Books: Some Bluegrass Is Black
Tracy A. Hawkins Erasing negative and false stereotypes: Frank X Walker Poet Frank X Walker was forced to invent a word to name himself. During a 1991 gathering of Appalachian poets in Kentucky, Walker, in the audience, thought about where he and other poets of color born in mountainous regions of Kentucky, Mississippi and…
The Wizard Of Oz
The familiar story of THE WIZARD OF OZ will come to life onstage this weekend in a production by CHILDREN'S THEATRE OF CINCINNATI. It's directed by Jack Louiso, who will be honored by the Ohio Arts Council a month from now for his contributions to arts in education. The production uses the familiar songs by…
Film: Beneath the Underneath
Matt Borgerding Local filmmakers (L-R) John Parker, Jon Seaton, Michael Maney, Ryan Lewis and Terrance Huff with Sara Mahle, director of Underneath Cincinnati "In other words, I am three." So began Beneath the Underdog, the autobiographic composition in words of the life of Charles Mingus. The three that Mingus was referring to were the…
News: Blowing Smoke
slim Jim Puvee Tougher penalties for marijuana possession won't help reduce crime in Cincinnati and might prompt some people to commit more serious criminal offenses, according to Todd Roy. Roy, 24, a student at Cincinnati State and Technical Community College, spoke Feb. 14 to city council's Law and Public Safety Committee, opposing a proposal…
Television and Radio: 30-Day Turnaround
Samuel Goldwyn Films Documentarian Morgan Spurlock has found a home on cable's FX Network. Think of Morgan Spurlock as the anti-Michael Moore. The friendly, handlebar mustachioed documentarian from West Virginia made waves in 2004 with an Oscar-nominated Super Size Me, which chronicled his 30-day experiment of ingesting foods only from the McDonald's menu. The…
Diner: Pssst …
I've driven past the sign for Ferrari's Little Italy on the main drag in Madeira dozens of times without stopping in. I suspect I'm not alone. When I asked numerous friends and colleagues about Ferrari's, most had never heard of the place or perhaps had heard of it but didn't know much about it or…
Crock-Pots
Where have all the Crock-Pots gone? I think I know: Upstate New York. The place is absolutely crawling with them. I went to Cazenovia, N.Y., to visit a friend last weekend and ended up in the middle of a convocation of slow-cooking appliances that would have made you think it was still the 1970s. The…
Bullet and a Target
In the waning light of Black History Month, how better to put the reparative short month to sleep than a rumination over white men being themselves? I always know when white men are embarrassed by their counterparts. They tell jokes about one another. Like this one, overheard in my favorite white enclave of Hyde Park…
Estrangement in a Strange Land: Echo-Conspirator
The Kiss of Pro-Death The street was chockablock with black-and-whites by the time Easy arrived. He'd heard the call on his police scanner and decided to cruise by, check it out. Approaching the perimeter of the crime scene, the fleshy sleuth flashed his P.I. license at a uniformed cop, then nonchalantly ducked under the yellow…
Bring Cincy up to Date
Good God, can someone please see the value in what Portland and other cities are doing to make their cities more livable ("A City That Works," issue of Feb. 15-21)? We have great restaurants, bands and events here in Cincinnati, and every single time I go downtown at night I feel like I'm walking into…
Behind the ‘Scenery’
Northern/Central Kentucky's Ralph Jones Band celebrates the release of its dazzling sophomore effort, Just for the Scenery, with a show Saturday at The Comet. Campfire Crush and Minneapolis' West Elliot also perform. The band — no, no one in the band is named Ralph Jones — released its impressive debut, Drowning in KY, in 2003,…
News to Use
Meet Progressive Candidates Democracy for Cincinnati hosts a candidate forum featuring progressive candidates running in statewide Ohio races. Featured will be Bryan Flannery, candidate for governor; Subodh Chandra and Marc Dann candidates for attorney general; and Hugh Quill, candidate for state treasurer. Each candidate will make a presentation and take questions. The program is at…
Upcoming Concert Reviews of Graham Weber, Tim Reynolds and More…
Burnt Sugar Graham Weber with The Kentucky Struts Wednesday · Southgate House Graham Weber is a Cincinnati native, at least by Cincinnati standards — he went to high school here, which is, of course, 80 percent of your identity in the QC. Fortunately, the rest of the world will remember the young balladeer for…
Eddie Sutton Remains Unappreciated, Especially by UK Fans
Jerry Dowling One is tempted at times to say Cincinnati really is in Kentucky, kind of the way Philadelphia really is in New Jersey. That in mind, the Cincinnati, Ky., athletic scene endured two earth-shattering scandals in the late 1980s. Each scandal badly marked its principal character to the extent that each is likely…
Farewell to The Challenger
In the old days, an important obituary carried a black border in print. Sort of like The Enquirer's apology to Chiquita. It's time to break out the black again. The Sunday Challenger, a free, independent "Voice for Northern Kentucky" started in mid-2004, folded with this week's edition. Page 1 announced the closure "due to economic…
Your Addiction Is Your Cure
All addictions are sexual — that is if we understand sex as an impulse toward release or bliss and not just exchanges of body fluids. For life itself is sex. We were born in it and we die in it, and in-between we go through endless symbolic cycles of birth and death: cravings and aversions…
Cover Story: ‘I’m Like a Quilt’
Graham Lienhart Denise Burge Denise Burge was 6 when she came home from school and found her father lying face down in the kitchen. It was a warm March afternoon, hot actually for North Carolina, in 1969. He was still and slightly stiff to touch. Burge remembers every detail of that moment, from the…
Radio Activity
C. Matthew Hamby Radio Activity "I ain't gotta love it even if they play it a lot." — dead prez WIZF-FM Program Director Phillip David March barely winced when I told him that I hadn't listened to his station for nearly 15 years. In fact, the man behind the music at the Radio One-owned…
Remembering Pioneers and Putzes
Matt Borgerding Jim O'Reilly (left), Democratic candidate for judge, has support from David Pepper, who's running for county commissioner. John Zeh — pioneering gay rights activist, advocate for the poor and community journalist — died alone last week. He was 60, according to the Hamilton County Coroner's office, which is storing his body. Attorney…
News: Web Exclusive : Glad to Be BLOC Heads
In the small village of Cleves, on the western border of Hamilton County, there aren't many recreational activities for teenagers after school. The BLOC House has been filling that need. BLOC — "Believing and Living One Christ" — was founded by Dwight Young, a Christian minister for the past 22 years. A native of Highland,…
President of the Internet
Naturally, I thought I'd be writing about Shotgun Dick Cheney and his bout with lawlessness. However, by the end of the week, the whole thing had pelted me in the face so much that I didn't want to have anything to do with bird shot and bad aim. Recently, I've been wearing a pin that…
Music: Lovedrug is the Drug
David johnson Music for films: Before Lovedrug, frontman Michael Shepard (second from left) nearly gave up a life in music for one in the movies Michael Shepard knows all too well about second chances. Because he gave music another try, music has extended the same courtesy to him and his Emo/Prog quartet, Lovedrug. Four…
News: Watching at WAIF
Bill Bullock/TinctCreative Some volunteer programmers at community radio station WAIF (88.3 FM) are angry about the installation of video cameras in the production booths — and some say they fear retaliation if they talk about it. Board chair Donald Shabazz discussed the cameras in a Jan. 24 memo to all programmers, sent several weeks…
Film: Son of the Blackboard Jungle
Frank Masi Julianne Moore (right) and Edie Falco star in Freedomland Everyone understands that actress Julianne Moore was upset when the release of the crime thriller Freedomland was pushed back from late 2005 to February 2006. Moore saw her performance as Brenda Martin, a single mom and recovering crack addict who loses her infant…
Not a Proper Victim
Property flipping can be legal or illegal, depending on the circumstances. The legal kind — purchasing a run-down house, rehabbing it with updates that add value and reselling it for a higher price — adds value to the community and improves the neighborhood. The illegal kind causes all kinds of problems and can destroy a…
Living Out Loud: : Not So Nebulous
On a recent trip to the Cincinnati Observatory, I got to peer through the old telescopes housed there and spied upon Orion the Hunter and the Pleiades, a cluster of seven white stars in the constellation of Taurus. Though I've lived here in town for most of my life, I'd never been to the small…
Locals Only: : ‘Show Men
Four boyhood friends kept looking up, no matter what, and eventually grew to be men. Now they're pictureshow, a lowercase quartet of madmen and lovers. Whenever and wherever they play, a string of devoted fans follows. Men and women of all ages and backgrounds can be seen bobbing their heads to the beat as well…
