Pera Mediterranean (Review)
I must have flunked my geography lessons. When I made plans to dine at Pera Mediterranean restaurant in Mount Lookout Square, I was thinking of the eastern Mediterranean — Greece and Turkey. I did not think I would pass through Italy. Hummus, falafel, moussaka, spinach pies and other staples I expected were on my itinerary,…
Lit: Kim Harrison
Prolific South Carolina-based author Kim Harrison is back with the latest entry in her Hollows paranormal book series, Black Magic Sanction, in which heroine/witch Rachel Morgan goes from being the hunter of vampires, demons, werewolves and other such nefarious creatures to being the prey of a like-minded witch. Harrison’s deft, fast-paced take on the genre…
Lectures: Cincinnati’s African American Jazz Artists
Black History Month is the perfect time to learn about two African American Cincinnati natives, Frank Foster and George Russell, who are among the most important influences on the critically important contemporary, progressive stream of American Jazz. On Saturday at 1 p.m. in the Reading Garden of the downtown main library, Reference Librarian Dan Aren…
Hope and Glory
When it was announced last year that Shepard Fairey’s traveling solo show Supply and Demand would stop at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, it immediately seemed a masterstroke for the museum. Once it opens Friday (continuing through Aug. 22), we’ll see if the attendance and community interest live up to expectations. As intelligent and beautiful as…
Attractions: GOLD at Cincinnati Museum Center
All that glitters, the stuff of fortune and fable, greed and gilded, is at the Cincinnati Museum Center’s newest exhibit. Gold presents the history, extraction and engineering of the globe’s most valuable substance. Among the treasures stored deep within the bowels of the Union Terminal are many unique Tiffany and Cartier pieces, Spanish doubloons and…
Music: I Am Ghost
In a major missed opportunity, “Rock N' Roll High School Murder” by I Am Ghost is not a morbid homage to Rock N' Roll High School, the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek 1979 cult flick where The Ramones eat pizza and wreak havoc. Instead, the track from 2008's Those We Leave Behind is played straight, offering a melodramatic…
Music: Boldface
For a lot of guys, being in a band is like being in a family. For Boldface, the band is family. Bassist/guitarist Jay Phillips and drummer Wolfie Phillips could easily have the kind of contentious relationship that afflicts some band brothers. And with the lineup rounded out by their cousins — Edouard Bullock on lead…
Film: Found Footage Festival
The unintentionally hilarious glories of the 1980s are resurrected in Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett’s Found Footage Festival, a treasure trove of vintage VHS footage the duo has unearthed by scouring garage sales, thrift stores and dumpsters across the U.S. Kind of like the video version of Found magazine, the traveling festival is a nostalgia-laden…
Lit: Lorrie Moore
Accomplished and award-winning fiction writer Lorrie Moore makes a stop at room 427 in the Engineering Research Center on the University of Cincinnati’s Clifton campus for a reading at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Her short-story collections include Self-Help, Like Life and Birds of America, which contains “People Like that Are the Only People Here,” the…
Art: Gary Gaffney and Minumental at the Art Academy
The Art Academy thinks big — partly by thinking small — with its two shows opening Friday: Gary Gaffney’s Everything I did on sabbatical … and less opens along with the 23rd Annual Minumental Exhibition. Sculptor Gaffney includes artwork along with “poetry, short stories and the beginnings of a libretto for a one-act opera.” His…
Onstage: Transmigration
According to my dictionary, the term “transmigration” means a movement or passage from one place to another. But it also is used to describe the rebirth of the soul after death in another body. What my dictionary doesn’t say is that it means a collection of fascinating and original theatrical works that are happening at…
Boldface (Profile)
For a lot of guys, being in a band is like being in a family. For Boldface, the band is family. Bassist/guitarist Jay Phillips and drummer Wolfie Phillips could easily have the kind of contentious relationship that afflicts some band brothers. And with the lineup rounded out by their cousins — Edouard Bullock on lead…
Gaming the Wine Biz
At wine tastings I host, people often ask what they can do to learn more about wine. The obvious answer is, “Pop corks and pay attention to what you’re tasting.” Do this (in conjunction with a little focused reading) and you’ll be way ahead of most wine drinkers in no time. But I just found…
Music: Snoop Dogg
Snoop “Snoop Doggy Dogg” Dogg might be the quintessential 21st-century Rap star. On the music side, he was a big part of the legendary Chronic album by Dr. Dre and his first couple of solo releases are almost as classic. But it’s what Snoop has done after his initial musical success that has made him…
The Horizon of Playwriting
Two weeks ago I wrote that theater critics are not a bunch of nitpicking naysayers. I want to offer further evidence this week, pointing out that critics often bring attention to new works by playwrights. There’s not much money to be made from writing plays; some writers chase TV and film opportunities. But many return…
Events: Fat Tuesday
Arnold’s celebrates Fat Tuesday with what they claim is the “most authentic” Mardi Gras celebration in town. They’ll have free beads, three different kinds of Hurricanes (from scratch), a full menu of Cajun specialties and Lagniappe will be roving the aisles all night playing traditional New Orleans music. 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m. Tuesday. Get details here.…
Music: Joe Deninzon Jazz Trio
A quick glance at Joe Deninzon’s MySpace page reveals a roster of influences that reads like the index for the Encyclopedia of Rock — Frank Zappa, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Yes and The Police are all there. Given that Deninzon’s main axe is a violin (whether it be acoustic, electric or fretted…
Art: VisuaLingual’s HOME WORK at the Betts House
We so often see art and design presented in clean, white galleries that we might not consider how these objects function in domestic, historical and more complex situations. There should be more instances of seeing contemporary artists working in historical spaces to create alternative art presentations that toy with context. Starting this Saturday and continuing…
Music: The Daredevil Christopher Wright
The Daredevil Christopher Wright is not, in fact, an Evel Knievel wannabe. Instead it is a three-piece band from Eau Claire, Wisc., the town that also brought us Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Vernon’s influence is evident in more than just DCW’s location, however, since the songster also mixed the band’s debut album, In Deference to…
I Am Ghost
In a major missed opportunity, “Rock N' Roll High School Murder” by I Am Ghost is not a morbid homage to Rock N' Roll High School, the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek 1979 cult flick where The Ramones eat pizza and wreak havoc. Instead, the track from 2008's Those We Leave Behind is played straight, offering a melodramatic…
Joe Deninzon Jazz Trio
A quick glance at Joe Deninzon’s MySpace page reveals a roster of influences that reads like the index for The Encyclopedia of Rock: Frank Zappa, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Yes and The Police are all there. Given that Deninzon’s main axe is a violin (whether it be acoustic, electric or fretted seven-string)…
Snoop Dogg
Snoop “Snoop Doggy Dogg” Dogg might be the quintessential 21st-century Rap star. On the music side, he was a big part of the legendary Chronic album by Dr. Dre, and his first couple of solo releases are almost as classic. But it’s what Snoop has done after his initial musical success that has made him…
Comedy: Kurt Metzger
A veteran of the New York comedy scene, Kurt Metzger has quite an impressive résumé. He has appeared on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham as well as his own half-hour special for that network. He was also a regular on VH-1’s Best Week Ever. More recently, you might have seen him on Important Things with…
Art: Supply and Demand at the Contemporary Arts Center
Shepard Fairey is an increasingly recognizable name working in popular, accessible imagery. The 40-year-old Los Angeles-based artist, trained at prestigious Rhode Island School of Design and has become one of the most well-known “street artists” for appropriating images from mass media — from wrestler/actor Andre the Giant to our President — for use on stickers…
500 Miles to Memphis’ Evolution and Revolution
In a scene filled with nice guys, Ryan Malott might be their king. He's young, massively talented, tirelessly inspired and self-deprecating to a fault, as evidenced by the title of his latest foray with his astonishingly versatile outfit, 500 Miles to Memphis. But there’s a point behind calling the new disc We’ve Built Up to…
The Daredevil Christopher Wright with The Sleeping Sea, Wake the Bear and The Harlequins
The Daredevil Christopher Wright is not, in fact, an Evel Knievel wannabe. Instead it is a three-piece band from Eau Claire, Wisc., the town that also brought us Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and, judging from the number of acts appearing from that small corner of the country, appears to have the highest concentration of well-trained…
Garbage Man
Who are you? I heard you singing. Even today, 14 years later, the strange tone of his ghostly voice still streaks across my mind. But this isn’t your everyday love letter. Come with me. Seattle. 1996. Within wet backyards, life was reckless and wild. My home was a bunk bed at best. Picking up dirty…
Adding Machine (Review)
Smart calculation: In the wintry depths of the Great Recession, Know Theatre of Cincinnati brings a bleak chamber opera based on an anti-capitalist play from the 1920s, in which an outsourced drone gets revenge on the boss. Adding Machine: A Musical was a Chicago sensation in 2007. Acclaimed stagings in New York and Washington, D.C.,…
Portman Gives Props to Heimlich — Literally
Although it was overshadowed by the recent national Tea Party convention in Nashville, another conservative group recently held a rally that featured several Greater Cincinnati notables in attendance. Americans for Prosperity’s Ohio chapter held an “Already Taxed to the Max” rally Jan. 30 at Capitol Square in Columbus. Among those attending the event were former…
Cincinnati Priest Faces Sexual Abuse Charges
Continuing a trend that just won't go away, Father Robert F. Poandl of Cincinnati pleaded not guilty this morning to charges of sexual abuse, which allegedly occurred in 1991. The now 28-year-old man claimed that Poandl molested him during a trip to the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in West Virginia, where he was accompanying Poandl…
The Wolfman (Review)
Joe Johnston’s remake of the Lon Cheney-led 1941 original finds Benicio Del Toro front and center as Lawrence Talbot, a brooding, Victorian-era actor who returns to his Northern England wasteland of a hometown following the brutal murder of his brother. While there he encounters his creepy, long-estranged father (Anthony Hopkins) who resides in a rundown,…
Planning the Casino District
With groundbreaking for a proposed Cincinnati casino less than two months away, a local organization will hold a public forum next week to gather input about what should be built around the gambling site. The Art Academy of Cincinnati will hold the brainstorming session — known as a “charrette” — on Feb. 20 at the…
Stage Door: Seeing the Little-Seen
This weekend wraps up Cincinnati Shakespeare's great set of infrequently seen shows. Strindberg's Miss Julie (Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.) is a naturalistic drama about love and strife between people of different classes in 1888. (Read our review here.) —- On Friday (7:30 p.m.) or Sunday (2 p.m.) you can see veteran actor Joneal…
Sharon Woods Hike
Key At-A-Glance Information Length: 5.3 milesConfiguration: Series of loopsDifficulty: ModerateScenery: Woods and lakeExposure: Shaded and sunTraffic: HeavyTrail Surface: PavedHiking Time: 2.5-3 hoursDriving Distance: 20 minutes from downtown CincinnatiSeason: Year-roundAccess: Dawn-duskMaps: USGS Glendale; Sharon Wood Park mapWheelchair Accessible: Paved portions and around lakeFacilities: Restrooms at harbor and Sharon CentreFor More Information: Hamilton County Park District, (513)…
From Paris with Love (Review)
As the special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador in France, James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) also doubles as a low level secret agent, presumably for the CIA, handling menial tasks while hoping for an upgrade that will earn him more active duty. Of course, the old adage to be careful what you wish for catches…
Best. Snowball. Fight. Ever.
Don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day? Pissed off about all the publicity that corporate media give Sarah Palin? Mad that shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition still are on TV? Just bored? No matter the reason for your frustration, you can release some of that energy by attending “Cincinnati’s Largest Snowball Fight!,” planned for…
COAST Chairman Faces Foreclosure
CityBeat doesn’t like to revel in anyone’s misery or misfortune. Sometimes, though, there’s a confluence between a person’s political philosophy and subsequent events that begs for attention and analysis. One such instance is the foreclosure and impending sale of the house owned by an anti-tax leader.—- Jason Gloyd, chairman of the Coalition Opposed to Additional…
Walking Away
Walking up Sixth Street in downtown Cincinnati on a cloudy January afternoon, I saw her standing there on the sidewalk. I was rushing to the bus stop while she was talking to a man I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if she had noticed me or not, but a text message on my cell phone…
Feb. 3-9: Worst Week Ever!
WEDNESDAY FEB. 3There was a lot of resistance to President Truman’s 1948 integration of the armed forces, but dang if history doesn’t show that those blacks helped a lot during the numerous wars that followed. The AP reported today that similarly driven opposition exists against the government’s latest attempt to let people willing to fight…
How Should Museums Display Film/Video Art?
As contemporary visual artists increasingly turn to video, film and projected images of all type, it becomes interesting to see how museums display their work. Are they like movies, deserving of a theater-like space where viewers can sit down and passively watch? Or are they more like performance art, encouraging viewers to walk amongst the…
More Help for Haiti
The problems in Haiti aren’t going to end anytime soon, so thankfully the stream of local Haitian relief benefit concerts continues to flow over the next few weeks (and hopefully months). Here are several Haiti-related happenings this week. • On Friday at the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center in Covington, the 6:45 p.m. “Rise…
Mid-Day Rush at Half Day Café
Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes when I’m dining out I feel like everything goes by too quickly. Sure, we all want attentive servers and no one likes to wait forever for their food to arrive. But when I go out for a meal I don’t want to feel rushed. I understand that they need…
Art: Starburst at the Cincinnati Art Museum
It’s hard for our generation to imagine controversy over color photography. In a day and age when many art schools have shut down their traditional black-and-white darkrooms in favor of going digital, color is simply taken for granted. Audiences had been accustomed to color in film since the 1930s and television since the 1950s. Color…
1000 Comic Books You Must Read (Review)
Cataloguing a thousand of anything is an impressive, likely painstaking task. If there’s anyone fit to amass a list of 1000 Comic Books You Must Read, it’s prolific comic scribe/industry observer Tony Isabella. Per the title, Isabella (whose creative credits include scripting Black Lightning, Ghost Rider and Captain America) has the great fortune of not…
Midlake, Broken Teeth, Brian Dolzani, Edward Rogers and More
You know how you can tell the release sheets are getting fuller? These introductory meanderings get shorter, the reviews get longer and there are more of them. As much as I love waxing philosophical — and I could start a philosophical candle company with the wax I have on hand — some weeks it’s best…
Boozin’ & Brawlin’
Jeff Bridges’ Best Actor Oscar nomination recognizes more than just his nuanced, sensitive portrayal of down-on-his-luck Country singer Bad Blake in the film Crazy Heart. It also acknowledges that actors and actresses give some of their finest performances when playing Country/Roots musicians. It might be because they — and their movies — are able to…
A Different Kind of Struggle
“Gigi” is 68 years old and lives in Northern Kentucky, where she moved five years ago after living in Cincinnati since the 1990s. She runs a small business in the community and enjoys her life very much. And like many women her age, she is discreet about her sexuality. But this isn’t a result of…
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
There’s a great moment in “Retreat,” a new short story by Wells Tower. Two brothers have been out deer hunting on a chilly island in Maine. They haven’t bagged anything and they’re wet and cranky. but just as they’re packing up for the day, one spies an enormous moose. He takes a shot and brings…
Music: Fucked Up and Kurt Vile
Kurt Vile, the moody, Post Punk/Neo Garage Rock retro-modernist sure has answered a lot of questions about his name since his first major-label release, Childish Prodigy, came out last year on Matador Records. (He had two previous releases.) It’s just too close a surly twist on Kurt Weill — the German composer of toughly political…
Love the One You’re With
Ugh! Dating. Am I right?! It’s like sometimes you meet people and you think they’re really hot or funny and then you go out on a date (outside of the bar or Internet) and all of a sudden they’re really boring gropers who love to talk about how fast they could run in high school.…
Music: Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore
Two years ago, regional Folk phenoms Daniel Martin Moore and Ben Sollee met at a Lexington show and began making small talk about music and their commonalities when the subject of Appalachian strip mining was broached. It was a subject that both Kentuckians are passionate about. They produced a record, Dear Companion (produced by My…
Snakes, White Racists and Black Imps
In our increasingly corporatized world, independent media voices are becoming more rare every day and should be cherished. Sometimes, though, the most immediate threat to those voices isn’t a faceless company in another state but comes from within. Longtime volunteers at WAIF (88.3 FM), a nonprofit community radio station, have warned for the past few…
Kazoo, Super Bowl and Big Brother
[HOT] Respect the Kazoo!Did you know that this year is the 160th anniversary of the kazoo, that little cheaply made “wind instrument” that everyone masters when they’re about 2? Did you know there are kazoo enthusiasts? How about professional kazoo players? Claiming to be “America’s only full-time kazoo player” (a distinction akin to be the…
Jon Craig and the Rev. Michael Howard
[WINNER] JON CRAIG: Through good old-fashioned reporting, The Enquirer’s statehouse reporter helped uncover the identity of the conduit for a shadowy contributor who funded the campaign trying to force a vote on Gov. Ted Strickland’s plan to place slot machines at seven Ohio horse tracks. It turns out the treasurer for the group was Tim…
Desperately Seeking Soulmate?
In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes claims that at one time all humans were really strong two-headed, four-armed freaks who could roll around like balls. When we challenged the gods, Zeus got scared and split us in half, dooming us to wander the earth in search of our complementary set of arms and legs, our soulmates. This…
The Women in the Mirror
To get to Marysville, you travel northeast from Dayton, easing off the interstates onto a highway that becomes a two-lane road, traversing acres of farmland, fields of grey-brown corn stubble punctuated by occasional homes and outbuildings. I am on a bus with 46 other members of MUSE, Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir, and we're headed for prison:…
Music: Two Gentlemen Band
In 2005, Andy Bean and Fuller Condon abandoned their college Rock band grind, shifting gears toward old-time Bluegrass, Country and hot Jazz music. The duo whipped up some authentically twisted tunes embracing bygone traditions and tested them in New York’s Central Park. “People threw money at us, and we got hooked pretty fast,” Bean says.…
