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HOT-AND-BOTHERED

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SAMMIES WINNERS!

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SACRAMENTO’S NEWS & ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

VOLUME 25, ISSUE 31

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013

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

CIGARETTES © SFNTC 4 2013

SN&R | 11.14.13

November 14, 2013 | Vol. 25, Issue 31

Mystery illness My girlfriend and I rescued Bernie, a 2-year-old pug, last December. He’s a 14-pound runt with a tongue that constantly droops out of his mouth. Bernie enjoys flannel bed sheets, almond butter—and long walks through Midtown. Last week, Bernie also started enjoying orange-red berries while on his walk. These pea-sized fruits litter Midtown this season; it’s hard to keep Bernie from vacuuming them up. I didn’t think much of it until this past Friday morning, when Bernie suddenly began vomiting uncontrollably. Soon, he was passed out on the sidewalk, his gums and tongue white, his body limp. The lil’ guy looked near death. I scooped him up and ran to the Midtown Animal Hospital on P Street. Bernie’s doctor immediately took him to the back, hooked him up to an IV and began running tests. “Did he eat anything bad?” the doc asked. The berries. I called a business near where Bernie consumed the berries and asked a woman if she could help. She directed me to a southeastern Sacramento-based landscaping expert that works in Midtown, who explained over the phone that some of the plants near the berries were podocarpus. Fruits on these shrubs are toxic, according to Bernie’s doctor and poison control, and cause severe vomiting and diarrhea. Bingo! Hold on: The podocarpus shrubs in question don’t actually produce berries. Nearby American sycamore trees, whose canopy blankets many grid streets, do. But these are not harmful to dogs. So, after a day in intensive care and a weekend of white rice, cottage cheese and boiled chicken (and a $270 vet bill), Bernie is 100 percent, but I have no clue. Perhaps all we can do is try to be smarter dog lovers. (And keep those rascals from devouring every damn thing in sight.)

Kate Paloy, Jessica Rine, Patti Roberts, Ann Martin Rolke, Steph Rodriguez Creative Director Priscilla Garcia Art Director Hayley Doshay Junior Art Director Brian Breneman Designers Vivian Liu, Serene Lusano, Marianne Mancina, Skyler Smith Contributing Photographers Lisa Baetz, Steven Chea, Wes Davis, Ryan Donahue, Taras Garcia, William Leung, Kayleigh McCollum, Shoka, Justin Short, Anne Stokes

Our Mission To publish great newspapers that are successful and enduring. To create a quality work environment that encourages employees to grow professionally while respecting personal welfare. To have a positive impact on our communities and make them better places to live.

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Co-editors Rachel Leibrock, Nick Miller Staff Writers Raheem F. Hosseini, Dave Kempa Copy Editor Shoka Shafiee Entertainment Editor Jonathan Mendick Editorial Coordinator Becca Costello Contributing Editor Cosmo Garvin Editor-at-large Melinda Welsh Contributors Ngaio Bealum, Daniel Barnes, Rob Brezsny, Joey Garcia, Blake Gillespie, Becky Grunewald, Mark Halverson, Jeff Hudson, Jim Lane, Greg Lucas, Garrett McCord, Kel Munger,

Client Publications Writer/Copy Editor Mike Blount Client Publications Staff Writer Meredith Graham Executive Coordinator Jessica Takehara Director of First Impressions Alicia Brimhall, Matt Kjar Street Team Jolynn Conrad, Charissa Isom, Anna Lovas, Ashley Ross, Colton Stadtmiller Distribution Director Greg Erwin Distribution Services Assistant Larry Schubert Distribution Drivers Mansour Aghdam, Walt Best, Daniel Bowen, Russell Brown, Nina Castro, Jack Clifford, Lydia Comer, John Cunningham, Lob Dunnica, Chris Fong, Ron Forsberg, Joanna Gonzalez-Brown, Aaron Harvey, Wayne Hopkins, Brenda Hundley, Greg Meyers, Kenneth Powell, Wendell Powell, Lloyd Rongley, Duane Secco, Lolu Sholotan, Jack Thorne President/CEO Jeff vonKaenel Chief Operations Officer Deborah Redmond Human Resources Manager Tanja Poley Nuts & Bolts Ninja Kalin Jenkins Human Resources Intern Aleasha Yates Business Manager Grant Rosenquist Accounting Specialists Renee Briscoe, Tami Sandoval Accounts Receivable Specialist Nicole Jackson Business Intern Allison Hill

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Systems Manager Jonathan Schultz Systems Support Specialist Joe Kakacek Web Developer/Support Specialist John Bisignano 1124 Del Paso Boulevard, Sacramento, CA 95815 Phone (916) 498-1234 Sales Fax (916) 498-7910 Editorial Fax (916) 498-7920 Website www.newsreview.com SN&R is printed by The Paradise Post using recycled newsprint whenever available. Editorial Policies Opinions expressed in SN&R are those of the authors and not of Chico Community Publishing, Inc. Contact the editor for permission to reprint articles, cartoons or other portions of the paper. SN&R is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts. All letters received become the property of the publisher. We reserve the right to print letters in condensed form and to edit them for libel. Advertising Policies All advertising is subject to the newspaper’s Standards of Acceptance. The advertiser and not the newspaper assumes full responsibility for the truthful content of their advertising message.

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“‘City of Fun’! I have young kids. There is stuff to do.”

Asked at 65th Street and Folsom Boulevard:

What would you rename Sacramento?

Heather Bell bar owner

I wouldn’t rename the city. I think Sacramento is a great name for this town. It sort of suits it well. I think it is a wonderful place. I can’t imagine it being named something else.

Zach Hines student

“Gloomy.” I am from Southern California. … I feel like it is gloomier [here]. It is different. Gloomsville!

Liz Kenish massage therapist

“City of Fun”! I have young kids. There is stuff to do. There are concerts in the park in the summertime, there are movies in the park, [and] I like the farmers markets.

Bobby Smith

Silvia Reynoso

musician

“Metricpolico.” There is always a lot going on. It is very hustling and bustling. It is like a metropolis with a very urban kind of feel. So, I think, “Metricpolico.”

Ryan Normandin

civil engineer

retail manager

Probably “River City.” This is where two rivers come together, the American and the Sacramento rivers. They both are from snowmelt. The Sacramento River’s [snowmelt] comes from Northern California, north of Redding.

HAVE YOU BEEN DENIED MEDICAL COVERAGE IN THE PAST?

There is a lot of political [stuff] that is negative. There is a lot going on without anything getting done. I have to say just “Capital City.” “Gov Hub” is a good one. We are not very close to downtown, but wherever I go, I hear views of negativity regarding political talk.

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building a

HealtHy S a c r a m e n t o

Students Savor Salad Bar by L i n da d u b o i s

very school day about 40,000 students in the Sacramento City Unified School District bite into some crunchy lettuce or vineripened fruit at lunchtime. Many come from low-income urban neighborhoods and having access to farm-fresh produce every day is a real treat. After the Farm-to-School program was launched during the 2009-10 school year — incorporating local farms’ products into school lunches — many schools had salad bars, but not all. “There were a lot of administrators and principals who were not necessarily sold on salad bars. They thought the kids wouldn’t like them,” says Diana Flores, the district’s supervisor for Farm-to-School produce and menu design. But Superintendent Jonathan Raymond loved the idea and believed students would too, so he instructed every campus to put in a salad bar within a year. This meant many schools needed new saladbar serving stations. A large percentage were donated by Whole Foods and others were purchased or upgraded with help from Salad Bars 2 Schools campaign funding, which is provided by The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities grant. In 2011-12, every school had a salad bar. “I wouldn’t say there was a single kid who didn’t love it, because kids love to make their own choices,” Flores says. “The salad bar

complements the meal. A student selects a main hot entree and then goes through the salad bar.” Each salad bar offers about seven different items that meet specific nutritional requirements mandated by the USDA and overseen by the California Department of Education’s Nutrition Services Division. They always include a green leafy vegetable like romaine lettuce or spinach, a fresh fruit, garbanzo or kidney beans and other vegetables, such as carrots, corn, jicama sticks, cucumber slices, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes or sliced bell peppers. Specific choices are often seasonal.

Courtland. “They’re tiny, tiny little pears and most people look at them and wouldn’t even know they’re a pear,” Flores says. The district is fortunate to be large enough to have its own storage warehouse, along with trucks and drivers that deliver food to the school sites, Flores says. “Because of that, the growers can just drop to one location,” she says. “What’s great about the produce is it’s picked fresh and it’s here quick — and the kids love it.” People continue to be amazed that kids actually like the salad bars, she says.

“WHaT’S grEaT aBOuT THE prOduCE IS IT’S pICkEd frESH and IT’S HErE quICk — and THE kIdS lOvE IT.”

BuIldIng HEalTHy COmmunITIES In 2010, The California Endowment launched a 10-year, $1 billion plan to improve the health of 14 challenged communities across the state. Over the 10 years, residents, community-based organizations and public institutions will work together to address the socioeconomic and environmental challenges contributing to the poor health of their communities.

diana flores, SCuSd farm-to-School supervisor, says many students enjoy a healthy salad for lunch. as of the 2011-12 school year, every school within the district had a salad bar. photo by Tara patrick

diana flores, SCuSd farm-toSchool supervisor “We have a great relationship with a lot of the local farmers,” Flores says. In October, the district got pears from Courtland. Over the cooler months, they’ll get mandarins from Penryn, oranges from Sanger and apples from Stockton. Next spring, they’ll get watermelon from Vierra Farms in West Sacramento. Kids often get a kick out of trying varieties they haven’t had before — such as mandarinsized seckel pears from Stillwater Orchards in

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

paid with a grant from the california endowment 6

SN&R | 11.14.13

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Email your letters to sactoletters@newsreview.com.

Prop. 14 doesn’t work

SN&R not progressive on mental health Re “Psychology of incarceration” by Raheem F. Hosseini (SN&R News, November 7): When it comes to mental health, SN&R is about as progressive as Milo Fitch, the jailer. Treatments that actually improve brain activity aren’t prioritized in hospitals, jails and community programs. Programs that don’t protect people from abuse often push harmful treatments, which cast the problem in the victim, not in the unhealthy social environment. It’s a disgusting injustice to surround people with social environments that don’t reinforce their mental strengths in the name of care. I also think you should stop giving readers short shrift with your half-sized letters section. Irene Cardenas Sacramento

Re “From gridlock to governing” by Jeff VonKaenel (SN&R Greenlight, November 7): This article doesn’t persuade me that Proposition 14 has made any difference at all. First, the article doesn’t discuss the extensive research published by 14 political scientists during 2013 (five separate papers, all of which concluded primary systems don’t change who gets elected or how they behave). Second, the example of the 2014 Senate race in Sacramento specuLETTER OF lates that both THE WEEK Assembly members who are running against each other, who are both Democrats and who are likely to run against each other in November, will cater to Republicans. This theory is wrong, because the instant one of the Democrats hints he is really in agreement with Republicans on certain issues, the other Democrat will point out to the majority party in the district (Democrats) that his opponent is Dem-light, and the Democrat who is more loyal to his party’s platform will win.

Republicans are haters Re “SN&R reaps what it sows” (SN&R Letters, November 7): Peter Finn’s letter imagines that people who politely express doubts about President Barack Obama and global warming are

Richard Winger

v i a em ai l

immediately and savagely set upon by liberal haters. Quantifying that sort of thing in public discourse is, of course, imprecise, but I am pretty sure that someone from another time who read a sample of what was said on the topics Finn describes would find the “conservative” or tea-party side to be way out in front in uncivil language and accusations of vile behavior. Finn’s characterization of global warming as being largely a matter of what Al Gore says is sufficient to correctly label him an ignorant denier. Dozens of national science academies and major-league scientific societies—such as the American Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of America, and the American Physical Society—say we have a globalwarming problem. The Pentagon sees global-warming caused destabilization of other nations as a threat to our security, and the insurance industry says global warming hits their bottom line with wild weather where they get to pay for the damage. The usual response, by the way, when I point out all the responsible adults who see a problem, is ranting about them all being part of a vast conspiracy. Frank Grober Carmichael

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SN&R | 11.14.13

16 pets killed a day See BEATS

Michelle Rhee and the Calderons See BITES

You won’t lose your health care See EDITORIAL

Baby-daddy imbroglio meets DNA shenanigans Twin Rivers school board member busted, DA accused of racial bias Wet paper towels landed embattled Twin Rivers school-board member Cortez Quinn in the slammer last week. For his accused by Raheem co-conspirator in a contentious paternity F. Hosseini lawsuit, it may have been even less. That’s according to the employer ra h e emh@ newsr evie w.c om of Andre A. Pearson, a 36-year-old lab technician at Comprehensive Medical Inc., who now faces conspiracy and evidencetampering charges. On November 6, Pearson was booked on allegations that he helped Twin Rivers Unified School District trustee Quinn submit a false genetic sample last year, in an attempt to get out from under an ex-lover’s paternity suit. The private civil matter blew into a countywide criminal probe. According to court documents filed by the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office, the 46-year-old Quinn failed to report roughly $55,000 in loans and gifts he accepted from Sherilene Chycoski, a widowed school-district employee with whom he was sexually involved. Quinn allegedly racked up thousands in bank transfers, money orders and cash advances to keep a Vallejo property from falling into foreclosure and to repair his BMW, among other expenses. Investigators say the elected school-board trustee and former chief of staff to Assemblyman Roger Dickinson failed to make the required financial disclosures. He was scheduled to be arraigned yesterday, November 13, on 18 criminal counts, 15 of which are felonies. Quinn announced a 90-day leave of absence from his school-board position. The Twin Rivers school district is expected to formally request his resignation next week.

BEFORE

Twin Rivers Unified School District board member Cortez Quinn allegedly fudged his DNA test, via a co-conspirator on the inside—but then, investigators nabbed some of Quinn’s DNA off of a used paper towel.

payments to another woman, according to Yolo County court documents cited by the criminal complaint.) The results came back negative, and the family-court judge denied Chycoski’s request for a second test. Investigators now say Quinn colluded with Pearson to submit someone else’s genetic material.

“Once they saw [Andre Pearson] was AfricanAmerican, they stopped gathering any more evidence. It was like a lightbulb went off.” Sue Ramsden president and CEO Comprehensive Medical Inc.

complaint says Ramsden suspected Pearson of past misconduct, but was unable to prove it. (DA spokeswoman Shelly Orio told SN&R that Albert C. Locher, the assistant district attorney, has “full confidence in what Sue Ramsden told our investigator.”) Ramsden told SN&R she was “baffled” by the DA’s conclusions. “They took the information that they got and wove it into this story,” Ramsden said. Pearson is a reliable, 11-year employee and devoted father of two, she said. And because her lab deals in court-ordered DNA tests, she said it uses video surveillance, open wall spaces and double-testing to prevent tampering. Locher wouldn’t say whether his office has more evidence against Pearson. But the chain-of-custody process for collecting and filing DNA samples—and Pearson’s signature on various lab forms—means he needs to “provide a reasonable explanation for how that [false sample] could happen,” Locher said. The DNA sample that was sent to a Nevada lab for testing belonged to neither Quinn nor Pearson.

The DA’s office has no jurisdiction when it comes to paternity disputes, Locher acknowledged, but needed to test Chycoski’s credibility, since her own affidavit raised some issues. The assistant DA said that made it necessary to “[get] to the bottom of this paternity matter.” On August 20, Quinn took a bathroom break during a Twin Rivers school board meeting in North Highlands. Following him into the restroom was DA investigator Daniel Garbutt. According to the criminal complaint, Quinn washed his hands in the sink and left. Garbutt retrieved the wadded-up paper towels Quinn dropped in the receptacle and delivered the damp trash to his office’s forensics lab, which pulled Quinn’s skin cells from them. According to investigators, tests by lab criminalist Devin Johnson proved Quinn was the father of Chycoski’s son, born in December 2011. Ramsden said it’s possible for a person to have multiple genomes, which could explain why the initial cheek swab from her lab differed from the skin-cell sample retrieved from a restroom trashcan. Chycoski’s attorney, Lisa Wible Wright, said neither she nor her client would comment on an ongoing criminal matter. As for Pearson, he’s been the object of false accusations before. Someone once told Ramsden that her employee accepted a bribe after agreeing to sell his hair to someone needing a clean DNA test. “Mr. Pearson is bald,” she said. “We get these allegations all the time.” Ω

But Sue Ramsden, Comprehensive Medical’s president and CEO, said her employee is an honest man who’s the victim of “narrow-minded” racial bias. (Both Quinn and Pearson are black.) “Once they saw [Pearson] was AfricanThe DA’s office had been looking into American, they stopped gathering any more Quinn’s affairs since about September 2010, when the California Fair Political Practices evidence. It was like a lightbulb went off,” Commission leveled him with a $14,000 she told SN&R. “It fit their agenda, and administrative penalty for not reporting they ran with it.” the money he accepted from Chycoski, the Ramsden said she spoke to DA district’s visual-and-performing-arts direcinvestigators at least four times. In an tor at the time. But before the political melodrama, there arrest-warrant affidavit and criminal The FPPC says he’s prohibited from was the baby-daddy one. complaint filed last week, the DA’s office accepting more than $250 from a district When Chycoski sued Quinn in civil cites those interviews in making its case employee. court in 2011, the judge ordered a paternity against Pearson. According to the docu“That’s what originally brought us test. Quinn acquiesced 10 months later ments, Pearson told Ramsden he “got lucky into investigating this matter,” Locher after being threatened with court sanctions. because someone did him a favor” when told SN&R. (He already owes $10,000 in child-support he underwent his own paternity test. The | N E W S | F E A T U R E S T O R Y | A R T S & C U L T U R E | A F T E R | 11.14.13

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Prop. 8 redux

No-show at court

A conservative group backed by California Christian churches hopes to repeal a new state law that expands transgender high-school students’ rights. Privacy for All Students submitted more than 600,000 signatures to the secretary of state this week: It aims to overturn a bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in August that permits transgender students to, for example, participate in sports based on their gender identity. Scorekeeper laments another Proposition 8-style election showdown—and is sad to see more hate in the Golden State.

Your Sacramento Kings boast the 24th worst average NBA attendance so far this year, at 15,905. One might think that, you know, since fans saved the team, turnout would be at an all-time high. Guess not. Maybe a new arena will help? Or not: The Kings have better numbers than the undefeated Indiana Pacers, even with that team’s much-touted new arena. (Still, it’s worth noting that attendance at NBA games in Seattle is zero.)

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Build-it boosters

Blockbusted

Nonfinal, “these are not the arena renderings you’ve been looking for” Sacramento Kings arena designs graced City Hall meetings during the past couple weeks. Council members weighed in on the concepts—and the mayor even raised his arms (and a leg) in a show of enthusiasm. Over at the Planning and Design Commission, there was a similar atmosphere of what one might call cheerleading. Scorekeeper appreciates the enthusiasm—but let’s remind everyone that government’s job is to inquire about issues that will matter to the citizenry and, at times, be unsentimental. We get the excitement— but it’s important to be tough, too.

The world is a better place now that all the Blockbuster Video outlets are shuttered. The mega-chain, notorious for censoring cinema masterpieces and screwing over renters with “restocking fee” mischief, was a horrible place. Scorekeeper fantasized about getting a job there and deleting everyone’s late fees. Now, it no longer has to.

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Wind swept

BEATS

The Sacramento region’s lone homeless-youth center forced to close Jessie Mills was 14 the last time she saw her father. It’s not her warmest memory. Now 20 and working at local by homeless-youth-service provider Raheem F. Hosseini Wind Youth Services, Mills knows what it’s like to be an abandoned child ra heemh@ trying to make it on unfamiliar streets. newsre view.c om Six years ago, her dad dropped her off in Sacramento, a city she didn’t know, and vanished. “I didn’t choose to be homeless. I was just left out here,” she told county supervisors at a meeting last week. “I’m not from Sacramento.” Now, she’s forever part of its troubled legacy.

Pray and neuter

Barber said her board is frantically reaching out to other partners in the hopes of cobbling together the roughly $150,000 needed to run the center for a year. She plans to submit a funding proposal to Sacramento Steps Forward, which awards continuum of care grants, in the coming weeks, and has been on the phone with Congresswoman Doris Matsui’s office about the federal grant. But no word yet. The money would buy 12,000 meals a year and keep caseworkers, counselors and a public-health nurse on hand. PHOTO BY BRIAN BRENEMAN

After this Friday, homeless youth won’t be able to turn to Wind Youth Services for walk-in assistance.

BEFORE

After Friday, November 15, Wind Youth Services will close its drop-in center, or what the nonprofit describes as “the heart” of its operation. Mills’ job is one of three that will be affected. Meanwhile, the 45 to 60 homeless minors who visit the center each day for meals, showers, vaccinations and casework will have no place else to go. Blame the government. Because of the federal shutdown that recently ended, Wind doesn’t know whether its three-year $540,000 federal grant to operate the center has been renewed. The last grant expired in September 2012, while other state and federal funding sources have dried up. “I know no one wants us to do this, but we’ve decided to close the center temporarily as we look for other options,” Wind executive director Sher Barber told SN&R. How long the center will remain dark is uncertain. |

NEWS

“It’s a huge asset,” Barber said of the center. “We are the only service provider in this area [for homeless youth].” Homeless youth are the leastserved yet most in-need population, experts say. And their numbers are growing. Between 2005 and 2012, the number of homeless students at Sacramento County schools shot up a staggering 117 percent, according to the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness. There are nearly 12,000 such students estimated to be sleeping in cars, motels, on couches or places unknown. Most of them come from the Sacramento City and Twin Rivers unified school districts, said Addie Ellis, youth-policy initiative director at homelessness nonprofit Sacramento Steps Forward, and most are younger than 13. The stories of how they came to be homeless are often crushing.

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Few run away; most are cast out. The California Youth Crisis Line, a state-mandated hotline for young people, receives hundreds of calls a year from parents and guardians contemplating such decisions. Many say they’re overwhelmed by children who are out of control or are unable to get help with special needs. “Oft times ... they’re throwaway kids,” Ellis said. Last year, Wind tallied more than 4,200 calls at its crisis line and counseled roughly 200 youth, many of whom had been kicked out or were nearing nuclear-family blowouts, Barber said. Sometimes, those kids end up at Wind’s emergency overnight shelter in north Sacramento, which has a dozen beds covering six counties. California Coalition for Youth executive director Paul A. Curtis said only 20 of the 58 counties in California have services for unaccompanied homeless youth. Sacramento is one of them, but it only has Wind. “There’s a huge need that’s not being met,” Curtis told supervisors last week while accepting a resolution commemorating runaway and homeless youth alongside Mills and Ellis. Unaccompanied homeless youth prefer places like Wind because they can get services without being alerted to the foster-care system. Stays at the emergency shelter are voluntary, topping out at 21 days, while caseworkers prepare stabilization plans that look at reconnecting youths with family members, alternative guardians or stable environments. Nearly 3,000 homeless youths take advantage of these services a year. Mills was one of those kids. “Putting all my hope in complete strangers is not easy for us homeless youth to do,” she said. “I made the choice to be a better person.” She’s now studying massage therapy and wondering how the center’s closure will affect her stability. Wind plans to hand out brownbag lunches and hygiene kits during the center’s indefinite closure, but the homeless-youth service provider can’t do it alone. And, without its center, it won’t. Ω

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Sacramento County’s charge to shelter lost and abandoned animals just got bigger. Supervisors decided last week to approve a contract to provide animal-shelter services to Elk Grove, beginning next year, even as they expressed concern about available space and the rate of euthanasia at the existing shelter. “They’re living, breathing creatures,” said Supervisor Don Nottoli. By taking this contract on, Nottoli said he didn’t want the county to get painted into a corner and become “the kill shelter for Sacramento County.” The shelter euthanized 6,000 pets last year, according to shelter director Dave Dickinson. Most took place because of behavioral issues, he said. Some occurred because of health issues, but not as many as past years, when kennel cough and upper-respiratory infections were bigger problems. Less than 10 percent of the kills happened because of space issues. The county anticipates its contract with Elk Grove to bring in between 1,850 to 2,300 additional animals, resulting in a potential revenue increase of approximately $470,000 per year. Dickinson assured officials his shelter has the resources to handle an additional six animals a day. “We’ve got the ability with some of these resources to redouble our efforts,” he said. The additional money, through a redirected contract with the Sacramento Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, would fund additional medical and support staff, attendants, and a mobile spay-and-neuter vehicle. The shelter has witnessed a 21 percent decrease in intake since 2009, during the height of the recession. Dickinson attributed the reduced figures to the shelter’s spay-and-neuter program. The shelter took in 11,000 animals this past fiscal year. The county announced the new contract in a press release before supervisors actually recorded their vote. (Raheem F. Hosseini)

PPO no-go It just doesn’t pay to provide quality health care. Sacramento County supervisors learned that on November 5, when they grappled with Blue Shield of California’s decision to pull a health plan the county has offered for years. As a result, more than 130 active and retired county employees will lose a plan geared to those with special treatment issues or who need greater access to specialists. Blue Shield actually wanted to cancel its “preferred provider organizations” plan last year due to dwindling enrollment figures, said David Devine, the county’s director of personnel services, but stuck it out an extra 12 months as officials sought to replace the fully insured PPO option through a different medical carrier. Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and UnitedHealthcare all declined. The county’s new HMO carrier, Western Health Advantage, offers a PPO-style plan, but only to those who can’t otherwise access HMO coverage. Blue Shield has insured fewer and fewer of the roughly 11,000 people working for the county. In 2008, 161 were enrolled in its PPO option, while 917 signed up for the company’s HMO plan. Cut to five years later: There are only 83 PPO enrollees this year, and only 347 signed up for HMOs. “There’s just not enough people picking them up, and they can’t spread the risk,” said Supervisor Jimmie Yee. Of the 83 active employees who have PPO plans, Devine said nearly half indicated their intent to transition to HMO coverage, now provided by Western Healthcare Advantage. Best projections put the annual cost of a self-funded PPO at $1.87 million for the county, but fears of spiraling medical expenses convinced the board to move forward with its reduced medical-plan options. (RFH)

| 11.14.13

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“That person attains peace who, abandoning all desires, moves about without attachment or longing, without the sense of “I” and “mine.” – Bhagavad Gita Chap. 2.71 12 | SN&R | 11.14.13

Compared to the root-hog, bloodlust craziness sidelines. He wants to create a of the death throes of the legislative “poverty caucus,” whose legislative session, the White Sepulcher is members would presumably focus currently living upHeadphones to its name. It’s with mic.on puttingFaceplates MICRO their caucus out quiet. (Here would be a good place of business. DeSaulnier says his 1 AMP to snidely add that it can never be too goal is to end poverty in California, quiet, since every day the governor the name of the movement and the Legislature do nothing is a established almost 80 years ago by great day for California.) muckraking socialist and guberExcept, even though that sentinatorial candidate Upton Sinclair. ment has been expressed in this EPIC, as it was known, fizzled 99 $ $ 99the truthTalkison Phonewith Sinclair’s $ 99defeat. space more than once, S A Listen to Music C from from U L by GREG that sometimes shit happens, and stuff Next year is also the 50th anniverneeds to be done. sary of the War on Poverty declared Most of the time, hell yes, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. A caplowdown@newsreview.com it’s far better when lawmakers cursory appraisal indicates that war has and statewide elected officials aren’t been almost as successful as the war “making things better,” but again, waged on drugs. But regardless of past sometimes, stuff just needs to be failings, poverty certainly qualifies as done. And when it needs to be done, Big Stuff. it’s better to do it in a smart, strategic More California-centric, the $20 billion in bond funds voters approved seven years ago to improve Even though more Californians highway and transit systems is spent, the Legislative Analyst’s Office are driving, they’re behind the notes in a recent report. Like several wheel of increasingly other major revenue streams in this state—sales tax in particular—the gas fuel-efficient vehicles. So gas tax is premised on a world that no tax revenue is declining. longer exists. Even though more Californians way. Rather than blundering around are driving—as any commuter will half-cocked, or responding to the latest attest—they’re driving less distance, whim of California’s electorate, which and they’re behind the wheel of makes the audience at the Shortincreasingly fuel-efficient vehicles. Attention-Span Theater seem focused. So gas tax revenue is declining. The things that need to be There’s been no increase in the gas done are the Big Stuff. Long term. tax in 20 years, and, as a bonus, the Multigenerational. Squaring shoulders federal Highway Trust Fund, which and accepting inevitable changes supplies California and other states before they pounce and whisk by, with transportation dollars, has been leaving our dazed asses in the dust. broke since 2008. Dealing with the Big Stuff Also on the Big Stuff list is that first requires some brainstorming the number of folks 65 and older and some brain picking. Chronic will be 20 percent of the populacogitation. And it’s the relative calm tion within 15 years. At the same of the late fall of odd-numbered time, Californians younger than 30 (nonelection) years that’s most believe there’s a higher use than conducive to Big Stuff Deep vagrant sleeping accommodations Thought. For lawmakers, there’s no for those book-filled, crumbly old Greg Lucas’ amending of bills or floor sessions warehouses on prime real estate state-politics column Capitol until January. The governor must that are only open every third Lowdown will appear prepare a budget, but he’s got people Thursday during the full moon. every-other week in over at the Department of Finance to The good thing about thinking SN&R. He also blogs do that. Time to pause, to ponder, to is that the only person who can at www.californias capitol.com. languidly gaze at the placid foliage get hurt by it is the one doing the of Capitol Park, mull grandly and thinking when they realize meeting throw the ball long. these challenges is either mindSen. Mark DeSaulnier, a Concord bendingly difficult or ridiculously Democrat, is limbering up on the simple. Ω

Scrutiny and oversight

W e a r

Individual Expression

Why is no one in Sacramento looking at Michelle Rhee’s connection to the Calderon family? Officially, the race for Sacramento County district attorney is nonpartisan. Behind the scenes, it’s all political. The position of Sacramento DA, like that of sheriff, has been dominated by Republicans for many decades. Anne Marie Schubert, a deputy DA and anointed successor to present District Attorney Jan Scully, began her campaign so early, and starting racking up endorsements VIN AR G and money from the Republican political O SM by CO establishment so quickly, that for a time, cosmog@ n ewsrev iew.c om she seemed almost alone in the race. Maggy Krell, a state deputy attorney general, jumped in this spring and started snapping up the support from the Democratic establishment. This month, Todd Leras, another Democrat and a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office, jumped in as well. Leras is playing catch-up, since he was prevented by federal rules from campaigning until recently, when he officially gave up his job with the U.S. attorney. After 20 years of Scully, both of the Democrats can make a strong case for change. Leras has criticized what he says is a top-down culture fostered by Scully, and said the DA office needs new priorities to make the best of realignment. Likewise, Krell has argued for tougher treatment of white-collar crime and a “smarter” approach to low-level offenses. But will Krell and Leras wind up fighting each other instead? Leras’ supporters are going after Krell for the way she handled a review of an officer-involved shooting death of a young Latino man in Yolo County. The Yolo DA declined to file criminal charges against three sheriff’s deputies in the shooting of Luis Gutierrez in 2009. Krell reviewed the decision and found the DA’s actions to be appropriate. Hard to say if the Gutierrez case will hurt Krell as much as the Leras folks hope, but it’s likely no coincidence that her campaign just released a list of prominent Latino leaders who are supporting her campaign. There’s still plenty of time for Krell and Leras to make their case. Against Schubert and the continuation of the Scully regime, or against each other, either way. After a year, the Sacramento City Council is close to appointing a citizen oversight committee to monitor spending of Measure U money. It’s taken long enough; voters approved the temporary half-cent sales-tax hike a year ago. And the city council has been criticized for dragging its feet on creating the committee, while charging ahead with the taxing and the spending. But maybe Sacramento’s citizens just don’t care that much about oversight. After all, the city asked for applications to serve on the fivemember citizen panel in April. By October, the city had received just 10 applications. Ten, in a city of nearly a half-million people. BEFORE

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A subcommittee of the city council has now nominated four of those applicants to be confirmed by the full city council soon. The city is still looking to fill one vacancy on the panel, which is set aside for a certified public accountant. One CPA candidate had applied earlier, but didn’t show up for the interview.

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Everything connected to the Calderon political family is getting media scrutiny now, since state Sen. Ron Calderon was named in an FBI affidavit, made public by the Al Jazeera America news organization, alleging the Montebello Democrat took bribes from undercover agents. One Sacramento Bee follow-up story looked at allegations that Calderon and his brother Tom Calderon, a lobbyist and former state assemblyman, used a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization to receive money from the Latino Caucus, in exchange for Ron’s support in a leadership dispute.

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The Al Jazeera America story raises all sorts of interesting questions. Like, why are we reading about this in Al Jazeera instead of in The Sacramento Bee?

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Several other stories have looked at the Calderon’s willingness to carry water for an array of special interests, including Hollywood, Indian gaming and the payday-loan industry, among others. But the Sacramento daily press has ignored the connection between Calderon and Sacramento’s own Michelle Rhee. Rhee, of course, is the wife of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, and a controversial figure in education policy. Her Sacramentobased StudentsFirst organization has lobbied for a particular flavor of corporate-backed education reform. As reported in Al Jazeera—which was first to publish the FBI affidavit—StudentsFirst last year plowed nearly $400,000 into the successful Assembly campaign of Ian Calderon, son of former legislator Charles Calderon, eldest brother of Tom and Ron. On February 21, according to the Al Jazeera report, StudentsFirst lobbyists met with lobbyist Tom. The next day, brother Ron introduced legislation to change the way teachers are evaluated, part of the StudentsFirst legislative agenda. Given Rhee’s status in Sacramento and the city’s prominent place in the education-reform movement, the Al Jazeera story raises all sorts of interesting questions. Like, why are we reading about this in Al Jazeera instead of in the Bee? Ω

STORY

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A special Sammies

It was an incredible show. Nearly two dozen local music acts and 36 awards. All crammed into four hours on a Friday night at Ace of Spades. It was the 22nd annual SN&R Sacramento Area Music Awards—or what we like to call the Sammies—hosted and produced by the one and only Jerry Perry. Every year for 22 years, SN&R staff has determined award categories such as Blues, Indie and Release of the Year. SN&R readers and music fans throughout the region vote for their favorite artists; this year, more than 15,000 unique visitors voted at L by JEFF VONKAENE www.sammies.com. At the show, the winners receive their awards, j e ffv @ne wsr e v ie w.c o m and a select group of local musicians perform, showcasing genres such as folk, rock, hip-hop and hardcore. It is a celebration of Sacramento music. And over the past two decades, it has put a spotlight on many talented artists. Music in Sacramento is art. This year, more It is also a business, a job, a than 15,000 unique creative process and a family. unlike most families, this visitors voted at But, musical unit bonds around a www.sammies.com. love of music, a willingness to spend an incredible number of hours practicing their craft and a financially irrational pattern of focusing on passion rather than dollars. The Sammies show on November 8 felt like a family affair, where all the musicians, no matter how different they were from each other, were all part of the same household. And they were incredibly different. Some were urban, some suburban, some were rich and some were poor. There were people of many different skin colors, and the songs told of many different kinds of joy and pain. Yet the bond of music NEWS & REVIEW BUSINES triumphed that night. DESIGNER To see photos from There was a joy in the fact that Sacramento’s music ISSUE DATE AL And, as 06.18.09 the Sammies, go to community was being recognized and celebrated. FILE NAME www.sammies.com. each band performed—and performed well—there was TRINITYCATHEDRAL061809R1 a growing sense of the wonderfulness of the Sacramento musical family. USP (BOLD SELECTI / ATMOSPHERE / EXPE When we at SN&R started the SammiesPRICE 22 years ago, the paper did not have a weekly Nightbeat concert calendar PLEASE CAREFULLY REV because only a small handful of Sacramento nightspots ADVERTISEMENT AND VERIFY T hosted live music. The conventional wisdom was that Sacramento would never be able to developADa SIZE good(COLUMNS music X INCHES) SPELLING scene because we were just too close to San Francisco: The NUMBERS & DATES City by the Bay would always vacuum up our best musiCONTACT INFO (PHONE, ADDR cians and our best fans. APPEARS The purpose of the first Sammies show,AD held at the AS REQUESTED Jeff vonKaenel APPROVED BY: is the president, historic Crest Theatre, was to give much-needed recognition CEO and to the music community. That Sammies led to the first majority owner of the News & Review downtown Friday-night summer-concert series, which also newspapers in helped Sacramentans discover many talented performers Sacramento, and great bands. More and more bar owners began to book Chico and Reno. bands. One thing led to another. And our music scene is still growing. It was a special night at the Sammies. Ω

THIS MODERN WORLD

BY TOM TOMORROW

Nobody is losing health care It is sad, but not surprising, given the current political climate, to see the current wave of partisan outrage over the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Yes, the website was not ready for prime time. And we’ll grant that President Barack Obama’s sales pitch—“If you like your insurance, you can keep it”—was, at best, incorrect and, at worst, deceptive. More troubling, however, is the failure of so many journalists to explain why insurance policies are being canceled. The fact is that, in most cases, the insurance these people “liked” so much was practically worthless. In one way or another, it was designed to take money from consumers and lull them into thinking they were covered, while not actually providing much coverage— a reality many consumers never faced. That is, until a major accident or illness, when they suddenly learned that their “insurance” didn’t cover hospitalizations, surgeries or some other expensive and necessary item. One of the signature achievements of the ACA has been a standard of coverage that actually covers health care. So, let’s call this manufactured outrage what it is: Another attempt to kill health-care reform before it begins. Ω

Strong mayor, weak priority

Heading back to prison

There’s always room for improvement, and the Sacramento city charter is no exception. That doesn’t mean that the mayor’s aggressive “Strong Mayor” campaign should be rewarded. We believe Mayor Kevin Johnson’s claims that he had nothing to do with the proposal to put executive mayorship before the voters to be, at the very least, disingenuous. The coalition behind this measure had, if not actual input from the mayor, at least an understanding of what he wanted—and some of them, no doubt, expect a payoff for their willingness to carry water. Mayor Johnson has refused to take “no”—or even “not now”—for an answer where the strong-mayor issue is concerned. Such persistence may pay off, or it may simply be perceived as petulance. We’ll take a careful look at the entire package before deciding on whether it should be approved or not. But at this moment in time, it’s worth pointing out that—between the arena plan and city-charter reform— the mayor and his supporters have successfully diverted attention (not to mention political-campaign dollars) from the very real problems our city faces to instead address his signature issues. When the city is still facing budget difficulties so large that fundraising for everything such as swimming pools and homeless services is necessary, we have to ask: Just who does this drive to change the charter serve? Should it really be a major political priority? The answers to those questions are bound to be uncomfortable for a number of people, including the mayor. Ω

Ever the recidivist, I was headed back to lockup. an array of treatment groups while serving the Being in prison is a dreadful, emotional remainder of their time. by experience. However, this time was different: The best drug counselors are ex-addicts who Eugene I was actually an invited guest. At the end of the meld their street knowledge with formal educaAlexander Dey day, I went home. tion on the subject of addiction. These specially As one of Sacramento’s recently released trained ex-offenders have the tools to address three-strikers, I spent 15 years in prison for a relapse, which is a part of the recovery process. career in serious crime. So, when I returned to I’m a product of my own program, which Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad to give began as a self-funded startup at Soledad in the commencement address at a graduation 2010. Since most offenders don’t have access ceremony on October 25, to money, a handful of us I closed one chapter and pooled our resources. We Seven months began a new one rooted made it happen—and now, we after being in social justice. have help. Eugene Alexander Seven months after As the program director released, my return Dey is a Sacramento being released, my of Inside/Outside Solutions, native who received a to prison marked it’s my job to coordinate the 26-year-to-life “three return to prison marked a milestone. I came back collaboration between colleges, strikes” sentence in a milestone. 1998 for transporting as a guest speaker to the corrections system and one methamphetamine. He congratulate the graduof eight substance-abuse licenswas resentenced earlier ing agencies. With the backing of Careering this year to time served ates of high-school-equivalency and college Responsible Opportunity Programs, a nonprofit under Proposition 36. programs, and one I helped develop. He has testified at other Aided by a Bachelor of Arts degree from organization, we use state waivers through Palo Prop. 36 resentencing Sacramento State University, I co-founded Verde College to state-certify our incarcerated hearings. Inside/Outside Solutions. We train long-term counselors for relative peanuts. offenders to be college-educated drug counselors Going back to prison is a feeling I’ll in prison. While I believe serious offenders never forget. If education is power, then what should be able to earn good-time credits, these I experienced is on a whole different level. An online version of this With offenders as the driving force, these essay can be found at guys volunteer for our program without any www.newsreview.com/ direct benefit to their sentences. The process my guys are going to make a difference. I should sacramento/ partners and I developed gives them the tools to know—I’m one of them. Ω pageburner/blogs. better understand themselves by co-facilitating BEFORE

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SN&R

The pasT year hasn’T been a good one for poor people in america. First, the “sequester” cuts automatically sliced billions of dollars from services such as Head Start— which provides early educational opportunities to young kids from poor families—nutritional programs and jobtraining grants. Then, the government shut down—over GOP opposition, in John Boehner’s House of Representatives, to expanding health-care coverage to the poor. And, while it was shut down, programs like Women, Infants, and Children—also called WIC—which provides vital nutritional assistance to mothers and babies, began turning away new applicants in several states. Now, the government is open again—but the GOP is doubling down. For this story, I tried to ponder the top 12 worst policies—ideas now in play that will push poor Americans, and in particular, poor women and kids, ever deeper into poverty—but I realize the choices are legion.

Republicans are still pushing for $40 billion of cuts to food stamps over the next decade. The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, and states such as Texas and North Carolina, led by GOP-run legislatures and governors, immediately responded by passing laws that make it harder for poor people to vote. These voter ID laws also make it harder for women who have changed their names because of marriage or divorce to prove that they are who they say they are. And, despite the Affordable Care Act and the healthinsurance exchanges coming online (albeit it in a particularly shoddy, dysfunctional manner), for millions of Americans too poor to qualify for government subsidies, their own state governments ensured that they would still remain without access to health care by refusing to expand Medicaid. Even though the feds agreed to pick up almost the entirety of this expansion’s costs. This is in an era where, by the government’s own measure, 15 percent of Americans—roughly 50 million people—live in poverty. An age in which we no longer do a double take when we hear that nearly one in four American kids nationally—and in much of the South, one in three children—live at or below the poverty line. The failure of our political leaders to tackle this rampant hardship, and their willingness to instead propose ever-harsher austerity measures, represents a moral catastrophe. When the U.S. House of Representatives had the chance to vote on a $10-an-hour minimum wage in March—a rate that California’s legislature has since voted to adopt, using the somewhat sensible logic that a minimum wage ought to provide workers with enough income to pay their basic bills—every single GOP congressman voted “no.” Yet the same Republican majority supports a budget plan that would reduce the top tax rate—paid by wealthy Americans—from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, presumably further denuding the government’s ability to fund basic public infrastructure and safety-net programs.

16 | SN&R | 11.14.13

Around the country, elected officials have been pushing proposals aimed either at humiliating those in poverty or ensuring that more people end up impoverished. These policies aren’t always enacted, but, cumulatively, they are shifting the needle rightward in how we as a nation think about, and respond to, poverty. Designing methods to hurt vulnerable people seems to have become something of a national sport these days, and not only in bastions of conservatism like Alabama and Mississippi. Liberal California, for example, has seen its fair share of awful ideas—from Gov. Jerry Brown’s attempts to set limits on how many funded doctor’s visits Medicaid recipients could have in a given year to recurring proposals to impose strict time limits upon Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients. Here in Sacramento, an anti-camping ordinance in place since 1987 renders homeless residents vulnerable to citations and tickets. “They chase the homeless from place to place,” explains Tamie Dramer, organizing director for the Sacramento Housing Alliance. “We run around pretending enforcement will somehow end homelessness.” Not surprisingly, it doesn’t. Rather, it simply shunts these individuals from one community to the next. But the roustabout strategy makes for good sound bites for politicians. “It’s deeper than favorite bad policies,” said Jim Wallis, president of the Washington, D.C.-based anti-poverty organization Sojourners, when asked what particularly egregious approaches to poor people and to poverty have been rolled out by state and federal politicians in recent months. He shared with SN&R a story: “I’m in the office of a U.S. senator, part of the gang working on fiscal stuff. He’s a moderate centrist. I say, ‘Now, Senator, you and I could easily think of 12 senators who could sit at this table and work out a path to fiscal responsibility, couldn’t we?’ “‘Yes.’ “‘And we could do so while protecting the poor and vulnerable?’ “‘Yes.’ “‘But then all the other interests will come into this and demand their interests will be protected, and the poor will be compromised, won’t they?’ “‘Yes.’” And compromised they are these days. Here are SN&R’s dirty dozen worst publicpolicy ideas when it comes to America’s poor.

KicKing 3.5 million AmericAns off food stAmps

the well-being of those on welfare. And not so great if you’re a poor family in need of assistance. The program went from covering more than three out of every four families with children living in poverty to covering only one-quarter of impoverished families. Convert the food-stamps program into a block grant, the same raiding will likely take place.

Congressman Paul Ryan aims to cut food stamps by $40 billion over the next decade—which would boot 3.5 million Americans off of assistance.

In 2012, when he introduced the idea of significant cuts to food stamps, Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, averred that “we don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” That’s right: Depriving millions of Americans of access to food is the surest way to empty America’s overcrowded hammocks—whatever that nonsensical image is intended to convey. It’s probably also the surest way to ensure that malnutrition re-emerges across the land.

denying medicAl cAre to the worKing poor

Making it harder for poor people to qualify for medical care is a really, really bad idea. It results in unnecessary illnesses and deaths, and it’s expensive. Throwing millions of people into the emergency-room system instead of giving them access to primary-care doctors ends up costing everyone else— taxpayers, health-insurance companies, those buying their own insurance premiums—a fortune.

rAiding the food stAmps money pot

Bad idea No. 3 is another ill-starred foodstamp-reform proposal. In addition to simply axing billions of dollars from food stamps, Rep. Ryan also wants to convert the program, which is currently an entitlement, into a block grant given to the states. How did that work during welfare reform nearly two decades ago, when Aid to Families with Dependent Children was shifted to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and turned into a block grant in 1996? Great—if you’re looking for a pot of federal money to raid for projects that have nothing to do with

An almost equally bad idea to removing food stamps from millions of people surely has to be state-level GOP opposition to allowing Coming in at No. 1 would have to be the poor adults onto their Medicaid rolls. Despite current proposal to cut $40 billion from food the fact the feds will pick up all of the cost of stamps. This program is virtually the only this expansion for the first three years, and 90 part of the safety net that hasn’t already been percent thereafter, a slew of states, and almost shredded. As a result, almost everyone in the entirety of the South, have opted out of poverty in America is either on the program this expansion. or eligible for it. Plans to “The 26 states that have rejected the disqualify More than 47 million Americans use food Medicaid expansion are home to about half of cosmetics such stamps. For 4 million people, food stamps as deodorant, the country’s population, but about 68 percent actually serve to raise family incomes above sunscreen and of poor, uninsured blacks and single mothers. the poverty line. It is, quite simply, a buffer lip balm for About 60 percent of the country’s uninsured needy-family between economic insecurity and hunger. working poor are in those states. Among those assistance But current GOP proposals would remove nearly passed in excluded are about 435,000 cashiers, 341,000 3.5 million Americans, in particular, able-bodied Massachusetts cooks and 253,000 nurses’ aides,” wrote New adults, from the program, and would impose this year. York Times reporters Sabrina Tavernise and time limits on many individuals’ participation. Robert Gebeloff last month. B E F O R E | N E W S | F E A T U R E S T O R Y | A R T S & C U L T U R E

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new tough-on-poor rhetoric

At a state level, food stamps have already started being cut: Kansas’ GOP governor, Sam Brownback, recently reinstituted work requirements for able-bodied, adult food-stamps recipients—requirements normally waived during periods of high unemployment for the fairly obvious reason that there is no work for these unemployed men and women to do. Brownback didn’t get the logic: After removing 15,000 people from his state’s welfare rolls, he has now embraced an approach to food stamps that will likely remove 20,000 of his state’s 90,000 foodstamps recipients from the program. This ranks No. 4 on our list of ugly policies. That food stamps are now in the sights of slash-and-burn conservatives speaks to the shift rightward in popular consciousness when it comes to hunger. A generation ago, while Ronald Reagan was busy denouncing “welfare queens,” who were allegedly living high on the hog off of AFDC benefits, support for food stamps remained robust. And most conservative politicians avoided targeting the program rhetorically. These days, however, conservatives denounce President Barack Obama for being a “food-stamp president” and routinely imply— without providing proof—that the program is rife with fraud. “They’re the same talking points we had before welfare reform,” argues Jessica Bartholow, of the Sacramento-based Western Center on Law and Poverty. “And we have a much smaller safety net now than we did 20 years ago. But the talking points are the same.” For Bartholow, the slew of recent attacks against food stamps is part of a pattern of politicians seeking to score cheap points by showing their tough-on-poor-people bona fides via a rash of misguided proposals.

the disquAlificAtion of chApsticK

Take, for example, the recent decision in Massachusetts, backed by Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, to outlaw the purchase of cosmetics using TANF benefits. It sounds good: Why should we allow women on welfare to spend our tax dollars dolling themselves up? “A low-down, dirty, shAmeful doZen” continued on page 19

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gop plAn to tighten unemployment benefits

Unemployment benefits are up for extension again in December. This time around, if Drug testing current tactics during the government shutdown and debt ceiling are any indication of unemployeD GOP thinking, it’s likely that the Republican AmericAns House won’t even begin to negotiate. Taking away ChapSticks and deodorant is If the benefits aren’t extended, “they silly. But not nearly as silly as looking for risk pulling the rug out from under a large ways to remove unemployment benenumber of Californians fits from unemployed [and] Americans still people, thus taking struggling to find away what little employment, remaining Many “red states” want to or the amount financial give drug tests to recipients and quality of of unemployment benefits— security their employment hopefully, the courts will families have. they desire,” strike the move down. But, worried Chris increasingly, Hoene, of the states are looking California Budget to do just this. Project. Florida’s attempts How can the job to do wholesale market be stimulated drug testing, not enough to absorb based on any reasonmillions of unemable suspicions, for ployed Americans? all unemploymentA number of insurance claimants. Republicans, including Taking away a famiTennessee Sen. Lamar ly’s income source Alexander, have called because mom or pop for repealing the smokes pot occasionminimum wage. ally might not make a State legislators whole lot of economic in Maine and sense, but it plays into elsewhere have the tough-on-crime, toughalso called for huge on-the-poor approach all too rollbacks in child-labor common in Florida—a state with nearly a laws, allowing kids to be employed at lessmillion disenfranchised ex-felons. than-minimum-wage rates. Reduce wages Florida tried the same catchall drug-testenough, the argument goes, and America will ing trick with TANF recipients in 2011—but return to a golden age of full employment the courts ordered it to stop the practice. (and, SN&R suspects, sweatshops, wholeIn Utah, the courts haven’t intervened, sale exploitation of children and so on). since the state only tests people it has a Collectively, we award this seventh position “reasonable suspicion” are using drugs—and in our list of horrors. it offers treatment, accompanied by restored benefits to users. Not that this makes Utah’s

“A loW-DoWn, Dirty, shAmeful DoZen” continued on page 21

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But dig deeper, and the implications are horrendous, which is why SN&R calls this bad idea No. 5. For instance, should sunscreen be considered a “cosmetic”? Well, it’s often sold in the cosmetics aisle of a store, but its use is more akin to a medicine: Use it well, and you can limit your risk of skin cancer; don’t use it, and you are more likely to end up with the disease. If your skin is bad, and you go for a job interview— even though employers aren’t legally allowed to discriminate on the basis of looks in practice—a woman with no makeup and with poor skin may well be at a disadvantage in the search for work. If you want to get that welfare recipient off of public assistance and into employment, making it more difficult for them to present themselves well at an interview seems counterproductive. Is deodorant a cosmetic? Quite possibly. But, again, who wants to go for a job interview on a humid summer day in Massachusetts with pits sweating? While the legislation eventually excluded deodorant from the list of banned items, it’s entirely likely businesses will still err on the side of caution and refuse to sell deodorant to welfare customers. Is ChapStick a cosmetic? Yes, it is. But it also is necessary for stopping lips from blistering.

policy fiscally sensible: Over the last year, according to ThinkProgress, it has spent more than $30,000 drug testing welfare applicants. How many people did it catch and remove from the welfare rolls? Twelve. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued Florida to stop drug testing unemployment-benefits applicants. But, despite their earlier ruling, there’s no guarantee that, this time around, the courts will intervene. After all, Congress put its imprimatur on this policy when, at the height of the recession, Democrats who wanted to extend unemployment benefits and Republicans who didn’t reached a compromise: Republicans agreed to extend the benefits, but only in exchange for Democrats agreeing to language being inserted into the legislation that would allow (though not require) states to drug test applicants. In the wake of this, Florida and several other states, mainly in the South, rushed to set up drug testing protocols. This is clearly, a Very Bad Idea. We’re provisionally placing it at No. 6, but are willing to move it higher up in our ranks should the courts not strike it down.

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“a low-down, dirty, Shameful doZen” continued from page 19

Sacramento’S war againSt affordable houSing

Then, at No. 8, there’s the proposal put forward in 2011 by Rep. Ryan and his confreres to cut an astounding $5.7 billion from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Affordable Housing program. At a time when the country was experiencing massive increases in homelessness in the wake of the bursting of the housing-market bubble. It hasn’t been implemented, but the government’s automatic budget cuts and other cuts have hugely impacted affordable-housing budgets. Linked in with this national effort to put affordable housing out of the reach of millions of Americans are a bunch of misguided local policies. For instance, Sacramento County’s recent decision to roll back its groundbreaking Affordable Housing Ordinance: It mandated that when developers build houses, they set aside 15 percent of them for affordablehousing units, including a portion for those just below median income, another portion for those in deep poverty, plus a segment for people in extreme poverty (those at or below 30 percent of the area’s median income). The new system contains no affordablehousing requirements. “It’ll trickle down to housing instability and lead to more homelessness,” said Dramer. “We’re already not meeting our needs with the ordinance, let alone without it.”

republicanS cutS to college financial aid

If we’re documenting awful ideas, let’s not leave out the GOP plan from last year to reduce Pell Grant eligibility. It would have removed 1 million people from the program over a

decade, reduced spending by $170 billion over that 10-year period, and allowed the interest rates payable on student loans to soar. We’re declaring this to be bad idea No. 9. If it stood a snowball’s chance in hell of being implemented, we’d have likely put it higher up. But this is, quite simply, emptygesture politics. It won’t become the law of the land anytime soon. It does, however, make politicians look tough by allowing them to rhetorically beat up on the poor. “The most toxic things politicians do is use very dehumanizing language to talk about the poor,” explains Bartholow.

During the government shutdown, the Women, Infants, and Children services program stopped accepting new applicants—which meant no milk for hungry babies.

denial of pregnancy ServiceS to homeleSS women

During the government shutdown, Bartholow’s organization had already documented how several states stopped accepting new applicants into their WIC programs—meaning that low-income infants weren’t getting enough milk and other vital nutrition. Arizona had for a few days abruptly stopped its TANF program. And many Head Start centers in Florida and elsewhere had shuttered their doors. Yet a number of tea party congressmen were taking to the airwaves to explain how the shutdown was no big deal, how things were pretty much humming along and how this all showed that we didn’t need a big government. For Bartholow, it spoke to the increasing invisibility of America’s poor, as well as a growing empathy gap between the political classes and those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In California, for example, the GOP had been fighting a rearguard action for several years in opposition to state Sen. Holly Mitchell’s proposal to expand specialized shelter services for pregnant homeless women during the first two trimesters of their pregnancy.

Under existing law, women in the early months of pregnancy can stay in regular homeless shelters, but not until their third trimester do they qualify for an additional cash grant and CalWORKs Homeless Assistance. For Bartholow, that makes no sense, since “all of the brain development [of the fetus] has already happened by then.” Ultimately, homeless teens were granted access to the early pregnancy services—but homeless women over the age of 18 were not. Score another win for the anti-poor brigade. And, congratulations, California GOP: You’ve made our top 12 idiotic policies. We’re placing this one as No. 10 in the list of shame.

budget cutS to reproductive and rape-criSiS centerS

In the penultimate spot on this list, we are placing Texas’ defunding of Planned Parenthood— which, in addition to providing access to abortions, also provides vital family-planning and screening services to poor women, many of whom (in a state where one in four residents have no insurance) have no other access to such health-care services. And the proposal (so far unsuccessful) by conservatives in Ohio to defund rape-crisis centers that so much as mention to their clients that abortion is an option, should they have become pregnant after being raped.

Sacramento changed its affordable-housing policy this year, making it easier for developers to build without considering lowincome residents—and making it harder for poor people to find a place to stay.

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a bevy of moronic gop immigration propoSalS

repopularized the chain gang and who once made his male jail inmates parade around in pink underwear, simply to humiliate them. Georgia’s House Bill 87 also gives local law enforcement draconian powers to intervene in what has, historically, been an immigration issue policed by federal agencies. Such local interventions were also embraced by the little town of Hazleton, Penn., which went so far as to pass a local ordinance that empowered the city to levy huge fines on landlords who rented homes to undocumented immigrants. That law was struck down by the courts in 2010. But where Hazleton failed, other locales have stepped in. Around the country, there has been a rash of local and state attempts to crack down on immigrants living here without legal permission, fueled by conservative politicians such as North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, who believes the United States is being “invaded” by immigrants. Others have called for building a fence along the entirety of the U.S.-Mexico border, for mass deportations and for denying citizenship to the U.S.-born children of such immigrants. These are all really, really, really dumb ideas. In reality, they won’t rid the country of these kinds of immigrants, but they do have the potential to push millions of people ever further into the shadows, making them more vulnerable to exploitation, more impoverished, even less likely to have access to basic services, and even more likely to end up hungry, homeless and sick. All of these and more are the exact wrong way to deal with a poverty epidemic that condemns one in six Americans to daily insecurity, angst and want. No other modern, wealthy democracy has poverty numbers approaching America’s. No other electorate would tolerate such cascading levels of inequity. Anti-poverty approaches should aim to raise people out of poverty—and to stop so many people from becoming impoverished in the first place—not to punish those who happen to be trapped in its vise. But in 21st-century America, that is not what’s happening. Ω

And at No. 12, we are bundling several other utterly idiotic proposals, many of them put up by local demagogues as “solutions” to tackle the numbers of people who have immigrated to the United States illegally. Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 achieved notoriety for essentially empowering local cops to demand residency papers of anyone who they deemed looked “illegal.” Somehow, giving Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph “Joe” Arpaio’s officers this sort of power doesn’t strike us as a particularly sensible thing to do. After all, Arpaio is the guy who PHOTO:THINKSTOCK/ISTOCK | A R T S & C U L T U R E | A F T E R | 11.14.13

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Awkward Lemon, featuring Alyssa Mattson (left) and Bryan Nichols, nabbed a Sammie in the Folk Rock category.

PHOTOS BY LISA BAETZ

THE 22ND ANNUAL SAMMIES AWARD SHOW IS NOW ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS.

WHO TOOK HOME THE PRIZE AT SN&R’S 22ND ANNUAL SACRAMENTO AREA MUSIC AWARDS? 22 | SN&R | 11.14.13

With nearly 1,000 people in attendance and three-dozen awards bestowed, the event—organized and hosted by local music promoter Jerry Perry—featured a diversity of acts and presenters on two stages at Ace of Spades in Midtown. Early in the night, a line wrapped around the R Street corridor. Inside, the show didn’t disappoint. Highlights included a tribute to the late Deftones bassist Chi Cheng, who died in April, from his longtime friend Jonah Matranga. Matranga was accompanied by Cheng’s teenage son, Gabe. The young Cheng, who plays bass in the

Sammie-nominated band A Mile to Dawn, spoke eloquently of his father as a “sweet” man and real “gentleman.” Other noteworthy moments included a dynamic performance by Paper Pistols (who won the Sammie for best Electronic act), as well as a set from the charismatic Young Aundee (nominated in three categories, including Release of the Year and Artist of the Year). Then, there was the heart-pumping set by Kill the Precedent. Dressed in scrubs and toting creepy baby dolls, the band charged the stage with such intensity and rocked out with such force (one onlooker described them as a “metal Beastie Boys”), that it was no wonder the hardcore band took home the prize for Live Performer. Read on for a full rundown on the night’s other trophy takers.

’Stache for the cause

See NIGHT&DAY

Clockwise from top left: Kill the Precedent took home the award for Live Performer; the FreeBadge Serenaders, nominated in the Americana/ Alt Country category, showed off their old-timey sounds; Gabe Cheng (left) paid tribute to his father, the late Deftones bassist Chi Cheng, with help from singer-songwriter Jonah Matranga; Dog Party, featuring singer-drummer Lucy Giles, earned Sammies in the Teen Artist and Post-Punk categories.

Undercover vegans See THE V WORD

ARTIST OF THE YEAR James Cavern

AMERICANA/ALT-COUNTRY Rachel Steele & Road 88

DEEJAY DJ Roger Carpio

White Minorities

ELECTRONIC

HARD ROCK

Paper Pistols

Fair Struggle

HIP-HOP/RAP

Century Got Bars

Christian DeWild Band

HALL OF FAME 2013 Be Brave Bold Robot DJ Epik DJ Rated R DJ Whores The Nibblers Pus Cavern Recording Studios Autumn Sky Tribe of Levi Harley White Jr. Orchestra Zuhg BEFORE

DJ Oasis and InkdUp

DJ Billy Lane

FOLK ROCK

COVER BAND

Awkward Lemon

Apple Z

Sunday Night Soul Party at The Press Club on Sundays with DJ Larry Rodriguez

Hans! and the Hot Mess

F E AT U R E

HIP-HOP PRODUCER DJ Epik

INDIE Musical Charis

FUNK

DANCE NIGHT

NEWS

California Bear Gang

EXPERIMENTAL

CLUB DEEJAY

See FILM

HARDCORE/INDUSTRIAL/ POST-HARDCORE

EMCEE

BLUES

Matthew McConaughey gets real, y’all

JAZZ Jim Martinez Quartet

LATIN

Vote weed! See THE 420

R&B/SOUL

Rey y Kaye

LIVE PERFORMER Kill the Precedent

METAL

ROCKABILLY

James Cavern

The Infamous Swanks

RECORDING STUDIO

SINGER-SONGWRITER

UpRock Audio

Stevie Nader

REGGAE/JAM

FallRise

NEW ARTIST Stevie Nader

POP/ROCK Hero’s Last Mission

POST-PUNK Dog Party

TEEN ARTIST

Element of Soul

Dog Party

RELEASE OF THE YEAR

TRIBUTE BAND

Stevie Nader, 333

SuperHuey (tribute to Huey Lewis and the News)

ROCK Walking Spanish

TURNTABLIST Mike Colossal

ROCK PRODUCER

Ira Skinner Check out more pics at www.sammies.com!

PUNK BlackEyed Dempseys

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WEEKLY PICKS

Art Mix/Crocker-Con THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 Comics are the theme of this event at Sacramento’s swankiest art gallery, the Crocker Art Museum. At CONVENTION Art Mix/Crocker-Con, visitors wearing costumes get free admission to the event, which includes art talks, a video-game tournament, a costume contest and a good-vs.-evil themed hip-hop performance by local emcee Task1ne. Free with general admission ($5-$10), 5 p.m. at the Crocker Art Museum, 216 O Street; (916) 808-1182; ww.crockerartmuseum.org.

—Jonathan Mendick

GRAVITY’s Adventures in Wonderland FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 Guiding Resilient Adaptive Valued & Innovative Transitioning Youth, or GRAVITY for short, helps transitional-age foster youth become PARTY self-sufficient, and it’s hosting an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-themed cocktailparty fundraiser. $35-$40, 8 p.m. at Beatnik Studios, 723 S Street; (916) 538-0280; www.gravityservices. org/adventures-wonderland.

—Raheem F. Hosseini

Don’t Blink: A Doctor Who Quiz SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 Denver-based Geeks Who Drink is hosting a 20-city Doctor Who trivia night in anticipation of the beloved British series’ 50th anniversary special next week on BBC America. While the show about a two-hearted time lord is a half-century old, most TRIVIA questions will concern the modern era that began with Christopher Eccleston’s ninth doctor in 2005. $5, 8 p.m. at Capitol Garage, 1500 K Street; www.facebook.com/geekswhodrink.

—Raheem F. Hosseini

Imagine–Belly Dance Challenge SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17

case you didn’t already figure it out, those perverted-looking mustachioed hipsters all over town are actually just participating in Movember— an international monthlong event dedicated to raising awareness about prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mentalhealth issues, according to www.movember.com. As part of the worldwide Movember festivities, there will be the Sacramento Moustache Run on Saturday, November 16, at Sutter’s Landing Regional Park (20 28th Street) at 4 p.m. It’s a nontimed 5k run (or walk). There’s no dress code, but mustaches are obviously encouraged—real, fake or otherwise—for all participating men, women and children. All proceeds from the run benefit the American Cancer Society. This will be followed by the Mo For Your Bro After

Party—benefiting the Active 20-30 Club of Greater Sacramento #1032—with food (OMG Burger, Drewski’s Hot Rod Kitchen, Papa Dale’s Drivin’ Diner), drinks (Hoppy Brewing Company, Lost Coast Brewery, Mustache Vineyards), live music (the Benny’s and Nideit) and mustache contests (Best Real Moustache, Best Fake Moustache, Best Kid Moustache). Plus, there’s face painting for kids, vendor booths (including one featuring the Cowboy Comb), and mustachecare stations by Jimmy’s Barber Garage and True Blue Barber and Shave Parlour. Registration for the run—$40 in advance, $45 the day of the event— includes a goodie bag, entrance into the after-party ($5 for nonrunners) and a free beer. For more information, call (916) 500-4992, or visit www.sacramentomoustache run.com.

M OV E MBE R REIGN

—Jonathan Mendick

Daleela Morad and Ayre Briar (of ShupaDa fusion dance) present the inaugural Imagine–Belly Dance Challenge this Sunday. Amateur and profesDANCE sional belly dancers compete for cash prizes. Expect colorful costumes and jellyfishesque dance moves. $15-$20, 2 p.m. at Pamela Trokanski Dance Workshop & Performing Arts Center, 2720 Del Rio Plaza in Davis; (530) 756-3949; www.shupada.com.

—Jonathan Mendick

Snowbomb SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, THROUGH SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17 Take the edge off of the wallet-emptying experience of gearing up for winter with this weekend’s Snowbomb ski and snowboard FESTIVAL festival and sale, which helps attendees get sloshed on beer (Saturday) and wine (Sunday) before purchasing discounted winter apparel. $10-$40, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday at Cal Expo, 1600 Exposition Boulevard; www.snowbomb.com.

—Jonathan Mendick BEFORE

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Seize the wine Carpe Vino 1568 Lincoln Way in Auburn, (530) 823-0320, www.carpevinoauburn.com Up in the quiet hills of Auburn, where few Sacramentans dare to tread, lies a little wine shop and restaurant called Carpe Vino. Within its quaint space by Garrett McCord exist stacks and racks and boxes of bottles, each jostling for attention. These bottles—and their support staff—encourage you to “Sit down, relax, have a glass. Something to eat, perhaps?” “Well, of course,” you answer before being escorted to a table and presented with the electronic wine list, a tablet device that lists wines by type, with awards, prices and tasting notes. Of course, there is a printed menu. “Please Rating: note,” we’re informed, “the menu is different HHHHH from online. I just printed out this new one a minute ago, as one of the sparkling wines Dinner for one: is now out of stock.” We’re given a recom$50 - $75 mendation for a brut rose by Lucien Albrecht instead, which turns out to be more affordable and of even better flavor than our sold-out original selection. Food arrives, and a trio of dips prove enlightening: A white-bean hummus smoother than a straight-razor shave, whereas the smoked-eggplant dip’s softness contradicts the robust flavor. A piquant creamed feta with cucumber balances the two. The house-made H flatbread is warm, chewy and sigh-inducing. FLAWED The musque de Provence pumpkin soup HH is lighter than your wallet will be when you HAS MOMENTS leave, but one bite and wallet be damned. The HHH flavor is exquisite with whispers of vanilla and APPEALING pops of pumpkin seed. Between this and the HHHH hummus, I imagine some poor extern chained AUTHORITATIVE to a food mill to achieve such textures. HHHHH A quartet of lamb meatballs arrive, lookEPIC ing like a contemporary-art sculpture. It sits corseted in harissa, mint sauce and yogurt. Surely the dish to convert anyone who (confusedly) refuses lamb. For the main course, a cider-brined pork chop bejeweled in bacon and prune sits atop savoy cabbage, defying expectations. “Try this!” my husband hurls toward the rest of us bites of meat dripping in a redwine sauce. All of us at the table blush a Still hungry? medium-rare at the taste. Search SN&R’s The kitchen had just run out of the “Dining Directory” roasted duck breast on our visit. “But we can to find local sous-vide a chicken breast wrapped in seared restaurants by name or by type of food. bacon, instead.” Sushi, Mexican, Indian, Done! Italian—discover it It arrived perfectly cooked among a all in the “Dining” medley of chanterelles, melon-ball scoops section at of kabocha, wheat berries, Brussels sprouts www.news review.com. and pomegranate arils. The flavors were rapturous. The dessert menu is eclectic and covers all the bases: fruit, cake, custard and chocolate. A sour-cream apple cake is soft with crispy edges, but it’s the caramel-apple ice cream that takes it over the top. Not to be edged out of the spotlight, the chocolate budino (an Italian custard cake) with crispy cocoa-nib brittle and fall-fruit conserve is the stuff BEFORE

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of dreams for chocoholics. A port ice cream induced much lip quivering and bosom heaving around the table. Our only letdown was the timid coffee served afterward. Honestly, I’ve brewed stronger cups of Folgers Instant over a campfire. An interesting kicker: The restaurant— being primarily a wine bar—does not serve anyone under the age of 21. Those of a legal drinking age, rejoice, for there will be no parent cooing to a child to settle down.

The musque de Provence pumpkin soup is lighter than your wallet will be when you leave, but one bite and wallet be damned. The service is impeccable and brings to mind Mrs. Wilson from the film Gosford Park. Not the murder, but the gift of anticipation and knowing what diners want before they do. The Cirque du Soleil of food is a set of arousing feats performed with incredible strength and artistic direction. In addition, the menu is changed more often than a newborn in order to reflect whatever is in season that week, ensuring no visit will ever be like the last. Ω

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Spy vs. desk job Last week in this space, The V Word shared a link to some disturbing footage taken at a foie gras farm by an undercover investigator from Mercy for Animals (see “Duck tales, boohoo,” November 7). The nonprofit animal-welfare organization is advertising it’s hiring more investigators with hearts of gold and nerves of steel to expose and prevent animal cruelty at factory farms. Those hired would be real-life spies, but this difficult position isn’t for everyone. Apply for it at www.mercyforanimals.org, or for more conventional employment at vegan and environmentally minded companies, visit the It’s Easy Being Vegan Resources page at www.itseasybeingvegan.com. Risk life and limb at a factory farm, or tuck those limbs in behind a desk to do paperwork for organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Either way, it makes a difference.

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

and wine bar spotlights the local farm-to-glass movement. Here, diners can order 2-ounce tasting flights of wine. Choose three from the same vintner to compare styles, or mix and match to contrast similar wines from regional wineries. Wines are also available in larger pours and by the bottle. Wine is meant to be enjoyed with food, of course: The menu offers a wide selection of tidbits and hearty dishes. Worth sampling: the goatcheese stuffed peppers, chilled Spanish-spiced shrimp, and a cheddar-and-apple melt. Or try the ambrosial Wine Country sandwich, with salty prosciutto, sweet fig jam, oozy mozzarella and peppery arugula on grilled bread. There are also a variety of flatbreads loaded with topping combos like capicola, three cheeses, piquillo peppers and green onions. The bread for these is nicely crunchy but not too chewy and comes across as more than a pizza trying to be fancy. American. 1200 K St., Ste. 8; (916) 228-4518. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH A.M.R.

Estelle’s Patisserie With its marble tables and light wooden chairs, there’s an airy atmosphere, casual and cozy. Estelle’s offers an espresso bar and a wide assortment of teas and muffins and rolls for the breakfast crowd as well as sweets, including DayGlo macarons. For the lunch-inclined, there are soups, salads, sandwiches and meat or meatless quiche. One of the authentic touches is the

spare use of condiments. The smoked salmon is enlivened by dill and the flavor of its croissant. Its tomato bisque is thick and richly flavored, and, in a nice touch, a puff pastry floats in the tureen as accompaniment. There’s a lot to like about Estelle’s—except dinner. Doors close at 6pm. French. 901 K St., (916) 551-1500. Meal for one: $5-$10. HHH1⁄2 G.L.

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

Zia’s Delicatessen Zia’s Delicatessen isn’t really about trying every sandwich: It’s about finding your sandwich. In addition to a large selection of salumi, there’s the worthy eponymous offering, served with a wedge of zucchini

frittata, a slice of provolone, romaine lettuce, grainy tomato, and a simple dash of vinegar and oil that adds tang. Order it hot, so that the provolone melts into the bread. Also tasty: the hot meatball sub with small-grained, tender meatballs bathed in a thin, oregano-flecked tomato sauce that soaks into the bread. A tuna sandwich is sturdy, if not exciting. It is just mayonnaisey enough, with tiny, diced bits of celery. A rosemary panino cotto with mozzarella could benefit from a more flavorful cheese. For a meatier option, try the Milano: mortadella, salami, Muenster; all three flavors in balance. The turkey Viareggio has a thin spread of pesto mayo, and the smoked mozzarella accents rather than overpowers. American. 1401 O St., Ste. A; (916) 441-3354. Meal for one: $5-$10. HHHH B.G.

Midtown Hook & Ladder Manufacturing Co. The restaurant, by the same owners as Midtown’s The Golden Bear, sports a firefighting theme (a ladder on the ceiling duct work, shiny silver wallpaper with a ratand-hydrant motif, et al) and a bar setup that encourages patrons to talk to each other. An interesting wine list includes entries from Spain and Israel; there are also draft cocktails and numerous beers on tap. The brunch menu is heavy on the eggs, prepared in lots of ways. One option is the Croque

Madame, a ham-and-Gruyere sandwich usually battered with egg. This one had a fried egg and béchamel, with a generous smear of mustard inside. The mountain of potato hash alongside tasted flavorful and not too greasy. The menu also features pizzas and house-made pastas, but one of its highlights includes an excellent smoked-eggplant baba ganoush, which is smoky and garlicky and served with warm flatbread wedges and oil-cured olives. The bananas foster bread pudding is equally transcendent, accompanied by very salty caramel gelato, pecans and slivers of brûléed bananas. American. 1630 S St., (916) 442-4885. Dinner for one: $20-$40. HHH1/2 A.M.R.

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

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

Starlite Lounge Kitsched up with midcentury modern details such as a giant metal starburst sculpture and a jukebox stocked with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Lady Gaga, the Starlite features food made by chefs from the Papa Dale’s Drivin’ Diner food truck. Almost everything here is either fried or accompanied by a creamy sauce, which makes for a heavy meal, but perfect bar food. Try the What a Pickle appetizer: crisply fried cornmealdusted pickle chips served with a garlic-dill dip. The Tara-Dactyl Wings are three chicken drumsticks that have been slow-cooked and brick-seared. This translates to moist, flavorful meat, with not a hint of grease. There are also onion rings, two kinds of french fries and fried macand-cheese balls. Brave diners should order the Oh! That’s a Burger, a half-pound of juicy beef, served with cheddar cheese, thick-cut bacon, barbecue sauce and an onion ring. It’s a Dagwood-style sandwich that’s hard to get your mouth around—but do your best. American. 1517 21st St., (916) 706-0052. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHH A.M.R.

Tank House BBQ and Bar The décor here is “suspenders and suede oxfords”—both homey and eclectic with old wood, new wood and wallpaper that is to die for. A large patio is welcoming and allows diners to bathe in the haze from the drum smoker. You’ll leave perfumed in white-oak and almond-wood smoke; a good thing if your date digs the smell of meat and wood, bad if you have a meeting after lunch. Recommendations include the ribs, which are astounding in texture. The meat falls off the bone with confidence that your mouth will catch it. A lack of salt or spice on the ribs, however, robs them of the chance of being truly astonishing. (An easy fix.) The brisket is also fantastic—as tender as the first time you held hands with a high-school crush, with a sweet, smoky flavor that’s just as memorable. Loaded onto the sandwich and served with white American cheese, it makes for an epic meal. Barbecue . 1925 J St., (916) 431-7199. Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHH G.M.

East Sac Istanbul Bistro Turkish chef Murat Bozkurt and brother Ekrem co-own this paean to their homeland, with Ekrem usually at the front of the house, infusing the space with cheer. Turkish cuisine features aspects of Greek, Moroccan and

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North Sac Asian Café Asian Café serves both Thai and Lao food, but go for the Lao specialties, which rely on flavoring staples such as fish sauce, lime juice, galangal and lemongrass, lots of herbs, and chilies. One of the most common dishes in Lao cuisine is larb, a dish of chopped meat laced with herbs, chilies and lime. At Asian Café, it adds optional offal add-ons—various organ meats, entrails, et al—to three versions of the dish: beef with tripe, chicken with gizzards, or pork with pork skin. The beef salad offers a gentle respite from aggressive flavors, consisting

of medium-thick chewy slices of eye of round with red bell pepper, chopped iceberg and hot raw jalapeño. The single best dish here is the nam kao tod, a crispy entree with ground pork that’s baked on the bottom of the pan with rice, then stirred and fried up fresh the next day with dried Thai chilies and scallions. Thai and Lao. 2827 Norwood Ave., (916) 641-5890. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHHH B.G.

soup. Chinese and Vietnamese. 6601 Florin Rd., (916) 379-0309. Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHH1/2 J.M.

Arden/ Carmichael Ramen & Rice At Ramen & Rice, a ramen restaurant that also makes Korean dishes, it’s best to stick to the latter. Order the bibimbap with the brown rice—it imparts a delightful nutty flavor. The sliced mushrooms add to the umami of this dish, and the shoyu, mustard and spicy sauces that come on the side should all be used liberally. Meat is very easily avoided here: The restaurant emphasizes the healthful aspect of its dishes, and tofu can be substituted for any meat, as can vegetarian broth in most of the soups. On the Japanese side of the menu, the ramen broth lacked a much-needed, salinated quality, the chashu lacked succulence and the hardboiled egg was served overcooked with an ugly green yolk. A steaming bowl of Japanese curry, however, boasted a comforting flavor, and, unusually, a bit of spice. Japanese and Korean. 807 Howe Ave., (916) 922-6227. Dinner for one: $10-$15. HHH1/2 B.G.

South Sac A&A Tasty Restaurant and Bar This Little Saigon eatery boasts such an extensive menu of Chinese and Vietnamese dishes that it’s hard to pinpoint its crown jewel. Notable options include a salty fish and chicken-fried rice entree with stir-fried vegetables. The fried rice offers copious pieces of the diced salty fish. This may seem a bit weird to the uninitiated, but the reward is a unique, jolting pungent flavor that spruces up an otherwise boring chicken-fried rice. Elsewhere on the menu, the Vietnamese pork-chop rice plate, served with a small bowl of fish sauce, surprisingly stacks up to similar dishes from other strictly Vietnamese restaurants in the area. The pork is thinly sliced and tender, easily cut with a simple butter knife. A&A’s mash-up of hu tieu and huáng máo ji is unusual: The dish is commonplace, yet here it shines when set atop a steaming bowl of noodle

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

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK STIVERS

Middle Eastern flavors. The appetizer combo plate offers an impressive sampling. Acili ezme is a chopped, slightly spicy mixture of tomatoes, cucumber and walnuts that’s delicious paired with accompanying flatbread wedges. For entrees, try the borani, a lamb stew with garbanzos, carrots, potatoes and currants. The meat is very tender, while the veggies arrived nicely al dente. Also good is the chicken shish plate (souvlaki), which features two skewers of marinated grilled chicken that’s moist and succulent. There are also quite a few choices for vegetarians, including flatbread topped like pizza, with spinach and feta or mozzarella and egg. Turkish. 3260-B J St., (916) 449-8810. Dinner for one: $15-$20. HHH1/2 A.M.R.

soup, a French onion-styled soup kicked up with Irish whiskey and Guinness beer. Or order the house-made veggie burger—it’s one of the tastiest black-bean patties around. The most unusual dish on the menu is the Scottish Mafia Pizza. Topped with turkey pastrami, potatoes, cabbage and Swiss cheese, it falls short with its too many flat flavors to actually benefit from their unusual pairing. Thankfully, there’s Tabasco sauce on the table. Pub. 5220 Manzanita Ave. in Carmichael, (916) 331-2337. Dinner for one: $10-$20. HHH1/2 J.M.

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

Ready to roast Temple Coffee’s Midtown location (2829 S Street) has expanded to include a warehouse and “Roasterie” next door (2827 S Street). It opens with an all-day celebration on Saturday, November 16, featuring coffee classes (where visitors can learn about sourcing, roasting, cupping and brewing the caffeinated stuff), a latte art competition, and a party with live music, drinks and food. In October, Temple earned high marks for its Sumatra Blue Batak Peaberry (94 points out of 100), Panama Los Lajones Estate Lot 14 (92 points) and Costa Rica Sonora Estate Honey Valencia (92 points) roasts in Coffee Review magazine. Last month, the coffee shop—which describes itself as a “quality-focused retail and wholesale roaster”—also earned a Snail of Approval from Slow Food Sacramento, the local branch of an international grassroots organization dedicated to high-quality, sustainable foods. Saturday’s celebration is free and happens from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. For more information, call (916) 454-1282, or visit www.templecoffee.com. —Jonathan Mendick

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FIND OF THE WEEK

History, in silhouette

Raw meat NEIL HAMBURGER

ICONS IN CONVERSATION: KARA WALKER

Watching a Neil Hamburger stand-up routine is a lesson in how to be awkward. The comedian also known COMEDY as Gregg Turkington drops jokes in a painfully stilted manner, and yet despite the weird pacing and twitchy body language, it all works in an Andy Kaufman-esque fashion. In other words, you’re probably going to be really uncomfortable sitting through one of his sets, but you won’t want to leave for fear of missing something really funny. Or really embarrassing. Whatever the case, Hamburger performs on Friday, November 15, at the Sacramento Comedy Spot. Showtime is 9 p.m., and tickets are $12. 1050 20th Street, Suite 130; (916) 444-3137; http://saccomedyspot.com/neil-hamburger.

In artist Kara Walker’s hands, the static silhouette becomes active, sometimes angry. Whether transformed into film, prints or metal sculpture, each piece explores the underlying tensions of race and gender issues. The Stockton native’s latest exhibition, Emancipating the Past: LECTURE Kara Walker’s Tales of Slavery and Power, is currently on display at the Crocker Art Museum through January 5, 2014. The collection features 60 pieces on loan from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation and comes with a warning for adults to preview the exhibit before allowing children to view it. Drawing from folklore, cartoons, film, romance novels, history, slave narratives and black Americana figures, Walker’s pieces have been called offensive, scary, brilliant and thought-provoking. The push-pull struggle for power finds new meaning in Walker’s black silhouettes. Two series that expand on that theme are The Emancipation Approximation, a collection of silk-screen prints drawing from Greek myth, and Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War: (Annotated), which depicts stark, woodcut lithographs overlaid with Walker’s silhouettes. Walker will discuss the politics and social meaning behind her works in a lecture at 3 p.m., on Sunday, November 17. Auditorium seats are sold-out, but the museum is offering a simulcast of Walker’s discussion in an adjacent room for a discounted price. $10 for museum members and $15 for nonmembers, plus $5-$10 for museum admission. Crocker Art Museum, 216 O Street; (916) 808-7000; www.crockerart museum.org.

—Rachel Leibrock

The fluff stuff THE RUSTIC PUFF Marshmallow lovers unite, for there’s a new puff in town. The Rustic Puff’s handcrafted gourmet marshmallows come in dozens of flavors that beg to be sampled together. Try the Apple Caramel Swirl with Creme De Mint or Espresso Sprinkle, perhaps. The Lodi-based company sells its sweets in varying sizes that cost $4-$7 per selection. There’s also a Puff of the Month Club, which gets members FOOD three triple packs of featured flavors. Membership ranges from $95 for three months to $325 for a year. That’s a whole lotta s’mores waiting to be made. www.therusticpuff.com. —Trina L. Drotar

Rock ’n’ roll ghosts THE REPLACEMENTS: WAXED-UP HAIR AND PAINTED SHOES

On stands

! E A R LY !

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More than 20 years after the Replacements called it quits, the band is arguably more popular than BOOK ever with a handful of successful reunion shows and its nomination to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No better way, then, to jump on the ’Mats bandwagon than with this hefty collection of band images. The Replacements: Waxed-Up Hair and Painted Shoes: The Photographic History (Voyageur Press, $30) is a visual history arranged in chronological order. Each chapter opens with an essay from Minneapolis-based critic Jim Walsh, and, in addition to tour pics, there’s documentation of fanzines, backstage passes, promo items and more. —Rachel Leibrock

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11.14.13

—Trina L. Drotar

Hot or not? This guy at work always flirts with me. Co-workers tease us about how he says “Hey, beautiful” every time he sees me and compliments me on how smart I am and what I accomplish. He and I talk every day, and sometimes we even fake-argue about stuff. Once when that happened, I actually got mad, and he made a point of checking on me and making sure I was OK. He and some of the other by JOEY GA guys were in the lunchroom RCIA talking about who’s hot at work. I was nearby and could a skj oey @ ne wsreview.c om hear them. He didn’t name me, and it bothers me more than I like to admit. Joey “Hot” is not “beautiful.” “Hot” translates to “I want to do her,” and celebrated her birthday at Mulvaney’s “beautiful” means “I’m in awe of Building & Loan. Yum! the exquisiteness of her presence and appearance.” A beautiful person can certainly radiate the kind of sexual energy that inspires lust. In fact, a lot of beautiful people are driven by career choices to cultivate their sex appeal. On the other hand, some people who cultivate their “hotness” are offended when strangers only want to know that hot body, and not the accompanying mind, heart or soul.

This man was honest with you from the beginning: He just wants to have fun. Why didn’t you believe him? That said, why are you bothered? You enjoy a classic work-based pseudo-romance. The only problem is your expectation that flirting should lead to something more. Remove that idea. What remains is the tedium of a workday broken up by sassy little conversations. If you want the interactions to mean more, dive below the superficial chats into your feelings about what is happening in your life and in the world. Or invite him out for coffee, a walk in the park or dinner. That way you can determine if the chemistry is real, or if he’s just using you to cultivate a reputation at work.

Got a problem?

Write, email or leave a message for Joey at the News & Review. Give your name, telephone number (for verification purposes only) and question—all correspondence will be kept strictly confidential.

I’ve been seeing this guy three times a week. When we met, he said he had a lot going on and just wanted to have some fun. He lives with his parents, is divorced and has his 3-year-old daughter half-time.

Write Joey, 1124 Del Paso Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95815; call (916) 498-1234, ext. 3206; or email askjoey@ newsreview.com.

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We’ve been intimate, talked about going on a little weekend trip, and I’ve met his parents. I’ve also hung out with him and his daughter. I told him that I want a relationship. He says no. How do I get him to see that we are in a relationship just without a commitment? This man was honest with you from the beginning: He just wants to have fun. Why didn’t you believe him? Yes, in Hollywood films and on the Hallmark Channel, one character breaks through another’s resistance to romance. In real life, this happens, too, but as an exception, not a rule. So, accept the relationship you are in as is. Or, end the relationship with no strings attached (no sending text messages to say hi and check on him, etc.), and date someone who shares your commitment destination. I met a gorgeous guy through an online dating site. After we emailed back and forth, he invited me to his comedy show. I went with friends, we had a blast and we hung out with him after the show. He sent friend requests to all of us but messaged me saying he hoped to see me soon. A week later, he sent a “Thinking of you” text. I responded, asking to get together, but got no response. Then yesterday, I got an invitation to his upcoming comedy show. I’ve seen him on the dating site, but he has not contacted me to go out. What’s going on? Marketing. Some entertainers (yes, including those in the “adult” category) use online dating sites to troll for customers, not potential soul mates. If you’re looking for a date, keep searching. Ω

Demand a Right to Vote on $350+ Million for a New Arena Sign the Voter Approval petition! www.StopArenaSubsidy.com/petition Phone: (916) 444-5555 Email: StopArenaSubsidy@gmail.com Time Tested Books: 1114 21st St., Sacramento * The Voter Approval for Public Funding of Professional Sports Arena Act will allow Sacramento City taxpayers to decide if they want to spend more than $350,000,000 in public funds on a new professional sports arena.

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Meditation of the Week “You don’t have to be cruel to bend the arc of history toward justice,” said the Very Rev. Brian Baker, dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, at a recent screening of God Loves Uganda. The powerful documentary shows American evangelicals exporting bigotry to Africa in the guise of fundamentalist Christian values, and pushing Uganda to consider the death penalty for gays and lesbians. Is that what Jesus would do?

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Still Crazy Horse after all these years Crazy Horse and Custer Sacramento Theatre Company stepped into a cultural hornet’s nest in staging this two-actor show about the iconic Lakota warrior and the man by Kel Munger white America reveres for failing. Crazy Horse and Custer, by Sacramento playwright Jon George, looks at the destruction of Native Americans as part of the United States’ ongoing vision of “manifest destiny,” but it does so in a way that the descendants of the man most of us know as Crazy Horse find offensive. The protests from Lakota tribal members led to a script rewrite, but the changes were not entirely satisfactory from the perspective of Crazy Horse’s descendants; the problem arises from the main theatrical premise of the play: the “ghosts”—afterlife spirits—of both the warrior and the cavalry officer in

tICKetS Nov 08 - Dec 1 - Davis Musical Theatre presents Oliver!: $18 tix for $9 Nov 22 - Dec 21 - Arden Playhouse presents Arsenic & Old Lace: $18 tix for $9 Nov 22 - Tainted Love @ Harlow’s: $15 tix for $7.50 Nov 29 - Utz! and the Shuttlecocks @ Harlow’s: $15 tix for $7.50 Nov 30 - Pety Theft/Zoo Station @ Harlow’s: $15 tix for $7.50

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Crazy Horse and Custer, 12:30 and 6:30 p.m. Wednesday; 6:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; $12-$35. Sacramento Theatre Company, 1419 H Street; (916) 443-6722; www.sactheatre.org. Through December 15.

www.newsreview.com 32 | SN&R | 11.14.13

Directed by Michael Laun, Crazy Horse and Custer is an opportunity—always needed—to rethink our history. It’s also a good reminder that, although the Battle of the Greasy Grass, which we remember as the Little Big Horn, was fought 137 years ago, we’re still blasting away. Or, to paraphrase William Faulkner, “The past isn’t over. It isn’t even past.” Ω

5The Sunset Limited Eason Donner’s current directing gig might well be his easiest: guiding local acting legends (and Elly lifetime achievement award winners) Ed Claudio and James Wheatley in Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited. It’s a couple of old dudes sittin’ around talkin’. The two veteran actors and their young director turn McCarthy’s verbose “drama in novel form” into a riveting philosophical discussion of faith vs. intellect. The characters are called White (Claudio) and Black (Wheatley), for their respective skin colors, and offstage, just before the play begins, Black has saved White from throwing himself in front of a train. In Black’s sparse apartment, the suicidal, atheistic college professor and the ex-con-turned-preacher who rescued him engage in a battle of wits over their existential dilemma. That neither has all the answers or convincingly wins the argument doesn’t detract from the power of their encounter. Edgy and agitated, Claudio powerfully portrays a smart man at the end of his rope, convinced of the futility of life and clinging to only one hope: that when it’s over, it is truly over. Wheatley is captivating from the moment he opens his mouth. Alternately at ease and coiled up, he gives a remarkably textured performance. They are a rare pair and this—a reprise from last year’s successful run—is a magnificent show. PHOTO BY KELLY CHRISTOFFERSEN

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conversation. This is at the heart of the play, since there is no way that Crazy Horse (Louie Leonardo), who informs us that his name is more accurately translated as “Horses Are Crazy,” would ever have been able to have the conversation with George Armstrong Custer (Kirk Blackinton) that is the basis of this play. While the arguments about cultural appropriation and respect for spiritual beliefs are relevant to art—this is the same sort of discussion that surrounds representations of Mohammed or Jesus—as a play, and using a theatrical premise with a long history, Crazy Horse and Custer has much to recommend it. Leonardo’s performance is top-notch, though heavier on the anger and resignation than anything else. As Custer, Blackinton surmounts an appallingly bad blond wig to give the character a touch of vulnerability beneath the well-known bluster and ambition.

—Jim Carnes

The Sunset Limited, 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday; $17. Actor’s Workshop at Three Penny Theatre, 1721 25th Street; (916) 501-6104; www.actinsac.com. Through November 24.

NOW PLAYING

Buried Child

Macbeth

The family portrayed in Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prizewinning play Buried Child is not just dysfunctional—they are dysfunctional times infinity. This is a Midwest farm family with a downward dynasty path and backyard buried secrets, one who is disintegrating at a rapid pace as they watch their American dream wither and die due to circumstances beyond and within their control. Buried Child is also a story that plays with the audience’s emotions—providing unsympathetic characters, storylines and outcomes that are entertaining and highly disturbing (warning!), climaxing with a last scene reveal that is hinted at, but still packs a punch once delivered. F, Sa 8pm;

Stage at the Wilkerson Theatre in the R25 Arts Complex, 1723 25th St.; (916) 606-5050; www.ovation stage.com. P.R.

Detroit Detroit is a play with great potential that doesn’t quite deliver the satisfying payoff it first promises. The award-winning play by Lisa D’Amour about the unlikely friendship between two sets of neighbors takes us down a pretty entertaining road, but fails to find the more interesting paths. Instead, the plot increasingly becomes more sitcomesque with a strange, disjointed ending that feels a bit preachy and tagged on. Th, F 8pm; Sa 5 & 9pm; Su 2pm. Through 11/17. $23-$35. B Street Theatre, 2711 B St.; (916) 443-5300; www.bstreettheatre.org. P.R.

FOUL

2 FAIR

3 GOOD

Monty Python’s Spamalot

Live orchestra! Knights that say “Ni!” Minor flesh wounds! Galloping coconuts! Flying cows! Shrubbery! Flying French insults! It’s all here in the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail—a tribute to nonsensical British humor and a mockery of all musicals ever staged. It’s not the best musical of all time, but it’s the best musical ever for Python fans. And Runaway Stage rocks it: a talented, enthusiastic cast with great voices and tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, a campy chorus line and creative cheesy costumes and sets. The awesome live orchestra nails the wickedly funny songs. F, Sa 8pm; Su 2pm. Through 12/1. $18-$25. Runaway Stage Productions at the 24th Street Theatre, 2791 24th St.; (916) 207-1226; www.runawaystage. com. P.R.

4 WELL-DONE

5 SUBLIME–DON’T MISS

Short reviews by Patti Roberts.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CARLOS RODRIGUEZ

THINK FREE.

Su 2pm. No performance on 11/9. Through 11/24. $15-$18. Ovation

There’s always plenty of gloom and doom in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Now, Capital Stage has brought back the company’s founder Stephanie Gularte as director for its firstever Shakespeare production, and Gularte has written an original adaptation of the famous Scottish play, projecting it into a postapocalyptic world, that adds even more gloomy doom to the tale of treachery and madness. W 7pm; Th, F, Sa 8pm; Su 2pm. Through 11/24. $22-$36. Capital Stage, 2215 J St.; (916) 995-5464; www.cap stage.org. P.R.

Carlos Rodriguez’s head shot or selfie? You decide!

Local laughs Carlos Rodriguez started off telling jokes at age 16 at an open-mic night at Old Ironsides. Since then, he’s launched into a career as a stand-up comic, actor and podcast host. This weekend, he headlines at Laughs Unlimited with another Sacramentan, Dennis Martinez, opening. Rodriguez’s style mines personal anecdotes (growing up poor, traveling, scamming people), observational humor, self- deprecation and offbeat color. The man voted “Best person to make you laugh” by SN&R readers in 2013 also co-wrote and starred in the short film Control, and has toured the world performing stand-up. Oh yeah, he also “went to 7 high schools, grew up on welfare and battled addiction.” In other words, it’s time to grab tickets and see a hardworking, homegrown comic at one of Sacto’s premier comedy clubs. No joke. Friday, November 15, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, November 16, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.; Sunday, November 17, at 7 p.m.; $10-$20. Laughs Unlimited, 1207 Front Street; (916) 446-8128; www.laughsunlimited.com. —Jonathan Mendick

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Dallas Buyers Club

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“ULTIMATE REDFORD.” - Mary F. Pols, TIME MAGAZINE

ALL IS LOST

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7 days a week

In Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, a hard-drinking, hard-drugging, promiscuous Texas good-old boy with a weakby Jim Lane ness for rodeo and anonymous, unprotected sex with strangers. It’s 1985, and the danger inherent in his lifestyle hasn’t managed to sink into Ron’s thick head. He and his pals make crude jokes about Rock Hudson, who has just outed himself as an AIDS victim. Then, when Ron is injured at his day job as an electrician, he gets a nasty surprise during what he expected would be a routine trip to the emergency room. Two doctors enter his cubicle wearing gloves and face masks, and they ask him if he knows that he’s HIV-positive. Ron’s reaction is immediate, angry, profane denial—“I ain’t no homo.” Nevertheless, they tell him he probably has only 30 days to live.

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34 | SN&R | 11.14.13

It’s based on a true story. The real Ron Woodroof died in 1992, having stretched those 30 days out to six years. Woodroof’s sister and daughter say that the original prognosis was for six months. Evidently, writers Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack shorted it to one month to increase the drama of Woodroof’s determination to survive. Neither the sister nor the daughter are represented in the movie, so it’s an open question exactly how much creative license Borten and Wallack have taken, but it hardly matters—the basic story is dramatic enough. Woodroof originally embarked on a course of treatment with azidothymidine, known more commonly as AZT—at the time, the only Food and Drug Administration-approved drug for AIDS. When the AZT only made him sicker, Woodroof explored other treatments, including drugs that were available in other countries but not in the United States. In time, he established the Dallas Buyers Club for AIDS victims, getting around FDA regulations by charging a $400 monthly membership fee, then supplying the drugs for free. This club, and Woodroof’s battles with the FDA bureaucracy and its pharmaceuticalcompany partners, form the spine of Borten and

Wallack’s rather slow, episodic script. Director Jean-Marc Valée plods right along with the script, and the movie moves in fits and starts without building much momentum. What makes Dallas Buyers Club a satisfying experience is its two key performances. Matthew McConaughey famously lost 50 pounds to play the wasted, emaciated Woodroof. His large, handsome head looks even larger poised on a scrawny neck and spindly shoulders that seem too weak and brittle to support it, and his sunken cheeks and eyes are almost painful to look at. Behind that startling exterior, however, McConaughey completes the process of rescuing his career from the junk pile it had fallen into with crap like The Wedding Planner and Failure to Launch, and where it threatened to stay. The rescue process started some time ago and includes his performances in Bernie, The Lincoln Lawyer, Mud, Magic Mike and others. McConaughey’s Woodroof is an antihero, a homophobic bigot and more than a little slimy, who finds a deepened humanity in the face of death. The actor doesn’t sentimentalize the character: He gives it to us straight. The other performance is Jared Leto as Rayon, a transgendered woman, also suffering from AIDS, who meets Woodroof during their respective AZT treatments, later becomes a customer for his smuggled drugs, and finally his business partner in the club. Leto (who lost 30 pounds himself for the part) inhabits the role completely. Rayon is at once frail and spirited, courageous and terrified, tough and tender, funny and sad. There’s been Oscar buzz about both McConaughey (lead) and Leto (support) in Dallas Buyers Club. Frankly, I’d bet money on Leto.

Matthew McConaughey’s Woodroof is an antihero, a homophobic bigot who finds a deepened humanity in the face of death. There are good supporting performances as well from Jennifer Garner as a sympathetic doctor whose efforts on Woodroof and Rayon’s behalf puts her own career on the line, Steve Zahn as a cop buddy of Woodroof’s and Griffin Dunne as a medium-shady doctor dealing in black-market drugs from a grimy office in Mexico. But Dallas Buyers Club belongs pretty firmly to McConaughey and Leto. Their prickly relationship is at the wounded heart of the movie, and it’s their performances you’ll remember. Ω

Orange Shandy is here.

by DANIEL BARNES & JIM LANE

12 Years a Slave

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

“Wait, I don’t even get an imaginary George Clooney to keep me company?”

A.C.O.D.

The title stands for “adult children of divorce”—one of whom (Adam Scott) is forced to contend anew with his long-andbitterly divorced parents (Richard Jenkins, Catherine O’Hara) during the run-up to his brother’s wedding. The script by Ben Karlin and first-time director Stu Zicherman is a highly polished comic gem—perceptive, often excruciatingly funny and with a ring of sardonic truth. Zicherman directs with a breezy assurance that belies his rookie status, and the movie has all the earmarks of indie filmmaking at its best. There’s also a top-drawer supporting cast (Jane Lynch, Amy Poehler, Clark Duke, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jessica Alba, Ken Howard), all of whom seem to have piled aboard for the sheer fun of being part of the show. The ending, upbeat yet ambiguous, is a particularly nice touch. J.L.

A man alone on a sailboat deep in the Indian Ocean (Robert Redford) is beset by a series of disasters, beginning with a collision with a derelict cargo container—and getting worse from there. Redford is the entire cast, and we don’t even know his character’s name (he’s identified in the credits only as “Our Man”). With no one to talk to, he speaks hardly a word, facing each crisis with a preternatural calm, sinking almost imperceptibly into despair. It’s a one-man show, all right, but the one man isn’t Redford, it’s writer-director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call), who turns in a virtuoso performance in both areas. Comparison with Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is unavoidable, and it’s high praise that Chandor’s movie holds up under it—it’s not as tense as Gravity, but just as suspenseful, and almost as exhilarating. J.L.

About Time

would have worked if the actress playing Carrie was anything more than adequate, but Chloë Grace Moretz is overly mannered and false. That same artificiality permeates the proceedings—everyone here looks too pretty, everything feels too polished, and every theme is too obvious and strident. D.B.

When he turns 21, a young man (Domhnall Gleeson) learns from his father (Bill Nighy) that the family’s men can time travel back to moments in their own lives, where they get the chance to correct mistakes—but often with unforeseen consequences. Writer-director Richard Curtis’ premise is a bit on the twee side, and he tends to doodle idly with it—running 123 minutes, the movie sometimes threatens to wear out its welcome. But the idea does have its appeal—who wouldn’t like a do-over now and then?—and the cast certainly has charm in abundance to compensate for the occasional spinning of wheels. Gleeson (son of Brendan) is clearly going places, and he holds his own with both the ever-reliable Nighy and the always-radiant Rachel McAdams as the true love he keeps meeting, losing and meeting again. J.L.

Blue Is the Warmest Color

Those who love Brian De Palma’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel Carrie will probably regard director Kimberly Peirce’s slavish devotion to the 1976 film as pointless, but newcomers are more likely to embrace this self-aware update. The De Palma original is a minor classic that overshadows this nearly scene-for-scene reproduction, although for anyone arriving to the new Carrie without baggage, the mostly intact story is still queasily irresistible. There are significant departures here, some of them disappointing compromises, while others show that Peirce and her collaborators have larger goals beyond updating Stephen King’s story for the online- bullying generation. This

NEWS

Ender’s Game

For years now, the trend in Hollywood franchise entertainment has run toward pompous bloat, and writer-director Gavin Hood doesn’t stray far from that formula in adapting Ender’s Game to the big screen. It’s a schlocky sci-fi film that wants to bring up weighty concepts like genocide, neofascism, domestic surveillance and technological dehumanization specifically to avoid dealing with them. An adequate Asa Butterfield plays Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a ferocious child genius in a future world decimated from attacks by an insectlike race known as the Formics. Determined to prevent any future attacks, the world leaders establish a brutal training program to transform video-game-obsessed kids into hyperaggressive military masterminds. Much of Ender’s Game feels strangely anonymous, a grab bag of loose ends borrowed from more notable sources. There is a seething ambition present here that is not only unrealized, but largely not even attempted. D.B.

Carrie

BEFORE

Diana

Diana was directed by Olivier Hirschbiegel, the German filmmaker of Downfall who came to America for 2007’s disastrous The Invasion, and now, apparently, doesn’t care what he makes. This is a tacky, media sound-bite biopic that tells you everything you already knew about the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and presents it as insider dish. The movie only covers Diana’s already wellcovered last couple years, and as such would have felt more at home on the USA Network in 1999. Naomi Watts is an excellent actress, but the vacuous script boxes her into a flavorless and ennobling impersonation. Her lack of resemblance to Diana makes her most effective when shot from behind, leaving the blond bob wig and high-waisted pants to do the heavy lifting. A sparkless romance between Diana and a Pakistani doctor (Naveen Andrews, looking positively constipated) takes center stage—it’s like watching wax figures melt. D.B.

Arty soft-core sex is part of pornography’s vanishing middle class, but Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or-winning character study Blue Is the Warmest Color gives it new life. Adèle Exarchopoulos is Adèle, an emotionally messy high schooler who becomes infatuated with a blue-haired lesbian played by Léa Seydoux. Both actresses are convincing and passionate in roles that could have easily veered into caricature, and Kechiche’s almost agonizingly persistent use of close-ups doesn’t allow them to fake it for a second. Over the course of three hours, they slowly drift together and slowly drift apart, but not before consummating their love in a series of gonzo sex scenes that earned the film an NC-17 rating. Based on a French graphic novel, Blue Is the Warmest Color unfurls at its own languorous pace, allowing the characters to reveal themselves naturally, rather than through narrative urgency. D.B.

All Is Lost

Gravity

Two astronauts (Sandra Bullock, George Clooney) are stranded in space when a debris storm demolishes their space shuttle and wipes out the rest

FEATURE

STORY

of the crew. Director Alfonso Cuarón, who co-wrote the script with his son Jonás Cuarón, has crafted one of the great whiteknuckle thrillers of all time—as airtight as the pressure suits the astronauts wear, without a wasted syllable and just enough featherlight touches to keep the tension from becoming entirely unbearable. Despite Clooney’s presence, it’s a virtual one-woman show for Bullock, and she’s as brilliant as the movie itself, showing the panic, despair, hope and hopelessness in her character’s struggle to survive. The story is so riveting that Cuarón’s virtuosic touches go almost unnoticed, but they’re there, with stunning visual effects to boot. J.L.

Last Vegas

Thor: The Dark World

Four old buddies (Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline) gather for a bachelor party in Las Vegas for the last one to marry, where they unpack ancient baggage in the course of proving there’s life in the old boys yet. Indeed there is, and writer Dan Fogelman and director Jon Turteltaub should thank God for it. Without these guys—plus Mary Steenburgen as a lounge singer who befriends them—the movie would be less than nothing. (It’s hard to believe that this wheezing retread of The Hangover came from the man who wrote the marvelous Crazy, Stupid, Love.) Douglas and De Niro add some dramatic heft while Freeman and (especially) Kline handle comic relief. Steenburgen blends right in, and has a nice singing voice, to boot. Joanna Gleason adds bookend cameos as Kline’s wife back home. J.L.

The superhero gets a second solo album with Thor: The Dark World, which manages to outpace the first Thor in terms of atonality and gobbledygook. This time, the crown prince of Asgard battles elves who seek to bring darkness to the interconnected universes, for reasons that probably make sense to them. These elves have been hiding for millennia in the far reaches of outer space, unnoticed by Asgard, even though they have a guy whose sole purpose in life is to watch the entire universe. Natalie Portman is back as Thor’s wooden love interest Jane, who gets possessed by a powerful form of energy that the elves want to use as an apocalyptic weapon. It would be nice to credit director Alan Taylor for the hilarious irony of having the drowsy Portman play a woman “consumed by energy,” but it’s probably just bad acting. D.B.

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Siren songs Freeport talks sea shanties, drum machines and that peaceful, haunted feeling

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MUSIC: A GALA NIGHT WITH

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This is much better than one of those scary cruise-ship voyages.

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See Freeport on Friday, November 15, at 6:30 p.m. at Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, located at 2708 J Street. The cover is $7-$10, and the Jahari Sai Quartet is also on the bill. Visit www.facebook.com/ freeportmusic for more info.

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36 | SN&R | 11.14.13

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a drummer exactly—rather a drum machine the members named “Doctor Rhythm,” to be exact. “We’ve apparently offended a lot of drummers from Sacramento when we posted a picture of Doctor Rhythm [on Facebook],” says Lohman with a laugh. “[They] were offended at being replaced by a robot.” OK, no one was actually upset. Bands use drum machines all the time. Then again, most bands don’t name their machines, nor refer to them as a band member. That said, Freeport’s decision to use technology instead of living, breathing person had to do mostly with not wanting to alter the trio’s dynamic: Since 2011, the three have worked to refine their sound and build on those gorgeous harmonies. Let’s back up a bit. The band actually formed in 2006, but never got that serious and eventually broke up. Then, in 2011, the women decided it was time for a reboot. “I never let Freeport go,” Stern says now. “I was just really excited that Jeannie and Madeleine wanted to give it a go again.” Now, the band is set to premiere a new collection of songs (Doctor Rhythm in tow) at the Harlow’s show. Afterward, it’ll take a break to write more material. How exactly the drum machine fits into that remains to be seen, the band members say. The idea is to keep the sound organic but also be open to new possibilities. pHoTo by SHoka

4USBJHIU / $IBTFS

The term “sea gaze,” which is how local band Freeport describes its genre of music, isn’t just some clever name the members devised—it really is by Aaron Carnes the best description for its sound. The band is, on one hand, heavily influenced by early ’90s-era music: moody, atmospheric shoegaze by the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Lush, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. On the other hand, it is also quite influenced by sea shanties.

It isn’t just that the group’s songs sound like slow, surreal pirate sing-alongs—although they do—it’s that the sea is an integral part of the band as a whole: It serves as a place of inspiration on all levels, and lyrically, the ocean is a recurring theme. To that end, Freeport, which performs on Friday, November 15, at Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, has even planned a songwriting retreat to the northern coast. “I think the sea is a good symbol in that it represents the freedom and also the terror of something so vast,” says pianist and vocalist Madeleine Lohman. The trio, rounded out by Jeannie Howell and Joy Stern (both on guitar and vocals), creates haunting vocal harmonies, which float atop snail-slow, drumless melodies. It’s a sound punctuated with plenty of keyboard textures and the effect makes for an eerie wash of sounds. The incompleteness of this sea-gaze sound is what makes it so chilling, at least in part. Without the anchor of a drummer, the songs are rendered thoroughly trancelike, even with the sea-shanty waltzes that inspire the guitar rhythms. But that’s all about to change—the lack of drummer part, anyway. The band recently decided to add another member and experiment with sound. Well, not

Without the anchor of a drummer, the songs are rendered thoroughly trancelike. “I think [we’ll be using the machine to] enrich the music, to add dynamics … to just to make the final point,” Howell says. With rhythm taking a more overt role in the band, the members say they’re taking care not to lose the haunting quality that has so prominently defined them in the past. If anything, Lohman says, they hope that more variations will make the music more chilling. “It’s very much in process. All of us hope it’s adding to that haunted feeling,” she says. “[The sound’s] not going to get happy and have handclaps going on it anytime soon.” Ω

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THURSDAY 11/14 - SUNDAY 11/17 THE PITBULL OF COMEDY!

BOBBY SLAYTON

ROBERT DUCHAINE, JOE TOBIN remained on stage for the rest of the show. Throughout the evening, WEDNESDAY 11/20 fri 11/15 the five-piece group performed FROM COMICS UNLEASHED AND NICK MOM! a bunch of new material off of REGGIE all request covers 9pm // $5 Latryx’s The Second Album, just STEELE sat 11/16 released on November 5. The THURSDAY 11/21 crowd responded well to the new FREDDIE RAINBOW 9PM // $5 tunes, waving arms to the highPRESENTS: energy “Deliberate Gibberish,” and GENDER NIGHT sun 11/17 nodding heads along to the more FRIDAY 11/22 - SUNDAY 11/24 serious “Exclamation Point.” FROM E’S CHELSEA LATELY! Both Shimura and Daumont 7pm // free engaged the audience with mon 11/18 impromptu banter. Daumont drew 8pm // free WEDNESDAY 11/27 - SUNDAY 12/1 cheers and a few laughs when he FROM NBC’S THE OFFICE! announced that everyone is welcome tue 11/19 MIKE E. at Latryx shows, including both WINFIELD “vegans and people who love to eat classic rock & blues review bacon every day.” A few minutes 8pm FRIDAY 12/13 - SATURDAY 12/14 FROM E’S CHELSEA LATELY! later, Shimura explained that the Wed 11/20 MICHAEL YO group nearly canceled the show TREVOR HILL, ROBERTO VILLALOBOS because he and Gray were both sick. 9PM If true, no one could really tell they FOLLOW US ON TWITTER! were feeling ill. The whole set was UPcOMING sHOWs: ;>0;;,9 *64 7<5*/305,:(* -(*,)662 *64 73:(* 11/22 zuhg life presents: played with enthusiasm, and the two WWW.PUNCHLINESAC.COM e bellu todo mundo, ideateam, adrian emcees managed to lead the smallbut-energetic crowd into spurts of CALL CLUB FOR SHOWTIMES: (916) 925-5500 908 K Street • sac 2100 ARDEN WAY s IN THE HOWE ‘BOUT ARDEN SHOPPING CENTER fist pumping, coordinated jumping 2 DRINK MINIMUM. 18 & OVER. I.D. REQUIRED. 916.446.4361 and call-and-response vocals. TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE CLUB BOX wwwMarilynsOnK.com On several occasions, Shimura OFFICE WITH NO SERVICE CHARGE. singled out particular groups of people with requests that they enjoy themselves and dance more. He also poked fun at the people who 2708 J Street “cheered for the bacon louder than Sacramento, CA the music,” people sitting around lackadaisically in the VIP booths, 916.441.4693 and the guys standing at the bar www.harlows.com ordering IPAs. At the end of the set—which *ALL TIMES LISTED BELOW ARE DOOR TIMES* included an encore and concluded at 1:15 a.m.—I was left wondering: - November 14 COMING SOON Why were there only about 100 November 17 people on hand to witness such an Nov 22 Tainted Love entertaining show? I don’t want to Nov 23 Tainted Love speculate, or place the blame on NEWSPAPER: SAC NEWS & REVIEW Nov 29 UTZ! and The Shuttlecocks anyone or anything—especially the Nov 30 Petty Theft and Zoo Station DATE: 11/14/2013 performers, the fans who showedPUBLISH up, $7adv • 7pm Dec 01 Church Of Misery / Giant Squid $20adv • 7pm the group’s management, the venue Dec 06 Dishwalla ART DUE: 11/6 or promoters. - November 15 Dec 07 Al Stewart Here’s how I see it: I was CONTENT: PUNCHLINE Dec 08 Alasdair Fraser lucky. I didn’t have to squeeze Dec 09 Howie Day SIZE: 1.87” X 5.67” my way through a crowd. I could - November 20 Dec 10 THEM HILLS easily order a craft brew, see ART PRODUCTION: SACHA PFEIFER (720) 239-3411 Dec 13 Dead Winter Carpenters $7adv • 6pm the show from a seat near the Dec 14 Two Gallants back of the venue, and feel like I NOTES: Dec 17 Charlie Hunter - November 15 was among a bunch of intelligent Dec 19 Aggrolites consumers listening to good music— Dec 20 Joy and Madness and not among the herd of drunk the Reel Dec 31 Lovefool Saturday-night revelers heading to $15 • 7pm Jan 04 Mark Curry/ 58 Fury / FMK some of the town’s bougie nightN-Pire Da Great • Blee clubs on a Second Saturday. Jan 08 Andy McKee

Real wild style: Hip-hop duo Latryx performed an energetic set at Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub on November 9. Too bad not a lot of people showed up to see it. Based on the fact that three of the five people onstage during the group’s set attended UC Davis, one would anticipate a huge turnout. Instead, only about 100 people gathered in front of the stage to dance along to tunes from the under-the-radar hiphop group—while a few dozen more sipped drinks and sat in VIP booths. But first, Sacramento hip-hop group Destructikonz opened the show. The group’s three emcees—Floe Montana, Reflective Intelligence and Wyzdom—took to the stage around 11 p.m. They were joined by a fourth guy who appeared to be a hype man, plus a guitarist, bassist, drummer and keyboardist. Throughout the ensuing 45-minute set, Destructikonz alternated between rapping, singing and shouting on top of instrumentals that varied from raucous power chords to more laid-back funky beats. This created an atmosphere that fluctuated between a Beastie Boys-eque show and a jazzy live performance reminiscent of hip-hop band the Roots. Near the end of the set, extended guitar and bass solos showed off the jam-band-like capabilities of the group. Latryx appeared around midnight, kicking off its set with its eponymous song. “Latryx,” recorded in 1996, and released on 1997’s The Album, featuring the group’s two emcees—Lateef the Truthspeaker (Lateef Daumont) and Lyrics Born (Tom Shimura)— rapping at the same time. While this made it nearly impossible to isolate or understand what either of two was saying, it switched the audience’s focus from the lyrical content to the rhythm and timbre of the rappers. Lateef’s airy alto and staccato rhymes juxtaposed against Lyrics’ scruffy 16th-note-filled tenor lines sounded more like two lead soloists in a Dixieland jazz band than an experimental hip-hop group. Hard to dance along with, but fun to listen to. Backing the lyricists for the evening were DJ Zeph, drummer Darian Gray; and then, after about 15 minutes, singer (and Shimura’s wife) Joyo Velarde hopped onstage to sing background vocals on the Lyrics Born hit “I Like It, I Love It.” This song, which the crowd seemed familiar with, kicked up the energy a notch; and Velarde

jukebox johnny rooster mc clintock

open mic talent showcase

JO KOY

karaoke gset

wild wednesdays

SEE HOW THEY RUN AUTUMN SKY RICKY BERGER

FREEPORT, THE JAHARI SAI QUARTET KAHALI ODEN

MASON JENNINGS

ANNA NALICK

$7adv • 10pm

—Jonathan Mendick

jon at han m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m

- November 21 -

PAPA

- November 16 -

JELLO BIAFRA & THE GUANTANAMO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

For more information, visit http://latyrxauthentic.com.

WATERS $12 • 7pm

Pins of Light

NEWS

FEATURE

STORY

ARTS&CULTURE

HARLOWSNITECLUB HARLOWSNIGHTCLUB HARLOWSNIGHTCLUB

$15 • 8pm

BEFORE

AFTER

11.14.13

SN&R

15FRI

16SAT

A Benefit for Safe Ground

The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit

Charles Albright

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine

Luna’s Café & Juice Bar, 7 p.m., $7-$10

Auburn Event Center, 7 p.m., $17.50-$20

Aid concerts are often highly publicized events that raise funds for disaster victims, but Sacramento is no slouch in the benefit-concert BENEFIT arena. Human rights for all— even those without homes—is the focus of a four-hour smorgasbord of rock, jazz, folk and funk. Joining event coordinator Jenn Rogar (pictured) are Sal Valentino, Marty Taters, Brittany Vanessa, Hans Eberbach, Miss Nyxi, Jackie Carroll Jazz Trio, Sad Juicees and a special yet-to-be-announced guest. This is the third benefit concert to raise funds for Safe Ground Sacramento, the five-year-old organization founded by the homeless of the city’s tent city. Proceeds from this all-ages event will also go to the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee. 1414 16th Street, http://lunascafe.com.

Bows & Arrows, 8 p.m., $5

The popularity of roots music has grown steadily in the last few years, and Northern California is turning into a veritable hotbed for the style because of bands like the Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit. For almost a decade, this sextet has skillfully weaved a variety of genres including bluegrass (“The Very Best”), Americana (“Lost Claim”) and rock (“One Yard”), and has done so without making albums feel like random patchwork collections of tracks. The country number “Little Bit O’ Livin’” highlights the band’s focus on ROOTS simple, day-to-day subjects, giving its most recent album, 2012’s Old Excuses, a consistently salt-of-theearth flavor. 145 Elm Avenue in Auburn, www.thegoodluckthriftstoreoutfit.com.

Local punk maniac Charles Albright releases the long-awaited LP version of his album The First Four Years this Saturday. Like the cover art (which features a cartoon depiction of Albright with five hands playing bass, guitar and drums at once) implies, he is a one-man PUNK punk-rock band, at least in the recording realm. Live, he has an actual band. While the fast drums and distorted guitars of the LP are reminiscent of about a million other bands currently playing basements all across the country, there’s something odd about The First Four Years: It’s at once a manic garage-punk explosion and a psychedelic, intimate bedroom recording. 1815 19th Street, http://charlesalbright. bandcamp.com.

—Brian Palmer

—Aaron Carnes

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, 9 p.m., $15-$18 The Dead Kennedys were one of a handful of bands that led not just the hardcore movement, but paved the way into the thenunknown world of DIY touring. Frontman Jello Biafra was also an early pioneer in the indie record-label movement. Unlike SST Records, the label Greg Ginn of Black Flag ran, Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles is still signing new, interesting underground bands. Biafra formed the Guantanamo School of Medicine just a few years ago, on his 50th birthday. ROCK Its first album, The Audacity of Hype, came out in 2009. Musically, it’s not a big stray from the Dead Kennedys’ surf-punk-hardcore sound. 2708 J Street, www.facebook.com/jbgsm.

—Aaron Carnes

—Trina L. Drotar

acE oF SpadES Thursday, November 14

MISFITS

The ATTAck - The SecreTionS Avenue SAinTS - kill The PrecedenT

saTurday, November 16

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

All Ages Welcome!

saTurday, November 30

puSha T PluS SPeciAl gueSTS

friday, december 6

E-40

ThE MowglI’S

PluS SPeciAl gueSTS

suNday, November 17

TRoMboNE ShoRTY & oRlEaNS aVENuE saTurday, November 23

MEllowhIgh

hodgy beATS - domo geneSiS - lefT brAin

friday, November 29

pRoblEM PluS SPeciAl gueSTS

COMING

SOON

12/13 Great White

blondfire - hunTer hunTed

12/31 Dirt Nasty

saTurday, december 7

01/15 Tribal Seeds

FRaNkofhaNNoN TeSlA & johN coRabI of moTleT crue/rATT suNday, december 8

TalIb kwElI m-Theory - m. born

wedNesday, december 11

blood oN ThE daNcE FlooR

fArewell my love - The relAPSe SymPhony - hAley roSe Awoken ShAdowS - oh! The horror

02/07 The Devil Makes Three 02/27 J Boog 03/13 Umphrey’s McGee 03/15 The Expendables 03/20 The Wailers 03/26 Moonshine Bandits & The Lacs 03/30 Reverend Horton Heat

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

38 | SN&R |

11.14.13

17SUN

18MON

20WED

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue

Mason Jennings

Drake

Anna Nalick

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, 8 p.m., $20-$25

Ace of Spades, 7:30 p.m., $37.50 Although he’s only 27, it seems as if Trombone Shorty (Troy Andrews) has been around forever. Maybe that’s because the dynamic trombonist, trumpeter, vocalist and composer has been making music since he was 6 years old in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. He and his outstanding group revere the standards of their New Orleans heritage, but can also barrel into deep funk or fiery rock jams at the drop of a hat. Lately, Shorty JAZZ/ROCK has been busy mentoring youth musicians in his hometown, released a great new album called Say That to Say This and continues to inspire people everywhere to get up and move. 1417 R Street, http://tromboneshorty.com.

Jennings has had his eye on the long game from the jump. He dropped out of high school and took to the road with his guitar at 16. FOLK-ROCK Though he settled in Minneapolis, he’s always traveled freely between dry, acoustic folk; plush, confessional pop; rootsy rock; and even political dub (“United States Global Empire”). He’s a literate storyteller with a laid-back shuffling drawl that suggests G. Love channeling Bob Dylan’s lilting protomumble. A fine writer, Jennings’ greatest gift is the ability to be clever in an offhand manner that doesn’t undermine the earnestness of his songs. He’s supporting his 10th studio release, Always Been. 2708 J Street, www.masonjennings.com.

Sleep Train Arena, 7 p.m., $47.25-$97.25 I’m probably one of the few people who listens to mostly underground hip-hop but can also stand Drake. Actually, I’m kind of fond of the way he creates a broody atmosphere using a blend of sparse beats, unusual instrumentals, introspective lyrics and singing-slash-rapping. Plus, the fact that he (allegedly) got into a fight with Chris Brown over Rihanna kinda turned me into a fangirl. Yes, he’s “soft,” too mainstream and RAP/POP overly cocky. Fine with me. After all, I’d rather listen to a mainstream rapper that rhymes mainly about love and heartbreak than one that writes about cars, money and clubbing. R&B singer Miguel and rapper Future open. 1 Sports Parkway, www.drakeofficial.com.

—Chris Parker

—Paul Piazza

Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub, 8 p.m., $15 Following the success of her platinumselling 2005 hit, “Breathe (2 AM),” singersongwriter Anna Nalick broke away from Sony Music to pursue her own music styles. While the tracks from her new album, Broken POP ROCK Doll & Odds & Ends, retain some of the wispy lyricism of her previous songs, Nalick explores some new territory with bluesy acoustics, lilting vocals and a softly pulsing bass line. Nalick’s haunting, vulnerable lyrics don’t stray far from the sense of early-2000s nostalgia. Opening this show at Harlow’s Restaurant & Nightclub is a Sammies-winning five-piece pop-rock group from Placerville, the Reel. 2708 J Street, www.annanalick.com.

—Jessica Rine

—Jonathan Mendick

1000 K Street, Sacramento, CA 95814

for tickets to all sHows visit assemblysacramento.com

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

mon nov 18

fri nov 22

waka flocka

thu nov 14 8PM | 21 and Over

vienna teng

6:30PM

7PM | 21 and Over

Upcoming ShowS

fri nov 22

norma jean

vanna, kenMOde, exOtic aniMal Petting zOO, iwishwewererObOts, with wOlves 6PM

BEFORE

NEWS

wed nov 27

fri nov 29

7PM

brOdi nichOlas | 7PM | all ages

arden park roots

F E AT U R E

STORY

big b

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

AFTER

Nov 30 Dec 03 Dec 05 Dec 06 Dec 07 Dec 08 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 20 Dec 22 Dec 28 jaN 11 jaN 24 jaN 30 feb 07 feb 12

Orgy crystal bOwersOx winds Of Plague fringe ed kOwalczyk frOM live Metalachi flOw lOs rakas rOck fOr tOts - fate under fire andrew w.k. dj quik anthOny b !!! (chk chk chk) ziOn i st lucia bettye lavette

| 11.14.13

SN&R

NIGHTBEAT

THURSDAY 11/14

List your event!

BADLANDS

2003 K St., (916) 448-8790

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

Fabulous and Gay Fridays, 9pm, call for cover

Saturday Boom, 9pm, call for cover

BAR 101

Karaoke, 7:30pm, no cover

MASSIVE DELICIOUS, 9:30pm, call for cover

ISLAND OF BLACK AND WHITE, 9:30pm, call for cover

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

BISLA’S SPORTS BAR

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 11/18-11/20 WAKA FLOCKA FLAME, RELLY REL, PATTMANN; 6:30pm M, $25-$60 Mad Mondays, 9pm M; Latin videos, and Wii bowling, 7pm Tu; Trapacana, 10pm W

Sin Sunday, 8pm, call for cover

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

Friday Night Hype w/ DJs Evolve and My Cousin Vinny and MC Skurge, 10pm

BLUE LAMP

JEAN-LUC, 9pm, call for cover

Sac City Rollers fundraiser, 8:30pm, call for cover

ALEX VINCENT WALKER BAND, WAR PAINT, STIGNOB; 8pm, call for cover

WHITE MINORITIES, MURDERLICIOUS, GRAVE SHADOW, BROKEN; 7:30pm

AXE MURDER BOYZ, MINDSHOT, DIRTY D, 420 DARKSIDE BOYZ; 8:30pm W

Under the Gum Tree reading, 6pm, call for cover

CHARLES ALBRIGHT, NACHO BUSINESS, KITTENS HAVING KITTENS; 8pm, $5

Beats by Nicatyne, 6-10pm Tu, no cover; TENDER FOREVER, POPPET; 8pm W, $5

THE BOARDWALK

STRAIGHT UP GRIZZLY, HEAT OF DAM-

BOWS & ARROWS

CLASSICAL REVOLUTION, 8pm, no cover

9426 Greenback Ln., Orangevale; (916) 988-9247 AGE, JUST A BIT; 8pm, call for cover 1815 19 St., (916) 822-5668

CENTER FOR THE ARTS

THE DICK GAIL QUINTET, 8:30pm, $5-$10

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

TONY TRISCHKA, BILL EVANS, SAMMY SHELOR; 7:30pm, $22-$25

THE COZMIC CAFÉ

Open-mic, 7:30pm, no cover

CLARK REESE, 8pm, $5

MIND X, THE MARK SEXTON BAND; 8pm, call for cover

DJs Tripz, Jeff Chang, Kracento Box, Satori, Entec, 9pm, call for cover

DJs Michael Toast, Chris Clouse, Rossi, Brian Lilly, 9pm, call for cover

DJ Amy Robbins, 9pm, call for cover

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

MARVELS OF THE MIDWAY, FINN DOXIE, ONE-EYED REILLY; 9pm, $5

WHISKEY & STITCHES, PANTHER & BEAR FIGHT; 9pm, $5

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

DISTRICT 30

1016 K St., (916) 737-5770

Hey local bands!

SUNDAY 11/17

The Siren Show Presents: Kama Sutra, 8pm, $15-$25

7042 Folsom Blvd., (916) 383-0133 1400 Alhambra, (916) 455-3400

FACES

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

SATURDAY 11/16

Flow: Jazz, soul and hip-hop w/ Andru Defeye, 8pm, $5-$10

1000 K St., (916) 832-4751

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

FRIDAY 11/15

ASSEMBLY

2000 K St., (916) 448-7798

FOX & GOOSE

STEVE MCLANE, 8pm, no cover

1001 R St., (916) 443-8825

G STREET WUNDERBAR

SHEIKH OMMID, 9pm, no cover

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

HALFTIME BAR & GRILL

GROOVE THANG, 9pm-midnight, no cover

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

HARLOW’S

SEE HOW THEY RUN, RICKY BERGER, AUTUMN SKY; 8pm, $5

2708 J St., (916) 441-4693

LOWBRAU

1050 20th St., (916) 706-2636

LUNA’S CAFÉ & JUICE BAR

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

MARILYN’S ON K

RICHIE BLUE, LAND BALDWIN & DEEPER JUKEBOX JOHNNY, 9pm, $5 BLUES, COLE FONSECA; 8pm, $5

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

MARTY TATERS, SAL VALENTINO, BRITTANY VANESSA; 7pm, $7-$10

Reggae with DJ Essef, 9pm, call for cover

JULIET GOBERT, 8pm, call for cover

Open-mic, 7:30pm M Pub Quiz, 7pm Tu; Northern Soul, 8pm W, no cover EMBODIED TORMENT, CHRONAEXUS, ABORTICIDE; 9pm, no cover Trivia night, 7:30-9pm Tu, no cover MASON JENNINGS, 8pm, $20-$25

ANNA NALICK, THE REEL; 8pm W, $15

RAINBOW GIRLS, THE CHARLEEE TRIO, MARTY O’REILLY; 8pm, no cover

Roger Carpio spinning vinyl, 5pm W, no cover

SANDRA DOLORES, SHERMAN BAKER, KARA GOSLIN; 8pm, $5

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

ROOSTER MCCLINTOCK, 9pm, $5

Karaoke, 8pm M, no cover

Orange Shandy is here.

anna nalick anna nalick

powerhouse pub

november 20th november 20th harlows harlows

crystal bowersox december 3rd assembly

RECYCLE THIS PAPER.

sbl en t er ta inmen t p r e sen t s

december 6th

Queer Idol, 9pm M, no cover; Latin night, 9pm Tu, $5; DJ Alazzawi, 9pm W, $3

Dragalicious, 9pm, $5

TOP SECRET BAND, 9pm-midnight, no cover

FREEPORT, JAHARI SAI QUARTET; JELLO BIAFRA AND THE GUANTANAMO 6:30pm, $7-$10; KAHALI ODEN, 10pm, $7 SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, 9pm, $15-$18

College Night deejay dancing, 9:30pm Tu; Country Night deejay dancing, 9:30pm W

monday

trivia @ 6:30pm tuesday

taco tues $1 tacos, $2 coronas, 2–8pm wednesday

open mic

sign-ups at 7:30pm thursday

KaraoKe @ 7:30pm

january 21st crest theatre

vienna teng

andy mckee

nov 22 · assembly

jan 8 · harlows

ed kowalczyk of live

the wallin’ jennys

dec 7 · assembly

jan 10 · crest theatre

howie day

shawn colvin

dec 9 · harlows

jan 12 · crest theatre

FOR ALL TICKETS VISIT SBLENTERTAINMENT.COM 40

SN&R

11.14.13

YOU’RE WELCOME, NATURE.

happy hour mon-fri 3pm-7pm

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

upcoming shows nov 15 massive delicious nov 16 island of black & white nov 22 street urchinz dec 06 riot maker dec 13 sweet talk-iron hearts dec 14 dread lullabies dec 20 bad behavior dec 27 humble wolf dec 28 vagabond brothers

facebook.com/bar101roseville 101 main street, roseville • 916-774-0505

Join us out here Please drink responsibly.

THURSDAY 11/14

FRIDAY 11/15

NAKED LOUNGE DOWNTOWN

JULIE MEYERS, ANNA TIVEL, JUSTIN FARREN; 8:30pm, $5

BROKEN JUG BAND, SOUTH SAC JOOKS; 8:30pm, $5

MOOT, JILT VS JONAH, 8:30pm, $5

Jazz session, 8pm M; OMARR AWAKE, REGGIE GINN, ZACK GREY; 8:30pm W, $5

OLD IRONSIDES

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

GILLIAN UNDERWOOD, SHERMAN BAKER; 8pm, no cover

RAZOR BLADE MONA LISA, BLACK MARKET SUNDAY; 9pm, $6

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

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

ON THE Y

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

CHOP SHOPPE, 8pm, call for cover

Karaoke, 9pm, no cover

THE PALMS PLAYHOUSE

MARY GAUTHIER, 8pm, $20

SAMMY SHELOR, TONY TRISCHKA, BILL EVANS; 8pm, $25

BUFFY FORD STEWART, 8pm, $20

PINE COVE TAVERN

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

Karaoke contest, 7-9pm, $10

SAVVANT, THE DENVER J BAND, TJ MCNULTY, MUSICAL CHARIS; 1-6pm

1111 H St., (916) 443-1927

670 Fulton Ave., (916) 487-3731 13 Main St., Winters; (530) 795-1825 502 29th St., (916) 446-3624

SATURDAY 11/16

PINS N STRIKES

SUNDAY 11/17

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 11/18-11/20

Open-mic comedy, 9pm, no cover

SANDRA DOLORES, KATIE KNIPP, STAR ANNA; 8pm M; Karaoke, 9pm Tu

Karaoke Contest, 9pm, $10

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

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

PJ’S ROADHOUSE

DJ Michael Johnson, 9pm, no cover

MELONNEE DESIREE, 9pm, $5

REBEL PUNK, 9pm, $5

POWERHOUSE PUB

WHISKEY DAWN, 10pm, call for cover

FOREVERLAND, 10pm, call for cover

8 TRACK MASSACRE, 10pm, call for cover

THE TRIBE OF THE RED HORSE, 3-6pm, no cover

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

THE PRESS CLUB

MC Ham vs DJ Gourmet, 9pm, no cover

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

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

Sunday Night Soul Party, 9pm, $5

THE DONKEYS, COOL GHOULS; 8pm M, $5-$8

SAMMY’S ROCKIN’ ISLAND

NEON VELVET, 10pm, $5

METAL SHOP, 10pm, $5

SOL COLLECTIVE

SUPERNATURAL, BROTHER J, PHOENIX JERRY BLACK, 5BILLI, CAM F. BAM, ORION, DOVE MOSIS, ZIN URU; 9pm, $10 CRAIG MIC; 6:30pm, $11-$13

5461 Mother Lode, Placerville; (530) 626-0336 614 Sutter St., Folsom; (916) 355-8586 2030 P St., (916) 444-7914 238 Vernon St., Roseville; (916) 773-7625 2574 21st St., (916) 832-0916

Comedy w/ Justin Worsham, 8:30pm W, $5 Microphone Mondays, 6pm M, $1-$2

STONEY INN/ROCKIN’ RODEO

THE BUCK FORD BAND, 9pm, $5

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

Country dance party, 8pm, no cover

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

TORCH CLUB

X TRIO, 5pm, no cover; KEVIN SELFE, 9pm, $5

PAILER AND FRATIS, 5:30-7:30pm, no cover; SOLSA, 9pm, $12

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

Blues jam, 4pm, no cover; GRANT FARM, 8pm, $5

Acoustic open-mic, 5:30pm W; PETE ANDERSON, 9pm W, call for cover

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NEWS

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I heard marijuana was on the ballot in a few elections last week. How did it go? —Weedwonk Weed is winning. And it’s not even close. The city of Portland, Maine, just legalized possession (up to 2.5 ounces) and use of marijuana for adults 21 and older. Weed got 67 percent of the vote. Over in Michigan, three cities (Jackson, Ferndale, Lansing) all passed initiatives allowing possession and transfer of up to 1 ounce on BEALUM private property. All the initiatives got more than by NGAIO 60 percent of the vote. Add this to the recent Gallup poll showing that 58 percent of Americans are for marijuana ’13 legalizaa s k420 @ ne wsreview.c om tion, and things are starting to look pretty good for people wanting to put an end to cannabis prohibition. This also bodes well for the legalization efforts planned for 2014 in Oregon and Alaska. Sidenote to actor Russell Brand, who once said, “I don’t vote, as I believe democracy is a pointless spectacle where we choose between two indistinguishable political parties, neither of whom represent the people but the interest of powerful business elites that run the world”: Any time someone tries to tell me that voting doesn’t work, I show them my medical-cannabis card. Voting works. If it wasn’t so important, Republicans wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep people from doing it. So, I offer congrats to the voters of Portland, Jackson, Lansing and Ferndale. And I remind everyone else to get off of their stoner asses and vote. I heard that although the state of Oregon is going to allow legal medical-cannabis dispensaries, some cities are still trying to ban pot shops. What’s the deal? —Joe Jefferson You heard correctly. Shortly after the Oregon Legislature passed the law (House Bill 3460) allowing medicalcannabis facilities, the Medford City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting businesses that “violate federal law.” Because distributing medical marijuana violates federal law, Medford thought it had a nice little de facto ban on medical-cannabis shops. But Rep. Peter Buckley, a Democrat, asked for a review of H.B. 3460 to determine whether local governments can do what Medford did. And guess what? According to the OLC, cities in Oregon cannot try to get around state law by passing de facto bans. Check this from Charles D. Taylor, senior deputy legislative counsel: “We conclude that while a municipality may not be required to violate federal law to comply with a conflicting state law, a municipality may not act contrary to state law merely because the municipality believes that the action will better carry out the purposes and objectives of federal law.” Furthermore, he states that H.B. 3460 “preempts most municipal laws specifically targeting medical marijuana facilities.” And while this statement from the OLC is nonbinding, it means that if a club wants to challenge the Medford ban, they have an excellent legal footing. It’s about time someone stood up to these prohibitionists and for medicalmarijuana patients. So thank you, Peter Buckley. Ω

Any time someone tries to tell me that voting doesn’t work, I show them my medical-cannabis card. Voting works.

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

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by TRINA L. DROTAR

ARIES (March 21-April 19): There’s

something resembling a big red snake slithering around in your mind these days. I don’t mean that literally, of course. I’m talking about a big red imaginary snake. But it’s still quite potent. While it’s not poisonous, neither is it a pure embodiment of sweetness and light. Whether it ends up having a disorienting or benevolent influence on your life all depends on how you handle your relationship with it. I suggest you treat it with respect but also let it know that you’re the boss. Give it guidelines and a clear mandate so that it serves your noble ambitions and not your chaotic desires. If you do that, your big red snake will heal and uplift you.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In my

astrological opinion, almost nothing can keep you from getting the love you need in the coming days. Here’s the only potential problem: You might have a mistaken or incomplete understanding about the love you need, and that could interfere with you recognizing and welcoming the real thing. So here’s my prescription: Keep an open mind about the true nature of the love that you actually need most, and stay alert for the perhaps unexpected ways it might make itself available.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “People fall

so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind,” asserts novelist Chuck Palahniuk. Your assignment, Gemini, is to work your ass off to fall out of love with your pain. As if you were talking to a child, explain to your subconscious mind that the suffering it has gotten so accustomed to has outlived its usefulness. Tell your deep self that you no longer want the ancient ache to be a cornerstone of your identity. To aid the banishment, I recommend that you conduct a ritual of severing. Tie one side of a ribbon to a symbol of your pain and tie the other side around your waist. Then cut the ribbon in half, and bury the symbol in the dirt.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “You can

look at a picture for a week and never think of it again,” said painter Joan Miró. “You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life,” he added. The coming days are likely to bring you none of the former kind of experiences and several of the latter, Cancerian. It’s a numinous time in your long-term cycle: A phase when you’re likely to encounter beauty that enchants you and mysteries that titillate your sense of wonder for a long time. In other words, the eternal is coming to visit you in very concrete ways. How do you like your epiphanies? Hot and wild? Cool and soaring? Comical and lyrical? Hot and soaring and comical and wild and cool and lyrical?

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): There’s a new

genre of erotic literature: dinosaur porn. E-books like In the Velociraptor’s Nest and Ravished by the Triceratops tell tall tales about encounters between people and prehistoric reptiles. I don’t recommend you read this stuff, though. While I do believe that now is a good time to add new twists to your sexual repertoire and explore the frontiers of pleasure, I think you should remain rooted in the real world, even in your fantasy life. It’s also important to be safe as you experiment. You really don’t want to explore the frontiers of pleasure with cold-blooded beasts. Either travel alone, or else round up a warm-blooded compassion specialist who has a few skills in the arts of intimacy.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The saxifrage is a small plant with white flowers. It grows best in subarctic regions and cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The word “saxifrage” is derived from the Latin word saxifraga, whose literal meaning is “stone-breaker.” Indeed, the plant does often appear in the clefts of stones and boulders. In his poem “A Sort of a Song,” William Carlos Williams celebrates its strength: “Saxifrage is my flower that splits / the rocks.” I nominate this darling little dynamo to be your metaphorical power object of the week, Virgo. May it inspire you to crack through blocks and barriers with subtle force.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You’re not being swept along in a flood of meaningless distractions and irrelevant information

BEFORE

NEWS

BREZSNY

and trivial wishes, right? I’m hoping that you have a sixth sense about which few stimuli are useful and meaningful to you and which thousands of stimuli are not. But if you are experiencing a bit of trouble staying well-grounded in the midst of the frenzied babble, now would be a good time to take strenuous action. The universe will conspire to help you become extra stable and secure if you resolve to eliminate as much nonsense from your life as you can.

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

ness is good. Sweetness is desirable. To be healthy, you need to give and receive sweetness on a regular basis. But you can’t flourish on sweetness alone. In fact, too much of it may be oppressive or numbing. I’m speaking both literally and metaphorically: To be balanced, you need all of the other tastes, including saltiness, sourness, bitterness and savoriness. From what I understand, you are headed into a phase when you’ll thrive on more bitterness and savoriness than usual. To get an idea of what I mean, meditate on what the emotional equivalents might be for bitter tastes like coffee, beer and olives, and for savory tastes like mushrooms, cheese, spinach and green tea.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

When you procrastinate, you avoid doing an important task. Instead, you goof off, doing something fun or simply puttering around, wasting time. But what if there were a higher form of procrastination? What if you could avoid an important task by doing other tasks that were somewhat less important but still quite valuable? Here’s what that might look like for you right now: You could postpone your search for the key to everything by throwing yourself into a project that will give you the key to one small part of everything.

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

his utopian novel Looking Backward, American author Edward Bellamy wrote a passage that I suspect applies to you right now: “It is under what may be called unnatural, in the sense of extraordinary, circumstances that people behave most naturally, for the reason that such circumstances banish artificiality.” Think of the relief and release that await you, Capricorn: an end to pretending, a dissolution of deception, the fall of fakery. As you weave your way through extraordinary circumstances, you will be moved to act with brave authenticity. Take full advantage.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “I have

your back” is an American expression that could also be rendered as “I’m right behind you, ready to help and defend you” or “I’m ready to support you whenever you’ve got a problem.” Is there anyone in the world who feels that way about you? If not, now would be an excellent time to work on getting such an ally. Cosmic conditions are ripe for bringing greater levels of assistance and collaboration into your life. And if you already do have confederates of that caliber, I suggest you take this opportunity to deepen your symbiotic connection even further.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): More than

a hundred countries around the world celebrate an independence day holiday, memorializing a time when they broke away from another nation and formed a separate state. I encourage you to create your own personal version of this festival. It could commemorate a breakthrough moment in the past when you escaped an oppressive situation, a turning point when you achieved a higher level of autonomy, or a taboo-busting transition when you started expressing your own thoughts and making your own decisions with more authority. By the way, a fresh opportunity to take this kind of action is available to you. Any day now might be a good time to declare a new independence day.

You can call Rob Brezsny for your Expanded Weekly Horoscope: (900) 950-7700. $1.99 per minute. Must be 18+. Touchtone phone required. Customer service (612) 373-9785. And don’t forget to check out Rob’s website at www.realastrology.com.

F E AT U R E

PHOTO BY LOVELLE HARRIS

by ROB

For the week of November 14, 2013

STORY

Face on, face off James Albertson is a painter who first discovered tribal arts as an undergraduate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but he didn’t connect that into his own work until much later. After earning his Master of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Albertson came to Sacramento State University to teach, and there he met an art professor who offered to trade a piece from New Guinea for one of Albertson’s paintings. Now, Albertson, who currently teaches art at Sierra College and American River College, has collected masks from around the world, and he views tribal art not just as objects, but as pieces that create dialogues with other pieces of art. He will display and discuss some of his collection as part of a one-day event at the Fenix Studio on Saturday, November 16. He recently chatted with SN&R about life forces, art collecting and Abraham Lincoln’s glasses.

Why tribal arts— particularly, African masks? I had been interested in pop-cultural objects. But as I started looking at these pieces of tribal art, I saw that they had much more resonance. The fact that much tribal art is of serious intent, about serious meaning—like the meaning of life—is something that gives it more resonance than something that is made with purely decorative values.

Do the mask carvers tend to be men? In general, the carving is associated with metal, which is associated with men’s tools and with war, so that carving is associated with men. Nowadays, taboo restrictions are released on carvers. I’ve got a book [that describes how] a carver [from the West African Dan tribe] has passed along the skill to his daughter. It’s kind of like women in Western art, like Artemisia Gentileschi in the Baroque period: There were no women artists, but she became an artist because her father taught her.

Does your interest in these works also translate to the art you create? It does, but generally, not in really directly specific ways. Many tribal religions posit a life force that is present in all things, even in stones. And in a sense, it’s equivalent to a modern physicist’s discovery that all matter is energy. That life force can be symbolized directly, metaphorically through rhythm. And rhythm is present in the visual arts as repetition of an image or a form. It’s present in dance as repetition of movement and in music as repetition of beat. My own painting comes out of my education in the late 20th century, which is based on the findings of the modernists |

A RT S & C U LT U R E

in the earlier 20th century, so I’ve always been sympathetic to that kind of geometric abstraction of reality that I saw first in cubist structure. The biggest thing for me about African art and art of other tribal peoples is I suddenly had different ways of saying the things that are common to human existence—in non-Western ways. Much of African art has this amazing dignity about it.

In March, you exhibited masks at Sierra College’s Ridley Gallery; how is this collaboration different? The chance to get the visual backing of dancing masks here in connection with the dance studio is just a good opportunity. Generally, we see the masks as a piece of sculpture, and we forget that they are usually in motion and in performance. Even though they are not actually going to be performed [with], this will connect them a little bit more organically with that. So I’ve selected at least one of the basic types of masks: crest mask, face mask, helmet mask, casque mask, shoulder mask and body mask. Masks are conceived in tribal art in three ways: as a stage prop, like in the West sometimes, but mostly in terms of spiritual intersection for the physical and metaphysical place, where the spirit can connect with living humans. Sometimes, the mask is only the vehicle for the dancer’s procession, and when the dancer takes it off, it becomes just a piece of wood again. Other times, the mask is considered a power object in which the spirit always resides. In those cases, |

AFTER

when it’s taken off, it can still be used to sacrifice and to address prayers.

What advice would you offer someone interested in collecting masks or tribal art? The best method for someone who … doesn’t have much money is to buy things they can afford that they like. The thing is, you see the piece, you buy it for aesthetic reasons. I call everything else the “Lincoln’s glasses effect.”

Please explain. Gold-rimmed glasses from the 19th century might be worth, by themselves, one- to twohundred bucks or more, depending how much gold there is in them. But how much are [Abraham] Lincoln’s glasses worth? They’re just the glasses, but because of the story, because of the attachment, then they become very valuable.

What if you really wanted Lincoln’s glasses? With aesthetic objects, you’re really buying the thing in itself. The super value on it comes from the story. That’s beyond the visual. To me, it’s got to be worth what I paid for it visually. That way, if it turns out not to be authentic, I’m not disappointed. Ω See Dancing Masks, James Albertson’s collection of authentic West African dance masks on Saturday, November 16, at 1 p.m. at Fenix Studio, located at 2110 Del Paso Boulevard. The Fenix Drum and Dance Company will perform at 5 p.m., and Albertson will give a lecture called “Masks & Meaning” at 6 p.m. Call (916) 205-3970 for more information.

11.14.13

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