Arts DEVO

Please, oh, please, Basketball Gods I am invested in many personal interests and/or distractions, but there are only two that I truly care about: music and basketball. So, it is with great sadness that I enter the fall without a single NBA season-preview magazine. The NBA is currently in a lockout because the billionaire owners and millionaire players are at a negotiating standstill, and with the 2011-12 season in limbo so too are my coveted NBA forecasting publications. They usually start showing up on magazine racks in August, but those are the early broke-ass guides, with horrible writing and incomplete team rosters. And, in a ploy to prey on the weakness of the basketball junkies who have no ability to delay gratification, those early ones are also the most expensive. But every year I happily plunk down my $9.99 plus tax to get my fix. By now, with the season normally a mere four weeks away, I would have at least five previews in constant rotation. But my nightstand is empty, and in some small way so am I.

Probably the only thing that could cheer me up would be if someone went on eBay and scored me this sweet, old-school, powder-blue Kings starter jacket. I wear a medium.

Cabaret in transition It looks like the Chico Cabaret Theatre is finally going to have to move out of the Almond Orchard shopping center, a space it has occupied for more than a decade. Rent at the space has risen astronomically over the years—up to $3,500 as of 2010—and according to a press release sent out by Cabaret honcho Phil Ruttenburg last week, the landlord is raising rent again. Ruttenburg says that they will not be renewing the lease when it expires next May, and that for now they have no plans for moving into a new space. But the Cabaret will live on, putting on plays at the current spot through May (likely ending with a rock ’n’ roll parody of the ’60s beach-party films) and renting space for productions beyond then if it has to. So, get out there while you can and see what will be the final staging at the space of the Cabaret’s signature production—The Rocky Horror Show—opening tonight, Oct. 7.

Enjoy a work of art On the eve of the premiere of season two of one of Arts DEVO’s all-time favorite television show, Bravo’s art-making reality show Work of Art (this season features an artist named The Sucklord—need I say more?), Chico is very busy with a receptions for a few exciting showings of works of art as well.

• RayRay Gallery is hosting the Stonewall Alliance’s Coming Out for Art group show, and the reception (Tuesday, Oct. 11, 6-8 p.m.) also will feature guest speakers, spoken-word performances and live music.

• There will be a champagne reception at the Bistro Gallery inside the Terraces Senior Living retirement community Saturday, Oct. 8, 2-4 p.m. for Passage to India, an exhibit of photographs by Geoff Fricker, a resident at the Terraces. Fricker (father of widely known Chico photographer and photography instructor Geoff Jr.) will be displaying photographs he took in India that were part of an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the early ’70s.

• And Chico Paper Co. will be pulling back the curtain to reveal the latest in print-master Jake Early’s Chico Experience series at a reception this Friday, Oct. 7, 5-7 p.m. Early is releasing just one print a year in the five-print series, and while this year’s is still a mystery (last year featured a sweet red beach-cruiser bike), I am going to see if I can predict what print No. 2 will look like: I’m seeing a picture of John Bidwell drinking a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale next to Errol Flynn while sitting on the bench in front of Shubert’s Ice Cream. Yeah, I totally nailed it.