Are you ready, Vegas? It’s the Friday Slashback!

A state official is ready for his close-up, the governor wants to re-enact that classic printer-destruction scene from “Office Space” on one particular copier company, and one U.S. senator decided to screw with the other. That can only mean it’s time for the Friday Slashback!

Everybody knows Secretary of State Ross Miller is probably the most technologically savvy politician in Nevada. He’s made great use of Facebook and Twitter to sell himself and his accomplishments in office, and his official website is quite useful.

That’s why his attention-getting YouTube ad, in the form of a film trailer (for a non-existent film) is part-and-parcel of his campaign for attorney general. The “preview” shows Miller in his previous job, as a deputy district attorney in Clark County, as well as in the mixed-martial arts ring (Miller had one official bout, which he won).

“The only candidate who has enforced Nevada law,” the “preview” declares. Totally. Also the only candidate you’d want to be standing behind in a courtroom if the defendant started acting out, too!

But why stop at just one preview for a fake movie? Why not graft Miller into other movies, too? Now that Nevada has a film tax-credit program going, this could be good for Miller and good for the state, too!

• “The Gift.” What, too soon?

• “The Untouchables:” A squad of investigators raids the ACORN office to prevent the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys from registering to vote!

• “Star Trek: Into Darkness But Then Dragged Out Thanks to A Warning Letter Sent by The Attorney General at the Request of Ross Miller.” Man, that acronym is really going to screw things up at this year’s Star Trek convention.

• “Ross Miller and the Last Crusade (To Get A Cash-On-Hand Line Added to Annual Candidate Filing Forms).”

• “The Notebook (In Which Ross Miller Records Every Dollar of Gifts He Receives For Later Disclosure Purposes).” What, still too soon?

• “Jerry Maguire II: Show Me The Dark Money!” No, seriously, show me. It’s the law if you’re expressly advocating for the election or defeat of a candidate.

• “Pet (Peeve) Cemetery: Where Campaign Finance Bills Go To Die.” It’s an in-depth look at the bipartisan good idea killing fields in the Nevada Legislature.

• “Flashdance II: The Flashdancening.” A mild-mannered government bureaucrat stifled in his day job practices at night to be an MMA fighter so he can break out of the small-town capital city and make it big in Las Vegas.

• “Fight Club II: The Fightening.” Amended rule: You can talk about fight club after all, but only after you win your bout.

• “Stop or My Mom Will Shoot! (Off an Email About How There’s Really Only One Famous Son Who Should Be AG of Nevada!)”

• “Identity.” You better be using your real one when you register to vote, or that knock at the door might be Ross Miller. And justice!

• This week the House voted to sue President Barack Obama for (this is real) delaying implementation of a provision of a law they hate and tried to repeal. You’d think the Republicans — who objected to the mandate that most businesses offer insurance to their employees — would be cheering Obama for chipping off a little piece of Obamacare and saving it for later. But no, because that would involve cheering for Obama.

So, the House — including our very own Reps. Mark Amodei and Joe Heck — decided to sue the president, the object of which lawsuit (other than to embarrass Obama and reinforce the notion that he’s a lawless dictator) is to force the government to fully implement a law they hate and are still fighting against. Even if they had a legal point to make (and that’s highly debatable) this only makes sense if you realize that on the totem pole of Republican hate, Obamacare is slightly lower than Obama himself.

Remember this, voters, the next time Republicans are complaining about frivolous lawsuits and the need for tort reform.

• Not to be a big complainer or anything, but the concepts of “open air” and “Vegas summer” go together as well as “hungry shark” and “tender flesh.” I’ll watch my UNLV sports at Buffalo Wild Wings, thank you very much.

• You know, to hear the think tankers at the Nevada Policy Research Institute tell it, government jobs are ridiculously overpaid, with lavish benefits, a sweet retirement package and emoluments that poor private-sector workers can only dream about.

But why, then, can’t the Clark County School District hire enough teachers? The school year is just set to begin in a few weeks, and the district says it’s short by 650 teachers, especially elementary school teachers. Why, you’d think they’d be lining up to get those perk-laden jobs! But apparently, schools can’t crank out teachers fast enough to staff up here in Clark County.

Maybe they’re too busy shopping for their Bentleys and getting the second kitchen in their beach houses remodeled?

• Gov. Brian Sandoval is seriously pissed at Xerox, the company that royally mismanaged the state’s health-insurance exchange computer system. The gov’s frustration with the document company has been growing for months, and it bubbled over this week, when Xerox was up for a totally unrelated contract in a totally unrelated department to do a totally unrelated thing. That’s when Sandoval put the brakes on.

“And I’ll be frank with why I asked these to be let out, is they’re with Xerox, and I just had some questions with regard to the nature of those contracts,” Sandoval said during a Board of Examiners meeting, according to Las Vegas Sun political reporter Kyle Roerink.

Why do I think that if I visited the Capitol right now, the copy machine in Sandoval’s office for sure be a Canon?

• Sen. Dean Heller decided to poke the dragon this week. And as we all know from “Game of Thrones,” one does not poke the dragon!

In a story about Democrats making pilgrimages to Nevada, Heller was quoted saying that he hoped Sandoval would at least consider running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

“I would just encourage him to consider it at this point,” Heller said when asked of a Sandoval challenge to Reid, according to Manu Raju’s story in Politico.

Reid, whose influence extends from the White House all the way down into the back conference room of the Latin Chamber of Commerce’s Latino BizPAC, is maneuvering to prevent Sandoval from having any thought of running for Senate. If Assemblywoman Lucy Flores wins the job of lieutenant governor, it’s thought that Republican powers-that-be wouldn’t encourage Sandoval to leave before his term is up. But if Republican Mark Hutchison were to be No. 2, Sandoval just might feel more comfortable about not finishing out his term.

Now, even though a poll showed Sandoval more popular and beating Reid in a head-to-head matchup, I still say that Sandoval won’t take the plunge, no matter how much pressure he gets. And that means Heller is only serving to provoke Reid, which is not a very smart thing to do.

• Diversity of Voices/High-Quality Journalism Update: Brian Greenspun, owner and publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, has been named to the board of Barrick Mining. Now, there’s no law that says a man who owns a newspaper can’t also sit on the board of a big mining company. But each outside interest that Greenspun has presents a dilemma for the journalists who work for the Sun and the various other Greenspun Media Group publications.

“This is great news. Brian is the first Nevadan to ever serve on the Barrick board and it shows how deeply committed our Chairman John Thornton is to Nevada,” wrote Barrick’s Michael Brown in an email. (Side note: If Barrick is so damn committed to Nevada, and has done business in the state for years, how is Greenspun the first Nevadan to ever sit on the board?)

So long as Greenpsun’s interests are disclosed in each and every story that bears on mining issues, the conflict can be managed. But why do I think we’re suddenly going to see the Sun take the position that removing the constitutional tax cap on the net proceeds of minerals is a really bad idea?

• And finally this week, if you thought Nevada was home to the most dysfunctional local governments in Nevada, you’d be wrong. It turns out, the Washoe County School District Board of Trustees is in serious contention for the title. First, the board fires its superintendent, Pedro Martinez, on flimsy premises and in potential violation of the Open Meeting Law. Then, there’s huge community backlash, including from first lady Kathleen Sandoval (and man, you do not want that lady mad at you!). Then, the board reversed course and offered Martinez his job back like nothing ever happened. And then, Assembly Minority Leader Pat Hickey announced he was introducing a bill to change how school boards run.

We can change the structure of governance all we like, but the bottom line is this: Voters have to make better choices when it comes to putting people in charge of public agencies. Those votes do matter, because if you get the wrong people, you get gigantic mistakes made for what Washoe County School District Board of Trustees President Barbara Clark called “attitude, demeanor, and lack of cooperation.”

Well, you know what they say. People make mistakes, but failing to learn from your mistakes is the real sin. Let’s hope Washoe voters have learned their lesson and are willing to fix things.

On that happy note, see you next week!