Matthew Mugg’s The Cats’ Meats Man
Since his retirement from performing in 1978, Matthew Mugg has been largely regarded as just another acid casualty. His name has appeared — if it appeared at all — with the likes of Sky Saxon, Roky Erickson, Syd Barrett and Graham Bond: all of them sad and mysterious Rock music figures whose lives and…
News: The Last Chance
Jymi Bolden Attorney Alphonse Gerhardstein says the city can cooperate to end racial profiling or face a federal judge. Cincinnati Police officers have repeatedly stopped African-American men for phantom traffic violations, then unjustifiably searched them for drugs. Officers use abusive language to provoke responses that leads to chargeable offenses, photograph innocent civilians during stops…
Diner: A Perfect Diner
I really hope my doctor doesn't read CityBeat. I'm cursed with bad genes that give me high cholesterol. I'm supposed to monitor religiously what I eat. He suggests, "a tossed salad with no-fat dressing for lunch." I suggest he get a life. For the most part, I comply. But some days, I need a fix…
Don’t Gimme No LIP
The License Intervention Program (LIP) of the Hamilton County Municipal Court is for losers. Losers like me. You get remanded to LIP, because some court official, judge or cop has had mercy on your sorry self. They want you to get it together. But to drive in that sunshine of legality, there are hoops. Large,…
Life at the College Town Hall
Children quickly move past a quartet of adult dancers. They glide across the floor and flutter their butterfly wings. It's a joyous sight. Life Cycle, local choreographer Linda Reiff's original dance piece, is art at its most human level. Life Cycle is about children experiencing dance and their parents who get to watch them. It's…
From the Steam Room to Council Chambers
It's often said politics makes for strange bedfellows, but come this fall, Cincinnati voters will be treated to one of the most unlikely boarders ever to vie for a room at the 801 Plum dormitory. He's about the last person I would have imagined to dirty his hands with the nasty business of politics. I've…
Art: Behind the Music
Jon Hughes/photopresse.com Recording engineer Erica Brenner and assistant Jim Yates supervise a recording session with the CSO. It's March 19, a Monday evening around 7 p.m., and inside Music Hall, home to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO), the seats stand empty. But there is a performance tonight. And though there is no audience, it's…
Did City Council Ambush True Campaign Finance Reform?
After a little hemming and hawing, Cincinnati City Council last week passed its first campaign finance reform law in years. But will the new law, which deals only with information disclosure, mean the death of a comprehensive reform package backed by a coalition of citizen groups? City Councilman Pat DeWine, the engineer of the new…
Streetbeat
Jymi Bolden Promoter Lou duva, and Boxers Ricardo Williams and Dante Craig CitywideHometown Olympic boxing greats Ricardo Williams and Dante Craig, now professionals, put their stellar records on the line at home for the first time next month. Williams, a welterweight, and Craig, a junior welterweight, headline an event that includes other noted local…
News: A Positive Mankiller
Jymi Bolden Wilma Mankiller overcame stereotypes and obstacles to become leader of the Cherokee Nation. When Wilma Mankiller says leadership requires being positive, she speaks what she has lived. The first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Mankiller spoke March 19 on the leadership qualities of women. "Life hands us all sorts of…
Music: Internal Reflections
Talib Kweli is a ghost. "Believe this when you see this and don't fuck with me either, 'cause you'll be down where my feet is, curled up in a fetus, crying from the get-go. Watch when I flip. People gone be buyin' my shit like fiends dyin' for a hit." —Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek,…
Wealth Creationism
For a handful of years, getting rich was easier than shooting fish on a screensaver. All you had to do was take a popular commodity like books or toys or dog food or child pornography that was sold to people in the slow, cumbersome, boring, same old-same old way and announce that you…
Critics Picks: Critics’ Picks
Thursday 22He's not one to toot his own horn, but he has gotten a lot of attention for the way he blows. In fact, local sax great NELSON C. BURTON has made one great career playing with the likes of Nat "King" Cole, Scatman Crothers and other Jazz legends. It's simply because he had good…
The Rosenbergs
While downloading a Metallica song on Napster will make that band hate you to your very core, The Rosenbergs are more than happy to let you hear their music for free. The current tour by the New York-based Power Pop quartet is even sponsored by Napster. And the group also made headlines when it…
Fibromyalgia Is Not in Your Head
So you've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a syndrome in which you feel chronic pain in your muscles, ligaments, tendons and joints. It's one of the most common chronic illnesses seen in doctor's offices today, affecting four times as many women as men. Were you told there is no cure and you must learn to live…
Curly tales of the city
Si Leis: What a Doll!It has finally come to this. First the gays joined the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City. Now Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. is flaunting his stuff in Cincinnati's St. Patrick's Day parade. There it was, a Si Leis blow-up doll — the buffest, most rigid blow-up doll…
