Joe the Plumber Mugs for Photo, Asks for Campaign Contributions
Sam “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher really wants to stretch those 15-minutes of fame into overtime. After asking then-candidate Obama a tough question on the campaign trail in ’08, the Toledo-area kind-of plumber has been walking the country as a conservative pin-up king. As you might of have heard, like a long line of fame-whores, his…
Scene: Helping Jimmy Dimora Get Laid Since 2003
“Hey, I didn’t order BDSM” Back when the first indictment of Jimmy Dimora went public and everyone got to read about his alleged taste for hookers and sex with woman who are not named Mrs. Dimora, we had a half-cocked idea to go find the ladies he allegedly slept with and grill them. Logistically, how…
Just Sit There and Watch a Movie About Bicyclists
Usually this time of year we’d have a great reason for you to go see a movie called Bicycle Dreams. But since any major dumping of snow this season is melting just a couple of days later, you really don’t have to dream about biking this winter, do you? Still, if you’re in the mood…
Dan Gilbert on Casino Delay, Sports Wagering
Ohio’s Casino Control Commission has put the brakes on the planned launch of Cleveland’s downtown casino in March, but the boss isn’t worried about the holdup. “The process overall, considering we got it approved just a little over two years ago, has gone pretty smoothly,” Rock Gaming owner Dan Gilbert told Scene last week in…
Some Guy Has Mike Holmgren’s Name Tattooed on His Butt, Along With the Whole Bill Walsh Coaching Tree
Reader, meet the ass of a 35-year-old radio intern in Sacramento. That’s the Bill Walsh coaching tree tattooed on his rump, ink which he got after he said he would get whatever design the host chose in exchange for prime tickets to last weekend’s NFC Championship Game between the Niners and Giants. (Via Deadpsin)
Local Businessman Invited to Sit With First Lady at SOTU
“Let me tell you about my buddy Hiro. He never uses a golf cart when we play. Where he hits the ball, it’s cheaper to take public transportation!” This evening, after the dinner table is gleaming clean and the dishes are stacked neat in the drying rack, families across the rolling Republic are going to…
Former Cleveland Heights-University Heights Superintendent Tapped for the Big Time
Deborah Delisle When former superintendent Deborah Dilisle departed the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district after she was appointed state superintendent by Governor Ted Strickland in 2008, the city was sad to see her go but cheered that the popular and respected administrator would be able to use her knowledge and skills to benefit the entire…
Watch Kid Cudi Throw a Fit Onstage
Kid Cudi is no stranger to having meltdowns onstage and off. So it should come as no surprise that the Cleveland-born rapper threw a fit onstage at this past weekend’s Heatwave Music Festival in Melbourne. The fest’s promoters shut down Cudi’s mic during his set, which led Mr. Rager into a rage-filled and Hulk-like demolition…
Bruuuuuce Is Coming to the Q
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are coming to Quicken Loans Arena on April 17. Tickets for the show go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday via Live Nation. Reserved seats range from $42.50 to $98. General admission floor seats are $98. Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball, comes out on March 6. Bruuuuce!!! —Michael…
How Many Snow Plows Does Cleveland Have Compared to Other Cities?
Good question. Or inane one. Either way, we’re glad you asked. Given the alacrity with which snow is cleared downtown, you might assume the city of Cleveland has just one snow plow and a couple of old guys with shovels on duty, but you’d be wrong. Atlantic Cities called around and got data from a…
Creep of The Week: Metro’s Director of Inpatient Services
If your doc looks like this, keep your kids away from him. Think you can trust your doctor? Think again. MetroHealth Medical Center’s director of inpatient services, Joseph Todd Joyner, is the latest winner of Scene’s creep award. He pleaded not guilty today to three counts of kidnapping and three of gross sexual imposition involving…
Cleveland-area wrestling promoter pleads to sex charges
Walt Klasinski by Walter Novak Walt Klasinski, known around northeastern Ohio as the owner of Pro Wrestling Ohio (PWO), was arrested last month for a laundry list of sex offenses. According to wrestling writer of Jerry Wiseman of the Columbus Examiner, In December of 2012 Klasinski was charged with three counts of attempted rape, two…
Dad Booked For DUI En Route to Bailing Out Son for DUI
“Wait a minute . . . you look familar . . . ” Is this the greatest drunk driving episode ever to grace the pixels of this news blog, no mean holding pen for past booze and car related spectacles of epic stature? When the Society of Professional Journalists finally gets its act together and…
Concert Review: Real Estate at the Beachland Ballroom
Three separate shows in 2010 — supporting the likes of Woods, Kurt Vile, and Deerhunter — did nothing to deter Clevelanders from wanting more out of New Jersey band Real Estate. On Saturday night, the band headlined a sold-out Beachland Ballroom. Since we last checked in, Real Estate added a keyboardist, replaced their drummer, and…
Kent Prof Looking for Memories of Ray’s
For 75 years, Ray’s Place — a venerable downtown tavern serving burgers and lots of beer — has been a welcome pit stop for the entire Kent community, meeting the noshing needs of town and gown alike. Perchance you are among those who’ve tossed back a few at Ray’s? In which case, Patrick O’Connor, a…
Source: Dan Gilbert Buying Cleveland Gladiators (Updated)
Update II: New Gladiators’ owner Dan Gilbert was unavailable to speak to the media during the press conference earlier this week announcing the acquisition of the arena team, but he shared a few thoughts with Scene today prior to the tipoff of the Cavs game. “We’re excited about it,” Gilbert says. “To keep it here,…
Gassy Trash Talk To Continue
The Ohio EPA has extended the public comment period on a preliminary permit issued to Cleveland Public Power to build a trash gasification plant at the city’s Ridge Road garbage transfer station. The comment period was to end Monday, but will be extended to February 23. Last week Mayor Frank Jackson’s office requested the 30…
Cleveland Activists Occupy the Court
Toting signs that said, “Corporations are not people! Money is not speech!,” about 50 Cleveland activists braved the frigid temperatures today to gather outside the Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse on Public Square to commemorate the second anniversary of the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in the U.S. Supreme Court. That decision opened the floodgate to…
Channel 19’s ‘Puppet Court’ is a National News Story Now
19 Action News is getting plenty of pub this week for its “Puppet’s Court,” a segment of the show where puppets re-enact scenes from the Dimora trial down in Akron. Necessary, of course, because cameras are banned from the court. What? You thought 19 Action News was already a newscast done entirely by puppets? No,…
Ohio’s Unemployment Rate Drops; Cue (Tentative) Tears of Joy
Wow . . . are things . . . maybe . . . getting better out there? Now, we’re not exactly leaving work early and filling our inflatable kiddie pool with Cristal, but it looks like the state of Ohio might be . . . damn, we almost don’t want to say it out loud,…
Ohioans Drank A lot of Cheap Booze Last Year
It does have the OSU color scheme. At least, that’s the takeaway from the state’s latest batch of stats on our drinking habits. Every year, the state likes to release the dollar amount Ohioans burned on booze, a gentle nudge to us drinking folk. You know that too-early morning after a long stint at the…
Pro-bullying state senator proudly stands alone
Kris Jordan: Would such a clean-cut young man support bullying? Apparently so. Who doesn’t love bipartisan agreement? You’d think it was the holy grail the way political pundits praise it. HB 116, which added cyber-bullying to Ohio’s anti-bullying policies, garnered overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle. Passed by the Ohio House last summer…
Apparently Fausto Carmona Isn’t Really Fausto Carmona
What’s my name? That Tribe pitcher who refuses to remove the hologram from the underside of his hat? The one who was really dominant for a year or two and has fallen back to maddeningly mediocrity? The one that wears No. 55? Yeah, his name isn’t Fausto Carmona, just so you know. It’s apparently Roberto…
Tony Grossi Calls Randy Lerner “Pathetic” and “Irrelevant Billionaire” in Now-Deleted Tweet
Update II: Whispers from the friendly confines of the Plain Dealer newscomplex tell Scene that Grossi’s errant, insulting tweet might have the Browns beat writer in trouble today. Newsroom rumors, which are all they are at the moment, have Grossi actually in the office today, which as one person pointed out, never happens. That might…
Meet Ohio’s Real Life Craigslist Pet Detective
Once your web browser elbows past the dudes hocking toasters or trying to find the girl with the lip ring from the coffee shop, Craigslist is the wide open plains of weirdness. Case in point: if you’ve been wandering around the Cleveland section of the web site’s lost and found listings, you might have spotted…
Four Guys Rob Salvation Army Bell-Ringer at Knife Point (Updated)
“Give us the can, and no one gets hurt.” Update: That Salvation Army worker who claimed he was robbed at knife point by four guys who raided his kettle? Yeah, he was never robbed at all. He stole the money and concocted the story to cover his tracks. Police now say that Kevin J. Weitzel…
The Quality of Cleveland Life Report
Your guide to living in fabulous Cleveland. The Bridge Is Way Out: ODOT says state lacks money to build second Inner Belt Bridge; key decision looms over whether to allow motorists to enter Cleveland or exit for the next dozen years or so. Smells Like Fish: Greater Cleveland Aquarium set to open this Saturday; nostalgic…
Local Musician Fights Facebook Embargo — And Wins
Getting any action from a giant Internet company often seems like a hopeless job. But a determined Cleveland musician succeeded. When Snake Rock, who’s been making music since the ’70s fronting a band of the same name, signed up for a Facebook account about three years ago, his unusual name — legally changed from Chris…
The Naked Chef Survey
Residents of the Buckeye, Central, and Ohio City neighborhoods have a chance — a very limited chance — to tell the American Heart Association whether they want celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to drop a teaching kitchen in their backyard. One of the neighborhoods could get the permanent facility, which will be used to demonstrate healthier…
Concert Calendar
Akron/Family Each successive step in Akron/Family’s musical evolution seems a little more unlikely than the last. And it’s a safe bet they wouldn’t have it any other way. Beginning almost a decade ago in the hipster epicenter of Brooklyn, they released a series of wildly eclectic albums filled with their brand of sonic-construction freak folk.…
Don’t Let Winter Kill You
Yeah baby it’s cold outside. The sky’s a perpetual handsome shade of gray that unites in a monochromatic shitpile with the sludge accumulating alongside every sidewalk and parking lot. The days are short, commutes are long, and we’ve only just begun this somber slog. But hell, let’s have some fun. Winter brings each of us…
Get Out!
Thursday | 19 Get Ready to Rumpus All About Maurice Sendak Anyone who has ever delighted in the picture books of Maurice Sendak knows the illustrator is anything but PC. Filled with surreal settings, mischievous characters, and a surprising amount of moral ambiguity — especially for a kiddie audience — works like Where the Wild…
Nip Your Nippiness
Booze has long been the Clevelander’s most indispensable winter survival tool. But, like the hunter-gatherers who plied their trade across this great region until frontier businessmen from Connecticut had them all killed so we could build shopping centers, hunting and gathering your own booze requires leaving the confines of home. You could get a single…
Stay In!
TOP PICK Talking Heads Chronology (Eagle Rock) This great DVD features more than a dozen live performances by the artsy NYC band, including some very early ones before keyboardist Jerry Harrison joined. Watching the jerky quartet slowly expand to a multinational funk party onstage is a kick, but it’s the songs themselves – from a…
Southern Belle
When it comes to southern hospitality, nothing’s more gracious than inviting in a stranger and setting out a plate of pimento cheese. That’s precisely what takes place nightly at SoHo Kitchen and Bar, the latest in a flurry of new additions to Ohio City’s restaurant row. Snug, cheerful, and glowing from within with candlelight, SoHo…
On View This Week
At MOCA Cleveland: A Moving Display Cleveland’s MOCA will move to its new home on Euclid Avenue later this year. Meantime, we have the museum’s final show in its original space, 8501 to 11400 (On Moving). For it, three local artists — Ben Kinsley, Corrie Slawson, and Brandon Juhasz — have been asked to explore…
Film Capsules
Meryl Streep’s performance drives this biopic of Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who’s been a conservative pinup queen for 30 years. The movie opens late in Thatcher’s life, when bad health has left her under virtual house arrest and she’s relentlessly pursued by walking, talking hallucinations of her late, lovable-goof husband (Jim Broadbent).…
Home Movies
The Ides of March (Sony) Writer-director and star George Clooney’s cynical look at the political circus can be talky, obvious, and a bit on the over-dramatic side. But as the press secretary who watches his idol’s campaign take some morally questionable turns, Ryan Gosling checks in with one of his best roles. Clooney is also…
CD Review: Enter Shikari
By turns exhilarating and maddeningly stupid, the third album by British noisemakers Enter Shikari drowns most of its eclectic charm in a tepid bath of political eye-gouging. “Arguing With Thermometers” morphs from nimble nu-metal screams to slick Maroon 5-style funk-pop to circus-like electronics without sounding forced. But the band ruins this inspired lunacy when singer…
Sex Pistol
It should come as no surprise that Shame director and co-writer Steve McQueen’s background is in fine art. The movie’s aesthetic is sharply focused; McQueen carefully places every detail in every frame. From the sterile, IKEA-chic apartment of the film’s protagonist to the lights of New York City, Shame is steered by its director, for…
Savage Love
Dear Dan: My 13-year-old son came out to us this morning. He plans to tell his brothers in the next few days. We love and accept our son, and this news isn’t surprising (though when will the stereotypical neatness kick in?), but we do have some concerns. He has, apparently, already made the news public…
CD Review: The Internet
Matt Martians and Syd tha Kid — part of the controversial L.A. hip-hop collective Odd Future — have a specific target in mind for their debut album as the Internet: Tumblr fans who crave some late-’80s pop-R&B to get high to. Dinky synthesizers, nakedly bathetic guitar arpeggios, and tinny drum breakdowns stew in a basement-studio…
CD Review: The Big Pink
On their 2009 debut, A Brief History of Love, London electro-rockers the Big Pink surveyed the ups, downs, and sideways stagnancy of romance. Songs like “Dominos” tumbled with grace and hooks. On the follow-up, Milo Cordell and Robbie Furze expand their worldview, taking in and soaking up their surroundings. Future This is all about new…
Prime Location
Finding that one little sliver of something that distinguishes one blog-blessed indie-rock band from the next is getting tougher these days. Good luck explaining the differences between Dirty Projectors and Deerhoof to someone who doesn’t spend 15 hours a week reading Pitchfork. Or the fine line in musical minutiae that separates Wavves from No Age…
We Get Mail
The Other Ohio City Just when Ohio City is turning the corner, our councilmen, Joe Cimperman and Matt Zone, along with Ohio City Inc., are behind the scenes putting in a homeless shelter — sorry, permanent housing structure — for 50 residents in the old Hollywood Video location at Fulton & Lorain, in an area…
Thanks for the Memory
T’was the week before Christmas when Dylan Baldi found himself seated in a Westlake coffee shop, his first visit home in months. It was but a fleeting break for the 20-year-old Cloud Nothings frontman, who hits the road again this week in support of his band’s second album, Attack on Memory, which comes out next…
A Farewell to Beefcakes
Anyone who ever floated within earshot of Scott “Beefcakes” Bickel knew he was all about Cleveland. Born and raised here, the North Royalton resident relentlessly mega-phoned his love of our fair land, so much so that when the dauntless 21-year-old embarked on an unlikely mission — to win a national competitive-eating contest — he would…
At the Arthouse
The Conquest This new biopic about French President Nicolas Sarkozy assumes you’re up on modern politics, as it parades one stuffy leader after another in front of you. Good luck keeping up with all the players in Sarkozy’s rise to power. Director Xavier Durringer sets up The Conquest as satire, which may seem like the…
On Stage This Week
Ten Chimneys at the Play House: The Secret Lives of Legends Cleveland Play House presents Ten Chimneys, a backstage comedy based on the private lives of theater legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Starring Emmy Award-winning actress Mariette Hartley (that’s her, above, seriously) and directed by Michael Bloom, performances continue through February 5 in the…
