If you grew up in the Midwest you’ve probably heard the catchy jingle for “Stanley Steemer, the Carpet Cleaner.” But I bet you’ve never heard it sung operatically, or with some bebop or thrash. Now you can do that — all in one three-minute video featuring University of Cincinnati musical theater grad Mia Gentile, a 2011 grad of the College-Conservatory of Music. Local audiences know her for several amusing turns in incarnations of The Marvelous Wonderettes at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati and the sold-out (and revived) production of next to normal, but trust me, this girl is bound for glory. People who’ve never heard of her or the carpet cleaning company are tuning in now by the thousands, thanks to a YouTube video, cleverly titled “The Stanley Steemer Variations (by Mia).” Gentile generated with local musician and producer Roger Klug. Julie Spangler, a professional pianist and musical theater instructor at CCM, introduced Klug and Gentile, who wanted to produce a voiceover demo of the various musical styles she could reproduce (which appears to be limitless). Klug convinced her to translate her vocal performances into a video, which they shot in one day over the summer. “It was a total collaboration,” Klug tells me. “We talked about what each character would look like, she did the makeup and hair, I shot and edited the thing. We completely did it for no other reason than ‘just for the fun of it.’” It was shot at the local studio Mental Giant with Klug using a Sony Handycam. Well, that it was — it’s apparent from watching. But everyone is getting in on the fun, and the video has taken off virally on YouTube. When Klug contacted me on Monday morning, it had had 40,000 hits in just a few days. By midnight the piece had exploded, exceeding 100,000 hits. He and Gentile have created a blog site to support it: http://miavideo.wordpress.com. Even better, the Stanley Steemer people have picked it up, hyping it on their Facebook page, which has led to a suspicion that the whole thing is a clever marketing ploy. “Another faction thinks Stanley Steemer owes us a big check,” Klug jokes, “which I'm inclined to agree with!” It’s spread to an international audience now, dare I say “picking up steam” with a mention and a link in the U.K. edition of The Huffington Post. Before this winds up, Gentile will need her own 1-800 number!

During the past year CityBeat has spent a lot of energy reporting on countless Republican screw-ups, from typical shortsighted policies to legislation that is straight-up offensive to women, minorities, gay people and the poor and working class. But we didn’t realize that by pointing out how offensive and irrelevant the country’s GOP leaders were acting, that we were inadvertently killing America. That's why we would like to formally apologize to the Lebanon tea party in Warren County. The email you sent to The Enquirer today hit us pretty hard — the fact that you’re literally wearing black and mourning America because “socialists, welfare and unions took over this country” is super sad. In our haste to ask questions of elected leaders, fact check their statements and put their beliefs and policies into perspective over the past few months, we forgot how badly people in Warren County wish America could be like the 1950s again, when women knew their place and black people had to operate the elevators and never say anything whites didn’t want to hear. Mad Men is a great show.  We didn’t mean to be tricked by President Obama’s stimulus bill — we (stupidly) believed the economists who said it staved off a depression caused by under-regulation of the housing and financial industries (we tried to believe Mitt Romney’s concept of further reducing regulations so the job-creators can stimulate the economy in the private sector thus giving our wealth back to us, but it was maybe too complicated for us to understand?).  Some people we know kept their jobs when the president didn’t allow the American car companies to go broke even though they’re the ones that decided to max out profits on SUVs with truck beds on the back. Other people we know spent time last year without health care, and this country’s health care costs are somewhere around twice as much as any other country’s so we were like, “Yea, reforming that system sounds about right.” But we admit that we don’t know what it’s going to be like for the 15 percent of this country living in poverty to all of the sudden have access to preventative care. Someone in Cincinnati died of a tooth problem last year, and we don’t even know if that’s covered.  We realize that it wasn’t Mitt Romney who used the term “legitimate rape,” but it made us want to throw up, which slowed down productivity that might have allowed us to figure out that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was the only thing keeping our country’s military from turning Afghanistan into a European-style gay disco.  We thought it was kind of gross when the president killed Osama bin Laden, but everyone was really happy about it so we focused our attention on the results of the president’s home buying and refinancing programs that helped stimulate the economy and saved people’s houses, even though we’re all a bunch of renters who don’t even know how to use a level.  So we’re clearly at fault for your expectation of the downfall of this country, and we realize that you’re upset and probably right about America becoming a socialist nation within months. We messed up bad this time, but we want you to know that we’re not blind to it — your press release has put our actions into a perspective that we wish we had yesterday or, even better, several years ago before we learned how to do our jobs the right way.  At least you have the local daily newspaper to publish your emotional reactions to historical election results and to continue endorsing GOP candidates no matter how ill qualified and misguided they are. Please don’t mourn long — there’s still hope for the type of social regression you’re looking for, especially in Warren County. 

Voice of the common man, conscience of the American people, shepherd of men and 700WLW staple Bill Cunningham made an impassioned plea to his radio audience Nov. 2, saying if Mitt Romney lost the election, he would end his 30-plus year career in radio. “For nearly 30 years I’ve been the voice of the common man and conscience of the American people. I have led you and you’ve allowed me to lead you through thick and thin, through good times and bad, through recessions, depressions, wars, feasts and famines, through hurricanes, tornadoes and more,” Cunningham said. “If Mitt Romney does not win the election, I, Bill Cunningham, your shepherd, will quit radio on Wednesday Nov. 7. I’ll give it up. Continue my great television career and practicing law, but if my credibility means anything between you and me it means that you will listen to what I have to say.” Now, in the morning after, a time when we ourselves have often felt that “oh God, what have I done” feeling, we at CityBeat want to make our own impassioned plea: Don’t quit, Willie. Cincinnati needs you. You’ve always been a source of inspiration and wisdom to budding journalists and truth-seekers at CityBeat. Were it not for your Aug. 28, 2009 interview with Cincinnati Profile, we would never have known what “my baby daddy” was. We might forget what Barack Hussein Obama’s full name is were it not for your show. Without your faithful shepherding we’d go on believing the lie that things like assistance to the disabled and payments to workers who are injured on the job were good things! We’re glad to hear that you are backtracking on your Nov. 2 pledge planning to go on an intervention with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rob Portman to determine your future in radio. As you said on your show today, “every herd of sheep needs a shepherd,” and you’ve been our shepherd for more than 30 years. Please don’t “take [your] staff, crash in [your] skull and kill [yourself].” We, the bleating masses of Cincinnati, still need you.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati this week sent a letter to all local parishes warning them to keep politics off the pulpit. The letter reminds pastors and parishioners that church leadership may not endorse parties or candidates or take any action that could be construed as endorsement, let candidates or parties use church facilities, distribute political materials in church or use church publications to promote a party or candidate. “The Church has the responsibility to provide moral guidance on political issues; however, the Church does not wish to engage in political activity,” Chancellor the Rev. Steve Angi wrote in the Oct. 24 letter. Some Cincinnati-area parishes had placed stacks of tickets to a rally for Rep. Paul Ryan or stacks of Republican sample ballots, according to Parishes Without Politics, a group of lay Catholics. “We think the Cincinnati Archdiocese’s letter should be a model for bishops nationwide and the rest of the Church leadership,” group spokesperson Deborah Rose-Milavec wrote in an emailed statement. “Catholics should feel free to vote their own consciences without being bombarded by partisan political messages from the pulpits, on parish websites, in parish bulletins, in the vestibules or anywhere else on parish property.” CityBeat has previously written about how both major parties are using different aspects of Catholic social teaching to woo voters.