Week of Aug. 10, 2022

From the editor’s desk

Rep. Mark Amodei slipped an amendment into the military funding bill that would have transferred hundreds of thousands of acres of public land to the Navy’s training area in central Nevada. A House committee torpedoed the idea, but Amodei will keep trying to make those already-sprawling bombing ranges a much larger target.

As Lake Mead dries up and Lake Tahoe’s shoreline recedes, our wetlands are telling us something, writes guest columnist John L. Smith. The message: Embrace the science of climate change.

As a cat person, I understand the close connection between books and felines. (They enjoy stretching across the pages.) At the Radical Cat bookstore in Reno, friendly felines, hard-to-find tomes and a sense of community come together, writes Pax Leigh Robinson.

Music writer Matt King profiles Olivias, a Reno-based four-piece Southwest emo/indie-rock band based. Their sound, a mashup of the raw emotion and instrumentation of emocore with the jangly lead guitar lines of indie rock, will raise the rafters on Aug. 17 at The Holland Project. Matt also gets the scoop on reNEW Music, a Reno nonprofit that aims to spread a love for classical music throughout the area via original compositions by different composers. His Lucky 13 column, meanwhile, features a Q&A with Wolfgang Hendrix, lead vocalist of Pussy Velour, performing at the BlueBird on Aug. 20.

Also in the music vein, Dave Robert takes 15 Minutes to chat with Reno luthier Wesley Wilkerson. A luthier is someone who works on and repairs stringed instruments—and Wilkerson has helped everyone from people taking guitar lessons on up to Willie Nelson’s band.

RN&R movie reviewer Bob Grimm took a ride on the “Bullet Train,” Brad Pitt’s collaboration with John Wick co-director David Leitch. Bob says the flick travels a track from “entertaining to annoying,” as it gets a little too cute with its slick style and quick action. However, Bob had much nicer things to say about Ron Howard’s “Thirteen Lives,” about the dramatic rescue of a Thai youth soccer team from a flooded cave, and the return of the “Beavis and Butt-head” series on Paramount+.

I’ll see you in the funny papers,

—Frank X. Mullen, Editor