This month scores of worms will descend on Sacramento, but have no fear these cute little creatures might just be your new best friend … if you can find them.

Wormie World, the beloved city-wide scavenger hunt is back for its third year Saturday, October 17th.

A dedicated team of two lovingly crafts hundreds of ceramic worms and hides them throughout the city of trees.

Humble beginnings

Brittany Clark came up with the idea in 2024 after she participated in the global scavenger hunt called “Game of Shrooms.”

“I was very inspired and I happened to love earthworms. I've always saved them when it rains,” Clark said in an interview with Vicki Gonzalez on Insight. “I thought the merging of the two would be really fun, and I felt like Sacramento needed a goofy, whimsical, fun thing that we could do every year.”

So she put her burgeoning ceramic skills to use, making over 100 worms at her kitchen table and hiding them throughout the Sacramento city center.

In her initial post announcing the first Wormie World, Clark writes, “This free event was created to help spread joy and to share in our appreciation for worms.”

The event went over like gangbusters and pretty quickly word started spreading.

Recruiting more worm lovers

One of the participants on that first day in 2024 was muralist Karen Sue Chen. 

“I had like literally the best day ever looking for worms,” Chen says. “I'm an artist by profession so when I saw all these ceramic worms, I knew there was a lot of love poured into it.”

She enjoyed getting a chance to explore Sacramento through such a unique lens. So much so, she started messaging Clark on Instagram, becoming good friends and offering her services to craft the next batch of worms. She ended up crafting 250 of them for the 2025 scavenger hunt. They estimate each one takes about an hour to make, from sculpting to glazinging to firing in a kiln. 

The popularity of the event has grown so much that Clark and Chen have made over 700 worms for 2026. 

“I never would have imagined that [it] would have grown to this scale,” Clark said thinking back to the first hunt in 2024. “I had told my husband the first week of Wormie World, that I truly thought no one would come to find them.”

Worms about town

If you want one of these cute little creatures for yourself (which I know you do) the scavenger hunt will start on Saturday the 17th. Video hints for each worm's location will be posted on the Wormie World Instagram and TikTok starting at 8 a.m. 

They’ll be hidden throughout Midtown, Downtown, and the surrounding neighborhoods. Clark and Chen say they look for hiding spots year round and love to highlight cool places in the city, especially murals and art. All of the hiding places are public and don’t require any climbing to find your wormy treasure.

This year will be their biggest event so far. In addition to the hundreds of worms hidden across the city, participants can also fill out a Wormie World passport. Twenty local businesses will be participating including the Sacramento Zoo and the Sacramento History Museum. In addition to having some worms hidden in their shops, each location will be stamping passports.

Clark and Chen can be found all day on Saturday at the Strapping Store in Oak Park. They’ll be selling merch, talking to fans, and giving out exclusive stickers to anyone who completes a passport.

Clark says she loves that people value her and Karen’s art and that so many people have resonated with Wormie Word over the years.

“There was a little girl who has social anxiety and her mom reached out and told us that she takes her worm to school with her every day and it helps her,” Clark said. “And so I just cried when I read [it], I just never would have expected that.”

The 14th annual Aftershock will rock Discovery Park this week, running for four days starting Thursday, October 1, through Sunday, October 4, with its biggest lineup to date featuring over 140 artists. 

Aftershock is for fans who enjoy the music genres of rock, heavy metal and punk, which welcomed over 164,000 fans from around the world in 2025, according to Danny Wimmer Presents.

The headliners for this year include My Chemical Romance, TOOL, Limp Bizkit and Pierce The Veil. To honor the 140 plus artists, Aftershock at Discovery Park is expanding and adding a 5th stage.

There are a lot of things to look forward to this weekend, but here are a few things to consider ahead of the festival.

1. Friday is hip-hop day

Along with the heavy metal and rock music, Friday seems to be hip-hop heavy when it comes to the sets. Artists like Wu-Tang Clan. Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Three 6 Mafia, Insane Clown Posse, Haarper and $ucideboy$ are all performing on Friday.

P.O.D., and Silly Goose are holding it down with the nu-metal and rap-rock genres.

Hip-hop artists at Aftershock are not new to the festival, but this year it seems they’ve dedicated an entire day to the genre.

If you want to cleanse your pallet from all the heavy guitars consider going to one of these sets on Friday.

2. Wrestling ties

If you’re a fan of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) then you’ll notice some songs from pay-per-views and wrestler entrances. 

For instance, rock band Limp Bizkit is the headliner for Friday’s show. Their song “Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle) was the entrance music for The Undertaker when he switched his to the American Badass.

Their song “Crack Addict” was the theme song for Wrestlemania 19, “My Way” served as the theme song for Wrestlemania 17, and “Build a Bridge,” was the theme song for Survivor Series in 2023.

Drowning Pool, who is also performing on Friday, has a song with ties to WWE. The band has a total of 5 songs that have been used as themes for their pay-per-views, which includes “Bodies,” “Tear Away,” “Sinner,” “Step Up,” and “Rise Up.” 

P.O.D. (Payable on Death) is performing on Friday as well and they are known in the wrestling world as the band who made the iconic Rey Mysterio theme “Booyaka 619.” Their songs “Lights Out,” “Boom” were also used for themes and their track “Addicted” was used in a video game.

And finally, Three 6 Mafia’s “Some Bodies Gonna Get It” is the theme song for wrestler Mark Henry who is known in the WWE as the world's strongest man.

3. In between sets

An Aftershock sign at Discovery Park. The rock and metal festival runs through Oct. 13.
If you’re looking for things to do while you’re waiting for your favorite set to begin, there are a lot of experiences to do besides listening to music.

Aftershock is also bringing back their tattoo experience. Yes, you read that right — festivalgoers can get their next tattoo at the 14th annual Aftershock by Body Art Express, which is a mobile tattoo shop that also offers piercings.

There are also several bar experiences like the Aftershock x Jungle Bird Tiki Bar, a new Cantina del Diablo serving Mexican cocktails, a Jack Daniels Karaoke bar, and a sports bar. There’s also a soda shop for the non-beer drinkers.

4. Hometown heroes

Lead singers and lead guitarist from Dance Gavin Dance perform in front of a sold out crowd at Hard Rock Live Sacramento on Friday, June 27, 2025.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Oleander is an alternative rock band that made its debut in 1995. You might remember their songs “I Walk Alone” and “Bruise,” which were featured in the movie American Pie 1 and 2. 

The band is slated to take the stage Sunday, October 4 at 12:20 p.m. on the Shockwave stage. This would be one of their first shows since 2018.

Dance Gavin Dance is a post-hardcore band from Sacramento that formed in 2005. The band last performed in the city in 2025 during their “Return of the Robot Tour,” at the Hard Rock Live Sacramento venue in Wheatland.

Their music incorporates elements of post-hardcore and screamo, with influences from 1970s funk and 1990s R&B.

Drummer and percussionist of DGD Matt Mingus said in a text message that this Aftershock performance will be their only in Northern California for the year, so they hope to see a lot of new and returning fans.

“We are extremely grateful that Dance Gavin Dance gets to play at Aftershock again this year here in our beautiful hometown, Sacramento,” Mingus wrote. “Not to mention, being a part of a bill that is so eclectically stacked with so many talented artists is a really nice reward for all the hard work we have put into our music over the years.”

DGD will perform Sunday at 8:10 p.m. on the Faultline stage.

5. Transportation

There are many ways to get to and from the festival and it all depends on how you want to arrive. 

The easiest option is to Uber or Lyft to and from Discovery Park, although they will drop you off by the Denny’s on Bercut Drive and you will have to walk to the festival. If you’re choosing that option just know the surge prices on Uber and Lyft do get pricey after the festival.

There is a park and shuttle option where you can pay for parking at Cal Expo and take a shuttle to the festival. Four day park and shuttle passes are available or individual days. 

Sacramento Regional Transit is another option to consider if you’re attending the festival. Festivalgoers who show their valid Aftershock wristband can ride the bus or light rail for free.

SacRT has shuttle buses available between the 8th and K street bus stop downtown that will take you to and from the stop located in front of the ARCO station on Jibboom Street.

You can also take the light rail with the Blue Line Train and the Gold Line Train. The last Blue Line Train will depart at 11:55 p.m. and the last Gold Line Train will depart just after midnight.

You can plan your whole trip on their website.

There is also a biking option as well and the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates is offering complimentary bike valet service. SABA will accept all active transportation videos including skateboards and scooters.

KSSU, Sacramento State’s Student run radio station turns 35 today!

Over those three plus decades KSSU has remained a bastion for students who want to express themselves through the music and culture of the times, including yours truly, Insight Senior Producer Andrew Garcia aka DJames the host of Left of Center from 2013 to 2016. 

Ten years ago, as a burgeoning radio professional and KSSU’s student manager, I joined Insight to talk about the station’s 25th anniversary.

I am now a guest host for the show. And in a full circle moment, that still doesn’t feel real when I think too hard about it, a decade later I welcomed the current crop of KSSUers into the studio to talk about the 35th.

KSSU’s early beginnings

In the early 90s a ragtag club brought student voices back to the airwaves at Sacramento State. Students Chris Prosio aka DJ Chris Allen and Jim Bolt aka Racer X host of Ska Train, founded the Associated Broadcasting Club (ABC) in 1989. 

50 students strong ABC led what would be a years-long fight for a student-run radio on campus. In an interview with KSSU in the lead up to the 35th anniversary Bolt said, “we were told no at every juncture.” 

When they reached out to the former faculty advisor for the original student station KERS, Bolt said he wanted nothing to do with them and they wouldn’t last. “He basically slammed the door in our face.”

But they would eventually find some champions on campus. They recruited a new faculty advisor, professor Linda Rhodes and got helpful advice from Dean Sorensen, the advisor for UNIQUE, the student-led program that books campus events. 

The club would then go on to host a 24-hour music marathon to get exposure and eventually got major support from fellow campus media organization the State Hornet.

After two years of fighting and making their case to everyone who would listen, KEDG was born in 1991. Playing alternative, punk and ‘left of the dial’ music/talk through the decade.

The station was eventually renamed KSSU, supposedly for Sacramento State University (though that is the subject of debate).

It has moved all over campus from the library basement, to an alleyway, to the student union, to The WELL, and back to the union again. And moved from an AM frequency to online streaming in 2005, where the stream can still be found 24/7 at kssu.com. 

While constant evolution and reinvention has been necessary, one thing has stayed consistent: students.

Community spirit lives on

As a transfer student commuting over an hour to campus three days a week for classes, I knew literally no one. But luckily for me, my first day at student orientation I found KSSU. 

They were playing music at lunch, likely the millennial indie hit of the day, and like a fly to honey I was hooked. Within seconds of walking up they asked, “would you like your own radio show?” What other answer is there than an emphatic yes!

For the next three years I had a built in community on campus. Yes I learned the ins and outs of radio and became the Music Director (getting to listen to the latest Daft Punk and Parquet Courts albums before they were released). But the real boon of my years at the station and the things that stick with me the most are the people. Dare I say the, “friends I made along the way.”

And that sentiment remains true for many of the students and KSSU alumni I’ve talked to over the years. Founders Bolt and Prosio love to come back to campus for anniversaries and reminisce about the fight to start the station.

My generation loves to complain about the multiple moves KSSU went through during the 2010s, including an ill-fated temporary studio that shared a wall with the school boxing gym. 

Based on my conversation with KSSU’s current Station Manager Luna Diaz Contreras aka DJ LuaAbril, host of New with Lu, the community spirit is alive and well. 

I asked her what she hopes remains true about KSSU five years down the line when she comes back for the 40th anniversary. “I hope that whenever I do go back, it's still that same idea of free format, promoting the student voice. I feel like the core of the [station’s] motto, ‘Be yourself,’ as cheesy as it is, it’s quite literally what I hope stays [the same].”

Founder Bolt has a nice way of bringing things full circle, “It’s a huge sense of pride that this ragtag band of students got together and built something that had such staying power.” 

KSSU is truly built out of the hard work, dedication, joy and heart of the hundreds of students who have called the station their home and I have no doubt it will continue to thrive for another 35 years. 

“It just proves that previous faculty advisor who said we’d never stick around was dead wrong.” 

From left to right: KSSU Station Manager Luna Diaz Contreras, current Insight guest host Andrew Garcia, and ASI Student Services Coordinator Hector Hernandez.CapRadio/Esmerelda Garcia

The station's 35th Anniversary festivities are taking place Thursday, the 24th. Alumni takeover shows start at 9am, you can listen live at KSSU.com or on the KSSU app.

Ruby Setnik started doing stand-up while still in high school at The Met in Sacramento. Now, eight years later, she’s toured across the country, and was featured by Netflix in a new comic showcase in 2025.

When she first saw an open mic night in Sacramento, she said that she wasn’t impressed with anyone who went up. Setnik thought she could do better.

“The next week, I came back and I did probably worse than everybody who I had seen,” Setnik said. “It’s very hard. But it was exciting to me that it was difficult.”

Now, having toured all over the country, she’s back in Sacramento for a show this Saturday at Punchline Sacramento. She said Sacramento is unique because of just how normal people are here.

“Sacramento isn’t a city that people live in and then brag about living here,” Setnik said. “I think that you figure out Sacramento is a cool city by living here.”

She also said that there’s a spirit of inventiveness in Sacramento, which she thinks is necessitated by the terrain Sacramento sits on. People in a place like hilly San Francisco have everything laid out in front of them.

“They can see the ocean, they can see the trees, they can see the hills, they can see Oakland, they can see the curvature of the Earth,” Setnik said. “In Sacramento, it necessitates that you have the creativity necessary to understand that there’s a river without seeing it at all times.”

After Setnik got her start in stand up in Sacramento, she went to college in Massachusetts at Hampshire College, a school that has an alternative approach to education.

“My bachelor’s at that school was in comedy,” Setnik said. “The school is like you choose your own adventure.”

She filmed a stand-up special as her thesis for her degree that never saw the light of day.

“But that’s classic. So many comedians have the same,” Setnik said. “I spent five grand on something that no one will ever see.”

But to Setnik, it's all about the process. She said that she’s drawn to the difficulty of stand-up, and she also values the instant feedback you get on stage.

Ruby Setnik performing in Sacramento circa 2019.Courtesy of Ruby Setnik

“Most art can be easy right away and that it’s not obvious whether or not it’s going poorly, and one could do it in the privacy of their own home,” Setnik said. “With stand up, you have an immediacy. Either it works or it doesn’t.”

For Setnik, it’s worked, maybe a bit too well. When she was featured in the Netflix Is A Joke’s “Introducing…” stand-up showcase, it was a hallmark in her career. However, she started to realize that touring and doing shows all the time might not be the best way to live.

“Everything just became a bit too scary for me,” Setnik said. “I was unhealthy in many ways, and I wondered if stand-up was really something that I wanted to choose, or if it was something that I had chosen when I was 18.”

She started to wonder if it’s something she would choose again as a 26-year-old, or if it was only something that she was able to deal with because her brain was still young and malleable. She said that there’s a lot of things that young brains deal with that would be a lot more difficult today.

“When you’re a kid, for example, you lose all of your teeth. Imagine if right now, you lost all of your teeth… and then the tooth fairy gives you a dollar for it,” Setnik said. “You don’t even need psychological counseling. You need like, mysticism and a rumor to recover.”

So, she took about a year off to really try to figure out what she wanted to do. She wanted to get a “normal” job that didn’t involve travelling across the country talking to strangers. Setnik tried to get a job at a grocery store, but she just couldn’t land it. So, she went back to performing.

“The economy is so bad right now that it actually became the financially responsible thing to pursue my dreams,” Setnik said. “Stand-up is what I do… This is the valuable skill I have to offer. Trader Joe’s doesn’t care how many followers I have on Instagram.”

Now, she’s back on tour again. Setnik has a show in Sacramento this Saturday, and in November, she’ll be performing on a comedy cruise with Bert Kreischer—one of the top-grossing stand-up comedians in the world—and a big group of comics she looks up to. However, she’s a little apprehensive about returning to a life on the water.

Setnik said that when the markets crashed in 2009, her parents — her mother, a real estate agent and her father, a contractor — took the hit especially hard. They had to declare bankruptcy and they also got a divorce. Her dad, in response, bought a boat.

“Which is something that a man does both at rock bottom and at the tippy-top of his life,” Setnik said. “When one buys a boat, [it’s] in crisis or celebration. In this case, it was because he couldn’t afford to live on the land anymore.”

So, for a while, Setnik had to live on a boat. She said she has some “bad associations” with boats because of it, but she said she’s excited to be with a bunch of stand-ups all in one place.

“I’m excited about it because you don’t really get to see the comedians that you work with all at once,” Setnik said. “We’re all pretty scattered around the country.”

Setnik will be performing at Punchline Sacramento on Saturday, September 12 and will be touring across the country. You can find tickets at her website.

In the mid-1980s through early 2000s, movie night meant driving to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, wandering the aisles, and heading home with a stack of VHS tapes.

That experience lasted into the 2010s when both chains went bankrupt and Netflix’s DVD’s-by-mail — Redbox, and then movie streaming —took over.

Now, in 2026, Chris Emery and Jefferson Miller are trying to bring that vibe back and plan to open a video rental store in Oak Park.

Very Good Video is a new store that combines rentals and retail, offering new and used VHS, DVDs, and Blu-ray. The store is slated for a soft opening in October and Emery and Miller are planning to hold a grand opening before Halloween.

Everything has changed in the era of streaming. Even in the video game space — companies like Sony are telling people they don’t actually own the digital games they purchase. 

But Emery and Miller believe there’s still a demand for physical media and a place where people can watch, share and talk about movies.

“We both kind of drank the Kool-Aid when it came to the streaming services and how they have everything like at the tip of your remote control,” Emery said. “You can have any title you want at any time, and then slowly but surely, not only did they jack up the prices, but they started ripping titles away from us.” 

Emery said he wanted to watch an older movie like “Roadhouse,” but couldn’t find it anywhere, but on streaming.

“You could buy it for $19.99, but you don't really own anything, or you don't own anything if you buy something on streaming,” he said.

Miller pointed to friends and family who said they missed the old feeling of renting a movie at a store.

“It was like every single person we talked to; it was kind of like we felt the same way,” Miller said. “We waited for years for someone to maybe reopen the video store that they ran before and then after a while, it was like we should just do it.”

This isn’t the only place people can get VHS tapes, My Cat’s Video in Midtown opened in June this year and Sparky’s Retro Resale that opened in 2024.

A third space

Very Good Video won’t just be a place where you can buy and rent movies — Miller and Emery want it to serve as a “third space” with movie screenings, trivia, watch parties and movie-related events. Their events will be members-only.

“You sign up – pay monthly or annually — and you get something similar to Blockbuster, where you get certain rentals, you get discounts on merchandise because we're going to be selling T-shirts and mugs and local artwork,” Miller said. “It'll also get you access to these events, the screen screenings of films, which will be hosted after hours.”

Emery said VGV also plans to do live interviews with local directors or host TED Talks with local film professors.

“The local director Q and A's are going to be really fun, but then we're also just going to have to come and watch ‘The Goonies,’ come and watch ‘Friday Night Lights’ or ‘Friday,’” Emery said. “Or if a couple comedians in town want to come do a riff on like a really bad like a ‘Sharknado’ movie or something.”

Miller said they added events because they want to be a place where people can come to not just to rent movies.

“We want the community aspect,” Miller said. “It's like bringing people back together, interacting, talking about movies, being surrounded by movies, just turning into more of a social experience.”

Types of movies

Emery and Miller said there will be a wide variety of movies to choose from all different genres. They mentioned having 17 copies of Wolfgang Petersen’s “Troy” which came out in 2004. 

“We're doing every genre,” Miller said. “A lot of more niche video stores, lean horror, I think we've noticed, but we're gonna try and do the full gamut — So it'll be family stuff, action, rom-coms, horror, thrillers.”

A box of movies and tv shows that Very Good Video will have for rental or purchase when the store opens in October. Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio
Since VGV will be selling and renting three different physical home video formats — the store will give consumers the opportunity to rent or buy VHS or DVD players at the store.

“We've been sourcing around Northern California trying to find devices so that we can either sell them or rent them to people,” Emery said. “If you wanted to have a movie night and watch a bunch of old VHS tapes – you can rent one of our players — for like very discounted, very cheap, just so you can have that movie experience.” 

The experience of renting a movie is everything and from Emery’s experience that’s where the best memories come from.

By ANDREW DALTON, AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will serve “Star Wars” fans what they crave, but the saga George Lucas spawned represents just one small corner of the galaxy of creative work within the walls of the Los Angeles institution he calls a "temple to the people’s art.”

The purpose of the palace that has become his life's work since he sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 is to take the work of populist painters, commercial illustrators, comic artists and paperback cover-creators and treat it with a reverence normally reserved for Rembrandts.

“That’s really what the mission is, that there’s these incredibly familiar pieces that have not had the opportunity to be platformed in this manner, to be placed like this, to be curated in this way, for people to really see the genius behind it,” museum CEO Tracey Bates said in an interview with The Associated Press inside the museum.

The building opens to the public Sept. 22.

The 82-year-old Lucas made an unannounced appearance at a media preview day at the museum on Wednesday with his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, the museum's co-founder. He said he couldn't believe the place now exists after being conceived 17 years ago and having been “kicked out of” proposed locations in cities including San Francisco and Chicago, places where previous sites fell through.

"Part of the problem is that I’m a contrarian. I don’t like to do things people think can be done," he said, wearing a T-shirt that read “Dedicated to the people's art.”

“I’m used to doing the impossible," he said. "This one almost broke me.”

Visitors to the new museum will be greeted by a bright yellow Naboo N-1 Starfighter from 1999's “The Phantom Menace” that hangs in the lobby of the public research library. The opening exhibit, “Star Wars in Motion,” shows production versions of Luke Skywalker's landspeeder from the original film and speeder bikes from 1983's “Return of the Jedi.”

But Bates points out that “'Star Wars' only occupies 7% of the museum, actually.” And chief among the tasks of the CEO and her staff in the final days before opening is spreading the word about all it has to offer.

Nearly everything in the vast museum's 100,000 square feet of galleries comes from the personal collection of Lucas or Hobson, a major collector of African-American art.

The filmmaker began collecting original comic art from newspaper strips like “Alley Oop” when he was in college and it could be had for pocket change. When blockbuster money started rolling in, he started buying paintings from commercial artists, including Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish, that were deemed the height of uncool at the time. He joked at a San Diego Comic-Con panel last year that he needed a museum just to have somewhere to put it all.

Treating Rockwell like Renoir and Parrish like Picasso

Bates, who joined the project in 2020, spoke to the AP while sitting in the gallery devoted to Rockwell, the 20th century painter and illustrator who embodies the spirit of the museum more than Luke Skywalker or C-3PO.

“He’s one of the greatest storytellers of our lifetime, really,” she said. “I mean the level of nuance and depth in a Rockwell, I get lost in them constantly.”

Best known for his weekly covers of “The Saturday Evening Post,” with images of Boy Scouts and family Thanksgiving dinners, Rockwell's paintings were quintessential small-town Americana, which made them wildly popular but brought them scorn for their squareness.

Senior curator Ryan Linkof told the AP that when he joined the museum in 2018, he knew only the consensus view of the painter.

“Working here I really just grew to absolutely love the work and find him as an image-maker, him as an artist, him as the figure, the cultural icon, just to be incredibly sophisticated,” Linkof said.

The Rockwell gallery gives special prominence to a painting that shows he had greater depth than many realize: his rendering of Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old Black girl who is surrounded by marshals as she walks into an all-white New Orleans school in 1960. It's titled “The Problem We All Live With.”

The gallery also has a sculpture of the artist, newly commissioned for the museum, that recreates a famous comic portrait of him painting himself.

Lucas also stockpiled the work of Parrish, another painter and commercial illustrator whose imagery helped define the 20th century but who could be dismissed as cloudy fluff. His work is ethereal and angelic, marked by a signature shade of blue, and the paintings' luminosity gives them a glow that feels made for a museum, even though one of the most ornate paintings in the collection was made for a chocolate box.

Linkof walked with the AP through the Parrish gallery, a favorite of many early visitors, calling it “a little sanctuary, a little chapel in some ways, dedicated to the work.”

“He was known for these really gorgeous light effects and creating these atmospheric landscapes,” the curator said. "We wanted to respect that and create a space that really let the paintings create that sense of tranquility.”

Many galleries are organized not by artist, era or genre but by aspects of everyday life, merging eras and styles. One examines sports. Another civic activism.

“We’re interested in the stories that they’re telling, rather than these kind of somewhat artificial categories defined by discipline,” Linkof said. “The gorgeous idea of these myths, myths of everyday life, the stories that we tell ourselves.”

The museum has its share of higher-brow artists too, with work from Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Andy Warhol. If it tells a story, it has a place.

The building gives vibes of a spacecraft, a tree canopy and a cloud

Visitors will walk through the museum designed by architect Ma Yansong eight years after its groundbreaking in Exposition Park, next to Lucas' alma mater: the University of Southern California.

Ma and his firm were chosen in 2014, and an architecture gallery in the museum shows his proposed models for San Francisco and Chicago along with the origins of the Los Angeles project.

Given the name outside, it’s hard not to think of a spacecraft when looking at the building. The architect acknowledges this, and says visitors will especially feel it when standing in front of broad oval windows that give views of Los Angeles from spaces spread throughout the galleries.

But Ma's style is more organic than mechanical, and the museum gives the feeling that it hovers above the neighboring Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and surrounding buildings like the California Science Center.

“For me it’s like a cloud or like a tree canopy that’s floating above you,” Ma told the AP. “It feels formless almost. But you want to discover. So you have to start a journey. You have to start to walk around.”

As he looked around inside the museum, he said he couldn't wait to see people flowing through it.

“We designed an architectural space with emotion,” he said. “We want to see people’s reaction to those spaces.”

Comics, sci-fi and kid stuff permeate the space

The museum has as much sci-fi and fantasy from Lucas' collection as from his own work. The sword-and-sandal comic book and paperback art of artist Frank Frazetta has a dedicated space. Nearby are huge, heavy-metal-epic paintings of images from J.R.R. Tolkien by Paul Raymond Gregory, complete with skull-studded frames.

A children's section includes a painting of Eloise of “Eloise at the Plaza” fame by illustrator Hilary Knight, a painting of Pikachu modeled on a Van Gogh self-portrait from Pokemon illustrator Naoyo Kimura, and rooms full of anime and manga images.

And the comic art that started Lucas' collecting has several halls dedicated to it, with some of the earliest drawings of “Star Wars” inspiration Flash Gordon on display, along with Flash Gordon's own inspiration, Buck Rogers, and proto-“Peanuts” panels from Charles Schulz, along with edgier alt-comic work from artists including Robert Crumb.

Jessica Malone has been a staple of the Sacramento folk scene for years, performing her lush melodies and poetic songs up and down Northern California with a large cast of collaborators.

Her sharply honed lyrics often highlight the natural beauty of our region while telling stories of love, loss, and personal growth. Jessica’s new EP Indigo, releases tomorrow and was recorded in Nashville.

And it shows, deftly incorporating the soulful sounds of one of the country’s premiere music cities into the warm acoustic style of her previous work. She’ll be performing with her nine piece band on Saturday the 29th at the Sofia in Sacramento. 

Ahead of her show she stopped by CapRadio with her longtime violinist Giorgi Khokhovbashvili, to perform in this month’s Insight Studio Session and spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about what inspired her new songs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Thank you so much for coming to Insight. Your music has so much soul and emotion to it. I want you to start with your songwriting, the stories that you tell. What inspires songs like Rather Be in Love? 

I get inspired by a lot of different things and in the past, nature has been one of my biggest inspirations. I write a lot of songs about beautiful places. This song is about something completely different. I started writing the song and it was almost like the idea was writing itself. I was like uncovering it or something. And so it started out with a love story, somebody who was pretending, putting on a face and pretending like they were fine on their own, but really they would rather be in love.

And then it has this other part to it where they are reading books and living vicariously through the lives and love stories in the books that they read. So there's all these book references like ‘line by line’ and ‘paper back’ and ‘up your spine.’ 

I love that you mentioned nature because I kept getting visions of the outdoors and nature with this song. Why is that such a special inspiration for you?

Well, I grew up in Mount Shasta, California. I grew up in the little town of Mount Shasta city and I was always outside. That's just what you did there. You played outside, you know, in the 90s. Then after that I went to Humboldt, so [I went from a] snowy volcano to where the redwoods meet the ocean. And I've just always lived in the most beautiful places. 

So for your upcoming EP Indigo, you recorded it in Nashville?

Yeah, I did. I went out to Nashville last August, so it's been like exactly a year. I went to Frida Recording and the engineer/producer Nick Bullock invited me out and we did the whole EP in a day.

I got there on a Tuesday. On Wednesday I finished [writing] the songs and then Thursday I met the band. It was a bunch of just really incredible Nashville musicians and we recorded the whole thing on Thursday and then I flew home on Friday! 

So the title track off your EP is “Indigo,” why did you choose that one and what inspired that song?

So this one was a free associative writing about colors. I was like, "I'm just going to start writing." I had this line ‘blue as the coast’ and then I just went with that. There's a little bit of a heartbreak moment in the chorus where there's a past tense. ‘Even though the colors fade, I'll remember every shade, our love was indigo.’ That's the little hook line there.

I think it sounds the most different and new from anything I've ever written before and that was really exciting for me. And maybe because Joni Mitchell has her Blue album so I wanted my Indigo album [laughs].

You’ll be performing at The Sofia this weekend, as you have been doing every year for a while now, what is so special about this venue? 

We do a show there every summer with the nine-piece and it's such a beautiful room. The sound is incredible and the size. I think it's about 400 people, so it's this big beautiful theater, but it still feels really intimate and I still feel connected to the audience. 

It's just an incredible place to get to showcase the songs and all the hard work we've done. And playing with Giorgi is one of my favorite things in the world.

And it must be such a special week when you're performing at The Sophia and then it's the release of your EP!

Absolutely, a lot of work goes into recording an EP and then doing all the things you need to do to get it out in the world. It feels like it's exciting and then it's also like all the hard work has paid off for that moment, you know? 

It's like it all led up to that and it's always really fun to have everybody come out and celebrate with us.

So the last song on the EP is Gold and Green, what inspired this one? 

So I moved to Grass Valley a couple years ago. I bought a little house out there and I have my garden. It's the first time I've had a garden and I have my roses and I spent a lot of time with myself, by myself, at my house, making it my home and it was a really special time for me.

I learned a lot about myself and I grew a lot as a person and I just got a lot closer to myself and that's what this song is about. The title of this song [came when] I was finishing. I had like one lyric I couldn't figure out. And as I was driving out to a show in Sierraville the sun was coming through the trees in the most beautiful way. So there's a line ‘sunset through the trees, everything is gold and green.’ Because it was just so beautiful. So more nature inspiration there, personal growth and nature and flowers [laughs].

In 2023, a Sacramento indie band called Humidity Glow threw a house show at their drummer’s house. The show featured Humidity Glow, local indie band Blonde Star Wig, and Sacramento’s Philharmonik, who would go on the following year to win NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest.

The drummer, August Rose and their partner Dove Rose, would go on to host a series of shows in their home, which they dubbed Humidity Glow Headquarters, or HGHQ.

In the summer of 2024, Humidity Glow broke up. But, August and Dove decided they still wanted Sacramento’s music in their home.

Dove said they always wanted the space to feel more like a place where the community can gather and not just another venue. So, they decided to keep throwing shows, and call their new community “The Hearth.”

“I’ve always just really liked the imagery, the figurative hearth at the center of the home, the place where people gather, the place where you come in from the cold and feel safe,” Dove said.

Their living room-turned-venue features vintage CRT televisions and VHS tape decks, cassette tapes, and a wall scrapbooked with memories from shows in the past. Dove said that the inspiration for their vintage aesthetic came from their own love for old technology, and the analog feel of physical scrapbooks.

“The goal was to have it feel more like a community hub than someone’s living room,” August said. “We were trying to bridge that space between professionalism and comfort.”

They said that, ever since they started throwing shows, Sacramento’s music scene has shown support.

“I think it’s always going to be a concern, letting a bunch of random people into your home, but at the same time, we’ve been doing it this long and people have been showing that they're respectful and receptive to what we’re doing,” August said. “A lot of times, like random showgoers will just be like, ‘Oh, is there anything I can help with here and there?”

The Hearth has thrived on its relationship with Sacramento’s community, and an ethos that centers around mutual aid and respect. At all of their shows, which are all volunteer-run, they charge admission but they always specify that no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Davis jangle-pop band Illbie played at the Hearth on July 11, 2026.Courtesy of the Hearth

Iran is home to a rich, diverse culture spanning 31 provinces and dating back thousands of years — particularly music and storytelling.

A new touring performance — featuring a Sacramento-based percussionist — is bringing this rarely-experienced part of the country’s culture to audiences across the country, including at the International House in Davis on Aug. 2.

ZÂ guides audiences through the emotions and journey of life, woven around the traditions from the Western Iranian province of Lorestan and featuring the sounds of Iranian string instruments and drums.

Musicians Nariman Assadi, Behfar Bahadoran and Mazdak Alipour spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about the inspirations behind ZÂ, and shared a sample of Lorestani music.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

I would just love to start with learning more about the three of you. Where did your passion for music come from?

NARIMAN: Since I was 13 years old, I started playing the instrument called Tombak, a goblet-shaped drum. That was my first experience with music. And I've been following music performances, other musicians, started learning more drums [and] percussion. That was my first interaction with music. 

BEHFAR: I started studying music when I was six, and we’ve been performing on different stages in Iran, outside and in the United States for the past 20 years. I've known Nariman and Mazdak for five years now, and we have been working on different projects but this is the first project that we have been working on — Lorestani music to be specific.

MAZDAK: So from the early ages, [I] played music. [I] started learning from my dad; his name is Faraj Alipour, he’s a legendary Kamancheh player and vocalist. 

Nariman, you teach at schools in Sacramento. What is that experience like, bringing this musical style and traditions to young children?

NARIMAN: Yes, I teach Tombak and Daf [in] private and group lessons, and also working with elementary schools, Music for Children, and Farsi schools.

Since I started the training for music for children I always had that desire, especially in [the] Iranian diaspora, to teach the second generation of Iranian kids about their culture. Also sharing this culture with the elementary schools is a different experience for me, especially kindergarteners, TK and first graders that I see every day. It's very joyful, playing these instruments and sharing a culture that I've lived.

What was the inspiration for ZÂ itself? 

NARIMAN: ZÂ coming from the word zayesh in Persian, meaning “birth” and “beginning.” It was born from a desire to preserve and share this living tradition. If you go to a village in Lorestan, in Western Iran, you can see it still happening. 

It explores the milestones of life through music from lullabies, work music, love music, weddings, ritualistic ceremonial music that we have, and also mourning and celebration music.

What are the instruments that you are playing?

NARIMAN: So the instruments we're performing with are the Kamancheh, the Iranian fiddle; Tar [a lute-like instrument]; and Daf, the frame drum.

ZÂ’s music comes from the Lorestan region of Iran. Can you describe what the music there is like?

MAZDAK: What is very unique about Lorestan [is the instrument]. As you can see here, it has this special design where the back of this instrument is open compared to other Kamancheh in the other regions. The reason for that is it was used to play at weddings, and there was no amplification. So they designed this instrument so people can hear it. 

In Lorestan, in that region, they do everything with music. They wake up, they have music. They work, they have music. They fall in love, they have music for it. And if they lose someone, they also have music. They’re happy people, but some of the upbeat music you hear, when you go deep into the lyrics they’re actually very sad.

This performance is touring all over the country. What has the response been like?

NARIMAN: It’s interesting; for the first time I feel like everyone from all ages is connected to this music. We actually performed a demo of this performance at UCLA and we had some non-Iranian professors actually reaching out to us that they really enjoyed it. In Portland there was a kid, 12 years old, came up to us and was like, “that was the first time I'm hearing music from my homeland.” She was very attached;  she told us she felt very connected to her ancestors by this music as well. 

We also heard from non-Iranian audiences that they really love it, they feel attached as we were telling this story. And I feel, [compared to] other performances that we had before, this is not just museum pieces of the past that we're showing, rather a life story.

Everyone in the audience, they're also joining us in this journey as we're going. We hope that every time that we take this on the stage, we also leave those pieces in the moment.

Music has the power to educate, and bring people together. What does it mean for you all to perform together and connect these traditions through song?

BEHFAR: Being part of the Iranian diaspora for the past 20 years, reconnecting in a way to the roots of our culture and also sharing it with the American society that I’ve been living within myself for almost two decades, it’s amazing. 

It’s sharing something more than what we actually hear and see on the news. It’s refreshing, I think, to the foreign audience [and] our culture.

Editor’s note: Nariman Assadi provided translations for Mazdak Alipour during this interview.

ZÂ will be performed at the International House Davis from 5-7 p.m. on Aug. 2.