Missoula Independent

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UP FRONT

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE MISSOULA TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BUILD SIDEWALKS?

MONTANA WIND, PAYING FOR SKIING NEW PLAY AT CRYSTAL NEWS CATCH RANGE SCOPE POCKET THE BENJAMINS STEP BY DICEY STEP REVEALS NEAR FUTURE

Welcome to the Missoula Independent’s e-edition! You can now read the paper online just as if you had it in your hot little hands. Here are some quick tips for using our e-edition: For the best viewing experience, you’ll want to have the latest version of FLASH installed. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free at: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/. FLIPPING PAGES: Turn pages by clicking on the far right or the far left of the page. You can also navigate your way through the pages with the bottom thumbnails. ZOOMING: Click on the page to zoom in; click again to zoom out. CONTACT: Any questions or concerns, please email us at frontdesk@missoulanews.com

UP FRONT

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE MISSOULA TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BUILD SIDEWALKS?

MONTANA WIND, PAYING FOR SKIING NEW PLAY AT CRYSTAL NEWS CATCH RANGE SCOPE POCKET THE BENJAMINS STEP BY DICEY STEP REVEALS NEAR FUTURE

Missoula Independent Page 2 January 19 – January 26, 2012

nside Cover Story

On a blustery spring day, I crouched behind sagebrush at the edge of the Green River in western Wyoming, waiting for pronghorn to pass by on their northern migration. Occasional snowflakes fluttered into the steel-colored water. I pulled my arms inside my down jacket, zipped to the chin. Hours went by. Then, across the river, I glimpsed tawny shapes: a dozen prongCover photo by Joe Riis horn bunched up on the riverbank, pacing and looking at the current. A doe led the others into the water......................................14

News Letters At Whitefish High, appearances are deceiving ................................................4 The Week in Review Someone robs a UPS store .......................................................6 Briefs A windfall for Montana?.....................................................................................6 Etc. Don’t call it a “bailout”..........................................................................................7 Up Front The sorry state of Missoula’s sidewalks.......................................................8 Up Front Seeley Lake suffers from snow drought ......................................................9 Ochenski The Great Falls Tribune raises some serious questions...........................10 Range Getting a ski pass the hard way ......................................................................11 Agenda Vital Ground nonprofit benefit night ...........................................................12

Arts & Entertainment Flash in the Pan Your friend the Brussels sprout.....................................................18 Happiest Hour Occupy Pale Ale................................................................................19 8 Days a Week Two words: carbs and alcohol..........................................................21 Mountain High The Wild Bill Blast! Rail Jam competition ......................................29 Scope The Juveniles’ musical occupation of the VFW ..............................................30 Noise Shoppers, Infamous Stringdusters, Rogue Valley, Rivers Cuomo ...................31 Theater Ringing Out at The Crystal previewed.........................................................32 Film Roman Polanski rocks Carnage.........................................................................33 Movie Shorts Independent takes on current films ...................................................34

130 West Pine St. Downtown Missoula • 542-1471 kitchen open till 10pm

www.seankellys.com MONDAY Open Mic Night with Mike Avery 9 pm 1/2-priced Indian entrees all day long $6 Rainier Pitchers TUESDAY Fat Tire Pub Trivia 8 pm WEDNESDAY Hump Night Bingo 8 pm Happy Hour 4-6pm $4 Imports THURSDAY Dead Hipsters Dance Party 10pm FRIDAY Happy Hour 4-6pm $4 Imports SATURDAY & SUNDAY Brunch 11-2pm • $2 Mimosas

Exclusives Street Talk....................................................................................................................4 In Other News...........................................................................................................13 Classifieds ................................................................................................................C-1 The Advice Goddess................................................................................................C-2 Free Will Astrology..................................................................................................C-4 Crossword Puzzle....................................................................................................C-7 This Modern World ...............................................................................................C-11

PUBLISHER Lynne Foland EDITOR Robert Meyerowitz PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Joe Weston CIRCULATION & BUSINESS MANAGER Adrian Vatoussis ARTS EDITOR Erika Fredrickson ASSOCIATE EDITOR Matthew Frank PHOTO EDITOR Chad Harder CALENDAR EDITOR Jason McMackin STAFF REPORTERS Jessica Mayrer, Alex Sakariassen CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Skylar Browning COPY EDITOR Ted McDermott ART DIRECTOR Kou Moua PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS Jenn Stewart, Jonathan Marquis ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER Carolyn Bartlett ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Chris Melton, Sasha Perrin, Alecia Goff, Rhonda Urbanski, Steven Kirst SENIOR CLASSIFIED REPRESENTATIVE Tami Johnson CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Jon Baker MARKETING & ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Tara Shisler FRONT DESK Lorie Rustvold CONTRIBUTORS Ari LeVaux, George Ochenski, Nick Davis, Andy Smetanka, Brad Tyer, Dave Loos, Ednor Therriault, Michael Peck, Azita Osanloo, Jamie Rogers, Molly Laich, Dan Brooks

Mailing address: P.O. Box 8275 Missoula, MT 59807 Street address: 317 S. Orange St. Missoula, MT 59801 Phone number: 406-543-6609 Fax number: 406-543-4367 E-mail address: independent@missoulanews.com

President: Matt Gibson The Missoula Independent is a registered trademark of Independent Publishing, Inc. Copyright 2012 by Independent Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinting in whole or in part is forbidden except by permission of Independent Publishing, Inc.

Missoula Independent Page 3 January 19 – January 26, 2012

STREET TALK

by Chad Harder

Asked Tuesday morning, on the streets of downtown Missoula. This week, the Indy looks into the remarkable migratory travels undertaken by pronghorn antelope. Where would you like to migrate? Follow-up: What’s been your greatest journey?

Daniel McCrossin: I’d go someplace warm, like Utah or Denver. Nine lives: Life in general. I’ve faced a lot of adversity, from colon cancer to a bad car accident that should’ve killed me. And I should’ve died probably six times from drug overdoses—but I’m still here. I’ve gone from adversity to praising the Lord.

Tucker Larsen: I want to island-hop in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand. I’ve always wanted to surf there, although my girlfriend might say I’m getting too old for that. Cross-country: Driving back and forth to Boston to pick up a car. I drove back non-stop because my grandpa was dying, 40 hours straight. Not wanting to throw off my circadian rhythms, I only napped for 30 minutes. I’m probably not young enough to do that again, either.

Kevin Yanke: If I can rely on technology and still call it a “migration,” then Maui. I haven’t had a chance to explore it properly, so I need to go back. Maui is the best-smelling place on earth— coconuts, surf and onion rings. There’s this little restaurant on Lahaina Bay, and they just make the best onion rings. New World: Leaving the womb.

Kyla Staggs: You know, I don’t know anywhere else well enough to say I’d like to migrate there permanently, but I’d like to explore Vietnam or Sri Lanka and go from there. You go girl! My greatest journey so far is the realization that I don’t need to follow the path of our linear society. It’s 2012, and I’m into making this a year of exploration, taking the time to find what I want to be. I see this year as a segue toward doing what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

Inside Letters Briefs Up Front Ochenski Comment Agenda News Quirks

More Molly Molly Laich is funny, fearless, honest, original and always interesting (see “Abracadabra,” Jan. 5). What more could we want from a writer than that? And Jonathan Marquis’ illustrations are, well, magical. Let us know when you get that ukulele, Molly. Jan Killian Hamilton

Wait, I take that back I would like to apologize for my comments made in the “Street Talk” segment in the most recent edition of the Independent. There was a lengthy dialogue that took place with my friends and me and the compressed dialogue, out of context, may give an inaccurate presentation about the establishment Charlie B’s. I have never been, or witnessed anyone being, “over served” at the establishment. Its employees conduct themselves with a high sense of professionalism, responsibility and genuine care when dealing with their customers and when interacting within the community. All comments about drinking were about myself personally and were not meant to be connected with the establishment. Charlie B’s is one of the greatest bars in Missoula. Its philanthropic efforts, long history and character make it so. I apologize for any and all comments that would make anyone think otherwise. Douglas K. Shappee Missoula

Common ground Recent news about victims of forced sterilization in North Carolina during the 20th century should give us pause as we commemorate another anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. From the 1930s to the 1970s, more than 1,000 women in North Carolina were inhumanely sterilized without their consent or knowledge in some cases, an atrocity depriving them of the chance and joy of children. Shockingly, at least 30 other states conducted forced sterilizations, including Indian boarding schools in Montana. Whatever side you take in the vicious debate over abortion, consider this: Roe v. Wade gave women free will over our own bodies. While the decision did not specifically address forced sterilization, it marked

Brent Carmer: I’d like to go to the desert, but a desert with mountains, like Idaho. But I’d stay in the mountains. Tour de corn: My first bike tour. I rode across Nebraska on a mountain bike that had too small a frame for me. It was spring, so there was rain and thunderstorms, and tumbleweeds were blowing across the road and getting stuck in my wheels. I didn’t bring a sleeping bag, but I did buy one a few days in.

Missoula Independent Page 4 January 19 – January 26, 2012

a milestone for reproductive justice. No one likes the idea of abortion. I serve on the board of NARAL Pro-Choice Montana not because I advocate abortion but because I promote reproductive justice, which assures women the right to

“While I believe that every woman has the right to access a safe, legal abortion, I believe strongly in reducing the number of abortions, to live in a world where they’re not needed. This is a goal shared by all sides of the abortion debate.”

choose what happens to them. While I believe that every woman has the right to access a safe, legal abortion, I believe strongly in reducing the number of abortions, to live in a world where they’re not needed. This is a goal shared by all sides

Correction: Last week’s “Flash in the Pan” column by Ari LeVaux has been updated and expanded to address several errors. The corrected version can be found at www.missoulanews.com. The Indy regrets the errors. of the abortion debate. Imagine no division, just a sure way to reach our collective goal. The way to get there is through prevention and comprehensive health education, access to contraception and family planning clinics, funding for it all and choice. Mary Ann Dunwell Helena

Dawg House I don’t mind saying that we’re in the “Dawg House.” Our family was transferred from Texas to the Flathead Valley last June. Prior to our move, I spent a week here, driving the valley, wondering where we were going to settle. My husband works on Reserve in Kalispell, leaving north Kalispell and Whitefish as our options. I decided to let the choice in high schools be my deciding factor. I went to Glacier High and was shown the campus by a student who did a great job. I was only somewhat impressed with the school. We came from a school district that boasted state-of-the-art facilities. My bar was set pretty high. The following day, I went to Whitefish High. Wow, anything I had ever seen that looked like the high school was torn down. I prayed that what I was to find on the inside betrayed what the outside revealed. Was it the beautiful entry/cafeteria that betrayed its façade? No, it was the people, the front office staff, the student guide, the athletic director. Clearly, Whitefish was our home. I am not an analytical person; I married an engineer for that. I go by feel. And, despite the low ceilings, the poor lighting and the out-of-date everything, the “Dawg House” was where our six children were to attend. I can’t help but think how amazing that new school is going to be when you combine the fabulous teachers, the hospitable office staff and the excellent coaches with a school building that exceeds every academic, technological and physical need of our students and athletes. The word “unbeatable” comes to mind! Catherine Owens Whitefish

etters Policy: The Missoula Independent welcomes hate mail, love letters and general correspondence. Letters to the editor must include the writer’s full name, address and daytime phone number for confirmation, though we’ll publish only your name and city. Anonymous letters will not be considered for publication. Preference is given to letters addressing the contents of the Independent. We reserve the right to edit letters for space and clarity. Send correspondence to: Letters to the Editor, Missoula Independent, 317 S. Orange St., Missoula, MT 59801, or via e-mail: editor@missoulanews.com.

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Missoula Independent Page 5 January 19 – January 26, 2012

WEEK IN REVIEW • Wednesday, January 11

Inside

Letters

Briefs

Up Front

Ochenski

Comment

Agenda

VIEWFINDER

News Quirks by Chad Harder

Missoula City Council’s Sidewalk Connections Subcommittee floats a new way to pay for sidewalks. It would cap residents’ out-of-pocket expense at $2,000, plus a $300 “deductible.” The city could pay for the rest through a new property tax.

• Thursday, January 12 In Flagstaff, the University of Montana men’s basketball team sinks nearly 60 percent of its shots en route to a 78-53 win over Northern Arizona University. The Griz improve to 4-0 in Big Sky Conference play and 11-5 overall.

• Friday, January 13 Sidney law enforcement officials inform the family of Sherry Arnold, the 43-year-old math teacher who went missing after going for a run on the morning of Jan. 7, that they believe she is dead. Two Parachute, Colo., men, Lester Vann Waters Jr., 47, and Michael Keith Spell, 22, are held in connection with Arnold’s alleged kidnapping. Arnold’s body still hasn’t been found.

• Saturday, January 14 The Missoula Fire Department extinguishes a fire at 321 N. Higgins Ave. One firefighter suffers a minor injury while battling the blaze in the two-story building that houses Yellowstone Photo. Damage to the structure is estimated at $30,000.

• Sunday, January 15

Two dozen bear rugs line the shelves at Darby’s Big Bear Taxidermy last week, soon to be shipped to customers across the country.

Energy Wind on the horizon

A suspect forces his or her way into the backdoor of the UPS Store on Brooks Street and absconds with an undisclosed amount of cash. The Missoula Police Department says the investigation is ongoing.

• Monday, January 16 Locals mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day by volunteering for local nonprofits. The “Day of Service,” hosted by the National Coalition Building Institute, culminates with a commemoration of King’s life and his fight for economic and social equality.

• Tuesday, January 17 Missoula County removes Occupy Missoula’s tents from the courthouse lawn. One occupier, Mark Davis, allegedly ignores requests to leave a tent that is being removed. Davis, 21, is arrested for disorderly conduct and obstructing a public official.

On Jan. 10, NaturEner, an international wind energy developer, announced that it had secured a $320 million loan from Morgan Stanley that will allow it to begin constructing a years-in-the-making, 189-megawatt wind farm between Shelby and the Canadian border. The project, known as Rim Rock, will boost Montana’s wind energy capacity by about 50 percent, to nearly 600 megawatts. On Jan. 11, a Montana judge ruled that a company attempting to build a transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alberta, which would move power generated by Rim Rock and other energy sources, has the authority to condemn private property in order to do so. District Judge Nels Swandal ruled that House Bill 198, a law passed by the 2011 Montana Legislature to allow for the development of the Montana Alberta Tie Line, or MATL, by clarifying a public utility’s power of eminent domain, is constitutional. The decision comes as a blow to landowners who challenged the law and have refused to sell

easements to transmission-line developer Montana Alberta Tie Line LLP, a subsidiary of Calgary-based Enbridge. While the energy generated by Rim Rock’s 126 turbines will eventually flow along MATL, San Diego Gas & Electric Company is using it to meet California’s renewable portfolio standard, which is set to increase to 33 percent by 2020. The utility will invest $285 million in the project for the renewable energy credits, but immediately sell the power back to NaturEner. Such arrangements with California utilities might become more common had the state not passed a law last year limiting utilities’ ability to meet the renewable portfolio standard with out-ofstate credits. Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who helped broker the deal, said it will create “hundreds of good-paying construction jobs and be a sustainable property tax base for local governments.” Sen. Max Baucus, who helped craft a federal renewable energy tax credit that made the project possible, said it’s “great news for Montana jobs and American energy security.” Rim Rock will offset more than 389,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. Still, that’s a drop in

the bucket compared to the 17.1 million metric tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by Montana’s coal-fired Colstrip power plant, the eighth-biggest emitter in the country, according to a recent Environmental Protection Agency study. Matthew Frank

Real estate Sales stay sluggish The Missoula Organization of Realtors has crunched its 2011 market data to find that, while median sales prices in the city’s urban core increased over 2010, the number of properties purchased continued to fall. “We saw last year the number of sales in the area go down 7 percent,” says Ruth Link of the Missoula Organization of Realtors. MOR data shows that 773 homes in Missoula sold last year. That’s down from 830 in 2010, 913 in 2009 and a peak of 1,443 in 2006. While the high-end market has been particularly hard hit by waning demand, Link says homes priced under $260,000 remain a valued commodity. That’s

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Missoula Independent Page 6 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Inside

Letters

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Up Front

especially true if they’re in good shape and close to amenities. “There’s a market out there,� she says. Prices in the urban area are inching up. According to MOR, the median sales price of a Missoula home rose to $205,500 from $201,240 in 2010. Statewide, median prices and sales volume continued sliding in 2011 to varying degrees. In Billings, 1,506 homes sold between Jan. 2010 and Oct. 31, according to the Montana Association of Realtors. That number dropped to 1,475 in 2011. The median sales price in Billings for the same period dropped from $185,000 to $177,500. Northwest Montana, which has been particularly hard hit by the bursting of the real estate bubble, saw its median home price decrease by $22,000, settling at $178,000 in 2011. Foreclosed property sales are dragging down property values in western Montana, says Darwin Ernst from Darwin Ernst Appraisal Services in Hamilton. “They’re sold at liquidation prices, which is discounted.� That trend is playing out in Ravalli County, where 30 percent of all residential sales last year were foreclosed properties, says Ernst, who chairs the Government Relations Committee for the Montana Chapter of the Appraisal Institute, a global membership association of professional real estate appraisers. According to Ernst’s data, 347 homes were sold in Ravalli County last year. That’s an increase from 296 sold in 2010. But 2011’s median price was $175,000, down from $205,000 in 2010. Largely because of continued foreclosure sales across western Montana, Ernst expects a rocky real estate market in the coming year. “The clarity of the crystal ball is always in question,� he says. “But the data indicates more of the same trends.� Jessica Mayrer

Business The Missoula spirit Ryan Montgomery’s always been a fan of spirits. And he has grand plans for Missoula—plans that involve vodka, whisky, brandy and gin. At this point, simply sipping cocktails just isn’t enough. Montgomery took possession of the keys to the Pipestone Mountaineering building on Front Street earlier this month, making it the official home of his Montgomery Distillery. The place needs some work,

Ochenski

Comment

he says, and the still has to be shipped over from a custom manufacturer in Germany. But if everything goes forward without a hitch, Montgomery intends to start serving his first spirits—Quicksilver Vodka— sometime in April, under the same legal restrictions as microbreweries. Montgomery and his wife, Jenny, first turned their minds to distilling spirits while living abroad. Montgomery works in emerging market finance, and the couple has traveled throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East over the years. But Montgomery’s mind always strayed back to Montana. When the time came to return home, he decided to meld a love of spirits with his family ’s agriculture roots; Quicksilver will be made from Bitterroot wheat. “The idea just naturally came together, and Missoula seemed like the best place in Montana to do it,� Montgomery says. “It’s just a fun community to try weird shit in.� Finding a location proved the major pain. Montgomery was eyeing the Firestone building on East Main last year. The deal fell through when the site proved “unworkable.� But the Firestone was a bit small anyway, Montgomery says. Now, with Pipestone, he has the opposite problem. “For our tasting room, it’s too much space,� Montgomery says. “We can’t really conceive of having a 6,000-square-foot tasting room.� Montgomery says he intends to lease out part of the first floor. He wants to flavor his spirits with regional ingredients like Flathead cherries and donate the still’s byproducts to a local company for use in nonpetroleum-based cosmetics. He even has his eyes on national distribution. Eventually. “Our goal isn’t to try to be in New York City bars and Los Angeles clubs right off the bat,� he says. “Our goal is to be embraced by Missoula and grow organically from there.� Alex Sakariassen

Sexual assault Engstrom details UM investigation University of Montana President Royce

Agenda

News Quirks

Engstrom for the first time this week publicly detailed findings of an ongoing investigation into allegations that UM student athletes have engaged in recent sexual assaults. “To be clear, we do not know that recent sexual assaults have been restricted to the student athlete population,� Engstrom said. “But our investigations have indicated an association with patterns of behavior of a small number of student athletes.� Engstrom spoke before a crowd of more than 100 people including parents, students and state and local policy makers who gathered for the UM-hosted community forum at Missoula’s Holiday Inn Downtown at the Park Jan. 17. Engstrom said that his administration first learned of the allegations in early December when two female students reported to a school employee that they had been assaulted in two separate incidents this past fall. Upon learning of the allegations, UM immediately contacted city and campus law enforcement, Engstrom said. One week later, the school hired former Montana Supreme Court Justice Diane Barz to lead an investigation. During Barz’s inquiry, UM administrators have learned of three additional assault allegations. UM is now investigating five alleged incidents. Engstrom said his administration only recently learned that a female UM student filed a police report in December 2010 accusing four UM students of sexually assaulting her. A campus employee, who was told of the allegation by police, did not report the incident to his supervisor. “While it should have been reported up the line, no additional action could have been taken without the female herself reporting this to us,� Engstrom said. He laid out a multi-pronged plan to ensure student safety in the future. It includes streamlining communication, conducting educational outreach, clearly defining athletic codes of conduct and strengthening existing sexual assault reporting protocols. “Sexual assault is intolerable at the university,� he said. Several community members spoke during the forum. Associated Students of the University of Montana President Jen Gursky said that it’s important the campus community work to ensure victims of sexual assault feel comfortable coming forward. Engstrom said he expects to be given additional findings from Barz’s investigation by the end of this month. UM will hold a forum for students to discuss the allegations Jan. 25. Jessica Mayrer

BY THE NUMBERS

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etc. “Bail out the People� has been a common message on cardboard signs in Occupy camps all over the country. Signs with similar sentiments were hoisted at Tea Party rallies. Anger over using billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out Wall Street is one of the threads that tie the two movements together, despite other political differences. This came to mind amid the recent uproar over a proposal heading to Missoula City Council that would “bail out� the North Missoula Community Development Corp., which can’t pay the debt from its three-year-old, $2.7 million affordable housing development, called Burns Street Commons, on the Westside. Ten of the 17 Burns Street units remain vacant for a variety of reasons, largely resulting from the recession. Councilman Bob Jaffe wants to convert the $400,000 loan the city gave NMCDC into a grant. For that, Jaffe, a former NMCDC board member, is being vilified as “Bailout Bob.� We sympathize with those who say Missoula’s elected officials are too eager to fork over taxpayer money to save floundering private projects. The Burns Street proposal follows Missoula’s recent $2 million bailout of the baseball stadium. And the city might end up giving away valuable land within the Riverfront Triangle to a developer trying to build a hotel. You can’t blame citizens for criticizing the emerging pattern. But perhaps relieving NMCDC is the sort of bailout Missoula should get behind. Consider what this “bailout� actually entails. It’s taking federal money earmarked for social service projects and applying it to a social service project as a grant instead of a loan. “It’s not raising taxes so we can bail out an organization or any private individual,� Jaffe says. “What we’re doing is providing a greater subsidy for affordable housing stock.� Jaffe acknowledges the cost: not having the money to support another deserving project down the road. Yet that greater subsidy will expand the market of eligible buyers, which will improve the chances that the 10 vacant Burns Street Commons units will be occupied by Missoulians in need of housing. It may also save NMCDC, an organization that has long worked to revitalize the Northside and Westside. This “bailout� may be undesirable, but it’s not unreasonable.

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Missoula Independent Page 7 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Inside Letters Briefs Up Front Ochenski Range Agenda News Quirks

Must be trippin’ Eleven grand for a sidewalk? City seeks fix by Matthew Frank

Squint at my Missoula sidewalk and you see the bird’s-eye view of a highway cleaved by a massive earthquake. My snow shovel catches the cracked concrete, jamming the handle into my abdomen. This is a problem. Someone’s going to trip, and I’ll be liable. I need to replace it; the city could force me to. What would it cost? $10,980. That’s what an estimator from construction company Knife River told me last week. He came to my Westside corner lot and measured the broken sidewalk along the front of my property, and the length of my property where a sidewalk should be. Even though this 1,100-square-foot strip of public infrastr ucture would be placed on the city-owned boulevard adjacent to my property, I’d have to pay for it, either in cash or by adding the assessment to my tax bill. Fair or not, this is how Missoula has paid for sidewalks for well over a century, says Doug Harby, the city’s construction project manager of 27 years. Back in the late 1800s, goes the story told to him by an oldtimer or two, business owners wanted boardwalks on the unkempt public right-of-ways outside their storefronts. Public officials told them they’d have to pay for and take care of them. Harby says the city’s first record of sidewalks being assessed to property owners dates back to 1898. The policy has endured. “Of course, a lot of cities have changed over to where they have a tax for sidewalks, rather than making property owners responsible for them,” Harby says. “But Montana doesn’t have that kind of tax base.” The Missoula City Council is finally trying to establish one. For the past several months, the Sidewalk Connections Subcommittee has been developing approaches that would avoid saddling property owners with sidewalk assessments that can reach upwards of $15,000. Last week, the committee presented its ideas to the council. “I’ve been on City Council for six years, I’ve lived in Missoula for 17 years, and I hear a lot…that people in Missoula would like to have more sidewalks,”

Missoula Independent Page 8 January 19 – January 26, 2012

voters support creation of such a funding mechanism. (The new tax revenue would be divided between the city and county.) From Harby’s perspective, a new tax, however it’s generated, would cut down on the bureaucratic rigmarole that goes along with asking property owners to pay thousands of dollars for sidewalks they may not want and may not be able to afford. “Well over 50 percent of our time in the installation of sidewalks is devoted to the way the system is run and the way that it’s paid for,” he says. “If we make the payment system easier to take, then we can do more work with the same amount of staff. And if we can do more work, we can maybe increase staff ”—and get more sidewalks installed. But it’s another tax, and that creates opposition. “I don’t want to pay for somebody else’s sidewalks,” Councilman Jon Wilkins of Ward 4 said, adding: “It’s outrageous what you have to pay for a sidewalk. I’m there. I see that. And I cringe every time we have to [charge a resident for a new sidewalk]. But I also cringe every time we have to raise taxes.” “People may complain about the $17,” answered Councilman Bob Jaffe of Ward 3, “but they certainly complain about the $8,000. One is unfortunate, but the other one is devastating.” Photo by Chad Harder There are also those When you have a sidewalk installed, who say that implementing a new funding you’d pay a $300 “deductible.” After the mechanism would be unfair to people deductible is met, the city pays 70 percent. who recently paid for sidewalks out of You pay a 30 percent “co-pay,” up to a max- pocket, like Tom Parchetta. Six years ago, imum out-of-pocket expense of $2,000. Parchetta told council last week, he spent The city pays up to $15,000. Anything more than $10,000 on new sidewalks. beyond that reverts back to the property “The thought of having to pay entirely for owner. The “premium” is the increase in my sidewalk and then essentially subsigeneral taxes necessary to finance the pro- dize somebody else’s sidewalk, it’s almost gram. That would be about $17 a year for insulting,” he said. owners of property valued at $225,000. So Council’s considering ways to apply my $10,980 sidewalk bill, for example, the new program retroactively. Jaffe said would drop to around $2,300, plus the the city ought to “cut it here and live with annual tax increase. the pain of the past but not continue to Council is also considering a 2-cents- inflict it in the future. That’s still a better per-gallon fuel tax, which would raise choice than continuing to inflict it.” roughly the same amount, about $800,000 If council can reach consensus, the annually—the amount that homeowners are new tax would be worked into the fiscal now assessed for sidewalks. That might be year 2013 budget. harder to get on the books, however, since state law mandates that a majority of county mfrank@missoulanews.com Councilwoman Marilyn Marler of Ward 6 said during her presentation on Jan. 11. “However, the way that we do sidewalks now…is a big problem. It is such a big problem…that it obstructs the progress of installation. We’re just not able to get the city sidewalk network complete the way we’re doing it now, because it’s expensive to individual people and it takes a really long time.” Councilors see that changing under a proposal modeled after the health insurance industry. Here’s how it would work:

Inside Letters Briefs Up Front Ochenski Range Agenda News Quirks

Lake Snow-be-gone Seeley Lake welcomes storm, but not timing by Alex Sakariassen

Lynn Carey spent much of November and December monitoring weather predictions and tending to thin spots on Seeley Lake’s network of cross-country ski trails, his fingers crossed for storm clouds. The longtime trail groomer towed load after load of snow on a plank of particleboard behind his snowmobile, expanding or simply preserving what scant coverage existed. His grooming activities, regularly reported online, sounded desperate and exhausting. In what were supposed to be the depths of another La Niña winter in western Montana, Carey finds himself repeating a community-wide mantra: more snow. “They all kept talking about La Niña, and it just hasn’t happened,” he says, referring to early season forecasts. “Even midweek [last week], they were predicting four inches of snow. Well, we only got two inches.” Seeley’s season so far is a familiar story for powder-starved snow-sports enthusiasts this year. Area ski resorts struggled with thin cover early on, combined at times with limited terrain. Grooming reports for popular crosscountry ski trails up Pattee Creek and the Rattlesnake still come with the disclaimer “rock skis recommended.” Base depths are now adequate for snowmobiling at higher elevations, but the snowpack in many places is unstable. The phrase “need snow bad” seems apt everywhere. Those wishes are finally coming true this week. On Tuesday, a large storm began to pound the entire Pacific Northwest. High elevations such as Lookout Pass were already report nearly two feet of new snow Wednesday morning. Valleys in the region remain under a winter storm warning. In Seeley Lake, the snow is welcome— if not the timing. Nordic groups have already postponed two January race events, including the Missoula Nordic Ski Club’s popular OZONE Race. A number of trails remain closed and off-trail snowmobiling opportunities are virtually non-existent at lower elevations. Seeley Lake’s Nordic club does plan to move ahead with its 30th annual OSCR (Over Seeley’s Creeks and Ridges) race Jan. 28, as scheduled. But the busiest season for winter tourism has

already come and gone without a major snow event. “Your busiest time is Christmas to New Year’s,” says Doris Skiles at Seeley Sport Rentals. “This Martin Luther King three-day weekend, that would have been a big weekend. We still have President’s Day, which is a big weekend, so hopefully people come up for that.” Locals note a slump in business that no one, based on early La Niña predic-

tions, had anticipated. Skiles says snowmobile rentals, which bring in as much as $2,000 a day on weekends, are down nearly 50 percent from last year. Addrien Marx says she’s seen a dramatic drop in sales at her gas station, Rovero’s. The town is abuzz with talk of lodging cancellations and empty tables at restaurants. “If they’re not coming up here and they don’t need to gas up their sleds or gas up their cars or come in for a pizza…it has a dramatic effect directly on our economy,” Marx says. For Karen Pratt, co-chair of Seeley’s Nordic Challenge Steering Committee, the snow drought has also had a mild effect on the community’s plans for the future. Seeley has increasingly billed itself as a Nordic destination in western Montana; the promise of extensive new trails and a high-end Nordic training center has drawn added attention to the town. This season has emphasized the

importance of moving fast on a second set of trails farther north, where the valley’s snowbelt promises better conditions earlier in the winter. “It would be nice if we had another venue a little bit farther north where there’s a little bit more snow, and we’re working toward that end,” Pratt says. “But it isn’t here now.” The most frustrating part of this season for Seeley is that most locals have already hit the trails. “We’ve still had decent skiing,” Marx says. The work’s been “taxing,” Carey adds, “but that hasn’t stopped us.” What has is the perception among non-locals that there’s nothing in Seeley to ski. “A lot of people won’t travel up this far because they aren’t sure,” Marx says. “It’s perceived because the whole entire country has been hammered by this warm spell.” The solution in Seeley appears two-fold. First, Marx feels the community needs to better spread the word about online grooming reports. A simple web search would tell folks that Carey’s efforts are paying off, she says. Second, Seeley has begun to identify even more winter sports alternatives to complement the events the community already hosts. This year marked the second annual Seeley Lake Pond Hockey tournament, an ice-bound competition that drew 24 teams and roughly 150 people. Marx recently heard some locals talking about Nordic ice skates—a type of skate well suited to the rough ice on the surface of Seeley Lake. “We have dog sledding, we have ice fishing, we have Nordic skiing, we have snowmobiling and now we have a beautiful place for pond hockey,” Marx says. “Seeley is definitely growing in awareness of different winter sports.” Even if the latest storm brings less powder than hoped, Seeley’s making every attempt to assure out-of-towners that trail conditions are already the best the region has to offer. “If they don’t know that we’ve got good skiing here in Seeley Lake,” Carey says, “it’s their own fault.”

20

Best of Missoula

11

275 W. Main St • 728-0343

www.tanglesmt.com

SPACEMAN INVADES SYMPHONY! An out-of-control, out-of-this-world Family Concert by the Missoula Symphony Orchestra. Can songs go backwards? Defy gravity? Change color? Earthling children (and parents) will find out when an outer-space oddball takes over the Symphony — and the secret dimensions of music become laughably clear. Darko Butorac, Music Director • Plus a Surprise Guest Friday, January 27, 7 PM • The University Theatre Tickets: $8 • Online at missoulasymphony.org Call 721-3194 or visit 320 East Main Street

asakariassen@missoulanews.com

Missoula Independent Page 9 January 19 – January 26, 2012

2012 Winter Storytelling

Every Saturday January– March at 11:00am $4 Per Person, TRPHA Members Under 18 : FREE!

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Travelers’ Rest State Park 1/2 mile west of Hwy 93 in Lolo www.travelersrest.org

Inside Letters Briefs Up Front Ochenski Range Agenda News Quirks

Watching the watcher The Great Falls Tribune steps up

Sponsored by:

What happens when Montana’s top political ethics enforcer is himself accused of unethical practices on the job? Thanks to a recent investigative story in the Great Falls Tribune by former Indy reporter John S. Adams, we’re about to find out. The ethics complaints against Commissioner of Political Practices Dave Gallik are not coming from Republicans who recall Gallik’s terms in Montana’s House of Representatives and his active role in Democratic party politics. Nope. They come from the four women who work in the Office of Political Practices, who say Gallik is running his private law practice while being paid to do his state job. That would be bad enough, but they also claim he’s fraudulently charging the state for time he hasn’t put in. They’re alleging a classic case of double-dipping, in which an otherwise intelligent politician decides for some reason that the rules he’s paid to enforce don’t apply to him. What’s left of our shredded legal rights holds that people are innocent until proven guilty, so Gallik will undoubtedly have an opportunity to contest the allegations, which he denies. Their depth and breadth make them look like a mighty big hill for Gallik to crest, however. “An analysis of emails, photographs, court records and state time sheets obtained by the Tribune appear to dispute Gallik’s claim” of innocence, the paper said. Mary Baker, the program supervisor for the commissioner’s office, was blunt as she was quoted in the Tribune: “Dave Gallik has been committing ethics violations since he got here. He has been doing private-practice attorney work in the commissioner’s office since the day he walked in.” Those violations, according to the article, allegedly include “fudging time sheets and clocking state time he hasn’t actually worked,” which the staffers say is “stealing from the taxpayers.” When Gallik first came to the office, he told the staff that he wanted them to work “seamlessly” with his private law office staff. “We told him in no uncertain terms that he can’t do that,” an investigator for the commissioner’s office told Adams. “We drew the line prior to him coming here as to what he could and couldn’t do,” Baker added. “I said we were not going to be calling his staff and coordinating with them.”

Missoula Independent Page 10 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Gallik told the Tribune that Gov. Brian Schweitzer was fully aware that Gallik would be continuing his private law practice when Schweitzer appointed him Commissioner of Political Practices. “It was never a secret,” Gallik says in the article. Given the demands on the Commissioner of Political Practices and the potential for conflicts of interest or ethical violations, it’s a puzzle why

Gallik told the

Tribune that Gov. Brian Schweitzer was fully aware that Gallik would be continuing his private law practice when Schweitzer made him Commissioner of Political Practices.

Schweitzer would appoint someone to this full-time job (with full benefits and $57,689 a year in compensation) with the understanding that the appointee would also be running a private law practice at the same time. Perhaps Schweitzer or his staff could claim some misunderstanding at the time of the appointment, but even that feeble excuse seems to have been shot full of holes.

In August, according to the Tribune, two Political Practices staffers met with Vivian Hamill, Schweitzer’s chief of staff, to alert her that Gallik was charging the state for time he did not put in. According to their account, Gallik may have been doing half the time he claimed. Baker, who signed the office’s time sheets, said, “I was not at all comfortable putting my signature on that form when I knew that the hours he was reporting were not accurate.” After that meeting, Baker told the Tribune, her impression was that the governor’s office was not happy with the situation and told her it would be “nipped in the bud.” But that didn’t happen, and now Schweitzer says Gallik is simply “working two jobs.” “We wish the governor would have checked with us regarding what Dave Gallik has done,” the staffers wrote in response, according to the Tribune. “We apologize to the governor for having to give him the facts, but if he is naïve enough to believe [Gallik], and not check to see that what he is saying is true, then he will be embarrassed to find out Dave is taking credit for other people’s work.” The staffers contend that most of Gallik’s work for the office was actually either done by his predecessors or cut and pasted from staff work. “We wouldn’t give a damn about what he put down for hours if he was actually getting the job done,” one of the staffers told the Tribune, adding that Gallik has only issued one ruling on his own since he took the position. We’re in an election year, with most of Montana’s statewide offices up for grabs and a record number of candidates filing to fill them. It’ll be as busy as it can get for the Office of Political Practices. Given the distrust of politicians these days, Montanans need and deserve an unblemished Commissioner of Political Practices, not one under public scrutiny for alleged fraud and ethics violations. For the good of the state, Schweitzer should ask Gallik to step down until these allegations are fully investigated. Helena’s George Ochenski rattles the cage of the political establishment as a political analyst for the Independent. Contact Ochenski at opinion@missoulanews.com.

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A ski pass the hard way If you can just boot-pack, you’re golden by Nelson Harvey

With others to the left and right of me, we’re on the job, stamping our feet backward down an icy slope of manmade snow recently sprayed into the air by the Aspen Skiing Company. The slope drops off steeply for about 100 yards before ending in a brush-choked gully. I’m about to get to know that gully firsthand, because suddenly I’m falling feet first and then head first toward the brambles below. My hands and feet splay out like a skydiver’s as I dig them in for traction, but it does little good. I pick up speed and then crash in a swirl of ice crystals. Except for the bruises to come, I’m fine, so I let out a whoop to my comrades above. Then it’s back up the slope for more “boot-packing.” I’m actually paid to do this. Boot-packing is part of an avalanche-mitigation program that’s spearheaded by Colorado’s Aspen Highlands Ski Patrol. Since the year 2000, for about six weeks starting in midNovember, a ragtag band of ski bums, night workers, freelancers, ambiguously employed youngsters and any others who can’t—or won’t—buy a full-price ski pass have taken to the hills to boot-pack. They hike a ski mountain’s steepest slopes, where no machine can tread. The goal is for their boots to break up the layers of snow, thus preventing slabs from breaking loose and triggering an avalanche. Ropes and harnesses used on the steepest terrain make falls like mine, which occurred near the base on a typically harmless pitch, a rare event. Yet the words “falls or possible avalanche involvement” feature prominently in a waiver that all packers have to sign, along with this less-than-comforting reminder: “You are not covered by Workers’ Compensation.” For their trouble, however, boot-packers get money toward a ski pass, which this year couldn’t be had for less than a whopping $1,549. Fifteen eight-hour days earn a full pass, and the minimum of five days gets you a $500 credit. This translates to a wage

of $12.50 an hour, about the going rate for an Aspen restaurant hostess. I have never worked as a hostess, but boot-packing is the hardest physical job I have ever done. In a sense, it’s also the perfect job for a recession because it requires lots of people—around 150 signed up this year. Indeed, boot packing is one of those increas-

Ski bums, night workers, freelancers, ambiguously employed youngsters and any others who can’t— or won’t—buy a full-price ski pass have taken to the hills to boot-pack. ingly rare arenas in which humans outperform machines because there is simply no mechanical way to defuse avalanche potential in the kind of terrain where boot-packers work. But there’s more than economics involved; a ski patroller who oversees the program told me that boot-packing has gained popularity every year since its inception, regardless of the unemployment rate. That must be because it’s fun—in a punishing sort of way.

“I could buy a pass in 10 or 12 days working my regular job,” says Michael Gorman, a 26-year old native of nearby Carbondale, who works for an environmental group. “But I’d rather be up on the hill packing than at a desk.” Gorman likes the time alone with the mountain that packing affords, along with the exhaustion brought on by eight hours of slogging through snow. Perhaps most compelling are the characters you get to work with. The patrollers who lead are beastly high-elevation athletes; pain, for them, seems strongly tied to mental pleasure. Packers range from distractingly pretty young women to apparent Viking impersonators. Regardless of appearance, they come armed with stories that unspool themselves slowly over long hours on a mountain, talking about everything from acid trips in Crested Butte to river trips in Alaska. “I love meeting new people, getting to know everyone and the camaraderie,” says Julia Tallmadge, 27, of Carbondale, who met both her boyfriend and her roommate boot-packing last year. On one blustery morning, I rode the chairlift to work with a bearded, wildeyed friend who might be called the consummate packer, though later I heard stories that he’d completed most days on the job under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms. On his final day, he was spotted sporting a tutu and sipping a beer in celebration, but on this particular morning, as I hunched my shoulders against the bitter wind, he exclaimed, “This is gonna be a great day, man. I can feel it!” Funny, but it was. Nelson Harvey is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a freelance writer working too many jobs to list and lives in Carbondale, Colo.

Missoula Independent Page 11 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Times Run 1/20- 1/26

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If you grew up watching the television show “Grizzly Adams,” you know that grizzly bears are a friendly sort, the kind of creatures that you can take on long walks, that protect you from evil French trappers, that enjoy a bit of wrasslin’ out in the yard in front of the cabin. Of course, if you missed out on Adams’s and Ben’s adventures (don’t forget that ornery old mule Number 7), you may hold a different view of the friendliness of grizzlies. For example, the sight of large mounds of seed-flecked bear scat makes me nervous throughout hunting season, especially in the foggy early morning, particularly when walking a steep, ankle-warping hillside where I could be easily rode down by an angry 500-pound mama bear. No doubt my imagination works a little too hard at times, but I think it’s smart to recognize the grizzly as a superior creature in many ways. Whether you believe there are too many bears already out there in the

wild is moot. Any intelligent sportsman knows that the grizzlies’ presence is a good sign, demonstrating a balance in the ecosystem between predator and prey, telling us that there are still wild places a bit out of most people’s reach. This is where Vital Ground comes in. The Missoula based nonprofit seeks to connect the jigsaw of disconnected grizzly habitat before increasing development blots out these wild corridors for good. If participating in the acreby-acre recovery and acquisition of grizzly habitat interests you, join the Ten Spoon Vineyard and Winery at their Vital Ground benefit, where a portion of all sales will benefit the nonprofit. —Jason McMackin

FRIDAY JANUARY 20

MONDAY JANUARY 23

Give blood. That is all. American Red Cross. 2401 N. Reserve St. Ste. 6. 10-2 PM. To schedule an appointment, call 800-REDCROSS.

Need to brush up on that algebra or writing course before you pay a king’s ransom to get a D in Comp 101 at the university? Sign-up for the Lifelong Learning Center’s Adult Education Program, which hosts seven weeks of college prep assistance. 310 S. Curtis. Mon.-Thu., from 8–11:30 AM. Free. Call 549-8765.

Occupy Missoula is taking part in the national Occupy the Courts day. They ask that people looking to join them meet at Caras Park at 11:30 AM with signs, banners and noisemakers before marching to the Russell E. Smith Federal District Court, at 201 E. Broadway. Speakers include Councilwoman Cynthia Wolken, State Rep. Dick Barrett and Professor Paul Haber, as well as labor reps and small business owners. 11:45–1 PM. The YWCA’s Brown Bag Lunch Series presents Global Social Work: Women’s Empowerment in India with Katharina Werner, who recently spent time working with Chaitanya, a nonprofit women’s advocacy group in India. 1130 W. Broadway. 12-1 PM. Free. The Northern Rockies Rising Tide fights for the northern Rockies, including tackling the megaload issue and so much more. Jeannette Rankin Peace Center back room. 510 S. Higgins Ave. 7–8:30 PM.

SATURDAY JANUARY 21 If you have compulsive-eating problems, seek help and support with others during a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous, which meets this and every Sat. at 9 AM in Room 3 in the basement of First United Methodist Church, 300 E. Main St. Free. Visit oa.org. Help protect grizzly habitat and imbibe in a bit of local wine and tunes by the bluegrass outfit Black Mountain Boys during the Vital Ground nonprofit benefit night at the Ten Spoon Vineyard and Winery. 4175 Rattlesnake Dr. 5–9 PM.

Vital Ground nonprofit benefit night, on Sat., Jan. 21, from 5–9 PM, with music by Black Mountain Boys. 4175 Rattlesnake Dr. For more info., go to vitalground.org.

TUESDAY JANUARY 24 Knitting For Peace meets at Joseph’s Coat. All knitters of all skill levels are welcome. 115 S. 3rd St. W. 1-3 PM. For information call 543-3955. Get in shape, girl. Not with a ThighMaster, silly: Get your Financial Fitness on with Homeword before you buy that house and find yourself underwater. 127 N. Higgins Ave. 6–9 PM. $10. YWCA Missoula, 1130 W. Broadway, hosts YWCA Support Groups for women every Tue. from 6:30–8 PM. An American Indian-led talking circle is also available, along with age-appropriate children’s groups. Free. Call 543-6691.

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 25 Come on down to The Loft to meet and greet the new Pride Foundation Executive Director Kris Hermanns. The event is hosted by Mark Heyka, Ray Davis and Jim Royan, with apps by Catalyst Cafe. Free, but go ahead and donate to the scholarship fund. RSVP at caitlin@pridefoundation.org.

THURSDAY JANUARY 26 Get in shape, girl. Not with a ThighMaster, silly: Get your Financial Fitness on with Homeword before you buy that house and find yourself underwater. 127 N. Higgins Ave. 6–9 PM. $10.

AGENDA is dedicated to upcoming events embodying activism, outreach and public participation. Send your who/what/when/where and why to AGENDA, c/o the Independent, 317 S. Orange, Missoula, MT 59801. You can also e-mail entries to calendar@missoulanews.com or send a fax to (406) 543-4367. AGENDA’s deadline for editorial consideration is 10 days prior to the issue in which you’d like your information to be included. When possible, please include appropriate photos/artwork.

Missoula Independent Page 12 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Inside Letters Briefs Up Front Ochenski Range Agenda News Quirks

I N OTHER N EWS Curious but true news items from around the world

CURSES, FOILED AGAIN - Pedro Prieto and Yordan Llauger aroused suspicion when they tried to buy a Nissan Maxima in Austin, Texas, using 90 $100 gift cards. Police linked the pair to the theft of people’s credit-card data. (Austin’s KVUE-TV) Police accused Adam Hall, 34, of vandalizing his ex-girlfriend’s car in Bennington, Vt., by scratching “sult” (sic) on the hood. Suspecting Hall was trying to spell the word “slut,” they asked him to write the sentence “You are a slut.” Hall wrote, “You are a sult.” (ABC News) ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS - After an internal review of the metropolitan Washington, D.C., transit authority showed 645 items missing from one branch, investigators found 74 items in the home of a branch employee. “You would call it stealing, but I would say it was more like borrowing,” he said, explaining, for example, that he took a portable generator because his home lost power during Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and that he kept it in case he lost power again. After the search, word spread among the man’s co-workers, many of whom, the report stated, “began to bring into the office Metro-owned equipment that they had been keeping at home.” (The Washington Times) On trial for stealing county property in Morrow County, Ohio, former police officer Joseph Hughes denied knowing about the stolen items, including 12 air conditioners, authorities found in his basement. “It’s going to sound kind of ridiculous,” Hughes told the court, “but we believed that there was some kind of paranormal presence in the basement.” Despite his insistence that “there was evidence to support it,” Hughes was found guilty of 18 of the 20 charges. (Columbus’ WBNS-TV) LEST WE REMEMBER - Dec. 30, 2011, never happened in Samoa and Tokelau, as the Pacific island neighbors switched sides of the International Date Line. The change puts the islands’ workdays in sync with its Asian-Pacific neighbors, increasing trade possibilities, according to Tuila’epa Sailele Malielegaoi, Samoa’s prime minister. (Associated Press) SLIGHTEST PROVOCATIONS - An argument between a couple that ended with the boyfriend’s stabbing began, according to authorities in Martin County, Fla., “because they missed the ball drop for New Year’s.” The 26-year-old boyfriend told sheriff’s officials that at 12:05 a.m., the upset 46year-old girlfriend splashed his face with beer. When he retaliated, the woman went inside her Palm City home, and her son, Brandon Scarpati, 19, came out and confronted him. The two fought until Scarpati stabbed him in the hand. (West Palm Beach’s WPTV-TV) Authorities arrested Ricky L. Leer, 48, for decapitating Stephen C. Webber, 53, in Sarasota County, Fla., during a fight over spilled food. According to the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office, Webber, Leer and a third man were cooking at a homeless camp in the woods when Webber knocked over the grill. Leer then jumped Webber and used a machete to slice off his head. (Sarasota’s Herald-Tribune) ENTITLED TO SPECIAL PARKING - Americans lacking high school diplomas may qualify as disabled if employers deny them jobs on the basis of that shortcoming, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It stated in an “informal discussion letter” that an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening job applicants, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity” to avoid violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Employment-law professionals pointed out far-reaching implications of the EEOC’s advice, including, Philadelphia lawyer Mary Theresa Metzler said, “less incentive for the general public to obtain a high school diploma if many employers eliminate that requirement for job applicants.” (The Washington Times) BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO - A British court heard that when Marcin Kasprzak, 25, got “bored” with his partner, Michelina Lewandowska, 27, he changed his Facebook status to “single” and told Lewandowska she wasn’t as good-looking as the women he saw at the gym. Then he attacked her with a 300,000-volt Taser stun gun. After Kasprzak bound and gagged her, he and a friend put her in a computer box and taped it securely. Next, they “drove her to a wooded area where it was unlikely she would be found, and there dug a shallow grave and buried her alive,” prosecutor Jonathan Sharp told Leeds Crown Court. Despite having dirt piled around and on top of the box and an 88pound tree branch placed across the box to keep it shut, Lewandowska regained consciousness, fought her way out of the box and the dirt, and flagged down a passing car. (BBC News)

Griz Basketball This Week: Thursday, Jan. 19 @ 7 pm Montana v. Northern Colorado Halftime Performance by the UM Dance Team

DRINKING-CLASS HEROES - Voters in Medicine Lodge, Kan., approved Sunday liquor sales for the first time since Prohibition, which ended in 1933, even though Kansas still hasn’t ratified the constitutional amendment that repealed it. Medicine Lodge, population 2,000, was the home of Carry A. Nation, who famously crusaded against liquor by smashing up saloons with her hatchet. (Associated Press)

Staff Appreciation Night for UM faculty and employees

Police officers working a traffic checkpoint in Plaistow, N.H., suspected Barry Short, 22, might be driving while intoxicated when he drove by at a slow rate of speed in a vehicle that “was missing a rear tire and was riding on the rim,” Officer Michael Beauchesne said, adding that Short had no idea how long he had been riding on the rim and believed he was in a different town. His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. (Manchester’s WMUR-TV)

Saturday, Jan. 21 @ 7 pm

Chelsea Hess, 22, who rolled her car while driving drunk, filed suit against a bar in Bluffton, S.C., because the bartender failed to check her age or whether she was already drunk before serving her. She was only 20 at the time of the accident, which left her a paraplegic. Hess, who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when she was thrown from the vehicle, is also suing the state Department of Transportation, claiming the agency failed to properly maintain the shoulder of the road where the wreck occurred. (The Beaufort Gazette)

Montana v. Sacramento State Halftime Performance by Lil Griz Dance Youth Group Night - Youth Groups get in free! To register, call 243-2696 Please bring a food donation to any Grizzly Athletics event to help support the Student Athletic Advisory Committee’s food drive!

SCRAP HEAP OF THE RICH - Japanese police reported that 11 luxury sports cars driving to Hiroshima crashed in Yamaguchi prefecture when the driver of one tried to change lanes and hit the median barrier. His Ferrari spun across the highway, and other cars collided while trying to avoid it. In all, eight Ferraris, a Lamborghini and two Mercedes—worth more than $1 million collectively—were involved in the pileup, as well as three other vehicles. Police said 10 people were treated for bruises and cuts, and some of the vehicles were beyond repair. (Associated Press)

Missoula Independent Page 13 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Photo by Joe Riis

Antelope odyssey The remarkable journey of migrating pronghorn by Emilene Ostlind

O

n a blustery spring day, I crouched behind sagebrush at the edge of the Green River in western Wyoming, waiting for pronghorn to pass by on their northern migration. Occasional snowflakes fluttered into the steel-colored water. I pulled my arms inside my down jacket, zipped to the chin. Hours went by. Then, across the river, I glimpsed tawny shapes: a dozen pronghorn bunched up on the riverbank, pacing and looking at the current. A doe led the others into the water. At its deepest point, the river carried the swimming pronghorn downstream. The doe scrambled for footing and picked her way through jumbled driftwood at the river’s edge. She leaped up the bank, water streaming from her round belly and thin-boned legs. Once clear of the river, she shook a spray of water from her coat. Then she continued north at a run, the rest of the group trailing after her. As part of her 120-mile-long migration, this doe had already navigated parts of the Pinedale Anticline gas patch—an intensively drilled piece of public land in western Wyoming—a tricky highway crossing and

a couple of subdivisions. Here, along the Green River, she was still 60 miles, a 9,100-foot mountain pass and as much as a month away from her destination, the benchlands along the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. It’s a challenging journey, and not all of the 300 to 400 pronghorn that attempt it survive. This pronghorn migration is one of the longest and most dramatic land-animal movements in the United States. That it still happens is remarkable. Around the world, long-distance animal migrations are disappearing as human development blocks and fragments the migration corridors. In the Yellowstone ecosystem of northwest Wyoming and parts of Idaho and Montana, residential and other development has stopped pronghorn from migrating through six of eight historic corridors. Of the two remaining, this route, dubbed the “Path of the Pronghorn” by the biologists who identified it, is the most vulnerable. If it gets cut off, pronghorn will be extirpated in Grand Teton National Park, where snow piles up too deeply for them to survive the

Missoula Independent Page 14 January 19 – January 26, 2012

winter. In 2008, the U.S. Forest Service granted official protection to the northernmost 45 miles of the corridor, where it crosses the Bridger-Teton National Forest, making it the first federally recognized national migration corridor. But the Green River crossing lies outside that protected stretch. As it becomes clearer that protecting migration is crucial to maintaining robust wildlife populations, researchers are trying to understand where, how and why wild animals migrate. Advances in tracking technology are providing some answers, but in many ways migration remains a mystery. I thought I might gain some insight if I tried to watch this migration in action—especially in the remote northern part of the corridor, an area only accessible by foot.

Fleet survivors Satellite-collar studies have given us a 30,000foot-high view of the western Wyoming pronghorn migration, and hunters, cowhands and biologists have long wandered stretches of the corridor. But to my knowledge, no one had followed the entire

route on the ground. And so, over the course of four seasons, I walked the Path of the Pronghorn. The first autumn, I missed a key drainage and followed the wrong creek to the wrong pass, fighting my way through thick brush and forests without finding so much as a hoofprint. The next spring, I found the right course, but I was a week too late. The third time, the geography made more sense to me. I remembered how a certain V-shaped valley led to a small notch in a patch of trees at the divide. I could imagine how a fawn that followed its mother along the route a couple of times might memorize the best spots to ford the rivers and scoot through strips of forest, later teaching the course to its own offspring. The animals, however, are elusive, and they travel much faster than a person on foot, especially in the fall. I relied on hoofprints dried into muddy trails, tufts of hair snagged on branches and the occasional distant glimpse of a pronghorn disappearing over a hill. This helped me understand the journey, but I still yearned to see actual animals face their challenges.

The following spring, I drove about 15 miles north of the Green River crossing and parked just inside the forest boundary. The snow was still too deep for ATVs or pickups, and too melted for snowmobilers. The only way in was on foot. This time, however, like the pronghorn, I’d have company. My younger brother, Jake, would join me for a couple of days. “Check that out,” he said, squatting to lay his palm in the mud next to a huge dog-like track at the edge of the road. In this wild country famous for grizzlies and wolves, I was grateful for a companion, especially one who packs a gun and is comfortable in the backcountry. We walked for several miles up a gravel road along the west side of the Green River. Across the valley floor, scattered groups of 15 or 20 pronghorn worked their way north, the same way we were traveling, occasionally pausing to graze. In the afternoon, we climbed northwest, away from the river. The higher we got, the more snow we encountered—drifts that got deeper and deeper, until we were wading through thigh-high snow softened to slush by the afternoon sun. Finally, we found a patch of dry ground under ponderosa pines, where we stopped to dry our shoes and set up camp. A few pronghorn probed the edge of the snowfields across the drainage from us. We’d already seen more pronghorn in one day than I had in all my other trips along the corridor. In this wintry mountain landscape, pronghorn seem alien, but the taxonomic family from which they evolved has existed in North America for over 18 million years. Over the eons, the family Antilocapridae included more than 20 different species of antelope-like creatures, ranging in size from less than two feet tall at the shoulder up to the size of modern pronghorn, about four feet high at the shoulder. Some had spiraling, branching or even palmated horns, like little moose antlers. Paleontologists have categorized them into more than a dozen genera, giving them dinosaur-ish names like Texoceros, Ottoceros and Tetrameryx. Today, Antilocapra americana is the sole surviving representative of these sheath-horned, fourstomached, even-toed ungulates, which are more closely related to giraffes than to any other modern species. A pronghorn has a heart twice the size of the heart of a similarly sized goat, with one and a half times as much blood. Its windpipe—as big as a vacuum-cleaner hose—has half the air resistance. After spending much of its evolutionary history pursued by swift-moving, now-extinct prehistoric predators like American cheetahs and long-legged bears, the pronghorn can outrun any other land animal on the continent by a good 15 miles per hour. How do the animals do it? Seeking to solve the riddle of pronghorn speed, biologist Stan Lindstedt bottle-raised pronghorn fawns and taught them to run on a treadmill. He put masks on the fawns as they ran to measure their rate of oxygen consumption and found it much higher than expected for their body size. The only vertebrates whose peak oxygen uptake surpasses pronghorn are hummingbirds and bats. Pronghorn have a nearly 360-degree range of vision, and their eyes are as powerful as binoculars. They are surprisingly strong swimmers, buoyed by

hollow hairs in their coats. When the does make their springtime journey, they are pregnant to bursting with twin fawns that make up 15 percent of their body weight—the equivalent of a 130-pound woman carrying two 10-pound babies. Within a few days of birth, the fawns can outrun the coyotes that hunt them. Pronghorn are survivors, and as long as they can move from place to place, they aren’t endangered. In fact, they are one of the more resilient species on the Western landscape, where they’ve survived lengthy ice ages and droughts. They had a close call with extinction at the turn of the last century, when hunting reduced their herds from millions to fewer than 20,000. But sportsmen’s groups advocated for hunting regulations, and the population has recovered to about a million today. My brother and I watched the pronghorn across the valley until it was too dark to see them. For now, the population is doing well, but their long-distance migration along this corridor is in serious danger.

The mystery of migration There was an overnight freeze in the Gros Ventre Mountains, and the following day Jake and I traveled easily on the hardened snow. We hiked across treeless rumples of land between small lakes and drainages, ascending a wide, slanted park toward the hydrographic divide that separates the watershed of the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado, from the Gros Ventre, a tributary of the Snake and eventually the Columbia. As I’d learned in my earlier expeditions, this is the only way the pronghorn can reach their summer range in Teton Park. By mid-morning, the snow was so soft that we plunged through it up to our thighs. Clambering out of the holes we made was slow and exhausting work. Then, in a swale, we broke through the snow into knee-deep ice water. Gaiters were useless; the water filled our boots. We retreated to a small patch of open sagebrush to dry out. If we couldn’t make any progress under these conditions, we didn’t expect

Map by Jonathan Marquis

the pronghorn to do much better. We decided to make some coffee, enjoy the morning and wait for them to catch up. The mystery of migration has enticed researchers and conservationists for decades. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, entomologists scoured the southern U.S. in search of the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly, eventually finding them in

They were heading to the safety of the valley floor for the night. Like road crews clearing a highway, the pronghorn punched trails through snowdrifts all day and then returned at sundown to the lower elevations.

the pine forests of Michoacán, Mexico. When whooping cranes were nearly wiped out and just a few captive breeding pairs survived, pilots used ultralight aircraft to guide the fledglings along their migration route from Wisconsin to Florida. In the late 1980s, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department used colored neckbands to mark over 800 pronghorn in winter range near Rock Springs. When four of them showed up the following spring more than 150 miles away in Teton Park, biologists were amazed. The pronghorn migration was longer than anyone had imagined. Recent advances in tracking technology reveal where animals migrate, if not how or why. Minuscule radio transmitters super-glued to the bellies of dragonflies show that the insects can travel as far as 85 miles in one day. Satellite transmitters mapped the impressive 7,250-mile non-stop flight of the bar-tailed godwit from the Arctic coast of Alaska across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. In December of 2003, biologists put radio collars on pronghorn in southern Alberta. The following spring, the study animals had vanished. Eventually, a farmer called to report pronghorn wearing collars 300 miles away, in Saskatchewan. Other pronghorn collared on the Great Plains traveled 500 miles through the course of a year. In 2007, an especially energetic and ferocious wolverine known as M3 was fitted with a GPS collar in Glacier National Park in Montana. Data from it showed the animal climbing a rocky cirque to summit 10,466-foot Mount Cleveland and rambling through a 700-square-mile home range. Another wolverine col-

Missoula Independent Page 15 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Photo by Joe Riis

lared in Grand Teton National Park in 2009 traveled more than 500 miles to central Colorado over a couple of months, crossing the significant barriers of Interstates 80 and 70 along its way to Leadville. It was the first wolverine known to visit Colorado in 90 years. These aren’t typical seasonal migrations, but they demonstrate an important point: wild animals need room to roam between national forests, parks and other protected areas. Pronghorn migrate for ecological reasons, seeking to avoid deep snow, find nutritious forage or return to places where they have already successfully given birth. But mysteries remain. Why does one pronghorn migrate a long distance while another makes a short journey or lingers year-round near its winter range? Why, in some populations, do more females than males migrate? And why would a pronghorn migrate one year and not the next? Andrew Jakes, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Calgary who is studying the animals, says, “Migration is a complex behavior. We have the ability as scientists to tease apart that complexity.” Many of the mechanisms remain unknown, but one thing is clear, he says: “Migration is an adaptation. It’s an important strategy to survive and reproduce, and it needs to be maintained.” Orange dots on a poster of mapped waypoints tell the story of one doe collared in Teton Park in

October 2003. She migrated south to the Green River Basin with the rest of the herd for the winter. The following spring, rather than just following the corridor back to the summer range, she took off into the Gros Ventre high country, testing drainage after drainage. “From an anthropomorphic impression, it looked like she was trying to find a different route,” says Steve Cain, lead biologist at Grand Teton National Park. When the alpine peaks at the top of the range stopped her, she quit exploring, returned to the regular migration corridor and made her way up to the park for the rest of the summer. Studies of the Teton population show “how tremendously fragile the corridor is,” says Cain. “It’s clear the existence of the population in Jackson Hole is completely dependent on maintenance of the corridor.” Today’s research is painting a picture of a vibrant landscape, where wildlife flows like water across the boundaries between private and public, protected and working, Canadian and American landscapes. As one researcher puts it, “Us humans do not have a grasp on it yet.”

Missoula Independent Page 16 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Like road crews clearing a highway As Jake and I drank our coffee, sandhill cranes hollered back and forth across snowmelt ponds. They strutted across the snow and grass searching for insects and then raised their long beaks to cry out, heads bobbing. The cranes seemed out of place here, like ballerinas on a mountaineering expedition. A yellowish coyote trotted into view, its pointy nose lowered, bushy tail swept behind. Every few steps, its paws broke through the snow, and it sank to its belly. After the coffee and a short, sun-warmed nap, we left our packs and wandered along a /’dry ridge. On a small pond, two trumpeter swans glided away from us, climbing out of the water with their huge black feet splayed on the snow. Noisy ground squirrels scrambled to the tops of sagebrush to flick their tails and chatter their warnings. The clear zippering songs of sparrows rose from the sagebrush. Because pronghorn are one of the bigger “sagebrush obligates”—species adapted to thrive in a sagebrush ecosystem—protecting their habitat benefits a lot of other animals, including some of the species Jake and I encountered that day in the mountains.

One pronghorn wearing a satellite collar wandered across parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana during a single fall hunting season. The map that it generated helped launch an international agreement called the Northern Sagebrush Steppe Initiative, which coordinates conservation of sage grouse, mule deer and pronghorn. In western Wyoming, private-land conservation easements targeting pronghorn corridors also protect habitat for other native species, including sage grouse and mule deer. When wildlife photographer Joe Riis set remote cameras along the Path of the Pronghorn, he captured images of not just pronghorn, but also deer, elk, wolves, mountain lions and bears all using the same trails. In late afternoon, Jake spotted a group of nearly 60 pronghorn carving a path through the snow up the valley toward us, making their way in single file. Whenever the leader—usually a doe—got tired of breaking trail, another would pass her and take the front of the line. In one place, they followed the track we had left through a pocket of snow. Out of the way of the slow-moving pronghorn, we made camp at the edge of a small hill and sat on our sleeping pads to watch them. When dusk fell, much to our surprise, they retreated back down the trails they had made, splashing through Wagon Creek and cantering along the bare sage slopes

below. They were returning to the safety of the valley floor for the night. Like road crews clearing a highway, the pronghorn punched trails through snowdrifts all day and then returned at sundown to the lower elevations. Hall Sawyer, a biologist for the consulting group Western Ecosystems Technology Inc., has been following the Teton pronghorn and the mule deer that share their winter range for over a decade. He’s made a startling discovery. “In the last few years, we’re recognizing the internal anatomy of migration routes,” he says. Migration corridors are less like a conveyor belt where animals get on at one end and off at the other than they are like a chain of hotels linked by strips of highway. The migrating mule deer that Sawyer studied spent 95 percent of their time at the “stopover points” (the hotels) where they rested and foraged, and just 5 percent of it zipping through the “movement corridors” (the highways). The maps he’s generated resemble a rosary: strings of beads with spaces in between, the bulbous stopover locations linked by narrow movement corridors. They offer conservationists a new lens for looking at ungulate migration, which is important for figuring out how to protect it. Sawyer says conservationists could work on protecting ungulate stopovers the way they’ve protected refuges for migrating waterfowl through the Midwest. “The best-case scenario would be no development in migration corridors,” Sawyer says. Today, however, no migration corridor in the U.S. is protected from end to end, and development is already slated for some lands where ungulates migrate. Distinguishing stopover points from movement corridors could help managers minimize migration hindrances when they decide where to locate pipelines or wind turbines. “There will be some development. Given that choice, it’s better to put it in the movement corridors than the stopover points with the qualifica-

tion that it doesn’t impede migration,” Sawyer says. “We need to maintain connectivity.” His finding matched what Jake and I were seeing: The pronghorn spent only a little time navigating the trickiest parts of the corridor, such as these snow-

snow to the pass. We settled down on a dry patch of sagebrush to wait for the pronghorn. Jake napped, but I buzzed with excitement. For the first time during my four seasons following the migration, I was ahead of the animals as they neared the highest

One doe migrated south to the Green River Basin with the rest of the herd for the winter. The following spring, rather than just following the corridor back to the summer range, she took off into the Gros Ventre high country, testing drainage after drainage.

choked slopes. Whenever possible, they camped out in the drier lowlands along the Green River.

The antelope express The following afternoon, Jake and I worked our way another couple of miles north through deep

point in the corridor, the gateway to the summer range on the far side. A mile to the south of our sunny resting place, 80 pronghorn dozed on a rise. I watched them through binoculars, wondering whether they would try to push higher this afternoon or retreat to the Green River, just as they’d done each of the past several nights.

Finally, around 4 p.m., as if a drill sergeant had shouted a command, the pronghorn jumped to their feet and began testing the snow at the edge of the sagebrush. There is nothing casual about migration. The animals were organized, methodical and efficient. They moved in silence, but with perfect coordination. A doe kicked a trail across a drift to reach a long strip of dry land that paralleled the edge of the forest, leading toward us. The rest of the herd lined up to follow her. Within moments, the first pronghorn were hurrying by just 30 yards from where we crouched in the shadow of a ponderosa. The mass of tan-andwhite bodies whispered between the tree trunks. Their hooves crunched through the snow, and they panted open-mouthed. The leaders broke trail up a drift through an open gate and into the beetlekilled pines at the crest of the divide. The rest of the herd—more than 80 antelope, perhaps as many as 150, half of the Teton population—streamed behind them. For half an hour, we sat frozen in place, watching the quiet flow of animals as they scurried along the edge of the forest. After the last white butt disappeared into the trees, Jake and I looked at each other in amazement. “I can’t believe we just saw that,” I whispered. “It’s like the Serengeti, seeing so many animals move past at once,” Jake replied. Nothing remained of that surge of life except for the narrow paths where pronghorn hooves had punctured the snow, like rows of stitches linking the desert in the south to the summer range in Teton Park. This story originally appeared in High Country News (hcn.org ).

Missoula Independent Page 17 January 19 – January 26, 2012

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Welcome Back UM Students! www.thinkfft.com 540 Daly Ave • 721-6033 Delivery Hours: M-F • 11-2 Missoula’s Original Coffeehouse/Cafe. Across from the U of M campus.

In defense of the Brussels sprout FLASHINTHEPAN Brussels sprouts with bacon is hardly a new idea, but the combination has taken off lately. The pair has become a menu meme and a darling of online recipe searches and food TV. Given the recent spike in all things bacon, I suppose this was inevitable. But the pairing has gotten popular enough to necessitate a reminder that it’s possible to eat Brussels sprouts without bacon as well. Those green brassica balls go effortlessly and deliciously, for example, in that most vegetarian of dishes: the leafy salad. Of course, one need not choose between pork belly and raw greens. The two have shared many a plate, and it probably won’t be long until bacon grease vinaigrette becomes the next “it” salad dressing. However you like to prepare your sprouts, the fundamentals are the same. And the foundation of most successful Brussels sprout dishes is that the sprouts are cut in half. Cutting Brussels sprouts in half multiplies the ratio of surface area to volume, which is key when it comes to holding sauce. The many layers of tightly wrapped leaves exposed by a halved Brussels sprout can hold a surprising amount of flavoring. This is crucial, because Brussels sprouts have a strong flavor of their own, and the more sauce you can balance against it the better. You can cut beyond half if you wish, but it isn’t necessary. If you’re going to chop them finely, you might as well use cabbage. If the sprout is not sliced at least once, the ratio of surface area to volume is not at all conducive to holding sauce. Additionally, the tightly wrapped leaves form an almost impermeable barrier that repels sauce or dressing like water off a freshly waxed car. The sauce has no access to the sphere’s inner folds, and can only wait helplessly on the sidelines while a flavor foul is committed in your mouth. Unless, of course, you like the flavor of full-on, unadulterated Brussels sprouts. Raw Brussels sprouts are too strong for most palates, so they generally need to be cooked before you toss them in a greasy pan or a salad bowl. My two favorite ways of cooking Brussels sprouts are roasting and steaming. Roasting gives them a weathered taste and feel. The dry heat cultivates extra flavor as the outer leaves develop a brown crisp.

Steaming sprouts preserves a certain clean, bright innocence in them, the better to deflower with bacon grease, ranch dressing or a light mix of olive oil, salt and vinegar. Growing Brussels sprouts is a grind. They take a long time to mature and don’t produce much poundage per plant. That’s why they’re expensive, and why each sprout should be groomed like the treasure it is. Trim the cut end at the bottom of each sprout to create a new, non-browned end, and pull off the outer leaf or two if they’re brown, yellow, dirty, shriveled or otherwise tainted. What

remains are densely packed layers of green and pre-green yellow. In the oven, I roast my cut sprouts at 350, sprinkled with olive oil and tossed with carrot coins or slices of winter squash. Stir often and cook for about half an hour, or until the first signs of browning. Steamed, they only need 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the sprouts’ thickness, until they soften all the way through but retain the rich green glow of spring grass. Whether you steam or roast is entirely dependent on the final dish you have in mind. If you plan to fry Brussels sprouts in bacon grease, a quick steaming is way less trouble. For salad, the rough, rich flavors of roasted Brussels sprouts add bold contrast to the leafy greens. If cooking Brussels sprouts with other vegetables, just make sure everything is cut to a size that allows it to cook at the same rate as the Brussels sprouts. Both carrots and squash cut to Brussels sprout size will take about the same time or a few minutes longer.

by ARI LeVAUX

To accompany Brussels sprouts in a salad, I go for sturdy greens like romaine lettuce or endive, and a dressing of equal parts olive oil, cider vinegar and soy sauce. Some or all of the cider vinegar can be replaced by balsamic, if you prefer. Just remember, we don’t have to put balsamic on everything like it’s the new bacon. One snazzy way to liven up a winter salad is with seasonal fruit. Even if you don’t live anywhere near the citrus orchards of Florida, Arizona or California, you can eat seasonally, if not locally, in winter. Chunks of orange or grapefruit add nice acidic sweetness to a Brussels sprouts salad, as do pomegranate seeds. And about that bacon vinaigrette. Any salad can be made omnivore-friendly by preparing the Brussels sprouts with bacon prior to adding them to the salad. Start by chopping the bacon and putting it in a pan, perhaps with a little olive oil, if the bacon isn’t super-fatty. While it’s cooking, you can also add other red meats like beef or venison and let it all brown together. When the bacon and meat are crispy to your liking, add the pre-cooked sprouts, along with any other veggies you may have cooked them with. Some people like their sprouts lightly cooked, others like them “cooked senseless,” as advice columnist Amy Alkon advised me to do. When the sprouts are done, add some minced garlic. Stir-fry for a minute, deglaze with a shot of bourbon if you have it and turn off the heat. (That bourbon shot is a secret trick, by the way. From hunting camp. Share it wisely.) Season with black pepper and hot sauce, and add the above dressing of vinegar, soy sauce and olive oil. Toss the sprouts to maximize their uptake of dressing. Add the meaty, greasy sprouts to your salad, or pop them straight in your mouth. After hanging on their stalks like bare knuckles in farm fields through late autumn, Brussels sprouts can be stored all through the winter under proper conditions, waiting to offer a refreshing bolt of green when you need it most. If more people knew how to cook these tight wads of bitter leaves, maybe Brussels sprouts wouldn’t be such a symbol of vegetable-hating. And remember, with Brussels sprouts, good cooking starts with slicing and sauce.

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Bagels On Broadway 223 West Broadway (across from courthouse) 728-8900 Featuring over 25 sandwich selections, 20 bagel varieties, & 20 cream cheese spreads. Also a wide selection of homemade soups, salads and desserts. Gourmet coffee and espresso drinks, fruit smoothies, and frappes. Ample seating; free wi-fi. Free downtown delivery (weekdays) with $10.00 min. order. Call ahead to have your order ready for you! Open 7 days a week. Voted one of top 20 bagel shops in country by internet survey. $-$$

Biga Pizza 241 W. Main Street • 728-2579 Biga Pizza offers a modern, downtown dining environment combined with traditional brick oven pizza, calzones, salads, sandwiches, specials and desserts. All dough is made using a “biga” (pronounced beega) which is a time-honored Italian method of bread making. Biga Pizza uses local products, the freshest produce as well as artisan meats and cheeses. Featuring seasonal menus. Lunch and dinner, Mon-Sat. Beer & Wine available. $-$$

Bernice’s Bakery 190 South 3rd West 728-1358 As January darkens Missoula with our traditional grey sky…..think Bernice’s. New wood floors, brick walls, and huge windows beckon those who need to

Missoula Independent Page 18 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Big Sky Drive In 1016 W. Broadway 549-5431 Big Sky Drive In opened June 2nd 1962. We feature soft serve ice cream, shakes, malts, spins, burger, hot dogs, pork chop sandwiches and breaded mushrooms all made to order. Enjoy our 23 shake and malt flavors or the orange twist

ice cream. Drive thru or stay and enjoy your food in our outdoor seating area. Lunch and dinner, seven days a week. $-$$ Black Coffee Roasting Co. 1515 Wyoming St., Suite 200 541-3700 Black Coffee Roasting Company is located in the heart of Missoula. Our roastery is open Monday – Friday, 7:30 – 2. In addition to fresh roasted coffee beans we offer a full service espresso bar, drip coffee, pour-overs and more. The suspension of coffee beans in water is our specialty. Blue Canyon Kitchen 3720 N. Reserve 541-BLUE (adjacent to the Hilton Garden Inn) www.bluecanyonrestaurant.com We offer creatively-prepared American cooking served in the comfortable elegance of their lodge restaurant featuring unique dining rooms. Kick back in the Tavern; relish the cowboy chic and culinary creations in the great room; visit with the chefs and dine in the kitchen or enjoy the fresh air on the Outdoor Patio. Parties and special events can be enjoyed in the Bison Room. Winter Hours: 4pm - 9 pm Seven Days a Week. $$-$$$

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the The Bridge Pizza Corner of S. 4th & S. Higgins • 542-0002 A popular local eatery on Missoula’s Hip Strip. Featuring handcrafted artisan brick oven pizza, pasta, sandwiches, soups, & salads made with fresh, seasonal ingredients. Missoula’s place for pizza by the slice. A unique selection of regional microbrews and gourmet sodas. Dine-in, drive-thru, & delivery. Open everyday 11 to late. $-$$ Butterfly Herbs 232 N. Higgins • 728-8780 Celebrating 39 years of great coffees and teas. Truly the “essence of Missoula.” Offering fresh coffees, teas (Evening in Missoula), bulk spices and botanicals, fine toiletries & gifts. Our cafe features homemade soups, fresh salads, and coffee ice cream specialties. In the heart of historic downtown, we are Missoula’s first and favorite Espresso Bar. Open 7 Days. $ Claim Jumper 3021 Brooks • 728-0074 Serving Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner 7 days a week. Come in between 7-8 am for our Early Bird Breakfast Special: Get 50% off any breakfast menu item! Or Join us for Lunch and Dinner. We feature CJ’s Famous Fried Chicken, Delicious Steaks, and your Favorite Pub Classics. Breakfast from 7am-11am on Weekdays and 7am-2pm on Weekends. Lunch and Dinner 11am-9pm SunWed and 11am-10pm Thurs-Sat. Ask your Server about our Players Club! Happy Hour in our lounge M-F 4-6 PM. $-$$$ Cold Stone Creamery Across from Costco on Reserve by TJ Maxx & Ross • 549-5595 Cold Stone Creamery offers the Ultimate Ice Cream Experience. Ice Cream, Ice Cream Cakes, Shakes, and Smoothies the Way You Want It. Come in for our weekday specials. Get Gift Cards any time. Remember, it's a great day for ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. $-$$ Doc’s Gourmet Sandwiches 214 N. Higgins Ave. • 542-7414 Doc’s is an extremely popular gathering spot for diners who appreciate the great ambiance, personal service and generous sandwiches made with the freshest ingredients. Whether you’re heading out for a power lunch, meeting friends or family or just grabbing a quick takeout, Doc’s is always an excellent choice. Delivery service within a 3 mile radius. Double Front Chicken 122 W. Alder • 543-6264 Number of years ago Double Front was built, 101. Number of years it’s been cooking chicken, 75. Number if years in the Herndon fami-

ly, 49. Always getting that perfect chicken dinner, timeless. Come find out why we are rule of the roost. Always the best, Double Front Chicken. $-$$ Flathead Lake Brewing Company of Missoula 424 N. Higgins • 542-3847 www.flbcofmissoula.com Known for their “Bar Burgers” a masterpiece of deliciousness; Flathead Lake Brewing Co. of Missoula is unfiltered sophistication atop the skyline of Missoula Montana. Downtown or Uptown, any way you look at it, Flathead Lake Brewing Co. of Missoula is your best destination for great food, wine and spirits. Come on in and join us. We can't wait to see you. Cheers!!! $-$$ Food For Thought 540 Daly Ave. • 721-6033 Missoula's Original Coffehouse/Café located across from the U of M campus. Serving breakfast and lunch 7 days a week+dinner 5 nights a week. Also serving cold sandwiches, soups, salads, with baked goods and espresso bar. HUGE Portions and the Best BREAKFAST in town. M-TH 7am-8pm, Fri 7am-4pm, Sat 8am4pm, Sun 8am-8pm. $-$$ Good Food Store 1600 S. 3rd West • 541-FOOD Our Deli features all natural made-to-order sandwiches, soup & salad bar, olive & antipasto bar, fresh deli salads, hot entrees, rotisserie-roasted cage free chickens, fresh juice, smoothies, organic espresso and dessert. Enjoy your meal in our spacious seating area or at an outdoor table. Open every day 7am - 10pm $-$$ Hob Nob on Higgins 531 S. Higgins • 541-4622 Come visit our friendly staff & experience Missoula's best little breakfast & lunch spot. All our food is made from scratch, we feature homemade corn beef hash, sourdough pancakes, sandwiches, salads, espresso & desserts. MC/V $-$$ Holiday Inn Downtown 200 S. Pattee St. • 532-2056 Brooks and Browns Trivia Night is back. $7 Bayern Pitchers plus appetizer specials. Every Thursday from 7-10pm. $50 Bar Tab to winning team. Warm up your chilly nights with our Hot Jalapeno Artichoke Dip. We have Classic French Onion Soup and hearty Bison chili made in house daily. Fall in love with our Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloafstuffed with crispy Daily’s bacon and cheddar cheese, served with cheddar mashed potatoes and corn. And finish the best meal in

HAPPIESTHOUR Occupy Pale Ale, Tamarack What’s the story?: A few months back, as the Occupy movement began to sweep the nation and the globe, Tamarack Brewing released a refreshing late-fall pale ale dubbed Occupy. Why? According to manager Lacy Lopez, the name was partly derived from the fact that “it’s brewed with all-American hops,” putting it in the spirit of the sentiments brewing on Wall Street. Occupy Pale Ale has generated some laughs, but not all have taken so kindly to the recognition the brewery gave the movement. “A lot of people have actually been offended by the name,” Lopez says. Why you’re drinking it: Whether or not you agree with the Occupy movement, Tamarack’s tip of the hat is a damn tasty brew. Sampled alongside the staple Lakeside Pale Ale ESP, it offers a sharper, fuller experience. It’s a wetter pale, with a sweeter citrus tone than the more traditional, English-style Lakeside. And at 5.5 percent—compared to Lakeside’s 4.5—it’s a stronger pint than you’d expect. As one bartender says, “It’s a great conversational beer. And great drinkability.” Oh, yeah. We’d definitely have to agree. Why it’s more than just beer: Earlier this month, the Missoula County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution—effective immediately—banning non-permitted camping on county property. The county recently denied

Occupy Missoula’s request for another camping permit, making the protesters’ presence on the courthouse lawn a violation of county policy. In a move more related to questionable structural integrity than camping violation, Occupy Missoula agreed to take down its token big green tent sometime around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Sheriff’s deputies removed the rest of the camp early Tuesday morning, Jan. 17, and arrested one protester. Where to find it: For the next few weeks at least—until the keg runs dry—Occupy Pale Ale will be available at Tamarack Brewing at 231 West Front St. in Missoula. —Alex Sakariassen Happiest Hour celebrates western Montana watering holes. To recommend a bar, bartender or beverage for Happiest Hour, e-mail editor@missoulanews.com.

SATURDAYS $1 SUSHI 4pm-9pm Mondays & Thursdays - $1 SUSHI

(all day)

Tuesdays - LADIES' NIGHT 4pm-9pm Not available for To-Go orders

Missoula Independent Page 19 January 19 – January 26, 2012

town with our New Orleans style Bread Pudding with warm caramel sauce and Big Dipper vanilla bean Ice cream. We still have Happy Hour from 4-7 every day and on game days we offer wings specials and all your favorite local micro-brews. Everyone loves our SUNDAY BINGO NIGHT! Sundays 6-9 pm at Brooks and Browns. Same happy Hour specials ($5 pulled pork sliders, ? order wings, ? nachos; $6 Bud Lite pitchers) Have you discovered Brooks and Browns? Inside the Holiday Inn, Downtown Missoula.

Great Food. No Attitude.

Hunter Bay Coffee and Sandwich Bar First Interstate Center 101 East Front St hunterbay.com • 800.805.2263 Missoula’s local roaster since 1991 - now open downtown in the First Interstate Center! Stop by for hand-crafted gourmet coffees and espressos plus made-from-scratch, healthy sandwiches and soups. Enjoy the sunshine from our patio! Free Wi-Fi and Free Parking in the upper deck lot. Open Monday through Saturday. O n H iggin s

Iron Horse Brew Pub 501 N. Higgins • 728-8866 www.ironhorsebrewpub.com We're the perfect place for lunch, appetizers, or dinner. Enjoy nightly specials, our fantastic beverage selection and friendly, attentive service. Stop by & stay awhile! No matter what you are looking for, we'll give you something to smile about. $$-$$$

Mon-Fri 7am - 4pm (Breakfast ‘til Noon)

Sat & Sun 8am - 4pm (Breakfast all day) 531 S. Higgins ¥ 541-4622

Iza Asian Restaurant 529 S. Higgins • 830-3237 www.izarestaurant.com All our menu items are made from scratch, featuring dishes from Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Nepal, and Malaysia. Extensive tea menu. Missoula's Original Bubble Teas. Beer, Wine and Sake available. Join us in our Asian themed dining room for a wonderful IZA experience. Rotating music and DJs. Lunch 11:30-3:00, Happy Hour 3-6, Dinner 5-10. $-$$

You want a great

newspaper. . . and you want it

Jakers 3515 Brooks St. 721-1312• www.jakers.com Every occasion is a celebration at Jakers. Enjoy our two for one Happy Hour throughout the week in a fun, casual atmosphere. Hungry? Try our hand cut steaks, small plate menu and our vegetarian & gluten free entrees. For reservations or take out call 721-1312. $$-$$$

for FREE!

Korean Bar-B-Que & Sushi 3075 N. Reserve • 327-0731 We invite you to visit our contemporary Korean-Japanese restaurant and enjoy it’s warm atmosphere. Full Sushi Bar. Korean bar-b-que at your table. Beer and Wine. $$-$$$

Januar y

COFFEE SPECIAL

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COFFEE

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232 N. HIGGINS AVE • DOWNTOWN

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Coffees, Teas & the Unusual

Le Petit Outre 129 S. 4th West • 543-3311 Twelve thousand pounds of oven mass…Bread of integrity, pastry of distinction, yes indeed, European hand-crafted baked goods, Pain de Campagne, Ciabatta, Cocodrillo, Pain au Chocolat, Palmiers, and Brioche. Several more baked options and the finest espresso available. Please find our goods at the finest grocers across Missoula. Saturday 8-3, Sunday 8-2, Monday-Friday 7-6. $ The Mercantile Deli 119 S. Higgins Ave. • 721-6372 themercantiledeli.com Located next to the historic Wilma Theater, the Merc features a relaxed atmosphere, handcrafted Paninis, Sandwiches, and wholesome Soups and Salads. Try a Monte Cristo for breakfast, a Pork Love Panini for lunch, or have us cater your next company event. Open Monday – Saturday for breakfast and lunch. Downtown delivery available. The Mustard Seed Asian Café Southgate Mall • 542-7333 Contemporary Asian Cuisine served in our allnew bistro atmosphere. Original recipes and fresh ingredients combined from Japanese, Chinese, Polynesian, and Southeast Asian influences to appeal to American palates. Full menu available in our non-smoking bar. Fresh daily desserts, microbrews, fine wines & signature drinks. Takeout & delivery available. $$-$$$ Orange Street Food Farm 701 S. Orange St. 543-3188 Don’t feel like cooking? Pick up some fried chicken, made to order sandwiches, fresh deli salads, & sliced meats and cheeses. Or mix and match items from our hot case. Need some dessert with that? Our bakery makes cookies, cakes, and brownies that are ready when you are. $-$$ Paul’s Pancake Parlor 2305 Brooks • 728-9071 (Tremper’s Shopping Center) Check out our home cooked lunch and dinner specials or try one of 17 varieties of pancakes. Our famous breakfast is served all day! Monday is all you can eat spaghetti for $8.50. Wednesday is turkey night with all of the trimmings for $7.75. Eat in or take-out. M-F 6am-7pm, Sat/Sun 7am-4pm. $–$$. Pearl Café 231 E. Front St. 541-0231 Country French specialties, bison, elk, and fresh fish daily. Delicious salads and appetizers, as well as breads and desserts baked in-house. Extensive wine list; 18 wines by the glass and local beers on draft. Reservations recommended for the intimate dining areas. Visit our website Pearlcafe.us to check out our nightly specials, make reservations, or buy gift certificates. Open Mon-Sat at 5:00. $$-$$$

$…Under $5

Missoula Independent Page 20 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Philly West 134 W. Broadway • 493-6204 For an East-coast taste of pizza, stromboli, hoagies, salads, and pasta dishes and CHEESESTEAKS, try Philly West. A taste of the great “fightin’ city of Philadelphia” can be enjoyed Monday - Saturday for lunch and dinner and late on weekends. We create our marinara, meatballs, dough and sauces in-house so if “youse wanna eat,” come to 134 W. Broadway. Pita Pit 130 N. Higgins 541-PITA (7482) • pitapitusa.com Fresh Thinking Healthy Eating. Enjoy a pita rolled just for you. Hot meat and cool fresh veggies topped with your favorite sauce. Try our Chicken Caesar, Gyro, Philly Steak, Breakfast Pita, or Vegetarian Falafel to name just a few. For your convenience we are open until 3am 7 nights a week. Call if you need us to deliver! Sapore 424 N. Higgins Ave. • 542-6695 Voted best new restaurant in the Missoula Independent's Best of Missoula, 2011. Located on Higgins Ave., across the street from Wordens. Serving progressive American food consisting of fresh house-made pastas every day, pizza, local beef, and fresh fish delivered from Taste of Alaska. New specials: burger & beer Sundays, 5-7 $9 ~ pizza & beer Tuesdays, 5-7 $10 ~ draft beers, Tuesday -Thursday, 5-6:30 $3. Business hours: Tues.- Sat. 5-10:30 pm., Sat. 10-3 pm., Sun. 5-10 pm. Authentic Thai Restaurant 221 W. Broadway • 543-9966 sawaddeedowntown.com Sa Wa Dee offers traditional Thai cuisine in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Choose from a selection of five Thai curries, Pad Thai, delicious Thai soups, and an assortment of tantalizing entrees. Featuring fresh ingredients and authentic Thai flavors- no MSG! See for yourself why Thai food is a deliciously different change from other Asian cuisine. Now serving beer and wine! $-$$ Sean Kelly’s Empire Grill 130 W. Pine St. • 542-1471 Located in the heart of downtown. Open for lunch & dinner. Featuring brunch Saturday & Sunday from 11-2pm. Serving international & Irish pub fare. Full bar, beer, wine, martinis. $-$$ Silvertip Casino 680 SW Higgins • 728-5643 The Silvertip Casino is Missoula’s premiere casino offering 20 Video gaming machines, best live poker in Missoula, full beverage liquor, 11 flat screen tv’s and great food at great prices. Breakfast Specials starting at $2.99 (7-11am) For a complete menu, go to www.silvertipcasino.com. Open 24/7. $-$$ NOT JUST SUSHI Sushi Hana Downtown offering a new idea for your dining experience. Meat, poultry, vegetables and grain are a large part of Japanese cuisine. We also love our fried comfort food too. Open 7 days a week for Lunch and Dinner. Corner of Pine & Higgins. 549-7979. $$–$$$ Taco Del Sol 422 N. Higgins • 327-8929 Stop in when you're in the neighborhood. We'll do our best to treat you right! Crowned Missoula's best lunch for under $6. Mon.Sat. 11-10 Sun 12-9. Taco Sano 115 1/2 S. 4th Street West Located next to Holiday Store on Hip Strip 541-7570 • tacosano.net Once you find us you'll keep coming back. Breakfast Burritos served all day, Quesadillas, Burritos and Tacos. Let us dress up your food with our unique selection of toppings, salsas, and sauces. Open 10am-9am 7 days a week. WE DELIVER. Ten Spoon Vineyard + Winery 4175 Rattlesnake Drive 549-8703 www.tenspoon.com Made in Montana, award-winning organic wines, no added sulfites. Tasting hours: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 5 to 9 pm. Soak in the harvest sunshine with a view of the vineyard, or cozy up with a glass of wine inside the winery. Wine sold by the flight or glass. Bottles sold to take home or to ship to friends and relatives. $$ Westside Lanes 1615 Wyoming 721-5263 Visit us for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner served 8 AM to 9 PM. Try our homemade soups, pizzas, and specials. We serve 100% Angus beef and use fryer oil with zero trans fats, so visit us any time for great food and good fun. $-$$ YoWaffle Yogurt 216 W. Main St. 543-6072 (Between Thai Spicy and The Shack) www.yowaffle.com Let YoWaffle host your next birthday party! YoWaffle is a self-serve frozen yogurt and Belgian waffle eatery offering 10 continuously changing flavors of yogurt, over 60 toppings, gluten free cones and waffles, hot and cold beverages, and 2 soups daily. Build it your "weigh" at 42 cents per oz. for most items. Open 7 days a week. Sun-Thurs 11 AM to 11 PM, Fri 11 AM to 12 AM, Sat. 10 AM to 12 AM. Free WiFi. Loyalty punch cards, gift cards and t-shirts available. UMONEY. Like us on facebook.

$–$$…$5–$15

$$–$$$…$15 and over

Arts & Entertainment listings January 19 – January 26, 2012

8

days a week

Photo courtesy of Alex Lemus

Party trained. Buster Blue brings a wide array of instruments and positive party attitude to The Top Hat on Tue., Jan. 24, at 9:30 PM. $5.

THURSDAY January

19

Teach the kids the birds and the bees before Wally the weird kid does at the Montana Natural History Center’s miniNaturalist Pre-K Program. For kids ages 2-5. This month’s theme is Winter Birds. 120 Hickory St. 10–11 AM. $3/$1 for members. Let the Missoula Nonprofit Network help you nonprofits get the most out of your over-long, disjointed and ultimately time-

wasting meetings, where one person tells a story about the time he was an undergrad at Brown and yak, yak, yak, Peace Corps, Peace Corps, something I saw on TV. So attend Achieving Your Mission Through Effective Committee Meetings. 11:30–1 PM. City Life Community Center, 1515 Fairview Ave. $10 for non-members. RSVP to leah@missoulanonprofit.org.

nightlife Get wild and wooly at the Dead Hipster Dance Party at Sean Kelly’s. Party starts at 10 PM and, oh lordy, there are $1 well drinks until midnight. $3. Check out deadhipster.com.

Take a load off Jenny (she’s tired, ya know) and bring her to hear Cash for Junkers at the Draught Works Brewery. 915 Toole Ave. 5–8 PM. Free. You’ll be climbing up a wall at Freestone Climbing Center’s Ladies Night each Thursday. 935 Toole Ave. 5–10 PM. $6.50/$5 students.

end your event info by 5 PM on Fri., Jan. 20, to calendar@missoulanews.com. Alternately, snail mail the stuff to The Calemander c/o the Independent, 317 S. Orange St., Missoula, MT 59801 or fax your way to 543-4367.

S

Missoula Independent Page 21 January 19 – January 26, 2012

No Hugh Jackman jokes here, only an announcement that fun-loving s i n g e r / s o n g w r i t e r S te p h e n Jackman is playing some guitar and singing some tunes at the Bitter Root Brewery. 6–8:30 PM. Free. Get all Miss Marple up in the Missoula Art Museum during Artini: Sleuth, a gallery-wide scavenger hunt. Music by the effervescent Stellarondo and vittles by Chef Noel Mills of James Bar. 335 N. Pattee St. 6–9 PM. Free. Come hear what FWP has in mind for the 2012-2013 hunting season, or go ahead and comment on what you have in mind for that time period. Potomac Community Center. 6:30 PM. Bring your miscellany of talents down the ‘Root for The Roxy Open Mic Night. Anything goes: comedy, juggling, music and prescient children rapping about the streets. Hamilton. 120 N. 2nd. 7 PM. $5. Figure out how to begin an oligarchy during Dr. David M. Emmons’ lecture Marcus Daly in Montana at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture, in the PARTV Center on the UM campus. 7 PM. Free.

and head down to the Central Bar and Grill’s Trivia Night, hosted by local gallant and possible Swede Thomas Helgerson. 143 W. Broadway. 8 PM. Free.

Two great tastes that go great together, Stellarondo and Butter, perform at Sean Kelley’s Stone of Accord at 10 PM. 4591 N. Reserve St. Free.

It’s gonna be more fun than a hot transfusion when The Juveniles are joined by Shane Hickey’s Ukelele Project and Cure Music (Cure covers, duh) at the VFW. 10 PM. Free. (See Spotlight in this issue.)

Before you get blotto, blacked out, cracked out or caved in, kick it with cousins when The Skurfs and The Boxcutters hit the stage at The Top Hat. 10 PM. $3.

The bubbly Josh Farmer performs pianolicious tuneage at the Union Club. 9 PM. Free.

FRIDAY

Swap that old nag Number 7 for the music of Ugly Pony at the Sunrise Saloon. 9 PM. Free.

20

January

Hey little archers and aspiring archers, Bowhunter Certification Courses will be held Sat., Jan. 23 and Sat., Feb. 11, from 8:30 AM–5:30 PM. The field course for

both will be Sun., Feb. 12, from 1–4 PM. 3201 Spurgin Rd. Register by following the education links at fwp.mt.gov. Give blood. That is all. American Red Cross. 2401 N. Reserve St. Ste. 6. 10-2 PM. To schedule an appointment, call 800-REDCROSS. Occupy Missoula is taking part in the national Occupy the Courts day. They ask that people looking to join them meet at Caras Park at 11:30 AM with signs, banners and noisemakers before marching to the Russell E. Smith Federal District Court, at 201 E. Broadway. Speakers include Councilwoman Cynthia Wolken, State Rep. Dick Barrett and Professor Paul Haber, as well as labor

SPOTLIGHT uke it up

Josh Wagner’s play Ringing Out is a post-apocalyptic dark comedy that takes place in a family’s bunker. Not for the claustrophobic. Directed by Rebecca Schaffer. Crystal Theater. 515 S. Higgins Ave. 7:30 PM. $15/$13 adv. for adults and $10/$8 adv. for students. Tickets available at Bridge Pizza and ringingout.com. (See Theater in this issue.) Fans of grammar, logic and rhetoric grab your liberal arts degrees

nightlife Hear the jazz, taste the wine and have a time when the Captain Wilson Conspiracy performs at the Tenspoon Vineyard and Winery tasting room. 4175 Rattlesnake Dr. 5–9 PM. Free. Active outdoor lovers are invited to the Mountain Sports Club’s (formerly the Flathead Valley Over the Hill Gang) weekly meeting to talk about being awesome, past glories and upcoming activities. Swan River Inn. 6–8 PM. Free.

The ‘Root be rockin’ when Kalispell ghoul-punkers Graveyard Girl Scouts and legendary heavy and hard rockers Mahamawaldi torch the stage at The Roxy in Hamilton. 7 PM. $5. The Northern Rockies Rising Tide fights for the northern Rockies, including tackling the megaload issue and so much more. Jeannette Rankin Peace Center back room. 510 S. Higgins Ave. 7–8:30 PM.

Unleash your cogent understanding of the trivium at Brooks and Browns Trivia Night. $50 bar tab for first place. $7 Bayern pitchers. 200 S. Pattee St. in the Holiday Inn-Downtown. 7–10 PM.

I ain’t afraid of no saxophone, so I am definitely headed up to Ronan to see saxophonist Rob Verdi’s performance of Saxophobia. This saxophone-centric event is about to blow, at the Ronan Performing Arts Center. 7:30 PM. $14/$12 adv./18 and under free. Go to cmc@ronan.net for tickets.

The YWCA’s Brown Bag Lunch Series presents Global Social Work: Women’s Empowerment in India with Katharina Werner, who recently spent time working with Chaitanya, a nonprofit women’s advocacy group in India. 1130 W. Broadway. 12-1 PM. Free.

Load up the wee ones for an evening of light beer drinking and hollering children during Family Friendly Friday. Music TBA. The Top Hat. 6-8 PM. Free.

The Bitterroot Public Library screens Last Train Home. The film follows Chinese migrant laborers as 130 million of them make their way home for the New Year celebration. 7 PM. Free.

Grab a glass of vino and chillax with the Joan Zen Jazz Quintet at the Missoula Winery. 5646 Harrier Way. 7–10 PM.

reps and small business owners. 11:45–1 PM.

The ukulele seems to be making a bit of a comeback as of late. Eddie Vedder released an album titled Ukulele Songs in 2011. Little Ms. Twee herself, Zooey Deschanel, plays one in She and Him and in numerous cutie-pie YouTube videos. But there are other, less famous ukulele players. Players whose passion for the instrument forces them to collect the things the way some collect ceramic thimbles from different states or Nazi paraphernalia. Players like the Ukulele Guy, Shane Hickey. One trip to ukeleleguy.com and you’ll learn two important things. First, that Hickey has been obsessed by the instrument since he discovered one in his mother-in-law’s closet about six years ago. Second, and the most important, how to play WHAT: Shane Hickey ukulele project, opening for the Juveniles and Cure Music (a Cure cover band) WHEN: Thu., Jan. 19, at 10 PM WHERE: VFW HOW MUCH: Free

Missoula Independent Page 22 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Wang Chung’s “Dance Hall Days.” Hickey wrote out the tablature for the ’80s classic and created a cogent video in which he describes how to play the song correctly. Hickey then goes on to demonstrate, full-throated vocal and all. The effect is pleasant. The plucky ukulele alters the song’s original tone, simultaneously creating a spot of emotional weight and a bit of fun; something that Wang Chung thinks it does famously. He explains, “I like novelty. Tiny Tim. Weird Al. It’s awesome.” His fondness of novelty is illustrated in the unabashed performance of what may not be the greatest song of the ’80s. For the upcoming show at the VFW, Hickey will be joined by Jerry Petasek on the suitcase drumset. The case itself becomes the kick drum once the array of bells, bicycle horns and other percussive noisemakers are removed from inside. As for the type of music they will be playing, “Originally, I was going for a Leon Redbone type of thing,” Hickey says, “but with 2 Live Crew lyrics. Instead it’s more like the Smothers Brothers, but not as smart.” With a hilarious original songs like “Trailer Park Mom” and a cover of the 1953 lost classic “Poontang” by the Treniers, I find that hard to believe. —Jason McMackin

David Curtis and Big Sky Mind host Tibetan meditation teacher and author of No Self, No Problem Anam Thubten Rinpoche. UC Theatre. 7–9 PM. $15/$5 students. tibetanlanguage.org. Josh Wagner’s play Ringing Out is a post-apocalyptic dark comedy that takes place in a family’s bunker. Not for the claustrophobic. Directed by Rebecca Schaffer. Crystal Theater. 515 S. Higgins Ave. 7:30 PM. $15/$13 adv. for adults and $10/$8 adv. for students. Tickets available at Bridge Pizza and ringingout.com. (See Theater in this issue.) Check your royal identity at the door for the Missoula Community Theatre’s performance of Once Upon A Mattress. MCT Center for the Performing Arts. 200 N. Adams St. 8 PM. $21. Call 728-7529 or go to mctinc.org.

If his performance is anything like three-point shooting, Ray Allen is gonna put on one heckuva consistent show when he plays jazz, standards and pop tunes at the Symes Hot Springs Hotel. 8–10 PM. Free. Here comes the ‘Couv. Canadian rap collective Sweatshop Union are joined by Shaymlusly Elliterate for a full night of partying, with the Bassface Krew kicking it out until 5 AM. Full bar. American Legion Hall. 825 Ronan St. 8 PM. Ages 15 and up. $12, surcharge for those aged 15-20. Sinners and mutineers alike, get your swerve on when Reverend Slanky drops the funk and soul bombs at The Badlander. 208 Ryman St. 9 PM. $5. Take that lady from the bank or the dude from the stairclimber down to the Union Club for a night of flirtility and dancing with the omni-present Tom Catmull and The Clerics. 9 PM. Free. Get ready for the hard sell during Tainted Frequencies Vol. 1, featuring electronic beat-makers Freddy Todd and Thriftworks. The Palace. 9 PM. $10/$7 adv. Relive your apex and the ‘90s when electronic music legends Crystal Method drop beats, etc., along with locals Ebola Syndrome and pop radio superguy DJ Aaron Traylor. Wilma Theatre. 9 PM. $21. Tickets available at Rockin Rudy’s. Leave the maps at home and use your ears to find the kickin’ country of County Line at the Sunrise Saloon. 9 PM. Free.

He lives to spin: DJ Dubwise just can’t stop the dance tracks once they start at 10 PM at Feruqi’s. Free. Call 728-8799. Get rustic when local folksters Butter is joined by the folk-adelic Rogue Valley. Top Hat. 10 PM. $5.

SATURDAY

21

January

Granny get your guns and be a hero of telemark at the Seeley Lake Biathlon Challenge. This event has skate and classic styles, along with various distances for kids and adults alike. For novices and other folks, there are loaner guns and mandatory safety meetings. Day-of-race registration begins at 8 AM. For all the times, distances and costs, consult raceseeley-montana.info. If you have compulsive-eating problems, seek help and support with others during a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous, which meets this and every Sat. at 9 AM in Room 3 in the basement of First United Methodist Church, 300 E. Main St. Free. Visit oa.org. Skate and destroy at the Missoula Figure Skating Club’s Learn to Skate basic skills class. This eight-week course will have you doing stuff that eight-year-old Romanians do in their sleep: pretty rad. Glacier Ice Rink. 10–11:30 AM. $115. Help beautify the Whitefish mosaic-stylie by participating in

WOW, Windows on Whitefish. This community mural project will create four large mosaics representing the four seasons. Lead artists will guide plebes and other helpers in the creation of these works. Stumptown Art Studio. 145 Central Ave. $25. 10–2 PM. Let that inner Grizzly Adams out during Lone Pine State Park’s Animal Tracking and Sign Interpretation Workshop, taught by professional wildlife researcher Brian Baxter. Pre-registration is required. Ages 16 and up. $15. Call 755-2706. Join author and meditation teacher Anam Thubten Rinpoche for the two-day Awakening Retreat. Red Willow Learning Center. 825 W. Kent St. 10–5 PM. $155/$100 students. Pre-register at tibetanlanguage.org or call 961-5131. Learn about the days of yore, when magic filled the air, during Kootenai Stories for All Ages. The one-hour program is given by tribal member Vernon Finley. Traveler’s Rest State Park. One-half mile west of Lolo on Hwy. 12. 11 AM. $4/18 and under free. Teach ‘em how to Dougie during Kids Vibrations Music and Rhythm Program for singing and dancing kids of all ages, at the Downtown Dance Collective. 121 W. Main St. 11–11:45 AM. $5-$20 donation. Find out how them critters spend the winter out of doors during Lone Pine State Park’s Kid’s Snow Stompers Program Winter Sleep. For kids 4-7 years old. Lone Pine Visiting Center. 11–12 PM. $3. 755-2706.

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Missoula Independent Page 23 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Christian

We’re only happy when it rains. Canadian hip hop collective Sweatshop Union performs with Shaymlusly Elliterate and the Bassface Krew at the American Legion Hall, 825 Ronan St., on Fri., Jan. 20, at 8 PM. Tickets are $12, with a surcharge for those aged 15-20.

Since you’ll be at the Seeley Lake Biathlon anyways, view the photography of Ken Dvorak of One Hand Clapping Studio at the Grizzly Claw Trading Co., from 11 AM–5 PM. Free. If we did staff picks this would be mine: Dessert Bingo. Bring a dessert to exchange for bingo cards. Bingo winners have first pick of the desserts. You play until the desserts are gone. Oh, word. North Valley Family Center. 5501 Hwy. 93, Ste. 3. 12–3 PM. Check your royal identity at the door for the Missoula Community Theatre’s performance of Once Upon A Mattress. MCT Center for the Performing Arts. 200 N. Adams St. 2 PM and 8 PM. $21/$17 matinee. Call 728-7529 or go to mctinc.org. Get out of the cold and into character at Theatrize, which combines elements of yoga, dance and movement, along with dialogues with others. Open Way Mindfulness Center, 702 Brooks St. $10. Pre-register by calling 531-4249.

nightlife Help protect grizzly habitat and imbibe in a bit of local wine and tunes by the bluegrass outfit Black Mountain Boys during the Vital Ground nonprofit benefit night at the Ten Spoon Vineyard and Winery. 4175 Rattlesnake Dr. 5–9 PM.

Missoula Independent Page 24 January 19 – January 26, 2012

The whole shack shimmies when the Wild Coyote Band plays a variety of tuneage for you people to sway to, at the American Legion. 825 Ronan St. 7 PM. Forget Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, the Heart to Heart Duo plays tunes at the Missoula Senior Center’s Saturday NIght Dance. 7–10 PM. 705 S. Higgins Ave. 543-7154. Humorist and actor Patrick McManus says what we’re all thinking during his one-man show Poor Again...Dagnabbit!, at the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish. 7:30 PM. $20/$18 seniors/$10 student. For ages 10 and up. whitefishtheatreco.org. The Missoula Folklore Society hosts a Black and White Ball, featuring the band Skippin’ A Groove. Bring the whole fam damnly for a lesson at 7:30 PM. Dance at 8 PM. Upstairs at the Union Hall. 208 E. Main St. $9/$6 for members. missoulafolk.org. Show ‘em you still got that Virginia Reel down pat at the Snowflake Ball. Lolo Square and Round Dance Center. 7:30–10 PM. 9955 Lolo Ck. Rd. (Hwy. 12). $5. Richie Reinhold packs up the acoustic guitar for a performance at the warm waters of the Symes Hot Springs Hotel. 8–10 PM. Free.

Reggae mega-legends The Wailers spark up the stage and light up your life when they play old and new tunes for all the people, with guests Outernational and local funketeers Kung Fu Kongress. Wilma Theatre. 8:30 PM. $25. Tickets available at Rockin’ Rudy’s. Now that things are getting shredable up in the high country, it’s time to raise some funds for the Backwoods Project’s upcoming Ride Montana event, with total heshers Universal Choke Sign, Mount Poverty Well Diggers, Monkey and a Roast Beef Sandwich and Throne of Lies. 8:30 PM sharp. Free, but you’re going to donate a few bucks to the Backwoods Project, right? Swig drinks while listening to oldschool rock hits, ‘80s tunes or modern indie rock songs when Dead Hipster presents Takeover!, which features “drinkin’ music” DJ’d by the Dead Hipster DJs starting at 9 PM at the Central Bar & Grill, 143 W. Broadway St. Includes drink specials and photos with Abi Halland. Free. DJs Kris Moon and Monty Carlo peel the bananas and dice the bacon for your peanut butter, banana and bacon sammiches during Absolutely, a dance party featuring every style of rumpshaking tuneage. Doors at 9 PM. 2 for 1 Absolut drinks until 11 PM. Free.

Leave the maps at home and use your ears to find the kickin’ country of County Line at the Sunrise Saloon. 9 PM. Free. Yes mean yes when local independent rockers Magpies join forces with punkers Graveyard Girl Scouts and Bozeman garageteers the Salamanders to rock the Palace. 9 PM. $5. The kids who didn’t play sports after 8th grade are at it again when Weird Missoula presents its January showcase, featuring NY noise punkers the Shoppers, plus locals Shahs, Memo to Maury and the never banal Bad Naked. 245 W. Main St. 9 PM. $7 for those aged 18-20/$5 for everyone else. (See Noise in this issue.) If you’re headed to the Union Club, I hope you like jammin’ with Chele Bandulu, cuz they are a-playing some reggae tonight, cousin. 9 PM. Free. Dry out your trousers by the fire while Whiskey Rebellion belts out the jams down Hwy. 12 at the Lumberjack Saloon. 9 PM. Free. DJ Dubwise supplies dance tracks all night long so you can take advantage of Sexy Saturday and rub up against the gender of your choice at 10 PM at Feruqi’s. Free. Call 728-8799. Pet the cat, pray to Ra and trundle over to the Pharaoh and Slave Party, with live dubsteppers and electronical music makers Sovereign Sect outta Fargo, ND. The Top Hat. 9:30 PM. $10/$7 with costume/$5 surcharge for those aged 18–20.

SUNDAY

22

January

Stretch out the hammies and slap on some thermals and join the Montana Wilderness Association for a Wilderness Walk in the West Fork of Fish Creek. The hike is considered moderate and is about 6-8 miles long. Snowshoes available on request. Space is limited. RSVP to Zack at 823-0695 or zporter@wildmontana.org. Get off your bum (that’s for my Canadian friend) and join the Montana Wilderness Association for a Blodgett Canyon Wilderness Walk. The hike’s difficulty and length is weather-dependent. RSVP to Kip at 503 437-4862 or kip.beckwith@gmail.com. Take the Ansel Adams Drop-In Tour at the MAM and find out why he still rules the calendar and coffee table book roosts. Every Sunday at noon. 335 N. Pattee St. Free. Go with the jam when The Rocky Mountain Grange Hall, 1436 S. First St. south of Hamilton, hosts a weekly acoustic jam session for guitarists, mandolin players and others, from 2–4 PM. Free. Call Clem at 961-4949. Nothing says cool beans like the Sussex School Winter Festival and Open House for prospective students and families, with an aerial performance, arts and crafts and refreshments. Director Robyn Reed Gaddy gives a slideshow at 3 PM. 1800 S. 2nd W. 2–4 PM. Free.

nightlife Get to the bottom of your beer and find out what the jazz of the Captain Wilson Conspiracy is all about, at the Draught Works Brewery. 915 Toole Ave. 5–7 PM. Free. Check your royal identity at the door for the Missoula Community Theatre’s performance of Once Upon A Mattress. MCT Center for the Performing Arts. 200 N. Adams St. 2 PM and 6:30 PM. $19/$17 matinee/$15 children evening. Call 728-7529 or go to mctinc.org. The King of Bugunda Quintet performs, you slaves. Oops, my bad: The Suna Quintet performs some jazz for the you, the free people of the U.S. and A. The Top Hat. 7 PM. Free. Close out the weekend in style with $4 martinis from 7:30 PM to midnight, plus live jazz & DJs, during the Badlander’s Jazz Martini Night. Live jazz starts at 8 PM with the Donna Smith Trio. Free.

MONDAY

23

www.losttrail.com - 406.821.3211

WE'RE OPEN!

ONLY 90 MIN. SOUTH OF MISSOULA

January

Need to brush up on that algebra or writing course before you pay a king’s ransom to get a D in Comp 101 at the university? Sign-up for the Lifelong Learning Center’s Adult Education Program, which hosts seven weeks of college prep assistance. 310 S. Curtis. Mon.-Thu., from 8–11:30 AM. Free. Call 549-8765.

For Ski & Stay package info please call 406-381-8769

Get the latest Terrain Park info at LTPark.com

GREAT SNOW! THU-SUN

9:30AM - 4PM

$36 ADULTS $26 KIDS 6-12

Check

LostTrail.com

for detailed lift openings & to view our new webcam.

Wilma Theatre Friday February 3rd Doors at 7pm • Show at 8pm

Tickets are $12 Available at:

Get yourself a hearty, midseason powder stoke! The 62nd annual installment from Warren Miller Entertainment is coming to Missoula just in time for winter’s greatest days. Narrated by Olympic Gold Medalist Jonny Moseley and shot on location on five continents. Meet Warren Miller athletes Lynsey Dyer and Andy Mahre! A portion of all proceeds, including $5 of each ticket sold at The Trail Head, go to benefit the West Central Montana Avalanche Foundation

Intermission raffle to benefit WCMAF including gear from Black Diamond, Eddie Bauer First Ascent, Lift tickets to local resorts and much more! Missoula Independent Page 25 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Vanogan shenannigan. Garage rocketeers the Salamanders play with the Magpies and the Graveyard Girl Scouts at the Palace on Sat., Jan. 21, at 9 PM. $5.

nightlife Give that solipsistic 6th-10th grader the chance to light up the stage when the Whitefish Theatre Co.’s

Young Actors’ Performance Troupe holds auditions for Poetry Cafe. Bring a song or monologue. O’Shaughnessy Center. 5–6 PM. whitefishtheatreco.org At Slacker Mondays, from 6 PM until close, slackline fans can come to Freestone Climbing Center at 935 Toole Ave. to test their balance. $13/$10 for students. Visit freestoneclimbing.com. Show the peoples how smoove you really are, and pick up the check after you watch Steve Kalling, Keaton Wilson and Jeff Stickney perform at the Red Bird Wine Bar. 7–10 PM. Free. So you think you can fill in the blank? Prove it at Sean Kelly’s Open Mic Night this and every Monday at 8:30 PM. Call 5421471 after 10 AM on Monday to sign up. Be a bad kitty and scratch your master at Milkcrate Monday’s Random Music for Random Kitties, with the Milkcrate Mechanic and DJs Ebola, Logisticalone, Munky Byznyss and the Mechanic himself, starting at 9 PM. Free, with free pool and $6 pitchers of PBR. Open Mic at the VFW seems like a fine idea, especially with 2 for 1 drink specials for musicians and the working class. Call Skye on Sunday at 531–4312 to reserve your spot in the line-up or I bet

Missoula Independent Page 26 January 19 – January 26, 2012

you could roll in and be all, “Dude, I do a perfect Sublime.” Strip down big jigglers for the Badlander’s Shake Your Everything!!! dance-a-thon, with Bukue One and DJ Zac Hendrix (aka Del the Funky Homosapien’s DJ). 208 Ryman St. 9 PM. $5.

TUESDAY

24

January

Hey hunters and other liars, come on down to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation conference room and work on your elk camp locution at the Shootin’ the Bull Toastmasters. All are invited. 12–1. 5205 Grant Creek Dr. Free. Knitting For Peace meets at Joseph’s Coat. All knitters of all skill levels are welcome. 115 S. 3rd St. W. 1-3 PM. For information call 543-3955.

nightlife MCT and VSA Montana offers a performance of Once Upon A Mattress that’s been modified for those on the autism spectrum, so that families can guide their children through loud applause and sudden light changes. MCT Center for the Performing Arts. 200 N. Adams

St. 8 PM. $10. Call 728-7529 or go to mctinc.org Occupy Missoula General Assembly takes place at the Union Hall. 208 E. Main St. 5:30 PM. occupymissoula.org. Aim your sights on the 8 ball when the Palace hosts a weekly 9 ball tournament, which is double elimination and starts with sign up at 6 PM, followed by games at 7. $10 entry fee. You saw House Party, but you still can’t do the Kid ‘N Play. Do something about it by taking the Downtown Dance Collective’s Beg./Int. Hip Hop dance class with Heidi Michaelson. 1221 W. Main St. 6–7 PM. ddcmontana.com Throw your jazz hands in the air and join Chris Duparri and Ruthie Dada every Tuesday evening for Jazz Martini Night, with $2 off all top-shelf martinis at Brooks and Browns, 200 S. Pattee. Free. Get in shape, girl. Not with a ThighMaster, silly: Get your Financial Fitness on with Homeword before you buy that house and find yourself underwater. 127 N. Higgins Ave. 6–9 PM. $10.

at 9 PM and is followed by dancing with tunes from the Tallest DJ in America. $5/$3 students. Call 543-5678.

matthew@drumbrothers.com or call 531-8109.

Stand up and shout when experimental electronic music maven Jimmy aka Big in Japan, funk fusionaters G.R.I.T. and hip hoppers Codependents perform at the Badlander’s Live and Local Night. Music at 10 PM. Free.

Haul your mega-brains and considerable livers to the Flathead Lake Brewing Co.’s Pint Party and Trivia Night, with Missoula art trivia (answer: Monte Dollack). A buck from each pint goes to the MAM. 424. N. Higgins Ave. 5 PM.

Bow down to the sounds at Royal Reggae, featuring dancehall jams by DJs Supa, Smiley Banton and Oneness at the Palace at 9 PM. Free.

Come on down to The Loft to meet and greet the new Pride Foundation Executive Director Kris Hermanns. The event is hosted by Mark Heyka, Ray Davis and Jim Royan, with apps by Catalyst Cafe at 5 PM. Free, but go ahead and donate to the scholarship fund. RSVP at caitlin@pridefoundation.org.

Shift into high gear (ugh) when Minneapolis’ 4 on the Floor do that blues-infested Americana thing, with mixolydian locals Modality. The Badlander, 208 Ryman St. 9 PM. $5. Whatcha gonna do when the many-instrumented Buster Blue runs wild all over you with their quirky folk rockin’ and western swing stylings? The Top Hat. 10 PM. $5.

WEDNESDAY

25

January

YWCA Missoula, 1130 W. Broadway, hosts YWCA Support Groups for women every Tue. from 6:30–8 PM. An American Indian-led talking circle is also available, along with age-appropriate children’s groups. Free. Call 543-6691.

Let them dance, or at least give it a try, during Kids’ Hip Hop (7-10 years old) at the Downtown Dance Collective. No dance experience is necessary and drop-ins are welcome. Just wear good clothes for dancing. 121 W. Main St. 5–6 PM. ddcmontana.com

Take a load off while you get a load of some of the area’s better musicians during the Musician’s Showcase at Brooks and Browns in the Holiday InnDowntown. $7 Big Sky pitchers and $2 pints. 200 S. Pattee St. Free.

Artists of all levels are invited to the MAM’s non-instructed Open Figure Drawing Class. This class gives artists the opportunity to draw from a for-real person. Ages 18 plus (you and the model). 335 N. Pattee St. 6–8 PM. $7/$5 members.

Sean Kelly’s invites you to another week of free Pub Trivia, which takes place every Tue. at 8 PM. And, to highlight the joy of discovery that you might experience while attending, here’s a sample of the type of question you could be presented with. Ready? What Soviet-born comedian was born on this day in 1951? (See answer in tomorrow’s nightlife.) Hey-a giggle piggies, snort your way over to Comedy Night at the Lucky Strike Casino and Bar for laughs and such. 1515 Dearborn Ave. 8 PM. $5. The Broadway’s Tuesday Night Comedy takes place every Tue.

nightlife

Black Eyed Peas fanatics are welcome to belt out their fave jamz at the Badlander during Kraptastic Karaoke, beginning at 9 PM. Featuring $5 pitchers of Budweiser and PBR, plus $1 selected shots. Free. Forget reform, it’s time to shake up the system and shake up that booty at Progressive, a night of progressive, house, trance and more dance tuneage spun by local DJs. Don’t forget the progressive drink specials. Palace. 9 PM. Free.

Learn the ins and outs of Beginning Beekeeping from Brian Rogers, so you don’t get, uhh, stung later. Jokes, you’re getting stung no matter what you learn tonight. Montana Natural History Center. 120 Hickory St. 7 PM. $4 suggested donation/ members free. Learn the basics at Matthew Marsolek’s Beginning Hand Drum Class and show your older brother you deserve to be in his Santana tribute band, Abraxas. The course takes place over five weeks and is $55 or $12 per class. 515 W. Front St (Old Western MT Family Clinic Building). To register, email

Missoula Independent Page 27 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Saddle up for a convivial night of pugilism, reggae and rockin’ when Jon Wayne and The Pain bring it to the stage at The Top Hat. 10 PM. $3. Pub Trivia answer: Yakov Smirnoff, in Soviet Russia birthday has you!

THURSDAY

26

January

MCT Center for the Performing Arts. 200 N. Adams St. 8 PM. $21. Call 728-7529 or go to mctinc.org. Lifer and road dog Martin Sexton brings his years of rock

and roll experience to the Wilma Theatre stage, with Adam Gontier. 8 PM. $25. Tickets available at Rockin Rudy’s. Read carefully: the Dead Hipster Dance Party returns to The Badlander for its 200th night of straight wildin’ out, with music

starting at 9 PM. 208 Ryman St. 9 PM. $3, with $1 wells from 9 PM–midnight. Help a local dude fight the good fight during Help Punch Marc’s Cancer in the Face Benefit, a fundraiser for Missoulian Marc Doty (a wildland firefighter diag-

SPOTLIGHT in suspense

Get your polar aurorae on when the Northern Light kick it live at the Sunrise Saloon. 9 PM. Free.

Get in shape, girl. Not with a ThighMaster, silly: Get your Financial Fitness on with Homeword before you buy that house and find yourself underwater. 127 N. Higgins Ave. 6–9 PM. $10.

He’ll cure your tremors with a sweet shot of country: Russ Nasset hits up the Old Post, 103 W. Spruce St., for a solo set this and every other Thu. at 10 PM. Free.

nightlife

After living it up like they’re going down for the last few weeks, the Juveniles wrap up their monthlong residency at the VFW with an album release and are joined by Cat Heaven and a reunion by ‘90s stalwarts VTO. 245 W. Main St. 10 PM. Free. (See Scope in this issue.)

Just in time to really gnarmageddon it, the Montana Backcountry Alliance and Montana Wilderness Association host the shreddy-shreddy Backcountry Ski Film Festival to get your stoke on. Roxy Theater, 718 S. Higgins Ave. 7 PM. $10.

Bring your miscellany of talents down the ‘Root for The Roxy Open Mic Night. Anything goes: comedy, juggling, music and prescient children rapping about the streets. Hamilton. 120 N. 2nd. 7 PM. $5. Unleash your cogent understanding of the trivium at Brooks and Browns Trivia Night. $50 bar tab for first place. $7 Bayern pitchers. 200 S. Pattee St. in the Holiday InnDowntown. 7–10 PM. Fans of grammar, logic and rhetoric grab your liberal arts degrees and head down to the Central Bar and Grill’s Trivia Night, hosted by local gallant and possible Swede Thomas Helgerson. 143 W. Broadway. 8 PM. Free. Check your royal identity at the door for the Missoula Community Theatre’s performance of Once Upon A Mattress.

Get something like lucky when Bozeman’s One Leaf Clover play some good old rock at the Union Club. 9 PM. Free. Standards galore and a pint a beer too, when the Joan Zen Jazz Quartet do the ‘Root right at the Bitter Root Brewery in Hamilton. 6-8:30 PM. Free.

You’ll be climbing up a wall at Freestone Climbing Center’s Ladies Night each Thursday. 935 Toole Ave. 5–10 PM. $6.50/$5 students.

Get a whiff of that breath when the Mountain Breathers, featuring Chase McBride and Michael Corson, perform some folk tunes at the Draught Works Brewery. 915 Toole Ave. 5–8 PM. Free.

nosed with cancer), featuring sets by The Reptile Dysfunction, Birds Mile Home, Naomi Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup, Cybury, PD Lear and Pretty Pretty Good. The Palace. 9 PM. $5 suggested donation.

One of the most disturbing illustrations of doubt I’ve heard of comes from Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, in which two neuroscientists do an experiment on someone whose brain hemispheres are disconnected and no longer sharing information. The right hemisphere is flashed the command to walk and the person follows the command. But when the person, via the left hemisphere, is asked why he got up to walk, he says, “To get a Coke,” (which isn’t true) rather than saying “I don’t know.” It all begs the question, What sorts of truths do we piece together—every day in our minds—from dubious evidence? How certain are we that our interpretation of what we do or see isn’t really a distortion?

ders if the path he’s taking is the right one still, or if he’s made the wrong decision. Perhaps doubt, however uncomfortable, isn’t always a bad thing. “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty,” says Flynn “When you are lost, you are not alone.” But as Flynn soon finds out, doubt has heavy consequences. The upcoming production by Montana Rep kicks off this week with a benefit gala, which includes food and wine before the production and music and open bar afterward. General admission nights continue into the first week of February. It’s the Rep’s big touring production, stocked with amazing professional actors and Missoula all-stars. And they’ve picked a great play. There’s good rea-

WHAT: Doubt, a parable WHO: Montana Repertory Theatre WHEN: Opening night party: Sat., Jan. 21, with a 6:30 PM reception and 7:30 PM performance. All other performances: Tue., Jan. 24–Sat., Jan. 28; Tue., Jan. 31–Thu., Feb. 2, and Sat., Feb. 4, nightly at 7:30 PM, plus a Sat., Jan. 28, matinee at 2 PM. WHERE: Montana Theatre, in UM’s PARTV Center HOW MUCH: $35 for opening party night, $20 general admission shows MORE INFO: montanarep.org or 243-4581 John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt addresses those questions masterfully. A nun suspects a priest of molesting an altar boy. But the story begins with that priest, Father Flynn, giving a sermon about a sole surviving sailor on the sea. Once sure of his celestial navigation, the sailor suddenly loses his course when a storm covers all the stars. He won-

Missoula Independent Page 28 January 19 – January 26, 2012

son Doubt has won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony for Best Play. The dark and playful story digs deep into language—the misinterpretation of it—and power struggles that take place in a Catholic Church in 1964, but that can take place just as easily in any realm. —Erika Fredrickson

The Marty Friedman and Jason Becker’s of bluegrass show off their virtuosity at The Top Hat when The Infamous Stringdusters shred their fretboards and melt your face...off, with Nicki Bluhm and the The Gramblers. 10 PM. $18/$15 adv. Tickets available at The Top Hat and Ear Candy.

Now that the snow has arrived, you’ve got a major bone to shred the gnar and rally the sleds in that big old beautiful back country, but be careful friends. The snowpack is weak and I don’t need you dying on me. Check out missoulavalanche.org before you do the do. In the meantime, hook me up with the goods by sending your event info by 5 PM on Fri., Jan. 20 to calendar@missoulanews.com. Alternately, snail mail the stuff to The Calemandar c/o the Independent, 317 S. Orange St., Missoula, MT 59801 or fax your way to 543-4367. You can also submit stuff online. Just head to the arts section of our website and scroll down a few inches and you’ll see a link that says “submit an event.”

MOUNTAIN HIGH F ew things get an entire community’s panties bunched more than the mere thought of an incoming snowstorm. It’s probably because it affects everyone in some manner, except for a few agoraphobes and indoor cats. Driving is sketchy. Clothing choices take more consideration. Heating bills soar. I bet there are even a few people filling up their bathtubs with water before they go to bed each night, in case the pipes freeze. For some of us, though, our panties are bunched in anticipation, not trepidation. We stand at the ready, boards waxed, racks mounted on vehicles and eyes fixed to noaa.gov while we peer at infrared satellite photos of swirling clouds pregnant with the pow. This is the right way to live in Montana. One way to embrace winter is to watch or participate in events such as Lost Trail’s Wild Bill Blast! Rail

Jam. The event is named for ski hill owner Bill Gasser and is sponsored by Edge of the World and Backcountry Racks. The jam’s terrain park features a couple of big kid-sized jumps (so, pretty big), boxes, rails, corrugated pipe and plenty of places to bonk, grind and generally get rad. For those of us who consider ourselves more of the all-mountain kinds of riders or skiers, watching others demonstrate their style in the confines of the terrain park can be a hoot and a siren song. (If you’re over 28, don’t do it.) The Wild Bill Blast! Rail Jam competition is held at Lost Trail Ski Area on Sat., Jan. 21, with registration from 9 AM to noon and the jam from 1–3 PM. The fee to participate is $10 and the event is open to skiers and boarders of all ages and abilities. For more info., go to ltpark.com.

Photo by Chad Harder

THURSDAY JANUARY 19 Teach the kids the birds and the bees before Wally the weird kid does at the Montana Natural History Center’s miniNaturalist Pre-K Program. For kids ages 2-5. This month’s theme is Winter Birds. 120 Hickory St. 10–11 AM. $3/$1 for members. You’ll be climbing up a wall at Freestone Climbing Center’s Ladies Night each Thursday. 935 Toole Ave. 5–10 PM. $6.50/$5 students. Come hear what FWP has in mind for the 2012-2013 hunting season, or go ahead and comment on what you have in mind for that time period. Potomac Community Center. 6:30 PM.

FRIDAY JANUARY 20 Hey little archers and aspiring archers, Bowhunter Certification Courses will be held Sat., Jan. 23, and Sat., Feb. 11, from 8:30 AM–5:30 PM. The field course for both will be Sun., Feb. 12, from 1–4 PM. 3201 Spurgin Rd. Register by following the education links at fwp.mt.gov. Active outdoor lovers are invited to the Mountain Sports Club’s (formerly the Flathead Valley Over the Hill Gang) weekly meeting to talk about being awesome, past glories and upcoming activities. Swan River Inn. 6–8 PM. Free.

SATURDAY JANUARY 21 Granny get your guns and be a hero of telemark at the Seeley Lake Biathlon Challenge. This event has skate and classic styles, along with various distances for kids and adults alike. For novices and other folks, there are loaner guns and mandatory safety meetings. Day-of-race registration begins at 8 AM. For all the times, distances and costs, consult raceseeley-montana.info. Skate and destroy at the Missoula Figure Skating Club’s Learn to Skate basic skills class. This eightweek course will have you doing stuff that eight-yearold Romanians do in their sleep: pretty rad. Glacier Ice Rink. 10–11:30 AM. $115.

Let that inner Grizzly Adams out during Lone Pine State Park’s Animal Tracking and Sign Interpretation Workshop, taught by professional wildlife researcher Brian Baxter. Pre-registration is required. Ages 16 and up. $15. Call 755-2706. Find out how them critters spend the winter out of doors during Lone Pine State Park’s Kid’s Snow Stompers Program Winter Sleep. For kids 4-7 years old. Lone Pine Visiting Center. 11–12 PM. $3. 755-2706.

SUNDAY JANUARY 22 Stretch out the hammies and slap on some thermals and join the Montana Wilderness Association for a Wilderness Walk in the West Fork of Fish Creek. The hike is considered moderate and is about 6-8 miles long. Snowshoes available on request. Space is limited. RSVP to Zack at 823-0695 or zporter@wildmontana.org. Get off your bum (that’s for my Canadian friend) and join the Montana Wilderness Association for a Blodgett Canyon Wilderness Walk. The hike’s difficulty and length is weather-dependent. RSVP to Kip at 503-437-4862 or kip.beckwith@gmail.com.

MONDAY JANUARY 23 At Slacker Mondays, from 6 PM until close, slackline fans can come to Freestone Climbing Center at 935 Toole Ave. to test their balance. $13/$10 for students. Visit freestoneclimbing.com.

THURSDAY JANUARY 26 Just in time to really gnarmageddon it, the Montana Backcountry Alliance and Montana Wilderness Association host the shreddy-shreddy Backcountry Ski Film Festival to get your stoke on. Roxy Theater, 718 S. Higgins Ave. 7 PM. $10. You’ll be climbing up a wall at Freestone Climbing Center’s Ladies Night each Thursday. 935 Toole Ave. 5–10 PM. $6.50/$5 students. calendar@missoulanews.com

Missoula Independent Page 29 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Resident evil

scope

The Juveniles take on the VFW with old-school rockers VTO by Erika Fredrickson

The Juveniles were originally supposed to play instrumental surf, but songs like “Guy in a Bathrobe” and “California Spam Man” beg for some lyrical visuals. The band’s debut album, Take One, combines creeping bass lines with silly images of Nike shower shoes and beer, punctuated with aptly juvenile “fuck yous” and lots of “heys” and “whoas.” “What’s this shit called love?” Answer: “I don’t know. I don’t care.” Of course. You gotta love the style if you ever did back in the ’90s. It’s all so nicely stripped down: three-chord lo-fi garage rock and Steve Juvenile yelling out the choruses with the cadence of Minor Threat and the gleefulness of the Angry Samoans. Like so many bands before them—à la the Ramones— members go by the Juvenile last name. It’s Dave and Rick Juvenile on guitars, Al Juvenile on bass and Derek Juvenile on drums. But it must be noted that Dave once went by his true name, Dave Parsons, in the much beloved ’90s-era Missoula band Humpy. And though they’ve played shows here and there over the past few years, the Juveniles haven’t pushed for much beyond their regular practice nights. “It’s kind of like men’s bowling night for us,” says Parsons. “We play every Monday and we’re not really ambitious about booking shows.” That changed in January. The Juveniles are the first

VTO

band in hopefully a long line of bands with a month-long residency at the VFW bar on Main Street. The venue recently opened its doors to all kinds of live music nights—and it’s turned into a hub for the downtown music scene. With the residency, a new band each month gets to be in the spotlight and hone their live antics. It gives The Juveniles the option to play every Thursday of the month, plus curate the free show with whatever other bands they desire. That means they can pick wild lineups made up of bands that might not otherwise end up on show-goers radar—including the show this Thursday, Jan. 19, where longtime musician Shane Hickey shows off his ukulele skills and his Cure cover band. “We have full license to invite whoever we want and that totally gave way to the ukulele thing,” says Parsons. “I don’t think Shane was ready to say yes to a show before. You’re going to get things down here that you might not normally see. And the sky’s the limit.” On a recent weekday night, for instance, the band played a show with punk favorites Reptile Dysfunction, the fairly hilarious classic-rock band Spirit Hole (members include Volumen’s Doug Smith and coffee roaster extraordinaire Matt McQuilkin) and Throne of Lies (ex-Four Horseman, Judgment Hammer). It was an interesting mix of young musicians and veterans of the old rock era (i.e. Jay’s Upstairs) and everyone in between.

Photo courtesy of Charlie Beaton

Charlie Beaton, owner of Big Dipper Ice Cream, met with me to discuss the resurrection of his old ’90s era band VTO, which plays with the Juveniles on Jan. 26. Beaton and Parsons, along with so many others at the bar, seem to represent an emerging trend: 40-something musicians who took a several years’ hiatus to have kids and are now returning to the scene to play some rock and roll. And why not? Here’s a recap of VTO. Original members Beaton, Yale Kaul and Jeremy Richter decide to start a band called the Ice Cream Makers because at the time, in the early ’90s, they all worked at Goldsmith’s Ice Cream Parlor. But then Kaul came up with Vi Thompson Overdrive, named for a longtime career broadcaster on KECI (then KGVO) named Vi Thompson who was, by that time, almost 80. “She was really cool to us,” says Beaton. “She thought it was pretty funny. She even invited us to her 80th birthday party, so we all went. But then we put this tape [Hamburger] out and we used her picture on it, and then these lawyers gave us a cease and desist order, so we had to buy all our stuff back.” Vi Thompson passed away a decade later, and the band was mentioned in her obituary. VTO played venues all around town through the late 1990s, including the memorable 1997 Slabs pizza show (where Taco Sano is now) where a bunch of bands played while the nearby Roxy Theater burned. They had a reunion show in 2000 at Jay’s Upstairs that showcased the band’s cowpunk style. Though the band hasn’t played since then, Beaton has been writing songs for the last 12 years, creating a decent back catalogue. The line-up has changed over the last two decades but now it’ll be the same as the 2000 lineup: Greg Twigg on bass, Joe Bates on guitar and Brian Collins on drums. It’s not a reunion show, Beaton says—the band plans to stick together for more shows and album recordings into the future. “This version of the band has turned out to be more punk rock,” he says. “It’s the hardest version we’ve had. No country this time. But we have all these other country kind of songs, so we were calling it the campfire version of VTO and that will be a whole different set down the road.” For the VFW show, Beaton says they will play half oldies and half new songs. He’s on the fence about the old fave “How To Get To My House from East Missoula” and you probably won’t hear “Busch Pilot.” But you will hear one of the first VTO songs ever written, “1974,” plus “Astronaut Rock” and “Shitfire.” And the new songs will probably not disappoint VTO fans with names like “Hot Yoga” and “Don’t Poop in Your Space Suit.” So, theme-wise, not much has changed. From the days when VTO practiced behind the house where Dave Parsons used to live in the early 1990s, the main evolution for both musicians is in the equipment. “Now we can afford gear,” says Beaton. “I bought a microphone stand the other day and it’s like, you know, this is pretty cool. I don’t have to use a vacuum cleaner as a microphone stand anymore.” The Juveniles play the VFW this Thu., Jan. 19, at 10 PM with Shane Hickey’s ukulele project and his Cure cover band Cure Music. The Juveniles play the VFW Thu., Jan. 26, at 10 PM with VTO and Cat Heaven. Free. efredrickson@missoulanews.com

The Juveniles

Missoula Independent Page 30 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Photo by Chad Harder

Scope Noise Theater Film Movie Shorts

Shoppers Silver Year Feeble Minds Records

Hotter than a cat scratch and thrice as sharp, Shoppers is nothing like the packs of musical sluggards that dominate Marine Corps weight rooms. I feel bad for those of you who listen to the radio and think that rock and roll is a lifeless corpse made up of throaty male bellows and insincere pleas for love alongside predictable innuendo, entendre and penis wagging. But here we have the antidote to that. The Shoppers’ sound isn’t new, yet it is fresh, reminding the listener of others without giving up its own aesthetic: early Sonic Youth without all the gratuitous noise; Bikini Kill’s drive and sass. Secret melodies quietly reveal themselves, emerging from the degener-

Infamous Stringdusters We’ll Do It Live High Country Recordings

This band has more chops than a cable TV karate-movie marathon. Sure, the Nashville outfit is plenty capable of catchy songwriting and high-lonesome harmonies, but the real payoff of hearing the Infamous Stringdusters in a live setting is their absurdly proficient display of improvisation. These extensive jams take center stage on the group’s first live album, such as guitarist Andy

Rogue Valley False Floors CDBY

First hearing of Rogue Valley’s ambitious plan, I thought, “This can’t possibly be good.” Even veteran performers wouldn’t attempt it: creating four full-length albums, each based on a season, in just one year. Miraculously, they did it. And False Floors, the fourth and final album, is surprisingly good. Brainchild of Minneapolis songster Chris Koza, Rogue Valley blends indie roots with orchestral-folk, sounding like the offspring of Hem and Death Cab for Cutie. Not every tune on the album is strong—the poppy “Blueprints” and “Onward and Over” feel a little flat. But others, like the pensive “Icebox” and the violin-and-guitar laden waltz “Dangerous Diamonds,” are fantastic, begging for multiple listens.

Rivers Cuomo Alone III: The Pinkerton Years Geffen

It is a known fact that Pinkerton is the best Weezer album. It can’t be the Blue Album, because the possibility of a band’s first release being its best is too depressing to contemplate. Ask Rivers Cuomo. The Weezer frontman was crushed by Pinkerton’s commercial failure, and the personally crazy and artistically mediocre decade he entered afterward was made more awful by Pinkerton’s gradual

ate swirl of distorted guitar, atomizing bass and palpitating drums only to fall quietly away. Silver Year never tests your patience. It’s fast for as long as it needs to be. It rings out with ear-splitting dissonance when it needs to. It’s as beautiful as it is formidable. The Syracuse-based trio doesn’t reinvent the wheel. They cover it in bleach and spin smoke-filled dirty burnouts at the intersection of noise and punk. ( Jason McMackin) Shoppers plays the VFW Saturday, Jan. 21, at 10 PM, with locals Shahs, Memo to Maury and Bad Naked. $5 /$7 for 18 to 20 year olds. Falco’s arresting, jazzed-up solo on “The Hitchhiker” and the sinuous frenzy of notes that dobro player Andy Hall releases at the end of “Masquerade” to help an otherwise cheesy song transcend into ambrosial balladry. Despite taking an unconventional approach to their craft in terms of composition, this is unmistakably a bluegrass act. No drum kit, electric instruments or studio magic here. While other bands’ amps may go to eleven, they’ll need more than sheer volume or technological wizardly to kick more ass—and have more fun doing it—than these guys. The result is thirteen tracks of raw, rootsy ruckus guaranteed to still sound good when the whiskey wears off. (Jed Nussbaum) Infamous Stringdusters play The Top Hat Thursday, Jan. 26, with Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers, at 10 PM. $18/$15 adv. at Ear Candy or seafarerentertainment.com R o g u e Va l l e y explores the vagaries of being human and alive in the world: “Is life something to capture? If you contain it, are you the master?” Koza wonders in “Hunters and Trappers,” playing tactfully with ambiguity and innuendo. But this questioning isn’t unique amongst indie bands. Where Rogue shines is in its downright poetic lyrics. The winter album is rife with nature: stars, snowy owls, icicles, grizzlies, Orion, northern lights, frozen lakes, the sea—a cinematic winterscape into which the listener wanders and gladly becomes lost. (Melissa Mylcrheest) Rogue Valley plays the Top Hat Friday, Jan. 20, at 10 PM with Butter. $5. ascent to cult classic. All Cuomo wanted was to make an album everybody loved. He somehow both failed to do that and established a standard that would make his future work disappointing. So Alone III: The Pinkerton Years is a document. The collection of outtakes and personal recordings reveals a songwriter fixed on certain themes. “When You’re Alone,” “I’m So Lonely,” “I’m So Lonely On a Saturday Night” and—to a lesser extent—“Oh God I’m Hungry” belong recognizably to the Blue period. Others, particularly the multi-ironic “Money Makes Me Happy,” portend the bitterness that would define Cuomo’s later work. The tracks between document an artist in transition—talented, worried and way too aware of what he is doing. Sometimes he forgets, beautifully; other times he remembers, painfully. All of it seems important in retrospect. (Dan Brooks)

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Missoula Independent Page 31 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Scope Noise Theater Film Movie Shorts

Tomorrow today Ringing Out is a future story for us by Erika Fredrickson

pre-apocalypse life—suddenly recalls strange things: “inside trees” decorated in jewelry; giant rooms and snow and music. The memory of Christmas stands in contrast to the dysfunctional bunker where Mandolin’s pregnancy creates tension among the trio. That story alone creeps up as a sort of dread. “How is she pregnant?” you wonder, but then you know. The acting in Ringing Out is fantastic—delivered by a four-person cast that would, with this script, be highly praised in any theater scene as easily as in Missoula. Kingston creates a complex character in Rick—his protective devotion is palpable and his temper spurred by fear creates real discomfort. Jennifer Fleming-Lovely as Mandolin gives us a young girl who rebels and loves despite her formative years spent in a bunker. And Tabibnejad plays the kind, brave stranger with wonderful restraint, capturing the way hope of a new life—a city with machines and people trying to live together—might be both liberating and an affront to bunker order. It’s Peacock’s Kendra, though, that makes this story so heartbreaking and beautiful. She’s a woman who has in some regards lost the husband she once knew. And Peacock has this incredible way of playing manic happiness with so much underlying sadness. Ringing Out is tightly executed under the direction of Rebecca Schaffer. The story unfolds in a patient way. And it keeps its humor in dark moments. It’s a story Photo courtesy of Josh Wagner about remembering Christmas and not in a trite way, but it’s mostly about a million gun and solar energy know-how, is now living a post- other things. It’s about storytelling, for one thing. And apocalyptic life with his wife, Kendra, and a young loss. We might imagine zombies and such for the end woman named Mandolin. The bunker set evokes a of the world, but more harrowing is imagining our childhood fantasy of living underground Hobbit- world without the things and people we once loved. style—there’s something cozy and romantic about One character laments not having a copy of The Hobbit the simple arrangement of seats on birch stumps, a or any Marquez books. But there are other things, too. phonograph, a pile of burlap sacks and a modest Think of everything gone and the keen pain you’d feel in the absence. bookcase. But this play isn’t seduced by fantasy. Wagner always renders poignant lines, and this The opening scene immediately illustrates the kind of longterm sorrow that only humor can allevi- script is no exception. “The earth pushes all things ate. Kendra (Ann Peacock) cheerfully lists off her pre- toward the surface—even the dead” is one that revertend complaints and makes Rick (Howard Kingston) berates long after it’s said. Cues to this being a story of our time, like a play along. “The bank closes as soon as I get off work!” “Jersey Shore” reference, keep it relevant and funny. And the fact that the only Christmas song present is Kendra says. “The vending machine at the office doesn’t take The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” also gives it a refreshing edge. (If you love that song,you’ll love the twenties,” says Rick. “I drank all the flavor out of my slushie,” says entire tone of this play.) This story isn’t one you’ve heard before, even if Kendra. It’s a morbid game, but a necessary remembrance you recognize the themes. And it never gets too cerebral or philosophical. But by the end, you’ll realize that of pre-apocalypse life and luxury. A ladder goes to the above-ground world where no it’s still a story of us—you and I—the kind of people one is safe—at least, that’s how Rick sees it. And we who listen to “Fairytale of New York” and do sometimes soon learn that in a cage, Rick has captured a stranger wonder, with real concern, what the future holds. Ringing Out continues at The Crystal Theatre (Ali Tabibnejad) who represents the scary outside Thu., Jan. 19, and Fri., Jan. 20, at 7:30 PM nightly. world and the way in which it threatens bunker life. Meanwhile, memories are also threatening to $15/$13 in advance at the Bridge Pizza. unravel what Rick is so carefully trying to maintain. Mandolin—too young for remembering much about efredrickson@missoulanews.com Imagining the post-apocalypse has brought about all sorts of thrilling stories: even scarier zombies than before; nightmarish disease creating unhinged panic; dark, Cormac McCarthy-esque landscapes lurking with the kinds of demons that spring up when civilization unravels. Ringing Out, the new original play by Josh Wagner, is also a post-apocalyptic exploration, but it’s a smarter take with an emphasis on carefully wrought characters. In a bunker in the not-so-distant future, Rick, a survivalist who predicted the end of the world and prepared for it with a large stash of canned goods,

Missoula Independent Page 32 January 19 – January 26, 2012

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Film Movie Shorts

There will be bile

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Carnage gets the big star treatment by Skylar Browning

Roman Polanski has a way with apartments. His 1976 film The Tenant is about an unassuming introvert who moves into a flat after the previous occupant committed suicide. Over the course of the movie, the new tenant (played by Polanski) becomes convinced his landlord and neighbors are pushing him to a similar fate, and the apartment itself becomes a source of paranoia and unease. There’s cross-dressing and a ledge and a twist at the end, but the vibe from that apartment is unmistakable. Home, in this case, is anything but sweet. Polanski’s latest film features another dubious dwelling that deserves to be deserted at all costs. With the exception of the opening and closing credits, the

entirety of Carnage takes place inside a pricey Manhattan condo. It doesn’t take long to realize that nothing good is going to happen here and that, as in The Tenant, things will end badly. The only difference is, The Tenant uses this creeping claustrophobia for horror, while Carnage takes it toward humor. In the real world, Carnage would last about seven minutes and end with hollow promises and polite goodbyes. The owners of the Manhattan condo, Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael (John C. Reilly), are the parents of an 11-year-old boy who was struck with a stick during a standard schoolyard dispute. The parents of the stick-wielder, Alan (Christoph Waltz) and Nancy (Kate Winslet), come over to apologize. The film opens with the four of them drafting a letter that agrees on who did what and states that Alan and Nancy take responsibility for their son’s actions. Everyone seems satisfied by the outcome, and Alan and Nancy get to the doorway, but a halfhearted offer of fresh cobbler draws them back in. Of course it does. A magical magnetic force works throughout the movie to keep the two couples confined to the condo. It’s one of two improbable plot devices used to set up a broader discussion of parenting and manners, but no matter the method. The result is a brisk 79-minute display of vicious dialogue and sharp acting. Foster plays an activist and author wound a little too tight. She’s currently working on a book about Darfur, and her coffee table holds stacks of rare art books. Reilly plays her husband, an easygoing salesman specializing in bathroom parts. Whereas Foster persistently amps up the conversation, unintentionally needling her guests with judgmental jabs, Reilly

only wants to please. He’s the one who insists on serving the cobbler. Waltz, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a Nazi in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, steals scenes as the preoccupied lawyer always talking on his cell phone. He’s been dragged to this meeting by his wife, and does a horrendous job feigning interest in the outcome. His son is a monster, beyond help, a “threat to Homeland Security.” It’s only when Foster challenges his parental apathy that Waltz decides to engage in a little verbal jousting. His raised eyebrows and sarcastic smile cut deeper than words. Winslet has the least to work with, but still offers up the most memorable scene. She’s a vain investment broker, embarrassed by her husband and defeated by her son’s actions. She wants to make things right. Despite her best efforts, she ends up making the biggest mess by losing her cobbler all over the coffee table and its precious contents. It’s the best public puke since George H.W. Bush lost his cookies with the Prime Minister of Japan in 1992. All four actors have a blast with the material. As the conversation devolves from awkward pleasantries to outright hysterics, each one brings a little something extra to the table (pun not intended with Winslet). Foster and Winslet received Golden Globe nominations for their performances; Waltz and Reilly would have been just as deserving. Polanski and Yasmina Reza adapted Carnage for the big screen from Reza’s Tony-winning play God of Carnage. While the acting in the film is superb, the larger platform reveals a few flaws in the script. There’s the whole thing about nobody leaving the condo, an especially bizarre choice after Winslet boots early on. The two couples also get sloppy drunk in record time, a convenient circumstance to help bring about a frenzied ending. The worst offense is less obvious. Reza’s play debuted in December 2006 and was praised for its biting commentary. Just more than five years later, key parts seem stale. Foster’s uber-liberal morals and Waltz’s CrackBerry obsession make for wilted punching bags. What didn’t fade with time, however, are the whip-fast exchanges and spirited debate. There’s a recurring fight over the use of the word “deliberately” and the treatment of a hamster. Neither has anything to do with larger society, but both make for incredible banter in the hands of talented actors. Even as this bickering continues, improbable as parts may be, it leaves the audience content to eavesdrop. The characters may want to escape the condo, but you’re just fine as a fly on the wall. Carnage continues at the Wilma.

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Missoula Independent Page 33 January 19 – January 26, 2012

Scope Noise Theater Film Movie Shorts OPENING THIS WEEK EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE An unbelievably precocious child searches New York City for the lock that matches the key left behind by his father, who died on September 11th. Starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Carmike 12: 1, 4:15, 7:15 and 10 pm. Pharaohplex: 6:50 and 9:10 pm, with 3 pm matinees on Sat. and Sun. Stadium 14: 12:55, 3:55, 6:55 and 9:45 pm. 1:10, 4:20 and 7:45 pm, Mon.-Thu. HAYWIRE Oh no you didn’t! A lady black ops soldier is wronged and certainly gets revenge. Starring former MMA fighter Gina Carano, Ewan MacGregor

3D: 1:30, 4:45, 7:30 and 9:50 pm. Big D: 1, 4, 7 and 9:30 pm. Village 6: 4:30 and 7:30 pm nightly, with 9:30 pm shows on Fri. and Sat. and 1:30 matinees on Sat. and Sun. Pharaohplex: 7 and 9 pm, with matinees Sat. and Sun at 3 pm. Stadium 14: 3D: 12:05, 2:15, 4:35, 7:20 and 9:50, with midnight shows Fri. and Sat. 1:25. 4:15, 7:05 and 9:20 pm, Mon.-Thu. Entertainer: 4, 7 and 9 pm. Mountain: 2:15, 4:30, 7 and 9 pm.

NOW PLAYING THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN A boy and his dog have marvelous shipboard, airborne and motorcycle-straddling adventures around the globe. Starring Simon Pegg, Daniel Craig and Carey Elwes. Directed by Spielberg.

CARNAGE Two pairs of parents talk about white people problems after their sons fight. Starring John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet. Stadium 14: 6:30 pm, with midnight shows on Fri. and Sat. 5:35 pm, Mon.-Thu. Wilma: 7 and 9:15 pm. 7 pm only on Fri., Jan. 21, Sat., Jan. 22 and Thu., Jan. 26. CONTRABAND A former smuggler has to do one more job to rescue his drug dealer bro-in-law from some bigger drug dealer, and so on and so forth. Starring Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale. Carmike12: 1:30, 4:30, 7:30 and 10 pm. Village 6: 4:30 and 7:30 pm nightly, with 10 pm shows on Fri. and Sat. and 1:30 matinees on Sat. and Sun. Pharaohplex: 6:50 and 9:10

HUGO Based on a children’s book no one in this office has ever read, Hugo is the story of a Parisian orphan who lives in the walls of a train station during the 1930s. There is a mystery, too, involving a robot and the boy’s father. Directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen. Carmike 12: 3D: 7:35. Village 6: 3D: 6:45 pm, with Sat. and Sun matinees at 1 pm. Stadium 14: 3D: 3:30 and 9:15 pm. JOYFUL NOISE Two choir directors bicker over how to win something which may not exist: the National Choir Competition. Starring Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah. Carmike 12: 1:15, 4:25, 7:35 and 10 pm. Pharaohplex: 6:50 and 9:10 pm, with matinees Sat. and Sun at 3 pm. Stadium 14: 1:05, 4:05, 7:05 and 9:40 pm, with midnight shows on Fri. and Sat. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE GHOST PROTOCOL Ethan Hunt and his crew are forced to go rogue, y’all. Told you not to bomb the Kremlin. Starring Tom Cruise and Paula Patton. Carmike 12: 7 and 10 pm. Stadium 14: 12:45, 3:45, 6:45 and 9:45 pm., Mon.-Thu.: 1, 3:45, 6:35 and 9:30 pm. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS Perhaps Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson will match wits with Professor Moriarty once again. Indubitably. Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Carmike 12: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9:50 pm. TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY One last mission. Retired spy George Smiley returns to duty and looks to foil a Soviet Cold War plot, in this film based on John le Carré’s book. Starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Wilma Theatre: 7 and 9:15 pm. 7 pm only on Fri., Jan. 21, Sat., Jan. 22 and Thu., Jan. 26.

Bosom buddies. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close opens Friday at the Carmike 12, Pharaohplex and Stadium 14.

and Michael Fassbender (and his penis). Village 6: 4 and 7 pm, with shows at 9:30 pm on Fri. and Sat. and 1:15 pm matinees on Sat. and Sun. Stadium 14: 12:15, 2:30, 4:45, 7:15 and 9:45 pm, with midnight shows on Fri. and Sat. 1:30, 4:20, 7:10 and 9:25 pm, Mon.-Thu. Mountain: 2, 4, 6:50 and 9:15 pm. RED TAILS The Tuskegee Airman are called to duty, so you Nazi punks best watch your six. Starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. (he’s back!). Carmike 12: 1, 4, 7 and 9:50 pm. Village 6: 4 and 7 pm, with shows at 10 pm on Fri. and Sat. and 1 pm matinees on Sat. and Sun. Stadium 14: 1, 4, 6:45 and 9:30 pm, with midnight shows on Fri. and Sat. 1:05, 3:50. 6:50 and 9:30 pm, Mon.-Thu. UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING Humans battle lycans and vampires. There will be no making out in trees during this one. Starring Kate Beckinsale and Michael Ealy. Carmike 12:

Village 6: 4 pm, with shows 9 pm shows on Fri. and Sat. Stadium 14: 1 pm. 3D: 6:50 pm. Mountain: 2:15, 4:30, 7 and 9 pm.

pm, with matinees Sat. and Sun at 3 pm. Stadium 14: 1:10, 4:10, 7:10 and 9:45 pm, with midnight shows on Fri. and Sat.

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIP-WRECKED Alvin and his bros., along with the Chipettes, fall off a cruise ship and drown. Jokes. They end up on a desert island. Starring Jason Lee and the voices of Justin Long and Amy Poehler. Carmike 12: 1:15 and 4:10. Stadium 14: 12:05, 2:20 and 4:30 pm. Mon.-Thu.: 1 and 4 pm.

THE DEVIL INSIDE Here comes a daughter with the look of a sleuth in her eye, as she seeks to discover how her mother died and perhaps who her mother killed during an exorcism. Starring Fernanda Andrade and Simon Quarterman. Carmike 12: 1:15, 4:15, 7:15 and 9:30 pm. Stadium 14: 7:10 and 9:25 pm, with midnight shows on Fri. and Sat. Showboat: 4:15, 7:15 and 9 pm.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D A pretty girl is held captive by a beast. Disney teaches young women how to choose a mate. We all win. Updated to 3D. Voices by Robby Benson and Paige O’Hara. Carmike 12: 1:15 pm. 3D: 4, 6:30 and 8:30 pm. Stadium 14: 12, 2:10, 4:30, 7 and 9:15 pm, with midnight shows on Fri. and Sat. 1:20, 4:10, 7 and 9:15 pm, Mon.-Thu.

Missoula Independent Page 34 January 19 – January 26, 2012

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (U.S.) Based on Stieg Larsson’s book, a journalist gets some help finding a person from a spooky lady. Stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. Village 6: 4:15 and 7:30 pm, with matinees at 1 pm on Fri. and Sat. Stadium 14: 12, 3:20 and 8:45 pm. Mon.-Thu.: 2 and 7:45 pm.

WAR HORSE A young man’s horse is enlisted for use by the cavalry during WWI, so of course the young man joins up for a spot of adventure and to find that beloved creature. Spielberg directs, cue well-lit faces. Carmike 12: 2, 5:30 and 9 pm. Pharaohplex: 7 pm nightly, with 3 pm matinees on Sat. and Sun. Stadium 14: 12, 3:15, 6:30 and 9:40 pm. Mon.-Thu.: 1, 4:15 and 7:40 pm. Mountain: 1:15, 4, 6:50 and 9:45 pm. On Sun., Jan 22: 2, 4:45 and 7:30 pm. WE BOUGHT A ZOO Matt Damon buys a struggling pet sanctuary after his wife dies and he falls in “like” with zookeeper Scarlett Johansson. Directed by Cameron Crowe. Showboat: 4, 7 and 9:15 pm. Capsule reviews by Jason McMackin. Moviegoers be warned! Show times are good as of Fri., Jan. 20. Show times and locations are subject to change or errors, despite our best efforts. Please spare yourself any grief and/or parking lot profanities by calling ahead to confirm. Theater phone numbers: Carmike 10/Village 6–541-7469; Wilma–728-2521; Pharaohplex in Hamilton–961-F I LM; S t a d i u m 14 i n K a l i s p e l l – 752 - 78 0 0 . Showboat in Polson, Entertainer in Ronan and Mountain in Whitefish–862-3130.

These pets may be adopted at Missoula Animal Control

These pets may be adopted at the Humane Society of Western Montana

541-7387

549-3934

SCOUT

At the shelter we all agree that Scout is simply the nicest dog in the world. He's loving, gentle, well-mannered, and always grateful for attention. We know he's going to make some lucky family a wonderful pet!

RIGBY

KIRA

Kira is a a beautiful, friendly lady who needs a family where someone is home most of time -- stay-at-home mom, retired person or couple, someone who works at home, etc. She just wants to be with her people!

3-year-old Rigby is an active and intelligent Australian Cattle Dog. She has experience with livestock and gets along well with most other dogs. Daily training exercises to provide mental stimulation are just as important as physical exercise for smart dogs.

Southgate Mall Missoula (406) 541-2886 • MTSmiles.com Open Evenings & Saturdays

BUTCH

Butch is a petite fellow, so we gave him a bigguy name to make up for his small size. He's quite friendly, likes to be handled, and is one of the tidiest rabbits we've ever cared for. He does, however, want a real home! 2420 W Broadway 2310 Brooks 3075 N Reserve 6149 Mullan Rd

BARNABY

Barnaby is a very playful older kitten, but he really needs more room than his cage at the shelter. Besides always have a truly sweet look on his face, he also has outstanding tabby marking on his body.

NYLES

This stunning young adult male is super outgoing! He has a lovable disposition and enjoys snuggling on a lap. Nyles gets along well with most other cats. He is quiet and sweet. Who could resist his charming good looks?

1600 S. 3rd W. 541-FOOD

FRED

Fred's owner moved and left him behind, the same owner who had named him Fathead. This handsome, shy fellow deserves better than that! We changed his name and are hoping for a new, loving owner soon.

BELLA

This gorgeous older tortoiseshell is very easy to get along with. She doesn't have the typical torti sass you would expect. She is 8 years old and thus is a candidate for the Seniors for Seniors adoption program.

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MISSY

5-year-old Missy is patiently awaiting her forever home. She LOVES to play with feather toys and use her scratching board. Missy is an independent cat and wont be very demanding of your time.

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Missoula Food Bank 219 S. 3rd St. W.

The Flower Bed

Missoula’s Unique Alternative for pet Supplies

PAT T O N

Patton is a big, fluffy, friendly guy whose favorite activities are eating and then lounging around until it's time to eat again! We have him on diet food, and we think he'd be more active in a real home with a family.

2405 McDonald Ave. 721-9233

JAZZ

This active Australian Shepherd cross adores other dogs, cats, and even ferrets! She is 5 years old and is very playful. She loves to go for walks on her leash. She is very responsive and well-trained. Her adoption fee is $90.

www.gofetchDOG.com - 728-2275

627 Woody • 3275 N. Reserve Street Corner of 39th and Russell in Russell Square

MARA

Gorgeous Mara is an outgoing Maine Coon adult. She gets along well with other cats. Mara will rub up against you until you give her some attention. She is not as large as some Maine Coons but still has the gorgeous coloring and fur.

MON - SAT 10-9 • SUN 11-6 721-5140 www.shopsouthgate.com

These pets may be adopted at AniMeals 721-4710 MANALA

Manala was a happy girl, living her life in a home that she loved, until the new baby became allergic to her. She is hoping she gets a chance to find a forever family to unconditionally love her just as much as she loves them.

JUNE

The afternoon summer sun, blue sky, white puffy clouds...June is not only a beautiful month, but June is also a beautiful kitty. You can enjoy June all year long by giving her a forever home! Equus & Paws, L.L.C.

BOULDER

A boulder is defined as a large, smooth piece of rock detached from its place of origin. Boulder was detached from his place of origin as a kitten during our 2010 kitten season. He is a beautiful 1 1/2 year-old Tuxedo kitty. 715 Kensington Ste 8

406-240-1113 A Nice Little Bead Store In A Nice Little Town 105 Ravalli St Suite G, Stevensville, MT 59870 406.777.2141

2825 Stockyard Rd. www.equusandpaws.com • 406.552.2157

Find me on FACEBOOK jessicagoulding.zenfolio.com specializing in weddings, pets, families, babies, senior J. Willis Photography pictures, fine art, and more!

SHY

Taken away from his home with his lifelong companion, and who was adopted from AniMeals not long after arriving, Shy became somewhat reclusive. This 3-year-old went through a tough time and internalized his pain of losing what he thought was his forever home. Help us nourish Missoula Donate now at

www.missoulafoodbank.org For more info, please call 549-0543

Missoula Food Bank 219 S. 3rd St. W.

Missoula Independent Page 35 January 19 – January 26, 2012

World Headquarters All Compact Discs, New & Used $2off All Jewelry 25% off All Body Products 25% off All Posters & Art 25% off All Cards, Journals & Paper Products 25% off All Toys 25% off• All Clothing 25% off All Chocolates & Candies 25% off All Valentine’s Cards & Goodies 25% off

Rudy’s II Record Heaven All Vinyl - New & Used 25% off All Turntables, Cartridges & Stereo Equipment 25% off SALE ENDS 1/29/12

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