-duty sewing machine, laser cutter, several 3D printers and an entire room full of shop equipment, such as a drill press and table saw. Some of it was donated, some acquired with the group’s 2011 startup grant from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, some bought with proceeds from the shop’s $40-per-month membership fee.

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n the depths of the recession in 2010, Nate Boyd wanted to do something big: save the entire U.S. economy. He started with something small: the yoga place around the corner from where he lived in San Francisco. “It’s places like that — small restaurants, sole-proprietor services — that make the everyday economy work,” he says. He wanted to

The people who can teach you to use the awesome tools are the members themselves, who bring to the collective as wide a variety of skills as the equipment implies — from arts and crafts and carpentry, to electronics and robotics. Hinton, for instance, is a software engineer by trade. A sufferer of occasional anxiety, she made a heart-rate monitor bracelet that sends her phone a text message whenever her pulse goes over a certain limit. Being alerted to this early sign of a panic attack helps her avoid the unpleasant occurrence before it happens.

“That’s the point of hacking: to control the technology around you,” she says. “Everyone goes to the store, weighs the pros and cons of a piece of technology and buys the one that’s good enough. Imagine if you could design something for yourself. It’s exciting to empower other people this way.”

That’s the inspiration part — arguably the common element of all hackerspaces.

encourage networking in the bustling ecosystem of indie shops, freelancers and creatives to get the economy rolling again. Facebook and LinkedIn? Too big. He decided to create his own network — and he found the perfect test-case city to build it in. With Bay Area venture-capital backing, he moved to Las Vegas and launched Nomic (nomic.com) in January.

When curious people gather, big ideas often result. A hackerspace gives them the tools and know-how to execute those ideas. A recent local example is the Robot Army, a DIY delta-robot kit conceived by artist Sarah Petkus and engineer Mark Koch, who met at Syn Shop. After working through their design, the pair did a KickStarter campaign to manufacture their three-legged little bot for consumers. They met their $25,000 goal in March, and held a build party on Aug. 31.

“What’s so cool about this is that two people came together in the space, and we were able to equip them,” Hinton says. “Prior to this, Sarah was using plastic spoons and stuff.”

It’s that sort of nerd-magic Hinton sought when she came to Vegas from her native Australia for a job at Zappos in 2011. Although she’d gone the software route in college, she’s loved hardware since childhood, when her father would bring home kits for the two of them to put together. She was the kind of kid who wasn’t satisfied just soldering; she had to take apart the torch and see how it worked.

When Hinton arrived in the States, she knew she’d need a community of like-minded people to feel at home in her new environment.

She immediately connected with Syn Shop founders Jeff Rosowski and Brian Munroe, who’d started the meetup in Rosowski’s garage. Less than two weeks later, the group was funded.

“I turned up at the right place at the right time,” Hinton says.

The collective has come far since then, reaching its goal of 80-100 paying members this year. But Hinton thinks the greatest achievement is its alternative business model. The organization is flat and transparent: Board meetings are conducted out in the open, anyone in the shop is invited to listen in, and any founding or vetted member can vote.

“That’s the hackerspace way,” Hinton says, “trying to subvert things to a certain degree, to show people there’s another way, and that it can work.” H.K.

“Vegas has all kinds of urban tribes,” says Boyd, referring to professional subcultures that often live in self-contained cells: designers, writers, photographers. “And that can make it hard to find the right person for a gig.”

Think of Nomic as a hyperlocal LinkedIn — with a crisp interface and a focus on people rather than endless résumés. The core tool is

Charitweet Giving in 140 characters or less

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ith its one-click buys, next-day deliveries, and digital carts and virtual wallets, the Internet wants you to spend, spend, spend. But what about give, give, give? With one foot still in yesterday’s era of call-in lines and pledge campaigns, charitable giving hasn’t exactly gone 2.0. Charles Huang intends to change that with Charitweet, which aims to make giving as easy as tweeting. Huang — who went to middle school and high school in Las Vegas — got the idea of a streamlined giving platform just before graduating from MIT in June 2013. He daydreamed it aloud to a friend.

“I was really into the ‘save the world with software’ thing,” Huang says. He continued to believe in it after he took a well-paying — but unfulfilling — job with a Big Data firm out of college. “My friend calls me three weeks later and goes, ‘Hey, I built that software program you were talking about.’ I couldn’t believe it. I try it out and it works.” Huang resigned his position with the Big Data firm and committed full-time to Charitweet (chrtwt.org).

It’s simple: You just tweet a dollar figure at the Twitter-enabled charity of your choice, include @chrtwt and you get a link back for a making a secure donation. (Charitweet takes a 3 percent transaction fee.) Great, but what about scam charities and shady nonprofits? Huang landed a dream beta tester to avoid that problem: respected philanthropy watchdog Charity Navigator. “Forging that relationship was a really huge win,” says Huang. It blossomed into a partnership. For their October launch, Huang says Charity Navigator (itself a charity) connected Charitweet to the more than 4,000 charities that Charity Navigator has awarded at least three out of four stars. Next on Huang’s task list: becoming the official charity partner of Twitter, to put its new “Buy” button to work for some deserving do-gooders. A.K.

the directory, a Tumblr-style grid of portals: arts, music, design, community and others.

Those open onto grids of Nomic profiles that you can “ping” to start a professional connection. Boyd says they’re hard at work on an update that aims to streamline the process even more. If you’re raising your eyebrows at yet another social media platform, Boyd clarifies

that Nomic is intended more as a tool — a fun, colorful tool — than a site for posting selfies and vapid status updates.

“It’s not a feed-the-beast model,” he says.

“This is a much more focused effort to encourage people to make lasting professional connections.” A.K.

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A resource map for gamers, hackers, makers, explorers and fanatics 37

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LEARN

[downtown/ central] 1 Discovery Children’s Museum With nine exhibits, it’s like pushing your kid into a giant living 3D textbook. 360 Promenade Place, discoverykidslv.org 2 Natural History Museum Beyond the exhibits of dinos and pharaohs, consider geeking up the kids with the museum’s new Science Explorers program. 900 Las Vegas Blvd. N., 702-384-3466, lvnhm.org 3 Neon Museum Walk through the history of Vegas casino culture in this artful collection of classic signs. 770 Las Vegas Blvd. N., 702-387-6366, neonmuseum.org 4 Supernova Comics Inside Neonopolis, this small shop does brisk business in comics, books and toys. 450 E. Fremont St., 702-721-7620.

5 Syn Shop Come for the soldering class, stay for the intellectual property discussion. 117 N 4th St., synshop.org 6 Insert Coins Gen X date night: A doubles game of Joust and a couple glasses of Hob Nob pinot. 512 Fremont Street, 702-477-2525, insertcoinslv.com 7 Tech Cocktail Tech entrepreneurs, dabblers and dreamers meet at these regular confabs that range from uberwonky to inspirational. In The Learning Village, 715 Fremont Street, tech.co 8 Learning Village Hosts TED-style inspirational talks, startup mixers, chess clubs and more. 715 Fremont Street, downtownspeakerseries.com, downtownproject.com 9 Las Vegas Chess Center Chess-o-philes meet weekly 6-10p Fridays and noon-6p Sundays to play, learn and kibitz. 727 Fremont Street, 702-202-1797 10 Mini Maker Faire This annual DIYer bash brings together tinkerers, hackers, and garage scientists. Dates TKTK, The Learning Village, 727 Fremont Street, makerfairevegas.com 11 Las Vegas Camera Club Retro instant camera fans come here to talk shop, get gear, take

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GEEK OUT

classes and drool over the oldschool Polaroids for sale.

1017 First Street #185, 702-2817810, lasvegascameraclub.com 12 Steampunk Imaginarium You’ll pop your top hat when you feast your monocle on this hybrid art gallery and gift shop centered on Victorian tech. On the second floor of Sin City Pickers Antiques & Collectibles, 10 W. Wyoming Ave., 702-366-9166

[central/ midtown/strip] 13 Sci Fi Center This geek mecca hosts monthly Rocky Horror Picture Show shadowcasts, Walking Dead viewing parties and a wide selection of graphic novels. 600 E. Sahara Ave. #13, 702-792-4335, thescificenter.com 14 Pirate Fest Period-dressed pirates take over Lorenzi Park — with elaborate boats in tow. Steampunk dandies and faeries also welcome. April 10-12, Lorenzi Park, 3343 W. Washington Ave., piratefestlv.com 15 Springs Preserve Multiple entry points for total geekery: Origen Museum (nature and conservation), Nevada State Museum (history), DesertSol (eco-friendly design).

333 S. Valley View Blvd., 702-822-7700, springspreserve.org 16 Gameworld Card and tabletop gamers come here to face off at Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon and Warhammer 40k.

4620 Meadows Lane, 702-307-1440, gameworldvegas.com 17 Amber Unicorn Geekiness with cosmic flavor: Amber Unicorn is especially known for its extensive sci-fi collection and range of cookbooks. 2101 S. Decatur Blvd. #14, 702-648-9303, amberunicornbooks.com 18 Avatar Comics and Games If you know what The Feast of Blades is, Avatar is your homeworld. The comic and game shop is known at Warhammer 40k HQ. 881 S. Rainbow Blvd., 702-795-8700, avatarcomicsandgames.com 19 Southern Nevada Gem and Mineral Society These guys have some real stones.

Avid gem collectors and rock-polishers meet monthly and even have a lapidary workshop. Meet-

ings: Eagles Hall, 1601 E. Washington Ave.; workshop: 3111 S. Valley View Blvd. #E125, sngms.com 20 Star Trek Convention Where the trekkiest of that species known as Trekkies (or is it Trekkers?) meet, mingle and breed. Aug. 6-9, Rio hotel-casino, creationent.com 21 Atomic Testing Museum Everything you ever wanted to know about the bomb, but were too terrified of nuclear annihilation to ask. 755 E. Flamingo Road, 702-794-5151, nationalatomictestingmuseum.org 22 Alternate Reality Comics Revered shop hosts a mind-boggling selection of indie and underground comics, with a supplemental dose of X-Men this, Avengers that. 4110 S. Maryland Parkway #8, 702-736-3673, alternaterealitycomics.net 23 Las Vegas Comic Con Not just about comics. It’s a pop-culture supernova embracing books, TV, film, games and toys.

April 24-26, Las Vegas Convention Center, wizardworld.com

702-478-3131, agpvegas.com 29 Pinball Hall of Fame A living library of lovingly restored and maintained pinball machines, classic video games and midway novelties. 1610 E. Tropicana Ave., 702-597-2627, pinballmuseum.org 30 Age of Chivalry Renaissance Festival History geeks get their Game of Thrones on in this annual festival of jousting knights, busty damsels and turkey legs. Oct. 10-12, Sunset Park, lvrenfair.com

[further out] 31 Denny & Lee Magic Studio No illusion: This magic shop is considered the real deal by street magicians and pro illusionists alike. 5115 Dean Martin Drive #102, 702-740-3500, dennymagic.com 32 Pololu Done with the blueprints for your ButlerBot 2000? These guys have the parts. 920 Pilot Road, 702262-6648, pololu.com

24 Def Con This annual hacker convention is a brain-busting three days of conferences, warez swapping, code sessions and parties. Aug. 6-9, Paris-Las Vegas, defcon.org

33 Press Start Gaming Center An all-ages arcade for the 21st century: next-gen consoles and PCs are rounded out by billiards and, yes, even air hockey. 4840 S. Fort Apache Road #100, 702227-4263

25 Polaroid Fotobar This shrine to Polaroid is part museum, part retail store. Best of all, you can turn that Instagram selfie into something to hang at home. In The Linq, 866-733-5827, caesars.com/thelinq

34 The Innevation Center A brainiac nexus of government, biz and tech with frequent workshops, conferences and seminars.

6795 Edmond, 702-444-1111, innevation.com

26 Zombie Apocalypse Store Is it a novelty shop? A survivalist bunker? Both. Stock up on MREs and kukri knives — don’t forget your “My Zombie Ate Your Honor Student” bumper sticker.

3420 Spring Mountain Road, 702-320-0703, zombieapocalypsestore.com

35 CSN Planetarium The city’s only planetarium hosts regular shows on Friday and Saturdays, from “Tales of the Maya Skies” to “Larry, Cat in Space.” Also HQ to the Las Vegas Astronomical Society (lvastronomy.com) 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave., 702-651-4000, csn.edu

27 Gorilla Cafe Pool sharks, Counter-Strike addicts and Grand Theft Auto fans coexist in this gamer’s haven filled with pool tables, PCs and PS3s.

1801 E. Tropicana Ave. #10, 702-483-6655, gorilla-cafe.com

36 Shall We Play? ... A game Dedicated to card, tabletop and role-playing games that don’t require a plug. 7120 N. Durango Drive #180, 702-721-7974, shallweplaygames.com

28 A Gamer’s Paradise Busted game systems find new life at this repair shop; they also host card and tabletop game tourneys.

1550 E. Tropicana #4,

37 Kettlemuck's Toy Shoppe Old-school toy-a-porium with everything from plushies to collectibles. 10895 Eastern Ave. #120, 702-776-8349, kettlemuckstoyshoppe.com

He’s making a list. Checking it twice.

He’s buying gifts for everyone, both naughty and nice.

From November 28 to December 24, Santa will be waiting to meet your good little boys and girls and hear everything on their wish list. Meanwhile, you’ll be finding everything on yours. With over 40 unique retail and dining destinations, Tivoli Village is your home for the holidays.

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Mage against the machine Growing up playing fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons involved epic, courageous battles with fearsome foes — and that was just the parents STORY By James Joseph Brown | Illustration by Brandon Lin

1

the journey begins

I

started playing Dungeons & Dragons when I was 12. It was during the early ’80s, when the game was still relatively new, but had nevertheless already attracted a sizable cult following. My story begins the way many Dungeons & Dragons adventures begin: You all meet in a tavern ...

When you’re playing D&D, you role-play a character: a half-elven wizard, a barbarian from the Great Wilds, a dark rogue with a score to settle with the lizard people who enslaved your family. You band together to seek adventure in a dangerous, exciting world filled with living statues and evil priestesses and bands of marauding hobgoblins. First though, in the beginning, you have to find each other. Usually this happens in a tavern, over flagons of mead and ale. You can spot each other among the townspeople by your battle-dented armor, your well-worn weapons, the glint of wanderlust in your eye as you meet each other’s gaze.

In the ’80s, we had no Internet, no so-

cial media. We lived in a primordial chaos in which like-minded individuals didn’t have the ability to locate each other in milliseconds. If your group wanted to find another adventurer because you needed a healer, for example, or an assassin, you had to scout them out.

That’s how the merry band of socially awkward misfits who played Dungeons & Dragons at my school found me. I was a bright, bookish preteen. I wore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirts while everyone else was wearing Izods. It was only a matter of time before the scout sniffed me out. His name was Jhonny. He had flaming red hair that drew attention to him like a beacon, which he tried to counter by moving slowly and quietly through the halls. One day, he smuggled something large and cumbersome underneath his Members Only jacket into school.

“I saw you reading Tolkien in study hall,” he said. “Which book are you on?”

“The Return of the King.”

“Already on the last one. I’m reading through the whole trilogy again for the third time.”

“I’m on my second time through,” I lied.

I must have passed the test. He nodded. He considered me for a moment, then reached into his jacket, pulled out an oversized hardcover book and slipped it quickly into my locker. I only caught a glimpse

of the cover as it blurred by: a red-faced demon, a razor-sharp blade, a half-naked blonde about to be disemboweled. Jhonny slammed the locker door shut and leaned against it as if the book were a wild animal that might escape.

“Read it cover to cover, and don’t let any teachers see you or they’ll confiscate it, and you’ll get detention. We’re meeting on Saturday. You’ll have to buy your own after that.”

The book he had loaned me was the Dungeons & Dragons First Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. Just like that, I was in. Soon I’d be joining fellow adventurers to explore the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, to discover the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, to do battle with the Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

The hearth at the center of the tavern blazes with a fire which wards off the chill of the wintry winds outside. A bard strums a melancholy dirge on her dulcimer and quiets the crowd with a dramatic retelling of ancient battles and heroic quests ...

Dungeons & Dragons is 40 years old this year. While that doesn’t exactly make it as venerable as the Seer of Urnst, it is indisputably the granddaddy of all things geek.

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through the years, from obscure hobby to fan-fueled phenomenon, to lightning rod in a misguided culture war. About a decade or so ago, right around the time sales from its merchandise passed the $1 billion mark worldwide, something unexpected happened. The taint of scandal that plagued the game in its early years seemed to dissipate, and D&D began to settle into its current role as the reigning elder statesman of nerd culture, the proverbial wizard behind the curtain to which mainstream pop-culture phenomena such as Pokémon, World of Warcraft and modern video games gratefully tip their hats.

It took a long time to earn this distinction. My friends and I began playing D&D during a decade when the game was caught in the crosshairs of a bizarre culture war — back when organized bands of Christian fundamentalists used to stir otherwise reasonable folks into irrational frenzies across the nation. They preached against the dangers of heavy metal music, long hair, gays, artists and, yes, Dungeons & Dragons, all of which they claimed could lead to Satanism and damnation.

In the tavern, your party approaches the man you came to meet, a frail mage hidden in the shadows of his cowl, seated alone in the corner. His arms are folded over a large tome bound in thick, reptilian hide. “The spellbook you seek, as agreed upon. You must promise to deliver it without allowing anyone to break its magical seals. What it contains could spell doom to any who dare look within ..."

The book Jhonny gave me was published while Dungeons & Dragons was still young, going through a painful growth spurt, akin to the prepubescence we ourselves were experiencing at the time. The first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide was gangly and unwieldy. Exhaustively comprehensive, its rules were presented in dense charts, one after the other, forcing Dungeon Masters across the land to pore frantically through it in search of specific information in the middle of the game.

The finer points between infravision and ultravision? Page 59. Which scrolls can be used by clerics? Page 127. And where’s that bone-chilling little chart where you can use dice to determine when your character will die of natural causes, in the unlikely event he doesn’t get gobbled up by a dragon first? Try page 12. (It helps if you’re a gray

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elf; they can live to be 2,000 years old.)

The first edition of the Dungeon Master’s Guide seemed arcane to new players, but it was also glorious, creative and maddeningly overambitious. And like us young people about to enter the minefield of their teen years, perhaps the authors were unaware of how royally they were about to screw up their own best-laid plans.

The bold illustration on the cover was one of several that would send the wrong signal to the public: On a stark black background, two bedraggled adventurers make a desperate attempt to save a half-naked, dagger-wielding woman from a massive, red, horned demon-creature brandishing a scimitar and a fiendish glow in its eyes.

To us prepubescent boys, it was simply a cool cover. But to many parents, it was a cause for alarm. Where we saw a fantastic enemy to vanquish, parents saw the devil.

The book itself? To them, it was an occult tome for summoning demons, a manual for performing black magic, a tool for promoting Satanism. Across the nation, there were calls for boycotts, exorcisms, even book burnings, all by people who had never even looked inside the books, never tried to play the game themselves, never sat in on a session or spent time talking to a gamer to see what it was about.

The mage gesticulates madly, weaving glowing sigils into the air where they coalesce into patterns of arcane energy. When the spell is complete, a burst of light envelopes your party and you find yourself magically transported outside the tavern, near the stables. “Go, quickly. I’ll keep them from following you.” Flashes of lightning crackle and hiss, igniting the barn next to the tavern and lighting up the sky behind you as you and your companions gallop away at full speed ...

2

attack of the mom-beast

O

ur D&D games must have seemed strange to our confused parents, our dedication fiendish and obsessive.

When we cleared our schedules of school obligations and holed up in a basement for a weekend sleepover, we surrounded ourselves with sleeping bags, binders full of maps and drawstring bags of polyhedron

dice and did nothing but play. We exhibited all the traits of drug addicts or cult members. We went for hours and sometimes days at a time, rarely eating or sleeping, just to get more time in.

It was intoxicating, this exciting new presence in all of our lives. Most of us were more brainy than brawny. We couldn’t win middle-school playground scuffles with our fists, but role-playing a fireball-slinging mage or a sword-wielding barbarian in a raid against a tribe of orcs from The Keep on the Borderlands, we were invincible. We built rich, complex, imaginative worlds together. We grew into young adults, side by side, sitting on rickety picnic tables in shady backyards in summer, and at card tables in drafty basements in winter. We bickered, bonded and became young men together. And how we did it was contrary to the way most preteen boys do. We didn’t compete to race to the finish line and beat everyone else there. We cooperated to enjoy an experience together.

But there was trouble brewing.

The journey through the Spiderweave Vale is treacherous. When night falls, dark and hostile forces emerge from the shadows and surround you, threatening to keep you from completing your mission. You must draw upon every last reserve of might and magic you possess if you are to forge ahead on your noble quest ...

After wearing out our welcome at several of our dungeon lairs, we ended up meeting at Jhonny’s house for the first time. His mom had been reluctant to host us; rumor had it she had caught wind of the bad press D&D was getting and had serious reservations. But Jhonny had very few friends, and we were it, so she grudgingly agreed.

The tension was thick as a bugbear’s hide as we entered the house that Saturday afternoon, backpacks laden with heavy rule books and stacks of character sheets.

Jhonny’s mother, unlike most parents who just stayed on the periphery unseen, was hovering at the door. She looked us up and down as we filed past her. My AC/ DC hand-me-down concert T-shirt from my older brother sent an eyebrow up. Our half-elf rogue’s hair was too long for her liking. I was already chilled by the time I descended the rickety wooden stairs into the frigid basement. Light bulbs hung

from strings, jars of mysterious pickled objects lined the shelves along the rough stone walls. Even we battle-hardened warriors and sorcerers were creeped out.

During the game, when we cheered a victory or argued about a rule change, she poked her head through the doorway at the top of the stairs and asked, “What are you boys doing down there?” Jhonny, exasperated with having to answer again and again, finally snapped.

In a mock-sweet voice, he called up the stairs: “We’re worshipping the devil, Mom!” It felt tremendous when Jhonny just blurted it out. We laughed hysterically until we were out of breath. She slammed the door behind her, making her way down the basement stairs as we sat in frozen, terrified silence, as though she were a monster descending into the dungeon to devour its trapped prey.

“Time to finish up now,” she said, then turned to walk away.

I was the only one who didn’t recognize the tone or its finality. My parents didn’t use it with me. They weren’t strict. We had discussions. We had trust.

“But we’re not finished yet,” I said.

Jhonny, pale and shivering, was silent.

The other boys got the message loud and clear. They began doing as she said, quickly. Just to make it clear to me — the only one who didn’t understand what was going on — she said without turning around: “Jhonny, now.”

“He was just joking,” I said.

Jhonny’s mom snapped her head around and glared at me, a medusa’s stare.

She slammed her hands down on the table, rattling the dice and the books. There was a collective gasp. She closed her eyes for several excruciating moments. Nobody moved or breathed. Then she turned and calmly walked back up the stairs.

We all began packing in a rush, putting the wrong books in some bags, leaving some behind. We hustled up the stairs as if we were escaping a burning building.

“Wait, I left my Player’s Handbook down there.”

“You’ll get it later,” our half-elven rogue said, pushing me along.

Your party reaches its destination.

It has been a long and arduous journey.

“The tome, as we agreed.” You deliver the reptilian-bound spellbook to its rightful

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91

owner. “This will save countless lives.”

The mage-king smiles, genuinely pleased.

You exchange a glance with the others in your party, wondering if the sacrifice was worth the gain. It is time to mourn those companions who were left behind.

Jhonny said he would return my book at school the following Monday.

But he wasn’t in school Monday. He was in big trouble, the kind of trouble

I couldn’t fathom. Prayer-meeting and stay-home-from-school and intensive-therapy trouble. Turned out his mom had thrown away all the books left at his house that day, just swept them up and scooped them into the trash, along with the coffee grounds and eggshells, as if they were garbage, including the ones that weren’t his. He said he would buy us new ones, but we felt so bad for him we just said forget

about it. He wasn’t allowed to play with us anymore, and that was that.

We still wanted to be friends. We tried our best, but to be honest, seeing devil-fearing hysteria rear its ugly head had terrified us and made us a little uneasy around him. We were all afraid it could happen to us, as much as we were perplexed that it was happening at all. Why were these irrational, nonsensical beliefs gaining traction? Why were adults twice and three times our age who should have known better acting this way? We knew better, we knew the game was nothing but an overwhelmingly positive influence in our lives and that the claims against it were unfounded, and yet, no one heard us, no one took us seriously when we tried to defend it, when we tried to defend ourselves and each other.

Back in the tavern where you first met, curious eyes watch your party suspiciously. You saved the village from great evil by delivering the ancient spellbook to the mage king, and still they watch your every move as if you were the criminals who started the trouble, not the heroes who brought it to an end ...

It’s too bad the game was so misunderstood — whether people feared it as a gateway to devil worship or dismissed it as desperate power fantasies for weaklings and geeks. Dungeons & Dragons helped many of us become the people we are today. We grew up together, went through the same awkward phases and came through the other side, self-actualized, respectable, trustworthy, maybe a little boring. The next generation of gamers won’t have to struggle against ignorance and ridicule like we did.

Dungeons & Dragons made many of us champions of justice in more ways than one. Together we defeated the evil demilich Acerak, we rescued Orlane from the Cult of the Reptile God, and along the way we learned that this great, glorious, too-often misunderstood game is much more than a mere game to millions of devotees. It’s been a reminder to us throughout our lives to stand up for the underdog, the disenfranchised, the misunderstood, victims of persecution, those maligned and harassed by the false slander of bigots.

And, of course, a reminder to never judge a book by its cover.

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Give as good as you get.

From the wrist

Now a friend who’s always at hand — literally. Tory Burch Kerrington large wristlet, $175, Tory Burch in The Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian and The Forum Shops at Caesars

by christie

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moeller

Whether it’s for the love of your life, your little ones or your colleagues, we’ve got the goods for everyone on your list

Got you covered Defend your friends against winter chill. Vince Camuto gloves and scarf, $58 each, Vince Camuto in the Fashion Show Mall

A nightcap in the shower This invitingly scented shower gel will have them all ready to snooze. LUSH Cosmetics Hot Toddy shower gel, $9.95-$28.99, LUSH Cosmetics in the Fashion Show Mall, Downtown Summerlin

for your

BESTIE Give gifts like these and you’ll be friends forever

Beauty inside These compacts sparkle, shine and intrigue.

Estee Lauder crystal sparklers compact, $250; Dazzling Bow compact, $250; Sparkling Stiletto perfume solid, $250, Year of the Goat compact, $125; and Delectable Bon Bon perfume solid, $250, Saks Fifth Avenue in the Fashion Show Mall, saks.com

A toast to good friends For that friend with the bubbly, sparkly personality. Kate Spade champagne bucket tote, $298, Kate Spade in the Fashion Show Mall and The Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian

In vino, friendship A wine tote with some flair — and jammy, warm undertones of friendship. Kate Spade gifting wine tote, $28, Kate Spade in the Fashion Show Mall and Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian

Sleek and slim Almost makes you want to join a bike gang. TOPSHOP patent leather jacket, $435, TOPSHOP in the Fashion Show Mall

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Drawn together Whatever drawing you choose, these porcelain doodle cufflinks blend fun and flair. Paul Smith porcelain doodle cufflinks, $90, Paul Smith at Crystals in CityCenter

around the water

Cards sharp This card case will give even the blandest biz cards a style boost. Coach Men’s crossgrain card case, chambray/navy, $75, Coach Men stores, coach.com

COOLER

Do me a flavor Forget crazy-colored energy drinks. This juicer bottle lets you infuse fresh citrus to flavorize your H20. Citrus Zinger water bottle, $15.99, The Container Store at Town Square

For co-workers, cubemates and colleagues Urgent care For life’s little emergencies, this kit comes to the rescue with aspirin, deodorant, polish remover, thread, buttons and more. Quilted minimergency kit, $15.99, The Container Store at Town Square

Mad for plaid The classics never go out of style — classics like this tie and pocket-square set in a crisp, colorful plaid. Original Penguin tie and pocket-square gift set, $79, Original Penguin at Miracle Mile Shops in Planet Hollywood and Fashion Show Mall

Carried away Handsome but rugged, this satchel gives the old office briefcase a stylish update. Ted Baker Harlem colorblock satchel, $375, Ted Baker London in The Forum Shops at Caesars and Fashion Show Mall

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Keyed in to success This delicate key pendant is a reminder that from confidence comes success. Dogeared “Confidence is Key” gold-dipped necklace, $58, Neiman Marcus in the Fashion Show Mall

Dinobaby!

These prehistoric PJs will make your cuteasaurus roar with glee. Paul Smith dinosaur boy’s baby grow, $88, Paul Smith at Crystals in CityCenter

for the

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Kickin’ it, kid These sweet kicks will have your toddler toddling in style.

Pediped Delaney shoe in silver, $39.95, Pediped in Town Square, pediped.com

Your tiny pianist Bring the noise! And hopefully, soon, some music.

Melissa & Doug 30-key mini-grand piano, $155, Neiman Marcus in the Fashion Show Mall

Beastmaster Jr. the nose knows This cute reindeer Jaquard Knit sweater is perfect for foggy Christmas eves, $14.95, H&M in the Forum Shops and Town Square

My child’s remote-control dragon beat up your honor student’s wimpy remote-control car! R/C smoke-breathing dragon from Animal Planet, $34.99, Toys R Us

Kitty kitchen Just emphasize that it’s about imagining cooking, not cooking kittens. Hello Kitty Kitchen Cafe, $79.99, Walmart

Cold play Galactically good time This playset is guaranteed to get them stop saying, “I am GROOT!” for at least 20 minutes.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes Guardians of the Galaxy Milano Spaceship Rescue set, $74.99, Lego Store in the Fashion Show Mall

This playset is guaranteed to get them to stop singing “Let it go” for at least 20 minutes, Play-Doh Sparkle snow dome set featuring Disney’s Frozen, $14.99, Toys R Us

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It does a body good ULTA took their top-selling essentials and made this must-have kit in a vintage-inspired holiday tin. Benefit Pretty Parfait gift set, $39, ULTA, various locations

Music for your fingertips This commemorative box celebrates Deborah Lippmann’s 15th anniversary with 15 beautiful lacquers housed in a music box. Deborah Lippmann Until Your Dreams Come True music box, $195, deborahlippmann.com

Color me happy Known for their vibrant, long-lasting colors, NARS always has your face covered. NARS Tech gift set, $49, NARS in The Forum Shops at Caesars

A brush with beauty This combo beauty brush and travel wrap ensures you’ll look stunning no matter where you’re going. Alexis Bittar for Sephora Liquid Gold beauty brush and travel wrap, $58, Sephora in Town Square, Miracle Mile Shops in Planet Hollywood, The Forum Shops at Caesars, The Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian, Downtown Summerlin

for the

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Body Shop Winter Wonderful Music Box, $45, The Body Shop in the Fashion Show Mall

Fit for a queen They’ll feel like a queen after getting this royal treatment for eyes, cheeks and lips. LORAC The Royal Full Face Collection, $40, Kohl’s, various locations

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Check your head When the holidays start to feel harried, this kit rescues tired eyes and lips. BareMinerals Holiday Survival Essentials gift set, $26, ULTA, various locations

Snug as a pug This pet coat will keep your furry friends toasty in even the coldest weather. Tory Purch pet coat, $65, Tory Burch in The Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian and The Forum Shops at Caesars

Doggone natural The BarkLogic collection includes natural products such as ear wash, kennel and coat spray, odor eliminating spray, shampoo, conditioner and more. $12.50-$28, logicproductgroup.com

My treat He wants Milk Bones; you want to use something other than your favorite vase. Solution! Henri Bendel dog treat jar, $58, Henri Bendel in the Fashion Show Mall

for the

fur babies

Your pup is now artisanal Designed by Shaggy Chic owner Kelly Petersen, these handmade collars come in five fun themes ($36) — or design your own ($44). Shaggy Chic in Tivoli Village, shaggychic.com

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Your cat is now a meme Keep your cuddle buddy out of the harsh sun — and ready for Instagram! Tommy Bahama straw pet fedora, $16, tommybahama.com

A bowl to dine for A bone-shaped dog bowl to remind Fido of his first true love. Henri Bendel boneshaped dog bowl, $58, Henri Bendel in the Fashion Show Mall

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keep it

LOCAL Gifts born in Vegas — locally made or sold in local boutiques

Caged beauty Raw meets refined in this rough diamond caged in gold. Diamond in a Cage necklace, $660; Diamond in a Cage earrings, $750, The Jeweler’s Daughter, 896 E. Sahara Ave., thejewelersdaughter.com

Friendship goes eclectic Inspired by styles and artifacts from around the world, this tray expresses an eclectic outlook. Luxury BFF Tray, $79.99, Paper & Home, 4555 S. Forte Apache Road #138, paperandhome.com

Shoes, meet ... chocolate?

A combo that any shoe-phile or chocoholic would fall for — plus a handbag filled with truffles. Chocolate shoe and truffle handbag, $37, B Sweet in The Market LV at Tivoli Village

Coal comfort

Back in black This gorgeous vintage black handbag features turquoise-toned feathers and a gorgeous antique centerpiece.

ICJUK handbag, $600, icjuk.com; available for local pickup

Chocopocalypse!

It’s pretty sweet that there’s a big name in chocolate we can call our own: Ethel M. Toast their success with this collection of cocktail candies. Ethel M Holiday Cocktails Collection, 16 pieces, $28, available at Ethel M locations, ethelm.com

Reptile style

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Made from reclaimed leather, this red snakeskin clutch is both hip and haute. Leather couture clutch, $225, Jessica Galindo Shop in Container Park

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Available in Red Carpet, Chocolate Loves Vanilla or Vanilla Loves Vanilla, $3 each, Retro Bakery, 7785 N. Durango Drive #130, retrobakerylv.com

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for little miss

Luxury For the discerning woman of style

Smells like luxe The bottle, with its female figure and gold-plated stopper, is a sculpture. The scent — sophisticated yet serene. Sisley Paris Eau du Soir limited-edition perfume bottle, $310, Sisley Paris at Crystals in CityCenter

Be a square These iconic bracelets reflect the simple luxury of Tiffany. Tiffany T Square bracelets in rose gold, $5,000, yellow gold, $5,000, and sterling silver, $950, Tiffany & Co. in The Forum Shops at Caesars and Crystals in CityCenter

The shape of things to come Flirty and functional meet in this innovative undergarment.

SPANX Lust-Have slimming teddy, $88, SPANX in the Fashion Show Mall

Hi, heels These eye-catching heels sparkle and shine — but they won’t outshine you. L.K. Bennett Faye crystal-embellished suede/mesh heel, $695, L.K. Bennett in The Forum Shops at Caesars

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Be an in-vester This warm and stylish waistcoat goes perfect by itself or under a jacket. Petrol cashmere waistcoat, $149, Suit Supply in the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian

Time and again The only thing more classic-looking is a sundial. Shinola Runwell Chrono 47mm timepiece, $750, Neiman Marcus in the Fashion Show Mall

for the

He wore blue velvet ... a blue velvet bow tie, that is.

Blue velvet bow tie, $65, Suit Supply in The Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian

You make a great case This soft briefcase is roomy but handsome, perfect for the office and weekend jaunts. Longchamp 3D briefcase, $1,000, Longchamp in the Forum Shops at Caesars

model husband

The complete look For a hubby who likes his look a bit rough around the edges, we vote Varvatos. John Varvatos three-button notch-lapel jacket, $1,698; button-front vest, $598, wingtip dress shirt, $250; tie, $145; leather jeans, $1,998; leather fingerless gloves, $228, John Varvatos in The Forum Shops at Caesars

The spouse with the most deserves to be gifted big

Rock it in your pocket The paisley pocket square is making a comeback, but it’s never really gone out of style. Johnston & Murphy paisley pocket square, $45, Johnston & Murphy in the Fashion Show Mall

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stretched across a 2.5-mile course. 5:30-9 p.m. Sun.-Thurs. and 5:30-10 p.m. Fri., Sat. and holidays, $20 per vehicle; $55 for season pass; $1 per person with minimum charge of $20 per bus. First 15,000 vehicles receive free gift bag.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 7000 Las Vegas Blvd. N., glitteringlightslasvegas.com Nov. 17, Dec. 1, 8, 15

Pet N ig ht with Santa

But don’t let that keep you away from this season’s gift fairs, festivals, lighting displays and entertainment events

Carla J. Zvosec

NOVEMBER Nov. 7-9

THE CR AFT FESTIVAL Get a jump on this year’s holiday shopping.

Offering more than 50,000 square feet of displays and 200 booths representing independent artists and crafters from seven Western states, this huge indoor festival of handmade arts and crafts has been rated one of the top 20 in the country. The festival doesn’t allow the selling of mass-produced, commercial or imported items, and all work for sale is created by the artist at each booth. In addition to the crafts, a wide variety of food is available for sale and an ATM is located on-site.

10 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun., $2-$7 (one admission charge is good for all weekend), $4 parking fee. Cashman Center Exhibit Hall, 850 Las Vegas Blvd. N., steve powers.com/public/LasVegasFallPublic.html NOV. 13

21ST AN N UAL HOLIDAY CACTUS GARDE N LIG HTING Ethel M Chocolates’ seasonal exhibit, displayed throughout the 3-acre Botanical Cactus Garden, features more than a half-million brilliant, colorful, twinkling lights, Santa’s house where kids can have their photos taken on St. Nick’s lap (5 p.m.-9 p.m. Fri.-Sun.) and live choirs

performances (Fri.-Sat.). Cactus Lighting: Nov. 13, 5 p.m.-8 p.m., ticket(s) required, which can be picked up beginning Nov. 1 at Ethel M Chocolates; those who bring a new, unwrapped toy receive a family four-pack of tickets to the event.

Holiday Cactus Garden: Nov. 14-Jan. 1, 5 p.m.-10 p.m. daily, free admittance. Ethel M Chocolate Factory and Botanical Garden, 2 Cactus Garden Drive, Henderson, (702) 435-2655 Nov. 14-Dec. 24

ADVE NTU RE TO SANTA Presented by DreamWorks Animation, DreamPlace is a 2,000-square-foot holiday cottage in the Fashion Show Mall that melds the latest digital technology with storytelling to bring Santa Claus to life. An interactive 12-minute experience, DreamPlace takes children and their families on an adventure to the North Pole, led by the lovable ogre Shrek and his friends. The journey ends with photo opportunities with Santa. (Avoid the long lines by making an appointment by app.) Mall hours, free for adventure, Santa photos $TBA. The Great Hall at Fashion Show, 3200 Las Vegas Blvd. S., thefashionshow.com Nov. 14-Jan. 4

G litte ring Lig hts Returning for its 14th year, this drivethrough light show is Nevada’s largest, drawing more than 25,000 vehicles and 150,000 visitors each year. It boasts in excess of 1 million LEDs and 400-plus animated displays

Capture holiday memories with your beloved pet this year when St. Nick’s Pet Pics visits the mall to take photos of proud pet owners and their four-legged friends with Santa Claus. Dogs and cats only. 6 p.m.-8 p.m., $TBA. Meadows Mall, 4300 Meadows Lane, meadowsmall.com Nov. 21-Jan. 4

MAG ICAL FOREST

Opportunity Village’s magical forest includes hundreds of trees twinkling with more than 3 million lights, the Forest Express passenger train, Boris the Elf’s 3-D Experience, the Avalanche Slide and the Magical Midway. Also, nightly entertainment for all ages, photos with Santa in his workshop and a gingerbread house display. 5:30-9 p.m.

Sun.-Thurs. and 5:30-10 p.m. Fri. and Sat., $11 and $20 (all inclusive) adults, $9 and $18 (all inclusive) children ages 12 and younger, free for children 2 years and younger. Parking is free of charge behind the Magical Forest in the CSN parking lot. Opportunity Village, 6300 W. Oakey Blvd., (702) 259-3741 Nov. 21-Jan. 4

Th e Rin k at th e Bou levard Pool It’s the desert, but who says you can’t enjoy some seasonal culinary and cocktail offerings after ice-skating? The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas converts the largest of its three pools into a real-ice rink with special programming that includes “Date Skate,” an evening of skating and favorite holiday movies playing on the resort’s 65-foot digital marquee, and “Industry Skate on the Strip,” featuring a DJ who will turn the rink into an outdoor club scene. Times and cost TBA. The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd.

S., cosmopolitanlasvegas.com Nov. 22-23

PRE - B LACK FRIDAY CR AFT AN D VE N DOR BAZAAR Get a head start on your holiday shopping at this two-day event featuring a variety of gift ideas, including handmade crochet and knit items, candles, ceramics, drawings and hair accessories, as well as a great selection of doTerra essential oils, Pink Zebra scents, soaps and lotions, Scentsy candles and warmers, N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 4

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and more. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

Sun., free. Galleria at Sunset, 1300 W. Sunset Road, Henderson. (702) 271-5263 Nov. 23, Dec. 7

Se n sitive Santa Santa arrives before the Meadows Mall opens to accommodate children with special needs. The chaos and crowds of the holiday season can be stressful for kids, especially for those who have autism or other special conditions. Caring Santa hours provide a quiet time for personal visits with St. Nick. 9-11 a.m. both days, free. Meadows Mall, 4300 Meadows Lane, (702) 878-3331, meadowsmall.com Nov. 26-Jan. 1

MYSTIC FALLS HOLIDAY SHOWS

Sam’s Town’s indoor park (1) transforms into a winter wonderland decked out with a large Christmas tree, thousands of lights, wreathadorned lampposts, poinsettias, garland and more. Also part of the holiday fun is a free 15-minute laser light show that occurs hourly, and visits from Santa Claus. Holiday shows: 5 p.m.-10 p.m. hourly daily, free. Santa visits: Nov. 28-Dec. 23, noon p.m.-4 p.m.

Thurs. and Fri., noon-8:30 p.m. Sat. and Sun. Sam’s Town Hotel & Gambling Hall, 5111 Boulder Highway, (702) 456-7777

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Nov. 28-Jan. 4

FOUNTAINS OF BELLAGIO One of the world’s most famous fountains will incorporate into its rotation eight Christmas performances choreographed to the season’s songs, such as “O Holy Night” and “Hallelujah Chorus.” Every half hour from 3-7 p.m. Mon.-Fri., noon-7 p.m. Sat. and holidays, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sun. and every 15 minutes from 7 p.m.-midnight daily. Bellagio, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., (702) 693-7111 Nov. 28-30

Sister’s Ch ristmas Catechism : Th e Mystery of th e Magi’s Gold This comical holiday mystery extravaganza (2) by Late Nite Catechism author Maripat Donovan, along with Jane Morris and Marc Silvia, is filled with laughs as the fictitious Catholic nun, known only as Sister, retells the story of the nativity while raising the 2,000-year-old question: Whatever happened to the Magi’s gold? Assisted by a local choir and some audience members, Sister transforms the stage into a living nativity. 7 p.m. Fri., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sat.-Sun., $35-$40.

The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Ave., (702) 982-7805

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Cowboy Ch ristmas G ift Show The longest-running gift show of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo features more than 300,000 square feet of show floor with 400-plus vendors; shoppers can find custom jewelry, western wear, boots and spurs, furniture, handmade crafts and pottery. And you may get to meet your favorite cowboy stars when they make surprise appearances and sign autographs. Free shuttle service will be available from the gift show to the Thomas & Mack Center for each night’s rodeo performance. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, free admission. Las Vegas Convention Center, 3150 Paradise Road, nfrexperience.com/home/cowboy_christmas Dec. 4-14

Stetson Cou ntry Ch ristmas We ste rn G ift Expo This gift expo is in its 21st year in Las Vegas during the National Finals Rodeo. Covering the entire ground floor of the Sands Expo, you can find the newest, hottest Western lifestyle items and classic gifts, too. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, free admission. Sands Expo and Convention Center, 201 Sands Ave., (702) 733-5556

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Dec. 5-7

CLINT HOLM ES FOR THE HOLIDAYS Join this three-time Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year, four-time Singer of the Year and recipient of the Sammy Davis Jr. Foundation Award as he performs an enchanting evening of lively holiday music. 8:30 p.m.

Fri. and Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., $36-$46. The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, 361 Symphony Park Ave., (702) 749-2000

Ho ho...oh the holidays

The Frenchest intentions I was the wife of a Frenchman for more than a dozen years, a state that came with many perks. Having moved on to a relationship with a fine Italian-American, I don’t miss the annual trips to France or near-native fluency in the language of high fashion and gourmet cuisine. But I do occasionally pine for the strange gifts that crossed the Atlantic each December, making their way from my now-ex mother-in-law Monique’s hands to our Christmas tree.

The first I recall from a long line of head-scratchers was the sexy nightie — a blue and white striped satin getup that barely covered my unmentionables and came with matching tap pants slit up the sides. It was an odd choice for a tomboy such as me, and completely outside my own mom’s realm of books and casserole dishes. But I’m a good sport and made sure to send a thank-you note.

A few years later came the giant, monogrammed bath sheet. Now, that was a useful gift; I cherish it to this day, despite the awkward flesh-wound color. What distinguished it, though, was the dark green stitching, which spelled out “Hëidi” — a mystery, considering there are no umlauts included in any translation of my name, and they’re never used over the first syllable of a diphthong in French. Forever after, I wondered how my given name sounded inside Monique’s head (and understood why she preferred the diminutive “Didi”).

But the whistling beaver was, by far, the most wonderful and inexplicable offering she made. The 2-foot-tall stuffed animal stood upright and, thanks to a battery-operated, motion-sensitive mechanism embedded in its stomach, would let out a wolf whistle whenever someone walked by it. “Beaver” not having the same double-entendre in French as in English, I can excuse the inappropriateness of that part easily enough; still, it was a bucktoothed varmint that issued cat-calls at passers-by! Clearly, my ex’s mother either under- or overestimated me in a way I could never quite grasp. On the other hand, until the noise box gave out, I never tired of people’s expressions when I explained the mysterious sound by pointing to the toy on the bookshelf, casually noting, “Don’t mind that; it’s just my stuffed beaver.” Maybe Monique had my number, after all. — Heidi Kyser

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Dec. 5- 14

M eet M e in St. Louis Rainbow Company Youth Theatre presents this optimistic musical based on the heartwarming 1944 film. The story centers on the close-knit Smith family, which happily resides in St. Louis on the eve of the 1904 World’s Fair as they reluctantly prepare to move to New York. Dec. 5, 6, 12 and 13, 7 p.m., and Dec. 7, 13 and 14, 2 p.m., $5, ages 5-adult.

Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush St., artslasvegas.org Dec. 5

Ward 4 Holiday Movie : Frozen Families are invited to see the 2013 PG-rated Disney film inspired by the story “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen. The 3-D computer-animated musical fantasy-comedy won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. 6:30-8:30 p.m., free, all ages. Durango Hills Community Center/YMCA, 3521 N. Durango Drive, (702) 229-2524 Dec. 6-Jan. 4

CON SE RVATORY & BOTANICAL GARDE N S This year’s holiday display at the Bellagio will feature thousands of fresh poinsettias, a family of polar bears and a huge tree decorated with 7,000 white lights and more than 2,000 ornaments, all set among a working train display. Live musical performances can be enjoyed from 5-6 p.m. daily. Open for viewing 24 hours daily, seven days a week, free. Bellagio, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., (702) 693-7111 Dec. 6

LAS VEGAS G REAT SANTA RU N Santa Claus — well, lots of Santa Clauses — will head downtown for the 10th anniversary of Opportunity Village’s largest annual fundraiser (3). It’s also the 60th anniversary of the esteemed Las Vegas nonprofit, which provides opportunities and support to nearly 3,000 citi-

zens with disabilities and their families. Thousands of St. Nick lookalikes will race, run and walk to raise funds. To keep the adrenaline going, the Great Santa Run features costume contests, live entertainment, food, celebrity appearances and more. 8 a.m. registration and entertainment begin, 10 a.m. 5K run starts with 1-mile walk following, $30-$45. Registration includes five-piece Santa suit and goody bag.

Participants are encouraged to bring canine companions for $10 and each will receive a doggie bag of treats and toys. Downtown Las Vegas.

LasVegasSantaRun.org Dec. 6, 13

Ornam e ntal Art- Making Workshop In this two-day specialty workshop, led by instructor Jaqueline Eihausen, students will create ornate, decorative sculptural objects

inspired by the winter season that they can use to decorate this year’s tree. Among the ornaments students will create will be an origami globe and beaded 3-D snowflakes.

Registration is open through Dec. 6 or until full. 12:15-2:15 pm., $26, ages 7+. Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush St., artsl asvegas.org/classes/register.htm Dec. 6

Pops II : Fa L a L a L as Vegas The Las Vegas Philharmonic’s new music director, Donato Cabrera, gets the festivities going with the orchestra’s popular celebration of the holiday season. The orchestra will be joined by the Las Vegas Master Singers and other special guests to present a seasonal program that includes Tchaikovsky and Vaughan Williams. 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., $26-$94. The N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 4

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Ho ho...oh the holidays

Little voices raised in song Not long ago, on a highbrow summer evening, I was in a mirror-paneled bar where serious singers were singing serious karaoke, and this manchild took the mic and butchered “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” On purpose. Because it was ironic. And July. His friends whoot-whooted and high-fived in a fine display of post-postmodern meta-appreciation, but I was deeply pissed-off.

Christmas carols are not funny, and one should not just craft-hatchet them in July when unsuspecting karaoke-mates might be ransacked with actual feelings that swiftly and uncontrollably arise from traumatic holiday memories.

I was 6. It was a cold December evening. My older sister, 9, and her gaggle of sleepover friends, bullies one and all, wanted to go caroling. They begged my tired mother, “Please take us, please take us caroling, please please please,” and finally my mother agreed to walk around the neighborhood and let them ring doorbells and charm the neighbors with their angelic choir voices. I would tag along. They warmed up their routine as we put on coats and scarves: They’d start with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and move onto “Rudolph.”

At door one, a beautiful new house owned by total strangers, we gathered on the stoop — 10 bundled-up, seasonally spirited bodies. My mother rang the doorbell, and we all began to sing — how could I not join in? As the door latches unlocked, my sister and her friends — bullies, one and all — ran away.

Abandoned us. They simply left us there, mid-song, a bedraggled woman and one tone-deaf child singing, “We wish you a Merry Christmas ...”

A husband and wife opened the door, and for reasons that I am still working out in therapy, we felt compelled to finish the entire song. So their whole family gathered at the door — a rather large, well-dressed family, maybe some guests? — and they curiously, quietly eyeballed us as we grasped for those good tidings lyrics: Good tidings we bring, to you and your kin, We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Now bring us some figgy pudding Now bring us some figgy pudding Now bring us some figgy pudding And bring some out here.

That’s the way it goes. We didn’t write the song. However, we chose not go on to Rudolph. One and done. Thank you. Good night.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” the awkward sweater-vested man said, and he gently closed the door. Years later, I learned that the Schwartzes were Jewish. And it was Hannukah. — Stacy J. Willis

sharks and stingrays that reside in the Silverton’s 117,000-gallon saltwater aquarium.

Suited up in scuba gear and equipped with a microphone, the jolly man in red will submerge himself into the depths of the tank to enjoy some underwater fun. Bring your kids and cameras! 11 a.m.-1 p.m., free. Silverton Casino Hotel, 3333 Blue Diamond Road, (702) 263-7777 Dec. 6

Ward 6 Cowboy Ch ristmas an d Car Show Join Councilman Steve Ross Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs to celebrate the holiday season. Families can enjoy hay rides, a petting zoo, balloon artist, jump house and visit from the jolly man in red, while donating food, toys and clothing to assist local charities. 10 a.m.2 p.m., free. Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs, 9200 Tule Springs Road, (702) 229-8100 Dec. 13

A Home for the Holidays Pet Adoption The Animal Foundation, which operates Lied Animal Shelter, and Meadows Mall hope to make the holidays a little brighter for dogs in need of a good home this season by hosting a pet adoption station in Dillard’s court. 10 a.m.-3 p.m., free to attend. Meadows Mall, 4300 Meadows Lane, meadowsmall.com Dec. 11-13

Winte rFe st The theme of Henderson’s annual WinterFest is “It’s a Fairy Tale Christmas.” Activities include a tree-lighting ceremony with Santa Claus, live music and roaming entertainers, gingerbread houses, a festival of trees, Santa’s Village with a carousel, pony and carriage rides, petting zoo and Santa’s workshop, arts and crafts vendors, food vendors, and a Saturday evening light parade at 5 p.m. 7-9 p.m.

Thurs., 6-9 p.m. Fri. and noon-8 p.m. Sat., free.

Henderson Convention Center & Events Plaza, 200 Water St., Henderson. hendersonlive.com/ special-events/winterfest Dec. 13-21

THE N UTCR ACKE R Smith Center for the Performing Arts, 361 Symphony Park Ave., Las Vegas. (702) 749-2000 Dec. 6, 7, 13, 14, 20-24,

Santa in th e Shipwreck St. Nick appears at the Shark Reef Aquarium to greet and take photos with guests who come to explore the exhibit’s 2,000 underwater friends.

10 a.m.-4 p.m. Exhibit admittance is $18 adult ($15 for NV residents), $12 children ages 5-12

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($10 for NV residents), free for children 4 and younger and Santa photos are included in the admission price. Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S., (702) 632-4555 Dec. 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21

Scu ba Santa an d e lve s at th e Silve rton Aquari u m Santa can be found swimming among the 4,000 tropical fish and three species each of

The Nevada Ballet Theatre and Artistic Director James Canfield present this beloved winter holiday tradition (4), complete with a live orchestra, which reveals the classic, visually stunning and wondrous story of Clara and her nutcracker prince as they dance through a blend of imagination and reality. 7:30 p.m. Fri. and Sat. with additional 2 p.m. show on Dec. 20, 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Sun., $29-$179 plus fees, no children under 3 years of age permitted. The Smith Center

for the Performing Arts, 361 Symphony Park, nevadaballet.org Dec. 19

Downtown Cu ltu r al Se rie s Conce rt: M e sh uggina Kle zmorim Meshuggina Klezmorim is Yiddish for “crazy musicians.” The group plays klezmer music, a type of European folk music that has expressive melodies reminiscent of the human voice, complete with laughing and weeping.

The musicians will perform some favorite Chanukah melodies, including “I Have a Little Dreidel” and “Chanukah O Chanukah.”

Noon-1 p.m., free. Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse Jury Assembly Room, 333 Las Vegas Blvd. S., lasvegasnevada.gov

Dec. 27

K wanza a 2014 : “A Ce le br ation of African Valu e s , Cu ltu re & Comm u nit y”

Join in as Master of Ceremonies “LaBlaque” and the community celebrate the meaning of Kwanzaa and the accomplishments of those youths who are graduating from the annual Rites of Passage mentoring workshops. Featured activities present the best in African culture and community, and include a marketplace bazaar, master dance class, ancestral stretch and yoga class, author visit and book signing, theatrical production of Two Trains Running, as well as a crossing-over graduation ceremony. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., free, all ages. West Las Vegas Arts Center, 947 W. Lake Mead Blvd. and West Las Vegas Library Theatre, 951 W. Lake Mead Blvd., artslasvegas.org

With these volunteer opportunities, you can make this the most wonderful time of the year for others, and yourself

Raise your holiday spirit by

Adu lt Day Care Ce nte r of L as Vegas Purpose: Provides support to senior citizens and their caregivers by a team of professionals that help families avoid or postpone nursing-home admission by bridging the gap between home and nursing-home care.

Needs: Volunteers to visit and assist clients, provide entertainment, event planning, fundraising, construction, facilities or other support, lead a class or serve on a committee.

Volunteer: (702) 648-3425, adultdaycarelv.org

Aid for AIDS of N evada Purpose: Provides medical case management, medical transportation, education and prevention, housing and nutritional services for adults and children living with and af4

Carla J. Zvosec

fected by HIV/AIDS in Southern Nevada.

Needs: Donations of new, unwrapped children’s toys and games for children up to 15 for its annual Kid’s Toy Drive, and volunteers to assist with gift-wrapping and annual Kids’ Holiday Party benefitting children infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. Volunteer: (702) 382-2326, afanlv.org

Baby’ s Bou nt y Purpose: Provides new and gently used infant clothing and gear to babies born to victims of domestic abuse, teen mothers and low-income families.

Needs: Volunteers to help collect, sort, clean and prepare clothing donations and fill diaper bags with receiving blankets, bottles, toiletries and any other vital equipment for distribution.

Volunteer: (702) 485-2229, babysbounty.org

Best Buddies Nevada (5) Purpose: Creates opportunities for friendships through socialization programs; job coaching; and tools in leadership development for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Needs: Individuals in corporate and civic communities, colleges, high schools and middle schools to develop a friendship with a Best Buddies participant, as well as those who’d like to become an email pen pal with a Best Buddies participant.

Volunteer: (702) 822-2268, bestbuddiesne vada.org B ig B roth e rs B ig Siste rs of South e rn N evada Purpose: This donor- and volunteer-supported mentoring network provides children N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 4

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facing adversity with enduring, professionally supported positive relationships that have a direct effect on their lives.

Needs: Volunteers to shape a child’s future by enjoying fun activities together such as playing sports, hiking, reading, etc.

Volunteer: (702) 731-2227, bbbsn.org

B lin d Ce nte r of N evada Purpose: Assists the blind and visually impaired by focusing on personal development, social interaction and meaningful employment.

Needs: Volunteers to greet and welcome members, serve lunch, shop and help with various daily programs and activities, such as ceramics, music, keyboarding and more.

Volunteer: (702) 642-6000, blindcenter.org

Cl ark Cou nt y READS Purpose: An initiative of The Public Education Foundation, Clark County READS offers literacy programs to children and families to improve student attitudes toward reading.

Needs: Volunteers to provide reading tutoring for struggling students, help with general clerical work and pick up and deliver books.

Volunteer: (702) 799-1042, thepef.org

Goodie T wo Shoe s Fou n dation Purpose: Provides disadvantaged children and children in crisis with new shoes and socks, as well as other items deemed essential for good health and positive development.

Needs: Volunteers to staff two or three distribution events per month during the school year, assist participating children in their selection of a properly fitted pair of shoes and complete distribution process. Minor volunteers ages 13-17 accompanied by an adult to assist with backpacks, lunch, etc.

Volunteer: (702) 617-4027, goodietwoshoes.org

H e lp of South e rn N evada Purpose: Assists more than 1,200 families to receive a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and more than 19,000 children in need to receive holiday gifts through its three signature programs: Adopt-A-Family, Turkey-AThon and Toy Drive/Holiday Assistance.

Needs: Volunteers to adopt a family for the holidays, provide toy donations or donations of turkey and food/nonperishables.

Volunteer: (702) 369-4357, helpsonv.org

J ewish Family Se rvice Ag e ncy Purpose: Supports people of all backgrounds by providing professional social services, including counseling, senior services, adoptions and emergency assistance.

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Needs: Volunteers to assist with daily administrative tasks, food panty, driving seniors and more, as well as to help with several events and fundraisers throughout the year.

Volunteer: (702) 794-0304, jfsalv.org

Luth e r an Social Se rvice s of N evada Purpose: Provides professional social services to people of all backgrounds, including counseling, senior services, adoptions and emergency assistance.

Needs: Volunteers to help assemble and distribute Thanksgiving dinners to seniors and families in need; for Christmas Adopt-A-Family program; sponsors to support an individual or family in need by purchasing gift items on a supplied wish list; and volunteers to help organize and distribute the gifts. Ongoing, volunteers to work in the emergency services food pantry; assist in office answering phones, determining client eligibility for services, entering client information into the record-keeping system and general duties such as data entry, bookkeeping, filing, copying, etc.; clean the pantry and offices; perform maintenance at housing units and keep the grounds clean; work at one of numerous holiday food drives assembling and delivering baskets; and fundraise in support of numerous programs.

Volunteer: (702) 639-1730 ext. 510, lssnv.org

Marin e Toys for Tots Purpose: Collects new, unwrapped toys and distributes them as Christmas gifts to needy children to send them a message of hope.

Needs: Toy donations and volunteers to assist in the transportation and storage of donated toys; to provide warehouse assistance; to help with meals and more.

Volunteer: (702) 632-1520, las-vegas-nv.toysfortots.org/local-coordinator-sites/lco-sites/ local-contact-us.aspx

tion, full-time drop-in center and independent-living program.

Needs: Feel Good Fridays volunteers to set up a table and hand out information about Safe Place, NPHY programs and other community resources that can help end homelessness, homemade goodies, toiletries, snack food items, water, lip balm, lotion, soap, shampoo and other basic need necessities; volunteers to canvass neighborhood and pass out informational flyers about events and other NPHY services.

Volunteer: (702) 383-1332, nphy.org

Opportu nit y Vill ag e Purpose: Serves people with severe intellectual and related disabilities by providing vocational training, community employment, day services, advocacy, arts and social recreation to help them seek independence.

Needs: Volunteers to work with men and women with intellectual disabilities or assist with one of the organization’s events, including its largest, the Magical Forest, which requires 70-90 volunteers, such as ticket takers, food and beverage servers, forest greeters, elves, train conductor and more, nightly for the 50-day event.

Volunteer: (702) 259-3741, opportunityvillage.org

Th e Ronald McDonald House of G re ate r L as Vegas Purpose: Provide lodging, transportation and support to families while their children receive medical treatment.

Needs: Volunteers to help with cleaning and organizing of house, family transportation, office work, building and grounds maintenance, hospital lunch program, dinner program, weekend breakfast program and clean up, special events, professional services and Wish List Drives.

Volunteer: (702) 252-4663, rmhlv.com

N evada Partn e rship for Hom e le ss Youth

Th e Salvation Army

Purpose: Provides youth services, including street outreach, 24-hour crisis interven-

Purpose: Offers adult rehabilitation, emergency disaster, family, homeless, hu-

Ho ho...oh the holidays

Knee-high gifts

man-trafficking victim and veteran services, as well as vocational, prayer requests, summer camp and youth club programs.

Needs: Volunteers to sort and wrap donated Christmas gifts. Ongoing, to unpack, sort, store and bag food pantry donations; wallpaper, paint and clean kitchen; provide and install updated kitchen equipment, including ice dispenser, sneeze guards and so on; paint common areas, halls, lobby and bathrooms; sort, organize and pack donated items; build shelving, wooden racks and wood bins for storage; organize two clothing rooms; provide and install additional landscaping for patio and playground areas; provide shade cover over playgrounds; visit senior care centers; serve food, pass out cups and utensils and help clean up at community homeless meals.

Volunteer: (702) 870-4430, salvationarmysouthernnevada.org

There are really only two rituals my family enjoys around the holidays.

There’s the careful, ordered sequence of Christmas gift-giving (you can’t open your next gift until everyone has had a turn). And there’s the Christmas movie.

But a third ritual is starting to gain traction. The premeal prayer. It has only become a ritual, I think, in the past couple of years. Maybe it’s a tiny way that makes this strange desert city feel more like home for myself, my parents and cousins.

We deploy the prayer at holiday meals, but also birthdays and other important milestones. For years, it was the basic kind. You know: “Bless us, O Lord, and these your gifts, which we are about to receive from your bounty.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Usually Dad said it. He would say “these thy gifts,” and I had no idea what he was saying. I used to think, until very (very) recently that the words were “knee-high gifts,” which makes no sense. Even when I said the prayer myself, I just sort of mumbled my way through that part: “Bless us, O Lord … blah blah gifts… and nourish our bodies … Christ …um … ah … Amen.”

But the prayers are growing more ambitious. The champ in our family is my cousin China. She delivers novelistic sermons that hit on the specific spiritual blessings of every individual around the table, family members not present, everyone in Las Vegas, and, sometimes, I think, for good measure, the rest of the planet. They are ambitious, all-encompassing opuses, and very tough to follow.

When I’m tasked to give the prayer, I either turn in slightly disappointing, too cut-and-dry blessings or else I freeze altogether. I’m a good public speaker, but perhaps the pressure of being a writer — somebody who’s supposed to always have a way with words — causes me to tighten up. One year I hesitated so long, trying to gather myself, that China benched me on the spot and had someone else deliver the prayer. The sacraments of religion always take their pound of flesh.

Yet, what’s strange is that, except for my mom (who never seems to lead these large prayers), none of my immediate family are active churchgoers.

We’re not particularly religious.

The prayers may not connect us to the Almighty, but they do connect us to each other. There’s something powerful about closing your eyes and focusing on another voice, letting it wash over you. It’s an unplugged, old-fashioned, soothing quality. True, the pause before the meal also helps the food taste better (just don’t make the pause too long), but it’s real accomplishment is to remind us of what we all know is true but sometimes forget: Family, however defined, is the only thing in life that ends up mattering. — T.R. Witcher

Th e Shade Tre e Purpose: Provides a safe shelter for homeless and abused women and children in crisis, and offers life-changing services promoting stability, dignity and self-reliance.

Needs: Volunteers to help prepare and serve daily dinners, tutor, organize art and craft projects, sort donated items, provide transportation to appointments, help with cleaning, paint and do yard work, and assist with special events.

Volunteer: (702) 385-0072, theshadetree.org

Spre ad th e Word N evada Purpose: Advances early childhood literacy by giving books to children in at-risk, low-income communities.

Needs: Volunteers to clean books, become a Books & Buddies mentor, reading companion and “model” providing individualized attention, help with Breakfast with Books event setup, sign-in and distribution of snack and books, assist with storytelling or lend a hand at one of many community events.

Volunteer: (702) 564-7809, spreadthewordnevada.org

St. J u de ’ s R anch for Childre n Purpose: Transforms the lives of abused, neglected and at-risk children, young adults and families through residential foster care; pregnant and parenting teen, transitional living, housing and services for homeless 18 to 25 year olds, child-focused sibling preservation, emergency placement and USDA child-nutrition programs.

Needs: Donations of holiday decorations, such as light-up figurines, prelit trees, garland; and volunteers with tools to hang

lights and decorate the outdoors of the ranch for Christmas on Nov. 17.

Volunteer: (702) 294-7152, stjudesranch.org

YMCA Purpose: Provides personal and social change through Christian principles and opportunities to learn, grow and thrive side-by-side, regardless of age, income or background.

Needs: Volunteers to assist in the sorting and wrapping of toy donations, set up the facility for its annual Reindeer Rock event

and distribute toys at the event. Ongoing, volunteers to lead the board of directors and committees; raise funds; coach sports teams and teach classes; motivate youth to build skills and relationships that lead to positive behaviors, better health and higher education; help adults who want to do more and live healthier.

Volunteer: Las Vegas: Centennial Hills, (702) 478-9622, Durango Hills, (702) 2409622, Bill and Lillie Heinrich, (702) 8779622; North Las Vegas: SkyView, (702) 5227500, ymca.net N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 4

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5

e k ta your Arts+Entertainment calendar for november

6

22

Abigail Goldman

Alex Boyé Ham Hall, UNLV

Trifecta Gallery

28 Chrissie Hynde The Pearl at the Palms This isn’t a Pretenders gig — the iconic, hard-rocking frontwoman is touring her critically acclaimed recent album, Stockholm — but expect some cuts from her prodigious back catalogue of hits. 8p, $52-$205, palms.com

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Goldman’s irony is wicked-sharp. She titles her exhibit Home Sweet Home, but look at this detail from one of her new, extra-murderlicious “dieoramas.” Nothing sweet about it. There’s more: “It’s actually going to be set into a glasstopped dining table for four. So you dine while looking into the nightmare cul-de-sac below.”

Diabolical! Brilliant! “I suppose we’ve all eaten our way through grisly, fighting-family meals — this time, the carnage is under the food but on the surface.” Through Nov. 28, trifectagallery.com

10 Human Trafficking Panel

Click over to the Tube of You for Boyé’s videos: Africanized versions of pop songs you might think have been drained of life by repetition — Lorde’s “Royals” being a great one to begin with — revived and globalized by this Nigerian-descended former Mormon Tabernacle Choir star. 8p, $25-$75, UNLV’s Ham Hall, unlv.edu

23 David Sedaris

Barrick Museum, UNLV

The Smith Center

The panel’s full title is “Human Trafficking and the Narratives of Modern Slavery” — a narrative that includes some 29 million people enslaved in the world today. It’s a harrowing topic that Loyola University professor Laura T. Murphy will go into eye-opening depth on. 7:30p, UNLV’s Barrick Museum, liberalarts.unlv. edu/forum

Man tells funny stories.

7:30p, $46 and up, thesmithcenter.com

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NOVEMBER ON VEGAS PBS Nature

ART

PANORAMA

A Sloth Named Velcro

Through Nov. 26.

A selection of work in every genre: painting, textiles, digital, photography, sculpture, printmaking and mixed-media by some of the recipients of the Nevada Arts Council fellowships. Free. UNLV’s Barrick Museum, unlv.edu

ERIK BEEHN – FROM WHERE I STAND

Nov. 5-Dec. 5, opening reception Nov 5, 6-8p.

Returning briefly from his MFA studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, Beehn’s entirely new body of work explores many new artistic directions as a result of his continued formal training. Drawings, photo collage and works on paper will be on view.

Free. MCQ Fine Art, 620 S. Seventh St., (702) 366-9339

Wednesday, Nov. 5 at 8pm

Masterpiece Contemporary Worricker: Turks & Caicos Sunday, Nov. 9 at 9pm

Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story Tuesday, Nov. 11 at 9pm

ENIGMA ANTHONY BONDI

Nov. 6-Dec. 14.

Collage artist Bondi uses classic imagery with Las Vegas glitz to create stunning portraits of post-modern mischief.

Free. Sin City Gallery, sincitygallery.com

SEA WHIZ

Nov. 7-30.

In her first solo show in four years, Blackbird Studios chief Gina Quaranto will delve into the mysterious connection between moon-made tidal surges and human behavior. Her blue-drenched pieces, some wall-mounted and others “in the round,” will feature moons and the sea as totems of change as a life process. Free. Blackbird Studios, blackbirdstudios.com

Elvis Lives: The 25th Anniversary Concert Friday, Nov. 14 at 9pm

Great Performances Cats Friday, Nov. 21 at 9pm

FIRST FRIDAY

Nov. 7, 6p.

This month’s theme is “EnLIGHTened,” a full-out visual celebration of light in all of its forms. There will still be the exhibits, open galleries, live music and DJs, food trucks, vendor booths and special activities for the kids. Free. Arts District; hub at Casino Center Blvd. between Colorado St. and California St., firstfridaylasvegas.com

DANCE

A CHOREOGRAPHER’S SHOWCASE

Nov. 2, 1p.

The Nevada Ballet Theater and Cirque du Soleil are collaborating on the seventh

Jay Leno: The Mark Twain Prize Sunday, Nov. 23 at 8pm Visit VegasPBS.org to see the complete schedule today.

3050 E. Flamingo Rd. Las Vegas, NV 89121 702.799.1010 VegasPBS.org

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THE GUIDE installment of their gymnastics-influenced dance — or is it a ballet-influenced tumble?

Both, and more, say audience members, who applaud the boundary-pushing performances that give the city’s most talented dancers and directors a unique forum for flexing their collective muscles. $25-$45, Mystère Theater at Treasure Island, nevadaballet.com

MUMMENSCHANZ

Nov. 11, 7:30p.

By creating a playful yet compelling experience through the inventive use of shadow, light and creative manipulation of objects, this show offers timeless insight on the human condition. The result is a visually stunning spectacle that transcends cultural barriers and sparks the imagination. $21$69. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

MUSIC

STORM LARGE & LE BONHEUR

Nov. 7-8, 7p.

With Le Bonheur (French for “The Happiness”), Storm shares her genre-spanning musical vision, collecting songs born of French chanson, jazz standard, heavy metal, smokehouse lounge and a handful of originals. $39-$50. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

VOCAL JAZZ SOLO NIGHTS

Nov. 7-8, 7:30p.

The CSN Jazz Singers perform ensemble selections. Each member performs a solo ranging from jazz standards to Broadway. $8 adults, $5 students/seniors. Recital Hall at CSN, csn.edu/pac

PAUL TAYLOR

Nov. 7, 8p.

UNLV alumnus Taylor performs in his home city at his alma mater. This contemporary urban Jazz saxophonist’s music is instantly identifiable with infectious melodies and a deeply soulful and rhythmic trip-hop-influenced sound. $25-$75. Performing Arts Center at UNLV, pac.unlv.edu

LAS VEGAS BRASS BAND IN CONCERT: A SALUTE TO THE ARMED FORCES

Nov. 9, 2p.

Selections will include some of our favorite patriotic and significant pieces from throughout our history. Founded in 1994,

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the Las Vegas Brass Band is a traditional British-style ensemble made up of talented professional and amateur musicians from Southern Nevada. Free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org

UNLV JAZZ CONCERT: JAZZ ENSEMBLES

Nov. 12, 7p.

Highlighting the best student musicians from the Jazz Studies Program. Free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org

ROCK & ROLL IS HERE TO STAY FEATURING THE VEGAS GOODFELLAS

Nov. 15, 7p.

This show covers two decades of hits by all your favorite artists, including Bill Haley & the Comets, Frankie Valli, Elvis, The Beatles, The Doors and The Rolling Stones. $15.

Starbright Theatre, suncity-summerlin. com/starbrighttheatre.htm

POPS SERIES I: ALOHA FROM LAS VEGAS

Nov. 15, 7:30p.

This concert by the Las Vegas Philharmonic will feature traditional and popular Hawaiian music, much of it sung by special guest Amy Hanaiali’i, Hawaii’s best-selling vocalist of all time. $26-$94. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

TAHIR FARIDI QAWWAL

Nov. 19, 7p.

Qawwal studied under Indian and Pakistani qawwali masters, leading to his signature sound featuring two harmoniums, tanpura, tablas, hand-clapping and singing. He performs the qawwali music of the Sufis of Pakistan, which is infectious, hypnotic, evolving melodies that last and last. $10$12, Winchester Park and Cultural Center, clarkcountynv.gov

LAS VEGAS ACADEMY PRESENTS THE MUSIC OF DESTINY: TALES OF FORTUNE AND FATE

Nov. 19, 7p.

Featuring selections from Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Orff’s Carmina Burana and the world premiere of “Psalm 103” by Anthony LaBounty. $20-$200. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

DENIS AZABAGIC

Nov. 19, 8p.

Celebrated Bosnian guitarist Azabagic was

the youngest musician ever to win one of the most prestigious international guitar competitions sponsored by the Jacinto and Inocencio Guerrero Foundation in Madrid.

Azabagic’s passion for performance extends to sharing his knowledge of the guitar with others. $40. Performing Arts Center at UNLV, pac.unlv.edu

THE UNLV WIND ORCHESTRA PRESENTS AMERICAN HEROES

Nov. 20, 7:30p.

Thomas G. Leslie, conductor. Guest conductors: Col. John R. Bourgeois, director emeritus, United States Marine Band, “The President’s Own”; Johan de Meij, winner, Sudler, Oman and Corciano International Competition Awards; and conductor Bruce Broughton, Emmy Award-winning composer, instructor of composition, Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California. $10 adults, $8 students/staff/military/seniors. Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at UNLV, (702) 895-2787

OLETA ADAMS

Nov. 21, 7p; Nov 22, 6p & 9p.

Adams has inspired a growing legion of fans in the U.S. and Europe with journeys of the heart via songs that draw deeply from her roots in gospel, while crossing effortlessly into the realms of soul, R&B, urban and popular music. $39-$65. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

A CELTIC THANKSGIVING

Nov. 22, 3:30p.

Listen to the Desert Skye Las Vegas Pipe Band for an afternoon of Gaelic music and dance in a Celtic Thanksgiving. Featured performers include world champion piper Jack Lee, Sharon Lynn’s Celtic Crown Academy of Irish Dance and the Las Vegas Highland Dance Association. Free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld. org

MASTERWORKS II: GREAT EUROPEAN MASTERY

Nov. 22, 7:30p.

Bulgarian conductor Danail Rachev, music director of the Eugene Symphony, leads the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s premiere performance of Brahms’ First Symphony, a work that was to reinforce the public’s high opinion of the composer as successor to Beethoven. $26-$94. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

THEATER

WICKED

Through Nov. 9, Tue-Sun, 7:30p; Sat-Sun, 2p.

Before the world heard of Dorothy, these two girls met in the land of Oz. One was born with emerald green skin and is smart, fiery and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious and very popular. The show tells the story of how these two grow to become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good. $45-$161. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

THE BUCKET SHOW

Nov. 5, 12, 19, 26, 10p.

Paul Mattingly (Second City) and Matt Donnelly (former writer for Penn & Teller) offer up improv at its finest. You call the shots from songs to Same Scene, Different Genre.

Free; donations go in the buckets at the end of the show. Scullery Theater, 150 Las Vegas Blvd. N., mattandmattingly.com

MYSTERY SOLVED

Yes, there absolutely is an afterlife.

In a previous life, they were the world’s brightest lights ablaze above the world’s most dazzling city.

Now, they lie unplugged, fading in the boneyard.

And, boy, do they have stories to tell.

Book your tour and take a walk through history.

Literally.

VINTAGE VEGAS NIGHTS, HOSTED BY RICH LITTLE

Nov. 8, 7p.

Rich Little takes the audience through a history of the greatest entertainers of all time and the stories to go with them, while the fabulous impressionist Peter Pavone, comedy magician Murray Sawchuck, singer Tommy “Baby Buble” Ward, crooner Ronnie Rose and the beautiful jazzy stylings of siren Toscha Comeaux take you back to those legendary moments. $18. Starbright Theatre, suncity-summerlin.com/starbrighttheatre.htm

BOOK A TOUR

NeonMuseum.org

THE SPOT IMPROV

Nov. 12 & 26, 8p.

Long-form improv in an intimate setting, so close to the Strip you can taste it. Come early to participate in improv games and to get a good seat. $10 at the door. The SciFi Center, 600 E. Sahara Ave. #13, facebook. com/sinscityunderground

THE SEA GULL BY ANTON CHEKHOV, IN A NEW VERSION BY JEANCLAUDE VAN ITALLIE

Nov. 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 7p; Nov. 16, 23, 2p.

The Department of Fine Arts’ Theatre presents this classic play of the modern theater, an ensemble piece that explores love, missed connections and what it means to be an artist in theater. $12 adults, $10 students/seniors. BackStage Theatre at CSN, csn.edu/pac

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Internet Sensation

Alex Boyé

Award-Winning, British-Born, LDS Singer Songwriter

November 22 • 8 p.m. $75 - $55 - $40 - $25

(702) 895-ARTS (2787) pac.unlv.edu

pure. powerful.arts.

2014 – 2015 season

THE GUIDE LAS VEGAS IMPROVISATIONAL PLAYERS (LVIP)

Nov. 15, 7p.

Be thankful that your family dinner isn’t quite like this — or is it? The Thanksgiving edition of LVIP will be full of family fun.

Clean-burning, interactive and safe for the whole family. $10 at the door, kids free. American Heritage Academy, 6126 S. Sandhill Road, lvimprov.com

AMERICA’S NEXT TOP BACHELOR HOUSEWIFE CELEBRITY HOARDER MAKEOVER STAR GONE WILD!

Nov. 20-23, 8p.

In this reality sendup, we find Rachel, Winnie, Trixie and Trampolina in the jungle, trying their best to score at challenges that involve singing, dancing, dating, dieting and, of course, large insects. $35-$40.

Troesh Studio Theater at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

PIPIN

Nov. 25-30, 7:30p; Sat-Sun, 2p.

The story of a young prince on a death-defying journey to find meaning in his existence. Will he choose a happy but simple life, or will he risk everything for a singular flash of glory? $39-$139. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

We are on the move! The Desert Companion Photo Showcase will be on display at the Green Valley Library! Check out the beautiful photography from our 2nd Annual ‘Focus on Nevada’ photo contest now through December.

More information at desertcompanion.com/ events

SHOWCASE

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SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM: THE MYSTERY OF THE MAGI’S GOLD

Nov. 28-Dec. 6, 7p; Sat-Sun, 3p.

It’s “CSI: Bethlehem” in this holiday mystery extravaganza, from the author of Late Nite Catechism, as Sister takes on the mystery that has intrigued historians throughout the ages — whatever happened to the Magi’s gold? $35-$40. Troesh Studio Theater at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

LECTURES, SPEAKERS AND PANELS

THE AMERICAN WOMEN’S ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION

Nov. 4, 7:30-8:30p.

Merging outdoor expedition leadership with rich life experiences, Sunniva Sorby shares a personal and powerful message about our inherent need to take risks and

makes a case for continually innovating as we navigate change. Free. UNLV Barrick Museum Auditorium, liberalarts.unlv.edu/ forum

Because no two clients are ever the same.

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PARADISE PALMS – KEY TURNING POINTS IN LAS VEGAS HISTORY

Nov. 6, 7p.

Writer, editor and Mob Museum executive Geoff Schumacher discusses specific dates in Las Vegas history from 1844 to 2014 and explains their significance to our town.

Free. Jewel Box Theater at the Clark County Library, lvccld.org

HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND THE NARRATIVES OF MODERN SLAVERY

Nov. 10, 7:30-8:30p.

More than 29 million people are enslaved in the world today. While the vast majority of them remain silenced by the exploitation, many survivor-activists are emerging who are acting as our modern day Frederick Douglasses. The stories they tell constitute what Laura T. Murphy is calling “the new slave narrative.” Free. UNLV Barrick Museum Auditorium, liberalarts.unlv.edu/forum

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN NEVADA

Nov. 13, 7-8:30p.

Join leaders in historic preservation from across the Las Vegas Valley for a discussion of preserving Nevada’s architectural heritage in a city known more for dismantling buildings than for preservation. Free. Inspire Theater, 501 Fremont St., nevadapreservation.org

JENNI SORKIN

Nov. 13, 7p.

Art critic Sorkin will discuss the intersection between gender, material culture and contemporary art as part of UNLV’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Free. Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv.edu

WOMEN’S LONG JOURNEY TO THE BALLOT BOX

Nov. 17, 7:30-8:30p.

One hundred years ago, Nevada’s male voters finally allowed Nevada’s women to vote and hold office, culminating a complex process

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begun with the 1869 Legislature. To commemorate the centennial of this great victory, Dana R. Bennett will describe that process and reintroduce long-forgotten Nevadans, both men and women, who were instrumental in that long battle, and especially in the final skirmishes of 1914. Free. UNLV Barrick Museum Auditorium, liberalarts.unlv.edu/forum

ROBERT BECKMANN

Nov. 20, 7p.

Beckmann is a longtime figure in the Las Vegas art community whose fine art and murals have reached well beyond our city limits.

He’s perhaps best known for his apocalyptic painting series “Body of a House,” based on footage from the Nevada Test Site. Part of UNLV’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Free.

Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv.edu

POLITICS OF TESTOSTERONE IN WOMEN ATHLETES

Nov. 24, 7:30-8:30p.

Controversial new policies exclude elite women athletes with naturally high testosterone from international competitions. To compete, these women must either be “insensitive” to testosterone or undergo invasive medical interventions to lower testosterone levels. The talk challenges these policies on both scientific and ethical grounds. Free.

UNLV Barrick Museum Auditorium, liberalarts.unlv.edu/forum

FAMILY & FESTIVALS

WICKED PLANTS

Through Jan. 4.

Inspired by Amy Stewart’s book Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother and other Botanical Atrocities, this exhibit offers up-close and personal experience with plants that can kill you. Free for members or with general admission. Origen Museum at Springs Preserve, springspreserve.org

7TH ANNUAL VEGAS VALLEY COMICS BOOK FESTIVAL

Nov. 01, 9:30a-4:30p.

A day chock-full of activities celebrating comic book culture, including panel discussions, workshops, a vendor marketplace, Artist Alley, food trucks, kids’ crafts and face painting, live music, film screenings and more. Free. Clark County Library, lvccld.org

HARVEST FESTIVAL

Nov. 8, 9a-4p.

The celebration will feature Roos-N-More Petting Zoo with special animal classes, face painting, pumpkin decorating, jerky and hot-

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wing eating contests, free games and prizes, live entertainment by “The Voice” contestants Ryan Maloney and Cali Tucker, and so much more! Free. Tivoli Village, tivolivillagelv.com

to win great prizes including a cash purse for the top finishers. $20 per team. Free for spectators. Made LV American Tavern, Tivoli Village, tivolivillagelv.com

VETERANS DAY CEREMONY

SANTA ARRIVAL PARADE

Nov. 8, 10a.

Join city leaders, veterans and their families to pay tribute to our military heroes. The event features a presentation of names and the memorial wreath at the Veterans Memorial Wall, presentation of colors and a music tribute to the armed services by the Henderson Symphony Orchestra. Free.

Henderson Events Plaza, 200 S. Water St., cityofhenderson.com.

TAILS & TRAILS

Nov. 8, 10a-2p.

The Springs Preserve is going to the dogs when they host this event, bringing dogs from throughout Southern Nevada and the people they own together for a day of canine-friendly fun. Featuring self-guided hikes for humans and their canine friends (dogs only; sorry, no cats or other animals) on the Springs Preserve’s 3.65 miles of trails. Free.

Springs Preserve, springspreserve.org

HENDERSON STROLL ‘N ROLL

Nov. 28, 10:30a.

Kick off the holiday season right with this family-friendly event featuring Santa’s house, where children can take photos with Santa, a trackless train ride around Tivoli Village and live performances on the main stage. Free.

Tivoli Village, tivolivillagelv.com

SANTA PHOTOS & TRAIN RIDES

Nov. 28-Dec. 24, Fri-Sun, Noon-4p.

Pet photos Dec. 10 and 17, 5-8p.

Need a photo for a family holiday card or want to capture your child’s holiday spirit?

Bring the family for photos with Santa and take a train ride through Tivoli Village. Photo packages start at $5. Train rides are $2 per ride or $5 for three rides. Tivoli Village, tivolivillagelv.com

FUNDRAISERS

FOREVER HOME FAMILY PICNIC & FURRY 5K

Nov. 15, 10a-2p.

Enjoy the community’s largest car-free streets festival, featuring children’s activities, live entertainment, fitness classes and food trucks. Free. Paseo Verde Parkway (From Valle Verde Drive to the Henderson Multigenerational Center, 250. S. Green Valley Parkway), bikehenderson.org

Nov. 2, 10a-1p.

Join The Animal Foundation for the Furry 5K (3.1 mile) run for people and their pups.

Run, walk, or jog. Then, stick around for the Forever Home Family Picnic, an outdoor extravaganza of pawsome activities for you and your pooch, including contests, demonstrations, family activities, food and more. $5-$50. Sunset Park, animalfoundation. com/5K

LVCA PETS AND VETTES COMMUNITY FESTIVAL

2014 HEARTS AND HANDS GALA

Nov. 15, 10a-3p.

Kick off the holidays with a celebration of our local animal rescue and welfare organizations. Corvette car show, 40 animal groups, vendors, food, live music, demonstrations, pet adoptions, free and reduced-cost pet care resources and information, photos with Santa, raffles, prizes and flash giveaways by the Goodie Squad. Free. Freedom Park, vegasvettes.com

MADE LV TURKEY TOSS CORNHOLE TOURNAMENT

Nov. 15, 10:30a-4p; awards ceremony 5p.

Get in on the action by registering your two-person team for the 10-board, double-elimination tournament and compete

Nov. 13, 5-8p.

Helping Hands of Vegas Valley’s program to raise awareness and needed funds for essential programs that assist seniors in our community. Featuring cocktails, dinner, entertainment, raffle and silent and live auctions . $100. Hard Rock Live, 3rd floor, hhovv.org/ news-events.html

EASTER SEALS CHEERS TO CHOCOLATE

Nov. 15, 7-9p.

Enjoy wine and chocolate tastings, live music and a silent auction, all for a good cause. $40 online, $45 at the door. Tivoli Village, cheerstochocolate.com

END NOTE gratitudinal adjustments

Let’s give thanks

B y A n d r e w K i r a ly, H e i d i K ys e r & scott dickensheets

I’m thankful that you can drive about 25 minutes in any direction and be in the middle of beautiful and/or forbidding wilderness. — Andrew Kiraly I’m thankful for our corps of diehard

Vegas defenders who spring up to fight for — and, more importantly, patiently explicate — our city whenever some national journalist (a tuft of recently deployed parachute still sticking out of his back pocket) hacks out some jejune chunk of misinformed screed about Las Vegas. AK I’m thankful for the River Mountain

Loop Trail, the Las Vegas and Flamingo Wash trails, and the soon-to-be mother of them all, the Vegas Valley Rim Trail, because they put cyclists and runners out of motorists’ way and provide more consecutive off-traffic miles than you can shake a bike pump at. — Heidi Kyser I’m thankful that Marty Walsh’s Tri-

fecta Gallery is going out in ferocious, thoughtful style, with the macabre fun of Abigail Goldman’s dieoramas (Nov. 6-28) followed by Wendy Kveck’s visually compelling paintings of very complicated women (Dec. 4-28).

— Scott Dickensheets I’m thankful for those translucent,

pinkie-sized geckos that come out at night and chill on the walls near the porch light, all emanating their timeless bug-eyed reptile wisdom. AK

friends I’ve made who haven’t moved out of town yet. HK

saying it: Brunchlesque, Brunchlesque, Brunchlesque! SD

I’m thankful for the possibility, however slight, that when the seedless grapes of our Legislature gather again in February they will set aside their ideologies and, in some cases, their pathologies, in order to work together for the greater good of … uh, yes, I am completely serious — why do you ask? SD

I’m thankful for scrappy neighbor-

I’m thankful for when I stumble into

Donut Hut on east Desert Inn at the otherwise inadvisable hour of 3:17 a.m. on a Sunday morning with the intent of ordering a single, blessed, numinous, glazed old-fashioned, but the nice lady behind the counter keeps doing that inescapably sweet “Aaaaand?” thing after every donut I order, basically creating a recursive, Escherian verbal donut trap in which I’m psychologically herded into ordering an entire mixed dozen — blueberry cake, fritters, double chocolate, glazed, maple bars — after which the lady behind the counter — as though, ironically, in gratitude for me being such a willing subject to her virtuoso donut mindfreak — throws in an extra fritter, a powdered, some donut holes. And a glazed old-fashioned. AK I’m thankful for Brunchlesque (Nov.

I’m thankful for the half-dozen close

120 N ov e m b e r 2 0 1 4

DesertCompanion.com

16 at Boomers Bar), just because I like

hood gardens, independent farms and community supported agriculture that litter the desert with baskets of fresh food. HK I’m thankful for the imminent opening of The Writers Block bookstore downtown, and super-extra-gonzo thankful for my amazingly wonderful wife’s forbearance once it does. SD I’m thankful for all the tiny little

Chihuahuas in my neighborhood. Tiny little Chihuahuas dancing on the sidewalks. AK I’m thankful that former library

district honcho Charles Hunsberger had the idea, back in the ’80s and ’90s, to commission great architects to design our public libraries. HK I’m thankful for the frequent, heart-gladdening eruptions of quail in my edge-of-the-desert nabe. Families — usually a mother and a line of chicks — speed-waddle along the sidewalks, suddenly veering to invade random front yards with wanton adorableness. If only they wore shark costumes and rode Roombas, it would be perfect. SD

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