How Long Will the Morgue Photos Haunt Cincinnati?
Is Thomas Condon destined to become the next Robert Mapplethorpe — a symbol of art repressed by the state? If New York filmmaker Paul LaMarre has is way, the answer is yes. Condon, locked up last year and facing a return to prison, made art photographs using cadavers in the Hamilton County Morgue. Mapplethorpe,…
Whirlygig: 93: Out on the Town
Where There's Smoke, There's Fireworks I haven't been down on the river for the WEBN Labor Day Fireworks for nearly 10 years. The last time I went, I had so much fun that I decided there would be no way to top it. A bunch of friends of mine were grilling out all afternoon that…
Thomas Condon Without the Taboos
The first things you notice in "Dog Man Star Repose," one of three recent paintings by artist Thomas Condon currently on display at the OKI: New Art show at NKU's Fine Arts Center galleries, are a child's soulful eyes at the center of his cherubic face. I use the word "cherubic" because of the subtle…
A lap dance in Vegas turns into a sticky situation
In Vegas I made the mistake of telling my "friends" I had an "accident." The girl giving me a lap dance was grinding too hard and I blew my load. Within minutes the nicknames started: Sticky Pants, Pocket Paste, etc. I took my medicine for three days in Vegas and thought that would be the…
Diner: Schoolhouse Rocks
Remember those stories your grandparents told about walking six miles in the snow to get to school? With hand-me-down shoes, worn-bare shoes or no shoes at all? I picture myself in 50 years sitting in my rocker with a grandkid on my knee, telling the story of my elementary school's sole computer and its tiny,…
What’s Matter with Self?
White T-shirted niggas look like pigeons. They flock and clock on corners and in doorways shittin' death onto white and black likewise niggas. Then these peddlers swagger past one another, Biggie-sized uniforms won/one with the win of sin. They all look alike/like we do to whites. They look away from palms pressing cash only long…
Events: Cho-Zen One
Margaret Cho takes noprisoners when it comes to her stand-up comedy. "For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution. And our revolution is long overdue!" At the closing of her last one-woman tour-de-force, Notorious C.H.O., Margaret Cho embodied the spirit of self-help gurus like Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil and, more recently,…
Writer’s Block
Kim and Bonnie Nuxhall find the beat at one of Riverbank Poetry Project's drum circles. On the road again? RIVERBANK POETRY PROJECT's forthcoming season is more a nod to Jack Kerouac than Willie Nelson. Well, at least to Kerouac's poetic contemporaries. The Beat Generation's quest for illumination and spontaneity in the 1950s has long…
