Cover Story: Right Here, Right NOW
Alec Hanley Bemis Right Here Right Now: MusicNOW Festival a Perfect Fit for Cincinnati Be honest. When you see the words "Chamber Music" on this page, do you quickly shuffle to another section, the newspaper equivalent of grabbing the remote to flip away from the PBS Classical special? Does the whole Chamber/Classical music realm…
Locals Only: : Eric Loy
Elizabeth Wu Eric Loy Eric Loy is one of those people who will send you an e-mail with sentences that end in multiple exclamation points. This element of his personality comes through in his playing — every time I listen to his music, I feel like I've taken a dose of speed. To say…
Music: In Lamb of God We Trust
Adrenaline PR Lamb of God members went to the Grammys this year and though they didn't take home a statue (thanks to Slayer), they did get to meet "Weird Al." Although acclaimed Metal act Lamb of God was nominated for a Grammy Award this year, you'd never know it from observing or listening to…
Porkopolis: Playhouse Out of the Park?
Geoff Raker Da Muttss put on a drive-by concert for the Opening Day parade. The city's large daily newspaper last week confirmed CityBeat's report — first published on the Porkopolis Blog — that Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park might move to Fifth and Race streets downtown. Influential business leaders are floating a plan to…
News to Use
Death Row Drama In the tradition of the play The Exonerated comes Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising. However, unlike the former death row prisoners in The Exonerated, the subjects of this play are still sentenced to be executed. Lucasville, written with the cooperation of five men who were sentenced to death for…
The Museum of Bad Art
Anita Douthat Thoughtful, beautiful and strong: Anita Douthat's "Bridal Suite" Just south of Boston exists a place to which every aspiring artist should pilgrimage: THE MUSEUM OF BAD ART. This institution chooses its collection — mostly paintings — with the same careful consideration as any major museum. Louise Sacco, Permanent Acting Interim Executive Director…
Ladies’ Nights
This week sees the return of the annual Chicks Rockfest at Downtown's Poison Room. The event is now in its seventh year (an impressive feat for a homegrown festival) and it has stayed true to its initial mission of showcasing lesser-known performers and musicians of the female persuasion from around the country. As it says…
News: Shocking Pattern
Citicable/Citizen Complaint Authority, City of Cincinnati ACLU attorney Al Gerhardstein wants the Citizen Complaint Authority to study patterns, not only individual incidents. The number of black men dying in police custody in Cincinnati is down. That's important, according to Al Gerhardstein, one of the plaintiff's attorneys in the Collaborative Agreement on Police/Community Relations. But…
Juggernauts: College Hoops End and Baseball Begins
Jerry Dowling One of the best elements of the college basketball season is that it ends on the same day the Major League Baseball season begins. Thus a moment of finality is really a transition from a lesser game to a better game, which salves a finality so firm as Florida's 84-75 win over…
Art: My Cincinnati
ArtWorks Megan Sanders' "Traveling Through" If you were asked to create a visual representation of what Cincinnati means to you, what would you make? Remember: no words, only images. After pondering that question, you can see how 12 local (or once-local) artists responded to that very subject in drawings, paintings and photographs. The exhibition…
Transitions
It's an amazing time of year, when you literally can see the world change around you. Flowers bloom, windows open and baseball returns. Winter even comes back to visit for a day or two. Transitions are everywhere. Big and small, gradual and immediate, personal and communal. I've lived the full spectrum this past week. I…
We Used to Know the F-Word When We Saw it
Remember when the F-word was "fuck"? Now it's "faggot," thanks to the GOP's tasty bit, lemon tart Ann Coulter. But some editors won't tell you. They report the latest fuss but not the F-word. That's the trouble. We never know what the F(orbidden)-word is. Why is it newsworthy when Ann Coulter calls Al Gore a…
Jardin Wine and Tapas Bar
Over-the-Rhine is gearing up for a restaurant renaissance. Maureen Godshall, current operating partner of Neon's, and Michael Spalding and Roula David, owners of Vinyl, last week announced plans to convert Neon's into Jardin Wine and Tapas Bar. The new restaurant is slated to open by the end of May. Jardin will feature an outdoor wine…
News: A Fighter to the End
Jimmy Heath Ray Agee of Middletown was no scientist. But he was convinced the AK Steel plant near his home was imperiling residents' health, and he agitated for change. By Maria Rogers AK Steel is a Fortune 500 company. AK's neighbor, Ray Agee, was a disabled truck driver who wouldn't back down on his…
School For Creative and Performing Arts
Peter Mueller Cincinnati Ballet Principal Dancers Kristi Capps and Dmitri Trubchanov perform Luca Veggetti's Traces. Local dance news has brought highs and lows during the past couple of weeks. You might have heard about a handful of students peacefully protesting the layoffs of dance teachers at the SCHOOL FOR CREATIVE AND PERFORMING ARTS on…
Living Out Loud: : A Simple Tale
The monks sat on a platform around an open area. They faced outward toward the sea. They were on an island, so each of them faced the ocean. What were they protecting? A village dog. A village dog sat scrunched on her haunches, licking her nipples. Was she pregnant? No one in the village knew,…
The Moog — Sold For Tomorrow (Musick)
The Moog — Sold For Tomorrow Dude, Hungary rocks! The Moog started out in the relatively cloistered Rock scene of Budapest as Nirvana/Led Zep-obsessed teens (the band's bassist couldn't play an instrument but was so inspired by their music that he learned in order to be involved) and eventually found each other to fulfill…
Something for Nothing: BNL Drop the Ball on New Videos
Oliver Meinerding Mid-1990s darlings Barenaked Ladies have been riding the new media train for quite a while, but their latest work is a major label's fantasy. The new BNL album is a collection of unused tracks from their previous effort (a two-fer!), and they're riding the YouTrain! Go to bnlmusic.com and see for yourself.…
Ascending
The small exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Transparent Reflections: Richard Pousette-Dart Works on Paper, 1940-1992, takes a neat chronological look at the work of this fringe Abstract Expressionist. One of the first images in the show, ASCENDING, dates to 1945 — a year that also marks the end of World War II and…
Upcoming Concert Reviews of The Long Winters, Girl Talk and More…
Autumn De Wilde The Long Winters The Long Winters with The Broken West and Say Hi To Your Mom Friday · Southgate House Six years ago, Harvey Danger vocalist Sean Nelson and guitarist John Roderick decided to take a busman's holiday from the band to create a recording project where the pair would each…
Thank God for Gray
Thank you for Stephanie Dunlap's column "Main Street Coming and Going" (issue of March 21). It's the most honest assessment I've read of why someone chooses, in spite of its problems, to live in Over-the-Rhine. I live in Walnut Hills but frequently find myself in OTR for the same reasons that Dunlap so beautifully describes.…
Lockdown
The small, dingy waiting area of the Hamilton County Justice Center might well be a stage set for The Vagina Monologues. The visitors sit in a half-circle, each engaged in their own story and willing to share their experiences to pass the time. Each of us is different from the other, but we're an "average"…
Diner: Review: The Hideaway
Joe Lamb The Hideaway is aptly named. In fact, it's easy to miss. Our dining companion arrived several minutes before us and actually called to say I'd given her the wrong address. But it's there — set back from Hamilton Avenue, tucked in the shadows behind the cluttered patio of its more-established neighbor, Northside…
Lookwhos: Look Who’s Eating: Amy Tobin
Graham Lienhart Amy Tobin, Culinary Director, EQ Cooking School at The Party Source Formerly an interior designer, Amy Tobin is now a working mom who runs the popular EQ cooking program, has written a cookbook and hosts a Sunday morning talk show on Q102. She laughs at the oft-cited comparison between herself and that…
News: Price Hill’s Old Friend
Scott Beseler A Taekwondo class for kids is one of many programs offered by Santa Maria Community Services, which has been active in Price Hill for more than a century. People outside Price Hill might not be familiar with Santa Maria Community Services, but after 110 years it's one of the oldest residents of…
Film: Genre Vultures
Woodrow J. Hinton Kurt Russell oozes machismo in Grindhouse. "Ronny Howard and I were talking about this recently," Kurt Russell says while hanging out in a Beverly Hills Four Seasons suite to discuss his new movie Grindhouse. "We used to see each other (at auditions for these 'grindhouse' movies). 'Hey, Ronnie, how you doing?'…
Film: or Fiction?
Richard Gere and Hope Davis star in The Hoax. Clifford Irving was a writer of middling interest in the early 1970s. Yet thanks to a wild stroke of inspiration he became a singular force in the literary industry. As Lasse Hallstrom's The Hoax purports, Irving (played by an exuberantly flim-flammy Richard Gere) — facing…
Opus
Terrell Finney Graduate revue: CCM's senior class performs in Time & Tide on Thursday, Friday and Saturday In the good news/bad news department: Once again Lynn Meyers' good judgment in picking plays with a future for her audiences at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati has been affirmed. Michael Hollinger's OPUS this weekend earned a Steinberg/American…
Loed of the Rings
HOT Last Knight on Earth Finally, a cultural icon deserving of a "Sir" is getting knighted in England … but we can't even call him "Sir." Sure, Elton John has done great work for AIDS research, but he also wore that giant Daffy Duck costume in concert. Bob Geldof organized Live Aid, but have you…
Web Onstage: 31ST HUMANA FESTIVAL OF NEW AMERICAN PLAYS (2007)
Harlan Taylor Something Wonderful Ends — Lori Wilner The 2007 edition of Humana Festival of New American Plays (back for year 31) ran between Feb. 25 and April 7. The festival is recognized as a major event in the theater world, the place where a half-dozen new plays are premiered annually. It has become a…
