Editor: Stefani Dias • Phone: 395-7488 • Email: sdias@bakersfield.com • Online: Bakersfield.com/Entertainment
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HERB BENHAM / THE CALIFORNIAN
This keepsake tea tin commemorates the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. If you were cleaning the pantry, would you keep it or toss it?
When it comes to cleaning up, there’s no loyalty except for royalty
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hit the royal wall when I uncovered a purple tea tin commemorating “The Marriage of Prince William of Wales & Miss Catherine Middleton 29th April 2011.” I was cleaning the pantry and tossing old bottles of fish sauce, dusty bags of cinnamon sticks and half-used packages of spaghetti when I came across the purple tin with a dashing photo of William dressed in his red uniform emblazoned with a blue sash and Kate in a surprisingly modest wedding dress holding a bouquet HERB BENHAM in her left hand and WilTHE CALIFORNIAN liam’s hand in her right. Keep or toss? Some jobs are only possible when your spouse leaves. Thinning the herd of vases is one. Cleaning the pantry is another. Women don’t like getting rid of vases. Vases hold flowers. Women love flowers and vases remind them of bouquets from neighbors, children and adoring husbands, when adoring husbands remember. I have a vase strategy. First eliminate the vases she’ll never notice, starting with the goldfish bowls, and then fill a wine box with the vases she may or may not miss. Put that box in the garage. Then wait. If, after a month or two, the missing vases go unmissed, heave the box into the blue recycling bin. I’ve never had a vase make it back into the house. It reminds me of Charlie Dodge, the former sheriff, when he cheerfully announced that he and his wife, Mary, were going into a retirement home. “We’re going from Glenwood Gardens to the Great Beyond,” he said. “We’re going in but we’re not coming out.” Charlie understood vases. Other stuff too. The vases weren’t coming back and neither was a jar of my homemade apricot jam. I had two jars in the pantry, but it’s important to exhibit a spirit of fair play: Throw away one of yours for every four of hers. Tossing the apricot jam was easy because the jam was tart. I had halved the sugar, something I’m going to blame on California sportswriter Mike Griffith because he suggested it. “I used less sugar and mine turned out great,” he’d said, probably because he caught the apricots as they dropped ripe from his tree. My apricot jam was tart and no one wants tart apricot jam. They can say they want tart jam but when they spread it on a piece of toast it is as if the apricot sunshine has gone behind the clouds and a bitter cold, rhubarb wind has blown in. “Put your foot down hard on spent candles and empty cookie tins,” texted friend Eric, when I told him I was cleaning the pantry. Please see BENHAM | C2
COURTESY OF JULIANA BERNSTEIN
Several art installations will be put up at Buena Vista Recreational Aquatic Area when the grounds are taken over for the Lightning in a Bottle festival.
Ride the
Lightning
Popular music festival heads to Buena Vista on Wednesday BY MATT MUNOZ For The Californian
After months of hype, talk and debate, the Lightning in a Bottle festival is ready to strike. Kicking off Wednesday at Buena Vista Recreational Aquatic Area, this cavalcade of music, food and wellness has big plans to elevate Lineup a mix of beat the dancing makers, newcomers, feet and conC2 sciousness of More than music on Kern. tap this week, C7 At least Organic, fresh bites that’s what top the menu, C7 festival cofounder Dede Flemming is hoping for when gates open for thousands of festival-goers, many of whom will have traveled from across country — even the globe — to camp and chill in Kern County. “We came into the county with a pretty good track record,” said Fleming who, with brothers Jesse and Josh, founded the festival from their Southern California-based art/music event company Do LaB in 2006. “We’ve been at this for 15 years. We’ve had a lot of success with our events and we are really good at what we do.” Confident words for such an ambitious undertaking that just a few months ago was under intense scrutiny from county agencies. Not to mention resident critics and the initial scourge of social network-
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COURTESY OF JULIANA BERNSTEIN
Lightning in a Bottle is all about the good vibes, which in a previous year included hammocks perfect for a mid-day rest. The festival will come to Buena Vista Lake starting on Wednesday, the first time it will be held in Kern County.
ing trolls who jumped at the chance to blast the remote possibility of it relocating to Kern County after being informed it would not be welcome back at its previous site: the San Antonio Reservoir Recreation Area in Monterey County. Flemming said the requirements put forth by the county were nothing the team had not experienced putting on past festivals. He said, “There are no surprises for us. We over-prepare, over-produce and we want the best show, not just for our attendees, but for the people putting it together, public safety teams and everyone involved. I think they were very surprised
LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE What: Independent music and art family-friendly festival, includes live music, food vendors, yoga classes, educational workshops, swimming, camping and games for kids When: Wednesday through Monday Where: Buena Vista Recreational Aquatic Area, 13601 Ironbark Road Cost: Admission $185-$430, free for children ages 5 and under; vehicle/RV camping $150-$1,200; on-site camping $1,500-$3,030 Information/tickets: lightninginabottle.org
Please see LIGHTNING | C2
DINING OUT
El Capitan Mexican Grill sails the sea of adequacy Service, specials stand out, but food is a mixed bag
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n the restaurant review world, readers seem to love the extremes: raves about a new place, particularly if they didn’t know about it, or the painful evisceration of a wretched restaurant that is stealing people’s money by offering swill at outrageous prices. Reality is most places fit somewhere in the middle on the spectrum. And then there are those places that are frankly right there in the OK middle — not awful, but not soaring either. Kind of like El Capitan Mexican Grill, the third name given to a California Avenue location that has been going for 22 years. Editor Robert Price messaged me
recently when he visited, wondering ordered the mango glazed salmon how long it had been since I visited. dinner ($19) and I selected the I had written about it when it was carnitas platter ($13) with a house named Anita’s and later Valentina’s, margarita ($5) that was not polluted and now on the window with excessive tequila. (It it read “New Name, New was weak enough for me PETE TITTL Owners,” but used an old to handle it.) The carnitas FOR THE CALIFORNIAN Valentina’s menu. Price, was fine: chunks of fried a former Orange County pork, not stringy, different restaurant critic, did not walk out sizes, different degrees of crunchraving, emailing me “Nice clean iness on the exterior. The refried place, good servers, friendly owners. beans were, uh, OK, but the thick With Mexicali West closed, there’s a layer of cheddar and jack cheese on void in the area. Our seafood fajitas top can make something like that were decent but too greasy and the seem far more dazzling. My comflan was way overcooked. But I want panion loved the fried plantains and to give them a second chance.” black beans served with her grilled Sounds like an OK to me, so we salmon, which had been topped with went twice and found similar mixed a fresh chopped mango salsa, but results, some good, some merely she thought the fish less than fresh, acceptable. On our first visit my companion Please see DINING | C2
COURTESY OF PETE TITTL
The carnitas platter at El Capitan Mexican Grill.