Week of Sept. 6, 2023

From the editor’s desk

When an inventory clerk this year searched the Truckee Meadows Community College campus in an attempt to locate unaccounted-for computers deemed “sensitive equipment,” administrators accused the employee of violating two dozen college policies and transferred her auditing duties to the department that initially lost track of the machines. The clerk, Karalea Clough, has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that TMCC is trying to cover up its own incompetence.

More than 7,000 readers voted in the final round of our 2023 Best of Northern Nevada competition. This year’s winners and finalists represent the myriad things that make this such a spectacular place to live. RN&R staffers and contributors, meanwhile, added a few more people, places and businesses that also deserve to be celebrated. In addition, music man Matt King profiles Rick Hays, RN&R readers’ choice as both the Best Local Musician and Best Local Songwriter. Additionally, his band, Rick Hays and American Steel, finished third in the Best Local Band category.

A mining company has started construction on an open-pit lithium mine at Thacker Pass as opponents, including Nevada tribes and environmental activists, consider another appeal aimed at stopping the project, Leah Wigren reports.

Wild horse advocates also have a case in federal court. The Cloud Foundation has filed a lawsuit calling for the use of cameras on helicopters and trapping pens used to capture mustangs. In those roundups, the horses are often stampeded for miles across the desert—and some suffer fatal injuries. Cameras, the activists argue, would allow the public to witness what is being done in its name.

The Equalizer 3 is a predictable movie, with the same routine revenge plot as its two predecessors, Bob Grimm notes. But he writes that the flick is elevated by the acting chops of Denzel Washington, who “saturates his performance with the kind of depth” usually absent from sequels. “He’s an acting marvel, and he’s been elevating material for more than four decades.” Grimm also gives high marks to Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar, the final chapter in the animated saga of Dethklok, the world’s most brutal death-metal band. The film is action-packed, he says, including “an apocalypse sequence that sees the Washington Monument flying through the air, destroying landmarks and impaling Dethklok fans on its pointy tip.” Ouch!

In our Taste of the Town column, foodie Maude Ballinger keeps tabs on the multitude of local festivals and feasts scheduled this month, and directs readers’ attention to six new restaurants—and the birth of Bali Express, a food truck that serves Balinese and Indonesian cuisine.

September’s cool nights are a good time to trace the wanderings of the planets and the clockwork of the heavens, writes stargazer Robert Victor. Venus and Jupiter will be beacons in the predawn sky, while Sirius will burn bright, along with the six other stars that make up the “Winter Hexagon,” Victor notes.

I’ll see you in the funny papers.

Take care,

—Frank X. Mullen, Editor