Cincinnati Has Something to Do with a Book You’ve Probably Never Read
Ahh, The Great Gatsby. You are either so dumb that you only saw the movie or were dumb enough to read it even though it made little sense because it’s from the black and white era. Anyway, it turns out the book’s subject has some Cincinnati ties, and we should get all overly excited about it because that’s what Cincinnatians do anytime anything from here gets featured in parts of the country that don’t get to see Tom Raper RV commercials. The Gatsby dude was apparently based on local lawyer, smuggler and criminal George Remus, who rose to fame when he figured out how to sidestep Prohibition and make Bill Gates money by supplying Americans with the intoxicants they need and rightly deserved access to. Remus’s life story is a fascinating and complicated one, which culminated in him killing his wife in Eden Park for betraying him while he was in the hoosegow. Hollywood producers are currently scouring the Cincinnati area in hopes of finding a new spouse-murdering hustler who is defrauding the tax system on a grand scale to romanticize in future books and movies.
Pipe Dreams Sizzle as Powerball Jackpot Climbs; State Lotto Reps Say the Kids Are Alright
The Powerball jackpot rose to $450 million this week and people all over the country are damned excited about it. But it doesn’t really matter much what you think you’d do if you won the lottery, because the odds of that happening are so tiny that the people who regularly play the lottery stand a better chance of waking up one morning with a Harvard Law degree in hand than they do the ticket that matches all five numbers and the Powerball. In reality, state lotteries are a racket that provide cushy jobs to those who run them while selling unattainable dreams to citizens, many of whom receive government aid intended to help them get by rather than help them play the numbers. In other news, poor people and those with no interest in understanding mathematical odds who bought the tickets also bought cigarettes, 20-ounce sodas and other convenience store goods which are likely to help keep them poor enough to continue fantasizing about winning the lottery and being rich instead of not having any money or attainable goals. State lottery representatives promise to keep getting paid off this convoluted scheme and muttering stuff about funding education if and when any more credible media outlets make mention of just how greasy state lotteries are.
New Bank in Hyde Park Caters to Residents Who Think They Are Sophisticated and Important
When people first get to know the great city of Cincinnati, they are often befuddled by Hyde Park. It’s a nice neighborhood that is full of white people who like running and owning non-threatening breeds of dogs. However, it’s hard to understand how and why many of its residents perp like it’s hands down the best part of the city and that everyone else in the city who doesn’t live there is a classless vagabond loser who didn’t go to Miami University or ride horses much as a child. The latest example of this deeply entrenched cultural phenomenon can be observed in the opening of the The Pointe, a stupidly named new bank brought to you by North Side Bank and Trust. The Pointe is their first new branch opened in more than a decade, and for some reason this place will offer visitors a pet-friendly environment in which cooking demonstrations and fitness classes will be available. The bank chain’s president explained the decision to offer all these amenities, stating: “We’ve never really reached out to millennials or the younger people. This is a whole different structure for us. We’ve never been on the East Side of town. We’ve always been on the West Side.” The new Hyde Park branch is the only one of its kind in Ohio, and it will probably remain as such since bank patrons from the West Side are simpler folk who like to get in and out as quickly as possible rather than dicking around to learn about canapés and other related bullshit.
‘InStyle Magazine’ Doesn’t Want to Offend, So Please Make Her Less Black. Thanks.
We all know that there is nothing scarier than a dark-skinned black person. That’s why other than Hurricane Katrina and sporting events, the media tends to not want to show black people whose skin may be dark enough to cause concern. After all, it has been proven that crime and villainy can be genetically linked to one race of people and that others haven’t practiced genocide and enslavement and every vile act you can think of for as long as history has been recorded. Sometimes black people whose skin is darker than that of editors of classy magazines like InStyle end up on the cover, as was the case with Kerry Washington, who is an actress on some ABC show. The solution to this conundrum was to Photoshop her skin to lighten it up. InStyle then blamed lighting rather than computer programming for the skin alteration and promised to more subtly do so until society decides it’s OK to feature people of all skin tones in their natural light or their Photoshop wizards get fed up and say, “I’m not going to make black people look different to help you sell magazines anymore.”
NBC News Anchor Lies About War Stuff, Doesn’t Really Get Punished for It
When blue collar folk don’t tell the truth it’s called lying and they are usually held accountable for it. However, if you have a job that entails wearing pancake makeup and talking about other people and things on the TV, you can do so with relative impunity. As you’ve surely heard, NBC’s Brian Williams is in trouble for making up a story about his time in Iraq — and then describing his deceitful statements as “misremembering” rather than lying. Williams will take a few nights off from doing the news, during which he will try to figure out if he remembers fighting in Viet Nam or if those experiences are just from him dropping acid and watching Apocalypse Now twice in a row at a frat party back in the early ’80s.
CONTACT ISAAC THORN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2015.