Perennial (losing) candidate Norbert Dennerl, once a Cleveland councilman back when greasers were an urban threat, pulled petitions a few months back to run in the Democratic primaries against Mayor Frank Jackson and Council president Marty Sweeney in West Park’s freshly gerrymandered Ward 19.

He couldn’t raise the 3,000 signatures needed to give Jackson a good laugh, but he’s got the 200 needed to give West Part citizens some good local theater until fall. He filed the petitions to face Sweeney on Wednesday.

Dennerl vows: “I’m interested in running an aggressive campaign, and I hope it’s a good one.” Where should he begin? (A little fundraising wouldn’t hurt, though Dennerl says he doesn’t roll like that.) — Dan Harkins

Cleveland welcomed rapper-actor Shaquille O’Neal at a press conference in Independence today. It marked his first official appearance as a member of the Cavaliers, a local professional sports team that plays basketball, a sport that’s popular in Europe and select American cities.

The conference was a disappointing production with practically no theatre to it. No entrance music. No fireworks. No driving in on a diesel truck (as he has in previous welcome-to-town ceremonies). It took place at the Cavs’ Cleveland Clinic Courts practice facility, where he’ll be spending plenty of time over the next three years, rehabbing between injuries.

Between four Twitter references, the lackluster affair was limited to discussing his athletic career and prospects for earning a fifth championship ring as a member of LeBron James’ court. Said the 7-foot Shaq, “We all know it’s LeBron’s team. … I’m here, here’s the captain. I’m now in the security business. My job is to protect the king.”

And after O’Neal and some local school kids threw T-shirts into the crowd, that was it. He did not freestyle a Kobe diss. Neither Coolio nor Warren G were in attendance. He did not wear metal armor or wield a sledgehammer, as he did in the 1997 film Steel, which earned him a Razzie award nomination for worst actor (a severe step down from his promising debut alongside Nick Nolte in 1994’s Blue Chips).

Nor did Shaq address declining album sales. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) database, Shaq’s debut recording — an appearance on the Fu-Schnickens’ 1993 single “What’s Up Doc (Can We Rock?)” — went gold. As did his first two LPs. Shaq Diesel (1993) and Shaq-Fu: Da Return (’95) are certified gold, signifying shipments in excess of 500,000 each. But he hasn’t released an album since 1998’s Respect. O’Neal’s acting career has also suffered since he started concentrated on winning championships. Now that he’s here, maybe locally based ace producers the Kickdrums can light a fire under his butt before they leave for New York. — D.X. Ferris

Cleveland Council clerk Pat Britt, the county’s Democratic Party vice-chairwoman, officially took the reins of chairman Jimmy Dimora’s donkey at noon on Wednesday. Don’t expect a quicker clip; it’s clearly the same machine, just a fresher face.

Dimora has that whole federal probe thing to remove from his ass, as well as his now-hyper-scrutinized duties as county commissioner, so he finally stepped aside to let Britt do battle in this year’s 58 municipal elections. Don’t be disillusioned: Jimmy’s hasn’t relinquished his chair there yet, so keep them homemade meatballs and gaming chips coming. (Scene’s cover story this week, illustrating the party’s divide between young visions and old ways, shows Dimora still fighting for party dominance, despite all his reasons he really should keep his big mouth shut.)

After the press conference, Britt sat down with Scene to make clear where her attentions must now lie. “Can things improve?” she asked. “Absolutely, but we have to keep the focus on keeping the party united, working together. Whether you’re black or white or grizzly gray, the job of the Democratic Party is to elect Democratic candidates.”

But which ones? She smiles. “All of them,” she claimed.

Scene’s cover story also displays how the roots of the county reform effort have been buried by Republican opportunistic tinkering, at the expense of many rival factions. Britt agrees: “We have to approach this holistically, as a group. If it’s such a good idea, there’s 88 counties. How about we all reform?”

What about the party? Isn’t it tainted now by the specter of great doubt? “That’s not been my experience. So I don’t really know.”

Mary Devring, the party’s executive director, said the party holds 104 of the 133 partisan seats countywide. She conceded, however, that it could do much better “bringing everybody to the table.”

She’s aware that Lakewood Councilman Tom Bullock, an executive committee member, is gathering support now for county party bylaws reform.

“I see some things that are good in there, some things that are necessary,” she says. She won’t say which reforms might work. She’ll wait to see what comes forward organically. Our guess: The Democratic tapestry of appointed party leaders countywide will continue appointing political successors and yielding to the status quo — no matter how dirty it all starts to look.

Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones was another leader at Dem HQ on Wednesday to anoint Britt’s interim ascension. After the press conference, the actor/politician wanted to try on yet another hat. He grabbed new Sheriff Bob Reid’s drill sergeant’s hat and put it on. “You look good!” Reid said.

“Wanna trade?” Jones asked, and the whole room laughed. “Not on your life,” Devring said for Reid through the merriment. — Dan Harkins

Recently we noted that when the Cuyahoga County Board of Mental Health and the Board of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services of Cuyahoga County merge, they'll be headed not by a medical professional but by a career bureaucrat, William Denihan. Well, let the record show that Mr. Denihan has fans.

I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your recent article, discussing the decision to appoint William Denihan Chief of the new ADAMHS Board, effective July 1. As an employee of Recovery Resources, an agency that is dually certified by both the current Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Board and the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board of Cuyahoga County, I have had the pleasure of working with both Chief Denihan and Dr. [Russell] Kaye for several years. As a provider in the system, it is my belief that both gentlemen were qualified for the position as head of the merged Board, but, as Dr. Kaye eloquently stated, the selection committee believed that the skills Mr. Denihan brought to the table were what the agency required at this time. As for Bill Denihan being well-connected politically, both Mr. Denihan and Dr. Kaye brought their considerable political connections and savvy to a system that desperately needs advocates and supporters. This worked in favor of the men, women and children we serve who have no one speaking up for them — I consider this a strength.

I do not believe that Chief Denihan will allow substance abuse prevention and treatment services to be overshadowed by the mental health system of care, any more than I believe Dr. Kaye would have allowed the opposite to occur. The bottom line is that we are at perhaps the most critical funding juncture this county has seen in several decades, and without all of us pushing together — from the same side — we will risk losing the safety net we have worked so hard to weave. And who are the real losers in this proposition? Those that need the safety net most of all. This community needs champions right now, and any activity that directs our attention elsewhere is attention misdirected. I implore us to push from the same side.

Respectfully yours,
Debora A. Rodriguez, MRC
President & CEO, Recovery Resources

Just one week after the Cleveland Museum of Art celebrated the Solstice and the opening of its new Rafael Vinoly-designed East Wing, executive director Timothy Rub has announced his resignation. Rub, who took the job in January 2006, and agreed to a pay cut as the museum’s endowment was hit hard (as endowments have been across the board this year) will take over as executive director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in September, according to a press release from the Museum.

In Philadelphia he’ll replace the late Anne d’Harnoncourt, who died of a heart attack last year. He leaves the Cleveland museum at the halfway point of construction in its $350 million expansion. To date, the museum has raised $212 toward that campaign, about $80 million of which was raised during Rub’s brief tenure.

Rub leaves one major architectural project for another: the Philadelphia Museum of Art is in the midst of its own renovation and reorganization, under the architectural guidance of Frank Gehry.

“We are sorry to see Timothy go and wish him well,” said Alfred M. Rankin, Jr., president of the museum’s Board of Trustees in a press release issued by the Museum.

“Following Timothy’s departure in September, the museum will be well served by senior managers who are both experienced and resourceful. With their assistance and the implementation of a transition plan that we are already developing, I am confident that the museum will continue to operate smoothly and that its momentum, including our renovation and expansion project and capital campaign, will continue,” Rankin said.

The search for his successor will begin shortly. — Michael Gill

Cleveland Metroparks Zoo have found a new use for old phone books, hiding treats in them and giving them to the primates to forage through. The swamp monkeys (pictured below) speedily flip through the big books page by page, while the Hamadryas baboons (next page) take a slower, more cautious approach.

Ultimately, both species ended up finding all the hidden food. The phone books and other household items serve as enrichment tools for the animals, encouraging them to engage with new objects and keeping their minds stimulated.

The swamp monkeys and baboons are on exhibit daily at the Zoo's Primate, Cat & Aquatics Building. More photos after the jump.

News from longtime Scene contributor Derf:

Welcome to TRASHED: THE WEBCOMIC, my first foray into a web-only feature.

This is a tale of a shit job. Literally. I first detailed my experiences as a garbageman eight years ago in my second graphic novel, the Eisner-nominated TRASHED. But there were tales left to tell and I always felt I'd return to it someday. Now I have.

TRASHED: THE WEBCOMIC is not really a memoir, like the original TRASHED. It's based on truth, but I've added fictional characters and situations. It didn't really happen but, trust me, it's all too real.

Drop by every Friday.

Via Mother Jones: A former health insurance flak reveals the industry's dirty secrets to Columbia Journalism Review:

Trudy Lieberman: Why did you leave CIGNA?

Wendell Potter: I didn’t want to be part of another health insurance industry effort to shape reform that would benefit the industry at the expense of the public.

TL: Was there anything in particular that turned you against the industry?

WP: A couple of years ago I was in Tennessee and saw an ad for a health expedition in the nearby town of Wise, Virginia. Out of curiosity I went and was overwhelmed by what I saw. Hundreds of people were standing in line to get free medical care in animal stalls. Some had camped out the night before in the rain. It was like being in a different country. It moved me to tears. Shortly afterward I was flying in a corporate jet and realized someone’s insurance premiums were paying for me to fly that way. I knew it wasn’t long before I had to leave the industry. It was like my road to Damascus.

Potter goes on to describe how insurance companies will claim to support reform but fight it viciously behind the scenes: "They will work through what they refer to as 'third-party advocates' — people and groups that are ideologically aligned with them — and use their PR firms and lobbyists to do that work. These surrogates will reach out to radio and TV talk show hosts and conservative editorial writers."

He also explains why the media are woefully unprepared to counter this offensive.

Read the whole thing. It's part of an ongoing effort by CJR to broaden the coverage of healthcare reform. — Frank Lewis

County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora went off on county Republican Party Chairman Rob Frost at the end of Thursday’s regular meeting.

Dimora, who stepped aside as Dem party chairman on Tuesday in favor of behind-closed-doors-lever-pulling, said his attorney finally was cool with him going head-to-head in a public setting with Frost, as well as Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti — the two leaders of the county reform movement that’s using Dimora’s central role in the federal corruption probe as evidence of the need for a new system even more responsive to the region’s business elite.

In his tirade Dimora slammed Zanotti, who sat in the front row, for traveling to Vegas on his own junkets with key Republicans and J. Kevin Kelley, the alleged bag man in the most recent federal indictments. Zanotti didn’t dispute it. He didn’t even make a face like he disputed it.

Dimora left out few of his Republican enemies, even alluding to collusion among ex-state Republican chairman (and ex-county elections board chairman) Bob Bennett and Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg and her former editorial page editor, who he saw lunching together last year and assumed they were plotting against him. (Paranoid much?) Then he slammed Bennett’s decision to champion the purchase of $30 million worth of Diebold voting machines, which still sit in a Lorain County warehouse. The county could try to recoup the loss, he said, if it weren’t for Bennett arranging for documents associated with the deal to disappear. Dimora asked: And who’s boss was Bennett, Mr. Frost, with your $110,000 paycheck?

"I know my family and myself have been living through hell for the past year,” Dimora told Frost. “And I don’t wish that on my worst enemy. And I guess that would be you.” — Dan Harkins

Charlie's Angel Farah Fawcett, 62, died today after a long battle with cancer. Four years ago, Scene writer Kevin Hoffman chronicled the twisting saga behind her iconic poster, a landmark of ’70s sexiness. Read the whole story here. — D.X. Ferris

The Nation reports that the discredited abstinence education movement that flourished under the Bush administration is trying to rebrand itself now that federal dollars (and attention) aren't so easy to come by. Valerie Huber, who used to oversee Ohio's programs, makes an appearance — she's now executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association:

At an April 29 Capitol Hill briefing, Huber told the room that abstinence-only education is "not a 'just say no' message." "This is not abstinence only, this is a holistic message that prepares and gives students all of the information they need to make healthy decisions," Huber said. In fact, the NAEA isn't even calling its programs "abstinence only" anymore—now they're "abstinence centered."

Emphasis added, to illustrate how the God squaders are once again trying to obscure their real intentions. And their failures:

The NAEA is also jumping on the science bandwagon; on its AbstinenceWorks website, much of the home page is taken up by a graph showing the decrease in teen pregnancy rates, presumably to demonstrate its programs' effectiveness. The problem? The graph conveniently stops in 2006; the teen pregnancy rate in the United States has actually increased for the second year in a row.

Insert your own Bristol Palin joke here.

An article on a Christian web site (no longer online but quoted in a comprehensive ’05 post about Huber on the now-defunct blog Hypothetically Speaking) described the western Ohio mom's view this way: "Many organizations support abstinence, but it is abstinence until you feel you're ready or simply feel like it. In other words, we're all abstinent until we do it again. Valerie Huber is advocating a different code of morality — the biblical standard of abstinence until marriage."

Big surprise: The Don of Rubber City is still in the big chair.

Detractors can suck it, says Akron Mayor For Life Don Plusquellic of the latest attempt to depose him in a recall election on Tuesday. In 2007, the darling of the national mayoral set won his unprecedented sixth term. So it was no surprise to anyone — even his chief opponent, lawyer and ex-councilman Warner Mendenhall — that Plusquellic came away with about 75 percent of the vote.

At his downtown victory party at Musica, he recounted for the assembled suits something his grandmother told him when he was a star quarterback still made to earn his booze money at McDonald’s: “There will be a small percentage who, no matter how hard you work, they will never be satisfied."

Yes, if we linger too long on what the little people out in the neighborhoods want, how will downtown business interests flourish? “If we dwell on them,” he continued about his opponents, “if we let them set our agenda, God help us.”

His castle is starting to look pretty impenetrable.

Warner Mendenhall, the Akron attorney who led the recall campaign on a promise to spread some dough more equitably across the city, raised just about $7,000 to Plusquellic’s $300,000 on the recall effort. And seemed at a loss for material just before the big day: He was sending e-mail blasts about “identifiably racist” flyers that Plusquellic had just mailed out with the warning “WHO’S TRYING TO TAKE OVER AKRON?” The flyers featured dark silhouettes that Mendenhall tried to say looked like black people. We really can't tell.

Mendenhall also alleged that Plusquellic hadn’t given his Change Akron Now group all of the millions of documents they’d gone fishing for in Sunshine Law requests. And he tried to point out how Plusquellic allegedly told a cop that if the police union endorsed the recall they’d end up “driving sleds before they get new cruisers.” Scene wanted to get this from the mouth of the cop who heard this, anonymously or not, and Mendenhall supplied the number of a retired cop who didn’t return our calls.

The cops did end up endorsing Mendenhall, though. Everyone else, it seems — from Chief Pretender Cryssie Hynde to each and every downtown business interest — was all over Plusquellic’s jock.

But Mendenhall didn’t seem disheartened on Wednesday. He said he listened to audio files of the losing and winning parties Tuesday night, and it seemed like there was more merriment at theirs. “They had a party at Musica, and we were at the diner,” says Mendenhall, “but ours was the one that sounded like a victory party.”

Mendenhall’s wife, Kelly, announced her plan to run for an at-large Council seat this year, and Mendenhall vowed to keep Change Akron Now alive. If they have to keep making their own yard signs, then so be it.
“We’ve gotten campaign finance reforms in 2000, fought [successfully] against a tax increase in 2007 and most of us worked to get a charter change to keep our utilities local,” he recounted. “I think the folks we worked with on CAN came out feeling very empowered that we are not passive citizens,” he said. “And maybe that’s why there was a sense of celebration last night in the face of what looks like a massive defeat.”

Calls to Plusquellic’s staff went unanswered. That Musica sure can throw a party. — Dan Harkins

Yes, this is how business is done around here, as county commissioner Tim Hagan was so fond of reminding everyone during the whole half-billion-dollar convention center give-away to his developer-friend Chris Kennedy. What he meant: behind closed doors.

And so it goes with the Ameritrust building at Euclid and East Ninth. Commissioners bought the long-vacant building — which somehow manages to look like an Irish public-housing highrise and “architecturally significant” — in 2005 from Dick Jacobs for the grand price of $22 million. The plan: put in some money and have a brand-new-looking county HQ. But a few unforeseen developments screwed that plan up seven ways from Sunday.

County commissioners have reportedly thrown as much as $40 million into the building, but then said last year — with the Medical Mart/convention center issue boiling on the front burner and site selection still burning holes in key developers’ pockets — that they couldn’t afford to move forward and would acquiesce to the plans of a very-connected developer, Doug Price of the K&D Group. Price said he had a major tenant lined up to help him turn the old building into a hotel and gathering place, but then Price backed out early this week after that tenant bailed and any hopes of financing fell through.

But maybe this was the plan all along. Commissioners didn’t float the idea of buying a county HQ with sales-tax revenue, to make it an entranceway to the new convention center development, until after the Med Mart deal was done. This would necessitate a move and provide the cash flow, as Commissioner Jimmy Dimora told Cleveland Council members, “to fill another one of your vacant buildings elsewhere downtown.”

This was all before the lastest round of federal corruption indictments came down last week, though, which confirmed that Dimora and Auditor Frank Russo are indeed up to their doughy faces in what prosecutors allege is a fat mess of greedy shenanigans.

Now, Price looks like the worst possible person to have been sitting on the county’s Ameritrust crater, waiting for something that hasn’t happened. Not only are investigators interested in Dimora’s role in the Ameritrust sale and his dealings with K&D, but they allege Price paid Dimora and Co. a series of bribes for the county engineer’s office to locate to K&D’s Stonebridge development downtown.

Yeah, it might be wise for him to “just go away.” Maybe to Florida with Kevin Kelley.

Dan LeBatard has a great feature on Bernie Kosar for the Miami Herald. While locally, all we got recently in terms of media coverage of Bernie's imminent bankruptcy filings were the financial details, LeBatard sits down with Bernie in Florida and recaps just how completely screwed up Kosar's life is these days — personally, socially, and physically.

If you listened to No. 19 call pre-season Browns games or make appearances on WKNR, you surely know that Bernie's voice is not one of a healthy man. You can hear the pain, the toll of alcohol, the stress of his messy divorce, all wrapped up in that endearing slur that Browns fans love.

What we know about his money is that he owes lots of it, to lots of people — somewhere between $10 and $50 million in total. From mismanaging his funds to being entirely too generous with friends and relatives, to taking a beating on real estate deals thanks to the miserable economy, Kosar is in a world of financial hurt.

That we know.

LeBatard's piece gives a ton of insight into the man we only know as a beloved public figure. For instance, he didn't know how to make coffee until recently.

And there's more. These are perhaps the best two anecdotes from the whole piece:

The IRS and the creditors and an angry ex-wife and an avalanche of attorneys are circling the chaos that used to be Bernie Kosar's glamorous life, but that's not the source of his anxiety at the moment. He is doing a labored lap inside his Weston mansion, the one on the lake near the equestrian playpen for horses, because he wants to be sure there are no teenage boys hiding, attempting to get too close to his three daughters. He shattered a Kid Rock-autographed guitar the other day while chasing one teenager out of his house because he doesn't mind all of the other boys within the area code thinking the Kosar girls have an unhinged Dad.

''There are a million doors in this place,'' he says. ``Too many ways to get in.''

And....

Do you know how to wash clothes, Bernie?

''No,'' he says.

Iron a shirt?

''No,'' he says.

Start the dishwasher?

''No,'' he says.

He just learned the other day, after much trying and failing, how to make his own coffee. This is a man who owned his own jet and helped found companies, plural. But when his new girlfriend came over recently and found him trying to cook with his daughters, she couldn't believe what was on the kitchen island to cut the French bread. A saw.

So, those are amusing, and it's always interesting to see how someone who a success at quarterback not because of his physical skills, but because of his cerebral acuity, doesn't know how to hang pictures on the wall or perform the most mundane of domestic tasks.

But the image of Bernie that emerges by the end isn't silly or unhinged or pathetic. It's one that any Clevelander could have guessed. He's self-deprecating, kind, a loving father, smart enough to know he'll come out of this, and too in love with the competition he long left on the field to get too far away from the game he loves. He carries his scars (broken fingers, broken ankles, screwed up back, countless concussions) proudly, and despite everything going against him, knows he'll survive. And he deals with all the usual issues of being a former superstar athlete now trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, still seeking that adrenaline and competition along the way.

He's not a perfect guy, by any stretch of the imagination. But we can identify with him. Guys and gals that fight their way through, making mistakes, trying to do better next time, but not always succeeding. That's why the love for Bernie is so palpable. It's not just about what he did on the field. He's one of us. Always will be. — Vince Grzegorek

Russell Masetta wants you to know something, so zip it and listen: He founded the Nature Stone flooring business in 1988 on the principles of determination and family loyalty. So just forget about all this kick-backing mafia stuff that happened for all the years right before that, you understand? Or do you need it explained in person?

The founder of the Bedford business sprung for a half-page ad in Sunday's Plain Dealer to tell half the story of his upbringing. The ad, which had to have cost several thousand dollars, featured a story about his father, Andrew “YAYA” Masetta — local slow-pitch softball hero and cement finisher — who gave his son a start in the construction business at a time when he needed the incognito time.

When Andrew passed in 2004, Russell incorporated “YAYA” into his business logo (so small that PD designers had to use the symbol of a magnifying glass to point out that it was right there, under the “E” in NATURE STONE). It’s a lovely story, though, for an advertisement.

Scene is nervous but duty-bound to fill in some blanks.