Events: Dinner and a Movie
“The stuff that dreams are made of.” I don’t think Humphrey Bogart was talking about watching himself on screen while eating dinner, but this may sound like a dream to you. If so, Venue 222 is hosting a dinner and a movie night which will feature a showing of the classic The Maltese Falcon and…
City: Streetcars Lessen Need for Parking
News flash: Don’t believe everything you read. In mid-June, the Cincinnati Planning Commission approved a change in the city’s zoning code that, on the surface, seemed to trigger a looming reduction in the number of existing downtown parking spaces. An Enquirer headline at the time trumpeted, “Streetcar could reduce number of parking spaces for Cincinnati…
Comedy: Ike Witty
Like a lot of comedians, Tulsa native Ike Witty fled L.A. loving comedy but tired of the Southern California grind. He moved back to Oklahoma, recharged, and is now heading back to Hollywood to pursue comedy writing. “I almost got a job on Gary Unmarried … but the creator of the show and the show-runner…
Onstage: Cotton Patch Gospel
One of my favorite Pop balladeers from the ’70s was Harry Chapin. His well known tunes include hits like “Taxi” and “Cat’s in the Cradle,” but he was a diverse and passionate composer during his too brief life. Just before his death in 1981 (at age 38 in a tragic car accident) he completed a…
Music: MidPoint Indie Summer Series Featuring Why?
We can all use a little routine in our lives, especially routine that comes in the form of live music and alcohol on a Friday night. Midpoint’s Indie Summer continues to rock Fountain Square, this time, with an array consisting of a mash-up Dj, a psychadelic rock band, a lounge rock band and finally, some…
Onstage: A Little Night Murder
C.S.I. meets “Sin City” each weekend throughout July at Newport’s Monmouth Theatre. Playing host once again to an interactive evening of murder, mystery and intrigue, this intimate theatre engages audience members in the scintillating production of A Little Night Murder. Owner Vito Vitolli will welcome guests to his posh 1930s Newport Night Club, but the…
Music: Sonic Orphans Screening
Country
MidPoint Indie Summer Series Featuring Why?
We can all use a little routine in our lives, especially routine that comes in the form of free live music, outdoor fun and alcohol on a Friday night. The MidPoint Indie Summer Series continues to rock Fountain Square, this week featuring a mash-up DJ, a psychedelic rock band, a lounge rock band and, finally,…
Events: Beast Bash
The 2010 Beast Bash is celebration of pets and their people that offers a wide array of vendors and educational activities. While there, visit Donnetta Zimmerman, the animal communicator, and learn about the thoughts and emotions of your loved ones that can only woof or meow. A veterinarian will also be on hand to answer…
Access to Important Sources Often Means Journalists Avoid Controversial Stories
Access is everything to reporters. We want people to talk to us, to share confidences and documents, to point us to others who will do the same. The closer those people are to the decisions about which we write the more energy we put into developing and maintaining those relationships. Bob Woodward would have been…
Music: Ray’s Music Exchange
One of the best Cincinnati-based bands of the ’90s (and early ’00s) was Ray’s Music Exchange, which had a strong following in the Jam Band scene and blended together more styles than a schizo fashion designer. Other projects and relocations caused the band’s lineup to switch a few times in its career, but Ray’s remained…
Music: iolite
Seven years ago, two witty Geminis — Arianne Benick (vocals) and Julia Johanan (keys) — met at a party. Soon they created a women’s group, hit up yoga and one day randomly busted out “Takin It Slow,” now track 5 on the debut EP from Cincinnati band iolite. Their music is a sultry combination of…
Art: Pictures and Statues at Country Club
Pictures and Statues offers an inelegant approach to the examination of the role of objects in post-digital culture. Rather than resting on theory, this project will build an idiosyncratic point / counter-point discussion through the images and objects on display. Among the questions posed: Can the mere act of framing an exhibition under this rubric…
Art: Coast to Coast at Cincinnati Art Museum
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s print collection is local legend, and a summer exhibition gives us a glimpse of artists working near and far towards wildly diverse results in the printmaking process. Coast to Coast American Prints 1960-2010 includes fine examples of internationally established artists, such as Ed Ruscha’s sleekly elegant car-themed pieces, or the electric…
Hickory Robot CD Release Party
Impressive Roots/Americana newcomers Hickory Robot host a release party for their debut album, the 13-track work Firefly, Friday at Stanley’s Pub. The band is joined by Jimmy King and the Rubber Knife Gang for the 9:30 p.m. show. Firefly would be a stunning release by a veteran band; the fact that Hickory Robot is such…
Events: World Cup Foosball Tournament
So, America is out of the World Cup. Celebrate the end of the world's biggest sporting event at Fountain Square anyway with a foosball tournament and viewing party. There will be a two-person double elimination foosball tournament before and after the soccer game, with a $250 prize for first place. Also, enjoy beers and food…
Onstage: Cincinnati Opera’s Otello
The Cincinnati Opera presents what's considered by some to be Verdi's masterpiece. The composer came out of a 15-year retirement to create this Italian opera gem, a tragic work based on Shakespeare's Othello set in Cyprus in the late 1400s. It's the story of forbidden love, war, betrayal and, above all, jealousy. Otello, a Moor…
Cowboy Junkies, Gaslight Anthem, The Pernice Brothers, Tom Petty and Steve Cropper and Felix Cavaliere
The latest Cowboy Junkies album, Renmin Park, is something of a beginning for the Canadian quartet that came to prominence with the release of The Trinity Sessions 22 years ago. The circumstances that led to Renmin Park, and the next three Cowboy Junkies albums for that matter, are an almost perfect storm of creative conceptualism…
Leave ‘Em Wanting Moor
Cincinnati Opera’s 90th anniversary season roars back with Otello, Verdi’s brilliant setting of Shakespeare’s tragedy of toxic doubt and jealousy. There’s plenty of drama onstage, but look for an equally compelling performance from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra led by Robert Spano, music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) and one of the most acclaimed…
Music: Forecastle Festival in Louisville
Louisville will be home to the 9th annual Too Broke For Bonnaroo Forecastle Festival starting this Friday. The three-day extravaganza of hot sweaty tree hugging features a star studded lineup of over 100 bands including She & Him, Spoon, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s and Cake. Headlining acts…
Art: Construence at Iris BookCafe
Ardine Nelson makes poetic photographs of considerable beauty using flimsy camera equipment or simply creating her own pin-hole camera with a clay garden pot. Ardine Nelson: Construence at Over-the-Rhine's Iris BookCafé has a title as hand-made as her camera -“Construence” seems to come from “construe,” meaning piecing together. She also puts the strip film of…
The Graveblankets
The Graveblankets are back! Though the members have been busy with other musical projects, the popular Folk/Rock/Pop group hasn’t put out a proper recording since 2000’s Where It Hurts. The Blankets make their triumphant return Saturday at Molly Malone’s in Covington with a refreshed lineup — regulars Chris Arduser (that's him on the left), George…
Ray’s Music Exchange Reunion
Ray’s Music Exchange was one of the best Cincinnati-based bands of the ’90s and early ’00s, building a strong following in the Jam Band scene and blending together more styles than a schizo fashion designer. Other projects and relocations caused the band’s lineup to switch a few times in its career, but RME remained remarkably…
Chris Walker, 1968-2010
Local super-bassist Chris Walker passed away July 3 from serious injuries sustained in a 2007 car accident. He was 42. —- Walker’s stellar musical abilities were showcased all over the Cincinnati music scene for the past few decades. His cool, kind nature and those mad bass skills earned him a place in innumerable bands throughout…
Is The Enquirer Next?
The Cincinnati Enquirer's parent company is testing a “pay wall” system at three of its newspapers as it attempts to devise a business model that involves users paying for Internet content. If successful, the model being implemented at the Tallahassee Democrat in Florida, The Greenville News in South Carolina and The Spectrum in St. George,…
Friday Movie Roundup: The Fall of Tom Cruise
Knight and Day, the action-comedy extravaganza starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, supposedly tanked at the box office last weekend, pulling in “only” about $20.5 million despite opening on a Wednesday (that's two extra days with which to build up its box-office tally, for those not keeping track of such things). The James Mangold-directed movie…
Pride Timing Irks CCV
Phil Burress' obsession with other people's sex lives is continuing unabated. Burress, the head of Sharonville-based Citizens for Community Values (CCV), is upset that this year's Cincinnati Equinox Pride Festival is being held downtown on the Fourth of July and could potentially intrude on some Independence Day events. CCV has sent a mass e-mail to…
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals: Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals have rarely suffered from a lack of superlatives in their press kit. Other than the band’s self-released and largely unheard debut, 2004’s Original Soul, GPN’s subsequent albums for Hollywood Records (2006’s re-released Nothing But the Water and 2007’s This Is Somewhere) have generally been showered with the kind of praise…
Micmacs (Review)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet feels like a spiritual and creative cousin to Terry Gilliam, but I’m tempted to argue that he’s a better visual stylist than Gilliam, who loves dark and twisted fables set in what can only be his own rich imagination. From Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to his most recent ode…
Teenage Fanclub: Shadows
Teenage Fanclub turns 21 this year, and it almost seems appropriate to begin thinking of the Glasgow jangle Pop outfit in terms of adulthood. The quartet’s early albums were noisy and frenetic evocations of their Scottish street heritage, burnished with a melancholy Pop melodicism and gloriously tilted by their youth. But by the time of…
Hot Hot Heat: Future Breeds
Hot Hot Heat’s evolution has been an ongoing process since the band formed within the insular Punk community on Vancouver Island in 1999. The quartet started as a darkly toned, keyboard-heavy Punk outfit but quickly shifted to a brand of jittery, synth-fueled New Wave that recalled the danceable lockstep of Gang of Four, the hypercaffeinated…
Marchers Lobby for Jobs Bill
It's definitely a sign of the times we live in. More than 70 unemployed people were joined by labor union leaders, clergy and community activists today to push of the passage of a federal jobs bill. In an event organized by the AMOS Project, the crowd circled Fountain Square chanting, “We need a job” and…
Cincinnati Native Makes New Yorker List
The New Yorker magazine recently published its Summer Fiction issue. It includes a list of what its editors deem as the 20 novelists under the age of 40 worth watching, an endeavor destined to be as contentious as it no doubt was excruciating to craft. (There's a reason the magazine hasn't published such a list…
EC Drops Ball on Domestic Registry
It's kind of like dressing up as a child and pretending you're a police officer or some other adult occupation, or maybe it's more akin to playing house. Equality Cincinnati (EC), a gay rights group, will have a booth on Fountain Square during this weekend's Equinox Pride festival. During the event, EC will unveil its…
Audio-Visual Equipment
T he caption above a Facebook image of local musician/performer/activist Ethan Philbrick states: “This will make music,” which is true about Philbrick — he does indeed make music (he plays cello in local band Turmeric). But it’s also true about the garment he’s wearing. It looks like a large wooden vest, and in fact it…
Cincinnati Police Rarely Use Hate Crime Law
It’s been a half-decade since local activists won a pair of major battles to ensure equal rights for Cincinnati’s LGBTQ community. First with the 2004 repeal of the notorious Article 12, a charter amendment that prohibited Cincinnati officials from passing any laws allowing gays and lesbians to seek protection from discrimination, and then the city’s…
Meals on Wheels for Everyone
My neighbor dug up most of his basement floor to redo the plumbing under his house. Several guys in the neighborhood pitched in to help. I wasn’t among them, because they all have some kind of job in a relevant industry or trade that makes them an asset to such a task, while I don’t.…
Obama v. Gaga, Name Changer and Rock Beards
[HOT] Facebook’s Best Friend It’s the hottest politico/musician fight since George Bush started that flame-war on Lil Jon’s MySpace page. The first African-American President of the United States of America is cyber-facing off with the first extraterrestrial Pop diva (Lady Gaga) in a race to see who can be the first living person to break…
Twilight: Eclipse (Review)
C ool as a cucumber, Edward (Robert Pattinson) is back full-time in Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) life. Hotheaded Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is none too happy about it because he fears that soon Bella’s going to surrender to the dark side and allow Edward to transform her into a vampire — spiritual enemies to Jacob’s werewolf (shapeshifting)…
The White Ribbon (Review)
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke recently admitted his admiration for the work of the late American director Robert Altman: “Not all his films are great, but some are truly amazing.” While I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment, I can’t help but find his admiration ironic: Haneke’s rigorous approach to filmmaking is the exact opposite of Altman’s…
Krista Tevar [Sugar Cupcakery]
“I’m a vegetarian,” Krista Tevar explains , “and I didn’t want to feed my 2-year-old son junk. So we decided there was probably a market for a healthier alternative to other sweets.” Last year, she and her sister opened Sugar Cupcakery, featuring delicious organic, gluten-free and vegan cupcakes. The fledgling business was supposed to let…
Will Kohler and Charlie Winburn
SPECIAL ALL-PRIDE VERSION [WINNER] WILL KOHLER: Known as “Wolfie” to his followers, the local blogger operates the always provocative Back2Stonewall site. Besides keeping Queen City queers and their friends up to date on gay-related news from around the world, Kohler also offers sharp commentary on what he sees as deficiencies in national gay leadership, provides…
Pride Is Bigger, But Is It Better?
P ut any large group of people in a room and, after awhile, they’re likely to disagree on something. And if you add one of the three often cited “forbidden” topics in so-called polite society — religion, politics or sex — the disagreement is likely to become a heated one. It should come as no…
Indy’s 100 Acres Art Park Not Just Another Sculpture Garden
The Indianapolis Museum of Art has always had one of the most beautiful settings of any Midwest art museum. It's adjacent to the meticulously maintained 26-acre Oldfields-Lilly House & Gardens, a favorite place for strolling and receptions. But it’s also had a secret — a wilder, rougher 100 acres of unused woodlands and meadows (and…
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Hot Hot Heat, Samantha Crain, Nada Surf and Teenage Fanclub
Breaking news: I’m still behind but catching up. Really slow film at 11. In some aspects of my writing life, I’m actually sort of ahead of the curve, which is a specific point on the work arc I haven't experienced for months. And, again, I’m not complaining. When I’m overwhelmed, my scheduling difficulties include finding…
June 23-28: Worst Week Ever!
WEDNESDAY JUNE 23 Anyone familiar with TV news knows that reporting success these days is largely based on how sweet a station’s technological gadgets are (Glenn Beck’s chalkboards are the lone exception to the rule). The Enquirer today performed its daily newspaper version of multimedia progress, sending a reporter out with a hand-held thermometer on…
A Minority Within a Minority
C incinnati is a city that's often struggled with tolerance. From the 2001 race riots to Article 12, the former ordinance in the city charter that allowed for open discrimination of LGBTQ citizens in areas like housing and employment, the city developed a reputation of being diversity challenged. But in the last decade things have…
Northside Explodes for Fourth
Though Fourth of July celebrations across the country have been cancelled due to the bad economy, there are no shortage of Independence Day celebrations in Greater Cincinnati. Along with the “Red, White and Blue Ash” bash on Sunday with current Cincinnati resident Peter Frampton and classic rockers Yes (see Frampton interview on this page), you…
Senor Roy’s Taco Patrol (Review)
Neon Indian had just finished their set at the Indie Summer Series on Fountain Square, and the crowd began to disperse. My friends were deciding what they wanted to do next. O’Malley’s in the Alley? The Righteous Room? I still hadn’t eaten. Just as I was running down the list of restaurants still open at…
The Great Gay Migration
T he story is as old as time: Plucky young adults, stymied by small-town culture and fueled by grandiose dreams, flee for the bright lights of the big city. It might sound like a story book or a Sex and the City script, but it happens all the time. In fact, it’s happening right now…
