Coming to Life
The formula for transforming a long-shuttered funeral home into the Kennedy Heights Arts Center can be found scrawled on a message board hanging in a second-floor kitchen. The slogan reads, "You + One Hour = $16.45," and board president and overall workhorse Kathy Spoon laughs when I point to it. It's a warm February morning,…
Play With Your Food
As I rub a bar of chocolate soap up and down the legs of my shower mate, I hear one of the fundamental principles burned into my psyche from childhood: "Don't play with your food!" (Hah! I am playing, and I intend to "eat like a lady" as well.) Handling food connects the sense of…
Music: Give the Drummer Some
Dale M. Johnson Drumming go-to-guy Shawn "Not Sean" Elsbernd (center, with Quartet bandmates Cary Jaquish and Will Toedtam) plays in both Jazz and Rock bands. Not too many live music listeners pay attention to the drummer. When people go see a band, they notice the good-looking front person, or the killer guitarist. But the drummer…
Diner: Standard Fare
Whose standards? That's what I'd like to know. Mine? Yours? My mother's? My editor's? I guess, since I'm the new guy, I haven't had this problem — until now. It never occurred to me that I'd have to consider things like my own preconceptions and past experiences. I might have to think; I might have…
Kay Sloan remembers the Suffragettes
Ask anyone about silent film and they'll describe comedy great Charlie Chaplin sporting a boxy mustache and parading around with a cane. Kay Sloan, a Clifton resident and professor of English at Miami University, looks beyond the well-known comic star and surreal, Keystone Kop slapstick with her own documentary film, Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema.…
Gay marriage doesn’t take away from married, heterosexual baby producers
I know you don't want to hear this, Dan, but marriage is about babies. By supporting the baby industry (i.e., hetero baby producers), our government keeps the country populated. Gay people can't reproduce, even if they can raise other hetero people's kids (adoption) or use other people's sperm (artifcial insemination). But never — and I…
News: Democrats in Revolt
Jymi Bolden Democratic Party Co-Chair Tim Burke faces a challenge from dissatisfied party activists. Hamilton County Democratic Party co-chairmen Tim Burke and Mark Mallory might face the first official challenge for their positions since they began leading the party. Steve Huffman, a union activist and construction worker by trade, says his next project won't involve…
Keep Making Cents
Walter Deller "In my neighborhood, when you're shot, you get up and keep going." — 50 Cent Within a single week during February 2003, over 800,000 people flocked to the stores to hear the Queens-bred rapper Curtis Jackson — better known as 50 Cent — tell them that it was their birthday. At one point,…
Film: Beach Blanket Indie
The Station Agent garnered a couple of awards at the Independent Spirit Awards. SANTA MONICA — Because it occurs the day before the Academy Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards ceremony, held outdoors at the Santa Monica Beach, doesn't get its full national due. If a Spirit Award winner also wins an Oscar the next day,…
News to Use
Getting Global "Global: A Conference on the World Economy," takes place April 2-4 at UC's Tangemann Center. The conference focuses on the debate over corporate globalization and its effects on the environment, local economy and indigenous people. For more information or to register, visit www.geocites.com/cincyglobal. Trouble with Gay Marriage President Bush says he's troubled by…
Holy MTV! It’s Monster Island
THURSDAY 10:30 P.M. Tripping Rift, Sci-Fi. "Stuttering John" Melendez provides the voice of "Bob," the agoraphobic ship's computer on the smuggling vessel Jupiter 42. Taking orders from the stumpy purple alien "Chode," voiced by Stephen Root (Milton from Office Space), Bob is shackled with a crew of misfits that also include the sex-crazed android, "Six,"…
Opera probes the genre of romantic comedy
Operas aren't always tragic. Case in point: DIE OPERNPROBE, on view at UC's College-Conservatory of Music this weekend (in the Dieterle Vocal Arts Center), is a comic opera about rehearsing an opera. A young baron, running away from a girl he doesn't want to marry, gets sucked into a production at court. It gets more…
News: Loving Your Gay Children
Jymi Bolden Marti Kwiatkowski got angry, then she got active. Now she wants African Americans to join her. How are parents supposed to react when their children announce they're gay? Some ask themselves where they went wrong. Others end their relationships with their children altogether. Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) aims to…
L.P. is letter perfect
L.P. L.P. with The Plains Thursday · York Street Café Singer/songwriter L.P. might just be the epitome of effective "word-of-mouth" in action. The New York City-based singer/songwriter (L.P. are her real initials, but she won't tell her real name) has earned a reputation for playing for small crowds, knocking out the handful of people who…
Cover Story: Jury of Belief
Jymi Bolden A draft board member for the past 20 years, Francis Marko says some of his friends died in the Vietnam War. Meet Francis Marko, a 58-year-old Sharonville resident and one of about 30 Selective Service (SS) board members responsible for deciding the fate of Hamilton County residents ordered to military service if a…
Photographer Brad Smith
Then: In 1998, CityBeat featured photographer Brad Smith on its cover. Smith was hailed by Steve Ramos as a "guerilla photographer" who "pushes the envelope of erotic art." In a conservative town like Cincinnati, Smith, who regularly photographs nudes, has had his share of challenges. He butted heads with the Mother Superior of St. Ursula…
The Lights shine at CCM
Cincinnati native Richard Oberacker will conduct Cirque du Soleil's newest show in Las Vegas. There's been a slight change of plans at UC's College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), but don't worry — they're not turning out the lights. In fact, the Department of Drama will be turning on THE LIGHTS, a 1994 Obie winner by Howard…
Looking for Mercy Street
My father is an old and emotionally brittle man convicted of gross sexual imposition for molesting young trusts. He spent 180 days in the Hamilton County Justice Center two years ago. Where he'll spend eternity is between him and God. I've spent my life looking for the real him. Hard to find. These days are…
Mental Blocks
Who among us has never had a mental block? It happens to the best of us, especially in the creative arts. It could be a deadline or an assignment that perhaps isn't much fun. We sit and stare blankly or lament or procrastinate — anything but do what we need to do. In her article,…
Cover Story: Bill’s Outlet
Jymi Bolden Expecting an exemption from the draft, Bill Letcher told his wife what he wanted for dinner. He was shipped off the same day. Vietnam War veteran Bill Letcher, 56, is dying. The voice from his cancer-riddled throat comes gravelly and rich; his laugh is guttural, knowing. His grandson is home today, so Blues…
Private Lives and Public Campaigns
When I first saw the television ad on Feb. 16, I was startled — not just by its audacity but its conclusions based on a kind of connect-the-dots that seemed to reach well beyond what little had been published, and even then only sporadically. The commercial had a grainy, docudrama texture, an almost caught…
