Pacific Sun July 3-9, 2019

YEAR 57, NO.27 JULY 3-9, 2019

SPOTLIGHT ON

SERVING MARIN COUNTY

PACIFICSUN.COM

Corte Madera & Larkspur

‘DEEPFAKES’ ARE BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN PHONY AND REAL VIDEOS—AND THE IMPLICATIONS ARE SCARY P8

FalseMedia

The 4th in Corte Madera P12 Lark Theater P13 Left Bank P17

PACI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

2

3

4 6 8 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Letters Heroes & Zeroes/Upfront Feature Sundial Arts Movies Film Stage Dining Swirl Trivia Calendar Classifieds Notices Advice/Astrology

Publisher Rosemary Olson x315 EDITORIAL Group Managing Editor Stett Holbrook News and Features Editor Tom Gogola x316 Movie Page Editor Matt Stafford Arts Editor Charlie Swanson

no gas... all electric no noise... quiet power no license, insurance, maintenance

PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

1020 B Street San Rafael, CA 94901 Phone: 415.485.6700 Fax: 415.485.6226 E-Mail: letters@pacificsun.com

VenturePad, Marin’s Premier Coworking, Meeting space, and Entrepreneurship Center • For solopreneurs, small teams, telecommuters, start-ups, work at home professionals • Open and dedicated desks, meeting rooms (4-30 capacity), phone booths, café • Over 300 members, 80 advisors and professional service experts on call • Book a tour, get a free day pass • Day pass, memberships, meeting rooms bookable online at venturepad.works Call Chris at 415-309-0331 for more info.

Sales, Service, Repairs, & Rentals

Get out of the house, be more productive, find your tribe!

415.457.1664 1281 Anderson Dr., Ste. F, San Rafael

Downtown San Rafael, 1020 B Street, between 4th and 5th Streets

www.venturepad.works

CONTRIBUTORS Amy Alkon, Wallace Baine, Rob Brezsny, Richard von Busack, Harry Duke, James Knight, Howard Rachelson

5

COPY EDITOR



Mark Fernquest



EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Alex T. Randolph ADVERTISING ACCOUNT MANAGERS Danielle McCoy x311, dmccoy@pacificsun.com Marianne Misz x336, mmisz@pacificsun.com LEGALS/DIGITAL/EDIT/SALES SUPPORT Candace Simmons x306, legals@pacificsun.com ART AND PRODUCTION Design Director Kara Brown Art Director Tabi Zarrinnaal Production Operations Manager Sean George Graphic Designers Jimmy Arceneaux, Kathy Manlapaz, Jackie Mujica CEO/Executive Editor Dan Pulcrano ON THE COVER Design by Tabi Zarrinnaal PACIFIC SUN (USPS 454-630) Published weekly, on Wednesdays, by Metrosa Inc. Distributed free at more than 500 locations throughout Marin County. Adjudicated a newspaper of General Circulation. First class mailed delivery in Marin available by subscriptions (per year): Marin County $75; out-of-county $90, via credit card, cash or check.

No person may, without the permission of the Pacific Sun, take more than one copy of each Pacific Sun weekly issue. Entire contents of this publication Copyright ©Metrosa, Inc., ISSN; 0048-2641. All rights reserved. Unsolicited manuscripts must be submitted with a stamped self-addressed envelope.

Fat cat?

Itchy dog?

WE CAN HELP!

We offer researched, nutritional & quality products that meet the highest standards.

Come See Us Today!

QUALITY PET NUTRITION FOOD & SUPPLIES

Family Petcare Store 415.897.2079 181 San Marin Dr Novato

Follow us on Instagram @piginapicklebbq Find our rotating craft beer menu on untappd and @piginapicklebeer for updates Follow us on Instagram @piginapicklebbq Find our rotating craft

and piginapicklebeer for updates menu on untappd Corte Madera Town Center | 415.891.3265 Emeryville Public Market | Sold-Out Hotline: 510.922.8902 | piginapickle.com

Corte Madera Town Center | 415.891.3265 Emeryville Public Market | Sold-Out Hotline: 510.922.8902 piginapickle.com

beer

Letters

PACI FI C SU N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

4

Tom Gogola

Many-headed hydrant: New Marin County Civil Grand Jury report cites lack of transparency among the county’s 131 water, fire, utility and other special districts.

GEM FAIRE America’s Premier Jewelry & Bead Faires

WrongTurn

I believe it’s Bel Marin Keys (“Cruiser Control,” June 26, 2019).

I don’t know of any Bel Mar Keys in Marin. Auto-correct is a terrible tool in journalism. Nice article.

Fred Fendler Via PacificSun.com

Good Idea!

JULY 19, 20, 21 SAN RAFAEL Marin Center

{ 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael, CA } *Bring this ad n and a food donatio to receive ONE

FREE admission

GEM FAIRE HOURS: FRI 12pm-6pm | SAT 10am-6pm | SUN 10am-5pm

JEWELRY ² CRYSTALS ² GEMS ² BEADS MINERALS ² FASHION ACCESSORIES Jewelry Repair | Largest Selection | New Vendors!

*To benefit SF-Marin Food Bank. Not valid with other offer. ONE per person. Property of Gem Faire, Inc, can be revoked without notice. Non-transferrable.

Sponsored by GEM FAIRE, INC

|

(503) 252-8300

|

GEMFAIRE.COM

Thanks for this news article (“In Us We Trust,” June 26, 2019). I didn't know California was considering a public-banking law. Good idea!

I'll be writing to Sen. McGuire in support of it.

Leslie 2 Via Facebook

Alt-Treatment

Cannabis can deal with the pain shingles causes (“Nerve Agent,” June 26, 2019), but the use of L-lysine can prevent flare-ups from even happening by shutting down the ability of the shingles virus to replicate.

Michael Clark Via Facebook

The Horrors

It is unfathomable to me that there are those who have lost so much compassion and empathy for their fellow human beings that they legitimize child detention centers and the horrors within on purely political partisanship.

"I screamed at God for the oppressed and incarcerated child until I saw the oppressed and incarcerated child was God screaming at me.” —Author Unknown Dennis Kostecki Sausalito In the United States detention means you have to stay after school in the principal's office for chewing gum in class. It does not mean little kids are now automatically relegated to the lowest caste of untouchables where you will likely remain imprisoned in filth, hunger, and distress as your family goes crazy with fear, until you die or are saved

by Democrats.

Marilyn King Novato

5 PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

MEASURE FOR MEASURE June 29 to July 21 Preview June 28 June 29 at 7pm 8 pm Performance

PAY WHAT YOU WILL

30th Anniversary Celebration Complimentary Champagne and Desserts

Forest Meadows Amphitheatre at Dominican University, San Rafael info@marinshakespeare.org

BOHEMIAN INSPIRED LUXURY FOR HOME OR HOLIDAY, FROM THE BEACH TO THE BOUDOIR

LA BELLE FIFI • 121 TOWN CENTER • CORTE MADERA, CA 94925 415.758.7158

PACI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

6

Heroes &Zeroes

By Nikki Silverstein

A herd of grazing goats will help reduce wildfire risk outside of Fairfax this week, on the site of the former Sunnyside Nursery. If you’ve never watched these bearded beasts devour all vegetation in sight, grab your kids and get over to 3000 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to take a gander. You’ll also observe herding dogs working to protect the goats against predators and keep them moving in the right direction.

While the animals are fun to watch, their labors are essential to removing high-risk fire fuel, including shrubs, weeds, tall grasses and invasive plants from the undeveloped 7.7 acre area.

Efficient and cost-effective, goat grazing has many other benefits, too. It’s gentle on the land and pollution-free.

Three cheers for the three agencies, Marin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Marin County Parks and FireSafe Marin, that chose this natural solution to creating defensible space.

Got a Hero or a Zero? Please send submissions to nikki_silverstein@yahoo.com. Toss roses, hurl stones with more Heroes and Zeros at ›› pacificsun.com

Tom Gogola

Talk about bad timing. Two women allegedly shoplifted from Sephora in the Vintage Oaks Shopping Center while a Novato police detective was in the store investigating a previous burglary. Oops. The pair reportedly filled bags with cosmetics and left the store without paying.

The detective, who had been in the business office when the theft occurred, was a few steps behind the suspects. Fortunately, an observant shopper saw the women flee and provided the detective with the license plate number of the getaway car.

Novato police dispatchers broadcasted the info to law enforcement across the county. The Central Marin Police took up the chase when they saw the suspect vehicle on 101 and stopped them at the Spencer Avenue exit in Sausalito.

Destiny Shree Gates, 18, of Richmond and a juvenile, 17, of Vallejo, were arrested for alleged burglary, grand theft and conspiracy, said police.

Sephora employees report that the two alleged thieves stole almost $2,500 worth of merchandise.

Upfront The Bolinas Community Public Utility District is one of 131 special districts in Marin County referenced in a new grand jury report.

Unknown Unknowns Marin Civil Grand Jury blasts county efforts to provide transparency on special districts By Tom Gogola

I

t’s usually hard to argue with the Dalai Lama on matters of the spirit, but Marin County finance director Roy Given is up for an argument over transparency and the county’s special districts.

Quoting the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Marin County Civil Grand Jury reported in late June on the transparency of the county’s numerous special districts and found it wanting. “A lack of transparency,” says the Dalai Lama in a header to the

seven-page report, “results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.”

From his lips to the Marin grand jury: That spirit was in play throughout the June 20 report, which blasted the county for a lack of information posted online about the county’s 131 special districts.

It’s a complaint that the county’s heard before and tried to address by adding details and links about the county’s special districts to the county website. And it’s one that the state has taken up in recent years

with legislation pegged at so-called “independent” special districts that lie outside of county governance.

It’s a tricky issue to resolve, says Given, who argues that the transparency onus ought to be on the special districts themselves and not the county—which is, he says, already doing what it can to keep track of the districts, their budgets and their leadership.

A special district is defined as a local entity that delivers a public service to a specific geographic area. Examples in Marin County include the Muir Beach

7 an annually reviewed “fiscal hardship exemption” for districts that can’t afford to create and maintain an online presence, and the CSDA’s on the case to assist those that can’t afford it: “We are taking very practical steps for every agency in the state to have a website,” says Packham.

Going back to 2014, the Marin Civil Grand Jury started to issue reports that said the county needed to do a better job of tracking its special districts. But the independent districts, says Given, are under no obligation to report to the county, and he’s not sure why the grand jury is so insistent about the county’s failure on this front.

Forget the Dalai Lama and consider the famous Donald Rumsfeld–ism about “unknown unknowns.”

Given says he’s being directed to provide expanded information about entities he might not even have an awareness of—hence, the “unknown unknown” cited by former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Given says his office strives to compile a complete list of special districts and that he spends considerable time tracking them down.

“I have to go out there and get them to provide me with the information.

They’re under no obligation to report to the county, and I’m under no obligation to put the independent ones on the website,” he says.

He’s happy to do so, he adds. “It’s important to have the independent ones listed so people can contact them. But am I going to be able to keep up on all this information?”

Given says no, and his message to the grand jury is “you need to give me something that will force or direct those special districts to provide information on an annual basis— they have to provide it to me.”

The grand jury’s holding fast to its demands that the county ride herd over special district accountability and transparency. Despite Marin taxpayers pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the districts, operational details about many of them, reports that grand jury, “are uncertain and obscure.”

Their issues with the county’s online transparency date back to 2014 when the grand jury first recommended that the county set up a webpage to list all the special districts. A year later, the grand jury issued a “transparency report card” that handed out poor grades when it came to those special districts, and

reiterated its call for greater online information.

This year they ratcheted up again with an additional 18 elements it would like to see detailed for all special districts: name, address, but also the names of board members, how board member compensation is calculated, whether board meetings are televised or recorded, total budget and source of funds and other requests.

Packham says he’s not sure why the grand jury would request that the county gather information that’s available on the state controller’s website.

The grand jury also asked that the county supervisors and finance department provide a digital directory to the special districts and that it post the compensation paid to directors and employees of the districts.

Even if the independent districts are subject to California publicrecords law, Given notes that “the real issue for most of these entities is, were people even able to find someone to get ahold of, to even put in the records request?”

Given, on the job in Marin for more than two decades, says he spoke to the grand jury for about an hour in advance of their latest

findings, and asked them how he was supposed to gather information from independent special districts that he may not even know are in existence.

“The county and myself—we have no authority to make sure people have websites or keep them up to date,” says Given. “It’s easy to say that the county has to do it, but with no authority to do so, it makes it almost impossible. I want to provide information as best as I can,” he adds.

“But it has to be attainable.”

Given says that he’s participated with the grand jury’s requests in years past. The key driver for greater transparency is to make sure taxpayer money isn’t misused by special districts.

But even after 29 years on the job, Given says he still doesn’t have a good answer to what agency is responsible for actually doing anything about an independent districts’ expenditures if they turn out to indicate a misuse of funds. (It hasn’t happened, he says, to his knowledge.)

His role as the county auditor is to get the special districts to provide him with financial statements, but that’s it. “I have no authority to do anything if they come back bad,” he says. That authority lies with the state controller’s office. Y

Flashback 50 Years Ago THIS

What this country needs is a Good Nickel Crusade. We need a common cause which can unite us all in these times of division and crisis. At first blush this might seem an impossible order. At a time WEEK when not everybody is in favor of God, Motherhood, Apple Pie and the Flag, is there anything on which we can all agree? There is. Everybody is against hippies. —July 2, 1969

40Years Ago THIS

Polish those bicycles and shop for a moped—Golden Gate Transit might be out on a strike Monday. Bridge district workers, demanding a 10.7 percent wage increase have threatened to strike Sunday. The WEEK strike would shut down bus service and ferries as well as the toll booths, but toll takers would be replaced by supervisory personnel, according to the district. The requested 10 percent wage increase would cost the district $1.3 million a year and presumably would necessitate a toll and fare increase. —June 29, 1979

30 Years Ago THIS

Made by Pixar, a computer graphics firm located in San Rafael, Tin Toy walked away with this year's Academy Award for best animated short —the first time the Oscar has gone to a computer-animated film...

WEEK Computer generated graphics is a rapidly advancing technology, and Pixar has remained at the cutting edge. That's thanks, in part, to the work of the animation team. The company originated as the computer graphics research division at Lucasfilm. The division's early work included sequences for Return of the Jedi, Young Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In 1986 Lucasfilm sold off its computer graphics division to a group of purchasers that included the division's own employees (who now own 30 percent) and Apple Computers cofounder Steven Jobs (70 percent). —June 30, 1989 Compiled by Alex Randolph

PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

Community Service District and the Sleepy Hollow Fire Protection District.

The grand jury report also includes-in Joint Powers Agreements between localities and agencies.

All told, Given says there are at least 131 special districts in the county, including Joint Power Agreements.

Those are split between “dependent” and “independent” districts that are either tied to the county’s budget (dependent) or operate outside of it and are basically their own governing agency (independent). In simple terms, dependent entities answer to the county or city they’re a part of; independent entities answer to their own governing boards. Both are subject to the California Public Records Act and the Brown Act when it comes to public access to meetings and information about the districts.

Most special districts in Marin County are dependent entities; examples of the 25 or so independent special districts include the Las Gallinas Sanitation District in San Rafael and the Marin Municipal Water District.

Given is not the only person to raise an eyebrow at the grand jury report. There’s a little-known advocacy organization called the California Special Districts Association that speaks for the interests of the districts in Sacramento. After reviewing the Marin Civil Grand Jury report, the CSDA’s advocacy and public affairs specialist Kyle Packham wondered to what extent the grand jury had reviewed the state controller’s office website that does everything the grand jury is asking of Marin County.

The state controller’s sub-website, “By The Numbers” (bythenumbers. sco.ca.gov), lists the more than 5,000 special districts around the state and provides breakout and information on the agencies.

“It’s not like the information isn’t available,” notes Packham as he wonders if the simplest solution to appease the Marin Grand Jury might be for the county to simply link to the controllers’ website (it currently does not, and the grand jury report doesn’t make the recommendation).

Two years ago the state passed a law that required the comptroller to post and update that list annually, reports Packahm. Last year, the state passed another law that requires independent special districts to create a website by 2020 if they hadn’t already done so; the law allows for

PACI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

8

Seeing Is Believing With the help of AI-assisted video manipulation software, hackers, pornographers and state intelligence services are creating ‘deepfakes’—blurring the line between reality and fantasy By Wallace Baine

T

he future of misinformation is here.

It reared its ugly head in May in the form of a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—manipulated to show her slurring her words, as if she were drunk. The trick was simple; the footage of Pelosi, speaking at a conference on May 22, was merely slowed down 25 percent. In the world of video editing, it’s child’s play.

The video went viral shortly after Pelosi said that Donald Trump’s family should stage an intervention with the president “for the good of the country.” The faked video surfaced on Facebook, where it was viewed more than 2 million times within a few hours. It was also shared

by Trump lawyer and apologist Rudy Guiliani with a caption (since deleted) that read: “omg, is she drunk or having a stroke?” followed by “She’s drunk!!!”

The incident called to mind an even cruder video dust-up in 2018 involving footage of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, manipulated to give the impression that he had behaved aggressively against a White House intern at a press conference. The deceptive clip was actually released by press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The country’s most powerful people lending their authority to objectively bogus video as a political weapon is enraging enough. But compared to what’s coming over the digital media horizon, the Acosta and Pelosi videos will soon look and feel as antique as a Buster Keaton short alongside Avengers: Endgame.

Cue Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” Welcome to the Age of Deepfakes.

The term “deepfakes” is a portmanteau, a reference to artificial intelligence-assisted machine learning, a.k.a. “deep learning.” It’s an emerging

technology that can potentially put the kind of highly realistic video and audio manipulation once only accessible to Hollywood in the hands of state intelligence agencies, corporations, hackers, pornographers or any 14-year-old with a decent laptop and a taste for trolling. In its most obvious application, a deepfake can create an utterly convincing video of any celebrity, politician or even any regular citizen doing or saying something that they never said or did. (For the record, the Pelosi video is not technically a deepfake; it is to deepfakes what a stick figure drawing would be to a high Renaissance painting).

The buzz about deepfakes has penetrated nearly every realm of the broader culture—media, academia, tech, national security, entertainment—and it’s not difficult to understand why. In the constant push-pull struggle between truth and lies, already a confounding problem

of the Internet Age, deepfakes represent that point in the superhero movie when the cackling bad guy reveals his doomsday weapon to the thunderstruck masses.

“If 9/11 is a 10,” says former White House cybersecurity director Andrew Grotto, “and let’s say the Target Breach (a 2013 data breach at the retailer that affected 40 million credit card customers) is a 1, I would put this at about a 6 or 7.”

Deepfake videos present a fundamentally false version of real life.

It’s a deception powerful enough to pass the human mind’s Turing test—a lie on steroids.

In many cases, it’s done for entertainment value and we’re all in on the joke. In Weird Al Yankovic’s face-swap masterpiece, “Perform This Way”—a parody of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”—nobody actually believes that Weird Al has the body of a female supermodel. No historian has to

Why now?

Ultimately, the story of deepfakes is a story of technology reaching a particular threshold. At least since the dawn of television, generations have grown up developing deeply sophisticated skill sets in interpreting audiovisual imagery. When you

spend a lifetime looking at visual information on a screen, you get good at “reading” it, much like a lion “reads” the African savanna.

Discerning the real from the phony isn’t merely a vestige of the video age. It was a challenge even when the dominant media platform wasn’t the screen but the printed word.

Psychologist Stephen Greenspan, author of the book Annals of Gullibility, says that the tensions between credulity and skepticism have been baked into the American experience from the very beginning.

“The first act of public education was in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, long before the country even existed,” said Greenspan whose new book Anatomy of Foolishness is due out in August.

“The purpose of that act was to arm children against the blandishments and temptations of Satan. It was even called ‘The Old Deluder Act.’” The advent of still photography, movies, television and digital media each in turn added a scary new dimension to the brain’s struggle to tell true from false. At one point, video technology was able to create realistic imagery out of whole cloth, but it quickly ran into a problem known as the “uncanny valley effect,” in which the closer technology got to reality, the more dissonant small differences would appear to a sophisticated viewer. Deepfakes, as they now exist, are still dealing with that specific problem, but the fear is that they will soon transcend the uncanny valley and be able to produce fake videos that are indistinguishable from reality.

“It would be a disaster,” Greenspan says of the specter of deepfakes, “especially if it’s used by unscrupulous political types. It’s definitely scary because it exploits our built-in tendencies toward gullibility.”

How they work Deepfakes are the product of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The applications that create them work from dueling sets of algorithms known as generative adversarial networks, or GANS. Working from a giant database of video and still images, this technology pits two algorithms—one known as the “generator” and the other the “discriminator”—against each other.

Imagine two rival football coaches, or chess masters, developing increasingly complicated and sophisticated offensive and defensive schemes to answer each other. The GANS process works when the generator and discriminator learn

9 PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

debunk the idea that Forrest Gump once met President John F. Kennedy.

But the technology has now advanced to the point where it can potentially be weaponized to inflict lasting damage on individuals, groups, and even economic and political systems. For generations, video and audio have enjoyed almost absolute credibility. Those days are coming to an abrupt and disorienting end. Whether it’s putting scandalous words into the mouth of a politician or creating a phony emergency or crisis just to sow chaos, the day is fast approaching when deepfakes could be used for exploitation, extortion, malicious attack or even terrorism.

For a small group of otherwise enormously privileged individuals, that day is already here. If you’re part of that tiny elite of female celebrities deemed sexually desirable on the Internet—think Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence, Gal Gadot—you wake up every morning knowing you’re a click or two away from seeing yourself in explicit porn in which you never participated.

Scarlett Johansson is the most highly paid woman in Hollywood and one of the most famous people in the world. But with all that cultural power, she can’t stop fake porn that uses her image. “Trying to protect yourself from the internet and its depravity,” she told the Washington Post, “is basically a lost cause.”

Of course, creating fake videos that destroy another person’s reputation, whether it’s to exact revenge or ransom, is only the most individualized and small-scale nightmare of deepfakes. If you can destroy one person, why not whole groups or categories of people? Think of the effect of a convincing but completely fake video of an American soldier burning a Koran, or a cop choking an unarmed protester, or an undocumented immigrant killing an American citizen at the border. Real violence could follow fake violence.

Think of a deepfake video that could cripple the financial markets, undermine the credibility of a free election, or impel an impetuous and ill-informed president to reach for the nuclear football.

A crudely manipulated video of Nancy Pelosi that seemed to show her slurring her words went viral in May, egged on in part by President Trump.

from each other, creating a kind of technological “natural selection.” This evolutionary dynamic accelerates the means by which the algorithm can fool the human eye and ear.

In its current iteration, the software is still very data-intensive. The more images it has to work with, the more convincing the end product will be. That means hundreds, if not thousands of still images are needed to capture every subtlety of lighting, face angle, pose, expression and skin tone. When you’re face-swapping Steve Buscemi and Jennifer Lawrence for a laugh, those subtleties are not a big deal. When you’re trying to fool the brain, which is designed to detect the real from the imaginary, you’re playing on a much more demanding level of deception. (Even this hurdle may be fast becoming obsolete. Last month, in a scary development, it was reported that Samsung had developed an AI application that could create a deepfake from a single photo.)

Naturally, the entertainment industry has been on the forefront of this technology, and the current obsession with deepfakes might have begun with the release in December 2016 of Rogue One, the

Star Wars spin-off that featured a CGI-created image of the late Carrie Fisher as a young Princess Leia. A year later, an anonymous Reddit user posted some deepfakes celebrity porn videos with a tool he created called FakeApp. Shortly after that, tech reporter Samantha Cole wrote a piece for Vice’s Motherboard blog on the phenomenon headlined “AIassisted Fake Porn is Here and We’re all Fucked.” A couple of months later, comedian and filmmaker Jordan Peele created a video in which he put words in the mouth of former President Obama as a way to illustrate the incipient dangers of deepfakes.

Reddit banned subreddits having to do with fake celebrity porn, and other platforms, including PornHub and Twitter, banned deepfakes as well.

Since then, everyone from PBS to Samantha Bee has dutifully taken a turn in ringing the alarm bells to warn consumers (and, probably, to inspire mischief-makers).

The deepfakes panic had begun.

Freak Out? Twenty years ago, the media universe—a Facebook-less,

»10

PACI FI C SU N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

10 Deepfakes «9

Andrew Grotto, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute and Center for International Security and Cooperation, is studying how deepfakes impact the electoral process and messaging.

Twitter-less, YouTube-less media universe, we should add—bought into a tech-inspired doomsday narrative known as “Y2K,” which posited that the world’s computer systems would seize up, or otherwise go haywire in a number of unforeseen ways, the minute the clock turned over to Jan. 1, 2000. Y2K turned out to be a giant nothing-burger and now it’s merely a punchline for comically wrongheaded fears.

In this case, Y2K is worth remembering as an illustration of what can happen when the media pile on to a tech-apocalypse narrative. The echoing effects can overestimate a perceived threat and even create a monsters-underthe-bed problem. In the case of deepfakes, the media freak-out might also draw attention away from a more nuanced approach to a coming problem.

Riana Pfefferkorn is the associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. She’s been at the forefront of what deepfakes will mean to the legal system. “I

don’t think this is going to be as big and widespread thing as people fear it’s going to be,” she says. “But at the same time, there’s totally going to be stuff that none of us see coming.”

The ramifications of deepfakes showing up in the legal ecosystem are profound. Video and audio have been used in legal proceedings for decades, and the veracity of such evidence has rarely been challenged.

“It’s a fairly low standard to get [video and audio evidence] admitted so far,” said Pfefferkorn. “One of the things I’m interested in exploring is whether deepfake videos will require changing the rules of evidence, because the threshold now is so low.”

But deepfakes won’t only have the potential to wreak havoc in the evidentiary stages of criminal and civil court. It could have effects in probate and securities law—to fake a will, for example, or to get away with fraud.

Pfefferkorn is calling on the legal system to make its adjustments now, and she’s confident it will. “When (Adobe’s) Photoshop came out in the ’90s,” she said, “a lot of news stories then talked about the doctoring of photos and predicted the downfall of

truth. The courts figured that out and adapted, and I think we’ll probably survive this one as well.”

What’s more troubling is the other side of the deepfakes conundrum— not that fake videos will be seen as real, but that real ones will be seen as fake. It’s a concept known as the “Liar’s Dividend,” a term championed by law professors Danielle Citron and Robert Chesney who’ve been the leading thinkers in academia on the deepfakes issue. “One of the dangers in a world where you can accuse anything of being fake is the things you can get people to disbelieve,” said Pfefferkorn.

“If people are already in this suspicious mindset, they’re going to bring that with them in the jury box.”

Andrew Grotto is a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute and a research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, also at Stanford. Before that, he served as the senior director for cybersecurity policy at the White House in the Obama and Trump administrations.

Grotto’s interest in deepfakes is in how they will affect the electoral process and political messaging.

Grotto has been to Capitol Hill and to Sacramento to talk to federal and state lawmakers about the threats posed by deepfakes. Most of the legislators he talked to had never heard of deepfakes and were alarmed at what it meant for their electoral prospects.

“I told them, ‘Do you want to live and operate in a world where your opponents can literally put words in your mouth?’ And I argued that they as candidates and leaders of their parties ought to be thinking about whether there’s some common interest to develop some kind of norm of restraint.”

Grotto couches his hope that deepfakes will not have a large influence on electoral politics in the language of the Cold War. “There’s almost a mutually-assureddestruction logic to this,” he says, applying a term used to explain why the U.S. and the Soviet Union didn’t start a nuclear war against each other. In other words, neither side will use such a powerful political weapon because they’ll be petrified it will then be used against them.

Such a notion seems out of tune in the Trump Era. And political parties don’t have to use deepfake videos in campaigns when there are countless partisan sources, many of them sketchy, who will do it for them.

One of the politicians that Grotto impressed in Sacramento was Democrat Marc Berman, who represents California’s 24th District (which includes Palo Alto and the southern half of the Peninsula) in the state assembly. Berman chairs the Assembly’s Elections and Redistricting Committee, and he’s authored a bill that would criminalize the creation or the distribution of any video or audio recording that is “likely to deceive any person who views the recording” or that is likely to “defame, slander or embarrass the subject of the recording.” The new law would create exceptions for satire, parody or anything that is clearly labeled as fake. The bill (AB 602) is set to leave the judiciary committee and reach the Assembly floor this month.

“I tell you, people have brought up First Amendment concerns,” Berman says over the phone. “It’s been 11 years since I graduated law school, but I don’t recall freedom of speech meaning you are free to put your speech in my mouth.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which for almost three decades has fought government regulation in the name of internet civil liberties, is pushing back against any legislative efforts to deal with deepfakes. In a media statement, the EFF conceded that deepfakes could create mischief and chaos, but contended that existing laws pertaining to extortion, harassment and defamation are up to the task of protecting people from the worst effects.

Berman, however, is having none of that argument: “Rather than being reactive, like during the 2016 [presidential] campaign when nefarious actors did a lot of bad things using social media that we didn’t anticipate—and only now are we reacting to it—let’s try to anticipate what they’re going to do and get ahead of it.”

Good & Evil Are there potentially positive uses for deepfake technology? In the United States of Entertainment, the horizons are boundless, not only for all future Weird Al videos and Star Wars sequels, but for entirely new genres of art yet to be born.

Who could doubt that Hollywood’s CGI revolution will continue to evolve in dazzling new directions?

Maybe there’s another Marlon

11 “People watch videos, sure,” Grotto says. “But mostly what really gets people over the edge is chatting with someone who is trying to make the case for them to join the cause. Instead of passively watching YouTube or exchanging messages on Facebook, you now have the ability to create a persona to sit in front of somebody for hours and try to persuade them of this or that.”

PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

What now?

In addressing the threat of deepfakes, most security experts and technologists agree that there is no vaccine or silver bullet.

Watermarking technology could be inserted into the metadata of audio and video material. Even in the absence of legislation, app stores would probably require such watermarking be included on any deepfake app. But how long would it be before someone figured out a way to fake the watermark? There’s some speculation that celebrities and politicians might opt for 24/7 “lifelogging,” digital auto-surveillance of their every move to give them an alibi against any fake video.

Deepfakes are still in the crude stages of development. “It’s still hard to make it work,” Grotto says.

“The tools aren’t to the point where someone can just sit down without a ton of experience and make something” convincing.

He said the 2020 presidential election may be plagued by many things, but deepfakes probably won’t be one of them. After that, though?

“By 2022, 2024, that’s when the tools get better. That’s when the barriers to entry really start to drop.”

This moment, he says, isn’t a time to panic. It’s a time to develop policies and norms to contain the worst excesses of the technology, all while we’re still at the top of the roller coaster. Grotto says convincing politicians and their parties to resist the technology, developing legal and voluntary measures for platforms and developers, and labeling and enforcing rules will all have positive effects in slowing down the slide into deepfake hell.

“I think we have a few years to get our heads around it and decide what kind of world we want to live in, and what the right set of policy interventions look like,” he says. “But talk to me in five years, and maybe my hair will be on fire.” Y

It’s a Family Affair.

Dressing generations of men.

BRYAN & VITA HEWITT PHOTOGRAPHY

Brando movie or Prince video in our collective future.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation touts something called “consensual vanity or novelty pornography.”

Deepfakes might allow people to change their physical appearances online as way of identity protection.

There could be therapeutic benefits for survivors of sexual abuse or PTSD to have video conferencing therapy without showing their faces. Some have speculated on educational uses—creating videos of, say, Abraham Lincoln reading his Gettysburg Address and then regaling Ms. Periwinkle’s fifth-grade class with stories from his youth.

Stanford’s Grotto envisions a kind of “benign deception” application that would allow a campaigning politician to essentially be in more than one place at a time, as well as benefits in get-out-the-vote campaigns.

But here at the top of the roller coaster, the potential downsides look much more vivid and prominent than any speculative positive effect.

Deepfakes could add a wrinkle of complication into a variety of legitimate pursuits. For example, in the realm of journalism, imagine how the need to verify some piece of video or audio could slow down or stymie a big investigation. Think of what deepfakes could do on the dating scene, in which online dating is already consumed with all levels of fakeness. Do video games, virtual reality apps and other online participatory worlds need to be any more beguiling? Put me in a virtual cocktail party with my favorite artists and celebrities, and I’ll be ready to hook up the catheter and the IV drip to stay in that world for as long as possible.

If the Internet Age has taught us anything, it’s that trolls are inevitable, even indomitable. The last two decades have given us a dispiriting range of scourges, from Alex Jones to revenge porn. Trolling has even proven to be a winning strategy to win the White House.

“Let’s keep walking down the malign path here,” said former White House cybersecurity chief Grotto from his Stanford office, speculating on how deep the wormhole could go.

Grotto brings up the specter of what he calls “deepfake for text.” He says it’s inevitable that soon there will be AI-powered chatbots programmed to rile up, radicalize and recruit humans to extremist causes.

Malvino Family

150 Kentucky St., Petaluma 707.765.1715 212 Town Center, Corte Madera 415.924.1715 Open every day | louisthomas.com

VOTE NOW! Vote for your favorite local bands by July 19

2019

pacificsun.com

MARIN’S MOST WANTED LOCAL 86

PACI FI C SU N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

12

Sundial

THE WEEK’S EVENTS: A SELECTIVE GUIDE

CORTE MADERA

Party in the Park

The whole town is turning out for the Corte Madera Fourth of July Parade & Festival. Beginning at Redwood High School in Larkspur and ending at the Corte Madera Town Center, the morning parade, themed “Stars & Stripes,” will feature many bands including the Famous Corte Madera Town Band, walking alongside a slew of local organizations, and the festivities at Corte Madera Town Park include a lineup of entertainment as well as a selection of artists and crafters showing their works, children’s activities and food. Thursday, July 4, 498 Tamalpais Dr, Corte Madera. 9am; parade begins at 10:30am. Free. cortemadera.org.

SAUSALITO

Hawks & Talks Back by popular demand, wildlife advocacy group WildCare hosts Talons: A Festival Celebrating Birds of Prey. The family-friendly afternoon features feathered friends including owls, hawks and other raptors found in the region.

In addition to getting an up-close-and-personal visit with the birds, attendees can hear guest speakers Joe Mueller of College of Marin and Jenny Papka of Native Bird Connection, enjoy a vegetarian cookout, hear live music from Tim Weed and Friends and partake in raffles. The talons come out on Sunday, July 7, at Cavallo Point Lodge, 601 Murray Cir, Sausalito. 11:30am. $75; kids are $15. Cavallopoint.com/ talons.

LARKSPUR

Viva la France Known for its seasonally-changing menu of French cuisine, Left Bank Brasserie is the place to be onBastille Day, the French holiday commemorating the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789—¸the event which ignited the French Revolution. Left Bank Brasserie, which this summer marks 25 years of serving Larkspur, celebrates Bastille Day not only on the 14th, butmakes a week of it, offering special French dishes, live music and entertainment, and “blue, blanc, and rouge” decorations beginning on Monday, July 8, at 507 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur, 415.927.3331.

CORTE MADERA

Pioneering Art Soulful songwriter Cris Jacobs brings the band for an afternoon concert alongside Phil Lesh on July 4 at Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael. See clubs & venues, pg 20.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, and currently working and teaching at the University of California Davis, where she holds the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair, sculptor Annabeth Rosen is a bold and inventive figure in the world of ceramics, bringing unconventional fluidity to the genre and generating dialogue within her community of fellow contemporary artists. Learn more about Rosen and her art in an illustrated talk, “Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped,” presented by the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Tuesday, July 9, at Corte Madera Library, 707 Meadowsweet Dr., Corte Madera. 7pm. Free. 415.924.3515.

—Charlie Swanson

LARKSPUR

The Larkspur Theater thrives as a nonprofit, owned-and-operated by members.

ARTS

Not a Lark Larkspur’s beloved theater survives thanks to local following By Richard von Busack

N

othing makes a pleasant village even more pleasant, than the marquee of a movie theater. The first light on in the evening and the last light to go dark, it’s a particularly fine sight on a summer night. The Arteco Lark Theater, a part of Larkspur for more than 80 years, is squeezed

into a corner at the north end of the five-block-long stroll on Magnolia Avenue. It’s the kind of small neighborhood theater that’s gone extinct in most of the nation.

It thrives here as a nonprofit, owned and operated by members, reopened 15 years ago this week.

The nearly 50-year-old Lark closed in the mid 1980s because

of competition from home video and multiplexes. When it faced demolition in the early 1990s, Larkspur local Bernice Baeza organized an LLC to keep the thenclosed theater from being gutted.

The “Save the Lark” work continued after her unexpected death. Today, the Lark is still being renovated.

Fundraising paid for a new HVAC

13 PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

SPECIAL SECTION: SPOTLIGHT ON

system, and a parklet will soon open next to the theater so people can sun themselves before a show. This single-screen theater of less than 250 seats does everything: it has rotating movie programs, leases out the space for private parties and community functions and serves as a venue for high school classes. The Lark also runs a popular discount show: $5 plus a free small popcorn before 11am.

Matt Molloy, the Lark’s GM, worked at theaters from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz before he started at the Lark five years ago.

Molloy meets with reps of other small, beautiful theaters at Utah’s Art House Convergence in January, held in advance of the Sundance Film Festival. Last year some 700 exhibitors and programmers met to discuss strategies to surviving the era of peak television. Molloy said that the community is essential for supporting these single-screen theaters. “The businesses here all help each other out,” he says.

Before the movie begins, there are advertisements for neighboring businesses—the Left Bank Brasserie, the Farm House Local and the Larkspur branch of Perry’s restaurant, operating in the site of the old Lark Creek Inn. In addition, Molloy notes, “We have the best volunteers around. The staff has very little turnover. The customers recognize the staff and vice versa.”

Friends of the Lark come from as far away as Sacramento and Portland.

When digital cinema became a cost-effective replacement for 35mm film several years ago, small single-screens around the country had to dig deep to purchase the new technology. “Digital was the downfall for many theaters,” Molloy says, “but the Lark has been on a resurgence ever since.”

The stage lighting and sound system doesn’t eclipse the view of the screen or the gold-brocaded proscenium arch. Greek key pattern border the wine-colored walls. The current 4pm show is the independent documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache. As narrated by Jodie Foster, it’s Pamela B. Green’s deeply researched account of a French pioneer of early cinema.

Seeing this crowd-sourced film was enlightening enough. Seeing it in a crowd-sourced theater with decades of history behind it was where the real magic came in. Y

PACI FI C SU N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

14

Movies

• New Movies This Week

By Matthew Stafford

Friday July 5-Thursday July 11 American Woman (1:51) A decade in the life of a blue-collar Pennsylvania woman struggling to raise her granddaughter on her own; Sienna Miller stars.

Anna (1:58) Luc Besson action thriller stars Sasha Luss as a gorgeous, highly skilled government assassin; Helen Mirren and Cillian Murphy look on.

Annabelle Comes Home (1:46) Yet another creepy doll wreaks havoc on yet another suburban family despite the best efforts of a demonologist, a priest and something called “sacred glass.”

Be Natural (1:43) Overdue documentary tribute to Alice Guy-Blaché, filmdom’s first female filmmaker, who made a thousand movies between 1896 and WWI; Jodie Foster narrates.

Booksmart (1:45) Coming-of-age comedy about two high school brainiacs who make up for lost time (not to mention drinking, drug use and strong sexual content) the night before graduation.

Child’s Play (1:30) Reboot of the 1988 horror flick about a mother, her son and the creepiest doll since Talking Tina.

Crawl (1:207) Horror thriller about a father and daughter trapped in a Florida crawlspace as floodwaters rise and gators come a-chomping.

The Cure Live in Hyde Park (2:20) Catch the British post-punk new wave alternarock band in 4K Cinemascope 7.1 sound as they celebrate their 40th year in the business with 65,000 fans.

Deconstructing The Beatles: Abbey Road (1:35) Filmed multimedia presentation by musicologist Scott Freiman focuses on the Fab Four’s final (and perhaps finest) album.

The Fall of the American Empire (2:08) Highfalutin comedy thriller about a French philosophy major/deliveryman caught up in a vexing yet potentially lucrative moral dilemma.

42nd Street (2:35) Direct from London’s Theatre Royal it’s the classic Warren-Dubin musical about a down-on-his-heels producer struggling to put on a show in the depths of the Great Depression.

Genghis Blues (1:28) Oscar-nominated documentary follows San Francisco bluesman Paul Pena to Tuva to jam with throat-singing legend Kongar-ol Oudar.

Kung Fu Panda (1:32) A doofus panda defends his fellow jungle critters against marauding leopards; Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman supply the voices.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2:01) Wistful, poetic drama about a Fillmore native struggling to remain in his rapidly gentrifying home town.

Late Night (1:42) TV talk show superstar Emma Thompson gets a dynamic dose of sisterhood when she hires Mindy Kaling as her first female staff writer.

Love Live! Sunshine!! (4:00) Highdefinition broadcast of superstar anime group Aqours’ fifth live concert at Saitama’s MetLife Dome; in Japanese without English subtitles.

The Metropolitan Opera: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (2:45) Live from New York it’s

Rossini’s comic classic of covert courtship; Peter Mattei is Figaro.

Midsommar (2:20) Two unwary Americans find themselves in a rural Scandinavian summer-fest where the spookiness is as unrelenting as the sunshine.

The Milagro Beanfield War (1:258) Mystical-realism folklorica about the water war between a New Mexico farmer and the posh housing development next door; Robert Redford directs.

Pavarotti (1:55) Ron Howard’s tribute to the opera superstar features insightful interviews, seldom-seen footage and dazzling performances newly restored in Dolby Atmos.

Photograph (1:50) Easygoing Indian romantic dramedy about the attraction that develops between two strangers as they wander about Mumbai.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 (1:26) Yet more insights into what your pooches and pussycats do when you’re out of the house; Dana Carvey and Tiffany Haddish lend voice.

Sound! Euphonium: The Movie—Our Promise: A Brand New Day (1:50) Tatsuya Ishihara anime about a high school sophomore mentoring frosh new members of her championship-level concert band.

Spider-Man: Far from Home (2:09) Spidey brings his arachnid act to Europe, weaving his web in search of Continental bad guys; Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton star.

The Spy Behind Home Plate (1:38) Documentary portrait of Moe Berg, the brainy multilingual major league catcher who spent WWII as an OSS agent undermining the Nazis’ A-bomb project.

Stuber (1:45) Uber dork Kumail Nanjiani finds himself in the middle of an escalating laff-filled nightmare when his passenger turns out to be an undercover cop on a case.

The Tomorrow Man (1:34) Quirky romance with Blythe Danner and John Lithgow scaling the obstacles wrought by their distinct personalities in search of love.

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2:00) Portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist shares her insights on race, history and the human condition plus tributes from Angela Davis, Oprah Winfrey and other fans.

Toy Story 4 (1:30) Woody and the gang are back and grappling with the concept of what it means to be a toy; Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and the late Don Rickles vocalize.

Twelve Pianos (1:04) Documentary focuses on Sunset Piano, an ongoing collaborative art project in which pianos are brought to public spaces for pros and passersby to play.

Water Lilies of Monet (1:20) Explore the life and work of French Impressionism’s master of light and liquid on a cinematic tour through l’Orangerie, the Orsay Museum and Giverny itself.

Yesterday (1:52) When mass amnesia envelops the globe, the only person who remembers the Beatles plagiarizes his way to fame and fortune; Danny Boyle directs.

Aladdin (PG) American Woman (R)

Northgate: Fri-Wed 10:10, 1:10, 4:10, 7:10, 10:10 Regency: Fri-Sat 1:20, 6:55, 9:40; Sun, Tue 10:30, 1:20, 6:55; Mon, Wed, Thu 10:30, 1:20 Anna (R) Northgate: Fri-Wed 10:50, 4:55 Annabelle Comes Home (R) Larkspur Landing: Fri-Sun 1, 4, 7, 9:45; Mon-Wed 7:15, 10 Northgate: Fri-Wed 11:30, 2:15, 5, 7:45, 10:35 Rowland: Fri-Sat 10, 12:35, 3:15, 5:50, 8:25, 11; Sun-Wed 9:50, 12:25, 3:05, 5:40, 8:15, 10:50 Avengers: Endgame (PG-13) Northgate: Fri-Wed 11, 3, 7:05 Be Natural (NR) Lark: Mon 7; Tue 10; Thu 12:30 (10am and 12:30pm shows may be cancelled; call 924-5111 for update) Booksmart (R) Regency: Fri-Sat 11:55, 2:30, 5:05, 7:40, 10:15; Sun-Thu 11:55, 2:30, 5:05, 7:40 Child’s Play (R) Northgate: Fri-Wed 9:50pm Northgate: Thu 7, 9:25 • Crawl (R) Northgate: Thu 7 • The Cure Live in Hyde Park (NR) • Deconstructing The Beatles: Abbey Road (NR) Rafael: Sun-Mon 6:45 (side 1); Thu 7 (side 2) Echo in the Canyon (NR) Rafael: Fri-Sat 2:30, 4:30, 6:30, 8:30; Sun 2:30, 8:30; Mon 8:30; Tue 6:30, 8:30; Wed-Thu 4:30 • The Fall of the American Empire (R) Lark: Fri 2:10, 9; Sat 10; Mon 4:20; Thu 10 (may be cancelled; call 924-5111 for update) Lark: Sun 1; Tue 6:30 • 42nd Street (PG) Rafael: Wed 7 (filmmaker Roko Belic in person) • Genghis Blues (NR) Northgate: Wed 9am • Kung Fu Panda (PG) The Last Black Man in San Francisco (R) Regency: Fri-Sat 10:35, 1:25, 4:20, 7:15, 10:10; Sun-Thu 10:35, 1:25, 4:20, 7:15 Late Night (R) Lark: Fri 12, 6:50; Sun 10; Mon 2:10; Tue 12:30; Wed 4:10; Thu 3 (noon and 12:30pm shows may be cancelled; call 924-5111 for update) Northgate: Fri-Wed 11:45, 2:30, 5:15, 7:50, 10:30 Sequoia: Fri-Sat 7, 10:25; Sun-Tue 7; Wed 1:55 Lark: Sun 4 • Love Live! Sunshine!! (NR) • The Metropolitan Opera: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (NR) Lark: Wed 6:30 Regency: Wed 7 Sequoia: Wed 7 Midsommar (R) Northgate: Fri-Wed 12:30, 3:40, 6:55, 10:15 Rowland: Fri-Wed 9:35, 12:50, 4:10, 7:20, 10:30 Lark: Sat 3 • The Milagro Beanfield War (R) Pavarotti (PG-13) Regency: Fri-Sat 10:45, 1:30, 4:15, 7, 9:45; Sun-Thu 10:45, 1:30, 4:15, 7 Sequoia: Fri-Tue, Thu 1:15, 4:10; Wed 4:20 Photograph (PG-13) Lark: Sun 8:15; Mon 10; Tue 2:40; Wed noon (10am and noon shows may be cancelled; call 924-5111 for update) Rocketman (R) Larkspur Landing: Fri-Sun 12:30, 3:30, 6:30, 9:30; Mon-Wed 6:45, 9:40 Regency: Fri-Sat 10:30, 1:30, 4:35, 7:30, 10:30; SunThu 10:30, 1:30, 4:35, 7:30 The Secret Life of Pets 2 (PG-13) Northgate: Fri-Wed 9:55, 12:25, 2:45, 5:05, 7:25 • Sound! Euphonium: The Movie—Our Promise: A Brand New Day (NR) Regency: Thu 7 Spider-Man: Far from Home (PG-13) Cinema: Fri-Sun 9:20, 12:30, 3:45, 10:15, 3D showtime at 7; Mon-Wed 12:30, 3:45, 10:15, 3D showtime at 7 Fairfax: Fri-Wed 12, 3:30, 6:30, 9:30 Northgate: Fri-Sat 9:30, 10:20, 12, 12:45, 1:35, 3:15, 4, 4:50, 6:30, 7:15, 8, 9:45, 10:25, 11, 3D showtimes at 11:10, 2:25, 5:40, 8:55; Sun-Wed 9:30, 10:20, 12, 12:45, 1:35, 3:15, 4, 4:50, 6:30, 7:15, 8, 9:45, 10:25, 3D showtimes at 11:10, 2:25, 5:40, 8:55 Rowland: Fri 9:30, 12:40, 1:30, 2:10, 3:50, 4:30, 7, 7:30, 10:10, 11:20, 3D showtimes at 11, 5:20, 8:20; Sat 9:30, 12:40, 1:30, 3:50, 4:30, 5:20, 7, 7:30, 8:20, 10:10, 3D showtimes at 11, 2:10, 11:20; Sun 9:30, 12:40, 1:30, 2:10, 3:50, 4:30, 7, 7:30, 8:20, 3D showtimes at 11, 5:20, 10:10; Mon-Wed 9:30, 12:40, 2:10, 3:50, 7, 8:20, 3D showtimes at 11, 5:20, 10:10 Sequoia: Fri-Sat 1:40, 4:35, 7:30, 9:25; Sun-Wed 1:40, 4:35, 7:30; Thu 1:40, 4:35 The Spy Behind Home Plate (NR) Rafael: Fri-Sun 12:30 Northgate: Thu 7, 9:35 • Stuber (R) Lark: Fri 10, 4:45; Mon 12:10; Wed 10, 2:15 (10am and 12:15pm • The Tomorrow Man (PG-13) shows may be cancelled; call 924-5111 for update) Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (PG-13) Regency: Fri-Sat 10:30, 4:10; Sun-Thu 4:10 Toy Story 4 (G) Larkspur Landing: Fri-Sun 12, 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10:10; Mon-Wed 6:30, 9:15 Northgate: Fri-Sat 9:45, 10:55, 12:20, 1:40, 2:55, 4:25, 5:35, 7, 8:20, 9:40, 10:55; Sun-Wed 9:45, 10:55, 12:20, 1:40, 2:55, 4:25, 5:35, 7, 8:20, 9:40 Lark: Sat 7:30 (filmmaker Dean Mermell in person; live music by • Twelve Pianos (NR) Mariah Parker & Her Indo Latin Jazz Ensemble) Lark: Sat 1 • Water Lilies of Monet (NR) Larkspur Landing: Fri-Sun 12:15, 3:10, 6, 9; Mon-Wed 7, 9:50 • Yesterday (PG-13) Northgate: Fri-Wed 10:30, 1:30, 4:30, 7:30, 10:30 Regency: Fri-Sat 11:20, 2:10, 5, 7:50, 10:40; Sun-Thu 11:20, 2:10, 5, 7:50 Rowland: Fri-Wed 10:30, 1:20, 4:10, 7:10, 10 We have omitted some of the movie summaries and times for those that have been playing for multiple weeks.

Showtimes can change after we go to press. Please call theater to confirm.

CinéArts Sequoia 25 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley, 388-1190 Century Cinema 41 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, 924-6506 Fairfax 9 Broadway, Fairfax, 453-5444 Lark 549 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur, 924-5111 Larkspur Landing 500 Larkspur Landing Cir., Larkspur, 461-4849 Northgate 7000 Northgate Dr., San Rafael, 491-1314 Playhouse 40 Main St., Tiburon, 435-1251 Rafael Film Center 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael, 454-1222 Regency 80 Smith Ranch Rd., Terra Linda, 479-6496 Rowland 44 Rowland Way, Novato, 898-3385

FILM

Spider-Man Abroad The web-head fights a fishbowl-looking villain in Spidey sequel By Richard von Busack

I

t’s not yet July 4th, and audiences can already experience Summer Movie Leakage. Spider-Man: Far From Home commences with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) examining a trashed Mexican village. Is this the same town Rodan took apart in Godzilla, King of Monsters? In fact, a windstorm is the culprit: “The cyclone had a face,” Fury rumbles.

The giant wind beast returns and coalesces like a thunderhead, and out of the sky comes … a guy named

Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), a flying superman in a glass helmet, a denizen of a parallel Earth come to save our own.

Prior to the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home, it was considered a spoiler to name the deceased hero who went to his reward in Avengers: Endgame—the second most popular film of all time. Anyway, his loss hangs heavy over the film, and memorials abound. None are clumsier than the opening, a high school video tribute with flickering candles and Whitney Houston’s “I

Will Always Love You” ululating in the background.

Following the loss of his knight, the squire Peter Parker (the eager and charming Tom Holland) longs to be the 16-year-old neighborhood hero he once was, instead of an Avenger. It being summer, he’s slated for a school vacation in Europe’s most decorative capitals. This gives him a chance to court the brown-eyed and diffident MJ, but his comic relief-buddy Ned (Jacob Batalon) advises him to play the field: “We’re American bachelors!” Familiar teenage summer vacation-stuff ensues

‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ is playing in wide release.

15 PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

Marvel’s onslaught of summer movies continues with ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home.’

in the European canals and castles, with Curb Your Enthusiasm’s J.B. Smoove and Martin Starr as the inept chaperones.

Parker draws the attention of new good-cop (Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan) and bad-cop (naturally, Samuel L.) mentors, and it’s off to Venice, Prague and London, where each city is besieged by an uninspiring kaiju that must be wrestled into submission by SpiderMan’s new fishbowl-headed pal from the multiverse.

Would that the big plot twist arrived just in time, like Spider-Man himself.

Long-time students of the lore will see it coming (though it’d be fun to watch the amazement of a nearby child). The movie finally gets an infusion of gusto when Spider-Man gets caught in a new kind of fight. He’s psyched out, boggled by illusions, forced through a horrormaze of guilt and anxieties and given an unexpected goodbye kiss … from a Thalys train travelling at 200 mph.

This movie is full of things that don’t get the emphasis they deserve.

We hear how Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) rematerialized after Thanos’ Snap, into the middle of what sounds like a bedroom farce. She describes the scene awkwardly at a public meeting, instead of letting us see it staged. We could have had a few more minutes with the ever-lissome Tomei.

As MJ, Zendaya gives a good impression of miffed, off-kilter appeal. She uses the defense of a good offense, which is the shield of every pretty and intelligent 16-yearold. But the dialogue reiterates the best moments of Spider-Man: Homecoming. She should have more eye rolls and less talk. To be fair, she endures nothing like the making over of the odd girl Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club.

Spider-Man: Far From Home gives MJ more agency during a final careen through Manhattan. It’s not a typical ride on a superhero’s powerful shoulder, as it was in 2002, but a terrifying trip MJ vows never to do again. To his credit, director Jon Watts takes the odd route whenever possible; he basks in the fun of hanging with teen pedants smart enough to tell a spear from a halberd. Sometimes it seems Watts has an altar somewhere with a DVD collection of Freaks and Geeks on it surrounded by candles and incense. Still, there’s relevance to burn in Spider-Man: Far From Home’s payoff in villainy; relevance in the distraction and deep fakery—with arsonists playing firemen—and in the smoke and mirrors.

PACI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

16

Kevin Berne

Liz Sklar (as Sofie) unleashes a fury of emotion that involves cat toys in ‘Wink.’

STAGE

Cat’s Eyes ‘Wink’ gets under the skin at Marin Theatre Company By Harry Duke

W

here is my cat?”

So begins the saga of Wink, playwright Jen Silverman’s long-gestating play whose title character is said cat.

Written in 2013, it’s had several staged readings across the country (including one in 2014 at San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater) and is now in its fully produced world premiere run at the Marin Theatre Company.

That opening line is uttered by Sofie (Liz Sklar), an uptight, upper middle class housewife, to her husband Gregor (Seann Gallagher).

Gregor’s cold, emotionless response is a pretty big clue that something’s amiss. A quick blackout takes us to the office of Dr. Frans (Kevin R. Free), where Gregor admits

to offing the cat and worse. The good doctor attributes Gregor‘s actions to latent homosexuality and encourages Gregor to take those feelings and just “press them down.” Gregor knows the reasons for his actions go deeper and darker than that.

Frans is also seeing Sofie, who has her own issues and troublesome feelings, which the clueless doctor also suggests she simply press down while she redirects her energies into a hobby like house cleaning.

And then Wink pops back up (in the person of John William Watkins), and hell hath no fury like a cat scorned, or in this case, skinned. He shall have his revenge.

Silverman says her play is about “the possibility of drastic transformation,” and her characters

do indeed transform. What lies “beneath the skin,” in contrast to how we portray ourselves and how our feelings and sense of being come to the surface, is at the heart of her script, which brings to mind Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage. Both shows have a signature scene of destruction, with Silverman’s scene far less disgusting and far more amusing than Reza’s.

That scene (think of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane when Charles Foster Kane destroys the bedroom of his soon-to-be ex-wife, and just add lots of cat toys) marks the beginning of Sofie’s transformation, and the show leaps into the evenmore absurd from there.

Often confusing and frequently bizarre, it’s well acted, and director (and frequent Silverman

collaborator) Mike Donahue keeps things zipping along for its very compact, 75-minute running time.

Watkins absolutely embodies the physicality and attitude of a cat, and the other three cast members keep their somewhat-cartoonish characters grounded.

Ultimately, Wink comes off somewhere between cutting-edge, New Age theater and a bad college thesis production with a budget.

There’s one thing for sure—it’s no Cats. Meow.

‘Wink’ runs Tuesday–Sunday through July 7 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tuesday – Saturday, 7:30 pm; Saturday & Sunday, 2:00 pm. $25–$60. 415.388.5208. marintheatre.org.

LARKSPUR

James Knight

The croutons at Left Bank are an unexpected treat.

DINING

Fraternité Fries Larkspur’s Left Bank Brasserie celebrates liberté, égalité and escargot By James Knight

T

he Paris Metro it may not be, but Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit has one feature in common with that other transit system: It’ll take you to a really good brasserie.

It’s a smart way to catch a six o’clock dinner reservation in Larkspur from points north, without the hassle of rush hour traffic. The only hitch is the so-called “last mile” of the trip, or rather, about five miles, in this example. But they’re easily covered on à bicyclette, by way of mostly off-street paths between the San Rafael station and Left Bank Brasserie in downtown Larkspur—a commercial stretch of such brevity that I cycle right on by the big, and indeed blue, Blue Rock Inn building on my first go-round.

It’s entirely unnecessary to carry a baguette under my arm on this trip, because the Brasserie has that covered with fresh white and wheat slices from Acme Bread. Served with butter.

Creamy butter.

Speaking of butter, the requisite escargot ($12) are cooked in Pernod garlic butter, and what do they say about what to do, when you’re in Paris?

Sorry, no. Because this is still Larkspur, and because I’m an unadventurous rube culinarily speaking, and also because during the previous day’s media lunch someone mentioned eating banana slugs on a juvenile dare, I pass on the Gallic specialty. It helps that chef David Bastide nudges me toward the smoked salmon rillette ($15) appetizer, a dish

whose only defect is not offering enough toast points for the veritable salad of salmon with cucumber, tomato and onion.

Bastide, whose full title is Maître Cuisinier de France, happens to be in town to help the kitchen with the new, seasonally-focused menu. I take the opportunity to ask, with generous lack of couth, “So, someone referred to Left Bank as a chain—what do you call it?”

Bastide explains that two locations closed after the 2008 financial kerplop, and only two other Left Bank restaurants remain—in San Jose and Menlo Park. Larkspur is the flagship location, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary. The restaurant sure looks at home in this historic spot, and so do the patrons, settling in at tables, booths,

17 PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

SPECIAL SECTION: SPOTLIGHT ON

outdoor seating overlooking Magnolia Avenue and at the bar beneath a wide selection of spirits (my semi-dry Manhattan was spot-on as ordered) and a silent TV screen.

This is no restaurant review based on three anonymous visits—I don’t own enough wigs, not to mention that the critical returns on investment would diminish quickly, as I swoon over any salad that sports an egg, settled upon frisée, that’s executed to fool me into thinking it’s a dollop of fresh cream.

Enter the Lyonnaise salad ($11).

And what’s this—an oversized, extra crispy bacon lardon? No. Enter the crouton.

The humble crouton is what gets me, in the end. Being of the fourth estate, I come from a station in society where croutons are dried-out crusts of bread. Maybe herbed, when fancy.

But this, this rich cube of indulgently saturated bready goodness, which is not oily, but improbably light and crunchy— can this be my pièce de résistance? Or is it that the samples of Provençal rosé and Sancerre my efficient and affable server drops by with each course are now talking?

The wine list is broad, but strictly limited to California and France. Thus, there are two Malbecs—but from Cahors. And three Zinfandels, a win for the West Coast.

Twenty wines-by-the-glass are priced from $10 to $19. Chardonnay fans will find Faively Mercury ($58) and Patz & Hall Dutton Ranch ($70), among other options. A glass of basic Bourgogne rouge from Frederic Magnien ($15) is almost too light and fruity for pairing with beef Bourgignon ($29). Trout almondine ($23) and lamb shank Provençal ($29) also sound enticing.

While the burger Américain ($15) is suspiciously more economical than the Frenchified raclette burger ($23), I have to go with that classic of French country cuisine, with which I have some experience. Mostly experience in ruining—even the vegetarian versions.

This beef stew of Burgundy sports halved baby carrots, button mushrooms, pearl onions, and slices of fingerling potatoes—nothing crazy here, all classic. Yet, the proof is in the pudding, or rather, the sauce, which is not like a flour-stuffed pudding at all, but like an umami dream team of wine and beef combining to make a light, intensely-flavored sauce. Quelle perfection. Alas, it’s going to take more than five miles to burn off this much bonne cuisine. Y

PACI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

18

California july 13 New Soul

Midtown Social

Afro Cuban

27th ANNUAL

SUMMER NIGHTS Latin Big Band

july 27 Americana Blues Rock DINNER

august 3

Pacific Mambo Orchestra

Danny Click & the Hell Yeahs

LI V E MUSIC

july 20

Ricardo Lemvo &Makina Loca

COCKTA IL S

DA NCING

KIDZONE

MARINJCC.ORG/SUMMERNIGHTS KIDS 17 AND UNDER FREE! DOORS 6:15 CONCERTS 7 THE OSHER MARIN JCC • 200 NORTH SAN PEDRO ROAD, SAN RAFAEL

Redwood Empire Distilling partners with Trees for the Future, which pledges to plant one tree for each bottle sold.

Tall Order Growing trees with whiskey at Redwood Empire Distilling

By James Knight

W

PacificSun.com

hat’s this about American whiskey not having the same good reputation as Scotch whisky, Irish whiskey or even Canadian whisky?

Sad to say, it’s true, according to Jeff Duckhorn, head distiller at Redwood Empire Distilling in Graton. But what about the currently unquenchable consumer thirst for American spirits like bourbon and rye? It’s all in a name.

Pipe Dream is the name of

Redwood Empire’s newest product, which joins a lineup that includes a rye named Emerald Giant and a blend of straight whiskeys named Lost Monarch. Duckhorn explains that the category “American whiskey” is seen by consumers as somewhat downmarket, even if it contains the very same blend of whiskeys distilled across America in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and California. It’s all more or less the same stuff—except now there’s more of that California stuff.

When I toured this cellar two years ago, it was creaking with crusty, old casks that’d spent years in rickhouses back East. This time, it’s brimming with new oak barrels that Duckhorn and team have filled in batches, four at a time. Selecting the oak makes a difference in the glass, says Duckhorn. He likes oak staves that are aged for 36 months before they’re made into a barrel, for a softer whiskey, and he’s even experimenting with Oregon oak.

But before we get lost in the woods, Hey, aren’t those whiskeys named after famous North Coast sequoias?

Yes, and the labels bear quotes from naturalist John Muir. The distillery connects the themes by partnering with Trees for the Future, which pledges to plant one tree, mainly in tropical areas facing deforestation, for each bottle sold.

While building up stocks for a “bottled in bond” whiskey, which must be distilled in Graton and aged there for four years, Duckhorn blends up to 10 percent of his own “grain to glass” whiskey with the purchased spirit.

Redwood Empire Pipe Dream bourbon ($44.99) has a warm, spicy character, and while dough and caramel round out the palate, it isn’t overly sappy or woody with oak.

It’s got some earthy spice, a hint of banana peel, and cinnamon and is a big success on the rocks.

Spice fans will find something to like in the Redwood Empire Emerald Giant rye ($44.99). If not quite like cereal grains fresh-picked off the stalk, crushed between fingers and inhaled, that’s where the spicy grain aroma is going. Dry on the palate, it’s backed up by woody, caramel flavor. Softer yet, with juicy grain flavor and herbal overtones, a small flask of Redwood Empire Lost Monarch blended straight whiskey ($44.99) will make a fine companion on my next walk with nature. Y

1

What is the largest city on California’s Monterey Bay?

By Howard Rachelson

5a

Outdoor Dining Sat & Sun Brunch 11–3

Din ner & A Show

Drew Harrison of the Jul 12 Sun Kings Acoustics on the Lawn Fri

2

What large, biting, tropical African fly with an exotic name transmits diseases to humans and animals?

Acoustic Beatles & more 7:30

Heartwood Crossing Jul 20 Classic Americana 8:00 Sat

Aug 16 Dinner Show 8:30

3 Computer techies developed

BBQs on the LAWN 2019

what seven-word phrase abbreviated ‘WYSIWYG’?

4 Potatoes were first

Peter Rowan Jul 5 Annual Bluegrass Birthday Bash Sun Jul 7 Paul Thorn Band Fri

5 Name these TV shows with

Sun

Tainted Love Best of the ‘80s Sun Petty Theft 21 Jul Sun Jul 28 subdudes Sun Aug 4 Rodney Crowell Jul 14

similar titles:

5a.

1990’s comedy starring Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt

5b.

2008’s drama starring John Ham and Elizabeth Moss

5c.

H 4th of July Weekend H

Jul 4 The Zydeco Flames Thu

cultivated around 200 B.C. by what tribe of indigenous people, in what country?

Since 2005, finance program starring Jim Cramer

“Uncle” Willie K

Fri

5b

6 This strong, loyal, intelligent

Aug 11 Asleep at the Wheel Sun Sun

Aug 18

“Uncle” Willie K Reservations Advised

415.662.2219

On the Town Square, Nicasio

and courageous animal can be a herding dog, a guard dog or a police dog and was named for a city in Germany. What is it?

www.ranchonicasio.com

7

Currently, six of NBA basketball’s top free agents (contractually free to change teams) have first names beginning with K. Who are they?

8

Poet Carl Sandburg, in a 1939 poem wrote, “Sometime they’ll give a ___ and nobody will come.”

5c

Sundays • 7pm SALSA SUNDAYS Fri 7/5 • 9pm

MIDTOWN SOCIAL Sat 7/6 • 9pm

Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Album Cover? (give the full title)

SONOMA SOUND SYNDICATE Fri 7/12 • 9pm

WHEN DOVES CRY

THE PRINCE TRIBUTE SHOW

10 In printing or word

Sat 7/13

LIVE SALSA FEATURING VIBRASON

processing, “font size” refers to the height of the capital letters.

Which font size is one inch high?

Fri 7/19 & 7/20 • 6pm

4TH ANNUAL WINE COUNTRY COMEDY FEST

BONUS QUESTION: After the 1929 Stock Market Crash, William Dreyer (of Dreyer’s ice cream) and his partner Joseph Edy (a chocolate maker), wanted to give the public something to smile about in the midst of the depression, so they invented what flavor with chocolate, nuts and marshmallows, whose name depicted the tough times people were going through?

You’re invited to the next Trivia Cafe team contest on Tuesday, July 9, at Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael, hosted by Howard Rachelson. Want More Trivia for your next Party, Fundraiser or Special Event?... contact howard1@triviacafe.com.

FLAMINGO ENTERTAINMENT

Thursdays • 7pm BACHATA NIGHTS (excluding July 4)

9 What 1968 Beatles album won

Answers on page

»21

19

Lunch & Dinner 7 Days a Week

Sat 7/20 • 9pm

KONSEPT PARTY BAND Fri 7/26 • 9pm

PETTY ROCKS Sat 7/27 • 9pm

CHICK JAGGER AND SHRED ZEPPELIN Sat 8/3 • 8pm Live painters, vendors, laser light show, led screens, huge sound system

THE OFFICIAL WAVE SPELL NEW FESTIVAL PRE-PARTY HAPPY HOUR

2777 Fourth St • Santa Rosa MENU 707.545.8530 • flamingoresort.com

Fri 7⁄5 • Doors 6:30pm ⁄ $15–18 • All Ages

Achilles Wheel & The Steven Graves Band Sat 7⁄6 • Doors 8pm ⁄ $17–20 • All Ages

Toubab Krewe + Yacouba Diarra with members of the Dogon Lights Sun 7⁄7 • Doors 7pm ⁄ $27–32 • All Ages

The New Mastersounds + Sal's Greenhouse

Tue 7⁄9 • Doors 7pm ⁄ $10–15 • All Ages Koolerator feat Barry Sless Wed 7⁄10 • Doors 7:30pm ⁄ $14–16 • All Ages

Kanekoa

Ukulele Powered Hawaiian Reggae Folk Rock Thu 7⁄11 • Doors 7pm ⁄ $20–25 • All Ages

Royal Jelly Jive + The Turbans Fri 7⁄12 • Doors 8pm ⁄ $20–25 • All Ages

The Killer Queens

All Female Tribute to Queen Sat 7⁄13 • Doors 8pm ⁄ $28–32 • 21+

The Purple Ones

Insatiable Tribute to Prince Sun 7⁄14 • Doors 3:30pm ⁄ $18–20 • All Ages

The Beatles & Stones Experience Thu 7⁄18 • Doors 7pm ⁄ $20–22 • All Ages A Midsummer Night's Jam with

The Ace of Cups and Doobie Decibel System www.sweetwatermusichall.com 19 Corte Madera Ave, Mill Valley Café 388-1700 | Box Office 388-3850

PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

Trivia Café

PACI FI C SU N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

20

Calendar Concerts

Hammerslag and Friends. Jul 10, Forty Feet North. 29 Broadway, Fairfax, 415.459.9910.

Rancho Nicasio Jul 4, 4pm, the Zydeco Flames. Jul 5, Peter Rowan’s bluegrass birthday bash. Jul 7, 4pm, Paul Thorn Band with Bonnie Bishop. 1 Old Rancheria Rd, Nicasio, 415.662.2219.

Cass McCombs Parachute Days hosts the storytelling songwriter in an afternoon also featuring Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Hand Habits and Frank Locrasto. Jul 6, 3pm. $38. Love Field, 11191 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Pt Reyes Station.

Sausalito Cruising Club Jul 8, Blue Monday Band jam session. 300 Napa St, Sausalito, 415.332.9922.

Dawes Spend the evening with the acclaimed Los Angeles folk-rock band, performing off their latest LP, “Passwords.” Jul 6, 8pm. $45.

Terrapin Crossroads, 100 Yacht Club Dr, San Rafael, 415.524.2773.

Station House Cafe Jul 7, 5pm, Paul Knight and Friends. 11180 State Route 1, Pt Reyes Station, 415.663.1515.

Clubs & Venues Fenix Jul 5, Boston Rocks. Jul 6, Persian flamenco with Farzad Arjmand. Jul 7, Mitch Woods & His Rocket 88s. 919 Fourth St, San Rafael, 415.813.5600.

Iron Springs Pub & Brewery Jul 3, Chris and Lorin Rowan with Ken Emerson. 765 Center Blvd, Fairfax, 415.485.1005.

Smiley’s Schooner Saloon Jul 3, Soul Ska. Jul 6, Kugelplex. 41 Wharf Rd, Bolinas, 415.868.1311.

Sweetwater Music Hall Jul 5, Achilles Wheel and the Steven Graves Band. Jul 6, Toubab Krewe. Jul 7, the New Mastersounds. Jul 9, Koolerator with Barry Sless. Jul 10, Kanekoa. 19 Corte Madera Ave, Mill Valley, 415.388.3850.

The Tavern on Fourth Jul 5, Smiling at Strangers. Jul 6, ColdSol. 711 Fourth St, San Rafael, 415.454.4044.

Tennessee Valley Cabin Jul 5, Creekside Fridays with VibraSon. 60 Tennessee Valley Rd, Mill Valley, 415.388.6393.

Lighthouse Bar & Grill Jul 6, The 7th Sons dance party. 475 E Strawberry Dr, Mill Valley, 415.381.4400.

Terrapin Crossroads Jul 3, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong. Jul 4, 2pm, Cris Jacobs Band and Phil Lesh & the Terrapin Family Band. 100 Yacht Club Dr, San Rafael, 415.524.2773.

Mantra Wines Jul 4, 12:30pm, Black Cat Bone. Jul 6, Dawson & Clawson. 881 Grant Ave, Novato, 415.892.5151.

The Trident Jul 5, 6pm, Audrey Moira Shimkas and Mike Greensill. Jul 10, 5pm, Stuart Rabinowitsh.

558 Bridgeway, Sausalito, 415.331.3232.

Margaret Todd Senior Center Jul 10, 5pm, July Jazz Night. 1560 Hill Rd, Novato, novato.org.

Art Opening

Marin Country Mart Jul 5, 6pm, Friday Night Jazz with Jennifer Lee & the Ever-Expanding Universe.

2257 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur, 415.461.5700.

Marin Fairgrounds Jul 3, Dwight Yoakam. Jul 4, ABBA: The Concert. Jul 5, Steel Pulse. Jul 6, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Jul 7, Cheap Trick. Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael.

Menke Park Jul 7, 5pm, Trace Repeat. Redwood and Corte Madera avenues, Corte Madera, 415.302.1160.

19 Broadway Nightclub Jul 5, First Friday Reggae Night. Jul 6, Attila Viola & the Bakersfield Boys. Jul 7, Elvis Johnson’s Fairfax Blues Jam. 17 Broadway Blvd, Fairfax, 415.459.1091.

Novato Civic Green Jul 6, 5pm, Barrio Manouche. 901 Sherman Ave, Novato, novato.org.

Papermill Creek Saloon Jul 5, Hot Box Hi-Fi DJ Party. Jul 6, OMEN. Jul 7, 6pm, Papermill Gang. 1 Castro, Forest Knolls, 415.488.9235.

Peri’s Silver Dollar Jul 4, Lee Vandeveer Band. Jul 5, Eric McFadden Band. Jul 6, Jim Harris Benefit.

Jul 7, Nowhere Family Band. Jul 9, Jake

Claudia Chapline Gallery Jul 3-31, “The Space Between,” artist Rachel Raymond’s new collection of drawings celebrate the subtle, the silent and the divine.

Reception, Jul 6 at 4pm. 3445 Shoreline Hwy, Stinson Beach. 415.868.2308.

Events Corte Madera Fourth of July Parade & Festival Parade features live bands, and the festival in the park offers arts, entertainment, kids activities and food vendors. Jul 4, 9am. Corte Madera Town Park, 498 Tamalpais Drive, Corte Madera, cortemadera.org.

Homestead Valley 4th of July Parade & Picnic Annual family event gathers at Volunteer Park for a community parade to the Grove, where a barbecue picnic awaits, with entertainment for kids. Jul 4, 10:30am. Free.

Stolte Grove, 598 Laverne Ave, Mill Valley, homesteadvalley.org.

Marin County Fair This year’s fair is “Over the Moon” with art, agriculture, carnival rides and nightly fireworks show Jul 3-7. $15-$20 at the gate.

Marin Fairgrounds, Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael, 415.473.6800.

Novato Fourth of July Parade One of the largest in the Bay Area, this parade boasts classic cars, color guards, festive floats, music and more. Jul 4, 10am. Free.

Downtown Novato, Grant Ave, Novato, novatochamber.com.

San Geronimo Valley Independence Day Parade & Country Fun Day Annual event begins in downtown Woodacre and celebrates country traditions with a parade to Dickson Ranch and an afternoon of games, exhibitions, a flea market, live music and BBQ. Jul 4. Free.

Dickson Ranch, 182 San Geronimo Valley Rd, Woodacre, dicksonranch.net.

Sausalito Fourth of July Parade & Fireworks Extravaganza A parade through town of floats, bands, classic cars and more is followed by a festive picnic with food and games at Robin Sweeny Park and live music and fireworks at Gabrielson Park. Jul 4, 10am. Free. Downtown, Caledonia Street, Sausalito, 415.289.4152.

Field Trips Fourth of July Sail on San Francisco Bay Three tours let you enjoy a brunch and an afternoon-or-evening fireworks sailing adventure. Jul 4. $79 and up. Schooner Freda B, Sausalito Yacht Harbor, 100 Bay St, Sausalito, 415.331.0444.

The Johnstone & Jepson Trails Hike Descend slowly through a lush, shaded forest of Bishop pines down to Tomales Bay to enjoy lunch on the beach. Jul 9, 10am.

Tomales Bay State Park, 1100 Pierce Point Rd, Inverness, 415.893.9520.

Talons: A Festival Celebrating Birds of Prey Bring the family for a raptor-ous summer afternoon featuring fine-feathered friends.

Jul 7, 11:30am. $75-$90; kids are $15. Cavallo Point Lodge, 601 Murray Cir, Sausalito, shopcavallopoint.com.

Film Deconstructing the Beatles Scott Freiman offers insight into “Abbey Road” and the genius of The Beatles in the first of a two-part series. Jul 7-8, 6:45pm. $15.

Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael, 415.454.1222.

A Wrinkle in Time Come in out of the heat and enjoy this family-friendly film with popcorn and pizza included. Jul 9, 5:30pm. Free. Larkspur Library, 400 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur, 415.927.5005.

Food & Drink Bastille Day Celebration at Left Bank It’s Bastille Day all week, with menu specials, traditional French garb, festive decorations and live music on the weekend. Jul 8-14. Left Bank Brasserie, 507 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur, 415.927.3331.

For Kids Indie Summer Playground Join Indie Alley at the McInnis skate park as

part of its weekly events series, where adults must be accompanied by a child for activities around Fairfax. Jul 9, 3pm. $5. McInnis Park, 310 Smith Ranch Rd, San Rafael, 415.446.4423.

Little Folkies Family Band Come explore rhythmic dance and movement, musical games and nature activities with your tots. Jul 6, 10am. Free; donations welcome.

Martin Griffin Preserve, 4900 Shoreline Hwy 1, Stinson Beach, 415.868.9244.

Lectures Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped illustrated docent lecture from the Contemporary Jewish Museum looks into California artist Annabeth Rosen.

Jul 9, 7:30pm. Free. Corte Madera Library, 707 Meadowsweet Dr, Corte Madera, 415.924.3515.

Ed Hardy: Deeper Than Skin Dive deep into the life and work of renowned tattoo artist Ed Hardy with de Young Museum docent Kathryn Zupsic.

Jul 9, 12pm. Free. San Anselmo Library, 110 Tunstead Ave, San Anselmo, 415.258.4656.

Readings Book Passage Jul 8, 7pm, “The Gifted School” with Bruce Holsinger. Jul 8, 7pm, “Measure for Measure” with Marin Shakespeare Company, includes a conversation about Marin Shakespeare Company’s current production. Jul 9, 7pm, “William Stoner & the Battle for the Inner Life” with Steve Almond, in conversation with author Tom Barbash. Jul 10, 7pm, “How to Change Your Mind” with Michael Pollan, in conversation with Peter Coyote. Sold-out. 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera 415.927.0960.

Point Reyes Books Jul 5, 7pm, “The State of Water” with Obi Kaufmann. Free; donations welcomed. 11315 Hwy 1, Pt Reyes Station 415.663.1542.

Theater Measure for Measure Marin Shakespeare Company takes on one of Shakespeare’s darkest comedies for their 30th season. Through Jul 21. $12-$38 and up. Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, 890 Belle Ave, Dominican University, San Rafael, marinshakespeare.org.

Wink New comedy about the thin line between savagery and civilization is told through the perspective of a cat. Through Jul 7. $25-$60.

Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave, Mill Valley, 415.388.5208.

The PACIFIC SUN’s calendar is produced as a service to the community.

If you have an item for the calendar, send it to calendar@bohemian.com, or mail it to: NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN, 847 Fifth St, Santa Rosa CA 95404.

Inclusion of events in the print edition is at the editor’s discretion. Deadline is two weeks prior to desired publication date.

TO PLACE AN AD: email legals@pacificsun.com or fax: 415.485.6226. No walk-ins

Seminars&Workshops To include your seminar or workshop, call 415.485.6700

SINGLE MEN WANTED Single & Dissatisfied? Tired of spending summer weekends and holidays alone? Join single women to explore what’s blocking you from fulfillment in your relationships. Nine-week Single’s Group STARTS July 23rd (no mtgs 8/6 or 9/3). Advance sign-up required. Space limited. Also offering weekly, coed (emotional) Intimacy Groups or Women’s Group, all starting the week of July 8th, and Individual and/or Couples Sessions.

Office in Victorian in Central San Rafael. For more info, call Renee Owen, LMFT #35255 at 415-453-8117 or email at reneeowen@sbcglobal.net

Seminars & Workshops CALL TODAY TO ADVERTISE

415.485.6700 Mind&Body HYPNOTHERAPY Thea Donnelly, M.A. Hypnosis, Counseling, All Issues. 25 yrs. experience.

415-459-0449.

Home Services FURNITURE REPAIR FURNITURE DOCTOR Ph/Fax: 415-383-2697

Complete Yard Clean Up • Landscaping • Fire Break Clearing • Hauling • Free Estimates

Real Estate HOMES/CONDOS FOR SALE AFFORDABLE MARIN? I can show you 60 homes under $600,000. Call Cindy Halvorson 415-902-2729, BRE #01219375. Christine Champion, BRE# 00829362.

GARDENING/LANDSCAPING

Call Pat Now 415-250-4787

GARDEN MAINTENANCE OSCAR 415-505-3606

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT— File No: 146878. The following individual(s) are doing business: RICHARD A. RUBENSTEIN, MD, 110 BALTIMORE AVE, LARKSPUR, CA 94939: BALTIMORE MEDICAL SYSTEMS INC., 110 BALTIMORE AVE, LARKSPUR, CA 94939. This business is being conducted by A CORPORATION. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County ClerkRecorder of Marin County on MAY 15, 2019. (Publication Dates: JUNE 12, 19, 26, JULY 3 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT—File No: 146997. The following individual(s) are doing business: HILLHOUSE ELECTRICAL, 10 SPRING GROVE AVE, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94901: RONAN PATRICK WHELAN, 10 SPRING GROVE AVE, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94901. This business is being conducted by AN INDIVIDUAL. Registrant will begin transact-

ing business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County ClerkRecorder of Marin County on JUNE 3, 2019. (Publication Dates: JUNE 12, 19, 26, JULY 3 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT—File No: 147002. The following individual(s) are doing business: NORTHGATE FLORIST, 4460 REDWOOD HWY #8, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94903: QUEEN OF ARTS AND FLOWERS, LLC, 216 LOS RANCHITOS RD, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94903. This business is being conducted

by A LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on JUNE 4, 2019. (Publication Dates: JUNE 12, 19, 26, JULY 3 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT—File No: 146817. The following individual(s) are doing business: MJC POOL & SPA SOLUTIONS, 95 PROFESSIONAL CENTER PARKWAY A 206, SAN

RAFAEL, CA 94903: CARLOS R. RODRIGUEZ MEJIA, 95 PROFESSIONAL CENTER PARKWAY A 206, SAN RAFwwAEL, CA 94903, MAYKO F. AGUIRRE GUTIERREZ, 95 PROFESSIONAL CENTER PARKWAY A 206, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94903. This business is being conducted by A GENERAL PARTNERSHIP. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein.

This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on MAY 6, 2019. (Publication Dates: JUNE 12, 19, 26, JULY 3 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT— File No: 2019146987.

The following individual(s) are doing business: UGEMS, 7 MT. LASSEN, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94903: WILLIAM FELDMAN AND COMPANY, 724 LAS COLINDAS, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94903. This business is being conducted by A CORPORATION. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein.

This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on MAY

PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

please. All submissions must include a phone number and email. Ad deadline is Thursday, noon to be included in the following Wednesday print edition.

21

PACI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CS U N. COM

22

PublicNotices 30, 2019. (Publication Dates: JUNE 19, 26, JULY 3, 10 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT —File No: 2019146914. The following individual(s) are doing business: RICHARDSON BAY TRADING COMPANY, 105 PEARL STREET, LOWER, SAUSALITO, CA 94965: WARREN A NOVAK, 105 PEARL STREET, LOWER, SAUSALITO, CA 94965. This business is being conducted by AN INDIVIDUAL. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on MAY 20, 2019. (Publication Dates: JUNE 19, 26, JULY 3, 10 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT—File No: 147005. The following individual(s) are doing business: MERIDIAN COMMERCIAL, 711 GRAND AVE, STE 290, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94901: MCII, INC., 711 GRAND AVE, STE 290, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94901. This business is being conducted by A CORPORATION. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County ClerkRecorder of Marin County on JUNE 4, 2019. (Publication Dates: JUNE 19, 26, JULY 3, 10 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT—File No: 2019146965. The following individual(s) are doing business: J4 CONSULTING, 1364 MONTE MARIA AVE, NOVATO, CA 94947: JASON CLARK, 1364 MONTE MARIA AVE, NOVATO, CA 94947. This business is being conducted by AN INDIVIDUAL. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on MAY 24, 2019. (Publication Dates: JULY 3, 10, 17, 24 of 2019)

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT—File No: 147084. The following individual(s) are doing business: EQUILIBRIUM, 100 TAMAL PLAZA, SUITE 225, CORTE MADERA, CA 94925: AUTOMATED MEDIA PROCESSING SOLUTIONS, INC., 100 TAMAL PLAZA, SUITE 225, CORTE MADERA, CA 94925. This business is being conducted by A CORPORATION. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on JUNE 20, 2019.

(Publication Dates: JULY 3, 10, 17, 24 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT— File No: 2019147114. The following individual(s) are doing business: BEYOND THE SITES, 115 SEADRIFT ROAD, STINSON BEACH, CA 94970: LAURA M SUSKI, 115 SEADRIFT ROAD, STINSON BEACH, CA 94970. This business is being conducted by A INDIVIDUAL. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on JUNE 26, 2019.

(Publication Dates: JULY 3, 10, 17, 24 of 2019) FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT—File No: 2019-147071. The following individual(s) are doing business: KRICKFIT, 245 SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, SAN ANSELMO, CA 94960: KRICKFIT, INC., 245 SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, SAN ANSELMO, CA 94960. This business is being conducted by A CORPORATION. Registrant will begin transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed herein. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Marin County on JUNE 18, 2019 (Publication Dates: JULY 3, 10, 17, 24 of 2019) OTHER NOTICES ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE

FOR CHANGE OF NAME CASE NUMBER: CIV 1902155 SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF MARIN TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS 1.

Petitioner (name of each): Junko Shimizu King, has filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Present Name: Junko Shimizu King to Proposed Name: Junko Shimizu 2. THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter shall appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. if no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing. NOTICE OF HEARING a. Date: 8/6/2019, Time: 9:00am, Dept: B, Room: B. The address of the court is same as noted above; 3501 Civic Center Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903. 3.a. A copy of this Order to Show Cause shall be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing on the petition in the Pacific Sun, a newspaper of general circulation, printed in the county of Marin. DATED: June 4, 2019 James Chou Judge of the Superior Court James M Kim Court Executive Officer MARIN COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT By E. Anderson, Deputy (June 12, 19, 26, July 3 of 2019) ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME CASE NUMBER: CIV 1902166 SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF MARIN TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS 1.

Petitioner (name of each): Gwendolyn J. Sereno, has filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Present Name: Gwendolyn J. Sereno to Proposed Name: Prartho M Sereno 2. THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter shall

appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. if no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing. NOTICE OF HEARING a. Date: 8/5/2019, Time: 9:00am, Dept: B, Room: B. The address of the court is same as noted above; 3501 Civic Center Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903. 3.a. A copy of this Order to Show Cause shall be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing on the petition in the Pacific Sun, a newspaper of general circulation, printed in the county of Marin. DATED: June 4, 2019 Andrew E Sweet Judge of the Superior Court James M Kim Court Executive Officer MARIN COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT By E. Anderson, Deputy (June 12, 19, 26, July 3 of 2019) ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME CASE NUMBER: CIV 1902157 SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF MARIN TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS 1. Petitioner (name of each): Edy Ermidio Rodas Diaz & Ansley Sumy de Leon Hernandez, has filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Present Name: Ainsley Edy Rodas de Leon to Proposed Name: Ansley Edy Rodas de Leon 2. THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter shall appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing

to show cause why the petition should not be granted. if no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing. NOTICE OF HEARING a. Date: 8/5/2019, Time: 9:00am, Dept: A, Room: A. The address of the court is same as noted above; 3501 Civic Center Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903. 3.a. A copy of this Order to Show Cause shall be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing on the petition in the Pacific Sun, a newspaper of general circulation, printed in the county of Marin. DATED: June 4, 2019 Stephen P Freccero Judge of the Superior Court James M Kim Court Executive Officer MARIN COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT By Q. Roary, Deputy (June 19, 26, JULY 3, 10) NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF: KEVIN A. SHANNON CASE NO.: PR 1902158 To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of: KEVIN A. SHANNON A Petition for~Probate~has been filed by: JILL THORPE. in the Superior Court of California, County of Marin.

The Petition for~Probate~requests that: JILL THORPE be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent.

The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the

petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: Date: 7/8/2019, Time: 9:00AM, Dept.: J, Address of court: 3501 Civic Center Drive, PO Box 4988, San Rafael, CA 94913-4988. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing.

Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or a contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined in section 58(b) of the California~Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California~Probate~Code.

Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in~Probate~Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk.

Attorney for Petitioner: ANDREA DITULLIO, 300 MONTGOMERY STREET, SUITE 1050, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104 FILED: MAY 29, 2019 James M. Kim Court Executive Officer MARIN COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT By: E. Anderson (JUNE 12, 26, JULY 3)

By Amy Alkon

Q:

I’m a married lesbian working on having another baby with my fab wife. My new best friend is an attractive straight girl who lives in another state. We talk and text every day. It isn’t sexual or romantic at all, but my friend gets me in a way that, I’m sorry to say, my wife does not. My wife seems jealous. I’ve noticed her moping around when I’m on the phone and sometimes rolling her eyes when I’m laughing with my friend. How can I reassure her without giving up my new friend?—Concerned

A:

Spouses can’t meet each other’s every need—and shouldn’t be expected to. Like, if you’re doubled over in pain, you don’t just hand your wife some dishwashing gloves and a knife and be all, “Kitchen-floor appendectomy, babe?”

Still, it makes sense that your wife is getting all green monster-y. Human emotions, including jealousy, are a tool chest for solving the mating and survival problems that have kept popping up throughout human history.

Jealousy is a guard-dog emotion, rising up automatically when we sense that our partnership might be threatened. Research by evolutionary psychologist David Buss finds that our jealousy, in turn, triggers mate-retention behaviors, such as going around all hangdog mopeypants to try to guilt our partner into spending less time with their sparkly new friend.

Now, it seems like you could just reason with your wife: “Come on...my friend’s fiercely hetero, she lives in another state and I’m having another baby with you.” However, though we each have the ability to reason, reasoning takes effort, while emotion comes up automatically, without mental elbow grease. So it turns out that emotion does a lot of our decision-making, and then we dress it up as reason after the fact.

Your best bet is be extra loving to your wife—basically to lovey-dovey her off the ledge. Psychologist Brooke C. Feeney’s research on the “dependency paradox” finds that the more an insecure partner feels they can count on their partner for love and comforting the less fearful and clingy they tend to be.

In other words, you should consistently go a little overboard in showing affection, like by sending your wife frequent random texts (“in supermarket & thinking about how much i love u”), caressing her face, doing little sweet things. Basically, stop just short of boring her to death with how much you love her.

Q:

My male neighbor was married to a wonderful woman for 15 years.

She died, and he was grieving heavily for several months, telling my husband and me she was the love of his life and he didn’t “know how to do life” without her, etc. Well, six months later, he was dating, and in less than a year, he’s engaged to somebody new! I’m beginning to wonder if all his “I’m so grief-stricken” was just for show.—Irate

A:

The way you see it, he went through some Stages of Grief: 1) Wow, this is terrible and life-shattering. 2) Boobs!

However, it isn’t surprising that you’re “irate” at what you perceive to be a suspiciously speedy recovery. Evolutionary psychologist Bo Winegard and his colleagues believe grief evolved to be, among other things, a form of advertising.

“Prolonged and costly” grief signals a person’s “propensity” to develop deep emotional attachments to others. This, in turn, suggests they can be trusted as a friend, colleague, or romantic partner.

The reality is, there are individual differences in how people respond to loss that don’t always square with widely held beliefs about how grief is “supposed” to work. These beliefs, explains grief researcher George Bonanno, “tend to create rigid parameters for ‘proper’ behavior that do not match what most people go through.” They end up fostering doubt and suspicion about what’s actually successful coping.

Understanding this, maybe you can try to be happy for the guy and support him in his new relationship. Don’t assume that his finding new love means he’s forgotten his late wife or no longer misses her.

Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon at 171 Pier Ave. #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email adviceamy@aol.com. @amyalkon on Twitter. Weekly radio show, blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon

Astrology

For the week of July 3

ARIES (March 21-April 19): When the

universe began 13.8 billion years ago, there were only four elements: mostly hydrogen and helium, plus tiny amounts of lithium and beryllium. Now there are 118 elements, including five that are key components of your body: oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus. All of those were created by nuclear reactions blazing on the insides of stars that later died. So it’s literally true to say that much of your flesh and blood and bones and nerves originated at the hearts of stars.

I invite you to meditate on that amazing fact. It’s a favorable time to muse on your origins and your ancestry; to ruminate about all the events that led to you being here today—including more recent decades, as well as the past 13.8 billion years.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Most American women couldn’t vote until a hundred years ago.

Women in Japan, France, and Italy couldn’t vote until the 1940s. Universal suffrage has been a fundamental change in how society is structured. Similarly, samesex marriage was opposed by vast majorities in most countries until 15 years ago, but has since become widely accepted. African American slavery lasted for hundreds of years before being delegitimized all over the Western world in the nineteenth century. Brazil, which hosted forty percent of all kidnapped Africans, didn’t free its slaves until 1888. What would be the equivalent of such revolutionary transformations in your own personal life? According to my reading of the astrological omens, you have the power to make them happen during the next 12 months.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini musician Paul Weller is famous in the U.K., though not so much elsewhere. According to the BBC, he is one of Britain’s “most revered music writers and performers.” To which I say: revered, maybe, but mentally healthy? Not so much. He bragged that he broke up his marriage with his wife Dee C. Lee because “things were going too well, we were too happy, too comfortable, everything seemed too nice.”

He was afraid that “as a writer and an artist I might lose my edge.” Don’t you dare allow yourself to get infected with that perverse way of thinking, my dear Gemini. Please capitalize on your current comfort and happiness. Use them to build your strength and resilience for the months and years to come.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Cancerian voice actor Tom Kenny has played the roles of over 1,500 cartoon characters, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Spyro the Dragon, Jake Spidermonkey, Commander Peepers, and Doctor Octopus. I propose that we make him your role model in the coming weeks. It will be a favorable time for you to show your versatility; to demonstrate how multifaceted you can be; to express various sides of your soulful personality.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo author Donald Miller reminds us that fear can have two very different purposes. On the one hand, it may be “a guide to keep us safe,” alerting us to situations that could be dangerous or abusive. On the other hand, fear may work as “a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.” After studying your astrological indicators for the coming weeks, Leo, I’ve come to the conclusion that fear may serve both of those functions for you. Your challenge will be to discern between them; to know which situations are genuinely risky and which situations are daunting, but promising. Here’s a hint that might help: trust your gut feelings more than your swirling fantasies.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Why do flocks of geese fly in a V-formation? Because to do so enhances the collective efficiency of their travel.

Each bird generates a current that supports the bird behind it. Let’s make this phenomenon one of your power metaphors for the coming weeks.

What would be the equivalent strategy for you and your tribe or group as you seek to make your collaborative efforts more dynamic and productive?

Unforeseen help will augment any actions you take in this regard.

By Rob Brezsny

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue,” mused Libra author Truman Capote. “That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.” That cynical formulation has more than a few grains of truth in it, I must admit. But I’m pleased to tell you that I suspect your experience in the coming weeks will be an exception to Capote’s rule. I think you have the potential to embark on a virtual binge of rich discussion and intriguing interplay with people who stimulate and educate and entertain you. Rise to the challenge!

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In accordance

with astrological rhythms, you are authorized to make the following declarations in the next two weeks: 1. “I refuse to participate further in this situation on the grounds that it might impinge on the expansiveness of my imagination.” 2. “I abstain from dealing with your skepticism on the grounds that doing so might discourage the flights of my imagination.” 3. “I reject these ideas, theories, and beliefs on the grounds that they might pinch, squash, or deflate my imagination.” What I’m trying to tell you, Scorpio, is that it’s crucial for you to emancipate your imagination and authorize it to play uninhibitedly in the frontiers of possibilities.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Dear Sagittarius: I invite you to make a copy of the testimonial below and give it to anyone who’s in a position to support your Noble Experiment.

“To Whom It May Concern: I endorse this Soulful Sagittarius for the roles of monster-tamer, funlocator, boredom-transcender, elation-inciter, and mountaintop visionary. This adroit explorer is endowed with charming zeal, disarming candor, and abundant generosity. If you need help in sparking your enthusiasm or galvanizing your drive to see the big picture, call on the expansive skills of this jaunty puzzle-solver.”

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Life will

conspire to bring you a surge of love in the coming weeks—if you can handle it. Can you? Will you be able to deal adeptly with rumbling love and icy-hot love and mostly sweet, but also-a-bit-sour love? Do you possess the resourcefulness and curiosity necessary to have fun with funny, spiritual love and running-through-thelabyrinth love and unexpectedly catalytic love? Are you open-minded and open-hearted enough to make the most of brilliant, shadowy love and unruly, sensitive love and toughly graceful love?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I don’t endlessly champion the “no pain, no gain” theory of personal growth. My philosophy holds that we are at least as likely to learn valuable lessons from pleasurable and joyful experiences as we are from difficult and taxing struggles.

Having said that, I also think it’s true that our suffering may lead us to treasure if we know how to work with it. According to my assessment, the coming weeks will bring one such opening for you. To help you cultivate the proper spirit, keep in mind the teaching of Aquarian theologian and author Henri Nouwen. He said that life’s gifts may be “hidden in the places that hurt most.”

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The Japanese

word “wabi-sabi” refers to an interesting or evocative imperfection in a work of art that makes it more beautiful than if it were merely perfect. “Duende” is a Spanish word referring to a work of art that gives its viewers the chills because it’s so emotionally rich and unpredictably soulful. In the coming weeks, I think that you yourself will be a work of art with an abundance of these qualities. Your wabi-sabi will give you the power to free yourself from the oppressive pressures of seeking too much precision and purity.

Your duende can give you the courage you need to go further than you’ve ever dared in your quest for the love you really want.

Go to realastrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes and Daily Text Message Horoscopes. Audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1.877.873.4888.

23 PA CI FI C S U N | JU LY 3 - 9 , 2 0 1 9 | PA CI FI CSUN.CO M

Advice Goddess

FREE WILL