The Reader 03/17/11

march 17 - 23, 2011 VOL.18

04

dish 16

Like Nothing Else

Theater 21 ‘Three Tall Women’

music 23

Distinctively Dodos

drop dead gorgeous film 31

‘Battle: Los Angeles’

OMAHA JOBS 2

still life photos of vera mercer expose unique taste for art cover story by michael j. krainak ~ Page 12

Weird 34

MOjo 36

FUNNIES 37

Full-time

Full-time

Farmers Insurance PT Contact Manager Contact mcarlson1@farmersagent.com. For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Merry Maids Solo Cleaners. Contact nporter@merrymaids.com.

For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Hillcrest Health Systems

Black Hills Corp.

Blair, NE. visit: blackhillscorp.com. For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Fontenelle Nature Assoc.

Finance Associate. Contact jhuffman@fontenelleforest.org. For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Zio’s Pizzeria S e r v e r s Contact ziospizza@juno.com For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Occupational Therapist & CMA/CAN/FT/PT Contact jyoung@hillcresthealth.co m. For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

R&R Advertising Seasonal PT jobs at TDAmeritrade Park Omaha.

Contact jthaller@mac.com.

For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Full-time

Full-time

Full-time

Full-time

Full-time

Full-time

As part of Black Hills Corporation (NYSE: BKH), Black Hills Energy is your service provider, offering electric and natural gas service to customers in Nebraska. We offer the following career opportunity: Service Technician (Blair, NE) Requires high school diploma and NE driver’s license with safe driving record. Must have completed at least 6 months in Service Technician Trainee classification or have equivalent training or experience as determined by the company; working knowledge of NE HVAC and plumbing codes, electronics & HVAC equipment; demonstrated ability to understand control systems, read blueprints and wiring diagrams. Must obtain and keep current, applicable licenses and certificates, and work assigned shifts, on call, assigned holidays and overtime as required. We offer an attractive salary based upon qualifications with competitive benefits and a supportive professional work environment. To learn more about Black Hills Corporation and apply for this position, visit: blackhillscorp. com EOE/AA.

Metropolitan Utilities District Information Technology Division. Candidates must have the ability to communicate effectively verbally and in writing with diverse clientele, including technical personnel, both internal and external to the District. Qualified individuals must also have a valid Driver’s License. Experience with Cisco operating software for IOS, VLANS and ISL/802.1Q is desired.

The Human Resources Office is located at 3100 South 61st Avenue, Gate #1, where a full job description for this position may be viewed. Applications will be accepted between the hours of 7:30a.m. - 4:00p.m., until March 25, 2011.

Now hiring friendly, experienced servers for nights & weekends. Excellent Tips. Apply MondayFriday 1p.m.-4p.m. 12997 West Center Road.

For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Nebraska CNA or Nebraska CNA/Med Aide 40 certified. Experience in Long Term Care if helpful.

Full benefit package: Health, Dental, Vision, Life, Cancer, Critical Illness, Accident, 401(k) with a match, Double time on Holidays, and paid Vacation and Sick leave.

Contact Kathy Hicks, HR Manager, Phone 402-6144000, Fax 402-614-4015 Brookestone Village, 4330 S 144th St, Omaha NE 68137, BrookestoneVillage.com.

JOB FAIR – APRIL 6, 2011 MARK YOUR CALENDARS NOW! OmahaJobs.com will be hosting their first of five job fairs for 2011 on April 6th at CoCo Keys Resort from 10a.m. to 5p.m. FREE to the public. Many great companies have already signed up to do recruiting that day.

Bring plenty of resumes and dress for success. Adults looking for employment, career change and education opportunites.

Please plan to attend Omahajobs.com job fair.

Assistant or Associate Professor. The successful candidate will be expected to develop a solid, funded research program and contribute to teaching medical, allied health and graduate students.

Visit OmahaJobs.com for more details.

Predictive Technology, Sales Representatives.

Contact awilson@ptisolutions.com For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

State Farm Sales/Service Assistant.

C o n t a c t kyle.emsick.rnol@statefarm.com. For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Ambitious? Creative? Outgoing?

P r ud e n t i a l Agency Recruiter. Contact Shelly.larsen@prudential.c om. For more information go to OmahaJobs.com.

Now Hiring!

Pioneer Publishing, a fast growing local media company with over 10 channels, both print and online, is seeking Marketing Solutions Experts for full-time, part-time and freelance positions. Successful candidates must be ambitious, creative, outgoing, super helpful with a passion for solving problems and building relationships. If you have a background in sales, marketing or customer service, especially in the bar, restaurant, automotive or media industries, we want to talk to you! We need team members who are ready to meet new people, understand marketing needs, close the deal and deliver ongoing value. Spanish proficiency is a plus.

Graphic and Web Design Openings Proficient in Adobe Creative Suite, HTML, Expression Engine experience a PLUS. Work with creative team of Local Print and Digital Media. Varying M-F schedules. English and Spanish required.

Drop your resume and goals to work@thereader.com

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Check out this position’s special qualifications and apply online at: www.convergys.com/careers and select Omaha, NE. EOE

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march 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

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BOG5: Mail-in rebate and activation required on each handset. All handsets must be activated on the same account. Service credit requires new two-year agreement and Smartphone purchase. $100 credit will be applied to your account in $50 increments over two billing periods. Credits will start within 60 days after activation.

Account must remain active in order to receive credit. No cash value. Kansas Customers: In areas in which U.S. Cellular receives support from the Federal Universal Service Fund, all reasonable requests for service must be met. Unresolved questions concerning services availability can be directed to the Kansas Corporation Commission Office of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at 1-800-662-0027. Android and the Android Robot are trademarks of Google, Inc. Trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners. Other restrictions apply. See store or uscellular.com/project for details. Limited-time offer. ©2011 U.S. Cellular.

BURST_6_Lower_A_News

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USC-PRD-11-005 | THE READER |

march 17BURST_6_Upper_A_News - 23, 2011 3

Destination: World’s Fare will take you to four fabulous destinations!

Play black jack and roulette in Las Vegas; Enjoy the intrigue of India; Hear opera in Vienna, Austria; Experience the magical lights of Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens.

An Act II benefit for the Omaha Community Playhouse

FOR THE GETAWAY OF A LIFETIME!

Dine on international cuisine! Sip signature cocktails!

Enjoy surprise entertainment along the way!

Saturday, April 9 at the Omaha Community Playhouse ALL passengers receive complimentary bar service for the evening.

6 p.m. ~ $125 per ticket

Patron reception featuring exclusive access to the high dollar tables. Enjoy cuisine from one of Omaha’s most exclusive restaurants and passed champagne!

7-9 p.m. ~ $75 per ticket

Feast on international cuisine and sip signature cocktails from all corners of the world.

There will be many surprises along the way so be ready for anything! Don’t forget to purchase raffle tickets and pick up souvenirs at the silent auction.

For more information, call the Development Coordinator at (402) 553-4890, ext. 145. www.omahaplayhouse.org 4

march 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

Letters to the Editor: letters@thereader.com

EDITORIAL

Publisher/Editor: John Heaston Content Director: Eric Stoakes, erics@threader.com Managing Editor: Sean Brennan, seanb@thereader.com Contributing News Editor: Andrew Norman, andrewn@thereader.com Listings Editor: Paul Clark, listings@thereader.com Copy Editor: Ed Howard Contributing Editors: Ryan Syrek (film), Michael J. Krainak (art), Sarah Lorsung Tvrdik (lifestyle), Chris Aponick (music) Senior Editorial Contributors: Leo Biga, Michael Braunstein, Warren Francke, B.J. Huchtemann, Tim McMahan, Michael Pryor, Jesse D. Stanek, Kyle Tonniges, Sarah Baker Hansen, Sarah Wengert Editorial Contributors: Brian S. Allen, Avishay Artsy, Mike Babcock, Nicole Blauw, Wayne Brekke, Steve Brewer, Chalis Bristol, Jill Bruckner, Jeremy Buckley, Jesse Claeys, Paul Clark, Ben Coffman, Brent Crampton, Sally Deskins, Kyle Eustice, Jarrett Fontaine, Adam Froemming, Layne Gabriel, Phil Jarrett, Tessa Jeffers, Camille Kelly, Jason Krivanek, Casey Logan, Jasmine Maharisi, Sean McCarthy, Rob McLean, Neal Obermeyer, Adam Payson, Hal Senal, Justin Senkbile, Patricia Sindelar, Darian Stout, Carson Vaughan, Brandon Vogel, John Wenz, David Williams Photography Contributors: Neal Duffy, Bryce Bridges, Adam Brubaker, Justin Barnes, Fletch, Eric Francis, Dale Heise, Bill Sitzmann, Paparazzi by Appointment, Sean Welch, Marlon A. Wright

PRODUCTION AND DESIGN

Creative Director: Eric Stoakes, erics@thereader.com Production/Graphics Assistant: Derrick Schott, derricks@thereader.com

DISTRIBUTION

Distribution Manager: Clay Seaman Delivery Team: Roy Allen, Ed Boyer, Neal Duffy, Don Henkens, Dick Himmerberg, Jason Hipsher, Mark Kelly, Micah McGaffin, Juan Ramirez, Patrick Seals, Joe Shearer, Shari Wilhelm

new etc.

7 Top News 8-9 News Hound ————————————————

heartland healing

11 Tick, Tock: Set your body clock ————————————————

m a r c h 1 7 - 2 3 , 2 0 11 V O L . 1 8 n o . 0 4

lazy-i

cover story

26 Red Sky Mining — Who will play at Omaha’s largest music festival?

————————————————

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Still life photos of Vera Mercer expose unique taste for art ~ Page 12

hoodoo

27 Josh Garrett, Roomful of Blues, Jumpin’ & Swingin’ ————————————————

dish

16 Like Nothing Else 16 Crumbs: Food News ————————————————

film

eight days

18-19 This Week’s Top Events ————————————————

FROM STILL LIFES by VERA MERCER

P.O. Box 7360 Omaha, NE 68107 Phone 402.341.7323 Fax 402.341.6967 www.thereader.com OUR STAFF

this week

theater

21 Superb Interpretation 21 Cold Cream: Literary News ————————————————

music

23 The Dodos 23 Backbeat: Music News 24 Sic Alps ———————————————-----

31 Black Hawk Clowns 31 Cutting Room: Film News 32 What Happens in Iowa...

32 Report Card: Film Grades ————————————————

news of the weird

34 Professor Numbskull ————————————————

mojo

36 Planet Power Horoscopes ————————————————

funnies

37 Modern World, Red Meat, Dr. Mysterian ————————————————

ADVERTISING & BUSINESS

Account Executives: Kathy Flavell, Rita Staley, Erik Totten Sales Associate: David Mills Communications Coordinator: David Williams Management Analyst: Diana Gonzalez Office Manager: Kerry Olson

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Promotions Director: Rita Staley, ritas@thereader.com Creative Director: Eric Stoakes, erics@thereader.com Style Events Coordinator: Jessica Hill, Deaunna Hardrich, Jessica Stensrud

Interns

Jessica Stensrud Dick Akromis The Reader is published every Thursday by Pioneer Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 7360, Omaha, NE 68107, 402.341.READ, Fax 402.341.6967.

The Reader is free in the Omaha, Lincoln, Council Bluffs area. Domestic subscriptions area available for $35 a year. Opinions expressed herein are those of the writer(s) and may not reflect the opinion of The Reader, its management and employees or its advertisers. The Reader accepts unsolicited manuscripts. For more advertising rates contact sales@thereader.com. To send comments to the editor, contact letters@thereader.com

PARTNERS Heartland Healing: Michael Braunstein, hh@thereader.com

Today’s Omaha Woman: Carrie Kentch, carriek@thereader.com

Woman TODAY’S OMAHA

Omahajobs.com: omahajobs@thereader.com

El Perico: elperico@abm-enterprises.com Directorio Latino: dlo@abm-enterprises.com

contents

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march 17 - 23, 2011

5

THU. MARCH 24 MID-AMERICA CENTER All Ages | 6:00 PM One Arena Way | Council Bluffs, IA

TICKETS AVAILABLE THRU

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march 17 - 23, 2011

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OUTLETS, WWW.TICKETMASTER.COM OR BY PHONE (800)745-3000

notableevents

Q St. Patrick’s Day Luncheon: Thursday, March 17, 11 a.m., Firefighter’s Union Hall, 60th and Grover. Omaha chapter of Ancient Order of the Hibernians celebrate St. Paddy’s Day with food and entertainment. irishomaha.com Q Teen Job Fair: Monday, March 21, 12:30 p.m., W. Clarke Swanson Library, 9101 W. Dodge Rd. A job fair specifically for teens ages 16 to 19 seeking summer employment. omahapubiclibrary.org Q Black-White Dialogues: Tuesday, March 22, 6:45 p.m., Big Mama’s Kitchen, 3223 N. 45th St. City Councilman Ben Gray speaks on the divide between east and west Omaha. black-white-dialogues.org

topnews e d i t e d

Big business aims to help students move students from the classroom to the boardroom

Y

by Brandon Vogel

and creativity — to traditional, core education subjects.

It reads like the “skills required” section of a job listing for a reason.

“Generally speaking everybody understands that we need to teach not just knowledge but skills as well,” Fadel says. “Education in the 21st Century is about the combination of knowledge and the ability to apply it.”

ou know about the three Rs – Charles Fadel reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic.

But some of the world’s biggest companies want to teach the four Cs. Education author and lecturer Charles Fadel can explain.

“People have this idea that vocational training is about skills, and traditional training is about knowledge,” says Fadel, co-author of the best-selling book 21st Century Skills – Learning for Life in our Times “But critical thinking and creative thinking is not just for college-bound students. What we’re really asking for is a rebalancing of the theoretical, versus the tangible.”

The global education research lead for Cisco Systems — the world’s largest consumer-electronic company — Fadel has devoted his life to changing education’s landscape. He’s a visiting lecturer at Harvard and Penn universities, and serves on the board of the Partnership for The featured speaker at Brownell-Talbot’s 21st Century Skills, a private-federal partner- inaugural 21st Century Education Lecture, Fadel ship to install marketable job skills into the says students can gain more by learning planets’ K-12 curriculum. names by preparing a presentation, for example, The partnership began in 2002, when eight rather than through memorization. companies, including tech heavyweights Apple, Fadel says social and economic factors make Microsoft, Dell and Sisco, joined the U.S. Depart- implementing the approach nationwide difficult. ment of Education to promote the “Framework But so far, 15 states — including South Dakota, for 21st Century Learning.” It adds the four Cs — Iowa and Kansas — have integrated the skillscritical thinking, communication, collaboration based education approach into their standards, assessments and state regulations.

FEELING JOBBED:

American jobs lost between Dec. 2007 and July 2009: 7,500,000 American jobs recovered between July 2009 and Feb. 2011: 322,000 Number of jobs gained by men during the recovery: 622,000 Number of jobs lost by women during the recovery: 300,000

Source: U.S. Dept. of Labor/National Women’s Law Center

n o r m a n

Nebraska child welfare services director provides his take on privatization

Nebraska isn’t one of them. But BrownellTalbot Headmaster Dianne Desler says individual schools are starting to incorporate some of the techniques into their curriculum.

Her school has conducted a life skills program since 2007, and was home to the state’s first high school laptop project.

“We’ve done a good job in terms of preparing our students for college and life, and we’ve been doing that for 150 years,” Desler says. “But there’s always room to grow in a globally competitive market. We were in the industrial age and now we’re in the information age. That brings changes.”

Fadel says he 21st Century classroom involves more than just shiny new computers. In fact, the goal is to make technological tools inconspicuous.

“It should just be part of anything we do in school, as it is in what we do at work,” he says. “If you’re studying the H1N1 virus, let’s overlay what the students are learning with Google Maps. Let’s let them blog about it. It should be that natural — as natural as those things we do with technology in everyday life. It should be embedded throughout.”

Fadel says future classrooms will look very different to generations of people raised on orderly rows of desks and blackboards. Traditional education has allowed sa more fluid environment among young students,”By middle school we become very rigid.

“What [parents] would see is collaboration, and they might not recognize the level of engagement.” , Charles Fadel delives the inaugural 21st Century Education Lecture March 22, 6:30 p.m. at BrownellTalbot , 400 N. Happy Hollow Blvd. Tickets are $15; or $40 with a copy of Fadel’s book. Contact brownell. edu for more information or to purchase tickets.

numberscruncher

a n d r e w

upfront

21st Century Teaching Tools

B y

We wanted to talk with Todd Reckling for last week’s cover story on Nebraska child welfare, but he wasn’t available. So we were pleased when the state’s director of Child and Family Services called after readi=ng the story to add his position on some points we made.

The story, Tough Climb Ahead, offered a sobering take of the state’s so-called reform efforts. One of our points: “Each of the more than 6,200 child wards of the state has been given a new case worker — many have had multiple agents.”

Reckling took issue with that statement. He says the department had case managers assigned to the cases in western and central Nebraska while the lead contractor was working with the family.

“There was always continuity there,” he says.

Still, from January-October 2010, more than half of the children in the state’s care had two or more service providers, according to a December report by the governor-appointed Foster Care Review Board.

Within a year, three of the five lead agencies hired in the revision process had dropped out or declared bankruptcy — leaving the state to resume its responsibilities in western and central Nebraska. The contractors exits contributed to depleting services. Shelters in North Platte and Kearney have closed, forcing kids to be shipped as far as Columbus to have a place to stay overnight.

The state has seen a decrease in its licensed foster care providers, Reckling says.

“At the same time, we’re also increasing in some of our approved foster homes — with relatives and families known to the child,” he says.

And to the frustration expressed by service providers and child welfare advocates about privatization?

Reckling says he hears a lot of that. He says his career path through the agency had a profound impact on him.

He started as a frontline case worker; he did intake and investigations for about six years. And he supervised in the rural northeast part of the state.

“I’ve seen a child in the hospital die because of abuse and neglect,” Reckling says. “I’ve sat through the autopsy. I’ve lived moment by moment knowing that my relationship with foster parents to get kids placed in the middle of the night was critical.

“No, I haven’t walked in their shoes,” he says. “But I have an incredible amount of respect for the system.

And I can appreciate what they’re going through. That’s why it’s so critical for us to try to … get through these issues together so we can come out in a better place than we were before.”

— Andrew Norman

theysaidit they “It’s just been an absolute fiscal train wreck and a terrible embarrassment for the state of Nebraska.” – State Auditor Mike Foley on the results of an eight-month audit of the State Law Enforcement Bargaining Council, which found the SLEBC used $1.2 million in public employee health care funds to build an office condo for the State Troopers Association of Nebraska.

news

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march 17 - 23, 2011

7

thenewshound

Feb. 18–March 27

P O L I T I C O | L AW A N D O R D E R | B U S I N E S S A N D D E V E L O P M E N T

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MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

news

school districts announced they were pulling out Nebraska’s Arizona-style law is on ice for now of the collaborative learning community, leaving after the state legislature’s Judiciary Com- Omaha Public Schools to either pay the annual mittee decided not to advance Fremont Sen. $1.4 million tab on its own or close the school.

Thanks to a private $800,000 donation, the OPS Charlie Janssen’s Illegal Immigration Enforcement Act (LB48) March 10. Two other Board announced March 14 that it was keeping the immigration bills requiring more stringent school open for at least the next three years. The background checks by employers and law en- school was originally slated to close June 24. Now forcement agencies also failed to advance out OPS is searching for a new location for the elementary school before the 2011-2012 of committee, effectively taschool year starts. The current bling the state’s debate over CHARLIE JANSSEN Underwood Hills elementary immigration reform until program is housed in a building next year. owned by the Westside School The committee instead District. ordered an interim study of a new law passed in Utah that Housing Authority allows the state to issue guest chairman steps down worker permits that enable After five months on the job, undocumented immigrants Omaha Housing Authority already living there to conboard chairman Phil Wayne tinue working. resigned March 10, citing disRebecca Gould, executive agreements among the board. director of the public interest Wayne’s departure was the law firm Nebraska Appleseed, latest setback in a rocky 2011 for the agency. praised the decision.

In January, executive director Stan Timm re“People in Nebraska want common-sense, workable immigration reform at the federal level, signed amidst allegations from the OHA board and they want our legislators to focus on policies that he used more than $1 million in federal lowthat promote strong families and build strong, income housing funds to pay employees. Timm vibrant, integrated communities,” she said in a has not been charged in the case. That financial statement. “The Judiciary Committee’s decision setback wasn’t included in the January report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban protects our state’s best interests.”

Development, which gave the OHA a D-minus grade for the authority’s 2009 fiscal year. The Donation saves focus school In January the Underwood Hills Focus School ranking puts the OHA in danger of receiving was nearly down for the count. Faced with loom- HUD penalties and cuts in financing. ing state budget cuts, the Elkhorn and Westside

murderink they Jarrod Maxwell, 36, was shot and killed near 30th and Newport Ave. on March 8. Police arrested two suspects in connection with the murder and have issued a warrant for a third.

2011 OMAHA HOMICIDES: 9 (THERE WERE 9 HOMICIDES AT THIS TIME LAST YEAR)

Jonathan Levi Armendariz was booked on suspicion of first-degree criminal homicide. The murder was Bellevue’s first since 2009.

Texas fugitive apprehended in Omaha

On Mar. 9 David Puckett, 27, escaped from a Beaumont, Texas prison where he was serving Omaha commuters won’t face a $50 wheel fee a 30-year sentence for cutting a police officer’s after Gov. Dave Heinemann throat. On March 12, he signed a bill banning such gov. dave heinemann was featured on “America’s taxes on March 10. The bill, Most Wanted.” On March LB81, was approved by a 37-4 14, Omaha’s Metro Area Fuvote in the Nebraska Legislagitive Task Force captured ture a day earlier.

Puckett after the fugitive Losing the wheel tax will jumped from a second-story cost the City of Omaha $2.8 apartment at 4760 Lafayette million in revenue earmarked Ave. Police also arrested an for road maintenance. It was Omaha woman for her role the second successive hit to in aiding a felon. the city’s budget in as many Puckett is being held weeks as the Legislature votat the Douglas County ed to cut state aid to cities by Corrections Center while a total of $22 million per year, awaiting possible extradicosting Omaha $3.3 million. tion to Texas.

The cuts won’t take effect until 2012, giving the city a year to decide how to deal with Omaha mom charged with child neglect the tax reductions.

Shanta Wood, 22, was arrested and charged with felony child neglect March 14 after auTeen arrested in Bellevue murder case thorities found her two-month-old boy weighed Bellevue police arrested a 17-year-old Omaha fewer than five pounds. Children’s Hospital and teen on March 11 in connection with the mur- Medical Center staff alerted Child Protective der earlier this month of Kyle Williams. Wil- Services in January after the child was weighed liams, 18, was found dead in his home at 9701 at 4-pounds, 7-ounces — nearly 1.5 pounds less S. 25th Ave. from a single gunshot wound to than his birth weight. Wood is scheduled to apthe head on March 3. pear in court April 1.

Lawmakers stop wheel tax in its tracks

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On Mar. 14 Mayor Jim Suttle nominated Jennifer Taylor, a corporate and real estate attorney, to replace Wayne as board chairman.

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| THE READER |

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night. All their athletes and coaches had their careers interrupted in a move that will have a trickledown effect on all collegiate sports in the state. UNO was moving forward but leaving a good chunk of its athletic history behind.

Someday it will be hailed as the right move. It has to be. There’s no room to be wrong. Most collegiate football programs don’t make money. UNO’s was no different.

The wrestling program simply didn’t match up with sports offered by other Summit League schools. Those are the facts, and the reasons for the change. The ramifications are yet to come.

On Selection Sunday UNO fans got a glimpse of what the excitement could be like. Oakland, one of the Mavs’ new conference rivals, was on national television reacting to getting a matchup with Texas in the NCAA Tournament. At the same time supporters of the wrestling program rallied outside Sapp Fieldhouse to salute a tradition that was no more.

Both groups were entitled to their emotions.

â– If youĂ­re not a fan of green beer, idiots in green top hats and “Kiss Me I’m Irishâ€? buttons, consider stopping by the OM Center at 1216 Howard in the Old Market this St. PattyĂ­s day. Righteous Babe recording artist Buddy Wakefield a two-time Individual World Poetry Slam Champion whoĂ­s been featured on NPR, the BBC, HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam,â€? and toured with righteous babe Ani DiFranco will perform. The event is scheduled to run from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and a $7 donation is suggested. â– The Omaha Chapter of the League of Women Voters will present “Lady Arrested for Voting!â€?chronicling the life and times of Susan B. Anthony and the fight for women’s suffrage, this Saturday, March 19 at the Saddlebrook Branch (18450 Laurel Ave) of the Omaha Public Library at 1 pm.

Later that same day, the Benson branch at 6015 Binney will host “Board Silly: An Evening of Fun for Adultsâ€? beginning at 7pm. The free event, which includes a cash bar, enables game-lovers to get together to play “Dance Dance Revolution,â€? ĂŹRock Band,â€? “Operation,â€? cards and more. Games

are provided but you do need to register in advance. Call Amy at 444.3399 or Rodney at 444.4846 for more information.

— Brandon Vogel The Jump takes you behind the local headlines. Email jump@thereader. com and look for daily updates at twitter.com/brandonlvogel.

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â– On March 12 the UNO wrestling team won its third straight national title. On March 13 the wrestling program was effectively gone, a casualty of the new face of college athletics.

The word bittersweet was made for weekends like this. While the wrestlers were wrapping up their title in Kearney on Saturday night the UNO hockey team was being bounced from the WCHA tournament on its home ice by Bemidji State. It was a stark contrast. The school’s most successful athletic program succeeded, again, in relative anonymity while its most visible program faltered at the end of its most high-profile season to date.

And then the announcement came. Football and wrestling were out. Men’s soccer and golf were in to make way for a move up to Division I athletics and a spot in the Summit League.

Rumors of the move started to swirl Saturday night. At a somber Sunday press conference UNO chancellor John Christensen and athletic director Trev Alberts confirmed the move. “I am incredibly excited about the opportunities going forward and the invitation for UNO to be a part of a Division I conference,� Christensen said in his opening remarks. A few minutes later he confirmed what anyone could see from looking at him. He was also incredibly sad.

It’s the only mix of emotions that makes sense. Two tradition-rich programs ended over-

THEJUMP

1R

â– If youĂ­ve been putting off buying an ereader, you may want to consider holding out till the fall. Technologist Kevin Kelly is predicting that Amazon will be giving Kindles away come November 2011. His theory is that customers who sign up for Amazon Prime, a $79-per-year membership that entitles customers to free two-day shipping and unlimited streaming movies, will get free Kindles to sweeten the deal. ĂŹIt brilliantly feeds into Bezo’s long-term strategy of nurturing extreme customer satisfaction,â€? Kelly writes in his Technium column on kk.org site. “What could be more satisfying that a free Kindle, free movies, and free two-day shipping for $80 a year?â€? All we can do is wait. — Kyle Tonniges Comments? Questions? Want more? Check out our Booked blog online at thereader.com. Or email us at booked@thereader.com.

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MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

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heartlandhealing

a g e

h e a l t h

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w e l l n e s s

Tick, Tock: Set your body clock

B

y now you probably figure your body has adjusted to the March ritual that set our watches and clocks ahead one hour this past Sunday. Would that it were so. After millions of years of evolution that molded our natural response to day and night, light and dark, it takes a bit more than a day or two before we adapt to a one-hour shift in life.

It’s not that our existence is tuned to the contrivance of a clock that is man’s invention, but rather that the slowly changing, cyclic nature of the rising and setting of the sun, the angle of its light, the shift in the electromagnetic flow and the variance of the seasons all play a part in our connection with nature. An abrupt shift in that relationship is as jarring to our nature as, well, an earthquake. It takes time to get back to normal.

Many researchers believe the so-called “daylight savings time” shift back and forth causes health problems that include increased heart attacks and depleted immune system response.

Doshas and nature. The ancient Indian medical system known as ayurveda identifies three primary energies in nature, pitta, vata and kapha. All existence is made of these three energies — bodies, planets, trees, and foods — everything. Related to the body, these energies are called doshas.

Balance of the doshas is crucial to health.

We can stay in synch with nature by studying the nature of the doshas.

Pitta relates to the element fire, or anything that has a fiery, hot and high-energy nature. Summer is a pitta season, peppers are a pitta spice and we all know fiery people.

Vata is airy, dry, cool, changeable, mercurial, identified with the element wind. Vata people tend to be thin. Winter is a vata season.

Kapha is heavy energy. Identified with earth, dampness, growing, it is slower moving and deliberate.

Spring is typically kapha and kapha people are heavier framed and even-tempered.

Each person has all three of these energies in various amounts at various times. Nothing is entirely one of the three. The parts make up the whole. Balancing these energies conveys health. Harmonizing the expression of these energies keeps us in synch with nature. Observing nature we understand the system.

The daily cycle: dincharya. In Sanskrit, “following the day” is called dincharya. Energy flow is obvious on a daily cycle. Acting in accordance with these cycles, wear and tear on the body is minimized. Health is optimized.

Each energy dominates certain daily segments.

First, the days are divided into 12-hour (roughly) daylight and nighttime segments we call phase one and phase two. Within each phase, a pitta, vata and kapha period extends for about four hours then repeats a second time in the second phase.

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Nature begins with a kapha stage around sunrise or 6 a.m. Even animals reflect that. Things grow in the early stages of kapha. It is productive. We should arise daily before the kapha period begins to prepare for the productive time. Notice around sunrise, birds and animals make a racket, are very active. An hour or so later, they are still. Stay in bed past that crucial switch to kapha, we get sleepy again.

By 10 a.m. we enter the first pitta stage of the day. Mid-pitta is the best time to take in fuel, when we should eat our main meal of the day. The fiery characteristic helps metabolize food efficiently.

Near 2 p.m. we enter the first vata period. There is airiness to what we do and get done. This is not the time to be doing the heaviest work of the day but time to restore some of the energy of the day. (Observe siesta time in some cultures.)

Around 6 p.m., nature enters the second daily kapha period. Our early evening meal should be light for the earth is growing heavy. You can feel it as the earth and animals grow quiet, preparing to rest. We should enter sleep near the end of the heavy period, around 9:30 p.m. Remain awake beyond and it is likely that you will catch a “second wind” and then won’t be able to sleep easily until the next period change.

By 10 p.m., the earth enters the second pitta period of the day. It is high-energy and fiery, but now as outflow. As we sleep, our temperature is a little warmer and we metabolize waste materials out of the body as the organs and breathing excrete. Being pitta, it is still high-energy but of a different polarity.

By 2 a.m. we are in vata, the airy time of the night, cooling. Now we dream vividly, our body cools. Nearing the end of this vata period, about 5 or 6 a.m., is when we should arise. From about 9:30 p.m. to about 5:30 a.m. we have gotten the sleep we need.

Even though we describe the day in terms of hours, the dincharya cycle is not based on arbitrary time but on nature. When we mess with that cycle by moving time and our response to it around, our bodies are impacted.

Technology de-syncs us. Since seasons are part of pitta, vata and kapha cycles, nature provides foods that help balance the energies. In the hot, dog days of summer (a pitta season,) nature gives us vata foods like melons and leafy greens to cool us. Fall, and nature proffers potatoes and heavier foods. Winter is the time of stored grains. But technology has disrupted natural food selection. We can deliver foods from around the world at any time. We are seasonally indiscriminate in our menu selections.

Our undisciplined use of the electric light is probably the greatest obstacle to living in harmony with nature. We stay up later than nature, not because we should, but because we can.

Ayurveda teaches clear guidance that can help us live in accordance with nature.

Be well. ,

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| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

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coverstory

Drop Dead Gorgeous Still life photos of Mercer expose unique taste for art

vera mercer

by Michael J. Krainak

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march 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

brycebridges.com

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f a viewer enters photographer Vera Mercer’s first U.S. solo show and stays long enough, he or she is likely to experience it in three stages and on a roller coaster of emotions.

Still Lifes, on display at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts through April 9, features 11 large format, painterly images from this Omaha-based international artist that, with colorful compositions of food, flora and fauna, may remind some of 17th century Flemish and Dutch paintings.

That is, once one gets over or past two inevitable initial reactions. The first is an immediate sensual response to these works, which are drop-dead gorgeous. A fitting description, more ironic than hyperbolic, considering the object holding center stage in each is an animal whose life indeed has gone still. And though initially all photos are a moveable feast for the eyes, it becomes readily apparent that not all objects are fit or even prepared for human consumption. Unless, perhaps, Andrew Zimmern of the Travchicken melon el Channel is your cup of Chinese medicine tea whose ingredients include shavings from a deer’s penis.

Speaking of deer, one of the most striking images in this most impressive exhibit is titled simply Deer Head, and it is served on a platter as prominently as was that of John the Baptist, at least in Oscar Wilde’s version of the story in his play Sa-

lome. While most viewers may not be tempted to embrace said deer as did Salome the head of St. John, there is no denying Mercer’s artistic license and paradoxical “joie de vivre” for all dead creatures, great and small.

Which brings us to the second stage.

Because beauty remains in the eye of the beholder, it may

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be difficult for some to appreciate a skinned “Nude Rabbit,” a dead “Redheaded Woodpecker,” “Paris” with raspberries, a skeletal “Naked Deer Head,” or the severed foot of a pig in “Pied de Cochon, Hong Kong.” Each is served up lovingly, almost reverentially, as if items on a banquet table graced with roses, melon, orchids and candle light. To an audience conditioned to a processed and prepared carry-out cuisine, the sight of what some might deem “road kill” could kill their appetite for art.

But not the artist. Mercer began making photos of food and its industry in the ’60s in the marketplace of Paris, where she and her husband Mark still keep an apartment.

She first gained notoriety for her portraits

of such artists as Jean Tinguely, Miki de Saint-Phalle, Eva Aeppli, Norman Mailer and Andy Warhol, as well as documentation of an avant-garde community known as the “Nouveau Realistes.” Since coming to Omaha 40 years ago, the Mercers have helped transform the Old Market into the city’s artistic community, most currently with its Moving Gallery exhibiting regional and international artists.

It is Mercer’s instinctive taste for global culture and a non-conformist, experimental approach to her art, that will ultimately pull viewers out of shock mode; she enables them to suspend disbelief as they enter that most difficult stage of all, interpretation. What to make of work that appears to be readily ac-

cessible, but flies in the face of convention as if daring one to either look away or try to make sense of it all?

One could do neither, and simply drink the photography in for the sheer pleasure of its aesthetic and presentation. Bemis curator Hesse MGraw deserves credit for the latter as he has chosen 11 photos from more than 200. Each selection “tells a story or makes a direct statement about her art.” Factor in walls painted in an elegant blend of maroon or burgundy; add dramatic, key lighting and each piece either radiates outward, as with the dense imagery of Crab, Paris, reminiscent of the decadent painting of Paul Renner, or entices with its deep field of focus, as in Judith’s Rooster, Omaha.

Yet, in this stage, there is always the need to rationalize what amazes or confounds us, or at least what we find curious or unexpected.

This was readily apparent during the artist talk in February following the show’s opening.

McGraw, Mercer and Humberto Chavez, deputy director of the National Centre for the Arts in Mexico City and a frequent visiting artist and curator in Omaha, did their best to enlighten without attempting to explain the work away.

McGraw acknowledged a visual connection to Flemish/Dutch still life, but cautioned against attributing a similar, symbolic inference to Mercer’s use of food and/or animal imagery. “These photos are more direct. It’s a constructed reality, not an allegorical reality. The woodpecker is not about virility. That said, they will mean something different to everybody.”

For Mercer, too, the image she has created is not symbolic or idealistic, but respect-

ful and a matter of “exposition,” a favorite expression of hers when referring to works of art. “Their life is granted something new by the work,” she says, referring to her use of animal imagery, “a quiet life, not something lost, but something revealed.”

Mercer’s art is comfortable with the subject of death, or better yet, that arc of time within a still life. Chavez described it in terms not only of each photo’s subject, but also with regard to the artist’s and viewer’s relationship to the work itself.

“There is that concept of time within any still life,” Chavez says, “a frozen time of full blossom, of things seen and even not seen or experienced, yet referenced.”

Chavez is speaking of objects within each image that we not only see ripe, dead or withering in that moment, but along with the artist, connect to additional “bubbles of time” that may imagine the lifespan of each animal or flower on a deeper level. This is especially true, he says, for the artist who spends additional time with each object creating a new reality.

Perhaps the harshest reality one has to accept when viewing these images is “omnia vanitas” or “all is vanity,” that lesson from Ecclesiastes concerning the impermanence and futility of life on earth. Mercer doesn’t shy away from this, nor does she moralize about it. She accepts it, revels in it, and finds rare beauty in its realization. This is first seen with her large format still life prints in the Mercer-owned restaurant, the Boiler Room, which opened in the Old Market in the winter of 2009.

coverstory redheaded woodpecker and cheese

judith’s rooster, omaha

In early 2010 she helped organize a three-part exhibition for the Moving Gallery with Matthias Harder, chief curator of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, called Time, Death and Beauty. Recognizing a kindred spirit to his show’s themes, Harder invited Mercer to participate; the latter exhibited photos of a solitary amaryllis and two majestic roses in resplendent, grainy black and white that were painfully beautiful and painfully aware of their impending decline.

Later that year Harder curated an exhibit in Berlin of Mercer’s portraits and still lifes: Joie de Vivre and Vanitas and published an award-winning retrospective of her work, titled Vera Mercer: Portraits and Still Life. In his preface, Harder notes the theme of vanitas in art gradually shifted from moralizing on vanity to an acknowledgement of transience, a dominant theme in Mercer’s work as well.

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“The observer is usually presented with fresh vegetables and fish, half-withered flowers and animal skulls — in peaceful coexistence,” Harder says. “Life still seems present in the ripe fruits,though they no longer hang from branches or vines … the death imagery is just as present: classical vanitas motifs like skulls, fish heads or half-melted candles are reminders — as memento mori — of our mortality.”

Though the result is sensual and engaging for the viewer, for Mercer, her point of view is more detached, her passion reserved for her aesthetic and the process that created it. She shoots in large and medium format, whose negatives help to accommodate her dense imagery and rich color variations.

“I like to experiment with my imagery,” Mercer says. “I know my technique. Every lens

| THE READER |

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march 17 - 23, 2011

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coverstory creates a different mood. I don’t spend hours and hours composing; I work instinctively.

Then I scan each image and use the computer, but no tricks [optical].”

No tricks, but certainly an illusion or two, especially with the occasional use of a background photograph in a given work that Harder describes as a “theatrical scrim,” thus enhancing perception and emotional response. For example, this picture within a picture effect is most prominent in Naked Deer Head. The eye travels from fading flower and spindly greens to skeletal antlers against a backdrop of another withering bouquet that resembles dried arrangements as one reality transits into another, once removed.

Yet the real “arrangement” in Mercer’s artistry, a term Harder often uses to describe the structure of each photo, has as much to do with the formal properties of her aesthetic as it does with the composition of subject matter. That is, the arrangement of palette, lighting, focus, angle and perspective as well as other elements to achieve a near-perfect asymmetrical balance that virtually supercedes content.

In describing his own art, James McNeil Whistler said his objective was beauty created through a harmonious pattern. “Just as music HEAD AND FOOT, OMAHA

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is the poetry of sound, painting is the poetry of sight — the subject matter has nothing to do with the harmony of sound or of colour.”

Which would explain why the title of his most famous painting, a portrait of his mother, is really An Arrangement in Grey and Black.

Thus a similar case could be made for several painterly photos in his exhibition. “Deer Head” could be an “Arrangement in Khaki and Black,” “Judith’s Rooster” renamed “A Pattern of Flour, Flower and Feather,” and “Harmony of Reflected Light and Color” substitute for “Crab, Omaha.” Admittedly, something may be lost in the translation, especially for those who fixate and say, “What about the melting brie that resembles a giant snail slowly oozing its way down a wine glass, and that severed and skinned, sheepish looking head in ‘New Day Together?’”

How do you ignore these? You don’t. You accept them as a fact of life and the muse of an artist whose vision includes a heightened sensibility and sensuality and a taste for adventure.

Not to do so would be to dismiss this photography as Shock Art rather than the shockingly good art that it is.

Vera Mercer I Still Lifes continues until April 9 at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 South 12th St. For details go to bemiscenter.org.

■ The work of Theaster Gates is the focus of a March 30th performance and lecture at the Bemis Center. Gates’ Town Hall Project, currently in development, focuses on North Omaha. Gates is approaching the project from many angles: urban planner, artist, developer and community organizer. He’s done similar projects in Chicago, St Louis and Detroit, and offered new models for public space, cooperation and ingenuity. He wants to re-envision place, he says, not just as art but as a way of life. The free Bemis event will give the public a chance to learn about and respond to the project. It begins at 7:30 p.m.

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■ More than 30,000 viewers saw the Kent Bellows exhibition Beyond Realism at the Joslyn Art Museum. Those who missed it can obtain the catalog.

Softcover books and posters can be purchased online; all proceeds from purchases support programs and operations at the Kent Bellows Studio.

Shop here: KentBellows.bigcartel.com.

■ Lit Undressed is celebrating Women’s History Month with a special event at the RNG Gallery. The Spirit of the Female Beats celebrates the contribution of women writers of the beat generation during the 1950s and ’60s.

Readings will include original work by contemporary writers including Cat Dixon, Michael Skau, Roger Gerberding, Marie Sacco Ponsot, Trilety Wade, Machell, Michael Hendrick and more; as well as classic pieces by writers including Anne Waldman and Denise Levertov. Nebraska Native and award wining poet Marilyn June Coffey will give a reading, and opening music will be provided by All Young Girls are Machine Guns. Artists Wanda Ewing and Rodney Rahl will do body painting during the readings; readers will be nude. Tickets are $15 for the general public age 19 and over, and $10 for students. Proceeds benefit VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, a non-profit organization. The event is cash only. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and readings begin at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 31. Patrons will also get a sneak peak at RNG’s accompanying art exhibition, Les Fous Femmes, featuring Leslie Diuguid, Wanda Ewing, Rebecca Herskovitz, Lauren van Wyke and Jamie Lamaster.

■ The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Rotunda Gallery will play host to the fifth annual UNL Staff Art Show starting April 4. The show features artists from a wide array of departments across campus and begins with a reception on April 4 from 5-7 p.m. in the Nebraska Union on the City Campus.

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— Sarah Baker Hansen Comments? Questions? Want more? Check out our Booked blog online at thereader.com. Or email us at booked@thereader.com.

14

MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

cover story

A Special Evening with Jun Kaneko MARCH 31 KANEKO Bow Truss/1111 Jones Street

5:30 pm Kaneko Onstage:

An Exhibit of Jun Kaneko’s Designs for Madama Butterfly

6:30 pm Kaneko Onstage:

A Public Presentation on Opera Design with Jun Kaneko

8:00 pm Butterfly’s Closet:

Opera Omaha Guild’s Fundraiser and Fashion Show with Sushi from Hiro 88 $25 in advance or $35 at the door. ticketomaha.com

| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

15

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march 17 - 23, 2011

Handcrafted fruit and wine vinegars at George Paul Vingegar in Cody, Neb.

into a bicycle path, goes through Cody following Highway 20 part of the way.

Johnson has worked all his life as an entrepreneur, involving himself in little businesses here and there. Making vinegar is his retirement hobby. Of the Cody residents, he says, “They got over thinking I’m crazy. It seems like I’m always doing something.

by Lainey Seyler They’re very supportive.”

Daughter Emily, who splits time between Portwoke after a few hours of sleep on the first Saturday in January to drive from Omaha six hours west to ranch land, Ore., and Nebraska, helps him. It was her friend country, to visit a man who makes artisanal vinegar. who got him interested in making vinegar from the NeI was affectionately referring to it as the vinegar pilgrim- braska wine he was experimenting with.

Johnson started “tinkering” with grapes and age among friends, family and seven people from Metrowine, and eventually vinegar, in 2004. He started politan Community College’s Institute for Culinary Arts planting grapes in 2009 in earnest. The first vinwho accompanied me. Even that weekend’s dour weather forecast didn’t squelch our enthusiasm. We loaded into a egar, the Prairie White, was released in 2008. The sports utility vehicle and one of those oversized trucks with Prairie White that customers and restaurants buy four doors and an extra-long bed, thankful in the end when today is the same golden stuff.

Vinegar is made from wine with the help of bacit snowed eight inches. teria.

Acetobacter, which essentially eats alcohol and I had met George Johnson of George Paul Vinegar at the Emerging Terrain dinner for 500 in October. The spits out acetic acid over a period of several months, is a bacteria culture that lives on the chefs who orchestrated the fourwine in Johnson’s barrels. Each course meal were raving about george johnson bacteria culture is as unique as a his vinegar as if he had discovered set of DNA and produces a vinAmerica. Chef Matthew Taylor of egar that doesn’t taste like anythe Lied Lodge and Conference thing else. The bacteria lives in a Center claimed it was better than vat of wine (not a bad existence) the vinegar served at Cyrus, a Midoing its thing until the vinegar chelin two-star restaurant where reaches a certain percentage of he worked in Napa Valley, Calif. acetic acid and the vinegar makIt was something of a diser decides it is at its peak; then covery for me that vinegar could the artisan removes some of be as diverse as wine. There the vinegar and replenishes the was the house white zinfandel, stock with more wine. The proand a 1941 Chateau Mouton cess is part luck, part skill, and Rothschild and everything in part perseverance. Johnson and between. I love vinegar. I crave his daughter have thrown away it like people crave hot sauce. bacteria cultures that haven’t When I think about it, my mouth produced tasty vinegar. excretes sweet juices to combat They’ve developed seven the intense sour soon to come; I successful acetobacter strains drool, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I confess (though I hate to in print), I’ve been known that feast on several kinds of wine, including a raspto drink leftover juice straight from the pickle jar, berry wine and apple cider. The resulting vinegars are and always pour too much vinaigrette on my salad, surprisingly light and crisp. Chef Øystein Solberg, an just so I can clean the plate with a piece of bread. instructor at the Institute for Culinary Arts, was extolBut I hadn’t realized a certain balsamic vinegar ling the beauties of the vinegar quite effusively that afternoon in January. He swears he drinks it straight could say just as much as a particular pinot noir.

George Johnson lives in Cody, Neb., which is from the bottle. After tasting it, I believe him.

The Culinary Institute serves the vinegar at the pretty much the definition of the middle of nowhere. The town has 80 residents, leftover from its Sage Bistro on occasion, as does the Boiler Room, Grey days when the train used to travel through, a much Plume, V. Mertz, the Omaha Country Club and Darioís straighter lot of folks than the ones who used to run Brasserie. Enthusiasts can buy George Paul Vinegar at the village’s numerous and purportedly crooked ca- La Buvette, where it is also used by Chef Julie Friedersinos. The Cowboy Trail, a railroad track converted ick, and Whole Foods Market. ,

For more information, visit georgepaulvinegar.com.

I

| THE READER |

dish

n Welcome to this special Lenten edition of Crumbs.

Midtown sweets-lovers have two new options with last week’s opening of the shared Cold Stone Creamery/Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory space in Midtown Crossing, both offering rich, high-calorie goodness sure to tempt those who’ve decided to reacquaint themselves with fruits and vegetables until Easter.

Venue Restaurant at 70th and Pioneers in Lincoln will host a four-course chef’s dinner on Wednesday, March 23 featuring fish sourced from south Pacific waters. Ahi tuna three ways, grilled squid salad and grilled marlin are just some of the featured dishes. The event starts at 7 p.m. and is $50 per person. For more information or to reserve a seat, call 488.8368.

If you can’t make it to Lincoln or prefer tequila over fish, swing over to Cantina Laredo in Midtown Crossing. The upscale Mexican restaurant will be hosting a three course dinner featuring Herradura tequilas on March 23 at 7 p.m. Dishes like a Cowboy Rib Eye Steak with wild mushroom sauce, a mango and goat cheese salad with honey vinaigrette and shrimp sautéed in garlic butter will all be accompanied by a tequila-based drink. There’s dessert, too: chocolate cake with vanilla flan and caramel sauce.

The cost is $49 per person, and that covers your cocktails as well. To make a reservation or more info, call 402.345.6000.

Nebraska Brewing Company in the Shadow Lake development in Papillion is introducing a handful of fish and Lent-friendly dishes. Featured Lenten items include Italian Roasted Cod, Pistachio Crusted Salmon Fillet, Chipotle Quinoa & Shrimp, a Black Bean Veggie Burger and a Salmon Burger in addition to the traditional fish and chips.

For many, Lent is a time to give up something that’s close to their heart. For some, it’s chocolate.

For others, it’s red meat. For J. Wilson of Prescott, Iowa, it’s food altogether. For the 46 days of Lent, he will only be consuming water and beer.

An avid home brewer, he got the idea from Paulaner monks, who allegedly created a beer high in calories and carbs in the 1600s to sustain them through Lent. Wilson’s recreating both the famed dopplebock beer and the experiment. “Right now, the plan is to drink four 12-ounce beers a day ... and lots of water in between,” he told the Des Moines Register. You can track his progress on his blog at DiaryOfAPartTimeMonk.wordpress.com/. You can also drink along with him. The beer he’s drinking — Illuminator Dopplebock — is available at (and brewed by) the Rock Bottom Brewery location in West Des Moines. .

crumbs

dish

— Kyle Tonniges Crumbs is about indulging in food and celebrating its many forms. Send information about area food and drink businesses to crumbs@thereader.com

| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

17

8 days

TOPTV

“The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway” Saturday, March 19 at 9 p.m., HBO

I’m the world’s biggest Pee-wee Herman fan. I never missed an episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse in the late 1980s, and I can recite Pee-wee’s Big Adventure by heart. I always wished that, one day, Paul Reubens would bring back his iconic character – that nerdy, manic, mischievous kid in a man’s body.

Now he has, in a Broadway show filmed for HBO, and it’s a major disappointment.

As much as you want the old magic to return, The Pee-wee Herman Show lacks inspiration. It’s more like a nostalgic tour of Pee-wee gags, from the “Tequila” dance to “that’s my name, don’t wear it out.” And Reubens, now in his late 50s, can’t muster enough of the old childish glee as he interacts with the Playhouse people and puppets.

I think I’ll just quietly turn off the TV and recite Peewee’s Big Adventure by heart.

— Dean Robbins

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march 17 - 23, 2011

t h e r e a d e r ’ s e nt e rtainm e nt picks march 1 7 - 2 4 , 2 0 1 1

FRIDAY18 March 18-April 2

Bitch. (Perception. Reality.

Execution.)

Blue Barn Theatre, 614 S. 11th St. March 18-19 and April 1-2, 11 p.m.

March 25-26, 7:30 p.m.; $10 facebook.com/bbwitchinghour “Bitch” is the zenith of contemptuous five-letter words. This eponymous production by the Blue Barn’s Witching Hour reconsiders the stories of rule breakers and alleged bitches Marie Antoinette, Mata Hari, Ann Askew and Mary Surratt, “four women executed in the face of hysteria, revolution, war, persecution and bad PR.” Were they bitches, or just women living outside the box? The foursome is forever emblazoned with big scarlet “B”s in the history books, but the Witching Hour asks its audience to revisit that history, considering reality and perception. Artistic Director Jenny Pool leads a strong cast to the sounds of original music from Amanda Miller.

— Sarah Wengert

Opening March 18

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Bellevue Little Theatre, 203 W. Mission Ave. Olde Towne Bellevue Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., 2 p.m. Sundays $15, $13 seniors, $7.50 students 402.291.1554 Who needs the movie with Steve Martin and Michael Caine as Freddy and Lawrence when you’ve got the musical with Steve Krambeck and Mark Thornburg as the two resourceful con men who rob the Riviera? You’ve also got the savvy team of director Bridget Robbins and musician Ric Swanson to guide a cast that includes proven musical comedy stars Debbie Cline and Cathy Hirch, plus Michael Taylor-Stewart as Inspector Andre. Thornburg talked to God in his awardwinning role as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, but now there’s no “if ” about being a rich man, as his sophisticated Lawrence plucks rich women while singing show tunes.

— Warren Francke

| THE READER |

picks

PICKOFTHEWEEK

March 19

Jil Aigrot in Concert Holland Performing Arts Center, 13th and Douglas St. 8 p.m., Tickets start at $19 ticketomaha.com, 345.0606 Jil Aigrot’s Holland concert is as good an excuse as any to celebrate Omaha’s own chanteuses. Aigrot, the voice of legendary Edith Piaf in the acclaimed 2007 French film La Vie en Rose, specializes in the heartbreak ballads that made Piaf a wildly popular singer the first half of the 20th century and that keeps her an enduring cultural icon today.

Piaf embodied the soulful, lovesick songstress whose American equivalent is variously the torch singer and the jazz vocalist along with interpreters of blues, R & B, soul, show tunes and the American popular songbook.

These revered female vocal stylists over time have included Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerjil aigrot ald, Carmen McRae, Sara Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Nancy Wilson, Natalie Cole and Sylvia McNair.

Omaha’s contributed at least two of its own to the ranks of these nightclub and concert hall divas. Julie Wilson has been a New York cabaret fixture for more than half a century. Karrin Allison is a more contemporary chanteuse cut from the same cloth as her elders. This season local music lovers have had the opportunity to enjoy the artistry of not only Allison, but of Dee Dee Bridgewater and Patti Austin. It’s been a rare treat for fans of this sisterhood of the plaintive-tinged, smoke-filled voices.

And now comes Aigrot conjuring the spirit of Piaf. Consider it inspiration or invitation to seek out the city’s roster of alluring femme fatale singers who practice their intoxicating craft here at home. Anne-Marie Kenny left Omaha for Paris as a teen and reinvented herself as a cabaret singer. Camille Metoyer Moten has built her chops and repertoire performing in musical theater and cabaret settings. Susie Thorne has honed her technique from a wide variety of influences. As required by their medium, all three women draw on a combination of formal training and life experience to inform their work.

Chanteuse the night away at a live performance. Program your own concert at home via CD or iTunes. Or, if in the mood for a melodramatic film portrait, go the DVD or download route for your fix of torch singer blues. Film Streams is presenting a special 2 p.m. screening of La Vie en Rose on Sunday, March 20. Aigrot will be there for a post-screening discussion of the film and Piaf.

— Leo Adam Biga

t h e r e a d e r ’ s entertainment picks march 1 7 - 2 4 , 2 0 1 1

SATURDAY19 March 19

Edge of Arbor w/ Sarah Benck, Brothers Tandem and Rock Paper Dynamite

The Waiting Room Lounge, 6212 Maple St. 9 p.m., $7 waitingroomlounge.com, 884.5353 Jessica Errett, the sultry front woman for Edge of Arbor, graced my humble abode a few weeks ago; there she treated the roommates and I to a few acoustic renditions of songs off of the band’s first EP, Neon Lit Nights. If you have not been able to make the trek to the Barley St. in recent weeks for open mic Mondays, where Errett is a regular, then don’t miss their CD release party this Saturday at The Waiting Room, where they’re sure to play through all of their newest songs.

Opening the night will be Sarah Benck, Brothers Tandem and, despite the special event being all about Edge of Arbor, they have asked Rock Paper Dynamite to close the night for them so they can spend quality mingling time with friends and family.

— James Derrick Schott

FRIDAY25 March 25

Dr. Strangelove Midnight Movie

Midnight, Dundee Theater, 4952 Dodge St. $6, dundeetheater.com

(Peter Sellers) and his war room advisers attempt to recall the plane and warn the Soviet Union of the impending attack. But the Soviets won’t go quietly.

— Patricia Sindelar

SUNDAY27 Through Mar. 27

Lissa Hase and John Stillmunks: Paintings

Dundee Gallery, 4916 Underwood Ave, lower level Tues.-Thurs. 11a.m.-7p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11a.m.-9p.m.; Sun. 12p.m.-5p.m., FREE dundeegallery.com, 402.505.8333 Multi-media artist Lissa Hase prides herself on transforming garbage scraps into richly colorful, textured images using oil paints. An act she calls therapeutic and exciting, University of Nebraska at Omaha Fine Arts graduate Hase says she begins each piece without a plan, creating intuitive, light and colorful “whimsical worlds.” John Stillmunks uses a similar improvisational process to produce his intense paintings of more familiar — yet wacky worlds, reflecting human experience. In a series he calls “Malcontents & Ne’er-Do-Wells,” one shows a black-eyed waiter hitting another waiter with a fish in a restaurant scene; a bright yellow sun struggles to smile in another. Stillmunks, originally of Omaha, lives and runs Thought Gallery in Des Moines.

Hase resides in Boulder where she “paints in her sunroom overlooking the Flatirons.” The exhibit is on display through March 27.

— Sally Deskins

Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black-and-white movie, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is not just a hilarious and believable take on the Cold War era nuclear scare, it was actually deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress in 1989.

The film centers on a rogue air force crew led by Jack. D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) who mistakenly believes Communists are about to attack the United States. Ripper then launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Hilarity ensues when the president of the U.S. Dr. strangelove

THREEUPTHREEDOWN Saturday, March 19

Omaha Fashion Week VIP Spring Runway Show Featuring Chessna Fernald

Nomad Lounge, 1013 Jones St. Doors at 7 p.m., GA tickets $25, VIP $75, nomadlounge.com

C

hessna Fernald has been designing clothes since middle school. Mostly self taught, she discovered her passion at a young age, and through the support of family and friends was inspired to turn her hobby into a career. “All of my family and friends, and especially my mother, have been very supportive of my choice to pursue my dreams of fashion design, and I am very lucky to have so many great people in my life.”

Following the success of Omaha Fashion Week Fall 2010, Fernald applied for the spring show in January. She will be showing six outfits, including one menswear look. I caught up with Fernald to get the scoop on Saturday’s show.

Chessna Fernald

Can you tell me a bit about this new collection? What inspired it?

My theme is one of life and death. Spring is a time of life and renewal, but with recent events, there is a constant reminder that death can always occur. So it is a celebration of life and a reverence for those no longer with us.

Who are your influences? Any favorite designers?

Some of my favorite designers include Naoto Hirooka, Anna Sui, and brands such as Metamorphose and Antique beasT. I am very inspired by the creativity of Japanese subculture fashions. Seeing the way individuals coordinate their outfits, and seeing how everyone has a different perspective on fashion are big inspirations. I also like to draw inspiration from seemingly normal scenes in life, and mix them into a sort of fairytale. With the recent devastation that has been occurring in Japan, I feel a tinge of morbidity in my inspiration. My collection is going to be rather dark, in some aspects.

Have you always lived in Omaha? Do you have any thoughts on how this community can come together to build a stronger fashion scene?

I have lived in Omaha nearly all of my life. I’d like to think that my designs bring variety to the Omaha fashion scene the same way that all local designers do. Every designer in Omaha has their own unique style, and it’s very cool. The Omaha scene is quickly growing, with more events taking place every year. The best way to encourage this growth is to promote an open-minded perspective of fashion, and to promote all local designers and events!

— Jessica Hill

picks

| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

19

So Much To See And Do... www.oldmarket.com

25 Y E A R S

PREMIUM HOMEMADE

12th & Jackson Old Market 341-5827 Ice Cream made the Old-Fashioned way using Rock Salt & Ice

20

MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

Best Ice Cream Shop

| THE READER |

theater Blue Barn version of Albee’s Three Tall Women is spot on

A

by Warren Francke

nonagenarian, with her wry smile, the happiest moment comes … well, save her conclusion for your own viewing of the final scene.

Suffice to say Albee offers a more cynical view of life’s journey than many of us are willing to share. Therein lies the heart of the matter when it comes to Albee’s reputation. Is it too misanthropic a perspective or does the humorous and sharply pointed insight into human shortcomings enrich us?

In this case, the brilliant presentation

by Clement-Toberer defeats my resistance to Albee’s cynicism. It begins with the three tall

nyone who loves theater that doesn’t settle for warm and fuzzy must wrestle with Edward Albee’s reputation.

Is he our greatest living playwright?

The Blue Barn makes that case convincingly, and its Three Tall Women proves again that director Susan Clement-Toberer CUTLINE can cast and interpret Albee superbly.

Ruth Rath should win acting honors as she portrays a 91-year-old, believed to represent Albee’s adoptive mother.

The other women, Sonia Keffer and Kirstin Kluver, offer equally classy portrayals, in Act I as caregiver and lawyer’s accountant, then in Act II as the elderly one when she was 52 and 26, arguing over the arc of their life. Albee makes an appearance at her deathbed, arriving as he was at 18, when he left the mother who couldn’t accept his homosexuality.

Played by Chris Fowler as “The Boy,” he doesn’t speak, but wears feelings on his face as he is spoken of with regret by the older women.

The playwright, however, is hardly silent when it comes to this mother, who begins the evening forgetful, incontinent and self-pitying, yet with plenty of fight left.

She’s more confident in act two when Rath and Keffer tease Kluver about her 20-something optimism. The women seated in the elder’s bedroom, veiled world-weary ones recall when they “used to be by a scrim that Fowler’s Boy pulls back to tall,” and mock the late husband they call “the more fully reveal a handsome set designed by penguin” and “the little one-eyed man.”

Martin Scott Machitto.

And the hopeful young one promises, “I The bed, backed by creative wallpaper, will not become you.” They smile knowingly, is flanked by the three in chairs — Kluver and eventually a final discussion ensues as the working at a desk, Keffer ready to rise from girl insists that there must have been happy her chair to attend Rath who sits, left arm in a moments in their regret-filled lives. sling, in a high-back chair which confirms the Yes, Keffer’s 52-year-old admits, it’s happy overall impression of a prosperous life style. when, “You’ve been through enough shit” that you know the troubles that lie ahead. For Rath’s

In Act I, the elderly mother spars with the other two, who represent all those she mistrusts in a life where she was taught “to make my own way” and “to keep an eye out.” We learn she loved to ride, loved horses, and we see two white ones galloping in paired paintings.

Perhaps the happiest we eventually see all three is when the other two huddle at Rath’s chair as she talks of a time when she sat naked, except for her ample jewelry, at her bedroom vanity. They lean closer, grinning eagerly as she describes her husband, also naked, entering the room with a bracelet dangling from his arousal.

But we learned earlier that she “didn’t like sex much,” so the outcome is deflating as the bracelet falls to the floor.

I’ve been identifying these women by the cast’s names and their character’s ages rather than Albee’s Woman A (Rath), Woman B (Keffer) and Woman C (Kluver), letters which serve the playwright’s purpose to communicate a common identity.

Whatever you call them, two of the three tall women tell the younger that life condemns them to become shorter as time goes by. “So it goes,” Keffer says, in what might be seen as Albee’s homage to Kurt Vonnegut.

If life shrinks us, theater expands our view of the experience, and the evidence the playwright gives of the wit and resilience of this three-inone trinity makes surviving all the shit seem worth the struggle. It happens and then we die, but, oh, we rage, rage against the dying of the light. , Three Tall Women runs through April 2, except March 25-27, at the Blue Barn Theatre’s Downtown Space, 614 S. 11th St., 7:30 p.m. ThursdaysSaturdays, 6 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $25, $20 students and seniors. Call 402.345.1576.

theater

coldcream

Superb Interpretation

n As David Letterman would ask his audience, “You like vibrators?” Nothing says “21 and Over,” the new Omaha Community Playhouse series of free performances, like Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play.

Kevin Lawler plays Dr. Givings, the scientist who invents a vibrator for treating “hysteria” in woman, and even in a man now and then. That’s why his young wife (Ashley Spessard) wonders what’s going on in the next room.

The cast includes Vincent CarlsonBrown, Teri Fender and Tim Abou-Nasr among others. You get one look at this staged reading in the Howard Drew Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 21. You can donate and help pay royalties.

For its first weekend, March 18-19, the Witching Hour presents Bitch at its usual 11 p.m. in the Downtown Space, and it returns to that time April 1-2. But in between, March 25-26, you don’t need to be a night owl to catch 7:30 p.m. performances. Tickets are $10.

Director Jennifer Pool, who co-wrote the devised piece with Kirstin Kluver and Kathleen Lawler, said the project was in the works last season when the three began looking into the executions of four women, the better-known Marie Antoinette and Mata Hari, and the less familiar Mary Surratt (linked to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln) and Ann Askew, who protested more than the average 16th century Protestant and was burned at the stake.

They looked for common themes in the stories of their uncommon executions: from fire to guillotine to hanging. “We focused primarily on their actual words” or the words of those close to them, which the writers judged to be better “than anything we could have come up for them,” Pool explained. n What better time to remind you that every review you read is nothing more than a look at one night’s performance. Last week I praised the John Beasley Theater production of August Wilson’s King Hedley II, which I watched on a Sunday afternoon.

It ran five or six minutes less than three hours.

The night Bob Fischbach reviewed it for the daily it ran 15 minutes over three hours. His praise was mixed with criticism of actors struggling for lines and mentioned a man having trouble with an ear piece, perhaps to feed him lines.

When I saw it a woman kept fiddling with her ear piece. Both performances had trouble with the timing of a gunshot.

Both reviews reflected that the strengths outweighed the weaknesses, but my shorter review was also based on a 20-minute shorter show with fewer problems.

— Warren Francke Cold Cream looks at theater in the metro area. Email information to coldcream@thereader.com.

| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

21

art

OpeningS

A CAVALLO VIOLINS, Countryside Village, 87th & Pacific St. ART OF SOUND: Violins and violas, opens Mar. 18-Apr. 9.

ANDERSON O’BRIEN FINE ART COUNTRYSIDE VILLAGE, 8724 Pacific St., 390.0717, aobfineart.com. EFFORTLESS ELEGANCE: Wearable art by Kay Chapman, opens Mar. 22-24.

BEMIS UNDERGROUND, 724 S. 12th St., 341.7130, bemiscenter.org. 2011 BEMIS CENTER REGIONAL EXHIBITION: Regional Juried Exhibition, opens Mar. 18-Apr. 16, reception Mar. 25, 6 p.m.

HAYDON CENTER, 335 N. 8th St., Lincoln, 475.5421, haydonartcenter.org. WIND ON EARTH: Native American group show, opens Mar. 17-May 7, reception Apr. 1 & May 6.

HISTORIC GENERAL DODGE HOUSE, 605 3rd St., Council Bluffs, 501.3841, dodgehouse.org. IN MEMORY OF... THE ART OF MOURNING: Examines a family’s response to loss and mourning in the late Victorian period, through Oct. 23.

INTERNATIONAL QUILT STUDY CENTER AND MUSEUM, 1523 N. 33rd St., Lincoln, 472.7232, quiltstudy.org. NATIONAL QUILTING DAY: Free admission, demonstration and more, opens Mar. 19.

JOSLYN ART MUSEUM, 2200 Dodge St., 342.3300, joslyn.org.

PORTALS TO PARADISE: DECODING ICONOGRAPHY OF THE CHRISTIAN EAST: Lecture on The Glory of Ukraine exhibit by theologian Nicolae Roddy, opens Mar. 20, 2 p.m.

KIMMEL HARDING NELSON CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 801 3rd Corso, Nebraska City, 874.9600, khncenterforthearts.org. LAURINE KIMMEL HIGH SCHOOL ART EXHIBITION: Through Apr. 30, reception Mar. 19, 2 p.m.

UNO CRISS GALLERY, 6001 Dodge St., 554.2640, library. unomaha.edu. INSIDE THE CERAMICS STUDIO: A SURVEY OF CLAYWORK AT UNO: Opens Mar. 18-27, reception Mar. 18, 3 p.m.

ONGOING

THE 815, 815 O. St., Suite 1, Lincoln, 261.4905, the815.org.

NEW WORK: Artists on the Edge, through March.

A TO Z PRINTING, 8320 Cody Dr., Lincoln, 477.0815, atozprint. com. NEW WORK: Julia Lauer-Cheene, through March.

ANDERSON O’BRIEN FINE ART OLD MARKET, 1108 Jackson St., 884.0911, aobfineart.com. PATTERNSCAPES: Julie Phillips, through Mar. 20.

ANKENY ART CENTER, 1520 SW Road, Ankeny, IA, 515.965.0940, ankenyartcenter.com. K-12 PUBLIC SCHOOL EXHIBITIONS: Through Apr. ARTISTS’ COOPERATIVE GALLERY, 405 S. 11th St., artistscoopgallery.com. NEW WORK: Group show, through March.

BEMIS CENTER, 724 S. 12th St., 341.7130, bemiscenter.org.

STILL LIFES: New work by Vera Mercer. ANOTHER NEBRASKA: Group show by the Nebraska Arts Council individual artist fellows. Both shows through Apr. 9.

BLUE POMEGRANATE GALLERY, 6570 Maple St., 502.9901, bluepom.com. SPRING INVITATIONAL: Featuring Jaime Bowers and Nancy Smith, through March.

CATHEDRAL CULTURAL CENTER SUTHERLAND GALLERY, 701 N. 40th St., 551.4888, cathedralartsproject.org. SHARING SPACE: New work Dennis Wattier and Deborah Murphy, through Apr. 2.

CHADRON STATE COLLEGE, 1000 Main St., Chadron, NE, 800.242.3766, csc.edu. THEN AND NOW: Faculty art show, through Mar. 25.

DRIFT STATION GALLERY, 1745 N St., Lincoln, driftstation.org.

ONE MARK TO THE NEXT: Group show, through March.

DUNDEE GALLERY, 4916 Underwood Ave., 505.8333, dundeegallery.com. NEW WORK: Lissa Hase and John Stillmunks, through Mar. 27.

DURHAM WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM, 801 S. 10th St., 444.5071, durhammuseum.org. SCHOOL HOUSE TO WHITE HOUSE: THE EDUCATION OF THE PRESIDENTS: Through Mar. 27. WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, through Mar. 20.

EISENTRAGER-HOWARD GALLERY, Richards Hall, Stadium Drive and T, Lincoln, 472.5025, unl.edu/art/facilities_eisentragerhoward.shtml. UNDERGRADUATE STUDIO ART COMPETITION: Through Mar. 24.

EL MUSEO LATINO, 4701 S. 25th St., elmuseolatino.org. MOLAS EXHIBIT: Textiles created by the Kuna people of Panama.

NEBRASKA MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENTS: Group show,

22

march 17 - 23, 2011

through Apr. 16. EL CABALLO: The horse in Mexican Folk Art, through May 4.

ELDER GALLERY, 51st and Huntington, Nebraska Wesleyan University, nebrwesleyan.edu. FACULTY EXHIBITION: Group show, through Apr. 8.

FRED SIMON GALLERY, Burlington Building, 1004 Farnam St., nebraskaartscouncil.org. NEW WORK: Anne and Mike Burton, through Apr. 22.

GALLERY 9, 124 S 9th St., Lincoln, 477.2822, gallerynine. com. LOUDER THAN SIRENS: New work by Meghan Stratman, through Mar. 22.

GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE EXHIBITION, 1425 H St., Lincoln, nebraskaartscouncil.org. NEW WORK: Nancy Lepo, through Apr. 15.

GRAND MANSE GALLERY, 129 N. 10th St., Lincoln, grandmanse.com. NEW WORK: Paintings by Neal R. Anderson, through March.

GRAHAM GALLERY, 617 W. 2nd St., Hastings, graham-gallery. com. NEW WORK: Janey Nottage Tacey, through Mar. 31.

GREAT PLAINS ART MUSEUM, 1155 Q St., Hewit Plc., Lincoln, 472.0599, unl.edu/plains/gallery/gallery.shtml. DOUBLE VISION: New work by Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, through Mar. 27.

HOT SHOPS ARTS CENTER, 1301 Nicholas St., 342.6452, hotshopsartcenter.com. OPEN HOUSE: Old Market Artists open house, Project Harmony is the 2011 beneficiary. ART WITH HEART: Fundraiser for American Heart Association. Both shows through Mar. 27.

INTERNATIONAL QUILT STUDY CENTER AND MUSEUM, 1523 N. 33rd St., Lincoln, 472.7232, quiltstudy.org. MARSEILLE: WHITE CORDED QUILTING: Through May 8. REVISITING THE ART QUILT: Through Apr. 3, gallery talk Apr. 3, 3 p.m.

JOSLYN ART MUSEUM, 2200 Dodge St., 342.3300, joslyn.org.

THE GLORY OF UKRAINE: Two part exhibition that forms an unprecedented celebration of this large European nation, through May 8. FROM HOUDINI TO HUGO: The art of Brian Selznick, through May 29.

KIECHEL FINE ART, 5733 S. 34th St., Lincoln, 420.9553, kiechelart.com. SHARED HISTORY: Anthony Benton Gude with works by Thomas Hart Benton and Dale Nichols, through Apr. 8.

KRUGER COLLECTION, UNL Architecture Hall, 10th and R, Lincoln, 472.3560, krugercollection.unl.edu. THINK GREEN: Interior/green design and miniatures, through Apr. 1.

LAURITZEN GARDENS, 100 Bancroft St., 346.4002, omahabotanicalgardens.org. A TROPICAL PARADISE: Amazing tropical plants, through Apr. WEEDS/PODS/SEEDS: New work by Kristin Pluhacek, reception Mar. 20, 1 p.m. THE LANDSCAPES: New work by Kristin Pluhacek. Both shows through Apr. 17. METAMORPHOSIS: The art and design of Jun Kaneko, through Mar. 20.

THE LICHEN, 2810 N. 48th St., Lincoln, thelichen.com. MARCH OF THE UNICORNS: Female-dominant group show curated by Sandra Williams, through March.

LUX CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 48th and Baldwin, Lincoln, 434.2787, luxcenter.org. NATIONAL JURIED CUP EXHIBITION: Julia Galloway juries. JURIED STUDENT ART SHOW: Group show. Both shows through Mar. 24.

METRO COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Fort Omaha Campus, 30th & Fort St., North Building #10. LUIGI WAITES EXHIBIT: Artwork honoring Luigi Waites, through Mar. 30.

MODERN ARTS MIDWEST, 800 P St., Lincoln, 477.2828, modernartsmidwest.com. WATER FORMS: New work by Kelly Manning and Amy Smiths, through Mar. 26.

MORRILL HALL, 307 Morrill Hall, Lincoln 472.3779, museum. unl.edu. AMPHIBIANS VIBRANT AND VANISHING: Photographs

by Joel Sartore, through Nov. 30.

MUSEUM OF NEBRASKA ART (MONA), 2401 Central Ave., Kearney, 308.865.8559, monet.unk.edu/mona. THE ANIMAL KINGDOM: Through Jun. 5, 2011. A GREATER SPECTRUM: African American artists of Nebraska, 1912-2010, through Apr. 3.

THE NEW BLK, 1213 Jones St., 403.5619, thenewblk.com. RGB: MODERN. DIGITAL. AMERICAN. PHOTOGRAPHY.: New work by Bill Sitzmann, through Mar. 25.

OLSON-LARSEN GALLERY, 203 5th St., Des Moines, IA, 515.277.6734, olsonlarsen.com. NEW WORK: Group show, through Apr. 9.

OMAHA’S CHILDREN’S MUSEUM, 500 S. 20th St., 342.6163. ocm.org. BIG BACKYARD: Through Apr. 10.

PARALLAX SPACE, 1745 N St., Lincoln, parallaxspace.com.

VARIOUS ENCOUNTERS: Work by Matt Belk, through Mar. 28.

| THE READER |

art/theater listings

poetry/comedy thursday 17

check event listings online!

RETRO, 1125 Jackson St., 934.7443. PARADIGM: New work by Gerard Perfung, Holly Kranker, Manuel Cook and Phil Hawkins, through March.

RNG GALLERY, 1915 Leavenworth St., 214.3061. THE KENT BELLOWS STUDIO MENTOR EXHIBITION: Group show, through Mar. 27.

SHELDON ART GALLERY, 12th and R, UNL, Lincoln, sheldonartgallery.org. BETTER HALF, BETTER TWELFTH: Women artists in the collection, through Apr. 1, 2011. AN AMERICAN TASTE: THE ROHMAN COLLECTION: Through May 1. POETICAL FIRE: THREE CENTURIES OF STILL LIFES: Group show, through May 7. TRANSFORMING VISION: PHOTOGRAPHIC ABSTRACTION IN SHELDON’S COLLECTION: Group show, in conjunction with Lincoln Photofest.

SILVER OF OZ, 6115 Maple St., 558.1307, silverofoz.com. NEW WORK: Charity Hathaway, through Mar. TUGBOAT GALLERY, 14th and O, 2nd floor, Lincoln, tugboatgallery.com. WHIPSTITCH: Group show featuring Erika Eden, Mary Pattavina, Eric Tremblay, through Mar. 26.

UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD MUSEUM, 200 Pearl St., Council Bluffs, 501.3841, uprrmuseum.org. ABRAHAM LINCOLN COLLECTION: Through Mar. UNL HILLESTAD TEXTILES GALLERY, 35th & Holdrege, 2nd Floor, Home Econims Bldg., Lincoln, textilegallery.unl.edu. ADDRESSING THE BODY: LESSON IN QUILTING: Through Mar. 18.

UNL ROTUNDA GALLERY, Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, 472.8279. VISIONS OF SISTERHOOD: Through Mar. 18.

UNO ART GALLERY, Weber Fine Arts Bldg., 6001 Dodge St., 554.2796. 2011 ANNUAL JURIED STUDENT EXHIBITION: Curated by Brigitte McQueen, through Mar. 17.

WORKSPACE GALLERY, Sawmill Building, 440 N. 8th St., Lincoln, sites.google.com/site/workspacegallery. SELECTIONS FROM THE FORTIETH PARALLEL: MISSOURI, KANSAS, AND COLORADO: New work by Bruce Myren, through May 5.

theater oPENING

BITCH, Blue Barn at The Downtown Space, 614 S. 11th St., 345.1576, bluebarn.org. Opens Mar. 18-19, 11 p.m., Mar. 25-26, 7:30 p.m., Apr. 1-2, 11 p.m., $10.

BROKEN MIRROR #11, Rose Theater, 2001 Farnam St., 345.4849, rosetheater.org. Opens Mar. 19, 4:30 p.m. & 7 p.m., Mar. 20, 4:30 p.m., $6.

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, Bellevue Little Theatre, 203 West Mission Ave., 291.1554, bellevuelittletheatre. com. Opens Mar. 18-Apr. 3, Fri-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m., $15, $13/seniors, $7.50/students..

oNGOING

THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE, Omaha Community Playhouse, 6915 Cass St., 553.0800, omahaplayhouse.com. Through Mar. 27, Thu.-Sat., 7:30 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m., $40, $24/student.

KING HEDLEY II, John Beasley Theater, 3010 R St., Omaha, johnbeasleytheater.org. Through Mar. 27, Thu.-Sat., 7:30 p.m., Sun., 3 p.m., $16.

LIFE WITH FATHER, Chanticleer Theatre, 830 Franklin Ave, Council Bluffs, chanticleertheater.com/index.php.

Through Mar. 27, Fri.-Sat., 7:30 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m., $17, $14/seniors, $9/students.

NUNSENSE, Omaha Community Playhouse, 6915 Cass St., 553.0800, omahaplayhouse.com. Through Apr. 3, Wed.-Sat., 7:30 p.m., Sun., 6:30 p.m., $40, $24/students.

THREE TALL WOMEN, Blue Barn at The Downtown Space, 614 S. 11th St., 345.1576, bluebarn.org. Through Apr. 2, Thu.-Sat., 7:30 p.m., Sun., 6 p.m., $25, $20/students and seniors.

AS THE WORM TURNS, The Bookworm, 87th & Pacific, 392.2877, bookwormomaha.com, 6:30 p.m. (3rd Thursday.)

BUDDY WAKEFIELD, ALL YOUNG GIRLS ARE MACHINE GUNS, Omaha Healing Arts Center, 1216 Howard St., 345.5078, omahaslam.com, 7 p.m., $7. Local musician Rebecca Lowry opens up for acclaimed Slam Poet Buddy Wakefield.

COMEDY NIGHT AT THE SIDE DOOR, 3530 Leavenworth St., 8 p.m., $5. Every Thu. JR BROW, Funny Bone, Village Pointe, 17305 Davenport St., funnnyboneomaha.com, 493.8036, 7:30 p.m.

FRIDAY 18

JR BROW, Funny Bone, Village Pointe, 17305 Davenport St., funnnyboneomaha.com, 493.8036, 7:30 p.m, 9:45 p.m.

SATURDAY 19

OMAHA FASHION WEEK VIP SPRING RUNWAY SHOW, Nomad Lounge, 1013 Jones St., omahafashionweek.com, 6 p.m., $25. Fashion season begins in the Big O. PEACEMAKING WORKSHOP XXIV, O’Donnell Auditorium, Nebraska Wesleyan, 51st and Huntington, 465.2384, nebrwesleyan.edu, 7:30 p.m., $10, $5/students. Famed Primatologist Jane Goodall.

JR BROW, Funny Bone, Village Pointe, 17305 Davenport St., funnnyboneomaha.com, 493.8036, 7:30 p.m, 9:30 p.m.

Sunday 20

DAN SPERRY, Orpheum Theater, 409 S. 16th St., 345.0606, omahaperformingarts.org, 7 p.m., $29-$44. “America’s Got Talent” season five semi-finalist and illusionist brings his unorthodox magical approach to Omaha.

JOHN H. AMES READING SERIES, Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors, Bennett Martin Public Library, 136 South 14th St., Lincoln, 2 p.m. Brent Spencer.

SUNDAY SCIENTIST, Morrill Hall, 14th & Vine St., Lincoln, museum.unl.edu, 1:30 p.m. What to sunglasses, barcodes and BluRay discs all have in common? Lasers and optics.

JR BROW, Funny Bone, Village Pointe, 17305 Davenport St., funnnyboneomaha.com, 493.8036, 7 p.m.

monday 21

DUFFY’S COMEDY WORKSHOP, 1412 O St., Lincoln, 474.3543, myspace.com/duffystavern, 9 p.m. Free comedy workshop (every Mon.) POETRY AT THE MOON, Crescent Moon Coffee, 816 P St., Lincoln, 435.2828, crescentmoon@inebraska.com, 7 p.m. Open mic and featured reader Mary Lee Johns chooses a selection of poetry to share. (every Mon.)

tuesday 22

SHOOT YOUR MOUTH OFF, The Hideout, 320 S. 72nd St., 504.4434, myspace.com/shootyourmouthoff, 9 p.m. Spoken word, comedy, music, chaos and more in the wildest open mic Omaha has to offer. (every Tue.) WIT IMPROV, PS Collective, 6056 Maple St., 556.9090, pscollective.com, 8 p.m., $5. The newest improv troupe takes the stage in Benson.

WWI HISTORY BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP, The Bookworm, 87th & Pacific, 392.2877, bookwormomaha.com, 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday 23

ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC FOR MUSICIANS & POETS, Meadowlark Coffee & Espresso, 1624 S. St., Lincoln, 8 p.m., 477.2007. Hosted by Spencer. (every Wed.) FANCY PARTY COMEDY, The Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St., 884.5353, waitingroomlounge.com, 9 p.m., FREE. Come and experience Banana Pants.

MIDWEST POETRY VIBE, Irie, 302 S. 11th St., 9 p.m., poetry, R&B, Neosoul music, live performances, concert DVD and food and drink. (Every Wed.) NANCY CARLSON, The Bookworm, 87th & Pacific, 392.2877, bookwormomaha.com, 6:30 p.m. Author and illustrator will give a book signing.

PEOPLE’S FILM FESTIVAL: THE PATHOLOGY OF PRIVILEGE, McFoster’s Natural Kind Cafe, 38th and Farnam, 7 p.m., FREE. Acclaimed author and thinker Tim Wise argues that racism in the United States is institutionalized. (every Wed.)

music

Indie band captures its true self by going back to basics

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by Chris Aponick

Askew. After working on Time to Die with Shins producer Phil Ek, the band were feeling nostalgic and wanted to work with their friend again.

Long says Askew came into the record with a new perspective as well, having worked with several other bands since recording the Dodos breakthrough Visiter. When it comes to recording, Askew is as close to a band member as a producer can get.

“He was very instrumental in helping us figure out how to record this band,” Long says.

While the Dodos were down to a two-piece, they decided they needed to spend ample time recording the record. The total time spent making No Color was two months.

he Dodos are back to being a two-piece band and they just finished an album with longtime collaborator John Askew.

But this year’s model of the Dodos has a few new angles to call its own.

The most apparent thing about the justreleased No Color is its directness, starting with opening song “Black Night”. The album is a sprightly, nimble and the dodos brighter than anything the band has done.

And on “Going Under,” the Dodos reveal their other new wrinkle — backing vocals by indie chanteuse Neko Case. Dodos singer/guitarist Meric Long says it’s an opportunity that arose out of touring with indiepop super group the New Pornographers, of which Case is a member.

The entire summer tour with the New Pornographers put the Dodos in front of an unconverted audience.

“That was a chance to try a lot of new material live, (including) stuff that wasn’t even finished,” Long says.

Case would come out and sing on a couple Dodos songs on the tour. At the last Dodos/Pornographers show at Chicago’s Lollapalooza, Long and Case were talking about what they were doing during the next few months.

The Dodos were about to enter the studio to “We scheduled more time to do this record work on the new album. Neko Case had sched- than we ever had,” Long says. uled some free time. It was a case of kismet.

The first two Dodos albums only took about “I just popped the question,” Long says. two weeks each, while the sessions for Time To Die Long says in writing new songs it had oc- also fell short of the time taken for No Color took. curred to him that having a female voice on some Askew and the band focused on making the reof them would be great. Until asking Case that cord sound really energetic, in order to capture the night, Long had no particular person for contrib- heavier side of the band. It’s definitely the hardest uting those vocals. they have worked on an album, Long says.

While Case adds an extra layer to the band’s And in the hard work, he says the band sound, the rest of the record was really all about has captured a collection of songs that is disLong, drummer Logan Kroeber and producer tinctively Dodos.

“This record is more us than any record we’ve done,” Long says.

The heavier sound of the record will also have an effect on the live show. The band is touring with a third member, who will also be playing electric. The set-up is pretty new for the band, Long says.

While Long is waiting on visa issues to clear, he’s not saying who the third member is, although he will say it’s a Canadian who was in a band that recently broke up. Super secret stuff, to be sure.

Also, Long will be going the Dylan-atNewport route, swapping his acoustic guitar for an electric one, during this tour. Until fullfledged rehearsals started a couple of weeks ago, Long had never really played electric

guitar.

He says he likes how the sound is coming together and he’s enjoying adding electric guitar parts to old songs. Still, he wonders if people are going to miss the acoustic.

“It’s really more of a rock band now,” Long says. , The Dodos w/ Reading Rainbow play the Waiting Room Lounge, 6212 Maple St., Tuesday, March 22 at 9 p.m. Tickets are $12. For more information, visit onepercentproductions.com.

music

backbeat

Distinctively Dodos

n There’s tons of news in the metro this week, so strap in. The folks at the New BLK, Omahype.com, HearNebraska. org, The Slowdown and The Reader, which you’re reading right now, are raising funds for the first ever NewBraska Festival. The outdoor event, scheduled for Saturday, May 14 at 12th and Jones streets, is raising funds via Kickstarter. com, in order to bring together 8 or 9 bands, visual artists and food to celebrate the end of the Big Omaha Conference. The event organizers are looking to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter by Friday, April 15. n DJ Kobrakyle, Kyle Richardson, took a break from the 18-plus crowd to put on a Saturday night Gunk for Grownups at the Waiting Room Lounge, 6212 Maple St., and Gettin’ Dusty at the Barley Street Tavern, 2735 N. 62nd St. While I missed out on Gunk, Gettin’ Dusty was a great, relaxed night out, as Richardson played through stacks of classic soul.

The event had a bring-in-your-favorites feel that hopefully will catch on. I’m looking forward to the next time this goes down. n Jazz pianist Gerard Clayton and vocalist Lisa Henry will perform at Jazz restaurant, 1421 Farnam Street, Friday, March 18 at 7 p.m., following a week of appearances and workshops at several Omaha Public School’s high schools and one middle school. The duo will be joined by five Dallas high school musicians, who will perform at the schools then work side-by-side with student musicians in Central, Northwest, Burke, South High schools, as well as Beveridge Middle School. The tour is sponsored by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. n Baby Tears, the local three-piece ode to desolation and despair, are working on a fulllength recording and have offered two tracks as forewarning of what is to come. The band also promises to post demos of more material soon.

Check it and other Baby Tears tracks out at bbbabytears.blogspot.com. n A tip of the hat to the Waiting Room for booking Jessica Lea Mayfield for a Wednesday, May 11 show. The Ohio singer’s latest album Tell Me is a collection of stark, American gothic country recommended to anyone who enjoys Neko Case or Lucinda Williams. n Check thereader.com all this week for Backbeat dispatches from the South by Southwest musical festival in Austin, Tex. See you there, Satchel Grande and others.

— Chris Aponick Backbeat takes you behind the scenes of the local music scene. Send tips, comments and questions to backbeat@thereader.com.

| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

23

music The Fidelity of DIY Sic Alps homemade rock records need no qualifiers

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cutline

By Chris Aponick

ic Alps and their decidedly homemade records are not so much lo-fi anthems as they are musical snapshots of the three-piece San Francisco band.

That holds true for Sic Alps’ latest, Napa Asylum, which touches on psych-folk, garage rock and ’60s psych-pop in bite-sized musical pieces.

The 22-song record is a double-album in the classic sense, clocking in at under 50 minutes. Multi-instrumentalist Noel Von Harmonson says the record was recorded in San Francisco, at a house that he shares with drummer Matt Hartman. It was all tracked to an 8-track reel-to-reel machine.

“Done on our time, when we felt we could do it,” Von Harmonson says.

That’s why the band doesn’t really embrace the lo-fi moniker for its D-I-Y recordings.

“We kind of joke around about that,” Von Harmonson says. “Lo-fi is going to be the new term for pitchfork and those guys to go with.

We’re just doing our own thing.”

That means stripping the artifice of recording by using one microphone and one preamp.

Nobody is paid to come in and engineer the sessions. Von Harmonson says the approach is inspired by several of their favorite obscure ’60s bands. Good enough for bands that didn’t get selected for the Nuggets compilation, then it’s good enough for now.

“It’s not like carelessness at all. It’s an aesthetic,” Von Harmonson says.

The project has been brewing for several years, as singer/songwriter Mike Donovan worked to figure out how to bring some of his song ideas to life, Von Harmonson says.

“He gave birth to that a long time ago,” Von Harmonson says of Donovan.

Von Harmonson joined the band about a year-and-a-half ago, after Ty Segall dropped out of the band’s touring lineup to pursue a solo career.

“The fact of the matter is that I was pretty good buddies with Matt and Mike before they asked me to help them out,” Von Harmonson

24

march 17 - 23, 2011

says. “If they were strangers, I wouldn’t have done it.”

The band is part of a San Francisco music scene that is being thought of as a hotbed of garage rock bands, though Von Harmonson says the affiliations between most of the bands is pretty loose, at best.

Still, Hartman at one time played in the Coachwhips with John Dwyer, who now fronts Thee Oh Sees, and Ty Segall has played with Sic Alps.

Eight years ago, Harmonson says San Francisco was on a no-wave kick. Now, everybody is supposedly in a garage band.

“It’s weird thing that everybody is on about right now in San Francisco,” he says.

At the start of making Napa Asylum, the band toyed with making it a concept album built around a pencil drawing of the Napa Asylum,

| THE READER |

music

which used to sit in the heart of Napa Valley’s wine country. The image was purchased at an estate sale by John Harlow, a video artist who has shot several low-budget videos for Sic Alps.

“The image stuck more than the concept,” Von Harmonson says.

That drawing now sits inside the album art for the band’s new record.

The songs start with Donovan, who will come in with a guitar demo or a part and they’ll track that. Then they’ll work on putting drums and other pieces on top of that.

Rarely will the band work on a song together, then record it after weeks of working on making it into a final version.

“It’s a really ass-backwards way of doing things but it’s how Sic Alps came to be,” Von Harmonson says.

He says the process accounts for looser moments on the band’s releases, so much so that it’s becoming a stylistic thing, he says.

Very often, Donovan will come in with a song, play it to the other two members for the first time and then, an hour later, the song will be fully recorded. However, Von Harmonson says there have been songs that have come in and not been figured out for months.

“It’s not efficient, but we’ve never been efficient,” Von Harmonson says. , Sic Alps w/ the Wayward Little Satan Daughters play the Slowdown, 729 North 14th St., Saturday, March 19 at 9 p.m. Tickets are $8. For more information, visit theslowdown.com.

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| THE READER |

MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

25

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Red Sky Mining — Who will play at Omaha’s largest music festival?

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peculation is always a dangerous proposition.

It can be construed as rumor mongering, which to be honest, I’ve never shied away from (as long as there was some substance to the rumors, of course). But when it comes to Omaha’s first annual Red Sky Music Festival, speculation is all we have, for now.

The event, slated to take place July 19-24 at the brand-spanking new Ameritrade Park, has been shrouded in secrecy. Speculation is beginning to bubble up on who will play the event, which is being organized by the star chamber known as MECA (or Mecca, as I like to refer to them) and national promotion giant Live Nation.

MECA already should have announced the festival’s lineup weeks ago, but here we are, still staring at our watches, tapping our feet.

I have no contacts at MECA. In fact, the Red Sky Festival couldn’t be more outside my wheelhouse as I’m not interested in the brightly colored homogenized pop cheese consumed by The Great Wad, which is bound to be a staple for this event. That said, among the programming rumors for Red Sky is this idea that each day of the festival will focus on one central genre. One day/night would be dedicated exclusively to country music, another would be dedicated to pop, another for dinosaur acts, and one would be dedicated to “alternative rock.” How exactly MECA and Live Nation define “alternative rock,” I do not know, though I suspect they will lean more toward how commercial radio defines it, which means goon-rock outfits heard on 89.7 The River. It’s unlikely to mean the style of indie bands that you and I know and love.

And then there’s the rumor that Red Sky will offer three tiers of musical acts: Huge main stage national bands would play inside the stadium; a second tier of bands that consist mostly of “casino acts” (REO Speedwagon, that sort thing) would play stages set up outside the stadium, and a third level of club acts and local bands would play on small stages in the parking lots. Perhaps you’ll be able to buy tickets for each individual level, or for one huge price, an all-access laminate for all three. If they follow that model, we could see quality indie bands booked for those second-tier stages.

Anyway, it’s all speculation. And what makes this column all the more risky is that Red Sky could announce its entire line-up the day this goes to press. So at the risk of looking like an ass (again) here are some of the names that I’ve heard kicked around that could be among the 50odd bands performing at Red Sky: U2 — This would be quite a coup for the festival’s inaugural year, but looking at U2’s current tour schedule, the band already is slated to play in New

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Jersey on July 20 and then Minneapolis on July 23.

Yeah, that does leave July 21 and 22 open, but U2’s stage set-up is rather massive and takes days to set up, move and tear down. It doesn’t seem likely that they’d be able to sneak in an Omaha date, unless... as a favor to Susie Buffett (reportedly a close friend to Bono’s), U2 flew into Omaha and left its massive stage in Minnesota. Maybe, maybe…

Journey — This sounds more like a second-tier stage event, especially considering that Journey no longer is the band most of us know after Steve Perry hung up his microphone years ago. Journey will be touring with Foriegner and Night Ranger in mid July.

Black Eyed Peas — The only other BEP gig scheduled even close to the Red Sky date is the Wireless Festival at Hyde Park in London July 1. I can’t think of a more banal, unoriginal act, but somebody loves them (judging by the Super Bowl).

Jamie Johnson — A couple people have mentioned this cowboy. I had to look him up in Wikipedia, which says the “American country artist” had a top 10 hit called “In Color” and has co-written material with Trace Adkins and George Strait, among others. He’s listed as a supporting act for Kid Rock’s 2011 Born Free Tour, which brings us to...

Kid Rock — He’s just the kind of white-trash superstar that your typical Husker-lovin’, pick-up drivin’, Larry-theCable-Guy quotin’ stooge would love to see. And he has July 19-21 wide open on his tour schedule.

311 — You can pretty much pencil this one in as a done deal. And if this is what MECA considers “alternative,” well, the MAHA Music Festival folks have nothing to worry about.

Jimmy Buffett — Back when Red Sky was first announced, MECA’s Roger Dixon was quoted by KETV Channel 7 saying Buffett “is probably the No. 1 requested artist to have.” I can’t think of a more vile act other than, well, Kid Rock. Unfortunately for Dixon, Buffett got lost in Margaritaville and fell off the stage at Hordern Pavilion in Sydney, Australia, back in January, suffering a head injury. He returns to the road in April, but already has gigs booked for July 19, 21 and 23.

Sublime with Rome — Not sure why this one has so much buzz. Sublime is indeed back on the road with a new line-up after the death of frontman Brad Nowell in ‘96. Now fronted by Rome Ramirez, the band was forced to change its name due to legal pressure from the Nowell family, who owns the Sublime moniker.

Bright Eyes — Many thought they were a shoe-in for Red Sky before Bright Eyes announced its June 4 date at Westfair Amphitheater. Now it seems like a long shot, though stranger things have happened, especially when MECA-sized money is involved.

So what’s the real Red Sky line-up? Keep an eye on redskyfestival.com — a website domain owned by MECA — for the announcement. It should come any day now..,

is a weekly column by long-time Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on the Omaha music scene. Check out Tim’s daily music news updates at his website, lazy-i.com, or email him at lazy-i@thereader.com.

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| THE READER |

lazy-i

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Josh Garrett, Roomful of Blues, Jumpin’ & Swingin’

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ast week I got so wrapped up in wistful longing for Austin’s SXSW events that I failed to give a good preview to Josh Garrett & the Bottomline. The band’s horn-driven Louisiana music hits the Zoo Bar Wednesday, March 16, 6 p.m.-9 p.m. So if you have this column in your hands in time on Wednesday, head on out to the Zoo. You won’t be disappointed. Fans of Tommy Castro and Tab Benoit should really dig Garrett’s sound, an up-tempo mix of electric blues, funk and zydeco that’s built for dancing.

Josh Garrett & the Bottomline rock The 21st Amendment Thursday, March 17, 5:30 p.m.8:30 p.m. Garrett is a fine songwriter and soulful vocalist. He’s also got some serious guitar chops and a band that’s fun and funky. Even though it’s St. Patrick’s Day, The 21st Amendment blues series still needs your support. If you haven’t seen this great band this is a great night to give them a listen. Look them up at JoshGarrettMusic.com.

Roomful of Blues It’s been a big month for national touring bands hitting the metro. The run continues when the swingin’ horn band Roomful of Blues rolls in for two shows. Roomful of Blues is led by longtime guitarist Chris Vachon and features Rich Lataille, who joined the band on sax shortly after its founding by Duke Robillard. The Boston-based band has been going strong for over 44 years, delivering horn-driven jump-blues, swing and jazz-inflected music to audiences everywhere. Phil Pemberton became the lead vocalist in 2010. Pemberton was a respected New England-area bandleader for over 20 years. Reviewers offer raves on Pemberton like WTKK’s Bill Smith’s comment, “This man could sing his way outta jail.” The Boston Globe wrote “his voice can ache with tenderness or rattle the rafters with power.”

Guitarist and composer Chris Vachon has been leading the band for many years. He was coproducer on a number of their discs and has been producer for the group’s recordings since 1998.

The band’s latest is Hook, Line & Sinker on Alligator Records.

The eight-piece group’s press kit contains stellar quotes from both blues journalists and more mainstream publications like USA Today and Blurt. Noting that early rock and roll was “defined by swinging horns and jump rhythms” Blurt wrote, “Perhaps no group has kept the spirit of early rock and roll alive better than Roomful of Blues ... stronger than ever in 2011. And that is saying something about a band that as long ago as 1974

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the immortal Count Basie called ‘the hottest blues band I ever heard.’ That heat still burns red hot on Hook, Line & Sinker.” Check the band’s press, history and sounds at Roomful.com.

Roomful of Blues hits Lincoln’s Zoo Bar next Wednesday, March 23, 6-9 p.m. The band plays The 21st Amendment Thursday, March 24, 5:308:30 p.m.

Zoo Bar Music Lincoln’s Zoo Bar offers honky-tonk, classic and outlaw country for St. Patrick’s night with The Hangin’ Cowboys and Buck & Faver after 9 p.m.

Earlier at 6 p.m. on March 17, the Zoo gets their green on with Irish music from Chris Sayre & The Laddies.

The Lilí Slim Blues Band featuring Shawn Holt, son of Magic Slim, takes the Zoo Bar stage on Friday, March 18, after 9 p.m.

On Sunday, March 20, at 3 p.m. the Zoo goes gospel with a performance by the Quinn Chapel AME Gospel Choir. Sunday night from 6-9 p.m., longtime Zoo bartenders Hannah Voelker and Tony Demma have an art show of their original artwork. Sign up at Zoobar.com for the club’s weekly email calendar plus updates and big shows on the horizon.

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#

#172 More dirt than Perez Hilton.

www.theatreartsguild.com

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Last week’s Hoodoo mentioned former Omaha musician Cass Brostad has been doing well in the music scene of her new home in Austin. Brostad’s new Texas band TigerMega was recently recorded for the Austin section of Balcony TV. The URL for their performance is balconytv.com/v/tigermega, info that came in too late to get into the print version of this column last week.

Hot Notes

Curtis Salgado headlines a big blues show May 14 at the Bourbon Theatre. More next week on that event.

Lincoln Exposed brings many styles of local music to various Lincoln stages Thursday, March 24, through Sunday, March 27. Find the schedule at HearNebraska.org or under their Facebook event page.

The next installment of Rockabilly Night is next Thursday, March 24, at Gator O’Malley’s, after 8 p.m. The free show features The Fall Down Drunks from Kansas City and Thad Sands from Iowa. Rockabilly dance lessons will be offered before the band starts and there’ll also be a performance by the Hot Tall Honeys Burlesque Troop. Find more information at the Omaha Rockabilly Facebook page.

Check OmahaBlues.com for the Blues Society of Omaha’s compiled calendar for all the live roots music at clubs on St. Patrick’s Day. ,

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HOODOO is a weekly column focusing on blues, roots, Americana and occasional other music styles with an emphasis on live music performances. Hoodoo columnist B.J. Huchtemann is a Reader senior contributing writer and veteran music journalist who has covered the local music scene for nearly 20 years.

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| THE READER |

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Reasons to experience

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MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

27

2234 South 13th Street Omaha, NE 68108 346 - 9802 www.sokolundground.com

livemusiccalendar

SEND CALENDAR INFORMATION — including addresses, dates, times, costs and phone numbers — to The Reader’s calendar editor. Mail to or drop off information at P.O. Box 7360 Omaha, NE 68107; email to listings@thereader.com; fax to (402) 341.6967.

Deadline is 5 p.m. the Thursday prior to issue date.

thursday 17

sat 3/12/2011

thu 3/17/2011

fri 3/08/2011

wed 3/23/2011

thu 3/24/2011

The ST. PaTrick’S ShamrOck FeST FeaTuring againST The arTiFical, auraSing, SidewiSe, The end in red, and cOincide dOOrS @ 6:30ShOw @ 7:00 “geT Pinched” lake Sulc w/ STanbye, big elePhanT, aneurySm, and averT yOur eyeS dOOrS @ 6:30 ShOw @ 7:00 whaT dwellS wiThin w/ a Sequence OF ghOSTS, The caTalyST, wOrdS like daggerS, aT war wiTh gianTS, and dire gnOSiS dOOrS @ 6:30ShOw @ 7:00 blackliST PreSenTS: viTOSuS, vulSaFire, eScaPe The Fire, and everyThing gOeS dOOrS @ 5:30ShOw @ 6:00 hearnebraSka.Org PreSenTS: SOJh w/ SchOOl OF rOck dOOrS @ 6:30ShOw @ 7:00

JOSH GARRETT & THE BOTTOMLINE, (blues) 5:30 p.m.,

21st Amendment Saloon, $8.

SLANG, E BROWN, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, FREE. POG MO THON, (celtic) 9 p.m., Barley St. Tavern, $5.

ST. CHRISTOPHER, MF SAINTS, PHARMACY SPIRITS,

BATTLE MANTIS, (rock) 9 p.m., Bourbon, $5.

PRAIRIE GATORS, (rock) 9 p.m., Brass Monkey, FREE. ELLIS ISLAND, (celtic) 2 p.m. & 6 p.m., Brazen Head.

GET LUCKY W/ CHIEF & E-ROK, (DJ) 9 p.m., Bricktop.

DEAN THE BIBLE, BONEHART FLANNIGAN, 9 p.m., Duffy’s.

DUN BIN HAD, THE SHIDIOTS, DUNDEE STRANGLER,

BLACK HAWKS, OFFICIALLY TERMINATED, (punk/

rock) 7 p.m., The Hole, $7.

EILEEN IVERS, (celtic/folk) Holland Center.

OMAHA PIPE AND DRUMS, POG-MO-THON, HIFI HANGOVER, (various) 12 p.m., Kennedy’s, FREE. THE KILLIGANS, NO JUMPING FOR JIM, BANJO LOCO,

(celtic/punk) 9 p.m., Knickerbockers.

THE ELDERS, (celtic/rock) 7:30 p.m., Lied Center, $24-$29.

LAVA ROCKETS, (cover) 9 p.m., Loose Moose, FREE. GRAND THEFT GIRLFRIEND, (cover) 9 p.m., O’Salty Dog. R-STYLE, (jazz) 6:30 p.m., Ozone, FREE. AVARICIOUS, (cover) 8 p.m., Pate & Mike’s, FREE. ERIN CEILIDH BAND, (singer-songwriter) 7 p.m., Pizza

Shoppe Collective.

CHRIS SAUB AND THE FEEL GOOD GROOVE JUNKIES,

(cover) 7:30 p.m., Prestige, FREE. LADY GAGA, SCISSOR SISTERS, (pop) Qwest Center.

JILL ANDERSON AND FRIENDS, (celtic) 7:30 p.m., Scottish

Rite Masonic Center, $20.

READER RECOMMENDS

THE DAVE POLSON ORCHESTRA, (jazz) 9 p.m., Side Door.

READER RECOMMENDS

ST. PADDY’S GOO, (DJ) 9 p.m., Slowdown, $5.

LAKE SULC, STANDBYE, BIG ELEPHANT, ANEURYSM,

FADED, (rock) 7 p.m., Sokol Underground, $7.

“STRINGS ATTACHED” W/ THE UNO CHAMBER

ORCHESTRA & THE UNO JAZZ ENSEMBLE, (jazz/

classical) 7 p.m., Strauss Recital Hall, $5.

JR HOSS, OMAHA PIPES AND DRUMBS, LEMON FRESH DAY, (celtic/cover) 2 p.m., Two Fine Irishmen, FREE. DUSTIN EVANS, (country) 9 p.m., Uncle Ron’s.

THE FILTER KINGS, BLOODCOW, THE WHIPKEY THREE, THE BEAT SEEKERS, (rock) 9 p.m., Waiting Room, $7.

DIRTY SECRET, (rock) 9 p.m., Whiskey Roadhouse, FREE. FIVE MAN TRIO, (acoustic) 7 p.m., Your Moms Bar. CHRIS SAYRE & THE LADDIES, (celtic) 6 p.m, Zoo Bar, $5.

THE HANGIN’ COWBOYS, BUCK AND FAVER, (country/

blues) 9:30 p.m., Zoo Bar, $5.

FRIDAY 18

MusicOmahaShow.com

The Documentary three-part episode

With Special Guest:

Andrew Jay

From Rock Paper Dynamite

28

march 17 - 23, 2011

THE JHAM W/ JAMES EHRMAN, KG, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, $5.

HIFI HANGOVER, (cover) 9 p.m., Arena, FREE. TANGENT ARC, ASHES VS LEAVES, (rock) 9 p.m., Barley

St. Tavern, $5.

SENSES FAIL, GHOST INSIDE, MAN OVERBOARD, TRANSIT, JV ALLSTARS, (punk) 7 p.m., Bourbon, $15.

WICKED FUN, (cover) 9 p.m., Chrome, FREE. GALAXIES, THRIFTY ASTRONAUT, LIFE IN PRISM, (rock) 9

p.m., Cultiva, FREE. 4 STRINGS OF SWING, (jazz) 6:30 p.m., Espana, FREE. CHAD LEE, (country) 9 p.m., Firewater Grille, FREE. PAISTY JENNY, (rock) 8:30 p.m., The Grove.

MARIACHI LUNA Y SOL, (mariachi) 6:30 p.m., Hector’s.

READER RECOMMENDS

CANCER BEATDOWN FUNDRAISER W/ THE CLINCHER,

FURIOSITY, THE SHIDIOTS, WEED SCUM, (rock) 8

p.m., The Hideout, $5, $7/under 21.

| THE READER |

music listings

GERALD CLAYTON & LISA HENRY, (jazz) 7 p.m., Jazz

Lousiana Kitchen.

BUFFINGTON, GIANT RUBBER SHARK, GORRILLA

WARFARE, (rock) 6 p.m., Knickerbockers.

READER RECOMMENDS

THE COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA, (jazz) 7:30 p.m., Lied

Center, $25-$35, $12.50-$17.50/student.

SOUTHPAW BLUEGRASS BAND, 9 p.m., Louis, FREE. THE RIVER MONKS, BRAD HOSHAW, (rock) 9:30 p.m.,

O’Leaver’s, $5.

LUKE JOHNSON, (acoustic) 6 p.m., Oscar’s, FREE. THE RUMBLES, (cover) 9 p.m., Ozone, FREE. THE JAZZ EXPLOSION, 9 p.m., Pizza Shoppe Collective.

FORK IN THE ROAD, (cover) 9 p.m., Prestige, FREE. THE SLANGS, (cover) 9:30 p.m., red9.

RALLY FOR ONE, SLIP SILO, FLIGHT METAPHOR, (rock) 9

p.m., Slowdown, $8.

WHAT DWELLS WITHIN, A SEQUENCE OF GHOSTS, THE

CATALYST, WORDS LIKE DAGGERS, AT WAR WITH

GIANTS, (rock/metal) 7 p.m., Sokol Underground, $8.

SIDEWISE, NIC & NICO, (rock) 9 p.m., Stir Live, $5.

LEMON FRESH DAY, (cover) 9 p.m., 2 Fine Irishmen, FREE. DUSTIN EVANS, (country) 9 p.m., Uncle Ron’s.

AFTER THE FALL, TAKE ME TO VEGAS, THE WRECKAGE, THE MATADOR, (rock) 9 p.m., Waiting Room, $7.

GARY DARLING, (acoustic) 9 p.m., Your Moms, FREE. FAC W/ BLUES PROJECT, (blues) 6 p.m., Zoo Bar, $4.

LIL SLIM BLUES BAND, (blues) 9 p.m., Zoo Bar, $6.

SATURDAY 19

ADAM HOTZ, GREG K, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, $5.

JEFF BLACK, (folk/americana) 7:30 p.m., 7th St. Loft.

HIFI HANGOVER, (cover) 9 p.m., Arena, FREE. ROUGH CUT, (cover) 9 p.m., Amerisports Bar, FREE. KETCHUP & MUSTARD GAS, THE WHEELERS, POWERFUL SCIENCE, DOWN WITH THE SHIP, (rock) 9 p.m.,

Barley St. Tavern, $5.

ROB BEATZ, CHE GARCIA, (DJ) 9 p.m., Bricktop, FREE. JUDD HOOS, (cover) 9 p.m., Chrome, FREE. RON JACOBS, ADAM ZAPPLE, BAD SPELER, (rock) 8 p.m.,

Cultiva, FREE. EVICTED, (metal) 6 p.m., Duffy’s.

4 STRINGS OF SWING, (jazz) 6:30 p.m., Espana, FREE. BOSSPHILLY, (rock) 8:30 p.m., The Grove.

DROWNING IN THE PLATTE, WEED SCUM, SARDONICUS, DEADECHOES, FAITH BURIED IN FLAMES, (metal)

9 p.m., The Hideout, $5, $7/under 21.

JIL AIGROT SINGS EDITH PIAF, 8 p.m., Holland Center, $19 SMOKIN SECTION, (rock) 9 p.m., Island, FREE. R & B ZONE, (R&B) 7 p.m., Jazz Louisiana Kitchen.

SOUNDBITE, (cover) 9 p.m., Kennedy’s.

DUSK BLED DOWN, TILL FLAMES FALL, AS EMPIRES

BURN, (rock/metal) 6 p.m, Knickerbockers.

THE MIGHTY REGIS, FILTHY FRESH AND THE SCUMBAGS, ALL OF MY FRIENDS ARE DINOSAURS, (punk/rock) 9

p.m., Knickerbockers.

MAJORTROUBLE, E-NUTT, TALENT & LYRIKAL, JUMP OUT SQUAD, MANYMORE, (hip-hop) 9 p.m., Louis, $5.

THE CLOCKSTOPPERS, (blues) 7 p.m., McKenna’s, FREE.

READER RECOMMENDS

BLOODCOW, TOILET: THE MOVIE, SAUDI ARABIA, (rock)

9:30 p.m., O’Leaver’s, $5.

RYAN MCLEAY, (acoustic) 6 p.m., Oscar’s, FREE. QUARTUS, (cover) 9 p.m., Ozone, FREE. ECKOPHONIC, (cover) 9:30 p.m., red9.

FORK IN THE ROAD, (cover) 9 p.m., Prestige, FREE. YOUNG ART CIRCLE, LINCOLN SYMPTHONY 20/30 CLUB,

(classical) 6 p.m., Sheldon.

SIC ALPS, THE WAYWARD LITTLE SATAN DAUGHTERS,

(rock) 9 p.m., Slowdown, $8.

READER RECOMMENDS STUDIO GALLERY RECORD CLUB PRESENTS: JOYRIDE

PERFORMS PRINCE’S DIRTY MIND, (pop/rock/

electronic) 9 p.m., Studio Gallery.

LEMON FRESH DAY, (cover) 9 p.m., 2 Fine Irishmen, FREE. DUSTIN EVANS, (country) 9 p.m., Uncle Ron’s.

EDGE OF ARBOR, SARAH BENCK, BROTHERS TANDEM, ROCK PAPER DYNAMITE, (acoustic/rock) 9 p.m.,

Waiting Room, $7.

CHROME UNION, (rock) 9 p.m., Whiskey Roadhouse, FREE. BRAD CORDEL BAND, (blues) 9 p.m., Your Moms, FREE. ACADEMY OF ROCK, (rock) 6 p.m., Zoo Bar, $4.

SUNDAY 20

SUNDAY GOLD W/ GREG K, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, FREE. DOWN WITH THE SHIP, THE WHEELERS, POWERFUL SCIENCE, (rock) 9 p.m., Bourbon, $5, $7/under 21.

80’S NIGHT, (DJ) 8 p.m., Bricktop, FREE. TIM KOEHN ACOUSTIC JAM, 8 p.m., Deuces Lounge, FREE. TREE TOPS, APPROACHING NOTHING, BAD, (pop/punk/

rock) 6 p.m., Duffy’s.

DANIEL DORNER, ELIQ MARDOCK, QUILT, JOHN

KLEMMENSEN & THE PARTY, (rock) 9 p.m., Duffy’s.

LIVE GUITAR, 6 p.m., Espana, FREE. PIANO QUARTET, 2 p.m., First United Methodist $30.

SWAMPJAM, (blues) 3 p.m., Millard VFW. YDESTROYDE, BAD SPELER, FATHR^, GRABASS, (electro/

noise/experimental) 9 p.m., Sandbox, $7.

POTLUCK, KRIZZ KALIKO, KUTT CALHOUN, JOHNNY RICHTER, (hip-hop) 6 p.m., Slowdown, $16.

TARA VAUGHAN, EDGE OF ARBOR, ALL YOUNG GIRLS ARE MACHINE GUNS, (singer-songwriter) 8 p.m.,

Waiting Room, $7.

QUINN CHAPEL AME GOSPEL CHOIR, 3 p.m., Zoo Bar.

MONDAY 21

READER RECOMMENDS SAIGON, POTLUCK, KRIZZ KALIKO, KUTT CALHOUN,

JOHNNY RICHTER, (hip-hop) 8 p.m., Bourbon, $16/

adv, $18/dos.

ALPHA AND OMEGA, BENT LIFE, EXPIRE, TAKE OFFENSE,

BIG MOUTH, (rock) 6 p.m., Knickerbockers.

MIKE GURCIULLO AND HIS LAS VEGAS LAB BAND, (jazz)

6:30 p.m., Ozone, FREE.

TUESDAY 22

VIC NASTY, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, FREE.

READER RECOMMENDS

NOISE NIGHT, (rock) 9 p.m., Barley St. Tavern.

CASTANETS, HOLY SONS, DOLOREAN, SOUTH OF

LINCOLN, PATRICK BRADLEY, (folk/rock) 8 p.m.,

Bourbon, $8.

ALEXIS GIDEON, JEFF THOMPSON, BRYAN KLOPPING,

(experimental/rock) 7 p.m., Clawfoot House, $5. $BILL, (DJ) 10 p.m., Duffy’s.

JOE AND THE JUNGLE, (rock) 9 p.m., Knickerbockers.

DOWN & DESPERATE, (acoustic) 6:30 p.m., Ozone, FREE. NOW NOW, SANTAH, (rock) 9 p.m., Slowdown, $8.

THE DODOS, READING RAINBOW, (rock) 9 p.m., Waiting

Room, $12.

GLOWORM, NOMANDIE WILSON, SOFA CITY SWEETHEART, PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES, (rock) 9

p.m., Zoo Bar, $5.

Wednesday 23

E.BABBS, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, FREE. STARF***ING HIPSTERS, SUBJECT TO AUTHORITY,

EASTERN TURKISH, CORDIAL SPEW, YOUTH AND TEAR GAS, (punk/rock) 6 p.m., The Hole, $8.

BLAKE KEMPTON, MIKE GOODE, (rock) 9 p.m.,

Knickerbockers.

VITOSUS, VULSAFIRE, ESCAPE THE FIRE, EVERYTHING

GOES, (rock/metal) 6 p.m., Sokol Underground,

$5/adv, $7/dos.

RUST BELT LIGHTS, LATIN FOR TRUTH, A NEW CLASS

WAR, GUTTERBALL, (punk) 8 p.m., Slowdown, $10.

BLU SIMON, (blues) 9 p.m., Your Mom’s Downtown Bar. ROOMFUL OF BLUES, 6 p.m., Zoo Bar, $15/adv, $18/dos.

CHRIS AND JARED’S GOODTIME BLUES PARTY, (blues) 9

p.m., Zoo Bar, $4.

VENUES

Ameristar Casino, 2200 River Rd., Council Bluffs, ameristar.com Arena Bar & Grill, 3809 N. 90th St., 571.2310, arenaomaha.com BarFly, 707 N. 114th St., 504.4811 Barley Street Tavern, 2735 N. 62nd St., 554.5834, barleystreet.com Bourbon Theatre, 1415 O St., Lincoln, 730.5695 Duffy’s Tavern, 1412 O St., Lincoln, 474.3453, myspace.com/duffystavern The Hideout, 302 S. 72nd St. Knickerbocker’s, 901 O St., Lincoln, 476.6865, knickerbockers.net LIV Lounge, 2279 S. 67th St. livlounge.com Louis Bar and Grill, 5702 NW Radial Hwy., 551.5993 McKenna’s Blues, Booze & BBQ, 7425 Pacific St., 393.7427, mckennasbbq.com New Lift Lounge, 4737 S. 96th St., 339.7170 O’Leaver’s Pub, 1322 S. Saddle Creek Rd., 556.1238, myspace.com/oleaverspub

Ozone Lounge at Anthony’s Steakhouse, 72nd and F, 331.7575, ozoneclubomaha.com.

Pizza Shoppe Collective, 6056 Maple St., 556.9090, pscollective.com Qwest, 455 N. 10th St., qwestcenteromaha.com Side Door, 3530 Leavenworth St., 504.3444.

Slowdown, 729 N. 14th St., 345.7569, theslowdown.com Sokol Hall, 2234 S. 13th St., 346.9802, sokolundergound.com The Sydney, 5918 Maple St., 932.9262, thesydneybenson.com Stir, 1 Harrahs Blvd., Council Bluffs, harrahs.com Venue 162, 162 W. Broadway, Council Bluffs, 712.256.7768, myspace.com/venue162 Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St., 884.5353, waitingroomlounge.com Whiskey Roadhouse, Horseshoe Casino, 2701 32nd Ave., Council Bluffs, whiskeyroadhouse.com Your Mom’s Downtown Bar, 1512 Howard St., 345.0180 Zoo Bar, 136 N.14th St., Lincoln, zoobar.com

0

UPCOMING SHOWS

With a title like Time To Die, you might think the Dodos’ third disc is their ‘mature album,’ a deadly serious undertaking punctuated with string sections and synths.

Nice try kid, but you’ve got it all wrong. While indie rock’s go-to guy, Phil Ek (Built to Spill,Fleet Foxes, The Shins), hopped behind the boards this time, the Dodos’ wildly-percussive style is still centered around two key elements: the punchy percussion of Logan Kroeber and rontman Meric Long.

tueSday, 3/22/11 9:00PM @ the Waiting rooM

SPOtlIGHt SHOW

THE DODOS w/ Reading Rainbow

thurSday, 3/17/11 9:00PM @ the Waiting rooM the Filter KingS

Friday, 3/18/11 9:00PM @ the Waiting rooM aFter the Fall

Friday, 3/18/11 9:00PM @ SloWdoWn rally For one

w/ Bloodcow, The Whipkey Three, & The Beat Seekers

w/ The Wreckage, The Matador, & Take Me To Vegas

w/ Slip Silo & Flight Metaphor

Saturday, 3/19/11 9:00PM @ the Waiting rooM edge oF arBor

w/ Sarah Benck, Brothers Tandem, & Rock Paper Dynamite

Sunday, 3/20/11 8:00PM @ the Waiting rooM tara Vaughan

w/ Edge Of Arbor & All Young Girls Are Machine Guns

tueSday, 3/22/11 9:00PM @ SloWdoWn noW, noW

WedneSday, 3/23/11 9:00PM @ the Waiting rooM FanCy Party CoMedy

thurSday, 3/24/11 9:00PM @ the Waiting rooM Saturn Moth

Friday, 3/25/11 9:00PM @ the Waiting rooM the enVy CorPS

w/ Dim Light, Cymbal Rush, & Knife.Fight.Justice!

3/26/11 SATCHEL GRANDE 3/27/11 Tom RuSSELL 3/28/11 RAILRoAD EARTH 3/29/11 LANDING oN THE mooN 3/30/11 STATE RADIo 3/31/11 mACKLEmoRE & RYAN LEWIS 3/31/11 oLD 97’S 4/01/11 IT’S TRuE 4/01/11 CoLD STEEL 4/02/11 THE READY SET - EARLY SHoW

w/ Santah

w/ Thunder Power, My Pal Dragon, & Lonely Estates

4/02/11 ToRo Y moI 4/03/11 JAmES mCmuRTRY - EARLY SHoW 4/03/11 VIBESQuAD - LATE SHoW 4/03/11 WYE oAK 4/04/11 BLACK JoE LEWIS & THE HoNEYBEARS 4/05/11 LIGHTNING BoLT 4/06/11 ASKING ALEXANDRIA 4/06/11 SuPER HAPPY FuNTImE BuRLESQuE 4/07/11 BASSNECTAR 4/07/11 GuNSHoT ITCH

More Information and Tickets Available at

WWW.ONEPERCENTPRODUCTIONS.COM

music listings

| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

29

Sokol Underground 2234 S 13th St Omaha,NE 68108

Presents

VITOSUS VULSAFIRE LEARNING TO FALL ESCAPE THE FIRE EVERYTHING GOES

WED.MARCH23 DOORS @ 5:30PM / SHOW @ 6:00PM

$5 Presale from Bands and Blacklist Street Team / $7 @ The door / 2 Bucks Off With Blacklist Flyer

Theblacklisters.com / Facebook.com/theblacklisters

You're Invited!

SATURDAY, MARCH 26TH The Max at 15th & Jackson 5:30-8:30pm

Opera like you have NEVER seen it!

Featuring the BEST female impersonators and their interpretations of classic opera arias.

OF THE OPERA Tickets $35

25 & Under $25 / 21+ only Includes delectable munchies from Dixie Quicks and signature cocktail tastings. Cash bar available.

SIGNATURE TASTINGS SPONSOR:

To purchase tickets go to: www.ticketomaha.com or call 402-345-0606 A processing fee will be assessed if paying by credit card.

To pay by check or cash, please visit the Ticket Omaha Box Office at 13th & Douglas Questions? Call Opera Omaha at 402-346-4398 or operaomaha.org

30

MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

E D I T E D

Battle: Los Angeles has great action, terrible everything else

A

by Ryan Syrek

would have been a near-perfect film. Alas, we are treated to such rich characters as “the one with the pregnant wife,” “the one who is getting married,” “the virgin,” “the old guy who has had enough of this shit,” “the one whose last mission went bad” and, of course, “the girl.” It’s enough to make one yearn for the wacky chutzpah of Starship Troopers.

Tantalizingly beginning in the middle of combat before pulling back to set up characters whose names we will never bother to learn, Battle: Los Angeles’ plot is Netflix blurb paradise. Aliens fall out of the sky and blow stuff up. The military

midst a sea of fallen comrades, facing almost certain death at the hands of an incomprehensible foe, Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) gets inches from the face of Cpl. Jason Lockett (Cory Hardrict) and begins to bellow a five-minute rant ZZBATTLE: LOS ANGELES without missing a single military cliché.

Seemingly exhausted by covering every base from “good men died out there” to “Marines don’t quit,” Nantz pauses, looks right at the camera and says “But none of that matters.” Probably not the best thing to say after the most significant, albeit ridiculous, dialogue spoken in an entire movie. But at least he was honest.

Battle: Los Angeles is a lumbering beast. It is a juggernaut with the brains of a glue-sniffer, a mongoloid mash-up of every conceivable cinematic military trope with the added wrinkle of an alien invasion. Also, it’s kind of awesome … so long as nobody’s talking or acting.

This is not a joke or hyperbole: Had writer Christopher Bertolini eliminated all but the incidental dialogue (as in “Get down” or “We have to go to that place over there to do that thing”), this

Film Streams at the Ruth Sokolof Theater 14th & Mike Fahey Street (formerly Webster Street) More info & showtimes 402.933.0259 · filmstreams.org Facebook & Twitter: /filmstreams

shoots at them and hopes for the best. Seriously, there is no nuance here, as the plot moves from “run over here” to “run over there” before settling on “now blow up that thing.”

And it mostly works! Honest. Hoo-rahs are due to director Jonathan Liebesman, who delivers the most riveting and explosive action set pieces in years. Relentless in nature and epic in scope, the eyes could not want for more. The ears and rapidly atrophying brain, on the other hand …

It’s not just that the acting is wretched — Eckhart seems to have caught Christian Bale’s head-cold voice from The Dark Knight, and Michelle Rodriguez has used her lifetime allotment of grimaces; and it’s not just that the dialogue is putrid. It’s that there’s no rational thought here. Why are extraterrestrials only here for our resources (specifically water) using bullets and not city-razing bombs? Why are the aliens designed like inside-out squids and yet wear humanoid exoskeletons?

Why does every intergalactic conquering species have one giant gaping vulnerability (cough, Death Star, cough)?

Battle: Los Angeles has no zombie movie-esque social commentary or sly military critique. It has no emotional resonance, no creative core, no brains at all. It’s stupid, stupid, stupid.

And also pretty awesome. ,

GRADE: B-

B Y

R Y A N

S Y R E K

■ La Vie En Rose kicked a lot of things off for me. It was the first film I saw at Film Streams at the Ruth Sokolof Theater (FilmStreams.org) and also marked the beginning of what professionals may call an obsession with Marion Cotillard. To celebrate (the film, not my obsession), Film Streams is buddying up with Omaha Performing Arts to present a matinee screening of the flick on March 20 at 2 p.m., complete with a post-show discussion with Jil Aigrot. Who is she? She’s the singing voice of Edith Piaf in the movie and will be performing on Saturday March 19 at the Holland Performing Arts Center. All this time, I thought Cotillard did her own singing — time to downgrade my affinity for her. Is this what therapists call a breakthrough?

■ After Benicio Del Toro stepped out of the Three Stooges biopic the Farrelly brothers are making, they began looking for a replacement Moe. They have decided to offer it to Johnny Knoxville, who will likely respond, “Yes! I’ll do it! I’ll definitely do it! Now, what is it you wanted to offer me?”

■ Fitting, given how Americans love expanding, director Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time In America is set to have another 40 minutes added back into the film. The total running time will now clock in at 309 minutes, which if Iím doing my math right, translates into way too long.

CUTTINGROOM

Black Hawk Clowns

film

— Ryan Syrek Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on the radio on CD 105.9 (Fridays at around 7:30 a.m.), on his blog at thereader.com/film/ C19 and on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).

New this Week The Last Lions

First-Run (PG) Directed by Dereck Joubert.

Starts Friday, March 18

“One of the most urgent and certainly among the most beautifully shot documentaries to hit the big screen in recent memory.”

—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“The footage, by [National Geographic photographers] Dereck and Beverly Joubert, is stunning.”

—Entertainment Weekly

Steven Soderbergh Series: Traffic 2000 Bubble 2005

Friday, March 18 - Thursday, March 24

The Met: Live in HD Lucia di Lammermoor Live: Saturday, March 19, 12pm* Encore: Wednesday, March 23, 6pm

*Prelude Talk with Opera Omaha Resident Music Director J. Gawf starting at 11am.

film

Family & Children’s Series Looney Tunes Shorts

March 19-31 (Saturdays, Sundays, Thursdays)

One Day Only!

La Vie en Rose Sunday, March 20, 2pm

2007

With a post-show Q&A featuring singer Jil Aigrot (“the Voice of Edith Piaf”).

Presented in collaboration with Omaha Performing Arts.

| THE READER |

MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

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AN INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF SURVIVAL

“BEAUTIFULLY SHOT...

GRIPPING!” _ Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“SUSPENSEFUL ...

EMOTIONAL ...

A_ TRIUMPH!” Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post

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As told by Academy Award® Winner Jeremy Irons

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What Happens in Iowa: Ed Helms meets the world in Cedar Rapids

“RIVETING!”

– Joe Neumaier, Daily News

r e v i e w s ,

J

by Justin Senkbile

ust as Glengarry Glen Ross was for real estate agents, director Miguel Arteta’s Cedar Rapids is an ode to the desperate, lonely life of the insurance salesman. Of course, there are a lot more jokes here than in David Mamet’s play, but there’s no avoiding that big melancholic heart beating at the center. And the feeling of defeat is easily sensed around these lively, ordinary people as they do their best to get cedar rapids along in a less than exciting life.

Ed Helms stars as the unfortunately named Tim Lippy, a kindhearted, preposterously innocent insurance man living in a sleepy Wisconsin town. Things move slowly in Tim’s town, if they move at all, and he prefers it that way. But when he’s assigned the task of traveling to Cedar Rapids to win a prestigious award for the agency, Tim finds himself thrust onto a plane and into the world.

Things are scary out there at first: there’s the “Afro-American” he finds in his hotel suite (who turns out to be his roommate Ron (played by Isiah Whitlock Jr. of “The Wire”) and the rambunctious Dean Ziegler (John C. Riley), whom he’d been previously warned about. But there are plenty of delights as well, including a friendly girl named Bree (a young prostitute played by Alia Shawkat) who hangs around outside the hotel.

There’s also Omaha native and fellow insurance

m o r e

e d i t e d

b y

r y a n

s y r e k

peddler Joan (Anne Heche), who quickly takes a motherly kind of liking to Tim. With a character as sincere and inexperienced as Tim, Cedar Rapids is set up to be one of those useless, mean-spirited dork bashings. The fact that it never devolves into that is what makes this run-of-the-mill comedy something special. Sure, there are laughs to be had at Tim’s expense, and Arteta and writer Phil Johnston certainly take advantage of that. But they still take him seriously, and he’s a full-formed character as opposed to a clown.

Tim is like a more tragic exaggeration of Andy Bernard, Helms’ character from “The Office.” The fact that his performance is so spot-on shouldn’t be too surprising, but for the same reason it shouldn’t be dismissed. No one does the sweet, annoying imbecile like Helms, and Cedar Rapids gives him a little room to expand that character into some real dramatic territory.

Heche and Whitlock are good enough, the former playing a clone of Vera Farmiga’s Alex from Up in the Air, and the latter coasting on a few hilariously stupid references to “The Wire.” Riley is always a joy to watch, and the foul-mouthed boozer he plays here is no exception. Zeigler is nothing new for this actor either, but Riley’s look, persona and sheer volume still have plenty of mileage left.

This is no masterpiece, but Cedar Rapids is consistently funny and even moving in its own clumsy way. Yes, we’ll soon forget this one among the many other comedies that will inevitably take its place on the screens, but it’s still well worth a watch.

GRADE: B

reportcard

The Adjustment Bureau A sweet fable with angels dressed as “Mad Men” fans.

READER RECOMMENDS

STARTS FRIDAY, MARCH 18TH AT THEATRES EVERYWHERE NO PASSES ACCEPTED

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march 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

film

Rango Not since Culture Club has a chameleon so captivated a nation.

B+ A-

Hereafter (ON DVD) DLet’s keep our hopes up for Eastwood’s next film. God knows its right around the corner.

The Fighter (ON DVD) If you can be punch-drunk on crack, Bale nails it.

B+

Hall Pass The recommendation for this unfunny comedy is in the second word of the title.

D

The King’s Speech BNot the best movie of the year, but lots of people will tell you it is.

Unknown Those expecting Taken may get took.

C-

A SUMMER TO DISCOVER

YMCA DAY CAMPS

Camp Pokamoke

Summer Fun Club

Teen Discovery

Children ages 5-15 can choose from a wide range of camps, including horse, sports, archery and arts and crafts.

The Y’s Summer Fun Club is an all-day, state licensed child care program for children ages 5-12

Fun activities, including field trips, leadership training, swimming. Open to 7th-10th graders.

Participation varies by location.

(Downtown and Sarpy YMCAs accept 4-year-olds).

For more on these programs, visit www.metroymca.org.

Financial assistance is available within the resources of our organization.

Dining out just got easier Want to find the latest scoop on restaurants, reviews and all the dish?

Find this and more on the newly improved DishOmaha.com. Offering simple access to details for Omaha’s restaurants.

Can’t decide where to eat tonight? Answers are a click

away! Our new iPhone app uses GPS to suggest restaurants based on your location

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| THE READER |

march 17 - 23, 2011

33

CREIGHTON Welcome to Our House!

BASEBALL

u Creighton vs. BYU Monday, Mar. 21 @ 3 p.m.

Tuesday, Mar. 22 @ 1 p.m.

Baseball home games played at the Creighton Sports Complex (22nd & Burt St.)

Tickets: 280-JAYS

WWW.GOCREIGHTON.COM

newsoftheweird

T H E W O R L D G O N E F R E A K Y B Y Z W I T H I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y TO M B R I S C O E

Professor numbskull

N

ew York University arts professor Wafaa Bilal had his camera surgically removed in February — the one that was implanted in the back of his skull in November to record, at 60-second intervals, the places he had left behind (beamed to and archived by a museum in Qatar).

The camera had been mounted under his skin, braced by three titanium posts, but his body very painfully rejected one of the posts, and his temporary solution is to merely tie the camera to the back of his neck (even though that work-around is unsatisfactory to him because it represents a less-personal “commitment” to the art). In the future, he said, communication devices like his will routinely be part of our bodies.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit Till Krautkraemer’s New York City beverage company MeatWater creates dozens of flavors of water for the upscale market of hearty gourmets who would like their daily salads, or shellfish, or goulash from a bottle instead of from a plate. Among his new flavors introduced in January, according to an AOL News report, were poached salmon salad water and a Caribbean shrimp salad water that can double as a vodka mixer. Old standbys include Peking duck water, tandoori chicken water, bangers ‘n’ mash water, and Krautkraemer’s favorite, German sauerbraten water.

Sell What You Know: In December, a company in eastern Ukraine (a country known for hard drinking) announced a “drinking buddy” service in which, for the equivalent of about $18, it would supply a barroom companion for the evening, “qualified” to discuss politics, sports,

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MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

| THE READER |

weird news

women, etc., and even to offer psychological counseling if appropriate.

Not Your Father’s Scotch: The Panamanian company Scottish Spirits recently introduced a straight Scotch whisky in 12-ounce cans, for a market of mobile drinkers who prefer not to invest in a whole bottle. The international Scotch whisky trade association expressed alarm.

At Clive’s, of Victoria, British Columbia, Glenfiddich Scotch whisky is only one ingredient in the signature cocktail “Cold Night In,” which, according to a January New York Times review, combines “molecular mixology” and comfort food. An especially buttery grilled-cheese sandwich is soaked overnight in the Scotch, along with Mt. Gay rum and Lillet Blanc wine. Following a brief freeze to congeal any remaining fat, and doublestraining, it is ready to serve — with a celery stick and other garnishments.

“Vulva Original,” from a German company, VivaEros, is the “scent of a beautiful woman,” reported in Harper’s magazine in August 2010, and selling as a fragrance concentrate for the equivalent of about $35 for a small roll-on container. (Its promotional video is of a lavishly photographed gym scene, with a handsome male, observing a beautiful female working out on a stationary bike, followed afterward by the male’s gently sniffing the seat.) “The female smell of intimacy,” promised VivaEros, “triggers sexual attraction and desire,” which men can address “more intensely during self-stimulation.””

Science on the Cutting Edge “You’re not going to like this,” warned NPR’s Robert Krulwich, about to deliver a February story about visionary robotics developers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, who created a carnivorous clock,

COPYRIGHT 2011 CHUCK SHEPHERD. Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com or NewsoftheWeird.com. Send Weird News to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679. Illustrations by Tom Briscoe (smallworldcomics.com).

supposedly able to power itself for 12 days merely on the carcasses of 12 dead houseflies (which the clock traps with fly paper and then mechanically razors in two). The pair also showed a prototype of a coffee table that catches mice by luring them up the table legs with cheese into a hole in the center, where they are guillotined. Auger and Loizeau said their creations are just extensions of TV nature programs showing animals hunting in the wild, but Krulwich fretted about the dangers inherent in “giving robots a taste for (meat).”

opiates, and decided to try what they had heard about on the street. One, age 44, bitten on the foot, experienced “a blackout associated with a sense of well-being, lethargy and sleepiness.” The other, 52, reported “dizziness and blurred vision followed by a heightened arousal and a sense of well-being,” and apparently was so impressed that he returned to the snake charmer two weeks later for a second bite.

The Continuing Crisis

Recurring Theme: Another “negative cash-flow” robbery occurred in February, in Kansas City, Mo., as an unidentified man tried to distract the clerk at a gun store by laying $40 on the counter to buy a box of bullets, then pulling a gun and demanding all the store’s money. The clerk thwarted the robbery by pulling his own gun (not surprisingly, since it was a gun store) and scaring the robber off — while the $40 remained on the counter.

In May 2008, classroom disrupter Alex Barton, 5, was finally made by his teacher at Morningside Elementary kindergarten in St. Lucie County, Fla., to sit down and listen to the accumulated complaints of his classmates, who then were asked to vote on asking Alex to leave the class. (He lost, 14-2.) Shortly afterward, Alex was diagnosed with a form of autism, and his mother filed a federal disability discrimination lawsuit, citing Alex’s “humiliation” by the voting incident. A settlement was reached in February 2011 when the school district agreed to pay Alex $350,000 (which included legal expenses). Said Ms. Barton, “Money can’t take care of what (the school district) did to my family.”

People With Issues Mental health practitioners, writing in the January issue of the journal Substance Abuse, described two patients who had recently arrived at a clinic in Ranchi, India, after allowing themselves to be bitten by cobras for recreational highs. Both men had decades-long substance-abuse issues, especially involving

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Least Competent Criminals

Recurring Theme From time to time a woman appears in the news proudly displaying her years-long cultivation of fingernail growth. This time it was Ms. Jazz Ison Sinkfield, a grandmother from Atlanta, who showed off her hands for WXIATV in February. She admits some handicaps from her 20- to 24-inch long nails that skew and curl in seemingly random directions (e.g., no bowling, shoe-tying or computer work, and the expense of a five-hour, $250 salon session each month), but claims to be unfazed if people she meets find the sight of her nails repulsive. Said Sinkfield, “Some people are jealous.” ,

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| THE READER |

MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

35

planetpower w ee k l y

H

h oroscopes

appy Full Moon in Virgo in opposition to the planet of the unexpected, the unusual and the bizarre, the planet Uranus and the Sun — this Saturday the 19th at 1:11 p.m. Omax time is the last day of/for both Winter and Pisces. How were your dreams? Turn ‘em into schemes and then realities after/on the New Moon in Aries, April 3rd.

That’s the word. Let’s see what this Spring can/shall bring?

It’s going to be very tricky, Ricky, so remember: There are no mistakes. Peace and Love Shall Conquer All.

— MOJOPOPlanetPower.com l PISCES (2.20-3.20) Happy Birthday and Full Moon! Say goodbye to the slumbering splendor you’ve experienced since December. It’s time to remember! It’s time to wake up — in 2 short weeks. April 3rd you’ll get the word on your new/next economic direction/situation. Somehow you’ve got to pay for this Shangri La? First thing, when one wakes up — you/we should do some Yoga? Stand on your head for five short minutes a day and report back to me September 12th, the Full Moon in Pisces. a ARIES (3.21-4.20) You’re ahead of us all; the leader of the pack. You’ve got these next two weeks to sell us on the idea before we’ll notice the hole in your bucket and send it back. Then you’ll have to chuck it or ...! You’ve got until the end of March before you’ll turn into an April Fool, as Mercury in Aries moves retrograde the afternoon of March 30 until April 23. It will be a different world for you. April 3rd you will feel compelled to CHARGE LARGE in Aries and pick up the pieces (or let others?) during Taurus. Until then, prepare by purifying your subconscious until all Hell (the unresolved portions of your subconscious memories) breaks loose. b TAURUS (4.21-5.20) If you can build up to an honest love for humanity (Venus in Aquarius until March 26th) you can realize the necessity of also/first loving yourself? A/The lesson of Onanism? (Well then, look it up — if you don’t mind the pun?).

Until your birthday you will be studying the downside of your impulsive nature. The trick is to be correct. Then your impulse will be verified by the future; otherwise you/we are destined to play the April Fool? Get ready. c GEMINI (5.21-6.21) Time to interact with an Aries.

Communicate with the head, the leader of the pack. You’ve got two short weeks before the craziness (when Mercury retrogrades) takes over and everything you’ve initiated March 10 will be held up to scrutiny and questioned. Start up a dialogue with your brothers and sisters before it’s too late.

Watch out what you say the first week in April or you’ll be slated to play the April Fool in school. d CANCER (6.22-7.22) Happy Full Moon on the Virgo/Libra cusp at 1:11 p.m., Saturday the 19th. The Sun will be conjunct, the planet of the unusual, the eccentric and the bizarre (the planet Uranus), so maybe you’ll get lucky at (a seafood?) dinner? Aquarians will/should be calling? Answer and fill them in on the/any and all details. Two weeks until your start! e LEO (7.23-8.22) Your Winter symphony hits its last crescendo this week and then voila! It’s Spring! You’re two weeks from gathering your forces and heading forward at breakneck speed into the oblivion of creativity. Prepare now.

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| THE READER |

mojo

b y

mo j opo

It’s going to be crazy; and the use of “craziness” (or the ability to step outside the confines of logic) for the good of all is/will be called “genius” by a grateful future. (You were born for that epithet!) Step outside and/to create! f VIRGO (8.23-9.22) You’ve got two short weeks to develop your quick, slick money making shtick. April finds you reacting to “bad press.” Maybe the resultant confusion can work economically for you? People pay for others to clean up their messes all the time? The Full Moon in Virgo is Saturday at 1:11 p.m. That’s your half birthday and the beginning of you road back. You’re about to unexpectedly (Full Moon in opposition to the planet Uranus) fall in love? Good luck in April! You’ll need it. g LIBRA (9.23-10.22) Please read Taurus. You must start now to prepare yourself for MONSTROUS opposition the first week in April. Retrograding Mercury, Mars, the planet Uranus, Jupiter, the Sun and New Moon are/will be in opposition to you and a retrograding Saturn April 3rd; providing opposition to the harmony of your status quo. I would disappear like the Magician you ultimately wish to be. No target, no wounds. Abracadabra! Live and survive to conjure another day. h SCORPIO (10.23-11.22) Use these next two weeks. You are about to be bombarded within your theoretical 6th House of work and health.

Whatever has worked for you up until April is about to be questioned and confused. Maybe ... we can question (Mercury retrograde) the unusual (the planet Uranus) size and/or growth possibilities (Jupiter) as you energize (Mars) your/any new starts (Aries) in/ at your gig (6th house)? Number one, meditate for these next two weeks.

Number two, watch the world fold all around you/us. And number three, help with the regeneration, rebirth and resultant renewal — like you always will/do. i SAGITTARIUS (11.23-12.21) With your luck you’ll surf the coming confusion into a/your next BIG bestselling novel! Maybe that’s a novel idea; but your’s is the sign of “The Composer,” plus you’re a lucky dog! Compose something as you filter through the coming confusion and creatively channel your bent onto these socialistic breakthroughs affording themselves expression in the first week in April. I see it working for you. j CAPRICORN (12.22-1.20) Please read Libra.

Yours used to be the sign of “The Magician.” That was before the discovery of the planets Uranus (1750), Neptune (1846) and Pluto (1929-1930). They now hold most of our available “Magique.” Leaving Saturn (your ruler) to watch the store?

All we’re left with is either an image of Gandolf or Scrooge?

Music harmony is/will be an analogy to what you need and want to be. Yoga always helps. You must tune your instrument before making music? k AQUARIUS (1.21-2.19) Your next seven years starts April 3rd, and with a BANG! Bang good/bang bad? We’ll see? I can’t yet tell. It’s not up to me? BIG! I guess it depends, like everything, on your karmic reaction — according to the necessities of your evolving experience? The Full Moon in Virgo the 19th is in opposition to your esoteric ruler, the planet Uranus. Get right on the details or it fails. How does the MOJO know? ,

Bilingual Career Fair Metropolitan Community College 27th & Q

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 11am to 4 pm

CELEBRA CELEB RATING RATIN

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• March 17, 2011 • As anti-bullying legislation becomes tougher, schools will begin to develop a zero-tolerance approach in which any instance of bullying can lead to a student’s expulsion. Because this policy will be applied unevenly, the worst offenders -- the chronic bulliers -- will get shipped around from school system to school system, landing in schools where the administration has the least interest in or resources to deal with bullying.

These “bully schools,” as they will come to be known, will repeatedly demonstrate poorer grades, higher rates of violence, and a greater likelihood of suicide of students. These same schools are also the likeliest to be in poor districts, and so zero-tolerance anti-bullying rules will functionally cause bullies to be shipped to schools made up of poor people and marginalized cultural minorities -- ideal targets for bullying.

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Mayo 5-8, 2011

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For information on registering for booths & parade contact:

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| THE READER |

MARCH 17 - 23, 2011

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