Father’s Day is June 16, so make sure you get out there and show Dad (or the Dad-like guy in your life) a good time this weekend. There’s lots going on the next few days: stuff to do with Pops, and plenty to check out on your own once Dad starts talking about how wrecked the government is and how tough he had it when he was a kid (sorry, Dad, but it gets old).

Newport’s Italianfest runs Friday-Sunday on the Levee. Food is obviously a highlight at this annual fest; expect plenty of pizza, pasta, cannoli and gelato from area restaurants. There will also be live music, cooking and eating contests, rides and games and a photo exhibit of Italians that settled in Newport generations ago. Admission is free; go here for hours and more info.

Cincinnati Opera’s summer season kicks off with Mozart’s comic drama, Don Giovanni. The opener’s second showing is Saturday. Read our full Opera season preview here.

Jungle Jim’s is known for being the go-to grocery store for exotic types of meats, fancy cheeses, rare candy and produce from around the world, but it also has an extensive beer selection. Friday and Saturday, Jim’s hosts an International Beer Fest featuring 350 beers from 100 breweries across the globe. Tickets are $40 for Friday, $45 for Saturday, $15 for designated drivers and can be purchased at the store’s beer and wine department while they last (online sales have ended).

The City Flea takes over Washington Park Saturday. Browse furniture, clothing, housewares, accessories and other vintage, antique, local and handmade goodies, plus food from local vendors and food trucks from 10 a.m.- 4 p.m.

Does your father love pork? Of course he does, this is America! Bring Dad to Covington for MainStrasse Village’s “Original” Goettafest Friday-Sunday. Find ample versions of the sausagey Cincinnati stable along with plenty of beer, music, shopping and other festival favorites. Go here for details.

For more stuff to do this weekend, check out our To Do picks full calendar and Rick Pender’s Stage Door for weekend theater offerings.

More to look forward to: Peep our Summer Guide, tucked into this week's issue, for all sorts of seasonal goodness to keep you busy all summer long. And be sure to get tickets to next Wednesday's Margarita Madness celebration at Newport on the Levee. Admission is $20 in advance ($25 at the Levee, if there are still tickets available) and includes ample tequila and margarita samples, summery bites from area restaurants and live music and DJs, all from 5:30-9 p.m. June 19. Get tickets and more info here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For this year's installment of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., CityBeat sent the veteran ’Roo team of writer (and musician) Ric Hickey and photographer Chuck Madden down south again to report on the festivities. Keep an eye on this here music blog for updates, pics and more from Tennessee all ’Roo weekend. (If you can't make it to the fest, Cork n' Bottle in Covington is having a "Road to Roo" party that runs through tomorrow's festivities, with a live stream from the fest, drink specials and a rotating collection of visiting food trucks.)

Turkey vultures circled overhead as Chuck and I drove through the rolling green hills of central Tennessee between Murfreesboro and McMinnville, on our way to Manchester for the annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Our circuitous route through small towns and backwoods was briefly complicated by pounding rain. But soon the skies cleared and we found our way to the media campground located behind Bonnaroo's Which Stage, happily settling into an area that's just a few minutes walk from the festival grounds.

The friendly spirit of the festival was upon us immediately as we were greeted by new friends, fellow travelers in the campground and other members of the assembled press in the backstage Media compound.

Highlights of our Thursday perambulations included Futurebirds in This Tent, a glimpse of slam-bang Country rockers Houndmouth in the On Tap Lounge and a display of first class Honky Tonk by J.D. McPherson in That Tent that stopped Chuck and me in our tracks.

McPherson had the crowd smiling and dancing to a Rockabilly hybrid that swung like a wrecking ball. Western Swing met Chicago Blues as McPherson and crew featured upright bass, B-3 organ and saxophone for a syrupy saunter through Bo Diddley's "I Wanna Try For You." McPherson himself added some tasteful Telecaster licks, bringing a warbling echo of Surf music to the mix.

Fan-shot video of McPherson swingin' through "Your Love."

Head to Dayton's Nutter Center this weekend to see Cirque du Soleil's classic show, Quidam. The show, at the time a big top production, spent several weeks in Cincinnati in August and September 2006 in a "grand chapiteau" on the Ohio River bank near the Suspension Bridge. It's the story of a bored kid named Zoé whose parents ignore her. We enter the world of her imagination when Quidam, a headless wanderer under an umbrella, hands her his blue bowler hat. As her self-absorbed parents float away, the story moves into the magical reality her imagination, populated by Cirque's physically astonishing performers. There's a "German Wheel," a pair of man-sized double hoops with a guy rolling around the stage; an amazing silk contortionist, high above the stage); and "Statue," a mesmerizing performance by a muscle-bound guy and a powerful woman who slowly balance in various positions. My favorite was Banquine, the finale by 15 acrobats, launching tumblers high into the air and catching them. Through Sunday. Tickets: cirquedusoleil.com

Got questions for CityBeat about, well, anything? Submit them here, and we’ll try to get back to you in our first Answers Issue.

CityBeat is also looking to talk to anyone who’s been incarcerated for a drug-related offense in Ohio. If you know someone or are someone interested in talking to us, email glopez@citybeat.com.

An Ohio House bill introduced June 11 would impose harsher restrictions on legal abortions, and some of the requirements may coerce doctors into giving medically inaccurate information. Among other requirements, the bill would force doctors to explain fetal development and supposed risks to inducing an abortion, while pregnant patients would be forced to undergo an ultrasound 48 hours before the procedure. But research has found that, barring rare complications, the medical risks listed in the bill are not linked to abortion.

Local leaders are beginning a collaborative effort to combat Cincinnati's alarmingly high rate of infant mortality. The effort is bringing together local politicians from both sides of the aisle, nonprofit groups and local hospitals. Infant mortality rates are measured by the number of deaths of babies less than one year old per 1,000 live births. In Cincinnati, infant mortality rates are at 13.6, while the national average is six. In previous comments, Mayor Mark Mallory explained his moral justification for increased efforts against infant mortality: "In Cincinnati, we have had more infant deaths in recent years than victims of homicide. Our community, justifiably, invests millions of dollars, immense political capital and large amounts of media attention in reducing our homicide rate. It's time to start doing the same for our infant mortality rate."

State Rep. Alicia Reece, who heads the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, sent a letter to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted yesterday criticizing recent efforts to investigate 39 voter fraud cases in Hamilton County. "It is unfortunate that during the past few years, the focus has been on voter suppression instead of voter access and education," Reece said in a statement. "Many of these voters come from African-American and low-income neighborhoods, and they would benefit from a comprehensive voter education program." CityBeat previously covered the 39 "double voter" cases, which mostly involved voters sending an absentee ballot prior to Election Day then voting through a provisional ballot on Election Day, here.

Mayoral candidates Roxanne Qualls, John Cranley, Jim Berns and Stacy Smith squared off at a mayoral forum yesterday. Democrats Qualls and Cranley, who are widely seen as the top contenders, debated the parking plan and streetcar project — both of which Qualls supports and Cranley opposes. CityBeat previously covered the streetcar project and how it could relate to the mayor's race here.

An audit of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) found Ohio's Medicaid program could save $30 million by avoiding fraudulent billing. State officials responded to the audit by highlighting changes in budget plans that supposedly take steps to reduce Medicaid fraud, including Gov. John Kasich's proposal to add five full-time Medicaid auditors to perform additional on-site monitoring in an effort to reduce overpayments.

Ohio lawmakers seem unlikely to approve a federally funded Medicaid expansion, but bipartisan bills introduced in the Ohio House and Senate make sweeping changes to the Medicaid program that aim to lower costs and make the government health care program more efficient. Legislators claim the goal is to bring down costs without reducing services, all while providing avenues for Medicaid participants to move out of poverty. Hearings for the bill will begin next week.

After giving a speech celebrating the resurfacing of a high-speed test track, Gov. Kasich rode a car at 130 miles per hour in a more literal "victory lap."

Scientists are apparently making advancements in helping people regrow limbs.

An Ohio House bill introduced June 11 would add more restrictions to obtaining a legal abortion in Ohio, and some of the requirements may force doctors to provide medically inaccurate information.

With an exception for medical emergencies but not rape or incest, House Bill 200 would increase the waiting period on abortions from 24 to 48 hours.

The bill would also force doctors to give patients, verbally and in writing, a slew of warnings 48 hours before an abortion procedure.

Among the requirements, doctors would have to explain medical risks that the legislation claims are associated with abortion, including infection, hemorrhage, cervical or uterine perforation, infertility, risks to subsequent pregnancies and the increased risk of breast cancer.

The bill would also require doctors to provide a description of fetal development with colored photographs and “the probable anatomical and physiological characteristics of the embryo or fetus at that age.”

As part of the bill, pregnant women seeking an abortion would be forced to get an ultrasound two days before a procedure. During the process, doctors would have to provide a verbal description of the ultrasound, including whether there’s an audible heartbeat, and a written and verbal description of whether the pregnancy is viable. If the pregnancy is not viable, doctors would be required to tell patients that a miscarriage is likely even if the patient doesn’t get an abortion.

The most extensive research has found that, barring rare complications, induced abortions are not linked to the medical risks listed in the bill.

Regarding infertility, the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cited four studies, concluding that, “Published studies strongly suggest that infertility is not a consequence of uncomplicated induced abortion. There are small discrepancies among studies, but none of these studies was of sufficient power to detect a small association."

The American Cancer Society has a page on its website dedicated to abortion and breast cancer, which claims, “The largest, and probably the most reliable, study on this topic was done during the 1990s in Denmark, a country with very detailed medical records on all its citizens. … After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found that induced abortion(s) had no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. The size of this study and the manner in which it was done provide good evidence that induced abortion does not affect a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.”

House Bill 200 must first work through committee before it gets a full vote from the House. Its chances of passing the 99-person chamber are so far are unclear.

The bill was introduced by State Rep. Ron Hood, a Republican from Ashville, and co-sponsored by 34 of his Republican colleagues. Among them are several state representatives from the Cincinnati area: Louis Terhar, Louis Blessing, Ron Maag, Wes Retherford and Peter Stautberg.

Both chambers of the General Assembly recently passed budget bills that include anti-abortion policies. On April 18, the Republican-controlled Ohio House passed a budget bill that defunds Planned Parenthood and funds pro-abstinence, anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.

On June 6, the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate passed another budget bill that includes the Ohio House measures. The Ohio Senate also added provisions that ban abortion clinics from establishing transfer agreements with public hospitals and allow the state health director to shut down abortion clinics that don’t have transfer agreements.

Both chambers are currently reconciling their budget bills through a conference committee, which should produce a final version of the budget for the governor. Gov. John Kasich must approve a budget before a June 30 deadline.

Correction: This story originally said there are no exceptions for medical emergencies, but there is an exception for medical emergencies in the bill. The story has been updated and corrected.

In the beginning, there was Lenny Bruce. And Lenny Bruce said the word "fuck" and the word was good. 

Unfortunately, the word killed his career, and heroin killed his body, but he softened the ground for the Holy Trinity of comedy to follow; Robert Klein (keen observationalist with a social/cultural conscience), George Carlin (an acrobatic magician's use of language in the service of every possible subject) and Richard Pryor, the heir to the throne and, in Pryor's own parlance, the baddest motherfucker of them all.

In the liner notes to No Pryor Restraints: Life in Concert, a new seven-audio CD/two-DVD box set from Shout Factory further illuminating the legendary comic's brilliance, great-in-his-own-right Robin Williams suggests that, just as baseball honors its heroes by retiring their numbers, comedy should retire the word "motherfucker" as a tribute to "one of the best there ever was, ever shall be, comedy without end. Amen."

Pryor would never go for that, of course. He would tell you that he fought long and hard to transform the word "motherfucker" from a horrifying epithet relegated to other-side-of-the-tracks establishments and their low clientele to a uniquely descriptive word that punctuated his bits with conversational ease. If he'd gotten wind of that campaign before his death, I'd be willing to bet Pryor's response would have been, "Retire it? You motherfuckers are going to have to start saying it twice as much because I ain't gonna be here to hold up my motherfucking end. Ain't nobody retiring shit, motherfucker."

No Pryor Restraints is not the first collection to attempt to encapsulate Richard Pryor's revolutionary comedic brilliance. In 2000, Warner Brothers released ...And It's Deep Too!, a definitive (and Grammy-winning) box set which largely served as the CD debut of the bulk of Pryor's catalog, and five years later, just months before Pryor's death from multiple sclerosis, came Evolution/Revolution, a two-CD set that cherry-picked his 1971 Craps (After Hours) album, his appearance at Wattstax and a handful of unreleased bits. 

To dip into that same well a third time seems perhaps slightly redundant and mercenary, but producers Reggie Collins and Steve Pokorny and Pryor's widow Jennifer Lee Pryor (who all oversaw ...And It's Deep Too!) have assembled a completely satisfying and beautifully presented collection that features a lot of old favorites and an impressive amount of unreleased material.

No Pryor Restraints begins at the dawn of Pryor's career in the mid-to-late'60s when he was still working in the general confines of conventional comedy. Even then, his increasingly unrestrained use of the word "nigger" served to defuse its inflammatory intent (it was used in the the titles of three subsequent albums and ultimately created a new self-awareness and empowerment for the Rap/Hip Hop generation), and by the early '70s, Pryor was bravely referencing his prodigious drug use, his rampant sex life and his complicated and often violent relationship with whoever was his wife at the moment, not to mention calling out America for its racist attitudes, both blatant and subtle. 

If Lenny Bruce's approach to those subjects in the '60s could be viewed as subversively distributed underground texts, then Pryor's expansion of them in the '70s would be considered wildly unedited and graphically illuminated manuscripts hawked from sidewalk tables right out in the open.

By the mid-'70s, Pryor had gotten signed to Warner Brothers and was quickly becoming recognized as one of comedy's quickest and most scathingly brilliant minds. By then he had also embarked on an eclectic career as an actor, and proved conclusively that he had dramatic chops that were every bit as finely tuned as his gift for stand-up. 

As Pryor's life became more chaotic and tumultuous, his routines became more honest and soul-baring; one of No Pryor Restraints' unreleased gems is a greatly expanded version of "New Year's Eve," Pryor's account of shooting his wife's car after an all-night party and an argument.

One of the things that No Pryor Restraints accomplishes — in a well designed and gorgeous book — is an accurate charting of Pryor's progress, from an edgy yet still relatively orthodox comic to an unbridled social critic who was not afraid to call a motherfucker a motherfucker. One of the problems with the Laff albums was that they were all shows recorded at the beginning of Pryor's career and yet their releases were interspersed with his far superior Warners albums. In this context, the listener can actually witness Pryor's evolution as he becomes more and more confident, not merely in the writing and honing of the material but in his swaggering presentation of it.

In addition to the (loosely) chronologically sequenced bits culled from the early material that comprised the albums that came out sporadically on Laff, Pryor's legitimate releases and the unreleased pieces that came from his archive, No Pryor Restraints also contains two DVDs that offer three of his most notable concert films, 1979's Live in Concert, 1982's Live on the Sunset Strip and 1983's triumphant Here and Now. 

After seven audio CDs of heart-stoppingly hilarious bits, it's almost a revelation to see Pryor do the exquisite dance that accompanied his obscenity-laced symphonies. No Pryor Restraints doesn't necessarily tell us anything we didn't already know about Richard Pryor, it merely reinforces the things we did know in a beautiful and effective way. We already knew that Pryor didn't just change the way people thought about comedy, he changed the medium itself by expanding the parameters of what was acceptable to discuss and the manner in which it's done. He also single-handedly changed race relations in America; with a criminally genius sense of humor, Pryor identified and skewered stereotypes (and obvious flaws) on both sides of the racial divide, ultimately bridging the chasm by bringing fans of every diverse ethnic group together under his all-encompassing umbrella (and poking them in the eye when they arrived).

And in changing the comedy landscape and narrowing the racial gap, Richard Pryor changed the culture in the United States. Television, movies, music and art have all been touched in immeasurable ways by the influence that rippled outward from Richard Pryor's 30-year comedy reign. That's all that motherfucker did, and it was more than motherfucking enough.

Christian Moerlein now boasts a variety of beers and lagers including Moerlein OTR Ale, Moerlein Lager House, Moerlein Barbarossa Double Dark, Moerlein Northern Liberties IPA, Moerlein Seven Hefeweizen, and Moerlein Seasonal Selections. Moerlein beers and lagers are available on tap at a number of local pubs and restaurants and in bottles at retail stores.

The brewery will be open every Friday through Sunday for tours. Tours will begin at the following times: Fridays at 5 and 7 p.m.; Saturdays at 1, 3, 5 and 7 p.m.; Sundays at 1, 3 and 5 p.m. The Christian Moerlein Craft Brewery, Tap Room and Tour Center is located in the Kaufman Pre-Prohibition Brewery Complex, 1621 Moore Street. Ample parking is available in adjacent lots. For more information, visit christianmoerlein.com.

Hopefully, you've heard about CityBeat's first Answers Issue by now, and hopefully, by now you've submitted plentiful golden, glowing and totally insightful questions you want us to answer.

If you haven't, however, there's still time to rack your brain for the most stump-worthy questions about life in Cincinnati so we, CityBeat's faithful editorial staff, can do some sleuthing, drink some Red Bull, make some calls, read some files, spend a few hours on Google, hit up the library, talk to some fortune-tellers — whatever we can to get your questions answered.

Ask us questions about life in the Queen City you want answered — that means anything on city politics, arts and culture, food, sports, neighborhoods, E. coli in the Ohio River, bird law, what an inmate eats for breakfast at the Hamilton County Justice Center, etc. Whatever's on your mind.

You submit your question (check out the Answers Issue page here), and our dutiful reporting team will pick the ones we like best, divide them up and bring you back the answers in an issue sourced directly from you guys. Your questions will be anonymous when we print them.

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