City Weekly May 12, 2016 by Copperfield Publishing

C I T Y W E E K LY . N E T

M AY 1 2 , 2 0 1 6 | V O L . 3 3

My Life After the Bullets

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For the first time, Abdi Mohamed tells his story and shares his journey to recovery. By Stephen Dark

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Women of their word

12 Two counter-culture mavens of Salt Lake Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alternative magazine market reinvent themselves for the PAGE digital age.

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CWCONTENTS COVER STORY SHOT DOWN

Youth shot by police near the downtown shelter struggles to rebuild his life. Cover photo by Stephen Dark

CONTRIBUTOR

4 LETTERS 6 OPINION 8 NEWS 22 A&E 28 DINE 37 CINEMA 41 TRUE TV 42 MUSIC 59 COMMUNITY

SUMMER MONTGOMERY With wanderlust, a passion for rock climbing and a palate suited for only the finest of tequilas, Summer has rocked it as a graphic designer at City Weekly for two years now. Check out her work in our Community section (p. 59). Your online guide to endless bar and restaurant listings • Up-to-the-minute articles and blogs at CityWeekly.net/Daily

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LETTERS Concerns for future generations

Stan Rosenzweig says the coal business is slowly dying and will be pretty much gone by 2036. Unfortunately, this is not possible. In the “Straight Dope” column titled “Nuke Needed” [June 16, 2011, City Weekly], Cecil Adams notes a study by Daniel Nocera, “On the Future of Global Energy,” and concludes, “… we need to dispense with the illusory notion of ‘alternative’ energy, which suggests we’ll get to be choosy about energy sources. Sorry, not going to happen. We’ll have to use them all.” I am not aware of any refutation of Nocera’s paper. The alternatives that I think are implied by it are pretty simple. We can drastically curtail population growth, or we can suffer great reductions in our standard of living. Reductions in living standards would take one of two forms: greatly reduced per capita energy consumption, or greatly reduced environmental quality. We regulate firearms a lot more than we regulate population. This is a major cultural failure. We need to look at fixes: What about tax credits for vasectomies? Or phasing out child tax deductions and credits? Cap-and-trade on how many kids you can have? A world-wide blitz on birth control education and facilitation? If you don’t like these options, don’t complain that we will leave a world of squalor to our grandkids.

JOHN BURTON Magna

WRITE US: Salt Lake City Weekly, 248 S. Main, Salt Lake City, UT 84101. Email: comments@cityweekly.net. Fax: 801-575-6106. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. Preference will be given to letters that are 300 words or less and sent uniquely to City Weekly. Full name, address and phone number must be included, even on emailed submissions, for verification purposes.

Lend me your [Bears] Ears

As a young person whose story is written in the public lands of Utah, I appreciate United States Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell’s vision for America’s conservation future. On Tuesday, April 19, Jewell called for landscapescale management and the inclusion of diverse voices— from young people to Native Americans. In this spirit, President Obama must protect Bears Ears as a national monument to respect tribes and conserve one of America’s largest unprotected wild landscapes. Our public lands are central to my identity. As a Utah millennial, these lands are not just my playground— they are my spiritual refuge and teacher of humility. In the digital age of constant connection, it is critical to preserve places in which young people can experience solitude, silence and deep time. I second Jewell in calling for a “holistic look at an ecosystem” to preserve our wild places. Lastly, my generation demands a climate-just future— one that respects frontline communities today and future generations. We will not tolerate decisions that disrespect diversity or spiral climate change further out of control. We need Secretary Jewell and President Obama to protect our future. First step? Protect Bears Ears now.

BROOKE LARSEN Salt Lake City

Socialism never works

History demonstrates that socialism has been a failure every time and every place it has been imposed. Danny Bates needs to better inform himself on the subject if he is going to promote it. Cuba, for example, is a failed economy, poorer now than it was in 1958—a fact acknowledged by Fidel Castro himself. Mr. Bates should contact some of the 45,000 Cubans who entered the United States in 2015 alone, to find out why they left a socialist utopia.

LOREN BODDY Provo

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Salt Lake City Weekly is published every Thursday by Copperfield Publishing Inc. The Salt Lake City Weekly is an independent publication dedicated to alternative news and news sources, and serves as a comprehensive entertainment guide. 50,000 copies of the Salt Lake City Weekly are free of charge at more than 1,800 locations along the Wasatch Front, limit one copy per reader. Additional copies of the paper may be purchased for $1 (Best of Utah and other special issues, $5) payable to the Salt Lake City Weekly in advance. No person, without expressed permission of Copperfield Publishing Inc., may take more than one copy of any Salt Lake City Weekly issue. No portion of the Salt Lake City Weekly may be reproduced in whole or part by any means, including electronic retrieval systems, without the written permission of the Publisher. Third-Class postage paid at Midvale, UT. Delivery may take one week. All Rights Reserved. ®

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OPINION

Lies, Lies and More Lies

In my early teen years, my parents schooled me in the ways I would need to integrate into society as I became a young man. One talk, I remember, had to do with a simple rule for getting along with others. Don’t ever discuss religion or politics. I was admonished. Nothing good will come of it, I thought. Today I will discuss politics, but I am certain that I can do that with every one of you, and I will take a strong position without alienating anyone. I am sure my argument will find favor with both the right wing and the left. I predict unanimity both with Sen. Mike Lee and with Utah State Sen. Jim Dabakis. So, here it is: Donald Trump, the candidate who called his two greatest opponents “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary,” is himself being characterized as the most dishonest politician ever to run for office. According to numerous published sources, Trump has told lots of lies about Lyin’ Ted, about Hillary and al the others he vanquished. Now comes the pushback. Lee should be pleased by this, because Lee is a friend (possibly the only Washington friend) of Ted Cruz who Trump lied out of the race. Dabakis should be pleased, because he not only hates everything about Trump but is also a Democrat. For me, it’s a win-win. Let’s start with fact checks. Politicus USA reports that 91 percent of the things Trump says are false and the other “9 percent of the things Donald Trump says are mostly true.” PolitiFact awarded Mr. Trump for telling the 2015 “Lie of the Year.” Huffington Post once assigned five and a half reporters to do in-depth checking of a 12,000 word transcript of a Trump town hall meeting to find that in one single hour of talking, there were 71 instances of “inaccurate, misleading or deeply questionable” claims, “one falsehood every 169 words.” The Washington Post recently published

B Y S TA N R O S E N Z W E I G

an article titled “All of Donald Trump’s Four-Pinocchio ratings in one place.” Here are some of his claims that were mentioned: n His connection between Mexican immigrants and crime n The slurs against women pointed out by Fox News Host Megyn Kelly to which he denied n The real unemployment rate is 42 percent n We are importing 200,000 Syrian refugees (it’s 10,000) n The Bush White House tried to muzzle his Iraq War opposition n Thousands of new Jersey Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attack n The wives of 9/11 hijackers had warning of what was going to happen, even though the terrorists were all single n He predicted bin Laden’s plans to harm America, even though bin Laden had told the news media n The border wall will only cost $8 billion, then $12 billion, versus engineering estimates of $25 billion n He will save $300 billion a year on medicare drugs, even though those drugs cost $78 billion n Trump University received an A rating from Better Business Bureau, not the D- It really got n He built his empire from a $1 million loan from Dad, not the $40 million inheritance and extensive loan guarantees n Kasich helped Lehman Brothers destroy the U.S. economy n Scott Walker drove his state from a $1 billion surplus to a $2 billion deficit n Scores of recent migrants to the U.S. are terrorists n The National Enquirer story on Cruz’s father was not denied n Hillary Clinton started the birther movement. Now this is only The Washington Post’s long lists of Donald Trump lies. There are so, so many other reports both by liberals and conservatives, debunking Trumped up

lies, such as that Obama was going to sign an executive order to take away our guns, or that his campaign is self-funded, or that he knew of a two-year-old who got autism a week after his vaccination, or that he was the one to get Ford to move an automobile plant from Mexico to Ohio, or that he was now against abortion and wasn’t previously for it, or that he hasn’t changed his position on minimum wage, or climate change, or that lots of people don’t sue him, or that he never was involved in filing for bankruptcy (uh, make that four bankruptcies), or that several of his businesses haven’t failed, or that he has at least ten times more money than Deutsche Bank has estimated. There’s an old joke that goes, how do you tell if a politician is telling a lie? The answer is his lips are moving. Donald Trump is much too quick to tell you that he is not a politician, but, just look at the evidence. Just saying he is not a politician very well may be his biggest lie of all, proving beyond doubt that he really is one. We know that most elected Republicans in Utah went all in a few months ago to publicly back Ted Cruz. I think it is safe to say that they really are not Donald Trump fans. And we know from the Twitter-verse that Democrats are so incensed by the Donald that they are ready to do just about anything to stop the lying Trump the GOP couldn’t stop. If there is one saving grace to the Trump candidacy it is how marvelously Mr. Trump has been able to bring all political sides together like no president or speaker of the House has been able to do in almost two decades. With no disrespect to the advice from my parents, it looks like we all can find a way to discuss politics and still get along with each other. We just have to find topics we all agree on. Now, what was that other hot button subject they told me never to discuss? Oh, yes. Maybe next time I will write a column about religion. CW Send feedback to comments@cityweekly.net

THERE’S AN OLD JOKE THAT GOES, HOW DO YOU TELL IF A POLITICIAN IS TELLING A LIE?

STAFF BOX

Readers can comment at cityweekly.net

Fill in the blank: If Trump is elected president, I will _______. Scott Renshaw: Not overreact. Because this country will need as many people as possible who make rational decisions.

Sierra Sessions: Lose any remaining faith in humanity and become a recluse. Nicole Enright: Remember that the president has almost no power in this day and age.

Michelle Pino: I will move out of this country. Mason Rodrickc:

Be grateful that Reddit.com/r/The_Donald will likely shut up because I’m scared of it and I don’t understand. Are you serious people? Fake people? Sentient sandwich people? Drowsy puppies with keyboards and a lot of luck?

Lisa Dorelli: Flee. Jeremiah Smith: I’ll laugh and cry at the same time. Then dig in for an entertaining four years of politics.

Tyeson Rogers: Stop calling us a democracy and start calling America an idiocracy or vomit for four years straight.

Randy Harward: Become a citizen of the sky.

Josh Scheuerman: Be vindicated that all conspiracy theories are in fact true. The whole universe is controlled by a superior alien monkey race typing out our destinies on tiny typewriters.

Andrea Harvey: Get drunk and rock myself back and forth while crying in the shower to Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” because, what would be the point anymore?

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Derik Flanary (above left) is an iOS developer by day. By night, he guides bicycle tours through Provo, teaching fellow cyclists and paranormal enthusiasts about the surprisingly creepy history of the city with his cofounder, Max Orton. In conjunction with Provo Bike Month, the pair will lead a special tour, free of charge, this Friday the 13th starting at Joaquin Park (400 N. 400 East, Provo, 9:30 p.m., Facebook.com/ProvoGhostTours). City Weekly had the chance to chat ghosts and superstition with Flanary before his next tour. Check out the full Q&A online at CityWeekly.net.

Conservative Education

How did Provo Cycling Ghost Tours come to be?

One of the most frightening statements to come from Gov. Gary Herbert is this: “I am asking the State Board of Education to consider implementing uniquely Utah standards.” KUTV Channel 2 reported on Herbert’s letter to the board seeking an end to the Common Core standards and mandatory SAGE testing for high school students. Why? Because conservatives have long been complaining about conspiratorial federal overreach, assembly-line thinking and too much testing. While it may be true that there’s too much testing going on, you can also blame the state Legislature for that. But to have a common goal in education should not be a campaign issue. Herbert wants the state board to tailor education to the state’s needs. Perhaps politicians should consider the needs of the students first. A good place to start would be by supporting teachers in salary and mentoring.

Go Go GREENbike!

You can now rent a GREENbike at Trolley Square. That brings GREENbike to 33 stations and pushing east, according to Building Salt Lake’s website. “GREENbike’s system has grown by 400 percent since launching in 2013, with 10 bike share stations and a fleet of 55 bikes,” writer Isaac Riddle says. Still, the sharable bicycles aren’t of much use to the elderly or the disabled, who might be able to use tricycles instead of bikes. A recent KUER 90.1 FM report noted the problems with creating bike lanes, and a real vision for all modes of transportation. Advocates talk about a Complete Streets Approach, which would accommodate drivers, cyclists, children and wheelchair users. Salt Lake City has a ways to go.

COURTNEY MORTENSEN

Utah was founded because of persecution, so it’s no surprise that “religious freedom” has become a byword for our congressional delegation. The question is just whose religion they want to free, and from what. The Washington Blade reported that Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chair of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, is getting ready to call a hearing on the First Amendment Defense Act, which would prevent federal action against individuals and businesses opposing same-sex marriage for religious reasons. The bill was introduced by Sen. Mike Lee. The Blade says that the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage is bombarding Congress with faxes to push a hearing on FADA. Chaffetz’s support of FADA has become a campaign issue, as Stephen Tryon attempts to oust the popular congressman. “The legislation is hateful, and totally inconsistent with American values as well as Christian values,” he says on his website. But Utahns are a different kind of Christian.

We started in 2013. We both have always loved riding bikes, especially around Provo. Max, that summer, had just gone on a ghost tour in Salt Lake City and it got him thinking about the history of ghosts in Provo, where we lived. At first we thought it would be a funny idea to just do with friends, if we took them out on a ghost tour of Provo just using bikes. We had so much fun with that, we decided to make the tours a real business and invite the general public to come. We were shocked by the interest and the number of people who showed up that first year and continued to show up in the following years.

What are some of the scariest places you’ve been in Utah?

The scariest place Max has been is in the cellar of Ted Bundy’s old house in Salt Lake. Some other creepy places we have been is in the cemetery in Alpine, sitting on the Chair of the Dead.

How do you know so much about ghosts in Provo?

We’ve done extensive research on the history of ghosts and paranormal activity here. We’ve spent hours digging through cardboard boxes in the archives of the BYU library and researching on the Internet. Each year we’ve found more stories that make Provo even scarier.

What are some of the places you go to on your tour?

The creepiest place is the Provo cemetery. There’s something about riding your bike through the cemetery in the dark of night that can send chills down your back.

Have you ever encountered a ghost before, or know someone who has?

I have many friends who’ve had unusual encounters that could be explained by ghosts, but my only real experience with a ghost happened in Idaho. My grandma has a cabin up there, and right next door is an abandoned house where an old woman died alone and wasn’t discovered for some time. When we were younger, we’d love to sneak into the house at night. One year we had no flashlights and attempted the trip using only candlelight. After spooking ourselves out walking through the abandoned halls, we were heading back when we realized that one of us had left a candle behind. As we looked over at the house, we could see the candle through the window, but the candle was moving from room to room and all of us were accounted for. So instead of retrieving the candle, we ran as fast as we could back to the cabin.

If I go on your tour this Friday, should I be scared? I’ve never seen a ghost before, but I have no doubts they exist.

There’s no need to be scared—we have yet to have a strange encounter with the paranormal. We do bring our ghost detector, though, and have had it go off before. And this is our first Friday the 13th tour, so who’s to say that nothing strange will happen this time?

—ANDREA HARVEY aharvey@cityweekly.net

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Plural-curious

BY CECIL ADAMS SLUG SIGNORINO

STRAIGHT DOPE In this brave new (Western) world of marriage equality, why is polygamy still illegal? I’ve read all the usual arguments, which assume only heterosexual males would want multiple partners; successful men will monopolize all the marriageable women, leaving gangs of undesirable bachelors roaming the countryside; etc. They all seem like complete bullshit in the 21st-century U.S. What’s the real reason? —Jason Man, the polygamy bandwagon is really picking up steam—no less than Chief Justice John Roberts pitched the idea last year in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision affirming samesex marriage. Roberts argued, essentially, why stop here? “From the standpoint of history and tradition,” he wrote, “a leap from opposite-sex marriage to same-sex marriage is much greater than one from a twoperson union to plural unions, which have deep roots in some cultures around the world.” He was being rhetorical, sure—that scamp—but still, a family-law specialist told U.S. News & World Report, the good chief might’ve offered polygamy proponents a “legal foothold” for some future test case. The U.S. News piece was one of a number of contemporaneous articles that went right ahead and asked if this was the next frontier. Some were bald endorsements: Slate called polygamy “the constitutional, feminist and sex-positive choice.” Politico made your basic due-process argument: How can access to an important social institution be denied to a whole class of people just because they happen to be plural-curious? As you imply, traditional arguments against polygamous marriage in the U.S. have tended to be shallow and alarmist, as much about ostracizing Mormons (who ban the practice institutionally, though it continues among Mormon fundamentalists) as anything else. (Scholars have pointed out that, in its 1879 decision condemning polygamy, the U.S. Supreme Court cited British legal justification for imperial rule, essentially positioning American Mormons as colonial subjects in the process. But that’s a story for another day.) Still, they’re rooted in some fact—there are a few documented problems with polygamy as we know it: n A 2012 study found that, in polygynous cultures, where men take more than one wife, the ensuing sexual competition leads to greater rates of crime and violence. Researchers had been wondering why patriarchal cultures ever transition from polygamy to monogamy at all—it’s not like it’s in the interests of the guys in charge. Their findings led them to surmise that cultures evolve toward monogamy because it provides “greater net benefits for society at large,” even if, in the short term, it means less nooky for male heads of household. n If multiple spouses attach themselves to high-status individuals, where does that leave the little guy? In 2007 The New York Times reported that hundreds of teenage

boys had recently been forced out of a polygamous Mormon community in Utah, apparently to correct a “huge imbalance in the marriage market”—all the brides were being claimed by guys higher up the food chain. You dismiss this dynamic as bullshit, Jason, but I don’t think it’s a leap to imagine spouses flocking to rich hotties even in the most 21st-century of circumstances. n Monogamous marriage tends to increase the marryin’ age of young women, who aren’t being competed for so fiercely. In societies that have made the transition to monogamy, it’s generally preceded women’s greater inclusion in the civic sphere. And there are logistical quibbles. Take marital stability, for instance. Even if people in, say, three-person marriages were no more or less likely to seek divorce than in the two-person kind, divorce rates would still rise by a third. Just imagine the custody battles that might follow if kids are involved. And say I’m an employer offering a great benefits package—do I really need to provide it to all six of your spouses? Leaving the logistics aside, you’ll notice a theme among the opposing arguments you say are outdated: the presumption of a patriarchal society. Well, guess what, pal? That’s the one we’re living in. The overarching claim here is that reverting to our pre-monogamy past will bolster the patriarchy where we’ve already made significant strides to weaken it. Of course, the sexist-society argument cuts both ways: Arguing against plural marriage on the grounds that it’s traditionally patriarchal ignores the fact that traditional marriage is traditionally patriarchal. Perhaps practitioners of plural marriages can offer creative alternatives to the male-female patriarchal marriage, in the way gay spouses do by definition—maybe via polyandry, the practice of women taking multiple husbands. Historically this is rare and has been poorly studied, but going forward I wouldn’t mind seeing more sisters doing it for themselves. At the very least, advocates argue, legalizing polygamy may make it easier for victims of spousal abuse in preexisting polygamous marriage to find relief. So I’m with you in spirit, I suppose, but let’s stipulate: The best chance for successful plural marriage is a total upending of the patriarchy and the rewriting of the very well-settled capitalist and legal frameworks on which American society is structured. Call me back in another century and we’ll see how things are going. n Send questions to Cecil via StraightDope.com

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 Behnken Field House | Westminster College | 1840 S 1300 E SLC Tea Garden and Shopping 1:00-4:00 pm $35 per adult | $15 per child (12 and under)

Hats and gloves are encouraged. Proceeds support student scholarships.

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NEWS

JUSTICE

Shot Down

“I was trying to protect myself from getting stabbed. Now I’d prefer getting stabbed than shot.” —Abdi Mohamed

Youth shot by police near the downtown shelter struggles to rebuild his life. BY STEPHEN DARK sdark@citywekly.net @stephenpdark

STEPHEN DARK

bdi Mohamed’s body bears the brutal scars of his interaction with the Salt Lake City Police Department outside the downtown homeless shelter on February 27, 2016. Along with the five entry wounds— one into his back, two into his ribs, one gouged wheal on his side and one on his upper arm—there’s also the surgical scars that run from crotch to sternum and then across and around the upper right side of his chest where doctors sliced him open to save his life. One bullet was an inch away from his heart, says the softly spoken 18-yearold. “I’m alive. I could have died.” He lies on his side, rubbing his back from the pain. One of the rounds fired by two Salt Lake officers after they ordered Mohamed to drop a stick—either half a broomstick according to Mohamed, or a metal rod according to the police—fractured his spine. He can feel his legs; he just can’t move them. Mohamed does not understand why the two officers shot him. “They didn’t have to, like, shoot me because I had a broomstick in my hand. They had many options; they had tasers, batons, they could have used other results, instead of shooting a 17-year-old kid with a broomstick five times, you feel me?” Both officers were put on paid administrative leave and are now back on duty. Mohamed has become a polarizing figure in the ongoing local and national debate over police brutality that has convulsed both law enforcement and sectors of the public for several years. For some he is a victim of police brutality, and even racism, while for others he is a suspect, one of two youths who were described by Salt Lake City Police Department in their statement released the day after the shooting as beating a defenseless man. “Officers confronted the two suspects and ordered them to drop the weapons. One of the males complied and dropped the weapon, the other continued to advance on the victim and was shot by officers ... ” Mohamed has never told his side of the story before. He wants people to, “get it from me because I was the one there.” He disputes the police’s account of what happened and while he says he does not know if the officers who shot him were racist or not, he believes they were wrong

to use deadly force. “I honestly think police should not use weapons like guns and stuff on kids. That’s just wrong; especially when the kid doesn’t have a gun.” On that night, Mohamed says he was at 300 Rio Grande Street visiting homeless friends staying at the shelter. “That day I was there, me and my friends were going to go to a party.” He acknowledges that the shelter is dangerous, but “I know a lot of people, I’m not scared to go down there. When I go down there, I know I’m safe, I’m protected.” That night, Mohamed says he was intoxicated. He and a friend got into an altercation with a man. “I don’t know if he was drunk or high, he was like freaking on us.” Mohamed then heard someone yell, “‘Drop the stick.’ As soon as I turned around, I just went black.” He denies that he was beating the man, but rather says that he was protecting himself. “What’s messed up is they saw me as a threat because I had a broomstick. The other guy had a knife. He was trying to stab me. I was trying to protect myself from getting stabbed. Now I’d prefer getting stabbed than shot.” After the shooting, around 100 police in riot gear from multiple jurisdictions faced an angry crowd throwing rocks and bottles. What followed was a brief media firestorm locally, nationally and internationally. While media attention waned, the ordeal for Mohamed’s family was just beginning. Mohamed says his family members were repeatedly sent by the police to hospitals where he was never admitted. When his family found him, they were not allowed to see him because he was in police custody, even though he was in a medically-induced coma. “My mom was pissed off she couldn’t see her son when he got shot,” Mohamed says. “That’s kind of messed up.” The Utah Juvenile Defenders Office

Mohamed recovers in his west side home after being shot by two Salt Lake City police officers. has represented Mohamed on multiple juvenile court issues. Its executive director Pam Vickrey has no explanation for why access was barred to both members of the Mohamed family and Alicia Memmott, Mohamed’s attorney from their office, noting it was unprecedented in her experience. The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office is investigating Mohamed’s shooting, one of five open officer-involved shootings it currently has under way. DA Sim Gill says his office doesn’t comment on juvenile court issues, but that in this case the issue of who had right of access to the minor was unclear, so they sought clarification from the court. Vickrey says her office “filed a motion to allow legal counsel and his family to have visitation and the motion was granted.” Mohamed came out of the coma two weeks after the shooting. For his April 3 birthday, the nurses gave him a cake. He was released on April 12. The incident echoes several other recent and controversial Salt Lake City Police Department officer-involved shootings, notably the killings of a man wielding a snow shovel and an unarmed man outside a 7-Eleven. But despite the police body camera footage captured at the shooting not being released, the initial public outcry over Mohamed’s shooting has largely died out, bar several demonstrations by Utahns Against Police Brutality. Vickrey, like many others, wants to see the body cam footage released. “We have a young man who suffered injuries which may impact him his entire life and there is a video which could explain how this happened.” While no information has been released regarding the officers who opened fire, a fragmented portrait of

Mohamed that the youth says is a mix of inaccuracies and prejudices has emerged in the media. Parts of that media portrait have been gleaned from relatives, witnesses at the shelter, the Salt Lake City Police Department statement blaming Mohamed for the shooting, and an arguably inflammatory picture from Facebook of the minor sporting “bling.” Because of the publication of that image, he says, “People said I was in a gang, just because I’m on Facebook wearing red or blue. They just jumped straight [to me] being in a gang because they didn’t know anything about me.” What upsets him most, though, is the decision to release his juvenile record by the Administrative Office of the Courts [AOC] to The Salt Lake Tribune, following the shooting. In a news story [“Second Chances,” March 24 ], City Weekly looked at how the release of Mohamed’s court record cast a shadow over the confidentiality of the juvenile system. “They didn’t ask anybody, they just released it, they let the whole world know about my past, all the wrong I’ve done, all the mistakes I’ve made,” Mohamed says. “Now everybody knows it and I think it should be confidential. Nobody released any information on the cops and they had no right to release any information on me.” Rather than the AOC’s decision, Mohamed’s civil attorney, Ryan Hancey focuses his ire on the police statement which came out shortly after the shooting. “They put a spin on a story that hasn’t been investigated. I don’t think it’s responsible to do that,” he says. A Salt Lake City Police Department spokesman declined to comment on Mohamed’s story, citing departmental policy prohibiting comment on active investigations. The Unified Police

The youth says there are things he’s done that the world doesn’t see. Helping a homeless man by buying him a meal at McDonald’s, helping an old lady carry her groceries to the bus stop. “Even in [juvenile detention] when I was locked up, I didn’t cause any riots. I never caused problems.” While he waits for an operation to repair his spine, he still manages to get out with his family by using a wheelchair. He plans to buy crutches so he can walk, but either way he knows that he still has to deal with questions in public about what happened. “Every time I go somewhere with my mom, people ask me ‘Aren’t you the kid that got shot?’ They question you, then you get irritated. ‘Bro, leave me alone, it’s my problem, not yours.’” He feels that the police have tarnished his reputation. Society, he says, “automatically thinks you’re a bad person because you got shot by the cops. Honestly I think the cops put out a bad reputation for me. Now I got everybody thinking I did something wrong, when honestly I’m the innocent one.” After he recovers and puts this behind him, he wants to be a probation officer. “I’ve been through the juvenile system. I know how it’s hard; it’s hard for the kids.” He worries that his past will haunt him. “People don’t realize that whatever you do in life it always comes round, keeps on going round and round till you die. Everybody wants to break their circle, but when the media and the police are over there making you look bad, it’s hard to walk away from it.” Mohamed slowly maneuvers himself into an upright position to be photographed. He has to pick up and shift his thin legs from the left to in front of him before he is ready. “After this happened, I could have been negative, I could have been talking crap on the police,” he says. “You know what: it happened. They shot me. I’m still alive. I’m thankful I’m not dead.” CW

NICOLE ENRIGHT

More than 1,000 protestors took to the streets on Monday, Feb. 29 to denounce the officerinvolved shooting of then 17-year-old Abdullahi “Abdi” Mohamed.

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Department, which is independently investigating the shooting prior to turning over its findings to the DA, also declined to comment. Salt Lake City mayor Jackie Biskupski “wants a full accounting of the event,” says her spokesman, Matthew Rojas, noting that Gill has made it clear “the video will be made public.” With Mohamed as yet facing no charges— prosecutors have said in court they intend to file charges several times—the Utah Juvenile Defenders office’s Vickrey says her office is focusing “right now on making sure he has access to appropriate medical treatment, legal counsel, family support and that he is being cared for both physically and emotionally.” Mohamed says he’s prepared for what may come if the DA does pursue charges. “I don’t know what they are going to charge me with. I didn’t do anything. I know I didn’t.” Mohamed was born in a refugee camp outside Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998 to Somali parents who fled their homeland. He doesn’t have any memories of his life there, moving to Utah at age 5 with the help of an international refugee agency. Life in the States was hard, he says, especially after he began to get into trouble at age 12. He was in and out of juvenile court. “I try to fix it in my own way and usually it never works out,” he says. “I always end up messing up; making the situation worse for myself.” He says that he’s made mistakes. “I never got involved in drugs, I never sold drugs, but I’m not going to lie, I’ve used them before.” While Mohamed says he associates with gangs, he is not in one. “Gangs are like my family,” he says. “One day I just ended up in the streets and then I liked what I saw, how everybody treated me with respect.” Some people look at gangs “and jump to conclusions that they are drug dealers and bad people. Not everybody in a gang is like that. I know a lot of gang members don’t do that stuff. It’s all about respect in the gang system.”

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n the Utah Pride Festival website, the usual sights await: photographs from glorious festivals past, and tabs with information about how to volunteer, buy tickets and learn about the festival’s modest beginnings 41 years ago, when local gay rights activists staged the first Pride festival in a public park. The festival, and LGBT rights in general, have traveled a long, storied road since that first Utah Pride Festival in 1974. Same-sex marriage is now legal, and laws are on the books in many states prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But perhaps no barometer is more acute at measuring the success of a once-fringe movement than the free market, where the embrace of a counterculture by corporate behemoths is often what awaits at the finish line of a civil rights victory. This embrace is apparent by scrolling down the Pride Festival’s web page, where three bottles of Bud Light stand against a rainbow kaleidoscope, the words, “Be Yourself” printed below. The discomfort some gay rights activists feel with the presence of corporations like Adobe, Visa and Budweiser, percolated to the surface this spring, as the Utah Pride Festival has grappled with controversies stemming from its popularity. Local business owners and community organizations—miffed about vague deadlines, or none at all—posted to the Pride Center’s under-construction website, were told all parade slots were full. Michael Sanders, owner of the antique furniture store, Now & Again, and a leader of Utah’s leather-and-kink community, says his group, Black Boots, was told it could not have a slot in the parade because it asked too late. Meanwhile, Sanders says, many corporations—29 by the Pride Center’s count—were given spots. Community outrage from the perceived infiltration of the parade and other Pride festivals by corporate America prompted a town-hall meeting on May 5 at the Pride Center, where community members voiced concerns about everything from the commercialization of the parade, to mismanagement by Pride officials and the lack of HIV testing at the Pride Center. While Pride officials attempted to soothe the community’s concerns, apologizing for communication lapses and the shortcomings of its website, Sanders says he hopes

that as the festival continues to evolve, that Pride leaders don’t cave in to outright corporate domination, as he says is the case in other cities. “We love the [corporate] support,” Sanders says. “But we have to keep in mind that Pride parades around the country are starting to shift. Make no mistake, corporations are here because it’s good for their bottom line.” Connie O’Brien, the parade director, told the crowd that while corporate support of the Pride festival grows, it is still largely a community event, with nonprofit organizations, local businesses, religious groups and education interests taking up 74 percent of the parade slots. During the meeting, O’Brien told the crowd that this is the first year that she hasn’t been asked by the Pride Center’s board members, its donors or other powers, to break the rules and just let someone into the parade at the last minute. O’Brien said that when she informed Sanders that he’d be put on a waiting list for a parade slot, she knew that she was going to hear about it. An onslaught of social media attacks ensued, feelings were hurt and at some point, the politics behind the parade got personal. Carol Gnade, the Pride Center’s executive director, says O’Brien and the rest of the staff’s efforts to strive for integrity and professionalism can be greeted with disdain by some members of the public, but are important steps to helping ensure that the Pride Center doesn’t lose its way by kowtowing to powerful donors. “We’re trying to make that stop happening so we can keep that integrity,” Gnade says. The controversies surrounding the Pride Center are the latest in a sweeping series of issues that have come to light in recent years. Before Gnade took the reins less than a year ago, the center’s former executive director, Marian Edmonds-Allen, resigned after 11 weeks on the job. In media reports, EdmondsAllen said the Pride Center was in a state of financial crises and suffered from deteriorating programs and lack of donor support. During the 2015 celebration, members of the transgender community and other LGBT subgroups, protested what they said was Pride’s failure to be inclusive. And, just as the town hall meeting came to a close, and both sides of the issue seemed to be healing from the dissention surrounding corporations in the parade (by May 10, Sanders said he and several other organizations on the waiting list had received a slot), Dominique Storni took the microphone and challenged the Pride Center on its decision to honor two controversial figures with its “Icon” award. Christopher and Teinamarrie Scuderi, longtime LGBT advocates, drew fire in 2011 for their response to an incident involving a transgender person who was forced to remove makeup while trying to procure a state ID. Although Gnade originally said the board would not withdraw the award, on May 8 the Utah Pride Center in a Facebook post said the Scuderis—in a show of unity—declined to accept the honor. CW

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MAY 12, 2016 | 15

THE

NUEVE

THE LIST OF NINE

BY MASON RODRICKC & MICHELLE L ARSON

@MRodrickc

In a week, you can

CHANGE THE WORLD

URBAN DESIGN POLITICS SYMPOSIUM

If you’ve ever wondered about the politics behind things like urban planning, historic preservation or even water management, here’s a chance to learn at Creating Greater Salt Lake—History, Landscape, Urban Design. This isn’t simple politics, though, and Bernie Sanders supporters should take note. Andrew Needham of New York University will speak on “Beyond the Metropolis: Remapping American Urban History,” examining how metropolitan infrastructure has formed new regions and created new inequalities and environmental changes within them. There will be three panel discussions including transportation and urban design, water and the unsustainable landscape, and architecture and power. Downtown City Library, Nancy Tessman Auditorium, 210 East 400 South, 801-2457225, Friday, May 13, 9-4 p.m., free, registration requested, History.Utah. gov/2016Symposium

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16 | MAY 12, 2016

CITIZEN REVOLT

GENDER GAP FILM SCREENING

Nine horses that didn’t stand a chance at the 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby:

1. Fear & Hoofing 2. FacedownToastOnNewSlacks 3. HoldYourQuestionsUntilTheEnd

4. #YesAllHorses 5. Christian Morals 6. MyOtherHorseIsRhianna 7. I’mWearingAHuman 8. Horsey McHorseface 9. Future Glue

Donald Trump might want to see the documentary film CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, and soon. This special screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Robin Hauser Reynolds. The film explores tech jobs—which are growing three times faster than colleges are producing computer science graduates—and the reasons why more women and people of color are not seeking opportunities in computer science. It also explores how cultural mindsets, stereotypes, educational hurdles and sexism all play roles in this national crisis. Rowland Hall Lincoln Campus, Larimer Center, 843 South Lincoln St., Tuesday, May 17, 6:30 p.m. screening. Free and open to public, CodeDoc.co

PLANT SALE FUNDRAISER

It’s spring and planting is on everyone’s mind. But not so much the future of Fairpark, although its first annual Plant Sale and Education Project could help change that while promoting environmental responsibility and sustainability. There will be more than 4,000 vegetable and herb plants in the queue for distribution to the community for home gardens. As a special incentive to get people to attend the May 14 event, free seeds for lettuce, carrots, zucchini and cucumbers will be offered. Leftover plants from the sale will be taken to the Get Into the River Festival from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Utah Fairpark Amphitheater. Northwest Community Center, 1255 Clark Ave., Saturday, May 14, 10 a.m., free, pre-orders taken, FairparkCommunity.org

—KATHARINE BIELE Send events to editor@cityweekly.net

S NEofW the

Jail Is Hell The eye-catching Vietnamese model and Playboy (Venezuela edition) Playmate Angie Vu complained to the New York Daily News in April that her five-plus months in jail in Brooklyn have been “torture” and “cruel” because of her lack of access to beauty care. Vu is fighting extradition to France for taking her 9-year-old daughter in violation of the father’s custody claim and is locked up until a federal judge rules. Among her complaints: “turning pale” in the “harsh light”; lack of “Guerlain’s moisturizer”; inability to look at herself for months (because glass mirrors are prohibited); and “worrying” about being hit on by “lesbians” (thus causing “wrinkles”). At least, she told the reporter, she has found God in jail and passes time reading the Bible.

BY CHUCK SHEPHERD

n James David Manning, chief pastor of the Atlah Worldwide Missionary Church in Harlem, in a recent online sermon, stepped up his usual anti-gay rhetoric, warning “sodomites” that God would soon send flames “coming out of your butthole.” (A gay and transgender support group is fundraising to buy Atlah’s building and set up a shelter.)

WEIRD

Questionable Judgments Chef Mahbub Chowdhury pleaded guilty in April to food and hygiene violations in Swindon (England) Magistrates Court after inspectors found “brown fingerprints” in the kitchen at his Yeahya Flavour of Asia carry-out restaurant. Chowdhury was candid about his “cultural” habit of bypassing toilet paper and using his hand to clean himself. The plastic bottle with the fingerprints, Chowdbury said, contained water that he normally used instead of the toilet paper, and his lawyer argued that since the bottle was never actually lab-tested, the brown spots could have been “spices.” Unclear on the Concept “Zero tolerance” claimed another victim, in Charlotte, N.C., in April, when Jaden Malone, 12, came to his bullied friend’s aid, was knocked down himself and repeatedly punched in the head by the bully, and pushed the boy off of him to avoid further damage—but was himself suspended for three days by his charter school Invest Collegiate. A school official pointed out that the bully got five days, and besides, the policy against “all” physical violence is very clear. (After having Jaden treated for a concussion, his mother promptly withdrew him from the school.) n Ms. Madi Barney, 20, courageously publicly reported her own rape accusation recently in Provo, Utah, and as a result has been disciplined as a student at Brigham Young University for allegedly violating the school’s “honor code.” (She is barred from withdrawing from courses or re-registering.) Whether the sex was consensual must be investigated by Provo police, but BYU officials said they had heard enough to charge Barney with the no-no of premarital sex. (Critics decried the advantage BYU thus gives rapists of BYU females—since the women face the additional fear of university reprisals irrespective of the criminal case.) Latest Religious Messages Idaho’s law protecting fundamentalist faith healers regained prominence recently in the case of Mariah Walton, 20, who was born with a routinely repairable heart defect but who received only prayer and herbs because of her parents’ religious rejection of doctors. Walton’s now-irreversible damage leaves her frail and dependent on portable oxygen, and she will likely need lung and heart transplants to survive. Idaho and five other states immunize parents from criminal prosecution if they reject medical care on the ground of religious teachings.

Latest From Evangelicals Christian political activist David Barton told his “WallBuilders” radio audience recently that Disney’s anthropomorphic characters (e.g., Bambi) are simply gateways to kids’ learning Babylonian pagan worship. n Brooklyn, N.Y., “prophet” Yakim Manasseh Jordan told followers recently that he has arranged with God to bring people back from the dead if they—cheerfully—offer a “miracle favor cloud” of gifts as low as $1,000.

Police Report The Tap Inn bar in Billings, Mont., released April 11 surveillance video of the armed robbery staged by two men and a woman (still on the lam), showing two lip-locked customers at the bar, lost in affectionate embrace during the entire crime, seemingly oblivious of danger. The robbers, perhaps impressed by the couple’s passion, ignored them—even while emptying the cash register just a few feet away. n Andru Jolstad, 26, was arrested on April 16 and charged with using a pry bar to break into the cash boxes of four machines at Zap’s Arcade in Mesa, Ariz. Following citizen tips, a cop arrived to find Jolstad on his knees alongside one machine with his arm still inside. His total take from the spree was $18, and he’ll likely be sent back to prison from an earlier charge.

Yee-Hah! Transportation Security Administration announced on April 27 that its screeners had confiscated 73 guns from passengers’ carry-ons—in just the previous seven days! (Sixty-eight were loaded, and 27 had a round in the chamber.) n Federal regulators were deliberating in April whether to stop Minnesota’s Ideal Conceal from rolling out its two-shot, .380 caliber handgun disguised as a smartphone. Several police chiefs, and two U.S. senators, have expressed alarm. n Jeffrey Grubbs, 45, was charged with two felonies in March following a school’s 4-H Club carpentry project at which he (lacking a hammer) pounded a thumbtack into wood with the butt of his loaded handgun. (He subsequently realized the danger and removed the bullets.)

Perspective California’s forests host major marijuana-growing operations (legal and illegal), and though the product has its virtues, cannabis farming creates massive problems—guzzling water (23 liters per day per plant—state drought or not) and needing the protection of a dangerous rodenticide. A state wildlife official told NBC News in April that the cannabis sites “use massive amounts of fertilizers, divert natural run-off waters, create toxic run-off waste and byproducts, remove large amounts of vegetation and trees, … create … unstable soils and kill or displace wildlife.” Drugs! Is There Anything They Can’t Do? Police in the Augusta, Georgia, suburb of Hephzibah arrested a meth-addled Ray Roye for battery and family violence against his wife in March. Roye was yelling about custody of their child, but his wife informed police they don’t have a child. n Johnnie Hurt, 38, was arrested after reportedly eating mulch from a motel’s landscaping in London, Kentucky, in April while missing a court-ordered drug test. When police arrived, Hurt was found in his wildly trashed a motel room.

Thanks This Week to Eddie Earles and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Two counter-culture mavens of Salt Lake City’s alternative magazine market reinvent themselves for the digital age. By Stephen Dark •

@stephenpdark

Photos by niki Chan

“

Goldman Sachs, has been to step down as day-to-day editor—managing editor Alexander Ortega is taking charge—while, as “executive editor” and publisher, she focuses on long-term planning. deJong, by contrast, knew what she had to do before seeking the college’s help. According to Catalyst’s nonprofit prospectus, “the magazine’s long-successful model of providing educational and interpretative news coverage has been only partially successful in adapting to ever-spiraling costs of news print, mailing and other related expenses.” So she took the advice of readers and advertisers who said they would be willing to donate funds to keep it going, and turned her 34-year-old magazine into a nonprofit which also allows her to pursue funding through grants. Brown bought SLUG when she was in her 20s, recalls Utah Film Center’s Mariah Mann Mellus, a writer who has scribed a gallery-stroll column for the magazine for 16 years. What was once a punk-rock focused, black-and-white magazine has become, under Brown’s stewardship, a boldly colorful, quality-print monthly that encompasses not only local bands but art forms beyond music, action sports and food. Brown introduced snowboarding, skateboarding, belly dancing and other elements to the magazine that “expanded what underground meant,” Mellus

If I ever get a bit

bored, I change [the magazine’s] size. Or

have a big party. Or do

”

something with my hair.

says. “SLC Punk had happened—what’s our scene now?” Brown grew up and the magazine grew up with her, Mellus says. “Now, she’s got mentoring programs for photographers and writers. SLUG has policies and procedures, for heaven’s sake. The paper’s never looked better.” Under Brown, SLUG went from printing 5,000 copies monthly to 25,000, Brown says. Approximately 150 people are listed on her masthead working at the magazine in some form, many as volunteers as well as a smaller number of freelancers and full-time salaried employees. Brown says that her business model is “based on volunteers looking for experience, resumebuilding opportunities, a genuine love for community or hoping to interview their musical heroes.” Running a publication on good-will, charisma, loyalty and little in the way of a paycheck has its drawbacks, though. Brown couldn’t afford health insurance all these years and only got it at age 39 when she got married last year. With her restructuring in place, Brown hopes to address long-term issues such as monetizing SLUG’s website and dealing with rent increases at her downtown Pierpoint Avenue offices, which nearly doubled from $9 a square foot to approximately $16 after property ownership changed. “If you’re assigning out stories, it’s hard to make time for thinking of the future,” she says. Catalyst’s fortunes have been less heady of late, its circulation cut in half from its peak of 30,000 copies distributed monthly in the early 2000s, with the number of ads per issue down from a heyday 160 to

not lost on either of the longtime friends. deJong wrote in her March 11, 2016, Editor’s Notebook, “Business school? For a bleeding liberal magazine editor and publisher? Hell, yeah. I should have done it years ago.” Utah has seen many small publications come and go over the past 50 years, such as the first underground newspaper, Electric News, the Street Paper and the Salt Flat News. Catalyst and SLUG, the longest surviving niche alternative monthlies, launched in 1982 and 1989 respectively. “That Greta and Angela have survived so long, publishing local monthly magazines is a wonder,” says Ken Sanders, veteran book seller and owner of Ken Sanders Rare Books. “It’s a testament to the determination and drive of both of these women.” Both were awarded the Josephine Zimmerman Pioneer in Journalism award—Brown in 2013, deJong in 2014— by the Utah chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and now each faces the trial of ensuring their publications survive. SLUG and Catalyst, much like every other print and digital publication in Utah, has to address the same challenge: identifying new revenue streams in a world of shrinking print advertising budgets and the Internet. Brown’s response to that challenge, driven by the insights she gained from

| CITYWEEKLY.NET |

ne afternoon in spring 2015, Angela H. Brown stood up in the Miller Business Resource Center in Sandy to give a commencement speech to 80 fellow students. They were graduates of the Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program, and the blue-chip investment bank had asked them to dress as professionals for the occasion. Brown wore a gray dress, matching suit jacket, her mother’s pearl necklace and, perhaps as a salute to her punk-rock core, red heels. For the past 15 years, Brown has been publisher and editor of SLUG Magazine, a monthly, free alternative print and digital publication, the title of which stands for Salt Lake Underground. She told the audience that the three-month course had shown her “I had a problem with fear,” whether in terms of taking on loans to grow her business or asking her partner of 10 years to marry her. The raven-haired Utahn, who sports a tattoo down her back of a Japanese folk art-styled phoenix rising from water, is not the only Salt Lake City counterculture maven to have sought enlightenment from the global investment bank. Brown encouraged Greta deJong, Salt Lake City’s long-standing alternative-lifestyle magazine Catalyst’s founder, publisher and editor, to apply. The irony that the editor of the gritty, punk-rock-born zine and the founder of Salt Lake City’s only environmental and holistic-focused monthly turned to one of America’s most successful and aggressive multi-billion dollar corporations for help is

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Angela Brown, executive editor of SLUG magazine.

MAY 12, 2016 | 17

Greta deJong, editor and publisher of Catalyst.

COURTESY PHOTO

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18 | MAY 12, 2016

60. deJong “put her heart and soul into that paper,” Sanders says. “She kept it going despite the economy.” Catalyst has championed everything from the slowfood movement, through environmental issues to mycro-remediation (using mushrooms to battle contaminants in the environment). For 34 years, deJong has steered her publication, as founder, publisher, editor and columnist. “Catalyst has really been my life. If I ever get a bit bored, I change its size. Or have a big party. Or do something with my hair,” she writes in an email. Catalyst continues to be “like my personal journal,” says deJong, 64, in her apartment above the magazine’s offices in downtown Salt Lake City. “It’s sort of a reflection of where I’m at, what I’m doing.” What unites the two women across their generations—beside both being Capricorns with backgrounds in contemporary dance—is an anchoring passion for the creative and healthy wellbeing of their city. deJong says when she started Catalyst —dedicated to the idea of “healthy living, healthy planet”—there was a schism between the two populations she was serving, environmentalists and New Age spiritualists. “They were at odds; now they are integrated. I graciously accept any part I played in that happening.” Catalyst also provided a platform for the growth of yoga in Salt Lake City and massage therapy. Even though she did not intend Catalyst to carry journalism when she began, it’s the stories and the profiles of locals who breathe life into New Age issues and her own fire for such topics that keeps her going after three-plus decades as publisher. Catalyst readers, she says, aren’t identified by age, gender or income, but by attitude, “a culmination of personal influences, a values thing.”

Greta met future husband John, “the next Bill Gates,” in 1985. Brown’s husband, artist Fletcher Booth, says Brown sees her role in the community as similar to deJong’s. Brown is “trying to make [SLUG] grow, to make it bigger, a more inclusive entity within the community. It’s really about that, promoting all the things that are great in the city.” Brown, he recalls, talked about leaving Salt Lake City for “a cool city, but then she realized at some point you make the city you live in the city you want it to be.”

A Celestial Wedding Greta deJong grew up in Neenah, Wis., in the early 1960s, with an older brother who published his own magazine on organic farming called Countryside. That brother infected his younger sibling with a passion to be a magazine editor from her childhood. Her brother Jerry Belanger “was always her mentor and hero,” Catalyst art director and deJong’s niece Polly Mottonen says. “She’s a little sister, I think that her role in life is to be a proud little sister. She’s always rooting for her siblings, her employees and her city.” After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, she worked for two years at Countryside, editing a column of environmental news called Spaceship Earth. In 1978, deJong followed her thenboyfriend to Salt Lake City where he had found work with a gas company. Several years later, in 1981, after working in computer sales, she joined forces with two other women, Victoria Fugit and Lezlee Spilsbury, to produce what was initially a monthly guide to community resources, rather than a magazine. “My friends and I were discovering Native American, Eastern and Celtic spirituality,” deJong recalls. People were interested in “real food,” moving “back to the land,” as the New Age movement became holistic. It was also a time when the few massage therapists in town had to undergo annual VD tests and register with the vice squad, while yoga and meditation were both esoteric pass times few did. “There was a lot going on, but nobody knew about it,” deJong says. “Everything was underground, and there was no way for people to communicate,” she says, other than on the bulletin board at the legendary Cosmic Aeroplane bookstore and head shop. To launch the magazine, in December 1981, the three women threw a party. There were belly dancers, tarot readers, wandering violinists and a church choir in the balcony. After seven issues, Fugit and Spilsbury moved on, and deJong soldiered on alone, for a while turning the publication into a quarterly. Greta met her future husband, John deJong, a Vietnam veteran with a degree in industrial engineering, in 1985. He was working on a computer start-up with a friend and was sharing a house with several men who were bicycle couriers. A friend described him as “the next Bill Gates,” Greta recalls. He had built a 5-foot-deep, 2,000-gallon concrete hot tub in the backyard—its only rule: no swimsuits—and one day, Greta was invited by others for a dip. The man who did not believe in love at first sight was smitten. From the start, their emotional relationship was intertwined with business.

“

John deJong today, surrounded by his “space structures.” “He decided he’d much rather work for Catalyst than be a millionaire,” deJong says, noting that John brought “political acumen” to the publication. He wrote a column of political commentary called the “Cynicgrill,” about a group of characters sitting at a bar. “I feel sad he stopped it. It was so witty and insightful.” His current column is “Don’t Get Me Started,” where he vents on political issues of the day. He is also associate publisher and distributes the paper. John proposed marriage to Greta in late 1985, and they were married the following March. In her Editor’s Notebook entry for March 2007, Greta describes how they were wed in the former Hansen Planetarium on State Street (long since an O.C. Tanner store). “Guests entered through the rings of Saturn. I strode down the side aisle under the constellation of Capricorn. John entered opposite under Leo. ... We said our vows by candlelight.” Despite skepticism that Salt Lake City could support a magazine focused on holistic arts and environmentalism, Catalyst thrived. “Everybody wants clean water and clean air for their grandchildren,” she says. The most important stories Catalyst has done “were related to environmental issues.” Now, “there is a broad-based concern for environmental issues,” deJong says. “In 1982, it was something for the fringes.” Staff writer Diane Olson joined in 1994. Catalyst was “beautiful and handmade,” she says. She immediately penned a number of investigative pieces, including an expose of mismanagement and embezzlement at Tracy Aviary, and a hard-hitting series with John deJong, Greta recalls, on a nerve gas incinerator at Dugway. While the Dugway story was broken by a Deseret News reporter, “we certainly brought in angles that nobody else had,” Olson says. “We stirred up a lot of shit.” Another Olson-bylined story that drew plaudits from the Deseret News was a piece on the Bennett Paint building. deJong recalls the glass tower was “a longstanding eyesore.” Olson revealed through a title

We certainly brought in angles

that nobody else had. We stirred up a lot of shit.

”

search that it was owned by Sen. Bob Bennett’s family. The building was ultimately torn down. Other stories the publisher is proud of include “Karen Denton’s story on Kennecott’s contaminated groundwater plume seeping out of Bingham Creek” and more recently a piece by Katherine Pioli, also a City Weekly contributor, on hens in city neighborhoods, “which was instrumental in getting laws changed.” Olson, who left Catalyst in 2004 in search of better-paying work than journalism, echoes the description of other staff members of the much-adored deJong. “She’s not quite human, she’s kind of magical and weird.” Come the monthly crunch of going to press, she recalls that often at 3 a.m., as the staff struggled to finish, deJong would be doing handstands. “It was madness, but rather glorious madness,” Olson says.

Bright Lights, Small City

While deJong was a wide-eyed import to Utah, Brown was born and raised in a conservative Mormon household high up in the then-wilds of Emigration Canyon, three miles from Hogle Zoo. Brown was the last of six children and shortly after her birth in 1976, her mother was repeatedly institutionalized with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Her father was the dean of social work at the University of Utah and an entrepreneur who owned a counseling business specializing in drug and alcohol issues. A portrait of her dad from when he was dean adorns the top of a bookcase in the SLUG offices. “He encouraged me to follow my dreams,” she says. Raised in a “shrouded LDS bubble,” Brown’s cousin would give her SLUG to read. “There really was another world out there,” she learned from its pages, one she believed was the domain of punks she saw hanging around outside the old Crossroads/ZCMI malls, where City Creek Center stands today. Brown pursued photography, shooting local bands for free for the experience. Then SLUG publisher Gianni Ellefsen hired her to shoot a cover in 1997, and six months later took her on as managing editor. In 2000, Brown faced a decision. She had always wanted to move to New York City and pursue her dream of being a documentarian

and a music photographer. Suddenly she had an opportunity to go to San Francisco as an artist rep for Universal Music. But Ellefsen then offered to sell her SLUG. She wondered, bright lights, big city or Salt Lake City? Then, she found out her father had been diagnosed with cancer, from which, four years later, he would succumb. She decided to stay near her father and took over SLUG. One question she had to resolve was her own approach to the magazine’s content. One of its former publishers told her, “‘I just play God, I put what I like in the magazine.’” While she felt initially disappointed by the seeming lack of an overall philosophy, she later realized, that putting in what she found compelling was “really good advice. This is how you do it.”

From Husband to “Wasband” Back Seat Slugger

Don’t Ask a Cop

MAY 12, 2016 | 19

As Brown expanded her reach in new directions, a controversy erupted in early 2015 around an anonymously written column in SLUG called “Ask a Cop.” The column began in 2009, Brown says. What intrigued her was that the officer had grown up as part of the Los Angeles punk scene, going to Black Flag and Germ shows. “He came from the same spirit as the magazine came from. I thought it would be really interesting to hear from a like-minded individual who had chosen a career in law enforcement,” she says. Readers’ questions for an advice column can be a hit-and-miss affair. So when questions weren’t submitted, one of the writers would submit one instead. In the shadow of the Ferguson, Mo., riots, triggered by a cop’s shooting of an unarmed black teenager, a SLUG writer asked why cops pursue tactics that lead to people’s deaths, rather than use tasers. The cop’s response—that tasers kill civilians, too, and cops killed in the line of duty get no attention—provoked criticism from writers and illustrators at SLUG prior to publication. One illustrator resigned over the column. The column had not received criticism before, Brown says, but with that particular issue, readers, local musicians, artists and others in the community called for a boycott until SLUG stopped publishing “Ask a Cop.” Free speech was one thing, responsible publishing another, wrote an activist on Facebook. Brown agreed to meet with one activist,

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When 24-year-old Brown took over SLUG, she recalls that it had “a male-dominated culture. The social activists of today would be pissed about the environment. Not a lot of females participated in an active role.” She says she doesn’t “play into” any bias that others might apply to her gender as a business owner and publisher. In a meeting in a room “full of suits, I can tell if they don’t respect my opinion. It doesn’t really matter, I don’t give a fuck. I’m making a positive change in my community,” she says. But one person’s opinion that she did care about was that of artist Fletcher Booth, her next-door neighbor in downtown’s ArtSpace apartment complex. Booth grew up a punk rocker and skateboarder in Kansas, and played cornerback on the high school football team. His subsequent fascination with how hardcore punk was saturated in machismo and with kids growing up in America not knowing where they fit in society, “played a big role in how I approached the aesthetic of my art.” Booth initially thought Brown was a delivery driver for SLUG after he saw bundles of the publication in her backseat. She resembled the punk girls he drew when he was at high school in Kansas. “When I saw Angela, it dawned on me this is the girl I always wanted to meet.” With SLUG making very little money, Brown relied on two other jobs to pay her bills, one of them printing for a photographer from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. It took Booth asking her out seven times, he says, before she was finally able to fit him into her schedule. Brown started SLUG-branded products, such as the Death by Salt annual music compilations as well as events, most notably Craft Lake City. In 2007, “I started to notice this huge resurgence in the handmade community all over the country, going back to making your own

clothes, big craft food, family table movements.” In 2009, she organized a SLUGbranded event focused on handcrafts, and eventually launched Craft Lake City as a nonprofit. The event brought together politically diverse vendors at the tables. “You had this dichotomy of a very stereotypical Utah conservative next to a Utah rabble-rouser,” she says.

and at parties. After the sisters graduated from college, the relationship deepened as they attended events and festivals together, particularly Salt Lake’s Burning Man community. “We started to get to know them better,” 25-year-old Sophie says. “They were no longer the quirky couple who enabled our life.” The deJongs eventually “emerged as family members, but not like typical parents. Greta was the No. 1 girlfriend I would go out dancing with when I moved home to SLC after college. It was like finding out we had these really fun friends who also happened to be the catalyst to our existence.” Yet, their unconventional marriage eventually came to breaking point. In a March 2007 column, Greta announced she and John had gotten a divorce. “In the last year, our personal work has opened doors that we did not even know were there. I would say that love has survived. The marriage, however, has not.” Greta moved the magazine to the ground floor of what was the couple’s home, while John moved to the former offices, taking with him his vast and incalculably complex collection of Lego, Happy Meal toys, lenses and bits and pieces he has doggedly collected over the years. His apartment is somewhere between an antique store and the externalization of the creative impulses of one man’s mind. He calls the shapes “space structures. You stretch that, squish it, twist it,” he says. The two years surrounding the divorce were painful for both parties and tense for their magazine colleagues. John deJong says his “love for Greta never wavered.” He still reads to her from The New Yorker at night to help her sleep, then returns to the office in the morning with coffee to share with Greta. The man she calls both “a worthy foe,” and, in print, her “wasband,” is “still sort of my husband,” she says. “He introduces me as ‘my wife.’” John deJong, she says, “likes to say we’re ‘cahoots,’” but Greta prefers the term conspirators. “Frankly, I can’t imagine Catalyst or my life without him.”

Punk-rock’s ingrained machismo, Booth says, plays into his art.

Seventh time’s the charm: Brown and husband Fletcher Booth.

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Greta deJong’s role as a “catalyst” extends beyond her publication. In 1987, she became friends with a woman who had had two miscarriages and was getting a divorce. “I can’t wait around for Mr. Right,” deJong recalls the woman telling her. “I’m looking for a sperm donor.” After two ectopic pregnancies, deJong knew she wasn’t interested in having children. But her husband was still passionate about fatherhood, so she introduced him to her friend as a possible surrogate father. “I felt like I was doing a good deed,” she says. The woman wanted “someone who would be acknowledged as the father, whose name was on the birth certificate and show up on bar mitzvahs and birthdays. John agreed to all that.” John and Greta accompanied the woman on the first attempt at insemination, holding hands as the doctor went to work under a tent. Her single-mother friend gave birth to twin girls in 1990, Sophie and Rachel Silverstone. “I conceived of the notion of them,” Greta says. “I’m the catalyst to their birth.” She also describes it, as “the lazy woman’s guide to having kids.” Through the girls’ lives, the deJongs would show up sporadically for birthdays

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only to find herself in a confrontation with seven, who “did not want to talk. They wanted a punching bag, to tell me what a horrible, misogynistic, racist person I was,” she says. Brown says the controversy did not impact the magazine financially. While several clients did not renew contracts, others came out in support of SLUG. “It’s hard to stand tall on your truth when people throw tomatoes at you,” she says.

Scaling Down When Pax Rasmussen first started as deJong’s assistant at Catalyst in 2006, the magazine was at 88 pages—currently it’s around 40—“and there was a lot more money going through the place.” He’d heard the phone ring five or six times a day with someone requesting info about placing an ad. “That just stopped,” with the recession, he says. Suddenly all the small businesses that wanted to promote reiki and massages were targeting customers on social media, through Google ads or web apps. “The tiny little businesses just disappeared, they were gone by 2008,” he says. Where there were two full-time sales people when he began, by 2013, Greta was doing the selling. As the magazine shrank

in revenue and staff numbers dropped, through mostly natural attrition, “it started to have more of a family business feel,” Rasmussen says, with John’s daughters working there. In its 35th year, Greta’s frustrations with the limitations of her financial reach remain apparent. “In the years that we are more flush, we are bigger and can encompass more. That’s why, right now, I’m not happy being small (the May 2016 issue is 33 pages). There’s too much we should be writing about and don’t have the wherewithal to cover,” she says, ticking off topics such as alternative fuels, solar industry and perma culture that her writers cover, but not in the persistent way she would like.

Wedding Deconstruction In the fall of 2014, Brown attended classes in Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program. She discovered that contrary to her deeply held beliefs that she was fearless, that she could “stand out in a crowd and stand up for myself,” fear had “slyly seeped into my life like sticky black tar.” After the course, Brown overcame her fear of asking for money and secured a $100,000 line of credit for her business. She hired four full-time employees and is

20 | MAY 12, 2016

working on a strategy to dramatically increase SLUG’s annual revenue over the next three years, she told her fellow graduates in her commencement speech. That anticipated revenue stream will come from figuring out how to “monetize” SLUG’s digital presence, which she has beefed up to include multiple new stories being posted weekly. Brown also wrought changes at home, proposing marriage to Booth in early 2015. Brown and Booth decided they wanted their public wedding—they had a secret “official” wedding one month before the event—to deconstruct the nature of the ceremony. One Sunday evening in November 2015, friends, co-workers, artists and local celebrities gathered at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Longtime Brown friend and fashion designer Jared Gold designed her wedding dress, a startling combination of a U-Haul blanket and a 200-year-old Hungarian piano shawl. Music was provided by a punk rock karaoke band that played covers of Black Flag, Motorhead and Bad Brains songs. The evening included an analysis of proposals by actor Jason Bowcott, then belly-dancing by a group Brown had danced with for years, followed by a two-minute video filmed by local director Trent Harris of Booth and Brown lip-syncing to a song from Russ Meyer’s cult classic “Beyond the Valley of Dolls.” Finally KUER 90.1 FM radio personality Doug Fabrizio, in the role of preacher, presented the couple to the gathered crowd.

A Question of Relevancy

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deJong alongside Catalyst’s “social media maven” and community development manager, Sophie Silverstone.

Every month, Brown aims to deliver the “alternative experience” in SLUG’s pages.

For both publications, one ever-present concern is how to remain relevant. “It seems like an uphill battle,” says bookstore owner Ken Sanders. “Does the digital age we live in make old, local roots, on-the-ground activism just completely irrelevant, even passé?” he muses. Brown’s leading weapon in the fight for unique, compelling stories is having writers in the community who can identify stories no one else has broken. She continues to try to break into the suburbs, stressing how difficult it is for an independent publication to get readers out in Sandy or Draper, because of all the big-box stores.

“We look at how we can infiltrate the suburbs,” she says. “That’s where all the kids are.” She wants to show them, “there’s more to life than going to Target on a Saturday and buying shit made in China.” One Catalyst reader wrote to deJong in response to her November 2012 question, “Is Catalyst still relevant?” that the role it played was to find common ground between Utah’s two worlds of Mormons and non-Mormons. “And here comes this squeaky little voice in the middle of this political, social stare-down of opposites proposing that it is indeed a common planet and that maybe we could share the beautiful things and somehow make a difference.” To keep that relevancy going, deJong turned Catalyst into a nonprofit, noting that the nonprofit route will mean some limitations, for example, in political expression. But then, she says, “Mother Jones is a nonprofit. If they can cope with the regulations, so can we.” But even if deJong can address her financial woes, there’s another challenge ahead. “I need someone to step up to the plate and carry on the art of storytelling,” she says. “Basically, I just want to build a team so that if and when I book, the magazine is still solid.” With at least four massage therapy schools in the valley, yoga teachers and meditation fundamental elements of Salt Lake City’s culture and health-orientated groceries, Catalyst has played an undeniable role in building a more healthconscious Salt Lake City, as what was once fringe is now mainstream. Such changes, inevitably, herald more businesslike approaches to what were once cottage industries. “An intimacy has been lost,” she notes in an email. Catalyst, deJong believes, continues to find resonance with new generations. She’s met many millenials, she says, who reject “the cubicle lifestyle,” for the values that are enshrined in her pages. “They’re more expressive and liberal than recent generations.” Despite betting on digital for a significant revenue boast—“There’s no sense in leaving money on the table,” Brown says, quoting her Goldman Sachs’ mentor— Brown believes there’s a future for print, too. Readers want something that’s tactile, she argues. “There’s someone somewhere who wants an alternative experience.” CW

ESSENTIALS

the

FRIDAY 5.13

The Sklar Brothers are a unique act, not just in the idea of having a pair of identical-twin brothers performing standup comedy together, but because what would normally be written off as a “novelty act” has become one of the most successful duos in modern comedy. The back-and-forth comic timing that Randy and Jason Sklar write is almost a throwback to that of Abbott and Costello—except you as the audience are Abbott, and they’re both Costello. Find YouTube clips of “Chopper 4” or “Wonder If Kids Understand,” and you’ll see how the two play off each other in a rapid-fire style where one brother’s banter immediately leads to other’s punch line. Aside from getting their start on MTV for the short-lived sketch show Apt. 2F, the Sklar Brothers have been guests on shows and films like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Entourage, Grey’s Anatomy, Bubble Boy and The Comebacks. The duo have had some cool projects over the years, including the ESPN comedy show Cheap Seats, where they riffed on old sports broadcasts from the channel’s library. More recently, the pair have been running their own Earwolf podcast called Sklarbro Country, where they give their comedic take on the world of sports and pop culture with special guests, and recently recorded their 300th episode. They’ve also been producing videos for the NFL Now series, ripping apart all things football on the league’s own website. The brothers will be in town for a two-night stand at Wiseguys, performing a mix of classic bits and new material. (Gavin Sheehan) The Sklar Brothers @ Wiseguys Salt Lake City, 194 S. 400 West, May 13-14, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $20. WiseguysComedy.com

Racial identity is often thought of as a binary equation: black or white, Latino or Asian, etc., with the various ethnic communities even maintaining some degree of separateness. However, the realities of life in an increasingly diverse nation and world are that lines and colors blur, and it benefits everyone. Stereotyping still occurs, and it’s worthwhile to examine it in order to try to move beyond it. Local artist, curator, photographer and writer Sarah May has been undergoing a process of questioning her own identity as a biracial woman for several years. As a Latina, she has used the retablo tradition in Mexican folk art, with paintings of religious iconography as part of this process. It’s a series of mixed-media boxes depicting herself and people who are important to her, creating a kind of narrative telling the story of their culture and identity, with personal statements and artifacts. The impromptu nature of the boxes reinforces the idea of telling cultural and personal histories as a casual, everyday phenomenon; a part of our everyday lives. A graduate of the University of Utah with a BFA in photography and digital imaging, May has created work focused on contemplating the many facets of identity. In 2014, she curated a local show at a pop-up gallery called The Identity Project, and this January she curated Emotional Ties at Urban Arts Gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, May 20, from 6 to 9 p.m., during the May Gallery Stroll. (Brian Staker) Sarah May: Identity Retablos, @ Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts, 631 W. North Temple, Ste. 700, 801-596-5000, May 16-June 10. MAACollective.org

The question posed by the title of Bill Clegg’s novel—taken in part from a poem by Alan Shapiro—might seem unusual, given that nearly all of us were raised in a family. But this heartbreaking work digs deeper into the concept, exploring how the flawed realities of people ripple through generations, making that platonic concept of family feel elusive. The plot is initiated by a tragedy in the small Connecticut town of Wells, where a house fire takes the lives of four people, including a young couple set to be married the next day. Over the course of several subsequent months, the narrative switches to the point of view of nearly a dozen people impacted by that event: June, the mother of the bride; the owners of a Washington state motel where June comes to stay; a perpetually stoned teenage boy; and even people who don’t realize themselves that the tragedy touched their lives. Clegg masterfully weaves these individual stories into a rich portrait not just of grief, but of the regret that comes from lost opportunity to mend past mistakes with those we love. He even does a brilliant job of turning the town of Wells itself into a kind of dysfunctional family, in the way that many small towns shape those who were raised there. But mostly, he captures something universal in the way one damaged relationship can shape others down the line, and how hard it can be to find the peace that allows healthy relationships to emerge. (SR) Bill Clegg: Did You Ever Have a Family @ The King’s English Bookshop, 1511 E. 1500 South, 801-484-9100, May 17, 7 p.m., free. KingsEnglish.com

Bill Clegg: Did You Ever Have a Family

MAY 12, 2016 | 21

TUESDAY 5.17

Sarah May: Identity Retablos

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MONDAY 5.16

The Sklar Brothers

FRIDAY 5.13

Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy’s musical adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo—receiving its U.S. premiere production at Pioneer Theatre Co.—might feel more than a touch reminiscent of the massively popular musical Les Misérables. The plot setting in 19th-century France, the tale of a wronged man, aliases, mysterious parentage and even the use of a turntable set might all create the sense that this show is going to have a lot to live up to. Yet The Count of Monte Cristo carves out its own unique sensibility in telling the tale of Edmond Dantés (Matt Farcher), a simple sailor whose good fortune—marrying his beloved Mercédès (Briana Carlson-Goodman) and receiving a commission as ship’s captain—is destroyed by a conspiracy of those who envy him, including the man, Mondego (Darren Ritchie) who wants Mercédès for his own. As Dantés spends years languishing in prison, and an opportunity finally arises for escape, he’s forced to consider whether he wants to focus his new life entirely on revenge. While the set design by Michael Schweikardt is impressive, the physical production never overwhelms the story, or the solid collection of songs. Whether Mercédès is lamenting her lost love in the show-stopping “When the World Was Mine,” or Edmund and the young Albert are sharing the whimsical duet “Ah, Women,” Monte Cristo finds a tone and grace notes—even when departing from the source text—that give this musical a distinctively satisfying power. (Scott Renshaw) Pioneer Theatre Co.: The Count of Monte Cristo @ Pioneer Memorial Theatre, 300 S. 1400 East, 801-581-6961, through May 21, Monday-Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 2 p.m. & 8 p.m., $40-$67. PioneerTheatre.org

Complete Listings Online @ CityWeekly.net

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Pioneer Theatre Co.: The Count of Monte Cristo

ENTERTAINMENT PICKS MAY 12-18, 2016

Rock En Pointe

Municipal Ballet Co. brings a modern edge to a classical art form. BY KATHERINE PIOLI comments@cityweekly.net

MUNICIPAL BALLET CO.

n a Sunday afternoon at the former home of Night Flight Comics in downtown’s Library Square, in a space where bookshelves once stood, a rectangle of rubber Marley now covers the floor. Off to one side are a small raised stage and two portable ballet bars surrounded by various women’s bags, cups of iced coffee and ballet slippers. A poster of Degas’ ballerinas is tacked to the otherwise blank grey wall and, as if mirroring his painting, a dozen or so women are gathered on the makeshift stage—some stretching, others practicing their port de bras. At this pop-up studio—a perfect setting it seems for a young urban dance troupe— Municipal Ballet Co. rehearses for its latest work, Sunlight Limited, under the company’s founder and artistic director, Sarah Olivia Longoria. In the four years since Municipal Ballet’s inception, Longoria has boldly plucked ballet from where it’s been stuck in the 19th century, and thrown it smack in the middle of a 21st-century rock concert. It’s an exciting evolution for ballet, and for Salt Lake’s art scene. Consider that, for the last 60 years, since George Balanchine created what’s now called “contemporary ballet,” the form has been modernizing, but its soundtrack has never quite caught up. Music is a critical component of dance, giving it as much emotion and substance at the choreography. For the last three generations, ballet’s inability or unwillingness to modernize its music has left younger generations still believing that ballet, no matter how contemporary in its movement, is still a stodgy old art form made for grandparents and little girls in pink princess dresses. Longoria, who for disclosure is married to City Weekly staff writer Colby Frazier, was one ballerina who felt puzzled by her art form’s disconnect from the modern world. “Mixing ballet and rock is one of the main reasons I wanted to start this company,” she says. “There was a time when I wasn’t dancing anymore, and I remember driving around with my daughter and listening to this album by Department of Eagles, and I could imagine ballet to the whole soundtrack. I knew that ballet could be performed to contemporary music, and I didn’t understand why no one was doing it.” Longoria realized that she might be able to fulfill her vision of modern ballet, in 2012

when she performed original choreography to modern music at the Craft Lake City DIY Festival and earned praise from festival-goers. Though that performance was a requirement for her graduate thesis—she was then a student at the University of Utah dance department—Longoria wondered if she could continue attracting a diverse, young and artistic audience. The following spring, Municipal Ballet held their first official evening-length performance at Sugar Space; and though Longoria was unable to procure a live band for that first performance, the SCOTT FREDERICK

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A&E

DANCE

show was a sold-out success. Since then, Municipal Ballet has performed live with local bands St. Boheme and Holy Water Buffalo. And though Longoria has learned over the course of three years and four productions that performing with live musicians isn’t always easy or predictable, she’s still enthusiastic about working with her fellow performing artists. For the company’s latest work, Sunlight Limited, Longoria is teaming up with musician Andrew Shaw, performing to both Shaw’s solo work, Magic Mint, and his

band, Color Animal (with band members Felicia Baca, Tyler Ford and Seth Howe). As the dancers continue to go through their steps in the sunlit studio, and the band plugs in power cords and tests sound, Longoria waves over a tall man in a gray Tshirt. Andrew Shaw sits down, and seems genuinely thrilled to be part of the production. “It’s overwhelming how much of an honor this is,” he says with a grin, “to see how people interpret what I have done. They are the only ones outside of myself who have spent as much time with this music.” Shaw looks over at Longoria, and his face darkens slightly. “We’ll find out how it works today. They’ve been practicing to the recordings and we’re all kind of wondering what’s going to be screwy.” “Tempos are interesting,” agrees Longoria. “Dancers may even know tempos better than the musician, because it’s in their whole body. You can only hold a leap so long.” Soon Longoria and Shaw excuse themselves. The dancers then move into position and the band charges, hot and fast, into their first song. At first, the dancers’ movements seem too soft and abstract to keep up with the power from the guitars. Then, with a sudden shift of energy, four dancers drop to the ground, leaving one spinning maddeningly tight pirouettes toward the front of the stage. The rock ’n’ roll ballet begins. CW

SUNLIGHT LIMITED

Municipal Ballet Co. The Fallout, 625 S. 600 West May 12-14 Doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m. $10 advance/$15 door MunicipalBallet.com

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FRIDAY 5.13

Impulse at Mundi Live: A Sound Painting Music Festival Certain artistic forms can seem like they belong entirely in separate worlds. How, for example, can you connect the typically solitary activity of visualart creation with the theatricality of a live music performance? The Mundi Project—a nonprofit focused on providing access to piano education for those who might not traditionally have such access—is among the organizations looking to find out this week in a special event connected to National Music Week. Salty Cricket Composers Collective’s Grace Notes Program and Salt Lake School of Performing Arts are among the groups that will send students to show off their musical skills in a performance that’s free and open to the public. And while these amazing young people treat listeners to the masterpieces of Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart, students and faculty from the Visual Art Institute will create new works inspired by the music. (Scott Renshaw) Impulse at Mundi Live: A Sound Painting Music Festival @ Rose Wagner Black Box, 138 W. 300 South, 801-355-2787, May 13, 7-9 p.m., free. MundiProject.org/Event

PERFORMANCE THEATER

Appropriate Good Company Theatre, 260 25th St., Ogden, through May 15, Thursday-Saurday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 4 p.m., GoodCoTheatre.com The Count of Monte Cristo Pioneer Memorial Theatre, 300 S. 1400 East, 801-581-6961, May 6-21, Monday-Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; FridaySaturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday matinee 2 p.m., PioneerTheatre.org (see p. 21) Curtains CenterPoint Legacy Theatre, 525 N. 400 West, Centerville, 801-298-1302, through May 14, Monday-Saturday, 7:30; Saturday matinee, 2:30, CenterPointTheatre.org Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Hale Center Theater Orem, 225 W. 400 North, Orem, through May 20, HaleTheater.org The Full Monty The Grand Theatre, 1575 S. State, 801-957-3322, May 12-June 4, ThursdaySaturday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday matinee, 2 p.m., The-Grand.org The Marriage of Figaro Capitol Theatre, 50 W. 200 South, 801-533-5626, May 7, 9, 11 & 15, 7:30 p.m.; May 15, 2 p.m., UtahOpera.org Peter and the Starcatcher Hale Center Theatre, 3333 S. Decker Lake Drive, West Valley, 801-9849000, through May 18, Monday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday matinees, 12:30 p.m. & 4 p.m., HCT.org Stage Kiss Wasatch Theatre Co., Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. 300 South, 385-468-1010, through May 14, Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday & Sunday, 2 p.m., ArtSaltLake.org Ivanhoe Knight Fever The Off Broadway Theatre, 272 S. Main, 801-355-4628, through June 4, Monday, Friday & Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday matinee, 2 p.m., TheOBT.org

DANCE

Let’s Tango: An Evening of Astor Piazzola Westminster College, 1840 S. 1300 East, 801-832-2300, May 16, 7:30 p.m., WestminsterCollege.edu Municipal Ballet Co.: Sunlight Limited The Fallout, 600 W. 625 South, May 12-14, 8 p.m., MunicipalBallet.com (see p. 22)

CLASSICAL & SYMPHONY

Impulse at Mundi Live: A Sound Painting Music Festival Rose Wagner Center Black Box, 138 W. 300 South, 801-355-2787, May 13, 7 p.m., free, ArtTix.org (see above) All-Star Evening Utah Symphony, Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, 801-355-2787, May 17, 7 p.m., ArtTix.ArtSaltLake.org

COMEDY & IMPROV

Alex Velluto Wiseguys Downtown, 194 S. 400 West, 801-532-5233, May 12, 7:30 p.m., WiseguysComedy.com Randy & Jason Sklar Wiseguys Downtown, 194 S. 400 West, 801-532-5233, May 13-14, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., WiseGuysComedy.com (see p. 21) Shawn Paulsen Wiseguys Ogden, 269 25th St., Ogden, 801-622-5588, May 13-14, 8 p.m., WiseguysComedy.com Faux Pas Improv Comedy Sandy Station, 8925 S. Harrison St., Sandy, May 13, 8:30 p.m., SandyStation.com

LITERATURE AUTHOR APPEARANCES

Bill Clegg: Did You Ever Have a Family The King’s English Bookshop, 1511 E. 1500 South, 801-484-9100, May 17, 7 p.m., free, KingsEnglish.com (see p. 21) Wayne Pacelle: The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals Humane Society of Utah, 4242 S. 300 West, May 14, 2 p.m., KingsEnglish.com Matt de la Peña & Christian Robinson: Last Stop on Market Street Granger High School, 3580 S. 3600 West, May 18, 7 p.m., KingsEnglish.com

SPECIAL EVENTS TALKS & LECTURES

Great Salt Lake Audubon Birds and Bites Tracy Aviary, 589 E. 1300 South, May 17, 7 p.m., GreatSaltLakeAudubon.org

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VISUAL ART GALLERIES & MUSEUMS

Wasatch Back Student Art Show Kimball Art Center, 1401 Kearns Blvd., 435-649-8882, through June 5, KimballArtCenter.org A Call to Place: The First Five Years of the Frontier Fellowship Rio Gallery, 300 S. Rio Grande St., 801-245-7272, through May 30, VisualArts.Utah.gov A Real Rockwell?: Cover Art from the Saturday Evening Post Main Library Special Collections, Level 4, 210 E. 400 South, 801-5248200, April 11 - May 31, SLCPL.org Abstract Expressions Evolutionary Healthcare, 461 E. 200 South, 801-519-2461, through June 11, EvolutionaryHealthcare.com Ace Kvale: Himalayan Cataract Project Gallery MAR, 436 Main, Park City, 435-649-3001, through May 13, GalleryMAR.com Aeron Roemer: A Place Far Away from Here Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts, 631 W. North Temple, Suite 700, through May 13, Facebook.com/MestizoArts African Journey: Photography by Gabby McBride Salt Lake City Main Library Level 2 Canteena, 210 E. 400 South, 801-524-8200, April 22 - May 22, SLCPL.org Brian Snapp: House of My Brother/House of My Sister Finch Lane Gallery, 54 Finch Lane, 801596-5000, through June 10, SaltLakeArts.org Cara Despain: Seeing the Stone CUAC, 175 E. 200 South, 385-215-6768, through June 1, CUArtCenter.org Connie Borup/Don Athay Phillips Gallery, 444

COMPLETE LISTINGS ONLINE @ CITYWEEKLY.NET

E. 200 South, 801-364-8284, through May 13, Phillips-Gallery.com David Maestas: Peaceful Chaos UTah Artist Hands Gallery, 163 E. 300 South, 801-355-0206, through May 18, UTAHands.com Debbie Valline/Perda Atkinson Local Colors of Utah, 1054 E. 2100 South, 801-363-3922, through May 13, LocalColorsArt.com Drips, Splashes & Puddles: Paintings by James Haymond Anderson-Foothill Library, 1135 S. 2100 East, 801-594-8611, through June 16, SLCPL.org Howie Garber Rio Grande Cafe, 270 S. Rio Grande St., 801-364-3302, through May 31. Jena Schmidt: Believe & See “A” Gallery, 1321 S. 2100 East, 801-583-4800, through June 4, AGalleryOnline.com Jennet Thomas: The Unspeakable Freedom Device Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, 20 S. West Temple, 801-328-4201, through July 30, UtahMOCA.org Jim Jacobs: Append Finch Lane Gallery, 54 Finch Lane, 801-596-5000, through June 10, SaltLakeArts.org Joan Zone Art at the Main, 210 E. 400 South, 801353-4088, through June 12, ArtAttheMain.com Lewis J. Crawford: Constructs Finch Lane Gallery, 54 Finch Lane, 801-596-5000, through June 10, SaltLakeArts.org Sarah May: Identity Retablos Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts, 631 W. North Temple, Ste. 700, 801-596-5000, May 16-June 10, Facebook.com/MestizoArts (see p. 21) Star Wars Exhibition Urban Arts Gallery, 137 S. Rio Grande St., through June 5, UtahArts.org

CALL FOR ARTISTS: We’re looking for artists of all types to participate

Transform a CITY WEEKLY box - into a piece of public art! Your Box will be displayed at the Utah Arts Festival!

Go to cityweekly.net/ outofthebox for full details

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Artful Asian

DINE

Pleiku offers contemporary ambiance and eclectic Asian fare. BY TED SCHEFFLER comments@cityweekly.net @critic1

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n late 2010, I reviewed a restaurant that I liked quite a lot, called Pipa Asian Tapas & Sake Bar. However, the location—in a shopping center on 900 West—proved to be a challenging one for the upscale eatery. Dishes like quail in chile-lime sauce, silken tofu and avocado with ginger vinaigrette, and Siamese shark steamed in a soy-ginger broth were a hard sell and Pipa didn’t last very long. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the Pipa owners eventually resurfaced downtown—right next to the City Weekly office, in fact—with Pleiku, named after a city in central Vietnam which is the capital of Gia Lai Province. It’s on Main, in the space that was formerly home to Cindy Lee Café. The ambiance and décor—as was the case with Pipa—is ultra-modern and chic, with molded plastic chairs and a walllength banquet, mostly done in white and cream tones. A backlit bar in the rear of the restaurant is eye-catching, and the drop pendant lighting is as contemporary as it is subtle; you might need to bring a flashlight. Groove/lounge/electronica music à la Hotel Costes plays continuously, sometimes at volumes that are more “nightclub” than “restaurant.” But that doesn’t seem to concern the mostly hip crowd that gathers at Pleiku. While you peruse the eclectic Asian menu—with Vietnamese, Thai, Mongolian and Chinese dishes all intermingling—you might want to enjoy one of many unusual libations. The Hello Kitty combines blood orange juice, passion fruit, lime and sake ($8.50), while the mango mojito is a refreshing mélange of mango puree, sake and fresh mint. Or, share a carafe of Asian yogurt ($14), Soju (Korea’s most popular alcoholic tipple) and lime soda called Yogurt Soju. There’s a mix of imported and local beers available, but if you’re a wine drinker, I suggest bringing your own, unless you’re a big fan of Cupcake Vineyard wines, as the wine list consists of 100 percent Cupcake bottles. Overall, prices at Pleiku—especially given the high-end atmosphere—are surprisingly moderate. You get a lot of food for your dining dollar here, along with friendly, professional service that is above average. There is a tapas menu, which is a good place to start. Tapas are large enough by far to share. Although it is nearly teeth-achingly sweet, I couldn’t resist the Snowball Shrimp ($7.50): large, crunchy shrimp coated with a sweet and

JOHN TAYLOR

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Pasta for the PLEIKU People since 1968

creamy glaze, tossed with crunchy sugared walnuts and sprinkled with white sesame seeds—a delicious dish that could just as well be a dessert. Another tapas choice is the Mini Pho Cups ($6). It’s a trio of three small bowls, each brimming with Pleiku’s richly flavored pho, spilling over with garnishes like bean sprouts, jalapeño slices, cilantro, sriracha and more. It’s a great option for anyone who loves pho but doesn’t want to commit to an entire meal of it. For those who do, there are six regular pho bowl selections ($9-$10), including brisket, rare beef, beef balls, vegan and seafood versions. I found the pho tai chin (rare beef and brisket) to be very satisfying, although the kitchen failed to honor my request to have my pho sans cilantro. There is a tasty tapa that made the trip from Pipa to Pleiku: Shaken Steak Cubes ($8). These are cubes of marinated and grilled crispy boneless sirloin beef served with veggie accompaniments like cucumber, greens, onions, cilantro and such. Another terrific tapa—one large enough to function as an entrée—is called Tofu Stacks ($6). Five large, tender squares of tofu are fried and served on a black plate, bathed in a thick, rich black bean sauce with diced vegetables. I was disappointed, however, with the Singapore curry noodles ($10). I ordered the dish with shrimp and pork for an extra $1.50 (tofu is the other protein option). The flavor of the dish was fine, but what disappointed me were the noodles: thin, vermicelli-style noodles that were overcooked and mushy. On the other hand, the flavor of the Thai Basil wok dish ($10) completely sparkled. It’s a stir-fry dish of medium shrimp (or chicken, beef or tofu) tossed with crunchy scallions, red and green bell pepper slices, onions,

Pleiku’s Snowball Shrimp chiles and fragrant Thai basil. A bowl of steamed rice comes alongside, and we were offered extra gratis rice when needed. I don’t think there is a single food item that has taken over the dining scene in the past few years like bánh mì, the traditional Vietnamese sandwich. To be accurate, the term bánh mì actually refers to various kinds of bread (“mì” is wheat). Keeping in mind that Vietnam was a French colony, it’s not surprising that the bread of choice closely resembles a French baguette, although in Vietnam it is typically made with a combination of rice and wheat flour. Anyway, bánh mì ingredients here are as varied as the imagination, ranging from pork belly and pâté to veggies such as carrots, cucumbers and cilantro. Pleiku offers four versions ($7.50 each): a “classic” with Vietnamese deli meats, one with caramelized pork, another featuring chicken teriyaki, and the one we tried: lemongrass tofu. A hearty, crispy hoagie-type roll was split and stuffed with shredded carrot, onion, daikon, cucumber, lemongrass, cilantro and tofu with bland, puffed, rice “sea chips” served alongside. It’s not the best around, but it’s still quite adequate if you have a bánh mì craving, especially for the price. Low prices, distinctive décor, good food and superb service mean we’ll be returning to Pleiku, happily. CW

PLEIKU

264 S. Main 801-359-4544 Facebook.com/Pleiku

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Serving American Comfort Food Since 1930 -CREEKSIDE PATIO-86 YEARS AND GOING STRONG-BREAKFAST SERVED DAILY UNTIL 4PM-DELICIOUS MIMOSAS & BLOODY MARY’S-LIVE MUSIC SAT & SUN 11AM-2PM-

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AS SEEN ON “ DINERS, DRIVE-INS AND DIVES”

“Like having dinner at Mom’s in the mountains”

BY TED SCHEFFLER @critic1

VOTED BEST

Best

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2015

ASIAN EYE CANDY

Prideful Cider

To help celebrate and support Utah’s LGBT community, Mountain West Hard Cider (Mou nt a i nWest Cider.com) will release a limited edition bottles labeled Ruby’s Gay Hard Cider, available during the month of June in conjunction with Pride Month. The cider will still be the original Ruby Cider on the inside— crisp, semi-dry and traditional with 6.8 percent ABV—but each bottle features a snazzy, eyecatching label with the word “gay” very prominent. “We value diversity and inclusion. We always have and always will. We are happy to show support and celebrate Pride Month in style,” said owner Jennifer Carleton via a press release. A portion of proceeds from Ruby’s Gay Hard Cider will be donated to the Utah Pride Center during June. You’ll find the cider at the Mountain West tasting room (425 N. 400 West) and at select restaurants and bars such as Piper Down, Whiskey Street, Metro Bar, Good Grammar, Dick N’ Dixie’s and Club Jam.

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Artful Fare

In case you missed it, Uptown Fare has moved from its Main Street, Park City location, where it thrived for nearly 22 years, into Park City’s Kimball Art Center (1401 Kearns Blvd., KimballArtCenter.org). Serving homemade soups, sandwiches, salads and desserts, Uptown Fare has long been a favorite gathering place for locals and savvy tourists alike. Those of us who loved Karleen Reilly and her crew’s lipsmacking foods (mmm … cheeseburger soup!) and warm hospitality for lunch can now enjoy both along with art, sculpture, photography and more, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Indoor and patio seating is available.

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FOOD MATTERS

Chef on the Move winner 2015 & 2016

South Jordan • 10500 S. 1086 W. Ste. 111 • 801.302.0777 Provo • 98 W. Center Street • 801.373.7200 www.IndiaPalaceUtah.com

Phelix Gardner, formerly chef de cuisine at Pago and Finca, has taken over the reins at the new Stanza Italian Bistro & Wine Bar (454 E. 300 South, 801-7464441, StanzaSLC.com). Meanwhile, replacing Gardner at Pago is Culinary Institute of America graduate Curtis Lindley, who is relocating from Napa Valley, where he was most recently executive sous chef at Evangeline (a four-star French and Creole restaurant). Chef Lindley began his tenure in the Pago kitchen last week. Welcome to Utah! Quote of the week: All I ask of food is that it doesn’t harm me. —Michael Palin Food Matters 411: tscheffler@cityweekly.net

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BEER, WINE & SPIRITS

Cognac, Cinema and Cannes

The Malkovich movie we won’t see, and the cognac we won’t drink BY TED SCHEFFLER comments@cityweekly.net @critic1

f you’re hoping to see the latest John Malkovich film, you’d better plan on being around well into the next millennium; it won’t be released until then. I only hope Mr. Malkovich got paid in advance and isn’t counting on income from the film’s “points.” I’ve been exposed to innovative cinematic projects before. For example, I loved seeing Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoleon triptych, accompanied by a live symphony at Radio City Music Hall under the direction

of Anton Coppola, years ago. But this one really takes the cake. The movie, titled 100 Years—The Movie You Will Never See, is slated to premiere on Nov. 18, 2115. Until then, no one—not even the cast and crew—will ever see the final cut. I assume that the director of 100 Years, Robert Rodriguez, has seen the final cut, making him, literally, one in about 7.5 billion. The film will appear at the 2016 Festival de Cannes in France. It just won’t be seen. You see, the film will be locked in a safe during Cannes—which can be viewed by invitation only (the safe, that is, not the film) at the Louis XIII Suite in the Hôtel Le Majestic Barrière Cannes. After Cannes, 100 Years will make a well-guarded trek from Los Angeles to Tokyo, London and New York City, before finally arriving at its century-long resting place: in the Louis XIII cellars in Cognac, France. There, the film will hibernate until 2115 in a FichetBauche safe. As stated in a press release about 100 Years, “We wanted a safe box that can be opened like never before: with nothing else but time. Once the door is shut, the countdown begins and there is no way of opening it until the 100-year countdown is complete on Nov. 18, 2115. Since the system that could guarantee we hold our promise didn’t exist, we invented it,” said Ludovic du Plessis, Louis XIII global executive director. This may not just be one of the most inno-

DRINK vative cinematic projects in film history, but also one of the most creative marketing schemes, thanks to the movie’s tie-in with Louis XIII cognac. Now, I’ve never tasted it, and I doubt you have, either. Simply put, this is the world’s most sought-after and most expensive eau de vie—a cognac that is 100 years old upon release. That means that the craftsmen who make it never actually get to taste the product of their toils. Decanters of Louis XIII cognac, which are made of Baccarat crystal, range in price from about $2,100 to $3,400 for a 700-milliliter bottle. Here in Utah, it’s $3,264. However, certain limited edition bottles, such as Louis XIII Rare Cask 42.6 (referring to its 42.6 percent alcohol level), retail for around $22,000 apiece, and a half-ounce pour at the Four Seasons

Hotel in Beverly Hills goes for $1,000. Louis XIII cognac was on the wine list at Le Meurice Hotel in Paris, where I recently dined at the Alain Ducasse restaurant. Needless to say, I didn’t order it. And so, just like the cognac that must mature for a century before being enjoyed, such is the case with Rodriguez’ and Malkovich’s 100 Years, which was inspired by the time, patience and craftsmanship required to create each decanter of Louis XIII. Call me crazy, but I’m going to take a wild guess here that the brand financed the film project. According to the Louis XIII folks, their cognac, which dates back to 1874, “evokes tasting notes and scents of myrrh, honey, immortelle, plum honeysuckle, wood bark, leather and passion fruits.” That’s quite a mouthful. Lemme know if you happen to have any you’d care to share. CW

GOODEATS Complete listings at cityweekly.net Featuring dining destinations from buffets and rooms with a view to mom-and-pop joints, chic cuisine and some of our dining critic’s faves. Kitty Pappas Steak House

Kitty Pappas has been slinging steaks in this location since 1947. So, despite the somewhat rundown tavern ambiance, she must be doing something right. Her son, “Crazy George,” is the main attraction—well, he and the insanely eclectic jukebox, which he personally stocks with his own music collection. Sit back and listen to a mix of Dread Zeppelin, Bonerama, The Groundhogs and other under-the-radar artists as you dig into the juicy club steak or maybe the delicious cholesterol-busting egg burger. There’s also beer to help get you through the night. 2300 S. Main, Bountiful, 801-295-9981

Kobe Teppanyaki

This beautiful Japanese restaurant is situated in a house with a traditional Japanese garden and streams. The specialty at Kobe is teppanyaki, where you get a show along with dinner. The tempura and teriyaki dishes are excellent, but the real draws at Kobe are the steak and seafood offerings—try the grilled New York steak with king crab legs. 6024 S. 1550 East, Ogden, 801476-8889, KobeUtah.com

Korea House

At Korea House you’ll discover savory, traditional dishes that are certifiably authentic. The folks here describe the cuisine as “fresh, simple Korean food,” but don’t let that humble description fool you: The food is artfully presented and delicious. House specials include grilled mackerel, galbi tang (beef noodles with short ribs), kimchi with pork and bulgogi Jeongsik—marinated, tender beef. And, these cooks really know how to barbecue ribs. 145 E. 1300 South, Salt Lake City, 801-487-3900

Tosh’s Ramen

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Since the day Tosh’s Ramen opened, the place has been packed. The restaurant is small, but the wait usually is short. The shoyu ramen is a little richer and a little darker—seasoned with soy, but otherwise pretty similar to the tonkotsu. The curry ramen is dark, thick and brooding—an excellent wintertime ramen with a hefty heat kick from the yellow/brown curry. That’s not to be confused with karai ramen, however, which is a spicy miso ramen— the best option for heat seekers. Tosh’s also offers a vegetarian ramen (not made with meat broth) and vegan yam noodles upon request. 1465 S. State, Salt Lake City, 801-466-7000, ToshsRamen.com

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open!

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S P E ND $30 & GET $5 OFF

Exp. 6/30/16

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2005 E. 2700 SOUTH, SLC FELDMANSDELI.COM FELDMANSDELI OPEN TUES - SAT TO GO ORDERS: (801) 906-0369

MAY 14TH MAY 21ST MAY 28TH

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2696 Highland Dr. · 801-467-5052 · olddutchstore.com M-F 9am-6pm · Sat 9am-5pm · Closed Sunday ONLINE ORDERING AVAILABLE...EAT IN OR TAKE OUT

For the past 26 years, Dasks Greek Grill has offered some of the best Greek cuisine in the valley. From the original location in the Crossroads Mall to the present one in Old Mill Village in Cottonwood Heights, it has served authentic Greek food to thousands of Utahns. At Dasks, only the freshest ingredients are used in the delicious gyros, souvlaki, burgers and salads. Specialties of the house include gyros (meat, vegan and veggie), souvlaki (pork and chicken), falafel and burgers—including a popular pastrami burger. Authentic Greek items include dolmathes and spanakopita. There’s beer available, too. 6522 S. Big Cottonwood Canyon Road, Cottonwood Heights, 801-733-5010, Dasks.com

Kyoto Japanese Restaurant

If traditional Japanese fare and astonishingly friendly service are your thing, then Kyoto has all the right stuff. Kick off your meal with fresher-than-fresh saba—delicious mackerel served sashimi-style— before moving on to, perhaps, the justifiably renowned tempura. Osamu Tada’s lovely restaurant oozes serenity and calm, from the manicured gardens and outside patio to the lengthy granite sushi bar and private rice-paper- and wood-trimmed booths. 1080 E. 1300 South, Salt Lake City, 801-487-3525, KyotoSLC.com

3370 State St. in Chinatown | (801) 486-8800 | HoMeiBBQ.com

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wednesday, May 18- tuesday, may 31

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sponsors: x-nation I poplar | Garage | Budweiser | Salt & Smoke meats

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A sampler of Ted Scheffler’s reviews

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Padeli’s Gyro Padeli’s Street Greek

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Brothers Leo, Frank and Chris Paulos named their newest venture after their father, and while the Paulos family founded Utah’s Greek Souvlaki restaurants, Padeli’s is more upscale. To build your own meal, first pick your “base”—a warm pita gyro, “street” mini-gyros, a bowl (with lemon rice and garbanzo beans) or a wrap—then choose a filling from traditional lamb and beef gyro meat, chicken rotisserie, falafel or pork rotisserie. Then, pick a sauce from choices that include traditional tzatziki, spicy feta, creamy Sriracha, hummus, creamy mustard or roasted pepper tzatziki. Finally, bring it all together by choosing three toppings, providing a lot of room for customization. I’d happily eat everything I’ve tried at Padeli’s again. The classic gyro is a slam-dunk with roasted pepper tzatziki, and the chicken is great with creamy mustard sauce. The falafel is especially memorable thanks to its moist interior and superb flavor (the secret is blending feta cheese in with the falafel mixture). While you’re there, be sure to treat yourself to one of the homemade brownies—they’re killer. Reviewed March 3. 30 E. 300 South, 801-322-1111, PadelisStreetGreek.com

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WOMEN IN FILM

Where Are the Women?

A critic’s year-long deep-dive into the way movies portray one half of humanity. BY MARYANN JOHANSON comments@cityweekly.net @MaryAnnJohanson

Shailene Woodley in The Divergent Series: Insurgent

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Rose Byrne and Melissa McCarthy in Spy

Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

CinemaScores are generated via polls of U.S. multiplex audiences on opening night for new films in wide release; scores can range from A+ to F, but most fall in the A-to-C range. Comparing CinemaScores to WATW scores shows that mainstream moviegoers are just as likely to give a high rating to movies about women as they are to movies about men. Audiences are not turned off by women’s stories— which contradicts the typical Hollywood “argument” that audiences do not respond to women’s stories. We find much the same result when we compare global box office results to WATW scores: Filmgoers are just as happy to pay for a movie that treats women well as they are to pay for one that ignores women or treats women badly. Profitability is the factor that Hollywoodas-a-business supposedly cares about most, and it’s the one with the strongest argument for making more movies about women. Movies about women have a median budget almost 24 percent less than the average budget of movies with male protagonists. Yet movies that represent women well are just as likely to turn a profit as movies that don’t. Since movies about women cost less to produce and are just as likely to be profitable, movies about women are actually less risky, as business propositions, than movies about men. So, seriously, where are the women? If Hollywood really were primarily concerned with making money, we would have a movie environment overflowing with movies about women. We would be hearing men complain that they cannot find a movie that features people who look like them, and who share their concerns, worries and fantasies. And yet we see the exact opposite. Why? As the famous detective Ms. Shirley Holmes once said, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable—Hollywood? Sexist? Never!—must be the truth. CW

rative objects; sexualized abuse of women played for comedic effect). Then, I looked more closely at every one of the 153 movies released wide in the U.S. between December 25, 2014, and December 18, 2015. Of those, only 22 percent had a female protagonist, or a predominantly female ensemble (e.g. Pitch Perfect 2). A further 15 percent had female and male co-protagonists, or an ensemble that was reasonably gender-mixed. That left 63 percent of films entirely focused on men. Now, a movie with a male protagonist can still represent women well, and similarly, a movie with a female protagonist can still depict women poorly, if it reduces them to stereotypes. But the median WATW score of these 153 movies was -13, meaning that mainstream movies are, overall, not very good at treating women like people. Only 31 percent of those 153 films earned a positive score. Now, invariably the first response that comes when you mention a poor showing of women onscreen is: “But Hollywood is a business! There’d be more movies about women if they made money!” But Where Are the Women? has proven that this nebulous notion—movies about women are risky financial prospects—is not the case at all. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores— aggregating reviews of critics across the web and around the world—indicate that critics are slightly more likely to rate a film highly if it represents women well. This may be because movies about men are so predominant and tell so many similar stories, that movies about women simply feel fresher. But as the industry stands now, critics are in general agreement that movies about women are more likely to be better movies than movies about men. The industry loves to trumpet a “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes for its new films, so Hollywood should be looking to boost those fresh scores by ensuring that its films represent women well.

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saintly wife who stands by her screw-up of a husband. A girlfriend kidnapped in order to spur her boyfriend into rescuing her. A gorgeous dream girl who motivates an ordinary schmoe into climbing a mountain, making art or saving the world. Movies—from mainstream blockbusters to artsy indies to foreign-language imports—are dominated by stories about men, perhaps supported by femaleshaped cardboard cutouts at their side. As a lifelong movie-lover and woman, I’ve had it with this state of affairs. I wanted a way to quantify the problem that improved on the useful but limited “Bechdel Test”: Does a movie include at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man? So I developed a deeper way to examine the depiction of women onscreen with my Where Are the Women? test. WATW asks bigpicture questions such as “Is there a female protagonist?” but also more granular ones such as “Is there a scene set in a strip club for no good reason?” The criteria were designed to nose out whether the women in any given film are shown to be flawed, complex human beings with full lives and desires of their own, or whether they exist only in terms of what they can do for men. (All WATW rating criteria and data can be found at my website, FlickFilosopher.com) From January 2015 through April 2016, I applied these criteria to 295 films released in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. WATW scores ranged from a high of 50 for The Divergent Series: Insurgent (a well-rounded female protagonist; numerous female supporting characters in positions of authority) to a low of -120 for Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (women regularly used as deco-

CINEMA

MAY 12, 2016 | 39

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NEW THIS WEEK Information is correct at press time. Film release schedules are subject to change. THE DARKNESS [not yet reviewed] A family returns from a vacation with a possibly malevolent spirit as one of their souvenirs. Opens May 13 at theaters valleywide. (PG-13)

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DOUGH BB.5 Some stories are so formulaic and pre-determined, you can almost feel annoyed that it starts to work on you at all. Jonathan Pryce stars as Nat Dayan, a widowed Orthodox Jewish baker struggling to keep his family’s Kosher bakery running in London; he finds a new apprentice in Ayyash (Jerome Holder), a young Sudanese refugee working as a small-time drug courier to help support himself and his mother. But fear not that there’s any unsettling threat on the horizon: The pun-intended “highconcept” finds Ayyash accidentally mixing some marijuana into a batch of challah, leading to a sudden surge in the popularity of Nat’s goods. The premise is fueled almost entirely by the earnestness of Pryce’s performance, and the growing friendship between Jew and Muslim as each one provides the surrogate family member each one lacks. It’s all terribly rote in every beat, from the needy widow (Pauline Collins) courting Nat, to the nasty corporate big-wig trying to drive Nat out of business. And still there are those few minutes when you can surrender to a nice feel-good tale with its heart—if not its art—in the right place. Opens May 13 at Broadway Centre Cinemas and Park City Film Series. (NR)—Scott Renshaw

THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY BB The direst, most textbook-like subsection of rote biopics has got to be that of scientists and mathematicians, most of whom— unless they were totally bonkers or otherwise fascinating—tend to have precious little in their biographies to inspire anything more than admiration. Case in point: This serviceable but unremarkable movie about a mathematician who undoubtedly deserves to be honored (especially since racism prevented him from being well-known in his lifetime), but whose career writerdirector Matthew Brown has failed to make into stimulating cinema. Set in the 1910s, the story follows Srinivasa Ramanujan (Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel), a resilient, religiously devout Indian math whiz who’s invited by Professor G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons) to Cambridge, where he dazzles everyone, but faces opposition because of his ethnicity, social class and lack of formal education. Brown’s dramatization of Ramanujan’s career and personal struggles is overly respectful and ordinary, a sterile

MONEY MONSTER [not yet reviewed] The host of a TV financial-advice show (George Clooney) is taken hostage on-air by an angry viewer (Jack O’Connell). Opens May 13 at theaters valleywide. (R) TOO LATE BB It’s one thing to attempt a gritty re-creation of 1970s private-eye dramas; it’s not the same if that attempt feels entirely filtered through the Tarantino-clone sensibilities of the 1990s. Writer/ director Dennis Hauck follows a P.I. named Mel Sampson (John Hawkes) after a call he receives from a young stripper named Dorothy (Crystal Reed) entangles him in murder and other assorted sleaziness. Hauck fashions virtually the entirety of the narrative through five individual one-reel-long continuous shots, each one covering a specific moment in the achronological story. And the gimmick is profoundly distracting, offering little in the way of emotional immediacy to balance the look-at-me spacial choreography. Indeed, emotion of any kind is woefully lacking, with relationships that appear out of nowhere and never have a chance to build real potency through all the self-consciously rata-tat dialogue. Hawkes provides the kind of hangdog presence that gives a story like this a shot at real weight, and the unique structure at least keeps it interesting. But it’s only the superficial interesting of a movie that’s less interested in telling a gripping story than loudly announcing its movie-ness. Opens May 13 at Tower Theatre. (NR)—SR

SPECIAL SCREENINGS THE FIFTH ESTATE At Brewvies, May 16, 10 p.m. (R) THE GREAT ALONE At Main Library, May 17, 7 p.m. (NR)

CURRENT RELEASES APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD BBB In this eccentrically appealing hand-drawn animated feature, Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci adapt Jacques Tardi’s graphic novel about an orphaned girl named April in an alternate-

reality 1940s Paris where great inventors have all disappeared before they could bring the coal-fired Victorian era into modernity. The result is a vividly realized steampunk-y landscape, mixed with weird but engaging details like a mansion that can walk away to defend itself from attack, and ominous, seemingly sentient storm clouds. The narrative may be overly complicated—the reveal of the principal antagonists is both obvious in hindsight, and completely ridiculous—but it gets a boost from a resourceful heroine who is also a talented scientist, and old-school animation that brings both the characters and the world to quirky life. One might wish for an alternate reality where a different kind of technology was much less prevalent. (PG)—SR

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR BBB The Marvel Cinematic Universe is now a self-perpetuating cycle; each movie exists in part to tease the next one, though they’ve done an impressive job of making that process satisfying. This is, for all practical purposes, Avengers 2.5, as a proposal to put the Avengers under United Nations control leads to a clash between Captain America (Chris Evans), who opposes it, and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), who favors it. The characters’ history allows the potential rift to seem as consequential as any grand slugfest—though of course, there are grand slugfests, with a dozen combatants including Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and a charming new Spider-man (Tom Holland). Yet Civil War often feels like a commercial for those characters’ upcoming stand-alone features. There’s fun here, but it’s fun where the central purpose is making sure the cycle remains unbroken. (PG-13)—SR

THE JUNGLE BOOK BB.5 At first, it feels like director Jon Favreau is aiming for an actionadventure completely devoid of a kid-friendly tone—but that would be too much to ask. It hits all the familiar points from the Rudyard Kipling stories as filtered through Disney’s 1967 incarnation: “man-cub” Mowgli (Neel Sethi); his guardians Bagheera the panther (Ben Kingsley) and Baloo the bear (Bill Murray); the threat of tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba). The straightforward 3-D action-adventure is thrilling when it focuses on Mowgli escaping Shere Khan in a stampeding wildebeest herd, but Favreau also keeps dropping in stuff that will make it seem like a spiritual cousin to the animated film—snippets of beloved songs, or goofy comic relief—despite all the potentially scary photorealistic CGI animals. It’s a movie that wants to be a blockbuster spectacle and a harmless diversion for kids. (PG)—SR

LOUDER THAN BOMBS BB Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s first English-language film is still fairly, well, Norwegian: somber, chilly and seething with

more than just movies at brewvies

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40 | MAY 12, 2016

examination with no personality. It ends, of course, with photos of the real Ramanujan and onscreen captions telling us what happened next, lest the story of a mathematician be anything other than by-the-numbers. Opens May 13 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (PG-13)—Eric D. Snider

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unspoken emotions. Alas that those emotions are more elusive than is satisfying. Three years after the death of combat photographer Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) in a car accident, her colleague (David Strathairn), in concert with a gallery retrospective of Isabelle’s photographs, publishes an appreciation of her work that reveals a secret about her, prompting a familial crisis for Isabelle’s husband, Gene (Gabriel Byrne), over how he will finally reveal this secret to their withdrawn youngest son (Devin Druid). None of Isabelle’s men are coping well in her absence, but while moping may be understandable, it’s difficult to excuse all the bad behavior resulting from their inarticulate grief. Trier’s endless sympathy for them has the opposite of the intended effect. (R)—MAJ

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SING STREET BBB.5 Disclaimer: A musical directed by John Carney (Once), set in Ireland and built on affectionate skewering of 1980s MTV aesthetics might as well be custom-designed to my specifications. In 1985 Dublin, 15-year-old Connor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) responds to life upheavals—including a crush on mysterious older girl Raphina (Lucy Boynton)—by starting a band. Carney and cosongwriter Gary Clark provide an infectious collection of original tunes inspired by early-’80s pop, and Carney has loads of fun playing with the way Connor and his bandmates experiment with their “look.” It’s also built on charming relationships, though, particularly Connor’s connection with his older brother/musical mentor/life coach Brendan (a wonderful Jack Raynor). The story may meander whenever it’s not focused on the music, but Sing Street is simply lovely at conveying the beautiful foolishness of being young, in love and moved to create. (R)—SR

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TRUE BY B I L L F RO S T @bill_frost

Catch Up!

Watch the shows you were told to watch before, already.

ay is mostly a dead zone of season finales and reruns as TV gears up for the summer (there’s no offseason anymore, get used to it). But! Remember all those shows I’ve told you to watch harder in this very column? All readily available in various on-demand forms? Now’s the time to catch up! Here are 12 to start with: Wynonna Earp [Syfy] Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) is a modern-day descendent of Old West gunslinger Wyatt Earp, who was also a supernatural demon hunter (just roll with it), and she’s back in town to re-smite evil souls (or revenants). It’s all true enough to the comic-book source, and Scrofano is a likeable combo of badass and goofball. Orphan Black [BBC America] In Season 4 of this tense clone-soap, Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) investigates Beth, the deceased sister-clone whose identity she stole at the beginning of the series, and the origins of the clone conspiracy. Also, more clones, upping Maslany’s character load for the season to eight (and still no Emmy). Hap & Leonard [Sundance] Hap & Leonard is a six-episode tale about ’80s Texans Hap (James Purefoy) and Leonard (Michael K. Williams), a pair of luckless laborers dragged into a get-rich-suspiciously easy scheme by Hap’s ex-wife (Christina Hendricks). The plan soon spirals into a cacophony of conflicting agendas and colorful characters, with Fargo-like comic-to-violent jolts. Idiotsitter [Comedy Central] An unemployed Ivy Leaguer (Charlotte Newhouse) takes a babysitting job—but the “baby” turns out to be an adult wild-child heiress (Jillian Bell) under house arrest. As the series progresses (or regresses), it’s clear that Bell and Newhouse can do stoopid repartee almost as well as the Broad City ladies. All this, and a Channing Tatum cameo! Baskets [FX] Chip Baskets (Zach Galifianakis), having flunked out of a prestigious French clown academy, returns to uncultured ’Merica to be a rodeo clown—and then it gets weird (Chip’s mom is Louie Anderson in drag, for just one example). Baskets is a funny-to-sad-to-funnierto-sadder commentary on artistic failure and Western decline, but don’t be afraid. Better Call Saul [AMC] Better Call Saul continues to be a minor-miracle follow-up to, and expansion on, Breaking Bad in a flawless second season, further transforming small-time

lawyer Slippin’ Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) into mediumtime legal shark Saul Goodman. Even better, Rhea Seehorn, Michael McKean and Jonathan Banks get equal time to shine. Banshee [Cinemax] Season 4 will be the last for this gritty slice of Amish-country crime noir, so there’s hope for eventually catching up on Banshee. The twisted tale of an ex-con/thief (Antony Starr) who assumes the identity of Sheriff Lucas Hood in the small town of Banshee, Pa., has taken many a bizarre turn, but the outcome is always the same (and bloody). Vinyl [HBO] Vinyl is as excessive and beautiful as you’d expect a collaboration between Martin Scorsese, Terence Winter and Mick Jagger to be, mixing Almost Famous’ music-saves earnestness with Velvet Goldmine’s visceral glam bombast and Boogie Nights’ druggy chaos, and cranking it to 11 in 1974 New York City. It’s not perfect, but neither is rock ’n’ roll. The Detour [TBS] Jason Jones (The Daily Show) and Natalie Zea (Justified) star as harried parents on a family roadtrip where everything that could possibly go wrong does, spectacularly. Sound like National Lampoon’s Vacation? It is, but far funnier than last year’s limp Vacation reboot— and usually dramatic Zea is a comedic revelation. Billions [Showtime] Damian Lewis (as a charismatic hedge fund billionaire) and Paul Giamatti (as a troubled

Wynonna Earp (Syfy)

U.S. Attorney) churn bluster and testosterone Acting! against each other, but they’re not Billions’ most interesting players: Maggie Siff, as a psychiatrist-turned-performance-coach with an invisible, spooky command, could lead this series on her own. Teachers [TV Land] Teachers is a part of TV Land’s makeover from reheated sitcom repository to smart comedy destination, and six-woman improv troupe The Katydids (their first names are all variations on “Katherine”) gender-flip Super Troopers into an elementary school, dosed with Broad City’s fearless, vanity-free pursuit of sowrong laughs. Not Safe With Nikki Glaser [Comedy Central] Comic Nikki Glaser gets right down to topics like “losing your virginity, masturbation and putting stuff in your butt!” Not Safe is a sex-and-relationships talk show with fellow-comedian gab and pre-taped bits—it’s been done before, but Glaser has the smarts and presence to rise to the level of Amy Schumer.

Listen to Bill Mondays at 8 a.m. on X96 Radio From Hell, and on the TV Tan podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and BillFrost.tv.

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which Puget says was “crazy and unexpected,” and they garnered a fan base that isn’t dependent on their AFI roots. Ultimately, they aren’t concerned with success, at least in the popularly accepted sense, according to Puget: “My metric of success is putting out music that I enjoy and enjoy writing, and maybe getting to play a few shows of it.” “If you’ve been to an electronic music festival, it’s a totally different energy than a rock show,” Puget muses. It is this energy, this euphoric state caused by these unearthly tones, that seems to draw the musician in. “What Davey is doing is very similar … He’s out there singing and doing what he does, like in AFI. But what I’m doing—I’m behind a table with laptops and synthesizers, and it’s a completely different experience for me.” Recently, Puget and Havok performed at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, courting this euphoria once again. “We played ‘Anointed,’ which is on Material, for the first time live and that was really fun … I really enjoy playing all of [the songs]—kind of cliché, but true.” Puget hopes that, in the future, Blaqk Audio can release records more frequently, “I’d like to put out a record every year, even. [We] would have liked to have done that all along, but with having so many other [projects] going on, it’s hard.” Most importantly, Puget says that he’d like to continue with Blaqk Audio “as a fun, creative outlet for our love of electronic music.” CW

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or a duo that has been around since 2001, Blaqk Audio—with only three albums and one previous tour—is perhaps co-founders Davey Havok and Jade Puget’s most curious project. Havok and Puget are members of XTRMST, a new straightedge hardcore band, as well as the infinitely influential rock band AFI. With multiple platinum certifications, numerous studio albums and EPs, and an everchanging and evolving sound, it would seem they could ask for little more. But AFI and XTRMST, being organically fashioned with guitars, drums and bass, inherently lack an avenue for the flourish and artifice of electronic music, for which Havok (vocalist and lyricist) and Puget (programmer and producer) harbor a deep affinity. Out of the void was born a pulsing, sexual, electronic creature: Blaqk Audio. “It’s a labor of love—our love of electronic music,” Puget says. “We had been into electronic music for a long time. We were like, ‘We love this stuff, why don’t we start our own electronic thing?’ And that’s what we did. We started Blaqk Audio.” Yet, it wasn’t until 2007 that Blaqk Audio released their first album, CexCells (Interscope). “We were just so busy during that period with AFI,” he explains. And busy they were: The interim was filled with the recording, release and promotion of 2003’s highly acclaimed Sing the Sorrow (Dreamworks) and 2006’s commercially groundbreaking Decemberunderground (Interscope). And although Puget is grateful for AFI’s larger-than-life status, Blaqk Audio has had to fight some critics and fans in order to escape that shadow. Puget says, Blaqk Audio “is often seen as a side project”—understood here as a somewhat devaluing term, a way to signify a lesser band making lesser music. “Once people give [Blaqk Audio] a chance, they realize that it is something totally different.” “We’ve found a lot of continuity between the three records,” Puget continues, which isn’t to say that CexCells, 2012’s Bright Black Heaven (Superball Music), and their most recent release, 2016’s Material (Blaqknoise/Kobalt Records) sound the same. CexCells is a brooding, sexually liberated album in tone and sound; Bright Black Heaven is somewhat upbeat, experimenting more with treble, but featuring intricate bass movements and overt percussion—more sensual than sexual, and a far cry from the hedonistic reveries of the past. “Material is a little different,” Puget says, “in that lyrically, Davey is coming from a place that is more akin to the last AFI record, Burials. The dark and twisted place [Davey] was in during that record, it bled over a little bit into this record.” Musically, Material is noticeably brighter and, more than ever, it explored the modern electronic sound spectrum, becoming a beautiful paradox: disturbed, yet exquisitely fashioned. Blaqk Audio has found a level of commercial success. CexCells’ “Stiff Kittens” reached the Top 20 on the alternative rock charts,

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The puzzling allure of the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

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veryone has their own personal connections to certain musicians or pieces of music. But how many threaten your physical health and sanity? The Brian Jonestown Massacre has a weird vibe—you might call it mojo—around them. That’s the standard stereotype about the band: founder, singer/songwriter Anton Newcombe is unbalanced, to put it lightly, and the rest of the band, at least whoever will still play with him, aren’t the most normal people, either. The 2004 documentary Dig!, chronicling their rivalry with the Dandy Warhols, is the source of much of the mythos surrounding the band, although they and the Dandies say the film’s depiction is exaggerated. Still, the film captured studio magic, heroin use, pot busts and Newcombe attacking a fan at a show, among other things. Like most stereotypes, there’s an element of truth, but the reality is more complicated. There was always a cult-like aura around the band, as implied by their name, referring to the late Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and the infamous Jonestown Massacre. Newcombe has often cultivated a sense of himself as not only musical but a spiritual guru, studying Eastern religions. BJM uses its expansive musical canvas—moving from shoegazer to psychedelic melodic rock to, later, electronic dance music—to touch on sometimes-dark themes. In his onstage mannerism, Newcombe seems to see himself as a descendent of rock ’n’ roll personae like Jones and Jim Morrison. And his record label is called The Committee to Keep Music Evil. Just look at some of their album titles. Methodrone (1995), when they were still playing shoegazer, makes a pun on the hypnotic, narcotic effects of the music. Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request (1996) shows their ambition to be the inheritors of that dark middle-period of the Rolling Stones’ career when they had “Sympathy for the Devil.”

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Thank God For Mental Illness (1996) delved into more personal genres like country and rhythm and blues to explore madness. Strung Out In Heaven (1998) weighed the comparison of spirituality and addiction. Newcombe is at his best when acting out the role of musical adept, but tends to get distracted by personal conflicts. My own experiences seeing BJM have their own share of bad mojo. On Sept. 13, 2007, at The Urban Lounge, Newcombe halted the band mid-song to criticize their performance. The rest of their set was so lackluster that my partner and I got bored and left early. It’s common for BJM performances to be uneven. They can be maddeningly rife with band conflict, to the point of being unprofessional, or absolutely mesmerizing. For me, it was a signpost of ennui in an unravelling relationship. Then on June 14, 2010, the woman living with me at the time, who had a substance abuse problem, was rowdy enough to get us 86’d from the Urban. Then she assaulted me on the way home—actually bit me on the lower back, like a vicious animal. She was jailed, and I got a protective order. Traumatized by the incident, I hid in my house for most of the rest of that year, barely able to go to work. I skipped seeing BJM when they came here in May 2012, for the sake of my own mental health. Of course, those experiences were likely to happen anyway, in context of where I was in my life at those times. But something about the weird, discordant energy of the Brian Jonestown Massacre seemed to exacerbate those situations. I couldn’t listen to their music for a few years. Eventually, however, it called me back, with its seductive power and the promise that rock music can still be dangerous. It can, at least, take a passing glimpse at madness, and maintain a sinister side that must be acknowledged—and even embraced— in order to “break on through to the other side,” as Morrison once sang. And, then, we may find a kind of salvation in it. See you there. CW

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE

The Depot 241 S. 500 East Wednesday, May 18, 8 p.m. 801-355-5522 $18 in advance; $20 day of show DepotSLC.com

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WWW.TAVERNACLE.COM

Ventura, Calif., trio Night Demon is the metal band of your dreams. A power trio with left-handed Flying V guitar and righthanded Flying V bass up front, they fly multiple metal—and even punk—flags. Their sound is forged in new wave of British heavy metal, classic ‘80s metal, and the classic horror-punk of the Misfits (the imagery and the energy—even the whoa-oh backing vocals). On their Final Curse Tour, the band is playing their Century Media debut, Curse of the Damned, front-to-back. That’s a move usually pulled later in a band’s career, but when your second platter is a metric shit-ton of heavy metal fun, it’s completely justified. Tonight they’re joined by City Weekly’s Best Metal Artist of 2016, Visigoth, whose album The Revenant King dropped on the iconic Metal Blade label last year—and was produced by local super-producer, Andy Patterson. Their brand of epic fantasy metal—rife with sorcerers, dungeons, arcane mists of prophecy and mammoth rides—is just as much fun as Night Demon’s horror show. Blood Purge opens. (Randy Harward) Metro Bar, 615 W. 100 South, 8:30 p.m., $10 in advance, $12 day of show, JRCSLC.com

Lucius, Happy Hollows

Lucius (below) was formed by friends Jess Wolfe (lead vocals, synth) and Holly Laessig (lead vocals, keyboards) while both were attending the Berklee School of Music. They were later joined by Dan Molad (drums, vocals), Peter Lalish (guitar, vocals) and Andrew Burri (guitar, drums, vocals). Their latest album, Good Grief (PIAS/ Mom + Pop/ Dine Alone) is an

PIPER FERGUSON

46 | MAY 12, 2016

ROCKWELL AUGDEN ALDRICH III

201 East 300 South, Salt Lake City

Night Demon, Visigoth

ode to understanding the humor in pain (and vice-versa), couched in an unhinged indie synth-pop sound that can be quiet and pensive but also loud and exuberant—sometimes, and most pleasingly, all at once. With an excitingly versatile vocal range and intuition, Wolfe and Laessig are able to pull off Nico-esque whisper vocals circa 1967, Lana Del Rey croonings and the boisterous playfulness of Santigold, all while adding a semi-operatic flair that is definitively their own. Los Angeles-based Happy Hollows opens. (Zac Smith) The Complex, 536 W. 100 South, 8 p.m., $19.50, TheComplexSLC.com

Tortoise

The early 1990s—in fact, the year 1990—saw a number of highly influential bands start up, and you don’t even have to look at the grunge movement to count a bunch of them. Female-fronted punk outfits 7 Year Bitch and Bikini Kill are touring again and, later this week, the Brian Jonestown Massacre (see p. 44) comes to show how they’ve been able to “keep music evil” for a quarter-century. Chicago band Tortoise helped start the experimental post-rock movement, which often eschewed vocals in favor of restful, expansive instrumental excursions that sometimes barely seemed to qualify as rock, post- or otherwise, but ultimately served to expand the boundaries of the

Night Demon rock universe. Their most recent album, The Catastrophist (Thrill Jockey, 2016) includes, oddly enough, a cover of David Essex’s 1973 glam rock hit “Rock On.” They’re joined by Chris Brokaw, known for his work with two other noteworthy ‘90s bands, Come and Codeine. (Brian Staker) The Urban Lounge, 241 S. 500 East, 8 p.m., $18 in advance, $20 day of show, TheUrbanLoungeSLC.com

» Tortoise

ANDREW PAYNTER

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Now in its fourth year, the WYOmericana Caravan Tour features the Americana and roots-rock of Screen Door Porch, jazz-funk and groove with Sneaky Pete and the Secret Weapons and The Littlest Birds purveying their own brand of old-time folk. As is often the case with music, these genre terms we use to describe them are elastic and blur at the edges between them, especially when you talk about something like “Americana,” which means musical styles that come out of traditional American music like folk and blues. But when bands like these collaborate spontaneously onstage, it blurs the boundaries even more. Extended encore sets including all the musicians let them explore the commonalities among these styles. (BS) The State Room, 638 S. State, 9 p.m., $17, TheStateRoomSLC.com

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Until last year, Philly-based hardcore underground hip-hop group Jedi Mind Tricks hadn’t put out new music since 2011’s Violence Begets Violence. But when rapper Vinnie Paz and producer Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind got together after working on separate projects, they knew the chemistry remained. The Thief and the Fallen (Juggernaut Sound) shows JMT still has it after almost 25 years, and demonstrates the expected eclecticism, with references to Van Morrison and samples of the Budos Band, as well as their trademark blend of intelligence and aggression. “I can still talk about Bill Hicks or Dostoyevsky in the same song that I’m ref-

The Expendables

erencing an AR-15,” Vinnie says in JMT’s bio. Co-headliner Immortal Technique, incidentally, did time for aggravated assault before channeling his anger into rhyme battles and activism, working with incarcerated youths and fighting for immigrant rights. Last year, he allegedly reverted to his old ways when he caught some dudes selling bootleg T-shirts. His last new release was the free digital album The Martyr in 2011, but a long-awaited new album, The Middle Passage, has been in the works since the mid-to-late 2000s. (RH) The Depot, 400 W. South Temple, 9 p.m., $$22 in advance, $25 day of show, DepotSLC.com

TUESDAY 5.17 The Expendables

Growing up in Santa Cruz, Calif.—a place where daily skating, surfing, partying and jamming is normal—it’s no wonder that the Expendables make music so embedded with that local passion and Zen. They play a surprising amalgam of reggae, ska and metal, intermingled with mellow riddims, engaging storytelling and wild-buttasteful guitar solos. Since their 1997 formation, Expendables have released six studio albums; the first three being independent releases, and signed to Stoopid Records, the label started by their peers, Slightly Stoopid. The Expendables have toured with the likes of 311, Kottonmouth Kings and Less Than Jake, and you may even recognize their song “Sacrifice” from 2004’s Gettin’ Filthy, as a playable option on Guitar Hero 4. (ZS) The Depot, 400 W. South Temple, 8 p.m., $17 in advance, $19 day of show ($2 surcharge for under 21), DepotSLC.com

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SPIRITS • FOOD • GOOD COMPANY 5.12 JEREMIAH AND THE RED EYES

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THURSDAY 5.12 Sköld

Some people know Tim Sköld from the band Shotgun Messiah, a glam metal band too cool— and multifaceted—for such easy filing. Their music always incorporated plenty of punk influence and, toward the end, they edged toward a more industrial sound. While guitarist Harry Cody wound up in Tom Waits’ band, Sköld followed his industrial muse, recording under his own name as well as with genre heavyweights Ohgr, KMFDM (and MDFMK), Marilyn Manson, another glam-cum-industrial band the Newlydeads (with Faster Pussycat’s Taime Downe) and Doctor Midnight & the Mercy Cult (with Hank von Helvete from Turbonegro). He’s touring now behind Sköld’s long-awaited third album, The Undoing (Metropolis). (Randy Harward) Club X, 445 S. 400 West, 8 p.m., $10 in advance, $15 day of show, ClubXSLC.com

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CRAFT SABBATH 5.1

LIVE MUSIC

American Standards (Metro Bar) Big Wild (The Urban Lounge) The Brocks + Conquer Monster + Spirit City (Kilby Court) Divisions (The Loading Dock) DJ Courtney (Area 51) Hot Noise & Guest DJ (The Red Door) Mayer Hawthorne (The Complex) Sawyer Fredericks + Mia Z (Fort Douglas Post Theater) Sköld (Club X) see p. 50 Therapy Thursdays feat. Dirtyphonics + Funtcase (Sky) Viceroy (Club Elevate)

OPEN MIC, SESSION & PIANO LOUNGE Jazz Jam Session (Sugar House Coffee)

FRIDAY 5.13

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THURSDAY 5.12

LIVE MUSIC

UPCOMING EVENTS

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Blaqk Audio + Charming Liars + Night Riots (In the Venue) see p. 43 Brother + Paint the Woods + Our Future Selves (The Garage) Father (Billboard-Live!) Folk Hogan + Band On The Moon + Ashleigh Bassett (The Acoustic Space) GIVERS + Anna Wise (Kilby Court) The Lovers Rock Tour feat. Finn Groovah + Samu + David Rhythm + Maeli + Ya Boy Mo and more (Liquid Joe’s) Kirby Heyborne Roots Benefit Concert (Early Light Academy at Daybreak) Lucius + Happy Hollows (The Complex) see p. 46 Mo Troper and The Assumptions + Mr. Bones (The Borough) The Neighbourhood (The Great Saltair) Night Demon + Visigoth + Blood Purge (Metro Bar) see p. 46 The Night Spin Collective (Area 51) Outside Infinity (The Royal) Scarlet Canary + Away At Lakeside + The Departure + ImAlive (The Loading Dock) Tori Kelly (The Complex) Tortoise + Chris Brokaw (The Urban Lounge) see p. 46

KARAOKE

Karaoke (Cheers to You SLC)

SATURDAY 5.14 LIVE MUSIC

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AT 600 S. MAIN ST

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AT CLARK PLANETARIUM

Blackkiss + From The Sun + Catalyst + Matthem Lanier (The Royal) The Body + The Ditch & The Delta + Done (Kilby Court) Fourth Annual WYOmericana Caravan Tour (The State Room) see p. 46 The Freak Out (The Republican) Kitten Forever + Horse Lords + Baby Ghosts + Braeyden Jae (Diabolical Records)

Make It Louder Music Festival feat. Story of the Year + Grizfolk + Emery + Dorothy + Mac Lethal + Hand Practices + Penrose + Brogan Kelby + Jessica Frech + Broke City + Burnell Washburn + DJ Jarvicious + DJ Juggy + Miss DJ Lux (Gallivan Center) Max Pain & The Groovies (The Urban Lounge) Reloaded feat. Perish Lane + My Private Island + Radiata (The Complex)

OPEN MIC, SESSION & PIANO LOUNGE DJ Latu (Green Pig Pub)

SUNDAY 5.15 LIVE MUSIC

Girls Night Out The Show (D & R Spirits) Sensamotion + The Tribe of I + Wasnatch (The Urban Lounge) Striker + Weresquatch + Thrashole + Spellcaster + Visigoth + Deathblow (Metro Bar) Quiet Life + The Arvos + Josaleigh Pollett (Kilby Court)

KARAOKE

Karaoke Bingo (The Tavernacle) Karaoke with DJ Benji (A Bar Named Sue on State)

MONDAY 5.16 LIVE MUSIC

Frank Vignola & Friends (Capitol Theatre) see p. 53 Jedi Mind Tricks + Immortal Technique (The Depot) see p. 48 Prince Tribute Night! (The Urban Lounge) The Singer and the Songwriter (Metro Bar)

TUESDAY 5.17 LIVE MUSIC

The Expendables (The Depot) see p. 48 FMLYBND + Olivver The Kid + Darkwaves (Billboard-Live!) Hatebreed + DevilDriver + Devil You Know (The Complex) Tarot Death Card (The Urban Lounge)

KARAOKE

Karaoke with DJ Thom (A Bar Named Sue on State)

WEDNESDAY 5.18 LIVE MUSIC

Brian Jonestown Massacre (The Depot) see p. 44 Disclosure (Great Saltair) Magrudergrind + Yautja (Club X) Quiet Oaks (The Urban Lounge) Saliva (Metro Bar)

KARAOKE

Areaoke (Area 51)

VINNY RANIOLO

CONCERTS & CLUBS

MONDAY 5.16

Frank Vignola & Friends

Guitar virtuoso Frank Vignola is a spectacle all by himself, but this show is extra special. First, it’s a celebration of the 21st anniversary of the GAM Foundation’s JazzSLC concert series. Tonight, Vignola is joined by fellow guitarists Vinny Raniolo (with whom Vignola recorded last year’s Swing Zing! album), Julian Lage, Olli Soikkeli and Jan Knutson, as well as violinist Grant Flick and bassist/vocalist Nicki Parrott. For a taste of the instrumental pyrotechnics and humor in store tonight, check out the Frank-andVinny performance of “Tico Tico/Apache” and the Frank-Vinny-Glenn Tosto rendition of “Beethoven’s 5th” on YouTube. Then imagine it with three more guitarists, a violin, bass and vocals. Whoa. (RH) Capitol Theatre, 50 W. 200 South, 7:30 p.m., $33.50 +$4.50 service fee (student tickets available), ArtsSaltLake.org

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