The Reader 12/23/10

dec. 23 - 29, 2010 VOL.17

44

news 7

Get Big or Get Out

dish 16

Rockin’ Moroccan

art 24

Vermin, Vermin, Everywhere!

together again film 39

Tchai-Kafka-sky’s Swan Lake

OMAHA JOBS 2

Two legendary Nebraska bands - Slowdown Virginia and Polecat - reunite for one night only cover story by Tim McMahan - Page 13

Weird 44

MOjo 46

FUNNIES 49

Full-time Humboldt Specialty Metal worker - Omaha Dmccarty@ humboldtspecialty.com Check out Omahajobs.com for more details.

Omaha Storm Chasers Front office assistant Papillion. robc@omaha stormchasers.com check out Omahajobs.com for more details.

Infinity Data SolutionsParttime Warehouse andProduction support thenning @infinitydataso-lutions. com check out Omahajobs .com website for more details.

Tip Top Tux Customer Service Reps & Assistant Manager - Omaha and Lincoln Sharon@tttux.com check out Omahajobs.com website for more details.

Nebraska Title Company Escrow Closer – Omaha kjohnson@nebtitlelincoln. com check out Omahajobs .com website for more details.

Academic Cardiologists Medical center seeks BC/BE physicians with a commitment to excellence in research, teaching and patient care. Rank is dependent upon qualifications For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Full-time Asst. Professor/Program Director, Criminal Justice Admin This position is responsible for serving as an effective educator, mentor and role model for students and adjunct faculty in the College of Professional Studies for the undergraduate program.

For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Chief Info Officer Works with staff, business partners, vendors and senior management to define IT strategies and methods for deploying and maintaining technology solutions in support of strategic corporate goals. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Bilingual Designers Needed Freelance Part Time Openings. Graphic and Web Design. Proficient in Adobe Creative Suite.

HTML Ex-pression Engine experience a PLUS. Work with creative team of Local Print and Digital Media.

Varying M-F schedules.

English and Spanish required. For more information email clayseaman@Omahajobs.com.

Frontline Private Security Security Officers - Omaha office@frontlineomaha. com check out Omahajobs .com for more details.

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Application Engineer If you have experience working for a fluid power manufacturer or distributor, we can give you an objective view of the conditions in the industry that can directly affect your income and lifestyle! For more information visit OmahaJobs.com

Assistant Manager/MIT The job duties of a store assistant manager include driving sales, customer care, supporting store manager by assisting in store operations.This position is a precursor to Managing a store within the organization. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Collision Repair Technician (BODY MAN) The candidate for this position will be able to demonstrate skills and abilities necessary to restore damaged vehicles back to original and preloss condition. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com

Security Officer Seeking security officers for an active growing security firm in Omaha. Full time and part time both available.

For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Physician Assistant Program FACULTY Teach courses in areas of expertise; establish and maintain clinical sites for student rotations; participate in skills instruction, clinical assessment, student admissions, and academic advising; participate in scholarly activity and in University service committees and activities. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Sales Representative A distributor of natural stone slabs with its headquarters in Omaha is seeking an Inside/Outside Sales Representative with office and warehouse basic knowledge. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Customer Service Rep Qualified candidates will have strong customer service skills, be detail oriented, able to analyze information and produce a professional, quality product to meet company and customer guidelines. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com

Pharmaceutical Sales Your unique talents and perspective can make a vital contribution to innovative products that improve the lives of people every where. Career opportunities within our companies may provide you with an ideal setting to build your leadership experience, express your passion, and touch the world. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Marketing Communications Account MANAGER The account manager is responsible for building and fostering on-going client relations, development and implementation of marketing communication plans, and project management of assigned accounts. For more information visit OmahaJobs.com.

Escrow Closer The primary function of this position is to attend closings and obtain all necessary signatures on real estate and loan closing documents. For more information visit OmahaJobs. com Sr. Copywriter Concept, research and write copy for initiative and strategybased projects, as well as various PR, Advertising, Training and Communication initiatives. For more information visit OmahaJobs. com.

Marketing & Utilization PROGRAM LEADER Serve as forest service program Leader, providing strong leadership in forest products marketing & utilization, forest & tree inventory, project & properties management. For more information visit OmahaJobs. com.

Metal Worker Applicant must be experienced in metal working, including welding. Applicant must be skilled in the operation of plasma cutting table, brakes, milling, welding, tube bending and powder coating. For more information visit OmahaJobs. com.

Sr Account Manager Responsible for proactively leading in servicing the needs of each client within assigned client base, including establishing an excellent working relationship with client or client representative. For more information visit Omaha Jobs.com.

Depending on your experience and qualifications, The Reader is seeking a lead editor to take the position of Culture Editor or Managing Editor. Responsibilities include managing one of the most experienced and sharpest freelance writing teams in the area to create relevant, credible, compelling daily online content, culminating in weekly print editions and longer features, driving reader engagement and building audience. The ability to recruit and challenge writers and contributors is the top priority, but beating deadlines, streamlining production, media collaborations, tackling technology -- including video -- and building community contributions are also very important. Pioneer Publishing is the most dynamic and fastest-growing media company in Omaha, with a total of ten channels -- half in print, half online -- targeting the area’s fastest-growing demographic and consumer segments. An agile culture, we embrace the digital convergence, and responsive journalism ethic help us define local, alternative media. Start in January. Compensation to match role, health insurance available. Please send resume to work@thereader.com.

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dec. 23 - 29 , 2010

| THE READER |

omaha jobs

Computers - Process Engineer II First Data Technologies, Inc. Omaha, NE

Use ClearCase Administration procedures to translate high-level, complex business reqts into functional specs for the IT organization.

Reqts: Bachelor deg or equiv in Comp Sci, Mgmt Info Systems, Math, Engg or rel + 5 yrs exp in position offd or rel. Employer will accept pre- or post- Bachelor deg exp.

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has a Software Architect position available in Omaha, NE.

Design, run and implement develoment projects. Responsible for standards govenance, adherence to best practices, conducting reviews, making presentations, and coaching/ mentoring. Qualifications: BS in CS or related + 5 yrs in related exp. Requirement include: Experience with ASP.NET, ASP, SQL*Server; Web-based technologies, J2EE, ASP, JSP, Struts, Apache, etc.

Employer will accept any combo of education, training, &/or prof’l exp to meet the education reqmt. Must have exp w/: ClearCase Administration on: Windows, Solaris, Linux, Multisite Administration, Build & Release Mgmt, & Configuration Mgmt.

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Apply at www.firstdatajobs.com.

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Pioneer Publishing, a fast growing local media company with over 10 channels, both print and online, is seeking Marketing Solutions Experts for full-time, parttime 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!

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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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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010 | THE READER | 4 CWGO0279_L1nms_JukeboxPack_Wing_OMAHA_10X9.96.indd 1 12/2/10 7:21 AM

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new etc.

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

heartland healing

12 Air on the Side of Health ———————————————

dec. 23 - 29 , 2010 VOL.17 n o . 4 4

lazy-i

cover story

30 From Russia with Rock ————————————————

Together Again:

hoodoo

Two legendary Nebraska bands — Slowdown Virginia and Polecat — reunite for one night only ~ Page 13

31 Evolutions ————————————————

film

dish

39 Tchai-Kafka-sky’s Swan Lake 39 Cutting Room: Film News 40 Cockey Dude Will Shoot 40 Report Card: Film Grades 42 We’re Killing Christian Bale ————————————————

16 Rockin’ Moroccan 16 Crumbs: Food News ————————————————

eight days

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

sports

art

21 Globetrotters 21 Mixed Media: Art News 24 Vermin, Vermin Everywhere!

————————————————

COVER PHOTO BY BRYCEBRIDGES.COM

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

this week

theater

26 Countdown to Curtain 26 Cold Cream: Theater News ————————————————

music

29 Backbeat: Music News ————————————————

43 The Jump: Sporting News ————————————————

news of the weird

44 Permission Slips ————————————————

mojo

46 Planet Power Horoscopes ————————————————

funnies

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

PROMOTIONS

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Interns

Steven Adams, Kelly Engquist 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

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contents

| THE READER |

dec. 23 - 29, 2010

5

Celebrate the Holiday Lights Festival and help Shine the Light on Hunger.

ConAgra Foods Ice Rink Friday, December 10 – Friday, December 31 Sunday – Thursday: 1 – 10 pm Friday & Saturday: 1 pm – Midnight Christmas Eve & New Year’s Eve: 1 – 5 pm Closed Christmas ConAgra Foods Campus, 10th & Harney A $5 fee will cover admission and skate rental. All proceeds and non-perishable food items collected from the ice rink will be donated to Food Bank for the Heartland as part of the Shine the Light on Hunger Campaign.

First National Bank Fireworks New Year’s Eve, 7 pm Gene Leahy Mall, 14th & Farnam First National Bank is proud to present the region’s largest New Year’s Eve fireworks display. For prime viewing, go to the Gene Leahy Mall.

Bring your radio and tune to Star 104.5 for choreographed music.

Visit www.holidaylightsfestival.org and our Facebook page! produced by:

Mayor Jim Suttle & Downtown Omaha Inc. Foundation

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

| THE READER |

presented by:

media sponsors:

notableevents

Q Shop with the Sheriff: Tuesday, Dec. 21, 4 p.m., Wal-Mart, 11350 Wickersham Blvd. The Sarpy Co. Sheriff ’s Department helps underprivileged kids shop for holiday gifts. 681.0929 Q Heart Improvement Therapy: Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2 p.m., Creighton Cardiac Center, 3006 Webster St. Creighton experts teach steps to combat and treat heart disease. Creighton.edu Q Nebraska’s Musical Smorgasbord: Tuesday, Dec. 28, 7 p.m., Millard Public Library, 13214 Westwood Lane. Program exploring the rich history of Nebraska folk music. Omahapubliclibrary.org

by Brandon Vogel

N

ebraska used to be ahead of the curve when it came to protecting family farms — a corporate farming ban helped the state largely retain its wide-open pastures full of grass-fed cattle until about the turn of the century. But statistics now show a state packed with livestock on corporate-owned, large-scale farms capable of producing potentially noxious waste on a scale comparable to some of America’s largest cities.

There were 60 percent more factory farmed hogs, and 40 percent more cattle on feedlots than there were people in the state in 2007, the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In other words, there were 1.6 factory farmed hogs and 1.4 cattle on feedlots for each of Nebraska’s 1.8 million people.

Nebraska ranked fourth in the country in total livestock units (based on weight), with an estimated 2.59 million cattle, hogs and chickens on factory farms. Only Texas, Iowa and California hold more. And with 33.5 factory farmed animals per square mile, Nebraska trailed only Iowa in livestock density, ac-

cording to a recent study by national food safety non-profit Food and Water Watch.

Numbers relating to the state’s famed beef cattle are even more jarring. Only Texas (2.9 million) and Kansas (2.56 million) had more cattle on feedlots larger than 500 head. Nebraska had 2.51 million factory farmed beef cattle, and Cuming County just northwest of Omaha ranked sixth among U.S. counties with 253,940 head.

Farmers used to be able to take the manure their animals produced and use it as fertilizer to grow more food. Now there’s more waste than the soil can safely handle. Livestock on

Food and Water Watch

Factory farm data challenges Nebraska’s pastural image

Nebraska’s factory farms produce as much untreated manure as 313 million people — that’s more than the entire U.S. population.

What happened to the bucolic vision of Nebraska’s hard-working family farmer?

e d i t e d

Simple economics, says Carolyn Johnsen, journalism professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of the 2003 book Raising a Stink: The struggle over factory hog farms in Nebraska.

“People saw that they could make more money concentrating animals in feedlots and hog barns,” she says. “Nationally, the policy encouraged it.”

When a series of federal farm bills spurred surplus production of soy beans, corn and oats — the major components of traditional livestock feed — in the 1980s , it became cheaper for farmers to put their livestock on feedlots rather than out to pasture. Cheaper feed meant more animals. The average size of a Nebraska factory hog farming operation that includes more than 1,000 animals grew by 76 percent between 1997 and 2007, according to Food and Water Watch.

But farms weren’t just able to get bigger — they had to. In 1982, Nebraska passed Initiative 300, which banned almost all corporations and syndicates from owning farmland and livestock in the state. Nebraska Farmer’s Union president John Hansen says the ban — the most stringent of its kind in the country — insulated the state from the increasing factory farm trend for nearly a quarter of a century. But that ended in 2005, when U.S. District Court Judge Laurie SmithCamp repealed the law, ruling it unconstitutional for discriminating against out-of-state investors.

Meanwhile, meatpacking companies across the country were consolidating, aided by amendments to the Packers and Stockyards Act, the 1921 law designed to break up the meat monopoly of the “Big Five” packing companies. By 2007, the meatpacking industry was less diverse continued on page 10 y

harper’sindex

Oh, Brother:

3 Number of delayed-notice search warrants granted by federal judges last year under the Patriot Act: 1,150 3 Number that were related to drug offenses and terrorism, respectively: 844, 6 3 Number of times between January and June that Google turned over user information to government investigators: 4,287

B y

a n d r e w

n o r m a n

New documentary depicts the human side of cold science

upfront

Get Big or Get Out

topnews Antarctica is the coldest, driest desert in the world, but filmmaker Gary Hochman says living in Nebraska isn’t a bad way to prepare for its climate.

“When you land [on Antarctica] and walk out, it is an experience,” he says. “It is so cold and so dry it literally takes your breath away. But then there were times we were there that it wasn’t any worse than what we experience here.”

Hochman wrote, directed and produced Secrets Beneath the Ice, a new documentary for PBS’ “Nova” detailing a unique drilling operation to recover Antarctic ice and rock samples to help predict global climate shifts.

Between 2005 and 2008, Hochman and a threeman production crew made four trips to Antarctica to film a team of scientists from Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln working to discover new truths about the continent’s history.

While most Antarctic exploratory crews use modified mineral drilling rigs, the scientists were the first to use a specific ice drilling rig. Developed by the Antarctic Research Center in New Zealand, the mammoth rig was able to drill through 400 feet of ice, 1,000 feet of sea water and nearly a quarter mile into the sea floor.

Conducting such a large-scale operation in those extreme physical conditions is dramatic enough on its own, Hochman says, but in his more than 30 years producing science programming at NET, he has often found even more fascinating human stories lurking behind the science.

“Scientists are some of the most exciting people I’ve ever met,” he says. “These guys are detectives.

Science is really just being curious about the world, and I find myself drawn to these types of investigations.”

While films and TV have shown frightening depictions of Manhattan underwater due to a melting ice cap, few people know who works to prevent such a scenario.

Secrets Beneath the Ice aims to change that.

“Ice is something that maybe we don’t think so much about, yet its impact could be pretty stunning for the rest of the world, Hochman says. “This is the science behind the headlines.”

NOVA: Secrets Beneath the Ice premieres Tuesday, Dec. 28 at 8 p.m. on NET. Visit pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ — Brandon Vogel

theysaidit they Really? “Let’s scrap it from A to Z. We have the finest health care system in the world.”

— Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning on the federal health care bill. A February report by the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha found 190,000 Nebraskans — about 11 percent — lack health care coverage. While about 8 percent of whites are uninsured, rates are for Hispanics and blacks are 28 and 22 percent respectively.

news

| THE READER |

dec. 23 - 29 , 2010

7

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Judge tosses illegal immigration tuition suit Jefferson County District Judge Paul Korslund threw out a lawsuit challenging a Nebraska law granting in-state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants on Dec. 17.

Kris Kobach — author of controversial immigration laws in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas and Fremont, Neb. — filed the suit against the University of Nebraska Board of Regents on behalf of a group of six taxpayers in Fairbury.

The suit alleged tax dollars were being spent in violation of federal law.

Korslund ruled that the case should’ve been first tried at the federal level to determine if the tuition breaks — worth more than $11,000 in Nebraska — actually violate the law.

Kobach, who was elected Kansas’ Secretary of State in November, told The Washington Post the case was “far from over,” but that he has not decided if he would appeal the decision or ask the Department of Homeland Security to intervene.

The California Supreme Court upheld in-state tuition rates for undocumented immigrants in a similar challenge led by Kobach in November.

Council approves new green plan for Omaha The Omaha City Council voted 7-0 on Dec. 14 to approve a comprehensive new environmental plan that proposes changes to everything from how and where new buildings are constructed to an attempt to lure developers to older areas of the city with new tax perks.

Environment Omaha, a collaboration between the city and Omaha by Design, spent two years working on the plan that includes such goals as reducing per-capita energy and water consumption by 20 percent by 2020; slowing suburban development to make the city more compact and densely populated; reducing reliance on cars through mixed-use development and new forms of public transit; and integrating distinct natural resources and views into new building construction and public spaces.

The city has yet to set a time frame to implement the plan.

Omaha Steaks pulls ads from Glenn Beck program Omaha Steaks pulled its ads from the Glenn Beck television program Dec. 20, the earliest date the company could cancel their ad placement agreement with Fox News after Beck said in July 2009 that President Barack Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” The local company joins more than 100 companies that have pulled ads from Beck’s program.

Lawmakers list options for state cuts How will Nebraska close its projected $986 million budget gap over the next two years?

Nebraska’s state senators submitted their ideas for prospective budget cuts on Dec. 16.

The 69-page document lists a wide range of potential money-saving measures, from delaying equipment purchases to staff and funding cuts to various state programs.

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8

dec. 23 - 29, 2010

| THE READER |

news

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murderink they more shootings: Mickle Graham, 33, died after being shot Dec. 19 at his home at 4143 N. 44th St. Police have made no arrests.

2010 HOMICIDES: 33 (THERE WERE 30 HOMICIDES THIS TIME LAST YEAR)

Some of the recommendations made by the committee include eliminating the $500,000 general fund for tourism promotion, eliminating a planned NET broadcast facility in Omaha, and ending a 75 percent tuition reimbursement for members of the National Guard.

The appropriations committee will hold public hearings before submitting a budget proposal in May. The two-year budget takes effect July 1.

clinic locations after Nebraska passed a landmark law banning abortions later than 20 weeks. The doctor says he is still looking at potential sites in Council Bluffs despite the Council blocking his first attempt to buy property in November.

Iowa lawmakers say they are considering new abortion laws at the state level in response to Carhart’s desire to move to the state and Nebraska’s tougher restrictions.

German giant signs wheat breeding deal with UNL

$2M bond set in fatal car crash

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln and German pharmaceutical company Bayer announced a partnership on Dec. 15 that will bring the company’s first wheat breeding research facility to Lincoln.

The deal grants Bayer access to UNL’s germplasm — the genetic material used in wheat breeding. The company will support wheat research and educational programs at its new Lincoln facility and establish a $2 million endowed professorship. UNL researcher P. Stephen Baenziger will fill the professorship.

Protestors ask for abortion regulation in Council Bluffs Approximately 150 protestors showed up at the Council Bluffs City Council meeting on Dec. 13 to oppose a Nebraska doctor’s planned abortion clinic and to ask the Council to “define and renounce� late-term abortions within city limits.

Leroy Carhart, a late-term abortion provider in Bellevue, had to look elsewhere for

A Douglas County judge set bond at $2 million for an Omaha man charged with killing two people in a car accident on Dec. 12.

Victor Rodriguez, 27, lost control of his Nissan Pathfinder and slammed head-on into an oncoming SUV late on Dec. 12. Manuel SantosGomez, 24, and Danny Alcantara, 22, both died from their injuries.

Rodriguez fled the scene before being apprehended three hours later. Police initially believed alcohol was a factor, but Rodriguez’ charges of criminal homicide were reduced to two counts of vehicular manslaughter and leaving the site of an accident after he tested below the legal limit.

Mexican consulate moves Omaha’s Consulate of Mexico moved from 3552 Dodge St. to 7444 Farnam St. on Dec. 20. The consulate is conducting normal business hours from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at its new location. —Brandon Vogel

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produce more raw sewage than New York and Miami combined.

Hansen remains hopeful for Nebraska’s more than 40,000 family farms, and his organization continues to lobby for legislative limits on factory farms. But he says consumers have the most power to enact change.

“We encourage consumers to become more informed and more engaged in where their food comes from and how it was produced,” he says. “It’s not hard in this state to find a friend or family member who knows someone who produces hogs or cattle. Buy directly from them. Get a freezer.

“We think very clearly that if you give consumers the choice they’ll pick family farm raised and produced.” , n Book tours can be grueling for authors, but they also can be lucrative. And writers can rake in serious cash for speaking engagements.

Bestselling author David Sedaris took it a step further on one of his tours by setting a tip jar on his signing table. Though it was free for fans to get their book signed, many tipped. Sedaris wound up colleting over $4,000 in tips, he tells The National Post.

“The problem was then I started hating people who didn’t tip me,” he says. “I didn’t say anything to them, but I would just sit there thinking, ‘You cheap son of a bitch. I just signed four books and you can’t even give me a dollar?’

And why should they? But I just got so involved in it. I had to stop doing it. I told people it was all for me to spend on candy. They were delighted because it’s funny to give money to someone who doesn’t need it.” His most lucrative night? Dallas, where he got $530 in tips. n What’s cooler than being cool? No, not “ice cold,” it’s having an airstrip named after you. According to Air & Business Travel News, Jamaica’s third international airport will be named after James Bond author Ian Fleming.

“Previously known as the Boscobel Airstrip, the upgraded and expanded Ian Fleming airport will mainly be used by travelers flying in on private jets,” the publication says.

“The official opening of the airport, which now features a passenger lounge, pilot briefing room and customs and immigration points, is due this month.” So why Jamaica?

Fleming’s friend James Bond (yes, he really existed, but he was an ornithologist, not a spy) let him use his Jamaican estate for writing. Fleming liked the island so much he later bought an estate there, named Goldeneye. n If you find yourself with a fistful of bookstore gift cards this season and are struggling to come up with a list of books to check out, consider surfing over to the Largehearted Boy blog (largeheartedboy.com) and spend some time clicking through the dozens of yearend best-of book and music lists the site offers every year at this time.

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than it was when the act was created: 80 percent of the U.S. cattle trade was controlled by three companies, which owned one of every 12 cattle slaughtered nationwide.

By controlling large portions of beef production and processing, the companies drove down the market price and forced family farms to either “get big or get out,” the mantra coined by Nixon’s former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz.

Hansen says the combination of consolidation and the repeal of the state’s corporate farming ban left Nebraska wide open to factory farming. The result is a market for beef and pork he calls “completely and totally dysfunctional.”

“It is not a conventional market,” says Hansen, who has overseen his organization for 21 years. “If it was, it would be competitive, accessible, transparent and fair. Hardly any of those characteristics are in play in the meat market.

“Is it really in our national interest to get down to one meat packer or one hog packer?

How has that worked in any other sector? It hasn’t worked well and it won’t work in agriculture, either.”

But the growth continues. Since 2002, Nebraska has seen the average number of animals per farm grow for hogs, broiler chickens, and beef and dairy cattle. Densely packed feedlots and barns present a number of potential health and environmental concerns for the end consumer.

The potential for one animal with a disease or illness to infect thousands of others is greater as farms grow larger, Johnsen says. Giant farms also produce giant amounts of manure, leaving farmers no choice but to store the waste in above-ground lagoons and holding tanks. Open to wind and rain, the waste produces noxious gases capable of causing skin rashes and breathing problems. And it can deposit dangerous bacteria into the soil and waterways through runoff. Cuming County’s nearly 254,000 cattle

— Kyle Tonniges Comments? Questions? Want more? Check out Booked online at thereader.com. Or email us at booked@thereader.com.

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heartlandhealing

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a g e

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Air on the Side of Health

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n the dead of winter, we all become draft dodgers.

We do the best we can to seal up windows and doors to keep cold air out and warm air in. Now that we’re in winter lockdown, we spend more time breathing the indoor air of our apartment or house. The good news is we aren’t freezing our lungs. The bad news is that the air inside our homes is often more polluted with chemicals than the air outside. In fact, several studies have found that indoor air pollution can be more of a threat to our health than the smoggiest day in L.A. Indoor pollutants fall into some basic categories.

Environmental Tobacco Smoke: A report last month by researchers from the University of Rochester claimed children living in multifamily dwellings (apartments) are affected by secondhand cigarette smoke even if no one in their household smokes. Apparently the contaminants can pass through walls and building openings.

Each year 3,000 Americans die from lung cancer caused by second-hand smoke. One million kids suffer asthma attacks brought on by indoor smoke.

Biological Contaminants: Television ads for vacuums show an electron microscope image of a dust mite, making it look like something out of Jurassic Park. These tiny parasites really are an indoor air problem. It’s common to find 500 of the nasties in one gram of household dust. Pet dander, saliva, plant pollen, mold, mildew and household bacteria are some other sources of biological indoor air pollution.

Combustion Carbon monoxide: Any indoor heating device can be a dangerous source of pollution. CO is odorless, colorless and deadly. Any heating system in the house should be properly vented to avoid buildup. Nitrous dioxide and radon are also emitted by heaters and fireplaces. Any candle, incense or poorly burning fire can release harmful particulates into the air. Tiny pieces of soot can carry smaller pollutants like radon deep into the lungs.

Volatile Organic Chemicals: These are toxic chemicals present in everyday items such as household cleaners, fabrics, carpets, paints, clothing, cosmetics and other goods. It is not a trifling problem. The EPA estimates the exposure to these poisons to be five times greater indoors. Benzene, methylene chloride and perchloroethylene from dry cleaning agents are carcinogens. The EPA even recommends refusing your clothing at the dry cleaners if it smells of chemicals.

Formaldehyde: Usually the most common toxic pollutant in the home, formaldehyde is used in permanent press fabrics, carpets, building materials, flooring and seeps into the air from pressed fiberboard furniture. It’s even in your toothpaste and the vaccination shot your infant received. Every bit of plywood material, including cabinets, paneling, walls and anything made of plywood will emit formaldehyde. It is carcinogenic and one of the greatest of indoor threats, especially because it is so pervasive.

Pesticides: Seventy-five percent of American homes have used a pesticide (like Raid, flea powder, mothballs) in-

Heartland Healing

B y

m i c h a e l

b r a u n s t e i n

doors in the past year. That alone cannot explain the high levels of deadly pesticide pollution in homes. Most comes from stored containers. Remember, if a chemical was designed to destroy biological life, be it a snail or a cockroach, it likely isn’t going to be all that good for you or your family. The active ingredient in mothballs is often found in air fresheners! Imagine, that little thing you plug into the wall is doing a lot more than “freshening� the air in your house.

Others: Lead, asbestos, radon, fiberglass insulation and other toxins are well-documented problems.

A Growing Solution It may seem daunting, but take heart. There is an easy and natural way to purge the toxic air in your home. Houseplants can remove huge amounts of indoor air pollution and replace it with clean, clear oxygen. Plants are natural air filters and so efficient, NASA has used them in experiments to purify air aboard spacecraft. Place some of these around the house and they’ll grow on you while cleaning the air.

Philodendron: A common houseplant that is easy to grow and cheap to buy, the philodendron, like all plants, will breathe in carbon dioxide and release clean, fresh oxygen. In addition, it’s expert at removing the harmful chemical formaldehyde from your indoor air.

Spider plant: Perfect as a hanging plant, the spider plant also will remove formaldehyde.

English Ivy: Another easy grower, this one is a super plant when it comes to detoxifying your indoor air. NASA found that it removes formaldehyde, toluene, benzene and xylene. It will also decrease airborne mold spores by as much as 60 percent.

Peace lily: This workhorse indoor plant is exceptional at removing trichloroethylene from the air. It also does well getting rid of formaldehyde and benzene, too.

Another benefit is that a peace lily can remove mold spores from the air. Try placing one in your bathroom to cut down on any mold growth around the walls or tub.

Palms: Almost any sort of palm will be a huge benefit to the air in your home. They are rated at the top as purifiers and also humidify the air, too. NASA tested the areca, the lady palm, bamboo palm and the rubber plant and found them to be tops in efficiency. They can literally take the place of an electric humidifier and recycle air while removing toxins.

Chrysanthemum: Seems simple but what this plant can do in addition to beautifying your home is remove trichloroethylene. It also does well getting rid of formaldehyde and benzene.

Boston fern: Always a popular indoor plant, a Boston fern can humidify and remove toxins as well. Boston ferns also control mold and bacterial growth. They can make it easier to breathe in your bedroom at night by keeping allergens at bay. They are great for kitchen areas and other rooms where moisture is high.

Get started: A 2000-squarefoot home could use 10 plants and see a huge benefit. It takes only 24 hours for the plants to work their magic.

Be well. ,

by Michael Braunstein examines various alternative forms of healing. It is provided as a source of information, not as medical advice. It is not an endorsement of any particular therapy, either by the writer or The Reader. Access past columns at HeartlandHealing.com

coverstory

together again

Two legendary Nebraska bands — Slowdown Virginia and Polecat — reunite for one night only

by Tim McMahan

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brycebridges.com

hen Jason Kulbel and Robb Nansel opened Slowdown in the summer of 2007, it was inevitable that there would be a Slowdown Virginia reunion on the stage of the club named for the legendary band.

But when that reunion would happen would come down to timing.

“We had the idea in our heads around the time Slowdown opened, but the schedules didn’t work out,” says Slowdown Virginia bass player and sometimes vocalist Matt Maginn from the dining room of guitarist Stephen Pedersen’s stylish midtown home. Sitting across from Pedersen and Maginn was drummer Casey Caniglia. The only one missing from this evening’s Slowdown Virginia reunion was frontman Tim Kasher, who was somewhere on the road touring in support of his debut solo album. And his absence was indeed a problem.

“So we talked about a reunion off and on and then time and space aligned,” Maginn continues.

“Tim (Kasher) moved back to Omaha in July. Cursive is in a writing phase and not touring, and it was the first time we saw an open window, which has now closed. We’d already confirmed the show by the time Tim’s solo tour was booked.”

“We’ll be fine,” Caniglia says.

“We decided a couple practices ago that we didn’t need Tim,” Pedersen quipped. “We’ll call people from the audience, and they’ll handle the singing.”

The funny thing is, there’s a good chance that the band could get away with that. A sizeable chunk of local talent — including most of the bands that would eventually make up the core of Saddle Creek Records’ all-star roster — will likely be in the audience Dec. 23 when Slowdown Virginia makes its celebrated return to the stage some 18 years after its debut.

Recalling the history of the band was a challenge, thanks in part to the passage of time and slowdown virginia today: (from Left to right) Matt Maginn, Tim Kasher, Casey Caniglia and Stephen Pedersen

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the glasses of dark red wine that Pedersen continued to pour throughout the evening. But Maginn is determined to get the record straight even when small arguments broke out over little details, like who Slowdown Virginia played with back in the day, circa 1994.

Maginn ticks off the names. “There was Mousetrap, Polecat, Frontier Trust, Mercy Rule … ” What about 311? And Ritual Device? No one could quite remember.

“It gets confusing,” Maginn says. “We were friends with these bands and hung out with them at shows, but did we actually play with them? I’m not sure.”

It started sometime in 1992 when the four were at Creighton Prep. “We recorded our first five songs after the band was created out of another band, March Hares,” Maginn says. “We knew we needed something recorded to leave at shows.”

March Hares was a five-piece fronted by vocalist Jim Robino. After that band broke up and Robino moved on, Kasher slid into the frontman position and the new band became Slowdown Virginia, presumably a tribute to Kasher’s cat, Virginia, who was named after the song “Yes, Virginia,” by another local band, The Acorns.

Anyway … The band recorded those first five songs at Junior’s Motel, a ramshackle chicken coop converted into a recording studio in tiny Otho, Iowa, about 100 miles northwest of Des Moines run by Kirk Kaufman, former member of ’80s power-pop band The Hawks.

“We mixed the tracks at Digisound, which was overpriced,” Maginn says. “So we made the cheapest cassette covers we could using Stephen’s brother’s computer.”

Despite losing their asses financially on the cassette tape, the band kept trudging out to Otho to record, taking full advantage of its low-budget rates and Kaufman’s habit of letting them take over the studio after 9 p.m. “We continued to write and always had stuff to record,” Maginn says. “We’d record six or 10 songs and come home and mix them ourselves.”

By 1994, the band began working with a couple of producers — Melvin James, who was a friend of Kaufman’s, and Shimmy Disc founder Kramer, who mixed some of the tracks that eventually became Dead Space — the band’s full-length debut and the first CD ever released on Lumberjack Records — the label that would eventually be renamed Saddle Creek Records.

“It was Ted Stevens’ idea to put out the CD,” Maginn says. “He had heard every track we ever recorded at Otho. He talked me into it while we were driving around in his Cutlass, this long, red two-door that looked like a Monopoly car.”

“It was actually a Monte Carlo,” Stevens says. “I remember we all thought they were be-

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cover story

ing courted by this label, and they were — by a couple labels, actually. Word on the street was they were saving these recordings for a record deal, but we had a feeling that the manager they were working with didn’t like the songs and wouldn’t put it out. We reached a point where even Conor (Oberst) had put out a tape, and Slowdown still hadn’t done anything in years.”

Listening to the tracks today, it’s easy to understand why Stevens was so eager to see Dead Space released. There’s something young and exciting and brazenly uncharted about the album, from the opening salvo “Supernova ’75” where Kasher spits out the lines “It’s automatic / It’s systematic / It’s hydromatic / It’s kind of tragic,” to the banging pop of “Whipping Stick,” where he screws his voice into a bizarre adolescent yowl, howling “Yeah, yeah I know you’re sick of me by now / Well thanks a lot for hanging ’round.” Throughout the disc, the music is equal parts chiming guitars and pulsing bass and drums, always taking an unexpected turn into some strangely different rhythm or tone. It was punk, it was post-hardcore, and yeah, it was emo, but it was the good kind of emo, the Rites of Spring/Minor Threat kind of emo.

And maybe when Stevens listened to those Slowdown Virginia tracks he could hear echoes of the future. The guitar and vocals at the beginning of the anthemic “Blame” and the laid-back “Another Sip” clearly hint at things to come in just a few short years.

Maginn says Stevens along with Conor and Justin Oberst, helped raise the cash needed to press 500 CDs at a cost of around $1,500 — considerably more than what it costs to produce a cassette tape — but worth it for this new technology. “Back then the conversation wasn’t ‘How many CDs did you sell?’ it was ‘We’re putting out a CD,’“ Pedersen says. “That alone was the accomplishment. We had no idea what we were going to do with 500 of them.”

“We didn’t sell them all,” Maginn says. “I remember helping with inventory control in the Oberst attic. But we eventually sold enough to pay back the investors.”

If sales were slow it might be because the band rarely played outside of Omaha or Lincoln. The one road trip they remembered was a gig at a biker bar called Joe’s Pub in Council Bluffs. “The promoters gave us money to leave early because the crowd was going to kill us,” Maginn says.

Little did they know how big of an influence Slowdown Virginia would have on the future of the Omaha music scene. “Well, I’d say they had a pretty major impact,” Stevens says. “It’s hard to get a perspective of what their sound was at the time. It seemed so unique, but it was a pretty major influence. A big group of us would listen

to Slowdown and get kind of weird. Looking back, we were geeks about it.

“Toward the end, after we met Todd and Clark Baechle (who would go on to form The Faint) and a lot of the Westside crowd, people started coming out to their shows,” Stevens adds. “I never had the feeling they were very popular, but they had a die-hard set of followers.”

It was all over by the spring of ’95. Despite recording enough material for another CD, Slowdown Virginia played its final show at the Cultural Center in Lincoln that April. Maginn says the breakup was inevitable. “Tim was leaving town, he was going to go to school at the University of Kansas.”

Caniglia also had had enough. “I was 21 and out,” he says. “I could take it or leave it.”

But there was no stopping the rest of them. A month later, Pedersen’s other band, Smashmouth, which included drummer Clint Schnase, would combine with Slowdown Virginia. The merger resulted in a little band by the name of Cursive.

The band quietly built a following by performing constantly in Lincoln, Omaha and Western Nebraska. “Boz had bought this conversion van and we were young and having a good time,” Stevens says. “We traveled all through Nebraska — Kearney, Hastings, North Platte.”

Unlike Slowdown Virginia, Polecat even played out-of-state gigs. “I started a relationship

coverstory

“I sure got a lot of grief about it,” Stevens says of the breakup. “We weren’t getting along in the studio very well. I was a little hardheaded, and it’s my fault the record never came out. It never sounded right to me. Now I think it’s the best stuff we ever recorded. I’ll take a lot of credit for the band breaking up.”

As luck would have it, the day after Polecat

slowdown virginia back in the day

Skinning a Polecat

vntage polecat photos courtesy Rob Walters

While all of that was happening, Ted Stevens was involved in a band of his own. Stevens formed Polecat after his high school band, Gravy Train (which also included Pedersen and Schnase), broke up when he left for college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“I wound up at Abel Hall in a dorm with a bunch of people from Omaha,” Stevens says. “I was introduced to Boz Hicks, who lived a floor below us.” Hicks and Stevens were both fans of freewheeling tractor-punk band Frontier Trust.

“I think it was Gary Dead Davis from Frontier Trust that tipped me off to Oli Blaha.”

Blaha was the drummer in Lincoln band Hour Slave that, like Gravy Train, broke up when its members graduated from high school. “I remember seeing them play at Duffy’s and thinking they were pretty cool,” Stevens says, “so I cold called him.”

With Hicks on drums, Blaha on bass and Stevens on guitar and vocals, Polecat headed to the North Platte basement studio of Mike and AJ Mogis in November 1993, where they recorded the tracks for their first cassette, Dilly Dally, released on Lumberjack Records the following spring.

It was followed by their first 7-inch — “Saddle Creek” b/w “Chinese Water Torture” — released jointly by Double Zero and -Ism Recordings.

Polecat’s sound was lean, mean Midwestern punk rock covered in a thin layer of prairie dust.

Like its predecessor Frontier Trust, their music had a rural flair, but unlike Gary Dean Davis, Stevens could actually carry a tune, even when he was spitting out angst-ridden lines like, “It’s hard to repay all the tears that you give to me / To see the inside jokes turn outside in.” Driving their sound was the trio’s superb balance — no one member outshined the other. Polecat was a perfect corn-fed rock ‘n’ roll machine.

over the phone with Dave Dondero and Russ Hallauer of the band Sunbrain,” Stevens says. “We ended up driving down to Atlanta to play with them, followed by Charlotte, North Carolina.”

Polecat eventually cut a split 7-inch with Sunbrain that was jointly released by Lumberjack and Hallauer’s Ghostmeat imprint. Ghostmeat would go on to include Polecat on a number of the label’s compilation CDs. By 1995, Polecat was entering the studio with AJ Mogis again to record an 11-song follow-up to Dilly Dally slated for release as a CD by Lumberjack. But the album never saw the light of day.

disbanded, indie record label Bar None called Stevens about his other band, Lullaby for the Working Class.

“Mike (Mogis, a member of Lullaby) had been networking with manila envelopes and 8by-10 promo photos of the band,” Stevens says.

“I remember we were all in calculus class, and Boz was bummed out while AJ (who also was in Lullaby) was beaming because we were about to get signed. It looked bad.”

Lullaby for the Working Class would go on to garner international praise for its unique brand of indie chamber pop, culminating in a

cover story

European tour — something unheard of for a local band at that time. But eventually Lullaby would break up, too.

By 2000, Stevens would wind up as a guitarist/vocalist in Cursive, joining Kasher, Maginn and Schnase. He replaced Pedersen, who quit Cursive when he enrolled in law school at Duke University. Pedersen would eventually form two more bands — The White Octave in 2000 and Criteria in 2003. He’s now an attorney at Omaha’s most prestigious law firm — Kutak Rock.

Despite the unfortunate timing of their breakup, it didn’t take long for Boz Hicks to forgive Stevens. In fact, Polecat had its first reunion show 10 years ago. “At the time, I knew we’d do it again,” Stevens says. “I don’t know why we’re doing it this year. It might have something to do with the Lullaby reunion (which took place this past summer) and how good that felt to be in that band again for the night.”

Stevens says he’s been spending a lot of time with Hicks, who works at Slowdown and plays drums in a number of local bands, including Her Flyaway Manner.

As for Oli Blaha: “When Oli left Lincoln, he really left,” Stevens says.

“He went to Edinburgh and then Anchorage. He’s really a jet setter. Now he’s married and living in Oklahoma City where he goes to school.”

With Blaha returning to Nebraska to spend Christmas with his father, Stevens says everything fell into place for a Polecat reunion. And what better way to do it than with Slowdown Virginia at Slowdown?

“When Slowdown opened, I knew the reunion was inevitable and that I better start drumming again,” says Caniglia, who works with his father, Jerry, and his Uncle Chuck at Venice Inn. “Everyone I know has no idea that I was in this band.”

But can they pull it off with Kasher not coming back into town until Dec. 19?

“We’ll be ready,” Pedersen says. “I’m having a blast. It’s all brand new again, and part of that is because my memory is crap.”

“For us, the real fun has been being together again,” Maginn says. “I’m smiling the whole time I’m down in the basement.” , Slowdown Virginia plays w/ Polecat and DJMBowen Thursday, Dec. 23, at Slowdown, 729 N. 14th St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $10. Call 345.7569 or visit theslowdown.com.

| THE READER |

dec. 23 - 29, 2010

15

Rockin’ Moroccan

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

Marrakech Gourmet brings the flavorful cuisine to Omaha

by Lainey Seyler

A

lmost as difficult to get to as its namesake, Marrakech Gourmet is a tidy restaurant tucked away in the corner of the Brandeis Food Court at 16th and Douglas.

The cafeteria for downtown Omaha’s daytime employees (chiefly those at the First National Tower) has choices for a quick lunch: Subway, Mexican, pizza, gyros and now the only place to get Moroccan cuisine in Omaha.

Co-owner and chef Moussa Drissi adjusts Moroccan ingredients, herbs and spices to fit inside grilled paninis to service busy business lunchers. The cost is $7-$8 or $8.50 for a sandwich, chips and drink. He sells two kinds of soup: saffron tomato and vegetable and red lentil and ginger puree ($3.95) and recently expanded to include a breakfast menu. Drissi is a little limited by his clientele in the food marrakech gourmet court who want things on the go, but has done a great job satisfying the demand for flavorful food fast.

The enterprising young chef got a kick-start into the culinary world working with Chef Art Smith, a celebrity chef based in Chicago whose claim to fame is being Oprah’s personal chef.

While working for Smith, Drissi catered events for celebrities and politicians and fell in love with food. He moved to Omaha this year to open a Moroccan restaurant for casual dining (where

| THE READER |

dish

he could make more authentic Moroccan dishes) and the current Marrakech Gourmet, which he is interested in developing into a franchise, all because Omaha was previously completely devoid of Moroccan cuisine. While Drissi remains on the lookout for a venue for his casual dining eatery, Marrakech, which opened last June 14, is running and blossoming.

“I do everything from scratch,” says Drissi. “I don’t even have a can opener. My philosophy is to make food tasty and healthy.”

His list of sandwiches reflects that quest for flavorful food. Paninis are stuffed with roasted vegetables and meat.

The herb-grilled chicken panini comes with melted mozzarella, a pesto and tapenade sauce and oven-roasted tomatoes, making it one of the most flavorful items on the menu.

The chicken was moist and packed with flavor. The grilled vegetable club is packed with roasted eggplant and bell peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, tart and creamy goat cheese and crisp spinach.

The gooey roasted vegetables were made fresh with the perfect sour cheese. Panseared shrimp was a treat with melted aged gouda and bell peppers. This is not your typical foodcourt fare. The tomato soup on a recent visit was a little under-seasoned for my taste, though it seemed to go out the door quickly.

Moroccan food is new to Omaha. Ethiopian and Sudanese eateries that have opened in recent years in the city are the closest we’ve come to the flavorful, slow-cooked culinary style of this northeast African nation. Moroccan cuisine generally relies heavily on spices (such as saffron, cumin and ginger) and herbs adam brubaker

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n Worried about gaining 20 pounds over the holidays? Imagine yourself eating as much as you want instead of actually doing it and you might be able to keep the pounds off. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh discovered that repeated exposure to a certain food decreases your desire to eat more, even if you’re not eating anything, according to the latest issue of Science magazine.

In one experiment, researchers asked half their participants to imagine eating 30 M&Ms and inserting three quarters into the slot of a laundry machine. The other half was told to envision themselves eating three M&Ms and inserting 30 quarters. Then, all the subjects were allowed to eat as many M&Ms as they wanted. Subjects who had envisioned themselves eating more candy ate an average of three M&Ms while others ate about five.

Additional experiments bore this out — no matter what the food is, if you imagine yourself consuming that plate of enchiladas, turkey and dressing or those ubiquitous little smokies in barbecue sauce bite by bite, you’re more likely to end up eating less of it. Something to consider before grabbing a plate and rolling up your sleeves at the next holiday party.

— Kyle Tonniges

crumbs

dish

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

(such as mint; think Moroccan mint tea) for its flavor.

“Moroccan food is unique,” says Drissi. “It’s been influenced by so many regions (and tribes) in Morocco. We get Spanish cuisine, Middle Eastern. We also have East African cuisine. Morocco has been a colony by the French, so they brought French cuisine.”

Drissi, who was born in a small town between Rabat and Casablanca, has a lot to work with as far as flavors and ingredients go. Morocco and its cuisine and culture lie somewhere between European Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, using vegetables typical to southern French and Spanish cuisine, while combining the spices which Middle Eastern food is known for. Drissi hits the mark by adjusting Moroccan food for folks on the go while still offering all the flavor they could want. It warrants a visit from hungry outsiders free for lunch. , Marrakech Gourmet, in the Brandeis Food Court at 16th and Douglas, is open Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

17

8 days Dec. 27

Benefit for Amber Wilkins

Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. 7 p.m., $10, onepercentproductions.com

The story is tragic on so many levels. A dump truck driver runs a red light, slams into an SUV driven by a 25-year-old mother of a 2-year-old. She was just two blocks from work. The November 5 accident left Wilkins so critically injured, it took her four days to open her eyes and give a nurse a thumbsup. This is after the death of Wilkins’ younger sister in 2004, who was killed in a car accident on her way home from Bible study. In tragedy lies hope, however. In November, Wilkins’ friends auctioned a concert ticket to raise money for her family. Now, The Waiting Room and three local bands are hosting a show where 100 percent of the take at the door goes to Wilkins’ family. In addition to seeing We Be Lions, Vibenhai and The Vingins, concertgoers can bid in a silent auction — and those proceeds go to Wilkins’ family, too.

— Patricia Sindelar

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

t h e r e a de r ’ s entertainment p icks dec . 2 3 - 2 9 , 2 0 1 0

THURSDAY23

LITTLE BRAZIL

Dec. 23

Old Money w/ Satchel Grande

Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. 9 p.m., $7, onepercentproductions.com Be sure to check out this group with the funk-adelic sound; a sweet, sweet jive that is the soul tree nine, otherwise know as Satchel Grande. It’s always a pleasure listening to the sounds of this nine-man band that incorporates a blend of covers as well as hit originals in its lineup. This aviator-wearin’, beast mustache-sportin’ group own the stage with super group Old Money, one of the numerous side projects Satchel members have been involved with.

This powerhouse collection of eclectic musicians keeps the grooves rolling so get ready to dance — Kelly Engquist

SATURDAY25 Dec. 25

Banjo Loco w/ Reggaejunkiejew, The Beat Seakers, MC Gringo and Eastern Turkish Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. 8 p.m., $8, waitingroomlounge.com

Everyone loves Christmas and one the best parts about receiving gifts that you worked so hard all year to earn is getting to show them off to friends. This year you don’t have to wait until New Years Eve. Christmas night, at The Waiting Room, the local heavy metal bluegrass act Banjo Loco will be hosting a night of music with friends Reggaejunkiejew, The Beat Seakers, MC Gringo and Eastern Turkish. “Heavy metal bluegrass?” you ask. “Is that even possible?” With a name like Banjo Loco, the answer is an emphatic yes. They cover songs ranging from The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Maiden and Zappa all on their banjos. If you don’t believe me check out their rendition of The Beatles’ “I am the Walrus” at youtube.com/watch?v=QyBY0p9IE4.

— James Derrick Schott

| THE READER |

picks

SUNDAY26 Dec. 26

Shen Yun Performing Arts

Orpheum Theater, 409 S. 16th St. 7 p.m., $60-$150, 345.0606, ticketomaha.com In the more than 5,000 years Chinese culture has been in existence, it’s spawned some incredible art, music, legends, spirituality, philosophy and dance.

The place to see all of those things in one breathtaking presentation is a Shen Yun performance.

Dance is an obvious component, but those dances portray everything from mythical battles to the daily struggles of life under the rule of Mao Tse Tung.

High-tech backgrounds travel everywhere from the misty mountaintops of the Himalayas to tropical lakes in the south. Traditional Chinese instruments such as the pipa and erhu provide music for world-class singers. The program doesn’t go stale, though. Shen Yun changes the performance each year, and this show at the Orpheum is all-new.

— Patricia Sindelar

Dec. 26

Little Brazil w/ Conduits, The Filter Kings and All Young Girls are Machine Guns

Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. 9 p.m., $7, onepercentproductions.com Many who survive Christmas Day will appreciate how amazing this show will be. You’ve got Little Brazil who never fail to throw a hype show with a blend of indie and hard rock. Conduits, Omaha’s goulash of artists reinterpreting the psychedelic shoe-gaze sound not done properly since Mazzy Star. Then there’s Filter Kings, a band that has been pulling overtime on the concert front with their punk and rockabilly fusion. Lastly, there’s All Young Girls are Machine Guns, a band whose name sounds more like an emo band than what it really is — a soulful brand of jazz and pop topped off beautifully by the powerful, yet serene voice of Rebecca Lowry. With all this going on, what more could you want from a show to wake you from your holiday coma?

— Chalis Bristol

t h e

r e a d e r ’ s

Dec. 26

Mal Madrigal w/ Our Fox, The Bruces and Before The Toast and Tea Slowdown, 729 N. 14th St. 8 p.m., $6, theslowdown.com

Winter beckons two of Omaha’s sons, Mal Madrigal’s Stephen Bartolomei and Our Fox’s Ryan Fox. Mal Madrigal headlines with an experimental acoustic indie sound that jumps from slow-burning builds, to shuffling, quasi-tropicalia guitar rock. Bartolomei has continued the band in New York, where he also runs his record imprint Bocca Lupo Records. Bocca Lupo has expanded beyond Mal Madrigal’s vinyl-centric releases by hooking up with Before The Toast and Tea. Meanwhile, Our Fox is more of a Crazy Horse-inspired indie rock band, with touches of Pavement and other slacker indie bands forming Our Fox’s sound.

— Chris Aponick

MONDAY27 Dec. 27

Ladyfinger w/ Back When, Answer Team & Lightning Bug Slowdown, 729 N. 14th St. 9 p.m., $7, theslowdown.com

e n t e rta i n m e n t Dec. 27-30

Celebrate Kwanzaa w/ Omaha Public Library Charles B. Washington Branch 2868 Ames Ave. Times vary by day, FREE, 444.4849 omahapubliclibrary.org

If you’ve never attended a Kwanzaa celebration, sample the Omaha Public Library’s four-day African-American festival. Monday, Omaha blues man Dr. Spit (of Dr. Spit and the Blues Mechanics) presents a blues harmonica workshop for children from 2-4 p.m. Family make-and-take craft activities and board games are offered Tues.-Thurs. 2-4 p.m. Tuesday evening, from 67 p.m., jazz guitarist George Walker performs a black musical journey for all ages. Wednesday, from 6-7 p.m., master drummer Charles Ahovissi conducts an African Culture Connection drumming workshop for children. The Thursday night finale features: Lil’ Divas teen book club members reciting the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa in a 6-6:30 p.m. candle lighting ceremony; an ACC dance troupe recital from 6:307:30 p.m.; and Miss Marie’s catered soul food supper from 7:30-8:30 p.m.

— Leo Adam Biga

p i c k s

d e c .

WEDNESDAY29 Dec. 29

2 3

-

2 9,

2 010

ROOSEVELT: THE EDUCATION OF THE PRESIDENTS

Mousetrap w/ Mercy Rule, Noah’s Ark Was A Spaceship and The Stay Awake Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. 9 p.m., $8, onepercentproductions.com

While attending Central High School in the mid ’90s, all the cool kids had Mousetrap 45s, attended their shows or sported a sticker on their notebooks. They were the indie-rock band back then and a part of the very beginning of Omaha’s then-blossoming local music scene. Formed in May 1988, guitarist Pat Buchanan, bassist Craig Crawford and former drummer Scott Miller became known for their intense live shows.

A stripped down, punk rock aesthetic and driving rhythms made them irresistible. Combined with Buchanan’s charisma both on stage and off, they were a formula for success. Unfortunately, they disbanded in 1998 after a couple of break-ups and relocation to Chicago. Luckily for Omaha, they will reunite this month with Lincoln legends Mercy Rule, another innovative trio that helped shape the basement rock scene in Nebraska. Anyone who was a fan of both bands back in the day will not want to miss this show.

— Kyle Eustice

MOUSETRAP

Ladyfinger has been laying low in 2010, after a personnel change and the launch of singer Chris Machmuller’s pop-soul supergroup The SoSo Sailors. But Ladyfinger is back, ready to rip through its fierce take on hardcore-colored classic rock. Ladyfinger still flies under the radar in town, despite 2009’s excellent dusk. Ladyfinger should be in roaring shape as they head a bill featuring some of Omaha’s best wild, indie rock noisemakers. Back When brings an indie prog-metal that focuses on build-and-break drone. Get there early for Lightning Bug, quite possibly the most promising young band in Omaha.

— Chris Aponick

picks

Dec. 26-March 27

School House to White House: The Education of the Presidents Durham Museum, 801 S. 10th St. Reception Dec. 26, 1-5 p.m., $7/$6 seniors/$5 ages 3-12 444.5071, durhammuseum.org

Our presidents sometimes stand either heroically tall in our eyes, or they are villified — but it’s usually from a period of four to eight years. They had careers even before that, and even farther back, childhoods. So for those dying to know how Jimmy Carter did in school, Durham’s School House to White House exhibit is for you. This traveling exhibit, part of the National Archives Presidential Libraries, offers insight into the school lives of presidents from Hoover forward. Witness the nascent days of Omaha’s son-by-birth Gerald Ford, who bulked up for college football at Michigan before becoming our only unelected president. Or see young nerdlinger Richard Nixon’s eighth grade autobiography, and look for signs of being a crook. And you’ll even see some of the PG parts of JFK’s youth. This is for the history nerds who know, or want to know, that our presidents were people before they were commanders-in-chief.

— John Wenz

| THE READER |

dec. 23 - 29, 2010

19

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| THE READER |

bigbrainomaha.com

Transatlantik features three cultural envoys in Moving Gallery show

by Michael J. Krainak

M

The Moving Gallery’s latest cultural envoys are artists Fulvio de Pellegrin, Paolo Dolzan and Heidi Lichtenberger, on view in the Garden of the Zodiac Gallery in the Old Market Passageway. The exposition is aptly titled Transatlantik and features the photography of de Pellegrin and Lichtenberger and the acrylic and charcoal portraits of Dolzan.

Transatlantik is the first collaboration of these three Europeans, and it is based upon an additional journey, a “road trip” across the United States they took together in 2007. But if viewers are expecting an American photo-op from a foreign point of view with familiar landscapes and local color, they’re in for a surprise. And

any is the man or woman who wanted to take that voyage “across the pond” — seeking one’s fortune, a new beginning or maybe just to escape with no intention of returning.

Let the record show that most such movement has been east to west across the Atlantic.

Yet, today, “The land of opportunity” is no longer an exclusive reference to America.

Just as many Americans are rediscovering roots in their mother countries, whether for profit, enlightenment or enjoyment, many come to the United States and actually book a return flight.

Upward mobility has met its match in global outreach. Diversity and multi-culturalism are the new coin of the realm on the exchange market. Go West, or wherever, has taken on new meaning. And yes, you can go home again, richer for the experience.

When travel is not an option, one way to connect to another’s culture is through art; that is, opening one’s self to other ways of thinking and free expresart by heidi lichtenberger sion, often about the same issues that matter to all.

In the past decade, no Omaha visual arts some consternation.

The exhibition is largely conceptual, based venue has done more to counter provincialism than the Moving Gallery of the Old Omaha As- upon “a questioning attitude toward the elasticsociation. Artists and curators from Europe, ity of geographical boundaries, Western cultural Mexico and Latin America have come to Omaha conventions, and common aspects of human narepeatedly. Not only with their work, but with ture, according to the show’s press release which their friendship and an open invitation to return serves as an artist’s statement. Judging by their the favor in a cultural exchange that crosses bor- art, their impression of the U.S. is less flatterders of all kinds, mends fences rather than builds ing and more revealing of how much Americans barriers, and brings art into the conversation have in common with all of Western society despite real and perceived differences. outside the ivory tower.

Of the three, de Pellegrin, an Italian living in Freiburg, Germany, has the lighter touch.

Though he exhibited a darker vision with his photographs of Sicilian catacombs seen earlier in 2010 in the Moving Gallery’s stunning show Time, Death and Beauty, de Pellegrin returns with humorous images of staged animals in humorous scenarios that mimic or mock human emotions and behaviors.

A note of whimsy and the surreal persists in his photos here, as with “The Common Dove,” who sits meekly wearing a dunce cap; and “The Fear Comes From Above,” a very sheepish mouse staring up the large ass-end of an elephant. In these two images as well as “Hello Friends,” depicting two giant astronauts who appear to have landed among a herd of lambs, the animals center stage are submissive and ignorant, and it is tempting to place blame on certain political parties, policies and institutions seen symbolically in these tableaux.

On a more optimistic note are “The Jump” and “The Dream of the Penguin,” both of which illustrate animals breaking free of what holds them back. In the former, the worm has turned as a lion leaps from its perch at its clownish, would-be lion tamer. In the latter, our helmeted penguin is frozen in mid-flight. The lion reacts according to its nature and the penguin succeeds in transcending its own. Such is the sublime nature of being human refusing to be tamed or discouraged.

Lichtenberger, also from Freiburg, illustrates a fundamental human quality in her Transmission Window video and four subsequent video stills, “I-IV,” the need to achieve balance and harmony in one’s life. In video and stills, daring young men in suits and athletic shoes are slacklining, a popular aerialist sport, on flexible nylon continued on page 22 y

art

n Bemis Underground Manager Brigitte McQueen resigned from her position last week. In an email, she says she decided to leave the program in order to begin work toward the creation of a new arts nonprofit for Omaha, one “which will be dedicated to supporting local artists through studio space, facilities and exhibition opportunities.” She says the yet un-named organization will “utilize the arts to enact social change in our greater community, and will provide free, dynamic arts programming to children in need.” She describes the new organization as a support group for visual arts, music, dance and the literary arts. Though I’m sad to see McQueen leaving the Underground — she’s brought vibrancy and life to the space with her great curatorial work — this exciting project sounds like a worthwhile change. McQueen said the new year will bring more information about her new endeavor. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, in other Bemis news, the Bemis Center Art Sales Program is having a sale: take 15 percent off any purchase now through December 30. The collection is available for online browsing, or contact Art Sales Manager Erika Meisinger for more information or a tour of the Bemis Center Art Vault. (That alone sounds intriguing.)

Bemis recently received a $50,000 National Endowment for the Arts, in support of its residency program. The funding marks a 50 percent increase from what the Bemis received in 2009.

Bemis Director Mark Masuoka says the grant comes just in time for Bemis’ 30th anniversary in 2011. “I can’t think of a better way to signify this milestone than to be able to increase our capacity to support individual artists,” he says.

n Girl’s Inc. of Omaha, in partnership with the Nebraska Arts Council, created state tree ornaments that are now hanging on this year’s National Christmas Tree, installed on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. Participants from Girl’s Inc. worked with Omaha artist Marcia Joffe-Bouska to create a glass mosaic on hardboard that represented a favorite aspect of winter holiday celebrations. The National Christmas Tree Lighting began on Christmas Eve in 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge lit a Christmas tree in front of 3,000 spectators on the Ellipse. Since 1923, each succeeding president has carried on the tradition of what has become a month-long event presented by the National Park Foundation and National Park Service.

— Sarah Baker Hansen

mixedmedia

Globetrotters

culture

Mixed Media is a column about art. Get local art updates at weekfiftytwo.com. Send ideas to mixedmedia@thereader.com.

| THE READER |

dec. 23 - 29, 2010

21

art

y continued from page 21

webbing rather than high wire. Nevertheless, the sensation of attempting control amidst high risk and adventure is just as dizzyingly dramatic. This is especially true of her sensational video rear-projected on a large window above M’s Pub in the Old Market. This is the sort of alternative, public visual experience seldom seen in this community, and it is dearly welcomed.

Unlike de Pellegrin’s pristine fine prints that make use of theatrical staging and lighting, Lichtenberger’s video stills are characterized by red, grainy backgrounds and pixilated imagery, all the better to suit the frenetic, animated atmosphere and the uncertain, tenuous outcome of her protagonist’s pursuits. One can assume, especially as the video is on a loop, that one never really steps down from the “wire” except perhaps by accident or defeat, and that achieving balance is a lifelong pursuit.

Clearly, Dolzan, an artist and instructor in Trento, Italy, exhibits the darkest vision of the human condition in Transatlantik. Most of his portraits are recognizably human despite certain caricature and grotesquery, but his most expressionistic piece is the formidable “Crocodile.” In this large acrylic painting of translucent blues, reds and grays, the transformation is complete, as our sly and voracious, grinning croc oozing from the swamp, is a symbol of cunning hypocrisy, the devil incarnate, at least according to Slavic myth.

His other acrylic and charcoal portraiture also reflects a Northern European tradition, but they are more contemporary as the artist filters his facial distortions via the influence of television, radio, Internet and social media. Especially effective at this are his three acrylics on cardboard made for the Moving Gallery, “The Child,” “Minotaur” and “Countess.” The child is old and depraved before his time, the minotaur, a Wall Street investor bullish on his greedy success while still green with envy, and the countess resembles an Orange County housewife gone wild, and crazy enough to believe her bling and makeup build character.

Though Transatlantik’s satire varies in tone from merely poking fun to the truly Swiftian, it is clearly not meant to be didactic or fingerpointing. These three artists went on a global road trip to America and came, individually, to a similar conclusion: people make the greatest, albeit the most flattering, show on earth, all the world over. , Transatlantik continues through Feb. 16 in the Garden of the Zodiac Gallery, 1042 Howard St. in the Old Market Passageway. For information contact 517.8719 or vmercer3@cox.net.

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

| THE READER |

art

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12/13/10 DEC. 23 - 29, 2010

7:13 PM

23

art Vermin, Vermin Everywhere!

Artist uses social media, audience participation to create global installation

by Jasmine Maharisi

J

amie Burmeister is the type of guy who can’t stand still.

The 41-year-old exercise scientistturned-artist constantly works on new projects, whether it’s hardwiring a rocking chair to correspond with a movie projector, or modeling 4-inch men out of clay. The latter, Burmeister’s Vermin Project, is his most popular.

The idea of the Vermin Project — the first of its kind — is to install miniature sculptures in public environments.

Essentially, the word “vermin” comes with negative connotations. Depending on who you ask, the term can have several meanings, but mostly refers to pests that invade human spaces. Which is exactly how the artist developed the idea.

“There are starlings that live in the gables up there,” Burmeister says, pointing to the ceiling corner of his Gretna studio. “You’ll hear them in there having babies.

My first instinct was to get them out. They’re dirty and they’ve been all over. Yet another part of me is thinking, they’re just doing the same things we’re doing, they’re just trying to find a home. Live and have their family.”

He began making the vermin two years ago to put alongside his video installations at art shows. Because his work tends to be more conceptual, Burmeister wanted to incorporate tangible pieces.

“I was using traditional methods,” he says. “I was making work I wanted to be about consciousness and things that are mostly introspective. I got into sculptures because I enjoy the physicality of making them. That’s the sort

24

dec. 23 - 29, 2010

of the thing that brought me around to doing the vermin, just so I could start using my hands again.”

The Vermin Project took a turn in January when Jeremy Lipschultz, director of UNO’s School of Communication, approached Burmeister about speaking at the October 10/10/10 conference, an event focusing on technology 10 years past and 10 years into the future.

Lipschultz asked if he was using any type of tracking system, a concept Burmeister hadn’t considered. Soon after, Burmeister launched a website, vermin.me, and began using Google Maps, with each pinpoint representing an installed vermin.

His goal was to place vermin in every country. Although Burmeister travels extensively for his band and art, he couldn’t accomplish the task alone.

“When I was spreading them out I was thinking ‘This is going to take forever for me to do,’” he says. “So I thought if I could recruit help from people, I’d be in good shape.”

The artist began using social media to get the word out; he received so many requests, he had to start using molds to make the vermin more quickly.

The vermin started spreading exponentially. Over 800 have been placed in 430 locations since January, including Spain, Saudi Arabia and Norway. They are found solo or in groups, on unknown walls and buildings or outside of famous statues and

| THE READER |

art

structures. Visitors can click the map’s pinpoints to see who placed the vermin and when.

He also began varying skin color and postures.

Later, he experimented with putting them together, such as two vermin shaking hands or giving each other a pat on the back. A favorite is a group of three punk-rock vermin, each sporting Mohawks and standing with their clay fists thrust rebelliously in the air.

To deliver the vermin to par ticipants, he uses good old snail mail.

Wrapping three pieces in bubble wrap, he ships each with “vermin.me” engraved on their backs.

Thanks to two grants, one from the Nebraska Arts Council and another from the UNO Cultural Fund, Burmeister is able to pay shipping costs.

While public installations and audience participation have long-since been a part of the

art world, Burmeister’s collaborative method of social media, the public and sculpture is revolutionary. It’s as if the vermin themselves aren’t the art but rather a conduit, providing a channel in which people can connect. The real art in Burmeister’s project is how 21st century methods of communication, as well as people, transport an artist’s vision.

“I hope the vermin project results in many things,” he says. “New connections, opportunities for collaboration, vermin spreading to all countries of the world … I think this project has the potential to do many things depending upon how people choose to interact with the project and the vermin. Part of the excitement is that I don’t know what will happen.” ,

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12/6/10 4:36 PM

DEC. 23 - 29, 2010

25

theater Steve Priesman stage manages his last Carol

When Mike Farrell had a “very rough voice” one night, Priesman and Boggess cut his “Boar’s Head” song from the show. They also have a Playhouse employee present as “staff on duty” each night.

by Warren Francke This evening it was production coordinator e’s the unseen master of the house, call- Greg Scheer, so Priesman passed on a crew coming cues on his radio headset or flipping plaint about tight quarters for a set piece when switches to turn on red, green and yellow it’s moved on and off stage. “We’ve got three feet,” cue lights. The script says, “slurp, slurp, slurp,” as Scheer explains. It’s his 21st year, so few issues are Ebenezer Scrooge noisily spoons his soup, and the apt to surprise him.

Steve talks into his headset to announce, words tell Steve Priesman to signal the next change “Warm-ups on stage in five minutes.” Among the in lights, sound or set piece.

He’s been doing it 24 years as stage manager cast members arriving, not yet in costume, is wife for A Christmas Carol at the Omaha Community Marion, again playing Mrs. Dilber, one of the two Playhouse, but Steve will announce his final count- crones who cackle as they strip Scrooge’s bedding down to curtain — “five, four, three, two, one” — at and empty his purse.

Scrooge’s bed, Priesman points out, is smallthis Thursday’s closing performance. er than it used to be since the remount of the “I’ll miss the audience reactions,” he says, but show in 2006 after Boyd’s retirement. Smaller “I won’t miss six days a week of rehearsals and six means only one “bed bug” now shows a week” during a 10-week stretch rolls it about the stage. “There’s ending Dec. 23. And it comes in a seanot room for two anymore.” son when Steve and wife Marion, a cast Steve didn’t do bed bug duty member all those years, want more before stepping up as stage mantime with their granddaughter and anager, but he once was that huge other grandchild expected next year.

Ghost of Christmas Future, long Both still plan to volunteer at the before fiber optics replaced it. “I Playhouse, and Steve expects to conwas inside that frame covered with tinue stage managing such musicals as steve prIEsman black fabric,” where he raised the this spring’s Guys and Dolls. long arm that pointed ominously If all goes well during the final week of Carol, he’ll have stopped the show only to Ebenezer’s tombstone.

Anyone who’s seen the production knows it once during a run of more than 700 performances.

“We had a mechanical breakdown and couldn’t includes a tombstone that rises from the floor and fly Scrooge” (Dick Boyd then) to join the Ghost of a hole in the stage to lower Marley’s ghost to the nether regions. If everything goes on Priesman’s Christmas Present on top of the bed.

Most mishaps are minor, but when directors cues, nobody besides Marley falls in a hole.

Steve first worked as a volunteer in 1984’s The aren’t around, Priesman and music man Jim Boggess are in charge. Since Boggess is down in the orchestra Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and first served as pit, most trouble-shooting falls to the stage manager stage manager for the musical Can-Can in 1986.

He’s done most of the spring musicals ever since. at his podium-type desk to the side of the stage.

He enjoys similar longevity in his employThere he sees the audience view of the stage ment.

The son of a printer, Steve is manager of on a monitor, and scans a script and assignment Printing and Publications Services for Omaha sheet, headset in place, his right hand near those three cue switches. The worst has never happened Public Schools.

The family’s involvement with A Christmas — neither Boyd for 30 years or Jerry Longe the past five years has called in to say, “Sorry, I can’t Carol started with son Brian, who once played Tiny Tim. With mom and dad stepping aside, only play Scrooge tonight.”

If that had ever happened, Priesman says, “I’d daughter Jennifer Priesman (she’s Millie this time get Carl on the phone,” referring to artistic direc- around) continues with the annual classic. , tor Carl Beck. But the stage manager makes do if illness takes a youngster out of the children’s en- A Christmas Carol’s final show of the season is semble, and if a Cratchit child is missing, others Thursday, Dec. 23 at 7:30 p.m. Visit omahaplayhouse.com. can pick up the lines.

H

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

| THE READER |

art

coldcream

Countdown to Curtain

n More theater lovers have attended those “21 and Over” evenings at the Omaha Community Playhouse each month, organizer Amy Lane reports. And the Live Karaoke Broadway Night at Jan. 5 at 7:30 p.m. should bring an even bigger crowd than the 100 or so in the past.

Note that it’s a Wednesday, not the usual Monday. More important, it falls in the post-holiday gap before new productions open later in January.

And those with songs in their hearts will be asked to email their plans so music director Jim Boggess doesn’t start from scratch with whatever lands on his piano.

One surprise to me, and to director-in-residence Lane, was that a simple one-night reading of a play, even without admission charged, still requires full royalty payments. So far, nightly donations have come close to covering fees, usually around $100.

We’ll report more about these “21st century plays for a 21st century audience” later, but it’s still experimental in the amount of staging that goes beyond reading from a music stand. For example, the recent treatment of Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck featured some staged combat, probably fighting over a valuable postage stamp if one recalls a synopsis of the play.

It winds up late in the spring with that Tonywinning drama, August: Osage County. n We saluted theater volunteers in this space last week, ending with the show going on at the Playhouse despite nasty weather. And so it did, but not without a few no-shows.

Stage manager Steve Priesman (featured on this page) appreciated that stage crew members who couldn’t make it called early enough to ease adjustments. It wasn’t quite as easy in the costume department where the Christmas Carol cast was short a few dressers. (One assumes they still managed to get dressed.)

Down in the Old Market, the Blue Barn was sold out Saturday night, so still had a good crowd of 50 or so for Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.

Callers saying they’d stay home were invited to use their tickets for the Sunday afternoon show. n If you haven’t seen Camille Metoyer Moten on stage since her award-winning role in the Playhouse musical, Ragtime, that’s because she hasn’t recently done any theatrical roles. But she’s been busy doing cabaret with accompanist David Murphy.

Last week, she was singing the Downtown Rotary Club, closing with a Murphy composition that makes one of the season’s most common wishes: “I want a simpler Christmas this year.”

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

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DEC. 23 - 29, 2010

27

art

OpeningS

DURHAM WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM, 801 S. 10th St., 444.5071, durhammuseum.org. SCHOOL HOUSE TO WHITE HOUSE: THE EDUCATION OF THE PRESIDENTS: Opens Dec. 26-Mar. 27.

MUSEUM OF NEBRASKA ART (MONA), 2401 Central Ave., Kearney, 308.865.8559, monet.unk.edu/mona. OF PEN, PAPER, PENCIL: Group show, through Feb. 27.

ONGOING

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

NEW WORK: New work by artist Gonca Yengin, through December.

9 MUSES STUDIO, 2713 N 48th St., Lincoln. NEW WORK: Dr. Barbara Tracy, through Dec. A TO Z PRINTING, 8320 Cody Dr., Lincoln, 477.0815, atozprint. com. COMMUNITY OPEN STUDIO: A community group show, through Dec. ANDERSON O’BRIEN FINE ART COUNTRYSIDE VILLAGE, 8724 Pacific St., 390.0717, aobfineart.com. NEW WORKS EXHIBITION: Group show featuring new work by regional artists, through Dec. 31.

ANDERSON O’BRIEN FINE ART OLD MARKET, 1108 Jackson St., 884.0911, aobfineart.com. NEW WORKS EXHIBITION: Group show featuring new work by regional artists, through Dec. 31.

ART FRIENDS GIFT GALLERY, 14738 Grover St. UNIQUE GIFTS: Local artists, through Dec. ARTISTS’ COOPERATIVE GALLERY, 405 S. 11th St., artistscoopgallery.com. CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAY SEASON: All member show, through Dec. 26.

BELLEVUE UNIVERSITY GALLERY, Hitchcock Humanities Center, 1000 Galvin Road. S., 293.2048, Bellevue.edu. BOXES AND RELIEF: New work by artist Marc Manriquez. HOLLYWOOD TIMES: New work by artist Mervi Pakaste. Both shows through Jan. 11.

BENSON GRIND, 6107 Maple St., octopusesgarden.org. NEW WORK: Paula Phillip, through Dec. BLUE POMEGRANATE GALLERY, 6570 Maple St., 502.9901, bluepom.com. PHOTOS OF ORNAMENTS: Group show featuring photography by Sandra Gerber, Heidi Riha and Anne Nye, through Dec. BURKHOLDER PROJECT, 719 P St., Lincoln, 477.3305, burkholderproject.com. CELEBRATE THE SEASON: Group show. NEW WORK: Max Miller. Both shows through Dec. 23.

CATHEDRAL CULTURAL CENTER, 3900 Webster St., 551.4888, cathedralartsproject.org. NEW WORK: Regional Latino artists, through Feb. 4.

DRIFT STATION GALLERY, 1745 N St., Lincoln, driftstation.org. CTRL/ ALT/ESC: TECHNOLOGY AND THE LANDSCAPE: Through Dec. 17.

DURHAM WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM, 801 S. 10th St., 444.5071, durhammuseum.org. 100 YARDS OF GLORY: Oma-

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dec. 23 - 29, 2010

ha’s football history, through Jan. 2, 2011. DIG IT! THE SECRETS OF SOIL: Through Dec. 26. ETHNIC HOLIDAY TREES EXHIBIT: Through Jan. 2.

FRED SIMON GALLERY, Burlington Building, 1004 Farnam St., nebraskaartscouncil.org. NAC IAF VISUAL ARTS SHOW: Group show, through Feb. 25.

GALLERY 616, 616 S. 11th St, 301.9713. NEW WORK: Robert Miller, through Dec. GALLERY 9, 124 S 9th St., Lincoln, 477.2822, gallerynine.com.

ALL MEMBER HOLIDAY SHOW: Group show featuring all members, through Dec..

GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE EXHIBITION, 1425 H St., Lincoln, nebraskaartscouncil.org. NEW WORK: Sue Thelen, through Jan. 3.

GRAND MANSE GALLERY, 129 N. 10th St., Lincoln, grandmanse.com. BLUE CAT: David Christiansen, through Jan. 21.

GREAT PLAINS ART MUSEUM, 1155 Q St., Hewit Plc., Lincoln, 472.0599, unl.edu/plains/gallery/gallery.shtml.

HAYDON CENTER, 335 N. 8th St., Lincoln, 475.5421, haydonartcenter.org. SMALL TREASURES: Juried artist member exhibition, through Dec. 24.

HOT SHOPS ARTS CENTER, 1301 Nicholas St., 342.6452, RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS: NEBRASKA WOMEN’S CAUCUS FOR ART: Gruop show featuring women artists. BEST OF THE BEST 2010: Juried photography show. Both shows through Dec. 29.

INTERNATIONAL QUILT STUDY CENTER AND MUSEUM, 1523 N. 33rd St., Lincoln, 472.7232, quiltstudy.org. MARSEILLE: WHITE CORDED QUILTING: Explores white corded quilting, through May 8. REVISITING THE ART QUILT: Examining the quilt as a work of art, featuring items from the collection, through Apr. 3, gallery talk Apr. 3, 3 p.m.

JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER, 333 S. 132nd St., 572.8486, jccomaha.org. SOME OF ALL KNOWLEDGE: Tom Swanson, through Dec. 31.

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

BEYOND REALISM: THE WORKS OF KENT BELLOWS 19702005: Through Jan. 16. SEASONS OF JOY: Currier and Ives Holiday Prints from the ConAgra Collection, through Jan. 23.

GOLDEN KITE, GOLDEN DREAMS: The SCBWI Awards, through Jan. 16.

KANEKO, 1111 Jones St., 341.3800, thekaneko.org. FREE. FOLDED SQUARE ALPHABETS & NUMERICALS: Sculpture exhibit by Fletcher Benton, through Feb. KIECHEL FINE ART, 5733 S. 34th St., Lincoln, 420.9553, kiechelart.com. HOLIDAY SELECTIONS: Student work by University of Nebraska students, curated by Karen Kunc and Francisco Souto, through Jan. 5.

KRUGER COLLECTION, UNL Architecture Hall, 10th and R, Lincoln, 472.3560, krugercollection.unl.edu. THINK GREEN: Interior/green design and miniatures that explore forward thinking design, through Mar. 18, 2011.

LA CASA’S PIZZARIA, 4432 Leaveworth St., omahaartistsinc. com. 2010 FALL ART SHOW: New work, group show, through Jan. 3.

| THE READER |

art/theater listings

check event listings online!

LAURITZEN GARDENS, 100 Bancroft St., 346.4002, omahabotanicalgardens.org. HOLIDAY POINSETTIA SHOW: Through Jan. 9.

THE LICHEN, 2810 N. 48th St., Lincoln, thelichen.com. FORCED RESULTS: Samuel B. Rapien, through Dec. 24. 0 < ART < 100: New work, group show, all art priced $100 or below, through Dec. LUX CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 48th and Baldwin, Lincoln, 434.2787, luxcenter.org. VIS-A-VIS: New work, group show, through Mar. 1.

GIFTS FROM THE HEART: New work, group show, through Dec. 24. GARDEN: New work by Susan Stark, through Dec. MODERN ARTS MIDWEST, 800 P St., Lincoln, 477.2828, modernartsmidwest.com. RED DOT: 8th Anniversary celebration, through Dec. 31.

MUSEUM OF NEBRASKA ART (MONA), 2401 Central Ave., Kearney, 308.865.8559, monet.unk.edu/mona. POSTMASTER INTERACTIVE GALLERY: Group show, through Jan. 10, 2011.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM: Through Jun. 5, 2011. SATURDAY EVENING POST: Holiday images, through Jan. 10. NEBRASKA NOW: Renee A. Ledesma, oepns Through Jan. 2. A GREATER SPECTRUM: African American artists of Nebraska, 1912-2010, through Apr. 3.

THE NEW BLK, 1213 Jones St., 403.5619, thenewblk.com.

MIND AND BODY: Through Dec. 23.

NOMAD LOUNGE GALLERY, 1013 Jones St., 884.1231, nomadlounge.com. REPURPOSED: New work by Matt Jones, through Dec. NORFOLK ARTS CENTER, 305 N. 5th St., Norfolk, 371.7199, norfolkartscenter.org. NEW WORK: New work by Inna Kulagina, through Dec. NOYES GALLERY, 119 S. 9th St., Lincoln, 486.3866, noyesartgallery.com. FOCUS GALLERY: New work, Group show. MAIN GALLERY: New work by Mike Fluent, Janna Harsch and Marin Hacker. GOLD ROOM: New work by Marla Blush and Julia Noyes. All shows through Dec. OLD MARKET ARTISTS, 1034 Howard St., Lower Level of Old Market Passageway, oldmarketartists.com. GROUP SHOW: All member show, through Dec. OLSON-LARSEN GALLERY, 203 5th St., Des Moines, IA, 515.277.6734, olsonlarsen.com. SMALL WORKS SHOW: Group show, through Jan. 15. NEW WORK: Group show, through Jan. 15.

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.

TWEEN: New work by Anne and Michael Burton, through Jan. 31.

PASSAGEWAY GALLERY, 417 South 11th St, passagewaygallery.com. THROUGH THE KEYHOLE: New work, group show, through Dec. PROJECT ROOM, 1410 and 1416 O St., Suite #8, Lincoln, 617.8365, projectroom.us. GUNK: New work by Colin C. Smith, through Dec. RNG GALLERY, 1915 Leavenworth St., 214.3061. FLYING PEOPLE SERIES: Larry Sosso. LEFT: Rob Gilmer. Both shows through Dec. SHELDON ART GALLERY, 12th and R, UNL, Lincoln, sheldonartgallery.org. BETTER HALF, BETTER TWELFTH: Women artists in the collection, through Apr. 1, 2011. ORLAN & MIND OVER MATTER: Through Jan. 30. NEW MATERIAL WORD: RETHREADING TECHNOLOGY: Through Jan. 2. A WINTER GEM: Through Dec. 31.

STRATEGIC AIR & SPACE MUSEUM, 28210 W. Park Highway, Ashland, 944.3100, strategicairandspace.com. ANAKIN SKYWALKER’S PODRACE: Through Jan. 2. THE SECRET LIFE OF HOWARD HUGHES: Through Jan. 2.

TUGBOAT GALLERY, 14th and O, 2nd floor, Lincoln, tugboatgallery.com. PLEASE POST: Group show featuring new work by Denny Schmickle, Joey Lynch, Bonnie O’Connell, Fred Hosman and Justin Kemerling, through Dec. 31.

UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD MUSEUM, 200 Pearl St., Council Bluffs, 501.3841, uprrmuseum.org. MODEL TRAIN DISPLAY: Through Dec. 31.

UNL HILLESTAD TEXTILES GALLERY, 35th & Holdrege, 2nd Floor, Home Econims Bldg., Lincoln, textilegallery.unl.edu. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION GARMENTS, BECAUSE TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS: New work by Erica White, through Dec. 22.

WESTERN HISTORIC TRAILS CENTER, 3434 Richard Downing Ave., Council Bluffs, 515.281.3858, iowahistory.org. OVER HERE, OVER THERE: Iowa and WWI, through Fall 2010. ART IN DAILY LIFE: A comprehensive look at the art of Native Americans, through Jan. 2011.

WORKSPACE GALLERY, Sawmill Building, 440 N. 8th St., Lincoln, sites.google.com/site/workspacegallery. EARTH CUTS: Jonathon Wells, through Jan. 5.

theater opening

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN, Rose Theater, 2001 Farnam St., 345.4849, rosetheater.org. Opens Dec. 2630, various showtimes, $16. Kris Kringle and his animal friends are determined to save Christmas for the boys and girls of Sombertown.

SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS, Orpheum Theater, 409 S. 16th St., 345.0606, omahaperformingarts.org. Opens Dec. 26, 7 p.m., $60-$150. Chinese dance company.

ongoing

A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Omaha Community Playhouse, 6915 Cass St., 553.0800, omahaplayhouse.com. Through Dec. 23, Wed.-Sat., 7:30 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m., 6:30 p.m., $35, $24/students.

YESTERDAY AND TODAY, Omaha Community Playhouse, 6915 Cass St., 553.0800, omahaplayhouse.com, through Dec. 31, Wed.-Sat., 7:30 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m. $38.

poetry/comedy thursday 23

ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC FOR MUSICIANS & POETS, Meadowlark Coffee & Espresso, 1624 S. St., Lincoln, 8 p.m., 477.2007.

Hosted by Spencer. (every Wed.) MIDWEST POETRY VIBE, KENO Kings/Royal Crown Lounge, 6553 Ames Ave., 9 p.m., poetry, R&B, Neosoul music, live performances, concert DVD and food and drink. (Every Wed.) HAPPY HOLIDAYS WITH TONY TONE, Funny Bone, Village Pointe, 17305 Davenport St., funnnyboneomaha.com, 493.8036, 7:30 p.m.

sunday 26

POETRY NIGHT, 357 Club, 2404 Ames Ave., 6 p.m., poetry, prose, real-to-life, skits and interpretive dance. (Every Sun.) HAPPY HOLIDAYS WITH TONY TONE, Funny Bone, Village Pointe, 17305 Davenport St., funnnyboneomaha.com, 493.8036, 7 p.m.

monday 27

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, SE Corner of 8th & P St., Lower Level, Lincoln, crescentmoon@inebraska. com, 7 p.m. Open mic and featured readers. (every Mon.) THE WORLD WAR II HISTORY BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP, The Bookworm, 87th and Pacific, 22 p.m., 392.2877, bookwormomaha.com. Discussing WWII History. (4th Monday.)

tuesday 28

SHOOT YOUR MOUTH OFF, The Hideout, 320 S. 72nd St., 9 p.m. sign-up, 9:30 start, 504.4434, myspace.com/shootyourmouthoff, spoken word, comedy, music and chaos (every Tues.)

Wednesday 29

ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC FOR MUSICIANS & POETS, Meadowlark Coffee & Espresso, 1624 S. St., Lincoln, 8 p.m., 477.2007. Hosted by Spencer. (every Wed.) MIDWEST POETRY VIBE, KENO Kings/Royal Crown Lounge, 6553 Ames Ave., 9 p.m., poetry, R&B, Neosoul music, live performances, concert DVD and food and drink. (Every Wed.) PEOPLE’S FILM FESTIVAL: CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, McFoster’s Natural Kind Cafe, 38th and Farnam, 7 p.m., FREE. Examines the impact of corporate dominants on the everday lives of Americans. (every Wed.)

music

Backbeat takes you behind the scenes of the local music scene.

Send tips, comments and questions to backbeat@thereader.com.

RING NEW

IN THE

backbeat

n Local music fans will have a hard time staying in this week thanks to an impressive slate of local shows.

Thursday, Dec. 23, Satchel Grande and Old Money play The Waiting Room, while Slowdown Virginia and Polecat reunite at Slowdown. Friday, Dec. 24, Banjo Loco and several openers are at Waiting Room. Sunday, Dec. 26, Mal Madrigal, Our Fox, The Bruces and Before The Toast And Tea are at Slowdown, while Little Brazil, Conduits, The Filter Kings and All Young Girls Are Machine Guns rock The Waiting Room, which hosts a benefit for Amber Wilkins Monday, Dec. 27. Monday is also Ladyfinger, Back When, The Answer Team and Lightning Bug at Slowdown. Finally, Mousetrap, Mercy Rule, Noah’s Ark Was A Spaceship and The Stay Awake will be at The Waiting Room Wednesday, Dec. 29. You’ll find stories on most of these shows in this issue. Check our music listings this week for more local shows. n And, as promised, here’s a mini holiday playlist, from me to you. It’s a shortened version of one I’m giving friends and family this season.

In my opinion, the best Christmas songs tend to be wistful, not cheesy. A prime example is Judy Garland’s sad-faced “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” I’m not saying have a blue, emo Christmas, but a little reflection always tends to permeate my holidays. Most of these follow in that tradition: n “Fairytale of New York,” The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl: Epically insulting and simultaneously tender, regardless of whether one spends Christmas Eve in the drunk tank. n “Ave Maria,” Stevie Wonder: Stevie’s huge voice inflates this song to new heights, and nimbly marries classical and soul sounds. n “Maybe This Christmas,” Ron Sexsmith: A reflective croon that asks much more than commerce from Christmas. n “All I Want For Christmas is You,” Mariah Carey: Don’t judge. This romp is a modern classic. n “Greensleeves,” Vince Guaraldi Trio: Between the song itself and the Trio’s execution, this is masterful wistful. n “Christmas Lights,” Korey Anderson: My new Christmas tradition, from Pine Ridge Vol. III. n “Auld Lang Syne,” The Bruces: The ending part of a new year. Helps me “sign the bottom line” every time. n “My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year),” Regina Spektor: The beginning part of a new year, and a warm welcome at that.

For a longer, more comprehensive batch of seasonal songs visit http://ht.ly/3s4uL to hear the streaming Jingle Jams: A Holiday Mix From NPR Music.

— Sarah Wengert

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lazy-i

ousetrap frontman Patrick Buchanan thought he was getting the opportunity of a lifetime. Little did he know that the next six months would forever change his perspective on life in these United States.

But before we get to that, I urge you to get online right now and buy your ticket(s) to the Mousetrap reunion show Dec. 29 at The Waiting Room (or Dec. 28 at The Bourbon Theater for Lincoln folks).

Guitarist/vocalist Buchanan and bassist Craig Crawford, who make up the core of this seminal Omaha punk band along with new drummer Mike Mazzola, are once again faced with great expectations. They not only have to compete with the golden memories of fans and bands that grew up watching them in the ’90s (which includes just about every Saddle Creek Records musician), they also have to live up to last year’s reunion show, which was better than any Mousetrap show I’d seen.

Now on with Buchanan’s version of It’s a Wonderful Life …

Like Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian or any other great storytellers of the past, Buchanan knows how to spin a yarn that’s so utterly fantastic, you’re forced to wonder if he’s telling the truth. Back in the ’90s, he would call long-distance while on tour with Mousetrap and confess to some of the sickest, most twisted behavior imaginable — all of which not only built upon the band’s already notorious reputation, but also made for some great copy, regardless of whether it was true.

This time, Buchanan says everything was true, and I believe him. He says he just returned stateside after spending the past six months in Russia, where he worked at BBDO Moscow — one of the largest advertising agencies in the world whose accounts include Mercedes Benz and Pepsi.

“Everything about life there was so intense and heavy, every single aspect of every minute of your day was so difficult, that it toughened me up in ways that I can’t explain — mentally, physically, everything,” Buchanan says. “Stuff that would have bothered me before or pissed me off doesn’t even affect me now.

All I have to do is remember life in Russia and think about how amazing we have it here.”

His description of Russian life was like a scene straight from the Terry Gilliam film Brazil.

Buchanan’s office was in a row of giant identical, numbered office buildings that resembled faceless prisons. His daily two-mile bicycle commute was like a post-war obstacle course, spotted with falling buildings and 100-foot-deep holes in the streets. “I would always listen to Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Disci-

s c e n e

b y

t i m

m c m a h a n

pline’ during the commute,” he says. “It was a meta experience of total extremism.”

Extreme, like the gigantic forest fires that blazed just outside the city throughout August. “Because they deregulated their entire fire department to make money, a fire that here would have been put out in a couple days raged out of control for a couple weeks,” Buchanan says. The blaze eventually spread to a nearby peat bog. “The combination of wild fires and the peat bog blanketed the city in toxic smoke. For a week I had to wear a full-on gas mask outside just to breathe. When I walked down the street at two in the afternoon the sun looked like the moon because the sky was so dark with ash and shit. It felt like a nuclear holocaust, like World War III had happened.”

Adding to the conditions was the hottest summer in Moscow’s recorded history. “About 150 people died over the course of two weeks because they drank themselves to death in public places,” Buchanan says. “No one has air conditioning. To escape the heat they’d get a bottle of vodka and drink until they passed out, sometimes into a fountain where they drowned. They had the choice of dying either by burning up or breathing the air.”

Luckily, Buchanan’s 300-square-foot studio apartment, which cost 50,000 rubles a month (about $1,500) was air-conditioned. He hadn’t counted on Moscow’s extremely high cost of living, not only in terms of money, but in time. The simple act of making a deposit at a bank took no less than an hour, thanks to the mountain of forms that had to be filled out. “It’s like their whole system was designed by some evil architect to try to make every single factor of life as difficult as possible,” he says.

At least the city was safe from crime; that is if you could afford to bribe the police. “They’re shameless about it,” Buchanan says of the payoffs. “If the police shake you down and you don’t have any money, they’ll drive you to an ATM,” which is exactly what happened to him after he accidentally drove the wrong way down a one-way street.

Over time, things only got worse. Then out of the blue, Buchanan got a call from a former colleague who knew of a job opening at Detroit ad agency Doner. And just like that, the nightmare ended. Clarence got his wings and Buchanan was back in the U.S. of A. with a new, more patriotic attitude.

“I never considered myself one of those ‘America, I love it’ guys,” he said. “I grew up a punk rocker in the Reagan years, so my idea of the United States is more negative, the world’s oppressor. But it’s like what people say who have been to war: If you haven’t experienced it, you can’t know what it’s like. Moscow is like that. The people are incredibly tough, and it toughened the shit out of me. I feel invincible here.”

God Bless America, and pass the borscht … ,

Lazy-i 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.

hoodoo Reasons to experience Reasons to experience

LIVE THEATRE b l u e s ,

r o o t s ,

a m e r i c a n a

a n d

Evolutions

m o r e

B y

B . J .

h u c h t e m a n n

local talent or find some other creative mechanism to showcase Omaha’s best. Hopefully the Red Sky Music Festival doesn’t follow the general trend of offering the local bands a gate-opening afternoon slot when attendance is slim. Here’s hoping that MECA and Live Nation give thought to the artistic side of the event and that Omaha has a large enough population base to support the concept. This has the potential to be a great festival for Omaha music fans and for Omaha.

C #74 No commercials. hecking out the Funk Trek CD release party at The Waiting Room Friday, Dec. 10, yielded two great sets. Opening the show was Weir, Fairchild & Miller, or the Kris Lager Band without Kris Lager. Jeremiah Weir, John Fairchild and Brandon Miller rocked through some R&B inflected tunes that were musical shout-outs to The Meters and Professor Longhair. Their set showcased all three members but really let Weir shine with his serious keyboard chops. A couple of local MCs, 20 Grand and Kloun, joined Weir, Fairchild & Miller for a few of the numbers, adding some spoken word stylings. It was very cool, something a little different from many local acts in both the classic R&B combo feel and the MCs working with a live backing band. Find fun iPhone videos of both the performance and the trio’s rehearsals on YouTube. I suspect we haven’t heard the last from this group.

Funk Trek tore it up with a lengthy set to celebrate the release of their new CD. This 10-piece band of young musicians features four horns and some multiinstrumentalists. It was a the bel airs double treat to see The Waiting Room packed with a diverse crowd that ranged from band parents to folks in dreadlocks and a hulahooper. Funk Trek definitely had the audience grooving to largely instrumental music, which was a bit of a surprise.

If you’re reading this Wednesday, Dec. 22, you can check out the full Kris Lager Band and Funk Trek at Slowdown’s Frostival 2010. The event is a benefit for the Omaha Food Bank and also features Blue Martian Tribe, Midland Band and The Weeping Figs. See theslowdown.com.

! l a e R t e G

Weekly Blues Fix www.theatreartsguild.com

Reasons to experience

LIVE THEATRE

#151 No two shows are alike!

! l a e R t Ge

Property: Harrah's Council Bluffs Project: Stir Live & Loud New Job#: 48321.1 2:32 PM Show: Ship: 12/13/10 Insert: 12/16/1 Vendor: Omaha Reader dMax: Trim: 4.9" x 7.47" Live: 4.625" x 7.22 VO: ~ x ~ Bleed: none Artist: Lori Rev: 2 Desc.: Omaha Reader 4.9” x 7.47” Ad Final Mats: PDF File

Terry O’Halloran, The New Lift Lounge owner and Blues Society of Omaha president, wrote recently in his BSO enews update that The New Lift is sold on paper and wrote about the future of the popular Thursday blues series.

“I sold The Lift Lounge a few months ago,” O’Halloran writes, “but the deal was contingent on the buyers getting financing and a liquor license.

Unfortunately, 90 days later, I still don’t know whether the buyer will be able to obtain financing. I have been continuing to proceed with business as usual … Obviously the segment of my business that interests all of you is The Blues. The potential buyers have indicated they are not interested in continuing the Thursday afternoon blues series. It is paramount to me that the series continues somewhere. I feel I owe it to the artists, and to you, the fans that have supported this series so loyally for over a dozen years. I am continuing to explore options … Considerations include location, acoustics, sightlines, seating, and capacity.

I have several good leads and I assure you the series will continue somewhere. Your continued support is greatly appreciated, wherever it lands.”

So, as O’Halloran often writes, “get out and get into it” and support this series if you value it. Recent attendance figures will doubtless impact what venues are ultimately interested in continuing this series that has treated Omaha to festival-caliber artists. Check omahablues.com for The New Lift Lounge schedule along with all the metro’s blues and roots bookings.

www.theatreartsguild.com

Reasons to experience

LIVE THEATRE Red Sky Festival

With all our local talent in mind, it’s interesting to ponder what the just-announced Red Sky Music Festival will do for the Omaha music scene. Kevin Coffey reports in the Dec. 15 Omaha World-Herald that MECA will host the event July 19-24, 2011, at TD Ameritrade Park. The fest is expected to play 50 bands on several stages with a multi-genre concept like Milwaukee’s Summerfest. Coffey’s article says that the event coincidentally picked dates that overlap with next year’s planned MAHA fest and that MAHA opted to move to another date.

Hopefully the event bookers, identified as Live Nation on KETV, do indeed present a broad sampling of music including Americana, folk, blues and jazz.

It would be great if they set up a stage dedicated to

#10

Hot Notes

Brad Cordle Band plays the New Lift Dec. 23 at 5:30 p.m.

See All Young Girls Are Machine Guns, Jessica Errett and Platte River Rain at Barley Street Tavern Thursday, Dec. 23, for Big Al’s Christmas Party. The Zoo Bar continues a tradition with Magic Slim and Sons performing Christmas Day at about 9 p.m. The Bel Airs gig at Lincoln’s Zoo Bar Wednesday, Dec. 29, 6-9 p.m. and play The New Lift Thursday, Dec. 30, at 5:30 p.m. ,

Julia Roberts doesn’t need another million dollars.

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.

LIVE THEATRE

#14 It’s totally legal. ! l a e R t e G

www.theatreartsguild.com

ROCK IN to THE NEW YEAR. ReasonsFOR experience FREE!

LIVE THEATRE #162

No airbrushed nudity.

! l a e R t Ge

Learning to Floyd

Pink Floyd Tribute

www.theatreartsguild.com Disposable Heroes

Metallica Tribute

Reasons to experience

LIVE THEATRE

DECEMBER 31 9PM to 1AM

Facebook.com/stirliveandloud

#24

Twitter.com/stirliveandloud

DON’T MISS THE MIDNIGHT CHAMPAGNE TOAST!

Lots of Omaha actors are McDreamy!

Must be 21 or older to attend shows. Must be 21 or older to gamble. Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-BETSOFF (In Iowa) or 1-800-522-4700. ©2010, Caesars License Company, LLC.

hoodoo

V3_48321.1_4.9x7.47_4c_Ad.indd 1

| THE READER |

dec. 23 -29, 2010 12/13/10

31

7:29 PM

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 23 READER RECOMMENDS

12/23 Session 7 12/25 Shur Thing 12/30 Mr. Hand 12/31 Pixies, Pearl Jam

and Led Zeppelin

Tribute Bands 1/1 1/2 1/6 1/7 1/8 1/9

Down to Here Audition Night Rock Mafia

JES WINTER, (acoustic) 7 p.m., 1020, FREE. VELVET CRUSH, ON THE FRITZ, (cover) 9 p.m., Arena, FREE. BIG AL’S CHRISTMAS JAM, (rock) 9 p.m., Barley St. Tavern, FREE. FUNK AND SOUL W/ OL MOANIN CORPSE, (DJ) 9 p.m., Bourbon, FREE. CHRISTMAS WITH THE TURFMEN, (holiday/celtic) 11:30 a.m., Brazen Head.

MISS MISERY, JOHN DOE, MUSHROOM BRUIZE, (rock) 9 p.m., Chrome Lounge.

SHITHOOK, (karaoke) 9 p.m., Duffy’s, FREE. SHAWN FREDIEU, (singer-songwriter) 8 p.m., Firewater Grille, FREE. NASHVILLE REJECT, (cover) 8:30 p.m., Grove, $5.

TIM JAVORSKY, (jazz) 6 p.m., Jazz Louisiana Kitchen.

THE MEDIUMS, THE GODDAMN RIGHTS, (rock) 9 p.m., Knickerbockers.

CHRIS SAUB, (acoustic) 8 p.m., LIV Lounge, FREE. BRAD CORDLE’S LATEST BLUES BAND, (blues) 5:30 p.m., New Lift Lounge, $7.

MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER, (holiday) 7:30 p.m., Orpheum, $37-$77.

WGO ORCHESTRA REVUE CHRISTMAS SHOW, (jazz) 6:30 p.m., Ozone, FREE. SWAMPJAM, (blues) 8 p.m., Pour House, FREE.

READER RECOMMENDS SLOWDOWN VIRGINIA, POLECAT, (indie/rock) 9 p.m., Slowdown, $10.

LEMON FRESH DAY, (cover) 9:30 p.m., Two Fine Irishmen, FREE.

READER RECOMMENDS

Easy Street Band Seven Hells

SATCHEL GRANDE, OLD MONEY, (rock/funk) 9 p.m., Waiting Room, $7.

SESSION 7, (cover) 9 p.m., Whiskey Roadhouse, FREE. WAGS AND FRIENDS, (blues) 5 p.m., Zoo Bar, $5.

THE LIL SLIM BLUES BAND, 9 p.m., Zoo Bar, $5.

FRIDAY 24

Audition Night

READER RECOMMENDS DJ CORVIN, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, $5.

MUZIK AMBIENCE BY JACQUES, (piano) 4-7 p.m., Big Mama’s Kitchen.

JITTERBUGS’ NIGHT OUT, (jazz/dixieland) 9 p.m., Eagles Lodge, $10.

DEREK VENTURA, (cover) 6:30 p.m., Gorat’s, FREE. MULBERRY LANE, (acapella) 10 p.m., St. Mary Magdalene Church, FREE.

SATURDAY 25

TALI-BANG, ADAM HOTZ, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, $5.

DEREK VENTURA, (cover) 6:30 p.m., Gorat’s, FREE. THE CONFIDENTIALS, (cover) 9:30 p.m., Loose Moose, FREE. LEMON FRESH DAY, (cover) 9 p.m., New Lift Lounge, $5.

NOAH AND GUESTS, (singer-songwriter) 10 p.m., Side Door, FREE. DJ SAM EC, (DJ) 7 p.m., Two Fine Irishmen, FREE.

Must be 21 years or older to gamble. Know When to Stop Before You Start®. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-BETS-OFF(Iowa) or 1-800-522-4700(National). ©2010, Caesars Entertainment.

32

DEC. 23 - 29, 2010

READER RECOMMENDS BANJO LOCO, REGGAEJUNKIEJEW, THE BEAT SEEKERS, MC GRINGO, EASTERN TURKISH, (hip-hop/punk) 8 p.m., Waiting Room, $8.

SHURTHING, (cover) 9 p.m., Whiskey Roadhouse, FREE.

| THE READER |

READER RECOMMENDS CHRISTMAS WITH MAGIC SLIM AND SONS, (blues) 9 p.m., Zoo Bar, $8.

SUNDAY 26

SUNDAY GOLD W/ GREG K, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, FREE. DUB LOUNGE, (DJ) 9 p.m., Bourbon, FREE. ’80S NIGHT W/ OL’ MOANIN’ CORPSE, (DJ) 8 p.m., Bricktop, FREE. MUSTACHE, WEEZIL SKWEEZINS, THE HANGING COW BOYS, (rock) 9 p.m., Duffy’s.

LIVE GUITAR, 6 p.m., Espana, FREE. CHRISTIAN, AARON, AND POP, (rock/cover) 9:30 p.m., Side Door, FREE.

READER RECOMMENDS MAL MADRIGAL, OUR FOX, THE BRUCES, BEFORE THE TOAST AND TEA, (rock) 8 p.m., Slowdown, $6.

READER RECOMMENDS LITTLE BRAZIL, CONDUITS, THE FILTER KINGS, ALL YOUNG GIRLS ARE MACHINE GUNS, (rock) 9 p.m., Waiting Room, $7.

BUCK AND FAVER, (country) 6 p.m., Zoo Bar, $5.

MONDAY 27

SOUP AND SONG W/ KYLE & ANDY, (variety singer-song writer) 8 p.m., Barley St. Tavern, FREE. MIKE GURCIULLO AND HIS LAS VEGAS LAB BAND, (jazz) 6:30 p.m., Ozone, FREE.

READER RECOMMENDS LADYFINGER, BACK WHEN, LIGHTNING BUG, (rock) 9 p.m., Slowdown, $7.

READER RECOMMENDS BENEFIT FOR AMBER WILKINS W/ WE BE LIONS, VIBEN HAI, THE VINGINS, (rock) 7 p.m., Waiting Room, $10.

PIANO HAPPY HOUR, 5 p.m., Zoo Bar, FREE. Z-JAM OPEN STAGE, (blues) 9 p.m., Zoo Bar, FREE.

TUESDAY 28

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

READER RECOMMENDS MERCY RULE, MOUSETRAP, DIM LIGHT, (rock) 8 p.m., Bourbon, $5, $7/under 21.

FARUQ, (soul/funk) 10 p.m., Duffy’s.

HIDDEN HOLLOW, (rock) 9 p.m., Knickerbockers.

TIM KOEHN ACOUSTIC JAM, (acoustic/blues) 7 p.m., Louis, FREE. NEBRASKA’S MUSICAL SMORGASBORD W/ CHRIS SAYRE, (various) 7 p.m., Omaha Public Library Millard Branch.

GEORGE WALKER’S MUSICAL KWANZAA JOURNEY, (world) 6 p.m., Omaha Public Library Washington Branch.

DANNY GARCIA, (acoustic) 6:30 p.m., Ozone, FREE. CHRIS SAUB, (acoustic) 8 p.m., The Phoenix, FREE. MARK “SHARKY” SANFORD, (piano) 6:30 p.m., The Reef, FREE. OPEN MIC, 9 p.m., Sean O’Casey’s, FREE. GALVANIZED TRON, MO CAIAUS, MC GRINGO, (hip-hop) 9 p.m., Sokol Underground, $7.

READER RECOMMENDS

ARTILLERY FUNK, VIBENHAI, ILLUMINATI, SIN’D, BORN HUSTLA RECORDS, (rock/hip-hop) 7 p.m., Sokol Underground, $7.

OLD SCHOOL HOLIDAY BLUES JAM, 6 p.m., Zoo Bar, $6.

JAZZOCRACY, (jazz) 6 p.m., Zoo Bar, FREE.

WEDNESDAY 29

MOM E BROWN, (DJ) 9 p.m., 415, FREE. THE TURFMEN, (celtic) 7 p.m., Brazen Head.

music listings

STRAWBERRY BURNS, QUILT, 2 BLACK CATS, (rock) 9 p.m., Duffy’s.

THE ZEBRA JAM, (rock) 9 p.m., Gator O’Malley’s, FREE. TIM JAVORSKY, (jazz) 6 p.m., Jazz Louisiana Kitchen.

ESCAPE THE FIRE, CHASING THE SUN, A DIFFERENT BREED, JED AND JOY, (rock) 9 p.m., Knickerbockers.

JR HOSS, (acoustic) 7 p.m., The Loose Moose, FREE. GREASE BAND, (oldies) 6:30 p.m., Ozone, FREE.

READER RECOMMENDS BAD COUNTRY, SARA EYTALIS, (bluegrass) 10 p.m., Side Door, FREE. MO CAIAUS, MC GRINGO, GALVONIZED TRON, THE MORPHEENDZ, THE O.N.N.E, PSYCH B, LAC, STANDBYE, LAKE SULC, (hip-hop) 6 p.m., Sokol Underground, $7.

READER RECOMMENDS MOUSETRAP, MERCY RULE, NOAH’S ARC WAS A SPACESHIP, THE STAY AWAKE, (rock) 9 p.m., Waiting Room, $8.

THE BEL AIRS, (blues) 6 p.m., Zoo Bar, $10.

JERRY PRANKSTERS, (rock/tribute) 9 p.m., Zoo Bar, $5.

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 Downtown Blues, 1512 Howard St., 345.0180 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., 884.5410, 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 Zoo Bar, 136 N.14th St., Lincoln, zoobar.com

0

12/31

MusicOmahaShow.com

Pink Floyd AND

Metallica Tribute Bands FREE SHOW

Christmas Music Episode

1/7

The 9’s

With Special Guests:

1/8

Satchel Grande

1/14

Curbstone

Rock Paper Dynamite Janurary Music Episode

1/15

With Special Guests:

Landing on the Moon

1/21

1/22

UPCOMING SHOWS

Mousetrap was formed in May 1988 in Omaha by guitarist Patrick Buchanan, bassist Craig Crawford and drummer Scott Miller. All three were graduates of Ralston High school. Since then, the band has had different drummers and disbanded a few times. But now they are back together and better than ever.

Wednesday, 12/29/10 9:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

MOUSETRAP

w/ Mercy Rule, Noah’s Ark Was A Spaceship & The Stay Awake

Thursday, 12/23/10 9:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

Cold Steel

1/29

saTurday, 12/25/10 8:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

SLOWDOWN VIRGINIA w/ Polecat

w/ Reggaejunkiejew, The Beat Seakers, MC Gringo, & Eastern Turkish

sunday, 12/26/10 9:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

Monday, 12/27/10 9:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

Monday, 12/27/10 9:00PM @ sloWdoWn

w/ Old Money

BANJO LOCO

Evicted AND

Fate Untold

The Big Deep

LITTLE BRAZIL

A BENEFIT FOR AMBER WILKINS

LADYFINGER

w/ Back When, The Answer Team & Lightning Bug

Ten Club

Broken Crown AND

Hookshot Thursday, 12/30/10 9:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

THE END IN RED

$5 CASH COVER ON ALL SHOWS

you t ’ n Do now? ock! k es R bl Bum

Thursday, 12/23/10 9:00PM @ sloWdoWn

SATCHEL GRANDE

w/ Conduits, The Filter Kings & All Young Girls Are Machine Guns

1/28

SPOtlIGHt SHOW

DOORS AT 7PM

| SHOWS AT 9PM

Schedule and artists subject to change. Must be 21 or older to gamble. Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-BETSOFF (In Iowa) or 1-800-522-4700. ©2010, Caesars Entertainment.

w/ The Curtain Calls, Cannonista & Lonely Estates

Friday, 12/31/10 9:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

SECRET WEAPON NEW YEARS!!!

1/03/10 MOVIE NIGHT: THE CurE TrIlOGy 1/05/10 MITCH GETTMAN 1/06/10 GuNK’s EXCEllENT ADVENTurE! 1/07/10 ANNIVErsAIrE 1/08/10 brOKEN CrOwN 1/09/10 AM TAXI 1/10/10 MOVIE NIGHT: HEAVy METAl pArKING lOT 1/11/10 KOO KOO KANGA rOO 1/12/10 sOFT rOCK CAFE 1/13/10 TOubAb KrEwE

saTurday, 1/01/11 9:00PM @ The WaiTing rooM

COWBOY MOUTH w/ Dash Rip Rock

1/14/10 CursED by MOONlIGHT 1/15/10 sAIlOr JErry’s pINup pAGEANT 1/17/10 MOVIE NIGHT: syMpATHy FOr THE DEVIl 1/19/10 FANCy pArTy COMEDy 1/19/10 ANbErlIN/CIrCA surVIVE 1/20/10 VOODOO METHOD 1/21/10 sCrEAMING FOr sIlENCE 1/22/10 HAbITAT FOr HuMANITy CONCErT 1/23/10 AArON MANsFIElD 1/24/10 MOVIE NIGHT: rEspECT yOursElF

More Information and Tickets Available at

WWW.ONEPERCENTPRODUCTIONS.COM

music listings

| THE READER |

DEC. 23 - 29, 2010

33

Great Gift Ideas

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Let James Arthur Vineyards put together a beautiful gift basket for any occasion.

James Arthur Wine makes a great holiday gift for anyone on your list! www.jamesarthurvineyards.com (402) 783-5255.

Customize the label on your bottles of James Arthur Vineyard wine. Corporate, wedding, or holiday greetings make James Arthur wine a great holiday gift. www. jamesarthurvineyards.com (402) 783-5255.

Nebraskaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest winery offers the best selection of your favorite local wine. James Arthur Vinyardsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; wine makes a great gift for a party hostess, office co-worker, boss

Decorate your table this holiday season with unique wine glass decorations from James Arthur Vineyards. www. jamesarthurvineyards.com (402) 7835255.

The perfect gift for the Husker fan in your life! Visit James Arthur Vineyards for a large selection of unique gifts. www.jamesarthurvineyards.com (402) 783-5255.

34

dec. 23 - 29 , 2010

| THE READER |

gift guide

The Fruit Infusion Pitcher creates refreshing natural-fruit drinks. Fill the 2.5 quart pitcher with water, iced tea or other liquids, slice up a handful of lemons, limes, berries or other fruits. Insert the fruit into the infusion rod, which screws tight, and enjoy!

Category One Rockbrook Village 10922 Prairie Brook Rd. 390-9684 www.categoryonegifts.com Made in the USA, Tervis Tumblers are a double-walled insulated tumbler that keeps hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold for hours.

All Tervis Tumblers come with a life-time guarantee and they are dish-washer and microwave safe. Get yours today a Category One Gifts & Gourmet!

Category One Rockbrook Village 10922 Prairie Brook Rd. 390-9684 www.categoryonegifts.com

DESIGNER BEADS & CHARMS is your own local full-service bead store located at 120th & Blondo in Omaha, Nebraska. We invite you to stop in and design your own custom jewelry piece from our wide variety of genuine gem stones and unique beads. Our friendly and helpful sales staff will be happy to assist you in finding the right beads and materials for your individual project.

Located at 1806 N. 120th St., Omaha, NE 68154. (402) 315-3400. www.designerbeadsandcharms.com

ROOTS & WINGS is a locally owned specialty boutique for young women who dare to be different. Full of fun fashions you won’t find anywhere else in Omaha, Roots & Wings serves confident women who aren’t afraid to express their individuality. Here’s a few fun gifts sure to please holiday fashionistas. You can’t go wrong with this awesome party dress from DD DaKota or this comfy sweater jacket also from DD DaKota. Even more TOMS shoes (One for One™) make a perfect holiday gift with philanthropy in mind. With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. Check out these items and more at Roots & Wings at its new location in Countryside Village (8712 Pacific St.). (402) 504-4700.

Cupcakes and cakes make tasty gifts. Here are some great choices that are available at Books make wonderful gifts for all ages.

Find these titles and more at THE BOOK- JONES BROS. CUPCAKES, located in WORM, located in Countryside Village. Aksarben Village (2121 S. 67th St., www.

Call 402-392-2877 for more information. jonesbroscupcakes.com). Enjoy these cupcake flavors: Dust Devil VANILLA - Madagascar bourbon vanilla S&W $17.99 (Ages 5-9) cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.

An original folktale starring an exRED VELVET - Classic red velvet cake with traordinary gal who is as feisty as she is cream cheese frosting. funny and as courageous as she is kind.

BLACK & WHITE - Valrhona chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream with godiva white chocolate liqueur CHOCOLATE - French valrhona chocolate cake with callebaut chocolate frosting.

LEMON - Lemon cake with lemon curd infused buttercream CINNAMON & SUGAR - Spiced buttermilk cake with a cinnamon and sugar topping

The Fantastic 5&10¢ Store S&W $17.99 (Age 4-9) Filled with irresistible picture puzzles that will entice kids to read on their own.

And don’t forget about hese delicious cakes to choose from: RED VELVET - Classic red velvet cake with layers of cream cheese frosting CELEBRATION - White cake with layers of raspberry and lemon curd topped with amaretto meringue.

come visit our new store at

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Rockbrook Village

10922 Prairie Brook Road 390-9684 www.categor yonegifts.com

gift guide

| THE READER |

DEC. 23 - 29 , 2010

35

Great Gift Ideas

www.oldmarket.com A gift basket of product and gift card for a color and cut is the perfect gift for anyone on your list! Fringes Salon & Spa invites everyone to experience EDGEWORTHY™ — it will make you laugh and sometimes cry. We’re edgy, yet worthy and will always invite you to go beyond the fringe. www.fringessalon. com (402) 345-0404

This delightful Old Market Co-op Gallery offers original fine art in different media by local artists.

At the Passageway Gallery you will find original works in: Oil, Acrylic, Watercolor, Pastel, Pencil, Scratchboard, Photography, Stained Glass, Sculpture, Pottery, Cast Paper, Copper Sculpture, and more. www.passagewaygallery.com Moksha specializes in Indian Jewelry, Marble Art, Paintings, Wooden Icons, Tunics/Kurtis, Designer Bags & Purses, Silk & Pashmina Stoles and Scarves, Handicrafts, Silk & Wool Rugs, Cushion Covers and Incense Sticks and Candles. Located in the Lower Passageway. (402) 871-0920

The Old Market Artists Gallery (OMA) consists of thirteen professional local area artists. The gallery features a diverse collection of work, including original paintings, photography, collage and folk art, fine woodworking, functional ceramics, sculpture, fused glass and jewelry. The gallery is located in the lower level of the Passageway across the hall from Trini’s Restaurant. www.oldmarketartists.com (402) 346-6569

Happy Holiday’s - Give the gift of HEALTH $50 value 1/2 price personal training session with world champion LAURA BINETTI. 24 Hour co-ed fitness center, training, thousands of locations. Anytime Fitness 1027 Jones Street Old Market Lofts www.anytimefitness.com (402) 991.2333

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The Casbah is an oasis in Omaha, Nebraska that invites you to take a trip on the Mediterranean basin through its artifacts. The Casbah is located in the Lower Passageway. www.thecasbahomaha.com

Trocadéro is a lifestyle and accessories emporium located in the heart of Omaha’s Old Market historic district.

Trocadero’s shelves and tables are filled with an edited array of designer handbags, shoes and jewelry as well as gifts for the home, bridal or baby shower. www.shoptrocadero. com (402) 934-8389

| THE READER |

gift guide

Unearth Exhilaration! At Urbane Salon and Day Spa we carry the full Aveda line of products for all your hair, body and skin care needs. Our Holiday Gift Sets are pre-arranged for easy holiday shopping. Try our “Unearth Exhilaration” set featuring Aveda’s full size Rosemary Mint Shampoo, Conditioner and Rosemary Mint Body Lotion. Gift sets can also be customized to create your own special gift. 1007 Farman on The Mall (402) 934-2909 $35 set

Soul Desires is a full service bookstore specializing in books for your spiritual journey from the world’s major religious traditions. Soul Desires hospitality provides a quiet environment in which to relax and meet friends while you enjoy a cappuccino, coffee, tea, or soft drink. www.soul-desires.com (402) 898-7600 Tannebaum offers the largest selection of Jim Shore holiday crafts in Omaha. 25 Years of Celebrating Christmas in the Old Market!! Throughout the year, we carry decorative items that will become traditions for your enjoyment of this most joyous holiday. www.otannenbaum.com (402) 345-9627

The Old Market’s Original Candy Shop, Since 1977. Every day we sell fresh fudge made with real cream and butter made in our own kitchen. www.oldmarketcandy. com (402) 341-7151

The Souq offers a truly eclectic array of goods. Contemporary, soft dressing and ethnic inspired clothing, accessories galore, fun and fabulous jewelry, home decor and gift items from the elegant to the absurd.

(402) 342-2972

Hello East. Meet America. Blue Sushi gives traditional sushi an American attitude. Do you like your sashimi, nigiri and maki straight up?

No problem. Want something a little different? We’ll entertain your palate with something unexpected, such as yamagobo or sea salt. Whatever your tastes, get ready for one innovative meal at Blue Sushi. www.bluesushisakegrill.com (402) 408-5566

Great Gift Ideas

Great Gift Ideas

www.oldmarket.com

The Artists’ Cooperative Gallery is a non-profit, tax-exempt gallery, located in Omaha’s historic Old Market area. We strive for personal artistic growth and professionalism in presentation. The co-op is an artist run gallery.

We offer the unique opportunity for you to actually meet the creator of the art, because the person at the desk is one of the artists. www.artistsco-opgallery.com (402) 342-9617

Give your loved ones the gift of pampering this holiday season. From gift baskets to spa packages, Sirens at the Loft offers a unique salon & spa experience right in the heart of the Old Market. www.sirensatl. com (402) 933-9333

Cibola of Omaha invites you to “come discover your treasure”… embrace the best of the Southwest in Jewelry and Indian Art. Feel free to visit their location in Omaha at the Old Market . You’ll find legendary Native American designs along with contemporary Southwest designer jewelry pieces in gold and silver. www.cibolasouthwest.com 402-342-1200

Artists’ Cooperative Gallery connecting local art & worldly wanderers since 1975

405 S. 11th Street in Omaha’s Old Market 402.342.9617

www.artistsco-opgallery.com

Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.Tuesday through Thursday (open until 10 p.m. Thursdays Dec. 2, 9,16 and 23) 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday noon to 6 p.m. Sunday

Handmade Cornhusk Dolls from local Dundee artist make great gifts for the Husker fan in your life.

Old Market Sundries offers Heartland Apparel, Nebraska-made Gifts, and Husker Items. www.oldmarketsundries.com (402) 345-8198

Colorful glass artwork by local artists. “Elegance with a sense of Whimsy.” The White Crane Gallery features works by local and regional artists. Located in the Lower Passageway.

(402) 346-1066

gift guide

Who wouldn’t want a gift certificate to Zio’s for Christmas?? Omaha’s original Handstretched New York Style Pizza. Serving Omaha and the surrounding area for 25 years and now with 3 locations Midtown, Downtown & West Omaha.

Recipient of more than 25 best pizza awards!! www.ziospizzeria.com (402)344-2222

| THE READER |

dec. 23 - 29 , 2010

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THE HOLIDAYS ARE

For “Wow-where-did-you-findthat?” items, you have to see The Afternoon. This treasured local retailer has distinguished itself with a wide selection of eclectic gift ware, artwork and accessories for home and office.

Extended browsing is not only allowed; it’s encouraged! www.theafternoon.com

Stock up on food for any feast at Wohlner’s Neighborhood Grocery & Deli. Wohlner’s offers a full selection of affordably-priced groceries, fresh meat and produce, and an upscale wine/beer/ spirits department. Busy work schedule?

Need a break from the kitchen? Pop in for breakfast or lunch or grab one of Wohlner’s private label , heat-and-eat entrées. Need a caterer? Wohlner’s can help! www.wohlners.com

Raise the temperature this winter with Cantina Laredo and its authentic Mexican fare. The atmosphere is sophisticated; the menu exciting. Cantina Laredo offers daily fish specials as well as grilled chicken and steaks with signature sauces like chipotle-wine with Portobello mushrooms or sauteed artichoke hearts and roasted red bell peppers. www.cantinalaredo.com

Toast the holidays and the new year at Loft 610, an urban styled, upscale restaurant and lounge. The food is prepared fresh in-house everyday, and the mixologist bartenders make the most innovative cocktails in town. www.loft610.com

Dazzle your holiday company by serving baked delights from Délice European Bakery. A long-time Omaha favorite, Délice tantalizes with authentic European pastries, cookies and desserts made from scratch with the finest ingredients. www.deliceeuropeanbakery.com

Work off those holiday meals at Prairie Life Fitness. One of the nation’s leading operators of upscale health and fitness clubs, Prairie Life is “Fitness for the Entire Family”. They not only have adopted that as their slogan, but are strongly committed to providing services for and actively engaging their members in programs and activities for all ages and ability levels. www.prairielife.com PARLIAMENT PUB We call him Santa; at Parliament Pub, he’s Father Christmas. The holidays will rock at this English-themed pub which features live music, specialty cocktails, an extensive wine list, and a 140-seat patio overlooking beautiful Turner Park. Come for the atmosphere. Stay for the fun! www.parliamentpubomaha.com

Need a quick but quality bite between shopping and other errands? Ingredient is a fast casual restaurant with a gourmet flair. As the name suggests, all of the eatery’s salads, pizzas, hamburgers, desserts and more are made with only the freshest ingredients. www.ingredientrestaurant.com

Three Dog Bakery is the original, revolutionary bakery for dogs, the place for chef-inspired, oven-baked dog treats and dog food made with 100% all-natural, human-quality ingredients. The Midtown Crossing store also offers a wide variety of pet accessories including all-natural grooming products, bed, toys and pet clothing. Spaw services, too. www.threedogomaha.com

This holiday season everybody needs a unique style. Find the phone that suits your characteristic and tout the new look.

Hip. Cool. Classy. Trendy. From new phones to hip accessories Z Wireless has it all. www.gozwireless.com TRU SALON & SPA Perhaps you’re in the mood for a fresh hairstyle for the holidays or maybe you’re craving some time on the massage table. Whatever your need, the team at Tru Salon & Spa is set to exceed your expectations and provide an exceptional beauty experience. The salon floor boasts the area’s freshest talent, and when it’s time to relax, Tru’s massage, skin and nail care specialists are ready to rejuvenate. wwwtrusalonomaha.com

HERE! You don’t simply watch the latest holiday blockbuster at Marcus Midtown Cinema.

You experience it. Midtown Crossing’s five-screen theater boasts stadium seating; stateof-the-art digital projection and sound; and Omaha’s exclusive CineDine food-and-beverage service from the comfort of your theater seat. www.marcustheatres.com

After the movie, bring on the Glo! As in the classic cocktail lounge on the second floor at Midtown Cinema. Literally gloing with vibrant energy and light, this comfortably hip bar and lounge features comfy leather sofas and chairs, floor-toceiling etched glass panels, and a sleek video wall with flat screens. Specialty drinks, micro-brews, appetizers, live music too. www.glomidtown.com

The Grey Plume is an innovative restaurant that focuses on seasonallydriven contemporary American fare with an emphasis on locally-grown produce and livestock. Led by local culinary sensation Clayton Chapman, The Grey Plume emulates a farm-totable approach. www.thegreyplume.com

Have joy with the comfort of a sound financial plan for your loved ones with Callahan Financial Planning. Give a gift card that builds wealth - a prepaid financial plan from Omaha’s unique planning process free of sales people.

402.341.2000. wwww.callahanfp.com

Clean green.

Gather with friends and family at a restaurant where the cuisine, atmosphere and energy are second-to-none. CRAVE delivers on one simple promise to serve fresh and innovative cuisine along with an impeccable wine selection in a chic, casual and vibrant setting. www.craveamerica.com

Your holiday guests will thank you for booking them into the new Element Hotel by Westin. The hotel’s environmentally-friendly design and amenities promote balance, stimulate the senses and soothe the spirit. (You might even want to book a night for yourself.) www.elementomaha.com

Get your holiday finest looking its finest at Fashion Cleaners. Voted Omaha’s best dry cleaner for five consecutive years, Fashion Cleaners is dedicated to providing exceptional customer service and superior, environmentally-friendly cleaning and finishing with meticulous attention to detail. www.fashioncleaners.com

Some clothing gifts are destined to be returned. Not if they’re from ROC. A shopping experience like none other, ROC carries a wide range of premium brand apparel and accessories for men, women and children. www.rocintheweb.com

31st Ave and Farnam Street | 402.934.8860 | www.midtowncrossing.com Guide.indd 1 2010 23 - 29, 38Full Page GiftDEC.

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12/6/10 11:43:38 AM

tvtalk

American Masters (Monday, 8 p.m. PBS). Classical pianist Glenn Gould was a genius and an eccentric, and Amer-

ican Masters spends two hours trying to penetrate the mysteries of his life. In the early 1950s, Gould burst onto the international classical scene out of nowhere (i.e., Toronto), shaking up the established ways of doing things. He had James Dean looks, astonishing technique and a highly personal way of playing canonical music. Gould gave up concretizing at 31, calling audiences “a force of evil.” In subsequent years, he insisted on recording an album in a Toronto department store after hours. Gould’s obsessions make for two hours of blissful TV. — Dean Robbins

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Black Swan is “The Metamorphosis” with sexytime

by Ryan Syrek

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der) as the lead in the dance company’s new production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Although confident her boring-as-hell, subdued personality is perfect for the demure White Swan, Thomas remains unsure that Nina can also play the wild, reckless Black Swan, which her role as Swan Queen demands. Enter Lily (Mila Kunis). Lily is a free spirit, a fact you can tell by her pronounced eyeliner and willingness to smoke in “no smoking” areas. As Thomas keeps push-

irector Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is just your run-of-the-mill “girl haunted by doppelgangers while turning into a human/swan hybrid” ballet movie with elements of bisex- black swan ual experimentation.

In other words, writers Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin are a collective Dr. Frankenstein, standing over a creation that is part horror, part pure beauty.

Firmly entrenched in Aronofsky’s increasingly well-defined, simultaneously gritty and crisp visual style, Black Swan is as frightening as it is splendorous. It makes watching ballet feel like being a voyeur to a game of Russian roulette. In a word: Wow! Natalie Portman, whose collision course with Oscar could only be derailed by an inverse deus ex machina by the Academy, plays Nina. Nina is beautiful, hardworking and kinda lame. Tortured by her former-ballerina mother (Barbara Hershey) to seek perfection to the point of OCD, Nina is finally chosen by Thomas (Vincent Cassel) to replace Beth (Winona Ry-

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

ing Nina, in some cases with inappropriate body parts, Nina realizes that if she doesn’t become more like Lily, she’ll lose the role to her.

We’ve now reached the end of the literal events that can be described. From there it’s masturbatory fantasies, Kafka-esque transformations as metaphors for self-mutilation and lots and lots of dancing. And it is all so very awesome.

Everybody get on board, the praise train is pulling out of the station: First up is Portman, who acts the ever-lovin’ crap out of her role. Her genuine affectations prevent the film from ever feeling exploitative; instead, her nuanced, tour-de-force delivery unspools as a metaphor for females squeezed by the vice of cultural pressure. Combine that with Clint Mansell’s classical/modern horror score and Aronofsky’s gobstopper direction, and it’s hard not to call Black Swan the year’s best.

Interestingly, it’s not just the ballet company within the movie that’s presenting a new version of Swan Lake, as the credits suggest the entire film itself can be read as an interpretation. With endless layers of brilliance and the year’s best female performance, Black Swan is one damnfine feathered bird. ,

GRADE: A

Now Showing Black Swan First-Run (R) Directed by Darren Aronofsky Golden Globe Nominee: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Natalie Portman), Best Supporting Actress (Mila Kunis) “Visceral and real even while it’s one delirious, phantasmagoric freakout.”

—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

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n Inside a hollowed-out volcano, in a secret laboratory complete with Tesla coils and a mutated lackey, I’m working on my Top 10 list for the year. I take the whole thing way too seriously, as if there’s a studio executive with gun pressed to his temple murmuring “Please let us top Syrek’s list.” In a few weeks, we’ll see if that fictional man lives or if he Jackson Pollacks his drywall. For now, here’s how YOU voted, according to IMDB.com: 10. Scott Pilgrim vs the World — 7.9/10 9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 — 7.9/10 8. Shutter Island – 8/10 7. Kick-Ass — 8/10 6. Tangled — 8.1/10 5. How to Train Your Dragon — 8.2/10 4. The Social Network — 8.2/10 3. Toy Story 3 — 8.7/10 2. Black Swan — 8.9/10 1. Inception — 9/10 If nothing else, the top 4 proves the general public isn’t the drooling horde they’re often made out to be by some snooty critics. It also proves me whipping Igor here into a froth while seeking the formula to best identify my Top 10 is pointless. Thank God I don’t learn easily. BACK TO WORK, IGOR! CHOP, CHOP! n It only took decades for Hollywood to realize ladies like to laugh, too. Early buzz on Bridesmaids, the Judd Apatowproduced, Kristen Wiig-written comedy about feuding bridesmaids is off-the-charts positive. Although it doesn’t open until May 2011, look for studios to pee themselves when they finally realize they may have been undervaluing the comedic appetite of 51 percent of the population. n The Broadway musical version of Spider-man featuring music by U2 has been delayed … again. This is not helping my theory that I made the whole thing up while listening to the “Joshua Tree” in my Spidey underoos.

— Ryan Syrek

cuttingroom

Tchai-Kafka-sky’s Swan Lake

film

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).

Coming Soon Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen First-Run

Tiny Furniture

“A gorgeously filmed, surprisingly tough-minded portrait of the 12thcentury Benedictine nun, scholar, mystic, and composer.” —Village Voice

Winner: Best Narrative Feature Award at the SXSW Film Festival

Directed by Margarethe von Trotta

First-Run (NR) Directed by Lena Dunham Friday, December 31 - Thursday, January 6

“Wonderful!”

—Paper Magazine “Irresistibly funny.”

—Wall Street Journal

Facebook & Twitter: /filmstreams

film

| THE READER |

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Cocky Dude Will Shoot: The Coens’ Rooster Does More Than Crow

by Ryan Syrek

I

f it rhymed easier, “You don’t remake a classic John Wayne movie” might have squeezed in after “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape” in Jim Croce’s hummable cautionary tale. The cinematic equivalent of a fish’s bicycle, those writin’ and directin’ Coen brothers’ choice to revisit True Grit seemed at best unnecessary and at worst an act of art house true grit hubris. Surely they would weave their patented avant garde nihilism or black-hearted humor into it, sullying the whole affair.

Nah. Turns out, they just wanted to make a kick-ass Western … and they did that and then some.

True Grit is the leanest cut of film meat you’re likely to chew.

Trimmed of all expository fat, we open with precocious-bordering-on-bitchy, 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) as she tries to hire a bounty hunter to find her father’s murderer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She’s referred to Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a one-eyed drunk who cracks nothing but oneliners and whiskey bottles. Although he likes to keep his work as solitary as his eye, Rooster is joined by the insistent Mattie and Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), the first cowboy fop in screen history.

The reluctantly formed trio spends the remainder of the film hunting down Chaney and his boss, Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper), across unforgiving terrain while enduring even-less-forgiving observations from Rooster.

Guns go bang, horses gallop and pulses pound, as the Coens remind everyone that the only

reportcard 127 Hours Boyle’s film is so good, it deserves more than the sound of one hand clapping.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader The only things tread here are water and patience.

Devil Shyamala-what-now? It’s kind of good? That’s a twist.

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truly American genre ain’t just still viable, it’s sorely missed.

Outdoing his work in last year’s Crazy Heart, Bridges is not “doing The Dude” again, nor is he aping Wayne. His Rooster is affable but manic, decidedly original and a hell of a lot of fun. Actually, those descriptions work pretty well for the movie as a whole. Bridges isn’t alone either, as Damon’s dandy cowpoke and Steinfeld’s endearingly angry woman-child aren’t just supporting characters, they’re two legs of the tripod on which the whole thing rests. Heck, the Coens didn’t even fall for the obligatory fetishizing of

sprawling scenery, opting for tight shots with ample silence and falling snow.

True Grit is damn good, no-frills, boy-howdy, Western action at its finest. It’s neither meaningful nor important, but as it turns out, that was never the motivation for the remake. Turns out the answer to “Why remake True Grit?” was simple: “Eh, why not?” It was just about crafting pure Americana entertainment, and boy did this Rooster hit his mark. ,

GRADE: A-

READER RECOMMENDS

A-

CB+

Easy A (on DVD) AEmma Stone more than makes the grade … she makes me swoon.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 BLet’s not say the magic is fading, let’s say it is time for the final abracadabra.

Love and Other Drugs Even in animated form, Will Ferrell walks the line of

B-

The Tourist As much fun as sifting through the vacation photos of

D

United Way of the Midlands

5_bwAD_C_2010.indd 1

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

mon 12/27/2010

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afton live artillery funk w/ vibenhai, illuminati & born hustla records mo caious w/ mc GrinGo, Galvanized tron, the morpheendz, the o.n.e., psych b, lac, standbye & lake sulc riders of the apopcalypse w/ surreal the mc, aneurysm, label me red & a chokinG melody nicholas ordean w/ special Guests adelaide and bryce cain brouGht to you by n squared manaGement artillery funk w/ mc GrinGo, hot from far, rJJ & faded tribal seeds w/ fortunate youth & 77 Jefferson

CREIGHTON Welcome to Our House!

MEN’S BASKETBALL u Saturday, Jan. 1 @ TBD Creighton vs. Drake

u Tuesday, Jan. 4 @ 7:05 p.m.

Creighton vs. Missouri State

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL u Friday, Dec. 31 @ 3:05 p.m.

Creighton vs. Drake Men’s basketball home games played at Qwest Center Omaha (10th & Cass St.) Women’s basketball home games played at the Ryan Athletic Center/D.J. Sokol Arena (19th & Webster St.)

Tickets: 280-JAYS

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FRIDAY 12/31 vs. BALTIMORE BLAST 2:05PM SUNDAY 1/23 vs. KANSAS CITY COMETS 3:05PM *NOTE: Mexican Nat’l Indoor Team game on 12/12 rescheduled for FEB. ALL HOME GAMES PLAYED AT THE OMAHA CIVIC AUDITORIUM 20TH & CAPITOL

AdvAnce TickeTs noT AvAilAble AT venue | THE READER |

DEC. 23 - 29, 2010

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We’re Killing Christian Bale: Somebody give him an Oscar for The Fighter … or else

by Ryan Syrek

L

ook, either we give Christian Bale an Oscar or God knows what he’ll do to himself. Have you the fighter seen him in The Fighter? That dude looks like the “after” picture in Satan’s makeover brochure. Bale didn’t just drop weight to play a crackhead, he went full Skeletor up in this bitch. The most shocking acting transformation? He plays a people person.

The Fighter is a movie in which the fighter and the fighting are the least interesting parts. At it’s worst, the film focuses on the coulda-been-acontenda “true” story of “Irish” Micky Ward, a Bostonian road worker obligatorily played

by Mark Wahlberg.

Were that casting any more obvious, they’d share the same initials.

Wait … Everything from Ward’s “one last chance to be champ” to his romance with perpetual midriff barer Charlene (Amy Adams), the sassy barmaid, feels tired and expected. Thankfully, that’s not really what the movie is about.

In reality, The Fighter is an F-bomb-dropping, Norman Rockwell-on-acid take on a poor family overpopulated with harpies and boneheads. It’s like Rocky by way of “The Jerry Springer Show.”

Bale plays Dicky Eklund, Micky’s older brother and trainer who also happens to love himself some crack. Dicky is a fallen fighter; once the pride of his small hometown after giving Sugar Ray Leonard all he could handle, he now survives on his undeniable charisma and the protection of his mother, Alice (Melissa Leo). Alice may be

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Micky’s manager, but her devotion is clearly to her eldest son.

With a junkie trainer and a chain-smoking, white trash mom for a manager, the drama of Micky’s time in the ring pales with his trainwrecka-licious experiences out of it. Director David O. Russell must have agreed, as the verbal sparring matches make the boxing bouts look flatter than week-old Diet Coke. Writers Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson seem to have written two separate films: one a boring-ass, Disneyfied,

feel-good sports story prominently featuring a comeback montage set to Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle” and the other a brilliant deconstruction of a familial implosion.

It’s that second movie, the one that Bale is in, that buoys the whole affair. When the real Dicky is shown alongside the credits, all doubt is stripped away: Bale gave the best performance of 2010 and willed The Fighter to mustsee status in doing so. Now let’s give him Oscar because who knows what he’ll do to himself next if we don’t. ,

GRADE: B+

sports THEJUMP

■ Here’s something to keep your eye on for 2011 — Iowa Western football. It took Coach Scott Strohmeier all of two years to turn the school into a player in the junior college ranks.

In 2008 the Council Bluffs community college didn’t even have football. In 2010 the Reivers finished their second season 9-2 and one game away from playing for a national title.

Last week six IWCC players signed to continue their careers at Division I schools.

They aren’t just going anywhere, either. Quarterback Zack Stoudt could be an SEC starter after signing with Ole Miss; and defensive tackle Jared Ebert will try to crack the line-up at Oregon.

It will be interesting to see how closely Nebraska aligns itself with the new program at IWCC. The Huskers have looked to the juco level for some key additions under Bo Pelini. The staff seems to have a cozy relationship with Fort Scott (KS) Community College, landing Lavonte David, Jermarcus Hardrick, Brandon Kinnie and Stanley JeanBaptiste from the school. The City College of San Francisco has also been good to Nebraska, sending Zac Lee, Dejon Gomes and Maurice Purify to Lincoln.

Don’t see any reason Nebraska shouldn’t be neighborly to the new program just up the road.

January 9, 2011 10:00am - 5:00pm mid-america center

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■ Former Bellevue East star pitcher Buddy Carlyle signed a minor league contract with the Yankees. It’s a long way from Bellevue to the Bronx but maybe the change will provide the middle-reliever with a little spark.

After appearing in a career-high 45 games with Atlanta in 2008, Carlyle took the mound only 16 times with the big league club last season.

It’s not tough to make the Yankees, right?

■ Here’s something I didn’t know existed: the National Jesuit Player of the Week award.

Creighton’s Kenny Lawson won it last week along with the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Week award following his 30-point, 18-rebound performance — both career highs — in a much-needed win over St. Joseph’s Dec. 11 It had been a slow start for Lawson, the preseason MVC player of the year, but maybe this game represents a turning point.

Coming in to that game Lawson was averaging 10.7 points per game after pacing the Jays with 13.1 PPG last year.

— Brandon Vogel

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| THE READER |

DEC. 23 - 29, 2010

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newsoftheweird

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Permission Slips

A

mong the oppressive patriarchal customs that remain in force in Saudi Arabia is a requirement that females obtain their father’s (or guardian’s) permission before marrying — even women who are profoundly independent, such as the 42year-old surgeon (licensed to practice in the U.K. and Canada as well as Saudi Arabia) who was the subject of an Associated Press report in November. One activist, estimating that nearly 800,000 Saudi women are in the same position, complained that a Saudi woman “can’t even buy a phone without the guardian’s permission.” The surgeon took her father to court recently, but the judge had not rendered a decision by press time.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

Alabama is the only remaining state to ban the sale of sex toys, but nevertheless the Huntsville shop Pleasures recently expanded by moving to a former bank building in order to use three drive-thru windows to sell dildos. (Since state law prohibits the sale unless used for “bona fide medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial, or law enforcement purposes,” customers must provide a brief written description of their medical or other “legitimate” condition in order to make the purchase.)

— Wei Xinpeng, 55, a boatman in a village near industrial Lanzhou, China, collects bodies from the Yellow River (the murdered, the suicides, the accidentally drowned), offering them back to grieving relatives for a price. Distraught visitors pay a small browsing fee to check his

inventory and then, if they identify a loved one, up to the equivalent of $500 to take the corpse home. Says Wei, “I bring dignity to the dead;” no overstatement for him since his own son drowned in the river (yet his body was never recovered).

— Nov. 3 was National Sandwich Day, and several U.S. eateries capitalized by mixing up bar drinks in honor of such favorites as the cheeseburger, the BLT (bacon-infused rum), and the PB&J (peanut syrup, strawberry jam, banana and rum). The mixologist at Toronto’s Tipicular Fixin’s makes his cheeseburger cocktail with beef stock reduction, Roma tomatoes and iceberg lettuce water, garnished with a cheddar crisp and a kosher dill.

Cutting-Edge Science

Researchers at the University of Queensland revealed in November that parrot fish, which reside on Australia’s reefs and need protection from blood-sucking, lice-like parasites, shelter themselves at bedtime with blankets of “snot.” Typically, the fish’s mouth-slobber, once it starts dribbling out, takes about an hour to ooze into place.

— Medical Marvels: (1) Sixyear-old Alexis McCarter, of Pelzer, S.C., underwent surgery in December to remove the safety pin that she had stuck up her nose as a baby and which was lodged in her sinus cavity (having sprung open only after it was inside her, causing headaches, nosebleeds and ear infections). (2) Sharon Wilson of Doncaster, England, finally got a worthwhile answer for her nearly 10-year odyssey through a range of doctors’ complicated misdiagnoses. She had

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COPYRIGHT 2010 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).

complained of many, many days when she vomited more than 100 times, at “almost exactly” 10-minute intervals. The previous diagnosis was a tumor in her pituitary gland, but another specialist nailed it: “Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome.”

— Researcher Patricia Brennan of Yale University told a conference in July that a duck’s penis may vary in length from year to year — depending on their competition that year.

Their penises waste away after each mating season and regrow, and Brennan found that they regrow longer if there are other males around. Female ducks are known to have corkscrew-shaped vaginas, and thus a centimeter or two can make a big difference for success in mating.

— What’s Weird is That it’s Legal: The pharmaceutical company Genentech makes both Lucentis (a $2,000 injection for relieving agerelated macular degeneration) and Avastin (an anti-cancer drug that many retina specialists prescribe for age-related macular degeneration because it is just as effective yet costs about $50). Using Avastin instead of Lucentis saves Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars a year, reported The New York Times in November, and, obviously, every dollar’s savings is a dollar less income for Genentech. In response in October, the company commenced a lucrative rebate program for physicians, worth tens of thousands of dollars, that apparently passes as legal according t o Medicare guidelines, but said one Ohio specialist, “There’s no way to look at that without calling it bribery.”

News of the Overprivileged

Cell phones and GPS devices have led national-park visitors to do “stupid” things, confi-

dent that they will be saved from themselves, a Grand Teton National Park spokesperson told The New York Times in August — such as the lost, cold hiker who called rangers to ask for hot chocolate or the visitors flummoxed by cold weather who wanted a personal escort back to their campsite. In August, a party of hikers in Illinois called for (and received) three separate rescues in 24 hours.

The MET Opera Returns Dec. 18

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WWW.KVNO.ORG

The Weirdo-American Community

In November, at a burglary scene near Seneca, S.C., deputies found Noah Smith, 31, naked and apparently drugged, perhaps on hallucinogenic mushrooms, and with a string-like object protruding from his buttocks. Smith was X-rayed, revealing (according to the deputies’ report, which made its way to the Internet) that the object in his rectum was a “mouse.” However, several days later, the sheriff ’s office clarified that the object was a “computer mouse.” Smith told emergency room personnel that he had no memory of the incident.

Recurring Themes

Ironies: (1) The man caught in November in Brainerd, Minn., with a computer drive containing 75,000 pornographic videos, including child pornography, was Steven Augustinack, 52, who had one month earlier been named by the Brainerd Jaycees as Citizen of the Year. (2) The man reported to police in Louisville, Ky., in November as “indecent(ly) expos(ed)” sitting in his car at a traffic light, masturbating in view of a woman in the next car, was Charles Lickteig II, 48, who is supervisor of a LaGrange, Ky., correctional facility’s sex-offender treatment program. ,

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planetpower w ee k l y

h oroscopes

M

erry Christmas everybody, from one of Santa’s many helpers. I’d like to kiss each and every one of you (That’s how rumors start?) under the Psychic Mistletoe and see how far we can go? See ya soon for the next New Moon Solar eclipse Jan. 4, in Capricorn. Peace and Love Shall Conquer All. There are no mistakes.

— MojoPoPlanetPower.com j CAPRICORN (12.22-1.20) December Capricorns: Wow! Happy BIRTHDAY! Sun conjunct Mercury retrograde conjunct the Hunab Ku conjunct the Dragon’s Head — the North Node of this lifetime’s karma, in the sign ruled by Karma (Saturn). What kind of world do you see for yourself this lifetime? For Jan. 1-9 births: Wear red to get ahead and benefit from the lessons of harmony from traditions, the classics and “The Old Man.” Jan. 10-19: Enjoy and wait until 2011 to relate. Wake up your new self in 2011. You’ve got two good years coming up to create the harmony you seek in this lifetime. Study music. k AQUARIUS (1.21-2.19) Winter is one long dream for you. Enjoy. We don’t accomplish during the dream.

We prepare. Who do you want to be? What kind of fire do you wish to light for yourself (this Winter) and then for humankind (next Spring). You’ve got the next seven years facing you with your esoteric ruler, the planet Uranus, moving into Aries during Aries in three months. You’re just about to finish these last seven years of the planet Uranus being in wishful, blissful Pisces. No need to wake up yet … l PISCES (2.20-3.20) Please read Aquarius.

Your karmas are united. They need to dream, and you can help them. You need a dream that can manifest, and they will help you in return. A New Age, unusual, truth sayer, soothsayer, dragon slayer is on the way here. When you seek, first look about you … your everyday world. Your karma is an arm’s length away, depending on where you place your body. Your esoteric ruler, Neptune, has been in Aquarius for 14 years and will enter Pisces this coming spring for the next 14. Get ready to be touched by the Mystique — your dream come true. a ARIES (3.21-4.20) The power is yours. The money’s right. The plan is good. Wait a week, until next we speak. You’ll be ready then. Party hearty.

The power’s yours. Seek balance. I’ll offer you a guaranteed formula for success next week when once again we speak. You are the Power! b TAURUS (4.21-5.20) Whatcha been doing since September? Do you remember? Almost

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| THE READER |

mojo

b y

mo j opo

done. Death, sex and some type of poverty are why we have the blues. What do you have left to lose? Why do we have to lose to understand and appreciate what it’s like to win? Your answer is in two weeks, my friend. That’s when the “Since September” blues should end. The pressure shreds as your new attitude/philosophy spreads Jan. 7-8. c GEMINI (5.21-6.21) The confusion turns you inward. Of course not all of you can ride the Great Divide (the Zuvuya), that most of us try to hide.

You know it’ s not the Power of Evil that makes one run in fright. It’s a lifting of the veil, growing closer to the light? Mercury retrograde is conjuncting the Galactic Center, the Mayan Hunab Ku at 26/27 degrees Sagittarius and returns direct around Jan. 9-10. If you are one of the Chosen, teach us what you’ve heard with your Holy Words. Please, I want to know. d CANCER (6.22-7.22) You are in the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits of a land unknown. It’s like late night TV reruns is all you’re being shown. In one month you’ll be shown how much you’ve grown. The next Full Moon, Jan. 19, is once again in your sign. Evolve privately until then, to give you time and a chance to unwind. It’s your half birthday, my friend. Where do you want to be six short Moons from now? e LEO (7.23-8.22) Time to work on work and health while the rest of the world seeks wealth.

Party this week and then recover with your lover.

How does the MOJO know? f VIRGO (8.23-9.22) Please read Gemini and next week I’ll have ’em read yours. You’ll find the Magique in your own home (town). Look around.

Party at your house? g LIBRA (9.23-10.22) Please read Taurus and next week I’ll have ’em read yours. You’ve got a hot month comin’ up. The harmony of your home center is the key to your serenity, security and continuity. Blessed be on all three, and Merry Christmas from Michael P. h SCORPIO (10.23-11.22) Martians are already making money. Your brothers and sisters will be the key. Plutonians: You’re planning on making BIG MONEY. It’s almost ready. Give it a week or three. It’s meant to be. Your life’s work is beckoning thee. Listen up, be humble and prepare for success. i SAGITTARIUS (11.23-12.21) Go ahead and stay asleep for three or four more weeks. Wait until the sign of the unexpected (Aquarius, Jan. 20), that’s when your personal New Years starts. Until then, dream of yourself as a leader. ,

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â&#x20AC;˘ December 23, 2010 â&#x20AC;˘ A strange Christmas tradition will soon develop. Rather than give presents, friends and family will be able to come into your home and take whatever they want, and you may do the same. Often, a single piece of jewelry or artwork or a useful item like a lawn mower will get passed around year after year among friends. This strange habit will start as a money saving gesture -- rather than buy something new, people just take some-

thing you already own. But it will grow into an unexpected sense of shared community -- that your loved ones are more important than any single item, and that, if you care about them, you are happy to share with them. People will start buying gifts for themselves knowing friends and family might enjoy the item, and will glow with excitement when the item is selected. In the future, Christmas will be a time of sharing, rather than giving.

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