Nevermind that little flub in the music Blurt that says Truckasauras is playing tomorrow, Jan. 24, at Beauty Bar. Nope, that show is TONIGHT!

Many apologies. Here’s the accurate show info, in full:

Truckasauras (with Outerspace, Caused By the Sun, Kid Meets Cougar)

Fri., Jan. 23, 10 p.m.

517 Fremont St.

598-1965

$5

Hand over your cash, or the life-sustaining elixir gets it...

CineVegas Film Festival, the valley’s annual bringer of much new, worthwhile, independent (and not) cinema just got a little cooler. The Green Film Series kicks off Saturday, Jan. 24 at Springs Preserve, promising environmentally themed films — to suit a more environmentally themed presidential administration — that’ll be shown every other Saturday for the next four weeks.

First up is Flow: For the Love of Water. Irene Salina’s documentary turns out to be one of the more troubling in recent memory, profiling the players and parameters of what many say has become a full-on world water crisis so dire, lost sleep suffered after watching the film will be the least of our problems. It’s all about growing privatization of our fresh water supply, explains Salina, with politics, pollution and denial of human rights all contributing to the emergence of — get this — a “domineering world water cartel.”

Screen time is reserved mostly for the people and institutions who are striving to be part of the solution, whether by generating public awareness or developing new technologies to thwart the specter of a dirty, dry future. Those on the “problem” side aren’t represented as much, and so we’re torn here. One the one hand, that’s not, you know, fair-and-balanced journalism. On the other hand, it’s possible the “global conglomerations headed by pasty Europeans” that CityLife film critic Matt Kelemen refers to in a review written after the film’s release last October don’t deserve much chance to clear things up after launching a control-the-world’s-water gambit that already speaks volumes about the wormy minds and shriveled little hearts involved.

Come judge for yourself. Tickets are $10 each, or you can spring for the “Food and a Flick” package for $25, which includes a pre-movie dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s Springs Preserve Café. Visit the CineVegas Green Film Series website for details, along with a lineup of what greenery is still to come over the next two months.

Two weeks ago, CityLife reported on efforts by Environment America to promote a $142 billion green stimulus package. The economic recovery bill is working its way through the House and currently includes some $77 billion in green energy, efficiency and public transportation funding.

The big winners so far are energy efficiency, which will be funded to the tune of $37.8 billion, and renewable energy, which will receive a $27.8 billion infusion. The public transit part of the package has been gutted, and will only receive $11.6 billion. A full three-quarters of the legislation’s transportation funding will go to highway infrastructure, some of which will be used to build new roads.

For the full list of Environment America proposals, visit their website and click on “Reports.”

So read one of the scores of handmade signs at Thursday night’s UNLV student rally to protest Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons’ plan to fill the gaping state budget deficit with 36 percent cuts to education.

Not a half-mile from where mainstream media darlings J.C. Watts, E.J. Dionne and Gloria Borger spent part of Thursday night at a special forum handicapping President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, thousands of UNLV students rallied to protest the cuts and the tiny gubernatorial brain behind them. As Nevada higher education Chancellor Jim Rogers predicted cuts at UNLV could reach 52 percent, students were as dumbfounded as they were pissed by the governor’s cruelly creative financing.

“It’s ridiculous. We need to try to make education here better – Nevada ranks — what — 47th out of 50 states? A 52-percent cut would just devastate the university,” said Erica Goff, a graduate student in history.
Her friend, sophomore and psychology major Jen Dilauro, was just as amazed/enraged that Gibbons aims to balance an ailing state budget on the backs of students.

“It’s funny because I made a joke earlier where I said the reason he [Gibbons] probably did it is so he can keep us from becoming educated enough to steal his job. To me, his decision is the complete opposite of anything rational,” said Dilauro.

The rally gave political heavyweights like Rogers and UNLV president David Ashley the chance to rail against Gibbons and his proposed cuts — and each of them fired up the crowd. However, UNLV biology junior Michael Ulrich, who also took the stage, put them all to shame with his passionate call to action. His clipped, cogent arguments against the idiocy of killing higher ed in Nevada drew shrieks and roars from the thousands of students, who haven’t screamed that loudly since seeing President Obama at a debate early last year.

“If a class isn’t offered or becomes full, this delays graduation by years. Without UNLV, Nevada State College and CSN, we would have no graduating doctors, dentists, nurses or health care professionals … and an already crippled health care system in Nevada  would slip further toward oblivion,” said Ulrich.

“If we stand up, if we stand together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish … I’m here to tell you there is hope,” he said. “What can we do? You must first say no to continued cuts in education. Talk to everyone you know … we must know our representatives in the state and federal government and most importantly, we must contact them and let them know where we stand.”

Has Gibbons’ proposals sparked a new age of student activism here? Ulrich and many of those at Thursday night’s rally said they think so.

“Today is the beginning of a movement that will change Nevada forever!” yelled Ulrich. Thousands screamed back in approval, sick of a governor they said has clearly aligned against them, ready for the change that’s swept the nation to blow Nevada’s way.

Indeed. Here’s a vid from last night’s education rally at UNLV protesting Gibbons’ proposal to destroy all colleges as we know it.

(Editor’s note: CityLife contributor Carey Murphy is tramping around the globe in search of getting his face properly rocked. He found quite a bit of face-destroying rock happening in Pune — which is like the Austin of India — where he filed this dispatch about seeing the band Black Lips at the Campus Rock Idols festival.)

They speak fluent English, but, more importantly, they speak fluent LE ROCK.

PUNE, INDIA – Pune is a pleasant four-hour bus ride, more or less southeast, away from the sprawl and chaos and madness of Mumbai. And, truth being told, at least one-quarter of the travel time is just getting outside of the greater metropolitan area itself. After asking numerous taxi and rickshaw drivers over the course of the previous two days, I can appreciate the traffic difficulties in a city between 19 and 30 million people. No one in Las Vegas has the right to complain about traffic ever again.

Pune, by comparison, is an oasis. Though equally chaotic, just on a lesser scale, the city maintains something akin to the college-town atmosphere that makes large urban areas feel distinctly smaller. Like so many other college towns, Pune is renowned for its music. Or so I’m told. And it makes sense that the city would play host to one of the Campus Rock Idols competitions, India’s continental Battle of the Bands. The lineup for the evening was drenched in detuned sludge, roared vocals, thunderous drums, and names like Abstract Blue, Casanova Rodeo, The Pristine Theorem, Abraxas, and Minus 1. In India, at the moment, metal rules. Or rulz. Whichever applies. “Everything is about metal these days,” says Yash, a twenty-something eager to speak to the one white face in the crowd. He drops into a Johnny Ramone-ish pose and air-guitars as evidence of contemporary tastes and proof of his ill-spent youth. “What do these guys sound like?” he asks, referencing the Black Lips, the evening’s headliner. (more…)