Gov. Gibbons becomes the person Nevadans deserved
Will Dawn take him back?
By Won Dum Mas
Jim Gibbons has been bitten by a radioactive spider, turning him into a governor—and a mensch.
“We don’t know how to handle it,” said Gibbons’ spokesperson Dan Burns. “He’s here on time every morning and leaves late every evening. He treats the staff well. We feel like we should look in the basement for pods. It’s nerve-wracking having him in the office all the time.”
State legislators dealing with Gibbons say the governor for the first time has been doing his homework on issues.
“He’s up to speed,” said Speaker Barbara Buckley after a meeting on upcoming issues before the Interim Finance Committee, which handles legislative funding allocations between full legislative sessions.
“We didn’t have to educate him, he didn’t have to rely on Andrew [Clinger] or Robin [Reedy],” Buckley said. “We didn’t have to meet hour after hour because he didn’t know anything.” Clinger is the state budget director, and Reedy is Gibbons’ chief of staff.
Insiders say Gibbons has apologized to many former staff members in the governor’s office for his treatment of them in earlier years of his administration, when staffers were arriving and leaving the governor’s employ in rapid succession.
Gibbons has even reached out to First Lady Dawn Gibbons, promising to quickly deliver on the court settlement of their divorce and to use more discretion in his public appearances with other women.
“He told Mrs. Gibbons that he should not have allowed staff members to treat her badly, as when they cut back on her security,” said one source. “He made it clear that, as she assumed, he was behind those actions and that he had behaved badly.”
“What could I say?” the first lady later asked. “I could only agree.”
Gibbons is reported to be considering returning his salary for the first two years of the administration to compensate for the short hours he has kept and for not being prepared when he was on duty. In addition, he told a Gardnerville service club Friday that he felt his own policies have been foolish.
“If we were to govern the way I’ve claimed we should, then there would be nothing left of the social contract,” he told the Kiwanis Club in that town. “The truth is, my policies have been pure social Darwinism. When people needed us when the economy turned bad, we screwed them royally.”
Social conservatives, anti-tax activists, and assorted rightists reacted with dismay. “We liked the governor when he was pretty and dumb,” said one. “I blame the media. There’s no percentage in his being informed and competent.”
<hr>
‘It’s alive!’
Scientists astounded
Zoologists at the University of Nevada, Reno made a startling discovery last month: A creature long thought to be extinct in Nevada is alive and well in the Truckee River. The troutalope, a near relative of the cutthroat trout, has a pair of pronged horns, and looks more like a denizen of the deep ocean than a fish that lurks a few inches below the surface and is catchable with Berkley PowerBait (particularly Flo Yellow and Salmon Peach). This discovery, to be published April 18 in the journal Nature, has astounded scientists, but some longtime Nevada fisherman have maintained the wily predator’s existence for some time.
“Many’s the times I’ve seen those little prongs sticking above the water, gliding along like some shark,” said fly fisherman Milton Myers. I’ve tried to snag ’em, but I guess if they didn’t know how to use ’em, they’d get hung up on all the brush.”
Scientists speculate the fish use the prongs in mating battles, although both the male and female fish carry the adornments.
“Those horns are made of hair, just like a rhino’s horn, and as such, when the creature dies, the horns decompose almost immediately,” said zoologist Dr. Jack Zed. “That’s why they were so hard to find. Not that big of a story. Nobody was really looking, in fact.”
<hr>
Social faux pas
‘Mom’s not my friend’
Peter Guren was forced to “unfriend” his mother from the popular social networking site Facebook because she continually invaded his privacy and embarrassed him in front of his real friends.
“Look, Facebook is a place where you’re supposed to be yourself, but Mom kept commenting when I made a sexually ambiguous comment to one of my girlfriends or talked about the wild weekend night I had,” said the red-faced University of Phoenix business major. “I’ve always been pretty careful about what I put on there, mainly because you never know when a potential employer might be reading your page, but … jeez … a guy has to cut loose sometimes.”
Guren said it was bad enough when his mom “liked” his status, which at the time linked to the Korn version of “A.D.I.D.A.S.” (“All Day I Dream About Sex”), but she crossed the line when she sent him a “poke.”
“How could she see a link that says, “Poke Peter,” and choose to click it? I love my mom, but all my friends could see that. What could she have possibly thought it meant?”
Mrs. Michelle Guren was distraught at having lost her son’s friendship. “Poke? I thought it meant something like take your finger and poke someone to get their attention. Well, if that’s the case, I’m going to stop sexting him. He can call me on the phone like anybody else.”
Upon hearing her threat, Guren the younger shrugged his shoulders and sighed: “That’s texting, Mom. Texting.”
<hr>
Ewoks get the blues
Film travesty
By Kalvin Bigelow
correspondent
Filmmaker George Lucas, the creator of the enormously successful Star Wars media franchise, recently announced plans to re-release the six live-action Star Wars films in 3-D format.
More surprisingly, in a teleconference from his Northern California compound Skywalker Ranch, Lucas also confirmed that the Ewoks, the peaceful, diminutive, koala bear-like race featured in the 1983 film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, are now going to be digitally altered to appear 9 feet tall and blue.
“That wasn’t the original plan,” said Lucas, “but as soon as we started applying the 3-D technology, the Ewoks just started to look blue and really tall, and we just decided to go with it. You know, in the original version, and even in the Special Edition, the Ewoks were only 3 feet tall and furry. But there’s just something about the way that the new 3-D technology works that makes it easy to depict a peaceful, noble-savage, native alien race as blue, 9 feet tall and sort of weirdly sexy.”
Lucas says that the Ewoks were originally modeled after the Miwok, a group of Native American tribes indigenous to Northern California.
During the climatic scenes of Return of the Jedi, the Ewoks battle the Stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire. The Galactic Empire is a technologically advanced and militarily sophisticated organization intent on conquering and controlling the universe. The Ewoks manage to defeat the Stormtroopers using sticks, stones, bows and arrows, and other elements of the natural world. They then celebrate their victory by performing tribal music.
“The battle scenes look awesome in 3-D,” said Lucas. “Especially now that the Ewoks are really tall and blue. Well, maybe not blue exactly but kind of aquamarine or periwinkle.”
Lucas is passionate about the theme of peaceful natives defeating a greedy advanced invading force. “Noble, native warriors fighting a mechanized battle machine—it was thrilling when we first did it back in 1983, and it’s still thrilling today.”
Lucas also mentioned that the appearance of Chewbacca—a Wookie, a species of walking carpet—was also altered for the new version of the film.
“Chewie was a special case,” says Lucas. “He’s about 7 and a half feet tall, which is a little short for a Na’vi—pardon me, had to clear my throat there—I mean, he’s a little short for an Ewok. But we decided to leave his height alone just because we didn’t want to tarnish the legacy of the original film. We did, of course, paint him blue, and we added a new scene where Princess Leia asks him, ‘Aren’t you a little short for a Ewok?’ We had Carrie Fisher dub in the new dialogue, but we had to pitch it up a couple of tones because Carrie’s voice is a lot deeper than it was 30 years ago. We also had to filter out some of the phlegm. Princess Leia, as she appears onscreen for that scene is now entirely a digital character. And we made her breasts bigger. That’s a necessity when working with 3-D. You really want your heroine to pop off the screen. She’s blue now, too.”
Other films that set to be re-released in the new 3-D format include Dances with Wolves, Delgo and FernGully: The Last Rainforest.
<hr>
Addicted to love
Jimboy’s taco sauce declared the most addictive substance in Northern Nevada.
by Cheech Chongson
In a recent study conducted by the University of Nevada, Reno graduate and undergraduate students, Jimboy’s taco sauce was declared to be the most addictive substance in Northern Nevada.
“Dude, we were totally surprised by that,” said Mikey “Torpedo” Mike, a junior at UNR and a leading researcher on the project. “But that stuff is hella good.”
Tobacco ranked a close second, and methamphetamine was ranked as the third most addictive substance. Strippers came in at fourth place.
“To be totally honest, I expected crack cocaine to rank higher,” said Mike, between bites of a chicken burrito. “I actually had a little side bet going with my buddy Stew that crack would come in at number one.”
Crack cocaine was ranked 24th, right between Red Vines and fresh air.
<hr>
Falling STARs
The mayors of Reno and Sparks are speaking out against the excessive public share of sales tax revenue from STAR Bond projects.
Under the law providing for Sales Tax Revenue Bonds, three-fourths of the sales tax collected in businesses like Cabela’s and Scheels are used to pay off the corporations’ costs in constructing their stores.
Mayors Geno Martini and Bob Cashell say that letting the public keep a quarter of that revenue amounts to “private welfare” that will make the public dependent and slothful.
“Libraries and street cleaning are for pussies,” said the mayors in a joint statement.
As the press conference concluded, Mayor Geno turned to Mayor Bob and said, over a microphone he believed was turned off, “You sure say ‘fuck’ a lot.”
<hr>
Adult education
Forget about school, grow your own
The UNR School of Agriculture, fighting to avoid closure, announced a new field of study: Medical marijuana farming.
“This school needs students, and we think medical marijuana can stimulate interest,” said associate dean Georgia Carlin.
The course of study will provide information on normal farming issues—the growing cycle, nutrients and light requirements, harvest (“It’s harvest time when half the trichomes have turned amber and half are white”)—and less traditional horticultural considerations, such as security. (“Electric bill should be about the same as the neighbors and previous tenants.”) There will also be classes on the science of cannabis, including study of the 40-plus active and inactive cannabinoids known to be produced by the plant.
The principal textbook now available is Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible by Jorge Cervantes, but if the program is successful teaching staff members are expected to write their own textbooks, get them published, and assign them to their own classes. “Why should this college be any different?” asked one instructor.
<hr>
All bets are off
Ensign exposes legal gambling in Nevada
On the morning of Thursday, March 25, U.S. Sen. John Ensign called for yet another special session of the Nevada legislature.
Speaking to reporters outside a Hooters restaurant in Las Vegas, Ensign said, “My primary goal in joining Jim in calling for this very special episode of the legislature is to crack down on the major problem of gambling in the state of Nevada. There is more per-capita gambling in Nevada than in any other state in the union. In fact, people from all around the country come to Nevada just to gamble. In some corners of our great nation, the words ‘Nevada’ and ‘Las Vegas’ are basically synonymous with gambling.”
Gambling—or “gaming,” as it’s called in the Nevada casino industry—has been legal in Nevada since 1931. Ensign, despite that fact his father was a casino magnate, seemed unaware of this fact.
Ensign sought to portray his proposal as consistent with Gov. Jim Gibbons’ policy goal of eliminating all revenue streams into Nevada. Gibbons responded, “There’s just one thing I’d like to add to what John said, and this two word phrase really sums up my perspective on Nevada, governing, and life in general—‘fuck education.’”
For Ensign, the anti-gaming stance is part of his emphasis on “family values.” Ensign is considered by many to be a living symbol of Republican family values. He’s staunchly anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage, and always vigilantly on the lookout for new civil liberties to fight against.
Despite his anti-gambling stance and his insistence that it is based on moral grounds, Ensign remains a fervent supporter of legalized prostitution in Nevada.
“What happens in the rural counties stays in the rural counties,” he said. “But, just to clarify, I personally would never visit a brothel. I prefer married women. And I like women married to men who work for me best of all.”
To help him relax after tirelessly defending the sanctity of marriage, Ensign would enjoy the intimate company of the wife of one of his staffers.
<hr>
Reno City Council: ‘Sorry’
Seeking to get out ahead of the backlash against incumbents in November’s election, members of the Reno City Council last Wednesday issued a blanket apology from council chambers in Reno City Hall, 1 N. Virginia St.
“I am really sorry,” said Sharon Zadra.
Mayor Bob Cashell growled in his unmistakable Texas drawl: “We had some people on that side of the table who were very apologetic, and we had some on this side who wanted to offer mea culpas, but I cornered a few and said, ‘We’ve got to get on the same page, people, the citizens of Reno depend on us.’ So, I can tell you for a fact that we are all extremely sorry.”
Councilwoman Jessica Sferrazza began to offer her apologies and then retracted when she remembered she’s running for lieutenant governor.
Although he is not currently running for reelection, Councilman Dave Aiazzi was also sincerely remorseful. “I’m sorry that Burning Man isn’t twice a year,” Aiazzi said.
Dwight Dortch ground his toe into the carpet and dropped his chin to his chest. “I am really fucking sorry. I’m just so, so sorry.”
<hr>
Write the Caption!
Got a funny caption? Write a caption to describe what is going on in this photo and win a free trial subscription to the Reno News & Review.* Send your captions by e-mail with the subject line “Funny caption contest” to <script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript”>{ document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,97,32,104,114,101,102,61,34,109,97,105,108,116,111,58,98,114,105,97,110,98,64,110,101,119,115,114,101,118,105,101,119,46,99,111,109,34,62,98,114,105,97,110,98,64,110,101,119,115,114,101,118,105,101,119,46,99,111,109,60,47,97,62))
}
</script>. Maybe we’ll publish it.
*Winner may pick up free trial subscription at any one of more than 700 locations.