WEEK IN REVIEW: Reporters’ Notebook

THE HISTORIC NEVADA ESTATES NEIGHBORHOOD between Alta Drive and U.S. Highway 95, just west of Rancho Drive, is home to so many prominent people that some of them live right next door to each other.

For example, Las Vegas City Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian and her somewhat well-known husband share a back wall with Kenny Guinn.

But neighbors are neighbors, no matter how famous they might be.

Asked recently what it was like to live so close to the former Nevada governor, Lois Tarkanian said, "His cat visits me all the time. Lovely cat, lovely cat."

HENRY BREAN

LAS VEGAS MAYOR OSCAR GOODMAN'S REGULAR THURSDAY PRESS CONFERENCE coincided with his birthday last week. When asked how he planned to celebrate, Goodman said he's on the Atkins diet and is trying to watch his weight.

"Everywhere I've gone today has had a cake for me," he said. "I have lost 800 pounds on Atkins and gained 833 pounds on Atkins."

Hizzoner said he was fighting the carb overload by taking a "single lick" of each cake's icing.

LYNNETTE CURTIS

HISPANICS IN POLITICS PRESIDENT FERNANDO ROMERO took it in stride when he was interrupted during a news conference Friday by a ringing cell phone with a loud "cock-a-doodle-doo" ring tone. Romero, who had been talking about education funding, high school dropout rates and the importance of registering to vote, didn't miss a beat.

"Another major concern we have is that rooster that's crowing," he said.

LYNNETTE CURTIS

THE TUMULT SURROUNDING THE SUSPENSION OF DISTRICT COURT JUDGE ELIZABETH HALVERSON plunged Clark County District Attorney David Roger into dèjá vu of the bad kind. In 1986, Roger's first job as a law clerk ended abruptly after two weeks when the judge who hired him, Paul Goldman, was suspended after a bizarre string of events that included jailing an elderly woman for refusing to testify and having a maintenance man arrested for making too much noise during a trial.

Roger remembers the episode of the maintenance man vividly. Goldman ordered his newly hired law clerk to take the man into custody.

Goldman was ultimately removed from office by the Nevada Judicial Discipline Commission. When asked what effect that had on the community at large, Roger ruefully said he couldn't recall.

"I was too worried about what was going to happen to my job," he said.

LISA KIM BACH

BEING FORCED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN EATING A MEAL or having your only set of prison blues washed is cruel and unusual punishment, claims High Desert State Prison inmate Jeffery Brown in a 2006 complaint now proceeding through federal court. Brown, who decided to eat while fully clothed instead of going hungry in his cell while the prison laundry did its work, ended up getting a rash and suffering humiliation after wearing the same prison garb for 90 days running.

"My clothing began to smell as though I'd had a bowel movement," Brown wrote in his complaint. "Although I showered daily, I still had an unbearable odor from the soiled clothes I had to put back on!"

LISA KIM BACH

TIM KJENSTAD, A 49-YEAR-OLD CLARK COUNTY FIREFIGHTER, endured what is widely considered the world's toughest foot race last week, the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon through Death Valley.

He returned to Las Vegas on Friday with swollen, severely blistered feet and offered to let the Review-Journal shoot a photo of them. For the sake of our "Week in Review" readers, we declined.

"Yeah," Kjenstad said. "You'd probably get a picture of better feet at the morgue."

LAWRENCE MOWER