Stories for August 2005

Thursday, August 25

Straight Talk

He’s not just a gay icon—the girls love Rufus Wainwright.

This country—especially its heartland—needs Rufus Wainwright. He’s sexy, bold, glamorous, a genius of a songwriter—and openly gay. He’s the kid in high school sauntering rakishly down the hall with Elvis sideburns and a fashion sense ...

Court and Spark

Ron Granberg * Monterey College of Law

*STUDENT GUIDE 2005* Life's Lessons The typical Monterey College of Law student lives atop a 5,000-foot Hawaiian volcano in a one-room shack with no electricity. Or he did. Before Ron Granberg could realize a dream ...

Big Community

Beryl Levinger * Monterey Institute of International Studies

*STUDENT GUIDE 2005* Life's Lessons Dr. Beryl Levinger is an expert in how to strengthen civil society in troubled areas. She’s the author of a study that examines how health and nutrition influence school performance ...

FOODCHAIN: Food and Friends

OLD FRIENDS… My longtime friend JOHN BARMON called me today, left a message on my cell phone about some silly something or other. He and I met in 1984 (Orwellian, is it not?) at a ...

Life Recorder

Rina Benmayor * Cal State University—Monterey Bay

*STUDENT GUIDE 2005* Life's Lessons Rina Benmayor teaches her students how to tell a story. Not just any story. Their own stories. Their family histories. And to tell these stories, she incorporates the very oldest ...

Language of War

David Villarreal * Defense Language Institute

*STUDENT GUIDE 2005* Life's Lessons The small booklet created by Monterey’s Defense Language Institute (DLI) for troops about to deploy to a foreign country contains “commands, warnings and instructions” along with “helpful words, phrases and ...

Valley Girl

Roxana Robles-Gorriti tailors her eateries to fit the needs of Carmel Valley residents.

Over a buckwheat pancake brunch at the recently opened Garden Bistro in Carmel Valley, Roxana Robles-Gorriti tells the story of how she went from being the founder and CEO of a successful software company in ...

War Over Oil

Feds plan to expand oil drilling in Los Padres National Forest despite environmentalists’ protests.

Bubblin’ crude—oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea. The Los Padres National Forest has got it and Congress wants oil companies to have access to it. Last July, the US Forest Service approved a plan ...

HOMEPAGE: Valley Delight

There’s a great drive from the Carmel Valley Village to Sky Ranch that lasts just minutes, but those minutes are filled with graceful curves, abundant nature and stunning vistas. Even so, nothing prepares one for ...

Doing Radio ‘My Way’

Bob Edwards, former voice of NPR’s

For a quarter of a century, he hosted the station’s popular Morning Edition, drawing more than 13 million listeners each week. But that all changed in March of 2004 when NPR abruptly excused Edwards from ...

Letters 08|25

HAVE A CUPPA WITH THE NEW GUARD Ryan Masters’ article, “Coffee, To Go,” [Weekly, August 18-24] covered just two of the three sides of the issue. As a book store devotee who enjoys shopping and ...

Conjuring Comedy

Farrell Dillon makes amazing feats funny.

‘Do you wanna see some magic?” Farrell Dillon asks Chris Sorenson and me inside Salinas’ Cherry Bean Coffeehouse. In front of the 20-year-old Salinas magician, a deck of cards, four coins, a small pillbox, and ...

ArtListings

Aug. 25-31

TheaterListings

SquidFry 8|25

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION… Squid is fascinated by sports, but disturbed by the unseemly spectacle it has become. BARRY BONDS hitting for the cycle is cool. A sequence of post-game accusations and paranoid insults from Bonds ...

STREET TALK: Getting Schooled

Asked at Hartnell College Center

Q: What was the most important lesson you learned in college? Follow up: Who was your favorite teacher? ISAURA ARREGUIN | Grocery Store Manager | Salinas A: You have to put a lot of effort ...

Subliminal System

System of a Down wraps messages in silliness.

You’d be mistaken to discount System of a Down as bedfellows of fallen nu-metalers Korn and Limp Bizkit. Both conceptually and technically superior, SOAD marries the in-your-face moxie of Chuck D, embraces its Middle Eastern ...

Grimm Reality

Terry Gilliam comfortably treads familiar surreal ground in The Brothers Grimm.

The Brothers Grimm’s director Terry Gilliam has become almost as legendary for movies that were never seen—or almost never seen—as for those that were. In 1985, it took a full-page ad in trade magazines and ...

Future Man

David Clemens * Monterey Peninsula College

*STUDENT GUIDE 2005* Life's Lessons This fall, in addition to teaching standard collegiate fare like Freshman Composition, Intro to Literature and Critical Thinking, Monterey Peninsula College professor David Clemens will teach two courses offered at ...

News Briefs

Salinas: Overvalued Homes In a report released last week by National City Corp, Salinas ranked second nationwide of overvalued metropolitan housing markets. The study—which was based on historical price data, median income, mortgage rates and ...

KAZU GM Signs Off

John McNally leaves a legacy of controversy and success.

When John McNally left Los Angeles to take a job as general manager of Pacific Grove NPR affiliate KAZU, he knew he was in for a much different life. But in the move to 90.3 ...

$Tease photo$ Math for the Masses

Mark Weber * Hartnell Community College

*STUDENT GUIDE 2005* Life's Lessons Mark Weber is a numbers guy. He doesn’t talk in color or think in hypotheticals. He’s a guy who lives by definitives. He’s a mathematician. He may not sound like ...

Numbers Warrior

Dr. Carlos Borges * Naval Postgraduate School

*STUDENT GUIDE 2005* Life's Lessons A week ago, Dr. Carlos Borges wore a kilt. Today, however, the Naval Postgraduate School math professor is dressed in more traditional garb—denim and a blue and white button-down shirt. ...

Rage Against the Machine

Three young Germans take on the bourgeoisie in The Edukators.

Sticking it to the man, German-style, is the subject of this smart, kicky little gem that owes as much to Guy Debord and the Situationists of yore (and oh, how we miss them) as it ...

DiscSpace

PREFUSE 73 | Reads the Books | Warp Records With full-length albums for Prefuse 73 and The Books released earlier this year, what better time to bring together these heroes of the avant-garde? Yet at ...

Monterey Sweet Spot

Red’s Donuts takes the cake as the local’s morning hangout.

Inside Red’s Donuts on Monterey’s Alvarado Street, cake donuts with bright jewel-colored sprinkles and glazed, golden rings of dough sit behind a glass case like precious collectibles at a jeweler’s store. Behind the counter, frizzy-haired ...

Thursday, August 18

HOMEPAGE: Haunted by Love

From the street, the house at 1555 Mira Mar Ave. in Seaside has such a nondescript façade it’s difficult to imagine that it spawned a legend that lasted for decades amongst neighborhood children. Like characters ...

SquidFry

HOT TICKET ITEM… Squid’s talking about the new series of PACIFIC GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT’S COLLECTOR CARDS, “featuring the officers from the department in various poses and backgrounds.” The cards, according to a recent PGPD press ...

DiscSpace

APSCIThanks for Asking | Quannum Projects Quannum Projects branches out to the East Coast with the release of Apsci’s Thanks for Asking. It’s not exactly the standard, whip-smart hip-hop you’d expect from the West Coast ...

It’s a Small World

An automotive journey to the East.

~Beautiful Machines~ On a recent trip to Eastern Europe, my first voyage abroad, I found exactly what I had been led to expect: history and newness, exotic beauty, grime and grandeur. Best of all were ...

Motorheads Watch Out

Extreme gravity cars are fast, cool and don’t need fuel.

These ain’t your daddy’s soap box derby cars, boyo. Made out of the same materials as F-1 racecars, “extreme gravity cars” scream down steep, curvy road courses at speeds up to 70 mph. These space-age ...

Natural Born Killers

The documentary

Much of the action in Alastair Fothergill and Andy Byatt’s wild ocean documentary Deep Blue is as over-the-top explosive and explicit as a Sam Peckinpah flick. It’s astounding enough to watch killer whales bulldoze a ...

STREETALK: Journey Over Destination

Asked in Custom House Plaza

Q: What’s been the greatest journey in your life? Follow-up: What would be the title for your journey? PEGGY RYAN | Retired | Lincoln A: My marriage. We just celebrated our 35th anniversary. Love Story: ...

TheaterListings

Plane and Simple

Wes Craven’s Red Eye offers a lesson in making a taut, efficient thriller.

Roger Ebert, though best known for raising or lowering a pudgy digit, is also one of our wisest philosophers about the movies. And with the taut suspense thriller Red Eye, we see proof of one ...

Article.ArtListings

Aug.18-24

West Coast Girl

New York seduces, but can’t win Paula West.

Sometimes it seems like New York City is putting on a full-court charm offensive in a blatant attempt to coax Paula West from her San Francisco digs into an exclusive Gotham residency. The Big Apple’s ...

Drunk with Pleasure

First annual Monterey County Fair Wine Challenge drips with fun.

Robert Mondavi, one of the godfathers of wine in the modern era, is quoted as saying, “Wine is an art and a science.” Wherever and whenever people have tried to harness the process that turns ...

The Cadillac of Cadillacs

The historic design behind one of Detroit’s giants.

~Beautiful Machines~ The Cadillac has a story to tell. It’s a story that draws upon themes of friendship, war and American industry. It’s also a story about family. And like any good American car story, ...

Annie for President

MPC’s production could be the tip of a revival for this surprisingly political musical.

The play that launched a generation of determined-looking little girls’ singing fist-clenched versions of “Tomorrow” at musical theater auditions, Annie remains the pinnacle of female leads for a little girl. No self-respecting preadolescent starlet can ...

Americana Beauty

Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective.

Nominated as Best Americana act for this year’s upcoming San Diego Music Awards, Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective have been prolific since songwriters Derric Oliver and Louis Caverly formed the group in 2002. With ...

Fighting City Hall

One man’s crusade against Monterey’s city attorneys may end up being moot.

When Deborah Mall was sworn in as Monterey’s new city attorney last month, she assumed more than just her predecessor’s power and duties. She also inherited the ire of Michael Allen Shouff. Shouff, who also ...

FOODCHAIN:Harvesting the Good Stuff

UNREAL FOOD… The August 15th edition of US News and World Report featured a huge piece called “How America Eats.” Get online or pick up a copy—maybe schedule a visit to the doctor or dentist, ...

Rolling Folk Rock

Po’ Girl brings the road tunes.

Recently, several of the players in the Vancouver-based Po’ Girl—Diona Davies, Trish Klein and Allison Russell—have spent a lot of time in “Shaggy,” their 1985 Chevy van. Under a dashboard adorned with mementos from the ...

Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels

Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette’s documentary The Aristocrats features one joke that involves bodily fluid, dead fetuses, pedophilia, necrophilia, incest and the most vulgar situations to ever be verbally conceptualized. Ironically, a second viewing of ...

Coffee, To Go

PG’s Bookworks is sold, and Wildberries gets the boot.

On a brick wall in Wildberries, the popular Pacific Grove café, customers have scrawled angry words of protest. “Talk is cheap,” says one. “PG—America’s last hometown. SOLD!” reads another. And then there’s: “People don’t go ...

News Briefs

Farr’s Town Halls Rep. Sam Farr will hold his annual town hall meetings around the Central Coast beginning this week. Three will be held in Monterey County. “Open discussion is the basis for democracy,” Farr ...

FORUM: British Forces Rule

Occupational hazards aren’t so intense in southern Iraq, outside the US sphere.

A crowd of angry Iraqis gathered. Opposite it, behind shields, wielding batons, waited British soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment. The mob advanced, hurling flaming Molotov cocktails. Bodies crashed. People fell, flailing. Then referees intervened, ...

Classic Car Week Cliff Notes

~Beautiful Machines~ Recently, a 1910 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost left London. Around the same time, a 1936 Mercedes Roadster left Kuala Lumpur and a 1932 Packard blew out of Buenos Aires. Coincidence? Car buffs know ...

letters

Time for a Sea Change In regards to your recent article on the Marine Life Protection Act, [“Policing the Seas, August 11-17] I am writing to remedy a false impression that may have been given ...

No Means Yes

Supes vote against yanking approval of Rancho San Juan—which means voters will get to decide if they want to kill it themsleves.

In a surprising 3-2 vote on Tuesday, Aug. 16, County Supervisors agreed to allow county residents to vote on Rancho San Juan—the largest development project ever proposed in Monterey County. Supervisors Fernando Armenta and Butch ...

831: Twin Fun

Australian winemakers Hugh Reimers and Sam Burton have tried to bottle the spirit of California.

Winemakers Hugh Reimers and Sam Burton moved from Australia to the Monterey area several years ago, but their relationship with California still sounds like a heady new love affair. Listening to them rhapsodize about the ...

Thursday, August 11

Roots Jam

Tea Leaf Green plays Monterey Live.

Instead of playing a fancy new synthesizer that can sample hip-hop beats and reproduce the sounds of barking dogs, Trevor Garrod prefers a late ‘70s Fender Rhodes electric piano. Garrod, the keyboard player and vocalist ...

Keepin’ It Unreal

A sibling story dissolves into clichés in the urban drama Four Brothers.

When the Mercer boys reunite in Detroit for the funeral of Evelyn (Fionnula Flanagan), the woman who adopted them all, Bobby (Mark Wahlberg), Angel (Tyrese Gibson), Jeremiah (André Benjamin) and Jack (Garrett Hedlund) interact with ...

Southern Comfort

LA pianist George Kahn brings inspired jazz to Carmel this Saturday.

Los Angeles is often portrayed as a jazz wasteland, a huge, sprawling region where too many jazz musicians are looking for lucrative studio gigs rather than honing their sound. The truth is that LA boasts ...

AlrtListings

Bites of Heaven

Dissecting the pleasures of cherries.

‘I’m a fruit snob,” admits Tom McCamant, “I got into this business because I couldn’t find a good piece of fruit.” After spending a few minutes talking to this man, I’d have to agree that ...

Whole Lotta Love

Raymond Napolitano

WE ♥ YOU BILL… I had already sent off this edition of this column when I received a phone call from Cheryl Warner telling me that BILL LEE had been stricken with a pretty serious ...

DiscSpace

JOHNNY CASHThe Legend | Columbia/Legacy Johnny Cash was the original gangster. Before Ice T and The Notorious BIG were even a gleam in a shorty’s eye, Cash was singing about drugs and guns in songs ...

SquidFry

CA-CHING… Abel’s off and running—to the bank, that is. On Aug. 11, between 6pm and 8pm, ABEL MALDONADO, the Central Coast’s recently elected state senator—and even more recently declared 2006 state controller candidate—will hold a ...

TheaterListings

STREET TALK: Oh, That Again…

Asked at the Monterey Institute of International Studies

Q: How have your feelings changed about the war in Iraq? Follow-up: What’s your main source for news? Joe Cunningham |Teacher | Monterey A: I’ve always been against the war. If anything, my feelings have ...

FORUM: Are We Having Fun Yet?

Americans worship at the altar of recreation, but are downright clueless about leisure.

You know what the terrorists really hate about us? They hate our fun. They may be fundamentalists, but we Americans are fun-damentalists. Blue states, red states, it doesn’t matter. Despite our regional, religious, and political ...

The Girl Who Tried to Savethe World

The heroic life and final days of Marla Ruzicka.

On the afternoon of Saturday, April 16th, Marla Ruzicka sat in her unarmored Mercedes, talking on the phone with her friend Colin McMahon, a reporter in the Baghdad bureau of the Chicago Tribune. She’d had ...

News Briefs

Salinas Homicides Down The Salinas city homicide total has dropped by more than 50 percent this year compared to last year. In 2004, there were 12 homicides between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1. Five were ...

Shouting in the Wind

The County’s Weather Service Forecast Office takes its weather predicting seriously.

“Identification, please.” At the front gates of the Monterey County National Weather Service Forecast Office, I hand my driver’s license to a guard. He is dressed in full camouflage, complete with a boonie cap and ...

Santa Cruz Nation

The Expendables bring surf city sound to Monterey.

Santa Cruz is known for a large cadre of surfers, with nicknames like “Ratboy” and “Flea,” who approach wave-riding with an extremely aggressive attitude. And the beach town is also known for its mellow residents. ...

Strange Pilgrims

Maurizio Benazzo introduces his intriguing film,

As a fascinating, confounding portrait of “the longest running religious festival in history”—the Kumbh Mela in Prayag, India—Short Cut to Nirvana offers Westerners a tantalizing glimpse into this 70 million-strong, once-every-12-years event that by dint ...

Policing the Seas

‘New mandate’ designs marine protected areas along the Central Coast.

The ancient Maori had a simple way of maintaining marine reserves and fish nurseries, according to The Ocean Conservancy’s Kaitlin Gaffney. They simply killed anyone who fished them. When the renewed Marine Life Protection Act ...

Letters

Drug Addicts Need Help, Not Jail The Weekly’s July 21-27 cover story, “Prescription for Disaster,” covered the unfortunate physician who was caught in his addiction to narcotics. I am sure that the local district attorney ...

HOMEPAGE: A Home to Dance In

There are plenty of tantalizing elements to greet a visitor at the Del Rey Oaks home of Fernando Filipelli, and stepping inside provides the first. Behold a living room with a red brick fireplace, simple ...

Book of Life

Western Stage does its best to bring Cannery Row off the page.

As well preserved as a flatworm in formaldehyde, John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row turns 60 this year. Less a novel than an inter-related series of vignettes about the characters which lurk and drink and whore around ...

Bang for the Buck

Officials defend Monterey’s military institutions.

The federal BRAC Commission heard on Monday from local and state officials who testified that Monterey’s Naval Postgraduate School and Defense Language Institute are unique academic institutions which provide a highly cost-effective service for the ...

Artists’ Revolution

West End Celebration flaunts Sand City’s unique art culture.

Like the huge dunes which loom at this industrial neighborhood’s northern border, the West End arts revolution continues to change with every passing year. For the fourth consecutive year, the artists, galleries and businesses of ...

Thursday, August 4

STREET TALK: Heated Discussion

Asked in downtown Pacific Grove

Q: Last week saw 200 cities across the country breaking temperature records. What’s the hottest situation you’ve ever been in?Follow-up: Fill in the blank, “Hot as ______.”Dave FordMathematician | Carmel A: Last week I was ...

New Directions

With

Filmmaker Gregg Araki, heretofore best known for his numerous ragged and nihilistic coming-of-age, gay melodramas, here crosses over from the fringes to make his most mature and penetrating drama to date. Although he’s still transgressive ...

The Land Itself

25th Steinbeck Festival celebrates the places Steinbeck made famous.

It’s been 60 years since John Steinbeck published his classic novel Cannery Row and 25 years since the first Steinbeck Festival in Salinas. To celebrate, this year’s festival—themed “Folk, Film and Fish”—is a silver anniversary ...

DiscSpace

SON VOLTOkemah and the Melody of Riot | Sony Following the demise of legendary alternative country band Uncle Tupelo, the smart money was on Jay Farrar to go on and become a major force in ...

TheatherListings

Newsbriefs

Los Padres Forest Says Yes To Oil Drilling Last week, Los Padres National Forest officials announced they will allow oil companies to drill for an estimated 17 million barrels of crude oil or natural gas ...

Daring Diction

The experimental film Yes attempts to resurrect iambic pentameter.

A post-9/11 cross-cultural love story spoken entirely in iambic pentameter? For the less adventurous moviegoer, that might sound like the cinematic equivalent of a root canal without anesthesia. But while the unconventionally-filmed Yes doesn’t fully ...

Letters

DC: Where Rove Gets to Hide The timing of the nomination of John Roberts to the US Supreme Court was designed to take the heat off of Karl Rove. We must not let the media ...

Dangerous Beauty

A tale of three spas.

There are some three-letter words that hold so much promise and power that to just think of them conjures up bold thoughts of joy and transformation. Among them: God, sex and spa. The latter also ...

FOODCHAIN: Keep It Clean

BRING ON THE CLOROX… I recently moved so I’ve been living out of boxes lately (as opposed to living in them) and have struggled with misplacing things, not being able to find others that might ...

The Stinking Rose

A peek at winning recipes from last weekend’s Great Garlic Cook-Off.

‘Dude, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.” Alice Hagopian of Montclair, Calif., is backstage at the Gilroy Garlic Festival Great Garlic Cook-off, amazed at the second place finish of her Garlic Appetizer De-Lites ...

Inside Eden

Suspending time in the Ventana Wilderness.

The Bear Basin trail seems moments from vanishing, as if it—and we—are on the verge of being lost to civilization and reclaimed by the wilderness for all time. We perform the brushstroke. We swim downhill ...

Fledgling’s Song

Young Josh Armstrong celebrates his first release.

A year ago, Joshua Armstrong performed his music in front of a crowd for the first time at an open mic night in Salinas’ now defunct Coffee Espresso. Now, the 19-year-old Salinas native is releasing ...

HOMEPAGE: Soul Searching

Perhaps it’s a good time to ponder the Carmel housing market, to reflect a bit on opinions expressed about the remodeled and newly built homes there. Many people herald these temples of granite and iron ...

Ghost Ship

More than a half a century ago, the US’s largest dirigible sunk off the Big Sur coast. In the fall, researchers will attempt to photograph the wreck.

“SOS—falling,” the radioman coolly typed. Without a sound, the great airship fell slowly out of the clouds and towards the cold green sea and jagged cliffs of Big Sur. “Let go all ballast and ship ...

Squidfry

SQUID’S GOT BUNS…Is it just Squid, or is there a smell of rotting weenies in the air? Sniff. Sniff. Yep, definitely rotting weenies. Wait, now Squid remembers—it’s because the MONTEREY COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT recently banned ...

A Brilliant Stew

Jazz singer Jenna Mammina succeeds with old classics and writes her own striking material.

Before Jenna Mammina started writing her own songs, she was turning the work of other artist’s into her personal property. Steeped in jazz, the self-invented song stylist has built a dedicated following in the Bay ...

AlrtListings

One for the Books

San Quentin inmates raise $1,000 for Salinas libraries.

Olish Tunstall is serving a life sentence at San Quentin for murder. He’s 39 years old, and doesn’t have much chance of ever getting out. For some, that would be akin to a death sentence. ...

Thursday, August 25

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Thursday, August 4

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