Issue: July 01, 2010
Frontlines
This week, UC Davis scientists try to figure out what meditation does to your brain, Nick Miller wonders if the big state electricity providers will ever meet their renewable-energy deadlines. Next, Bites predicts that even the remote possibility a controversial gas-storage project will blow up a low-income neighborhood will be enough for Sacramento pols to kill the deal. They’re touchy that way. Speaking of which, Mark Williams and his merry band of Arizona-loving tea partiers try to recall City Hall. Political power play or publicity stunt? Hmm. And in Green Days this week, at least Mayor Kevin Johnson knows his book club won’t let him down. The boss has got Van Jones on his summer reading list.
Feature
Neighborhood activists are pushing to get Arden Arcade incorporated into its own city, much like Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova did. They say they want “self-determination” and to maintain a quality of life they fear is in decline. But critics say it’s not fair for one area to take resources—for police protection, roads or parks—away from the rest of the county. A November ballot measure lays it all on the line; Cosmo Garvin reports.
Arts&Culture
Hella is a local band, tongue-in-cheek punch line and also a slapdash, unconsciously strewn and at times unconscionable slang term. And now, a UC Davis student wants to make it part of the metric system—which some French math geeks actually are taking seriously. Mark Peters reports on hella’s etymology and future. Also this week: Ted Cox kicks the ball, Greg Lucas kicks it in Elk Grove, Lovelle Harris riffs on the foreclosure blues and Ann Martin Rolke cuts up the local artisan-butcher scene.
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Is Sacramento cracking up?
Behind the push to make Arden Arcade a city, and why county government as we know it may be over.
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Om mani padme hum
New UC Davis study finds that practicing meditation can indeed improve perception.
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Raising Arizona
Angry white men in Sacramento want to take back City Hall.
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A renewables hope
California Public Utilities Commission, IOUs, 20 percent by 2010, PG&E, Sierra Club, Jim Metropulos, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, A.B. 32, Global Warming Solutions Act, state Sen. Joe Simitian, S.B. 722, S.B. 14, SMUD, The Utility Reform Network, California Air Resources Board, Meg Whitman, RECs, Southern California Edison, feed-in tariff.
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Good, bad, uh-oh
Auntie Ruth is just 20 minutes away? Riiight.
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K.J.’s book club
Mayor Kevin Johnson, city staff and employees read Van Jones’ The Green Collar Economy.
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Letters for July 1, 2010
Love, hate, indifference—readers express their opinions, sometimes about each other.
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Hot sex or healthy love?
Joey reveals where all the good men—and good sex—have been hiding.
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Hating Tony Hayward
BP’s CEO made a good target, but he’s just a symbol of what really ails us.
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Practical solutions to political problems
In solving the problems of the world, we can learn a lot from ants.
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Head-to-tail eating
Find out more about Black Sheep Butchery at www.seasaltandbourbon.com.
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Keep your cabeza
The Mexican is feeling magnanimous this week!
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Sacramento natural gas project running on empty?
Neighborhood activists think they’ve beaten controversial Sacramento natural-gas storage scheme.
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From the SN&R blogs.
The many-headed elephant in the room; No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
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Function/dysfunction
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson blew a gasket. Why?
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Tax to extract
California should copy Texas with its energy-extraction tax.
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Editorial Cartoon
This week’s cartoon from the mind of John Kloss.
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Hella gets huge
How a UC Davis student’s Facebook campaign might formalize Sacramento’s most famous slang term.
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Off Balance 6: Freaks, Geeks and Bad Choices
SN&R reviews a new production by Offstage Actors Group at Clubhouse 24.
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Treasure Island
SN&R reviews a new production by Main Street Theatre Works at the Kennedy Mine Amphitheatre in Jackson.
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Happy birthday, America
Celebrate the Fourth of July the 21st-century way.
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Comedy in drag
San Francisco’s comedy show A Fag, a Hag and a Drag will show at the Sacramento Comedy Spot.
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The show belongs to‘the Man’
Celebration Arts tackles the blues, a solitary life and cultural appropriation in I Just Stopped By to See the Man.
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Time to go
From emotive to stoic, from verbose to terse, here are the final words of America’s executed.
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Hidden personality
A literary historian tackles C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series and finds medieval astronomy in Planet Narnia.
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Sierra Nevada lit
The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology brings together the best literature about our own back yard.
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Angels in Roseville
Roseville City Production Dynamics takes on the colossus of contemporary American theater: Angels in America, parts one and two.
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Kicks and shots
The World Adult Kickball Association is whack-a.
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Barenaked laughter
A new production of As You Like It at California Stage has music by the Barenaked Ladies.
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Elk Grove international
One worldly south Sacramento strip mall has it all.
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Melon dreams
This year’s melon harvest is a month late—but worth the wait.
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Wine and dine me
Visit www.sacramentowineanddine.com, then take me out.
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Foreclosure blues
Ol Cotton Dreary turns the housing crash into a dirty jam.
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Thurs, July 1, Lionel Richie
Get ready for some “Dancing on the Ceiling” “All Night Long.”
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Fri, July 2, Concerts in the Park
Indie night at Cesar Chavez Plaza.
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Sail away, another world, ah-ah
The Distillery, the Authorities, Soundtrack for Trouble, eBay, Stockton, Club Minimal, China Wagon, Curt Hall, Brian Thalken, Vancouver, Plea for Peace Center, Pavement, Fox California Theatre, Flip-Offs, Machete, Ground Chuck, Vomit, Dave O’Conner, Mario Maynor, Jeremy Roberts, Bill Lorenz, Iain Ross, Graham Johnston, Stuart Quayle, “Radiation Masturbation,” Bettie Page clone, Nick “Slurb” Kappos, Jackson Griffith, Halloween, Blue Lamp, Kill the Precedent, Twig, Plum Blossom, Sean Smith, “Islands in the Stream,” Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, TownHouse Lounge, Wallpaper, Eric Frederic, Ricky Reed, Arjun Singh, DJ Shaun Slaughter, DJ Roger Carpio, Lipstick, R Street Corridor.
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Struggling to stay positive
Daniel Barnes coins the “CGI-ification of the American Film-scape™.” Cahiers du Cinema comes calling …
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The Book of Eli
Denzel Washington plays a lone walker carrying the world’s last remaining Bible toward an unknown destination.
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A Single Man
Tom Ford (the man who once inserted his clothed self on to a Vanity Fair cover with buck-naked Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, an act for which I shall eternally despise him) can’t a find a single consistent tone from scene-to-scene.
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Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s documentary portrait of the commedienne as a tired old woman is more or less what you’d expect.
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Knight and Day
A woman minding her own business (Cameron Diaz) gets yanked into the adventures of a smooth-talking spy (Tom Cruise).
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