Comedy: Mick Foley
Former pro wrestler Mick Foley was always a fan of stand-up comedy. “I loved sitting around my cousin’s turntable and listening to George Carlin’s Class Clown,” he recalls, “and thinking it was the funniest thing I ever heard. And obviously these were words I shouldn’t have been listening to at 7 or 8 years-old.” Carlin,…
Morning News and Stuff
Hello all. Hope you’re ready for some news, because I’ve got a bunch for ya. First, happy Veterans Day! Here’s a timely bit of news: Cincinnati City Council members Chris Seelbach and Wendell Young announced an initiative yesterday to track the number of veterans employed by the city in an effort make Cincinnati the most…
Cranley, Portune Propose City-County Shared Services Taskforce
Mayor John Cranley and Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune are proposing a task force that could help the city and county governments share services. The idea has been proposed in the past with little progress, however, due to politics and an unwillingness to cut departments. But Portune and Cranley point to city-county cooperation on The…
Human Rights Campaign Taps Cincinnati for Equality Index Announcement
National LGBT rights group Human Rights Campaign will make a trip to Cincinnati Wednesday to announce its Municipal Equality Index. The index scores how welcoming cities are to members of the LGBT community. HRC researched every state capital, the country's 200 biggest cities by population, the four largest cities in every state, the city with…
Wussy to Make National TV Debut This Month
Last month, several photos featuring the members of Cincinnati’s Wussy hanging out at the CBS studios in New York made their way to the band’s social media accounts. Turns out the band wasn’t just taking a studio tour; they were invited guests! Wussy filmed an in-studio session and were interviewed for a feature on the…
Music Tonight: The Soil & the Sun, The Revivalists and More
The brand new Over-the-Rhine music venue The Woodward Theater had a public open house event this past Friday and now it’s time for the venue’s first official show. The Woodward — brought to you by the people who run MOTR Pub, which is just across Main Street from the new club — hosts acclaimed Grand Rapids,…
Morning News and Stuff
Morning all. There is a busy weekend’s worth of news to recap, but before we get to that, I just gotta say this: I went to something called Mustard Club Saturday, and it changed my life. While I haven’t been quite as up on the German heritage tip as a lot of folks in the…
Retro-culture Humorist Charles Phoenix Wants to Come to Cincinnati
Charles Phoenix, the California pop culture humorist who came to Dayton Art Institute last night with his slide show of retro-Americana images, managed to find time to visit Cincinnati and take some photos in advance of his performance. He included them in his show. He called Cincinnati Museum Center’s Union Terminal one of the most…
Weekend Music: Primus, Blues & Boogie Piano Summit, More
One of the few “Alternative Revolution” bands left over from the ’90s, Primus, returns to Cincinnati tonight for a special show at the Taft Theatre. The veteran band is still one of the more unique and eccentric groups around that maintains a large fan base. That’s singularity might have something to do with their longevity.…
These Walls Have Heard It All: Woodward Theater
It’s 1791, and as William Woodward’s many siblings head out into the world — some to sea, some to South Carolina — he decides to head into the vast Northwest Territory to a little town that looks like hardly anything more than an outpost. Little did he know that a little more than a decade…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all. Here’s what’s going on around the city and beyond this morning. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled yesterday to uphold same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee. You can read more right here about that ruling, and whether it means a Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage. •…
Stage Door: What You Can Learn at the Theater
Most of us go to the theater to be entertained. But we are often subtly educated and sometimes changed by the stories we witness. Take Driving Miss Daisy, for instance, Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play from 1987, currently onstage at the Carnegie in Covington. It has just three characters, all from different points on the…
Federal Court Upholds Region’s Same-Sex Marriage Bans
The Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals yesterday upheld laws banning same-sex marriage in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. The 2-1 decision covers six cases in those four states brought by a total of 16 couples. Among them are Cincinnati residents Brittani Henry-Rogers and Brittni Rogers, who are fighting so both can be…
Corbett Foundation’s Final Gift Goes to CCM’s Opera Department
In August, the Corbett Foundation announced it was closing shop, ending one of the city's most generous streams of philanthropy. It turns out that there was still one more gift in the hopper. On Tuesday, The University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music's J. Ralph Corbett Distinguished Chair of Opera received the final award of $1…
Alton Brown Talks Cincinnati Eats
Cincinnati-specific foods are often the butt of jokes when non-Midwesterners try them for the first time. I mean, who could forget Deadspin's assault on Cincinnati chili or West Coasters' reactions to goetta? But when celebrity chef Alton Brown came to Cincinnati for his live show Saturday, he arrived with an open mind and empty belly.…
GOP Leaders Announce Plans… Behind Wall Street Journal Paywall
It's a new day in America. There's a Republican tide sweeping into office, led by our own House Speaker John Boehner and neighbor to the south Senate Minority Leader (soon to be majority leader) Mitch McConnell. These new, brave soldiers, elected by the slim sliver of the American population that actually turned out to vote,…
From The Copy Desk
Good late morning readers! After an absence last week it's good to be back. I found plenty of Words Nobody Uses or Knows in this week's issue. (If you're feeling as hopeless about the midterm election results as I am maybe some vocab will cheer you up? Eh. Not likely, but we can try!) Best…
Music Tonight: Restorations, Tas Cru and More
Philly rockers Restorations play Newport’s Southgate House Revival tonight. Labelmates The Smith Street Band open the show at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the door. Restorations recently released its third album, LP3 (following LP1 and LP2, of course), though the great label, SideOneDummy Records. Rolling Stone said of the new album, “When their trio of…
Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra Appoints Interim Music Director
Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra this week announced the appointment of Kelly Kuo as Interim Music Director. Kuo will oversee the CCO's new festival format that debuts in August 2015. Currently the artistic director of the Oregon Mozart Players and the music director and conductor of the Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas in Austin,…
Morning News and Stuff
All right all right! Before we get to what’s going on today, I want to talk for a minute about yesterday’s print issue, which we’re pretty proud of. Our copy editor/news person Samantha got her first news feature in, and it’s super-interesting look at new developments with the Wasson Way bike trail. Check it out.…
Manifest Gallery’s FotoFocus Shows Were Powerful
So many FotoFocus-related shows overlap and then close in October that it’s hard to get to them all or even write about in a timely fashion those that I do get to see. But I didn’t want to let Manifest Gallery’s Neither Here Nor There juried group show of photography and video work and its…
Laggies
During an unusually crowded opening day at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Lynn Shelton’s Laggies became the obtrusive hump in the middle of my day, challenging my sensibilities. Its heroine Megan (Keira Knightley) is approaching 30, drifting along in a relationship with Anthony (Mark Webber), her high school sweetheart, while still occasionally couch surfing…
Interstellar
Christopher Nolan and his screenwriting brother Jonathan take audiences on yet another spellbinding journey — this time, a much more literal adventure in search of a new home for humanity, as planet Earth faces extinction. The discovery of a nearby wormhole triggers a frantic quest spearheaded by a former maverick NASA test pilot (Matthew McConaughey)…
Big Hero 6
Based on a comic by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle, this animated feature presents the story of the bond between Hiro Hamada (voiced by Ryan Potter), an inventive computer and technology prodigy who started out in life as a sickly kid, and Baymax (voiced by Scott Adsit), the cutting-edge inflatable robot caretaker developed by Hiro’s…
I Just Can’t Get Enough
Halloween is officially over and I have to say, this year’s costumes — both celebrity and normal humans — left a lot to be desired (and I’m not even going there with the Ray Rice costumes). In my book, a costume can be scary, funny or sexy, but it has to be clever, one-of-a-kind or…
Walhill Farm (Review)
T here is something eerie about a cornfield at night. Maybe it’s just the time of year, but as we drove down the winding road that led to Walhill Farm in Batesville, Ind., on a recent Friday night, we couldn’t help but wonder if we had taken a wrong turn into a scary movie. Fortunately,…
Female Food Start-Ups Hosts Open House and Tasting
The Northern Kentucky Incubator Kitchen, located in the basement of the Senior Services of Northern Kentucky building (1032 Madison Ave., Covington, Ky.), is the working home of several women looking to start and grow their own food-based businesses. (Read a profile here.) Started by Rachel DesRochers in 2013, the kitchen's current tenants include The Delish Dish, This Lady's, Babushka…
‘The Newsroom’ Signs Off with Final Season
Despite the growing prominence and convenience of web media and the straggling efforts of news radio and print publications, many Americans still consume their news in TV form. The Newsroom (Season Premiere, 9 p.m. Sunday, HBO) gives us a very contemporary look at that format from both sides of the screen, mixing true, recent news…
A Music Legend Struggles to Hang Onto Himself
Regional audiences settling down to the James Keach documentary Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me will likely experience a sense of déjà vu, considering the recent screenings of local filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett’s doc feature Alive Inside, which explored expanding use of music as a cognitive rehabilitation tool in nursing homes and beyond for people with dementia.…
Carmon DeLeone’s ‘Peter Pan’ Score Soars
Celebrating his 46th anniversary as music director for the Cincinnati Ballet, Carmon DeLeone has a lot to be proud of. The company is well known for its frequent performances to live music under the Maestro’s baton, but this weekend is extra special: DeLeone conducts his own original score for the full-length Peter Pan. “Although this…
Finding Humor in Retro Culture
The recent growth in popularity of all things Mid-Century Modern — from flowing, stone-and-glass showcase homes like Eero Saarinen’s Miller House in Columbus, Ind., to the “Googie”-style neon-bedecked coffee shops and drive-ins of the 1950s — has been good for pop culture humorist Charles Phoenix. As Mid-Century Modern becomes desired, preserved and collected, many cities…
Homemade Happy Hour: Obscura
Pop into Obscura (645 Walnut St., Downtown) and you’ll get an experience you won’t forget. The decor is fit for a scene out of 18th century France, and as I walked in I half expected to see Marie Antoinette lounging on one of the plush pastel chairs, eating cream pie and sipping on an Easter-themed…
Dylan Ryan/Sand with Dave McDonnell Group
Chicago born/L.A. based drummer/composer Dylan Ryan’s entry into music began with attempts at guitar and piano playing, but the aspiring musician found himself particularly attracted to the drums. He began to dissect and learn drum parts from some of his Heavy Metal favorites, then took lessons at Northwestern University, where he studied under the tutelage…
Carcass with Obituary, Exhumed and Noisem
Any discussion on the origins of Grindcore and Death Metal absolutely has to include Carcass on the shortlist of the genres’ progenitors. If you require official justification for an assertion of that magnitude, check the subject’s authoritative bible, Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore by Decibel editor Albert Mudrian. Carcass is…
Primus
Les Claypool is what you might think of as a dark magician of music. An accomplished though bizarre bassist and vocalist, he is the driving mind behind the hardly definable band Primus. Formed in 1984 as just Claypool and guitarist Todd Huth, drummer Jay Lane joined shortly after. Huth and Lane left by 1988 and…
Music Tonight: Oozing Wound, Jeezy and More
Chicago Thrash band Oozing Wound are in town tonight for a show at Rake’s End in Brighton. Forced Opinion, Monitor Lizard and Iron Oath also perform. Showtime is 9 p.m. Heavy on dark and clever humor and creative riffage, Oozing Wound is touring behind its second album release, Earth Suck, which came out Oct. 21…
As I Lay Dying
I admire Brittany Maynard. The 29-year-old Oregon woman and terminal brain cancer sufferer took a doctor-sanctioned lethal concoction Saturday, ending her life when and where she wanted — at home in her bed with her family surrounding her. Besieged by seizures, debilitating head pain and given six months to live last spring, Maynard became a…
Cincinnati vs. The World 11.05.14
The resurrected World Trade Center in New York City officially opened for business Nov. 3, 13 years after the devastating 9/11 attack. Publishing giant Conde Nast will occupy the building along with advertising firm Kids Creative, stadium operator Legends Hospitality, Servecorp and BMB Group. At 104 stories, it is the country’s tallest building. World +2…
Worst Week Ever!: Oct. 29-Nov. 4
Pope Francis Admits God Isn’t Anti-Science, Tries to Make Catholic Church Seem Less Uninformed For hundreds of years many people have looked to revered religious figures with big hats for guidance on how to be good people. It used to work, but as we have become less interested in church activities as a society, the…
Report: Ohio Needs to Double Transportation Funding Over Next Decade
Ohio will need to spend $1.1 billion annually on public transit by the year 2025, a new study commissioned by the Ohio Department of Transportation says. That’s nearly double the money the state currently spends every year on public transportation, including buses and rail service. However, the state has been trending in the opposite direction,…
Morning Election Rundown and Stuff
Well, folks, election season is over for another year, and we got precious few surprises last night. The GOP ran up the score in every statewide election, took control of the U.S. Senate by picking up between seven to nine seats and scooped up even more seats in the House than they had before. Rep.…
Council OKs Sealing of Low-Level Weed Convictions
Some of the 10,000 Cincinnatians convicted under an unpopular and now-repealed marijuana law will now be able to put the past behind them. City Council on Oct. 29 passed an ordinance that allows some city residents convicted of having less than 200 grams of marijuana to have the charges removed from their criminal record. In…
City Passes Regulations on Rideshare Companies
City Council voted Oct. 29 to approve rules governing ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft, marking the first time since the companies came here in March that they’ve been regulated by the city. “I don’t know if it will ever be perfect, but in other cities, they’ve outright banned Uber and Lyft,” said Councilwoman Amy…
Trail + Transit
T he 6.5-mile stretch of ugly and abandoned Wasson Way rail tracks that run through several upscale, bustling Cincinnati neighborhoods have long-since been hotly debated, at times pitting advocates of light rail against bike trail supporters. But a new land-use study completed in October could pave the way for the line to be developed into…
Sad Songs Say So Much
HOT: Sad Songs Say So Much For some depressed people, sad music holds a strange allure. A new study shows that the attraction isn’t sadistic or simply a case of misery loving company. The study, published in the science journal PLOS ONE, found that along with “providing consolation” to the sad listener, depressing music helps…
Ricky Nye Brings Back the Boogie
One of Greater Cincinnati’s most unique annual music events, the Blues & Boogie Piano Summit, returns for its 15th year this weekend. For the 2014 edition, the showcase of international Boogie Woogie Blues pianists takes place over two nights (Friday and Saturday) at the Southgate House Revival (111 E. Sixth St., Newport, Ky., 859-431-2201, southgatehouse.com).…
Battling Barriers
It was nine days into the new year, during the doldrums of a particularly brutal Cincinnati winter, when the reports came in about the woman left lying in the road on the 600 block of West McMicken Avenue. At first, police thought she was a hit and run victim. They showed up about 2:30 a.m.…
The Main Event
V ine Street in Over-the-Rhine usually receives all of the hosannas — and Guy Fieri’s overwhelming presence — but that’s about to change when The Woodward Theater opens on Main Street this month. Vine’s become saturated with popular restaurants such as Bakersfield, A Tavola and Senate, which can run up to two-hour waits on weekends.…
San Rise
A fter graduating from Yale, where he studied musical composition, Ellis Ludwig-Leone secluded himself in Alberta, Canada, for six months to work on his debut album as San Fermin. The result, last year’s self-titled San Fermin, mixes Ludwig-Leone’s Classical background with a healthy does of Chamber Pop, yielding a dynamic, richly textured record that was…
The Revivalists with Black Cadillacs
It honestly seems as though New Orleans births bands with the same frequency and volume as the New York subway system accrues passengers. In the case of The Revivalists, the group didn’t coalesce under the banner of an irrefutable desire to make music as much as an act of pure serendipity. In 2007, guitarist Zack…
