Week of Sept. 14, 2022

From the editor’s desk

The 2022 Burning Man festival, the first official fest since 2019, had about 80,000 participants and an uninvited guest: the virus that causes COVID-19. Although it’s an outdoor event, people gathered in tents and structures where the bug roamed freely—and infected campers across Black Rock City.

Photo editor Dave Robert interviews Reno optician Michael Grover, the focus of this month’s 15 Minutes feature. Grover not only makes eyeglasses; he repairs specs in his one-man shop.

RN&R music reviewer Matt King, meanwhile, spotlights Noland Magnuson, the guitarist and vocalist for Thee Saturday Knights, in The Lucky 13.

On the movie and video beat, Bob Grimm was impressed with “Clerks III,” a sequel that not only delivered an expected dose of sophomoric humor, but also came through with “a lot of genuine, feel-good smiles, as well as profound real-life musings and tears.” Bob also gave high marks to “Barbarian,” a twisted yet funny horror flick. But even though he is a self-described Disney fanatic, our reviewer says the live-action version of “Pinocchio” is merely passable entertainment.

Our Western Lit feature focuses on an excerpt from “The Vanishing,” Reno author David Michael Slater’s forthcoming novel, a fantasy about an 11-year-old girl in Nazi Germany who turns invisible after witnessing a horrific murder.

And readers’ epistles in our latest editor’s mailbag include commentary on the fitness (or lack, thereof) of some of the Washoe County School Board candidates, and a poem about the curtain of wildfire smoke you may be noticing outside your windows.

I’ll see you in the funny papers,

—Frank X. Mullen, Editor