News: Ann Coulter Is Right
Andy Houston Ann Coulter says Jesus was no sissy, so why should she have to be nice? Ann Coulter is right: She sells a lot of books. She's also right when she says Democrats presided over some pretty rotten wars when they were the dominant power in Washington, D.C. — Vietnam, the Korean War,…
Locals Only: : Ramsey
Ramsey Ramsey Wearing all black, long sleeves and long pants, immune to the scorching day, Joel Ramsey (stage name: Ramsey) appears to be chillin' in the moment. Serene. First, his smile is slight, beginning at the corners of his eyes. A secret chuckle could be trapped beneath his eyelids. He seems almost mysterious, almost…
Sound Advice: : Miranda Lambert and Liz Carroll & John Doyle
James Minchin III Miranda lambert Miranda Lambert with Toby Keith Thursday · Riverbend Music Center Even though it sounds like a cliche from the big book of Country songwriting, the truth is that, when the timing's right, a loser can end up being the biggest winner of all. Today's object lesson comes from Miranda…
Music: Bottom Feeders
Danny Clinch The odds-and-ends collection The Bottom Half features Umphrey McGee's first outside-the-band collaborations. Brendan Bayliss said he'd never before heard the sentiment that his music goes well with warm weather, but the thought seems to please the Umphrey's McGee singer/guitarist. There's just something about the Chicago-based, so-called "jam band" and its diverse palette…
Books: Grateful for the Midwest
Mercantile Library Author Calvin Trillin remains prolific, recently publishing personal recollections and political commentary that reflecting his Midwestern sensilbility. He speaks Saturday at the Mercantile Library's lecture series. Calvin Trillin has done it all. And he's still going. The 71-year-old author has tackled nearly every mode of written communication imaginable, moving from journalist to…
News: Bold Agenda Courts YPs
Graham Lienhart Keynote speaker Carol Coletta addresses Cincinnati's YPs at Bold Fusion. The latest installment of Bold Fusion featured a program for moving the conversations from this and past years into action — an element some said had been previously missing. Cincinnati's annual young professional summit — which since 2004 has aimed to engage…
MainEvent: Michael Tisserand reads from his Katrina memoir
Rachel Roze Michael Tisserand A Katrina Story of Hope, Support and Sugarcane Like a good many responsible adults, MICHAEL TISSERAND strived to put his life in order: He and his wife moved to a specific city neighborhood to get their two young children into a great public school, they developed close personal connections among…
Vintage of the Century?
We're only about seven years into this millennium, and yet some enthusiastic wine rags and hyperbolic marketers have already hailed certain vintages as the Best of the Century: 2000 Napa Cabs, 2001 German Rieslings, 2005 Bordeaux and now 2006 Austrian wines. Austria? Many Americans have never even tried an Austrian wine. Their reputation took a…
Music: Growing Reigns
Taz Darling She writes hits and album cuts for others, but Kim Richey's performing career is where her heart is. Like many singer/songwriters, Kim Richey would rather not be restricted by her various successes. Yet in the wake of the recent release of her fifth record, Chinese Boxes, she's getting used to the critical…
IN THE PIT (KINO)
IN THE PIT 2006, Not Rated The winner of the World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, In the Pit charts the construction of the Periferico Beltway, Mexico City's mammoth elevated freeway system. The premise sounds dry, but it is ultimately fascinating. Director Juan Carlos Rulfo uses time-lapse photography and…
TV Soundtracks
Television soundtracks and other boob tube-related delights are rocking the stereo. Another creepy exclusive release that's only available at Target hit store shelves recently. Sony/BMG's Live From SNL! Music Performances From Saturday Night Live is focused on musical guests from the past four seasons. The 11-track CD features Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, Foo Fighters, Arctic…
Get an Ugly Win, but It’s a Win
Jerry Dowling Opening Day of the baseball season is about the parade, a return to the daily habits of baseball and the arrival of spring. The game is only one out of 162. Opening Day of the NFL season is one out of 16. That makes it 10 times as important. The first win…
News: SORTA Less
Jon Hughes/photopresse.com With Cincinnati City Council turning down a fare increase, Metro has begun trimming costs by cutting service hours at its call center and postponing the replacement of aging buses. With Cincinnati City Council recently rejecting the Metro bus system's request for a fare increase, the mass transit agency that oversees the system…
Onstage: Review: Romeo and Juliet
Rich Sofranko Hayley Clark shines as Juliet. Had Hayley Clark been the player in the Lord Chamberlain's company circa 1594, when Shakespeare was writing his first great romantic tragedy — and had she first illuminated the play's leading female — then this tale of feuding families and star-crossed love might have come to us…
Art: Stone Zombies and Lonely Child Gods
Rhonda Gushee Rhonda Gushee Since moving to Cincinnati four years ago, I
Healthy Bacteria and Your Digestive Tract
Human bodies are living ecosystems of roughly 70 trillion cells. As in any dynamic and interdependent system, certain roles and processes rely on others for the proper function of the organism as a whole. In the case of probiotics in your alimentary tract (digestive system), the desired outcome is a healthier and more resilient version…
Deal With Your Inner Slob
If you can remember the old comic strip Shoe, you might have an idea of just how bad my desk looks. The main character of the strip, a cranky newspaper columnist named Cosmo, works at an old rolltop desk that overflows with papers, books and folders. My workspace is similarly camouflaged by what appears to…
The New Pornographers: Challengers (Matador)
THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS — CHALLENGERS Carl Newman and The New Pornographers do more in 90 thrilling seconds than most groups can muster across an entire album. Take "All the Old Showstoppers" from the New Porns' epic new full-length, Challengers. The track's first minute and a half references the string-laden bombast of The Move, the…
Onstage: Review: Dracula
Sandy Underwood Audience familiarity with Count Dracula (Kurt Rhoads) hurts rather than helps. Do you know the story of Dracula? Well, of course you do. Part of the fun of watching the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's season-opening production is that everyone knows exactly what's about to happen — from start to finish. That…
Living Out Loud: : He Thinks I’m Doing Coke
Why is it that when we enter the realm of the "first date moments," all sense of maturity and grace evaporates? I'm not talking about teenagers at the movies. I'm talking about grownups — 30, 40 and on — and those awkward times that creep in long before you hit the sheets. After that, smooth…
Violence Begets Violence
In response to "Home Is Where the Hurt Is" (issue of Sept. 5), it concerns me to see domestic violence separated out from the bigger picture with barely a nod given to societal and political causes. Martin Luther King accurately stated in 1967 that the United States government was "the greatest purveyor of violence in…
Take Five
I take a break from writing a string of sincere columns about people on the margins and issues involving socioeconomic disparity to get lost in my new PlayStation 2 for a month. I once logged about 20 hours over two summers playing Contra on a vacation friend's system. Outside her cottage, waves rushed the Michigan…
Kevin Drew: Spirit If… (Arts & Crafts Records)
KEVIN DREW – SPIRIT IF… Nothing about Broken Social Scene conforms to the odd standards that both the music industry and fans try to make all bands adhere to in some form or fashion, so it only makes sense that solo projects from the Canadian collective would be just as elusive in classification. Although…
Unfair Law Also Doesn’t Work
Joe Lamb Gov. Ted Strickland, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory, Erich Kunzel and others symbolically break ground for the new SCPA. A Cincinnati advocacy group for prisoners last week succeeded in defending a fundamental principle of American law: It's unconstitutional to increase the punishment for a crime after a person has already completed his or…
Under The Boardwalk
With September in full swing, Edward Potthast's Under the Boardwalk offers the chance to wax nostalgic about summer at Cincinnati Art Galleries downtown (through Sept. 29). Potthast has positioned his viewers beneath the boardwalk in the cool blue shade, looking out onto a beach and the ocean waves beyond. Glaring afternoon sunlight warms a…
Raspberries: Live on Sunset Strip (Ryko)
RASPBERRIES – LIVE ON SUNSET STRIP It was pure ecstasy being at the House of Blues in Los Angeles in October 2005, when the reunited Raspberries played there. We were lucky to be able to see the Raspberries, period: The early-1970s Cleveland Power Pop band had disappeared by 1975, when Eric Carmen chose to…
THE OFFICE: SEASON THREE (UNIVERSAL)
THE OFFICE: SEASON THREE 2007, Not Rated If there's one thing Office co-developer Greg Daniels learned from his pal and former co-worker Mike Judge (Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, King of the Hill), it is the value of great casting. It's something that isn't emphasized enough in movies and television today. Only Judd Apatow…
Free Night of Theater
Sandy Underwood Three of the 10 plays named by Best Plays Theater Yearbook are being performed in Cincinnati this season, including Rabbit Hole at Ensemble Theatre (starring L-R Annie Fitzpatrick, Sara Mackie and Lourelene Snedeker). In a Curtain Column in October 2006, I asked, "Wouldn't a FREE NIGHT OF THEATER be a great thing?"…
Eat Sugar, Dan Karlsberg, Rumble Club and The Great Depression
One of the cooler newer bands in town, Eat Sugar, has a new introductory EP ready for public consumption — and on Friday at the Gypsy Hut you'll be able to get your grubby little hands on a copy for the first time. For some samples to tide you over, check the band's sites at…
Film: Strangely Poetic Rhythms
Miramax Josh Brolin stars in the Coen brothers' best movie in years, No Country for Old Men. TORONTO — Too much to do in too little time. That's the mantra at the Toronto International Film Festival, an embarrassment of cinematic riches that leaves attendees both exhilarated and exhausted. It's the largest and most important…
Onstage: Down the Rabbit Hole
David Lindsay-Abaire Let me tell you a little about playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, whose Pulitzer Prize winning script, Rabbit Hole, opens at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati on Wednesday. He was born in Boston in 1970 to a blue-collar family who didn't care much about theater. When he was in seventh grade he won a scholarship…
Cover Story: Jail Break
C. Matthew Hamby It's rare to find a local issue so volatile that it not only pits Republicans against Republicans and Democrats against Democrats but also forges an unusual alliance between conservative and liberal groups who otherwise wouldn't even talk to each other, much less cooperate on a political campaign. The controversy over increasing…
News to Use
Peace Starts Here The Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center needs 200 volunteers to distribute 1,000 yard signs in 20 different Tri-state neighborhoods Sept. 15 and 22. Each volunteer will be encouraged to distribute five signs and get five signatures on a voters' peace pledge during a two-hour campaign. To help, contact Call Kristen Barker at…
Even in death, Patricia Renick travels the world
Matt Borgerding Pat Renick's friends paid tribute to the sculptor by spreading her ashes around the world. Late in May, outrageous hats brightened the 1200 block of Elm Street as their wearers stepped into Memorial Hall for a program honoring the memory of sculptor, teacher and notable hat-wearer Patricia Renick. At the close of…
Diner: Review: Silver Spring House
Joe Lamb Silver Spring House After taking part in CityBeat's barbeque tasting panel last spring (see 2007 Best of Cincinnati, issue of March 28), I accepted the task of reviewing Silver Spring House with more than a little trepidation. You see, I had planned to not eat ribs for the rest of the calendar…
American Cannibal (Lifesize Entertainment)
AMERICAN CANNIBAL 2006, Unrated When documentary filmmakers Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro began following the pitch sessions of a couple of on-the-cusp television writers, it seems they had no idea that these two would find themselves on a tragic odyssey of epic proportions in the reality television realm. The soul-grinding experience of constantly selling…
