Week of Jan. 17, 2024

From the editor’s desk

“A lot of times, people used to assume if we talk to Latinos, the only thing we need to talk to them about is immigration,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, the vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative for UnidosUS. She talked with the RN&R about how that assumption can lead to ineffective outreach on the part of political candidates.

WhatItDo Archive Group can’t simply be described as a band, and its latest LP, Palace of a Thousand Sounds, isn’t exactly part of a genre, but Alexander Korostinsky, Mark Sexton and Aaron Chiazza’s 2023 sound collage is intriguing. “The big inspiration for the record was exotic music and space-age bachelor-pad music,” said Sexton. 

Film guy Bob Grimm enjoyed Seth MacFarlane’s original 2012 Ted, with the wise-cracking teddy bear, but he found the 2015 sequel to be a letdown—so he was delighted that the seven-episode season of the new Ted series on Peacock delivered. “Ted is full of hilarious ’90s references, somehow funny-again pot jokes, and lots of riffs on pop culture …with the sort of no-holds-barred humor you don’t see a lot of these days,” Grimm writes.

Is the current level of societal polarization getting you down? Vince Salvatore, owner of Aikido of Reno, strives to be part of the solution. He teaches people how to use empathy, humor and physical cues to decrease conflict, as part of his free “Peace Challenge” class.

Think talking about the weather is boring? KTVN Channel 2 meteorologist Angela Schilling always has a good story—like the one about seeing hail the size of DVDs when she worked in Abilene, Texas. She talked with photo editor David Robert from behind the scenes of the weather desk for the 15 Minutes interview. 

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor