The ‘Reese’s Cup Bandit’ Is on the Loose
There’s D.B. Cooper, and there’s this guy. Cops out in Lorain (predictable) are on the lookout for a suspect who’s been lifting Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from local gas stations over the last couple months. Yes, the suspect has been dubbed the “Reese’s Cup Bandit,” and for no small reason — the sticky-fingered lad has…
Concert Review: Aerosmith at Quicken Loans Arena
There are plenty of reasons to hate Aerosmith. The guys are old and wrinkled (and they certainly don’t look great in high-definition), and they haven’t put a decent album in years. But then you could say the same thing about the Stones. But like the Stones, Aerosmith is a veteran group that really knows how…
The Quality of Cleveland Life Report
Your guide to living in fabulous Cleveland. WTF, Doc?: Schools dish honorary doctorates like Halloween candy. But only one of Frank Jackson’s top aides would think the paper is legit enough to dub herself “Dr.” Valarie McCall in emails. She’s also reportedly been seen trying to pay for lunch with Monopoly money. Please, Let Us…
Cleveland Podcasters Want to Hear All About Your Sex Life
Here’s a tip for the ladies: If you’re shopping for your first dildo with your mate, don’t pick one that’s bigger than he is. This was just one of the discussion topics during Cleveland’s new Awkward Sex Show podcast that debuted last week at Bonnie and Clyde’s in Lakewood. Not your ordinary podcast, this one…
Joe the Plumber Thinks Gun Control Caused the Holocaust
The freshest YouTube video from Joe the Plumber, who will square off against Marcy Kaptur in the election and subsequently lose to Marcy Kaptur in the election, is ready for the world. Today’s topic: guns. Joe has plenty to say in just 40 seconds while he’s shooting fruit for target practice. For instance: “In 1911,…
Political Ad Says Josh Mandel is LeBron James, or Something
If you clicked over to Cleveland.com today (or Facebook, or the ABJ), you probably saw this image: Josh Mandel with his back to the camera and his arms out. The tagline for the political ad — paid for by Workers’ Voice, a super PAC “affiliated with the AFL-CIO” — has the word witness in it.…
Bistro on Lincoln Park Shuttered for Good
This past Sunday, Bistro on Lincoln Park in Tremont shut its doors for the last time. The three-and-half-year-old Mediterranean bistro, originally opened by chef Pete Joyce, briefly shut down about a year ago to retool. “We just weren’t doing the numbers,” reports Patrick Brown, manager. “It was floundering when we took it over.” No word…
Supreme Court Rules on OSU v. ESPN
One of the leftovers from the OSU scandal is the legal beef between the school and ESPN over public records. After the initial tremblings of Tresselgate, OSU was drowned in hundreds of requests for paper that might spell out a trail of impropriety on the part of players and program bosses. When the school didn’t…
Man Arrested for Making Meth at Wal-Mart
Meth is a bit of a problem around this area, if you hadn’t heard, and cookers are popping up in the damnedest places. Come on, if people are making meth in nursing homes, where aren’t they making it? Today we heard a new one: Wal-Mart. Which makes all kind of sense, but for practicality purposes,…
Woman Says She Was Groped By Nurse While in Labor
19ActionNews spells out a pretty terrible saga if it shakes out to be true. A Cleveland woman claims she was groped . . . while in the last stages of child birth at the hospital. Pouring more awful into the mix, the alleged groper was a hospital employee ministering to the victim. Not having clocked…
Ted Strickland Knows His Ohio Colleges
Kent State upset No. 1 seed Florida last night in the College World Series. Former Ohio gov Ted Strickland (or whoever runs his social media) took to Twitter to congratulate the winners. This is what he said. Yes, those Kent State Zips sure do kick some sport ass. The tweet was quickly deleted and corrected,…
La Gelateria Gives Way to Vero Bistro
La Gelateria closed its doors about six months ago, much to the dismay of East Side gelato lovers. The good news is that the gelato is back – and it’s the same as it ever was. Also back – though some might never have known it was ever there in the first place – are…
See Paul Thorn on Wednesday at the Beachland or risk rotting in hell
Before issuing his 1997 debut, singer-songwriter Paul Thorn was a boxer and then worked in a furniture store making chairs. That colorful past informs the working class ethos you find on his first five studio albums. Distinctive because of his deep gravelly voice and gift for writing songs that read like short stories, Thorn takes…
Alan Glazen Strikes Again, This Time Downtown
Alan Glazen is set to make another move in the Cleveland dining and nightlife scene. He says he has an agreement to purchase the historic Ontario Street Café (2053 Ontario St., 216-861-6446). “We’ve come to terms,” he says. Glazen, who says that he’s been going to the downtown bar for 30 years, says there is…
Mitt Romney’s Stop in Brunswick Was Heavy on the Weather Metaphors
Do you feel the electricy? Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stopped by Mapleside in Brunswick for a campaign event over the weekend to sling pancakes. It just happened to be the morning Northeast Ohio was graced with rain and clouds for the first time in awhile. Romney saw an opening amidst the wet gray…
Battle Between Blood Workers and Red Cross Comes to an End
As we originally reported back in the early days of the year, there’s bad blood between the local American Red Cross and the Teamsters local supporting the non-profits rank and file. A face-off over a number of issues including health plans and safe working conditions finally boiled over into a work stoppage on Valentine’s Day.…
Man Opposes Buckeye as State Tree Because It’s “Bisexual”
Via Deadspin, a letter to the editor in the Findlay Courier from a fella who discovered that the Buckeye tree is both male and female (technically) and as such is bisexual and undeserving of state-tree status in Ohio. He’s obviously joking, but it’s some money satire. Something in the “Just Ask” column (Page A3, May…
Kevin Liptrap, Fairview Principal, Resigns After Missing Funds Discovered (Updated)
Maybe he used the missing funds for that nice tan of his. Update III: To put this story to rest: Kevin Liptrap, the former Fairview principal who admitted to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the school, was sentenced to five years of community service, 90 days in a halfway house, and will have…
Ohio Man Arrested for Having Sex With a Teddy Bear… Again
Meet Charles Marshall, a 28-year-old Cincinnati gentleman with a penchant for masturbating with teddy bears in public. No, when Marshall was recently arrested at a health clinic after staffers noticed him giving his tallywhacker the teddy treatment in an alley, it was not the first time. It wasn’t even the second time. Or the third.…
Concert Review: Childish Gambino at House of Blues
Donald Glover isn’t just another actor who mistakenly thinks he can sing. Rather, one of the stars in the very funny sit-com Community, Glover, who dubs his hip-hop alter ego Childish Gambino, has some serious microphone skills. The guy is a decent rapper and has assembled a tight live band to back him up on…
Watch Bill Squire’s Comedy Special Online For Free Right Now
Bill Squire’s comedy special “Just Say Your Jokes” is up there on the YouTubes and it’s about an hour long and it’s Friday at 3 p.m. and there’s really not much else you’re going to do for the next two hours so you can watch this. Yes, that’s Scene’s highest endorsement. Bask in it, Bill.
Will Someone Please Think About the Old People in Parma
On May 30, Prosecutor Bill Mason unilaterally shut down the internet gaming cafe business in Cuyahoga County. It’s illegal gambling, pure and simple, he contended, and 50 properties were told to shut up shop. Common Pleas Judge Nancy Russo granted a temporary restraining order on June 13 that will allow four facilities, including MegaPlay Internet…
President Obama in Cleveland
President Obama spoke for an hour yesterday to an enthralled crowd of 1,500 at Tri-C Metro campus’ gymnasium. Although much of the media harrumphed afterward that the speech was too long and had too many proposals and ideas in it, the audience in the gym listened attentively and gave him ovations of approval when he…
Mugshot of the Day: Marker Mustaches
Grabbing the Sharpie and doodling on your passed-out friend at a party seems like a good idea. Hell, it’s a damn fine idea. Juvenile, but whatever. We all go through stages. Just know he’s going to have to deal with the repercussions afterward, which involve washing it all off at the very least, and probably…
Mayor Jackson Wants to Close Public Square to Cars, Build Park (Updated)
A previously rejected design for Public Square, but this could be similar to what Jackson has in mind. Update: The idea was floated initially back in October of last year when Mayor Frank Jackson said he wanted to close off Public Square to traffic, quartering off Superior and Ontario and creating a unified, 10-acre park.…
Local singer-songwriter Tommy Wiggins will wig out tonight
For over a decade, Tommy Wiggins has worn two musical hats. He’s not only been active on the local music scene as a singer-songwriter but he’s also worked as the director of Tri-C’s Recording Arts & Technology (RAT) program. Now, however, he’s leaving for Nashville, where his wife has gotten a job at Vanderbilt. At…
Mike Tyson Sings About LeBron James; Josh Cribbs and Machine Gun Kelly Talk About LeBron James
Tired of the LeBron talk this week? So are we, but judging by the sports radio docket and the front page of the sports section, not everyone is filled with the same sense of overwhelming ennui over No. 23 that we are. So, here are two videos to catch you all up on the hot…
Vacant Buildings Going Up in Flames in Lorain
The latest dispatch from Northeast Ohio’s black sheep of a cousin comes from the Morning Journal and details a problem that bombed-out cities like Youngstown have already been dealing with: vacant buildings going up in flames. Foreclosed houses and boarded-up buildings are ground zero for behavior best not carried out in the public eye. As…
Monroe Beachy, Amish Bernie Madoff, to Plead Guilty (Updated)
Update II: This morning a federal judge sentenced Beachy to 6 1/2 years in federal prison for his role in a ponzi scheme that jilted about 2,700 investors out of their money. In the wind-up to sentencing, the investor once again tried to play the Amish card, requesting home confinement rather than prison. And once…
Sue Warren Breaks Into Homes, Cleans, and Overcharges (Updated)
Update: Well, the mystery has been solved, but then again, it wasn’t really a brain buster why a woman would break into a home, clean, and leave a bill: she needed some money. 19ActionNews gets some face time with Warren, who explains in an awkward, 8-minute ramble that she had no intentions to steal anything.…
Film Capsules
That Bastard! That’s My Boy is 114 minutes of mediocrity In That’s My Boy, Andy Samberg plays the fruit of a raunchy student-teacher love affair, for which teen hooligan Donny Berger (Adam Sandler) provides the sperm. Decades later, tax evasion threatens to send Berger to the pen (just like his statutory lover), forcing him to…
Food Truck Etiquette from a Food Truck Pro
As the founding father of the Cleveland food truck scene, Chris Hodgson likely has passed more grub through his rig’s window than any other operator in town. Here are his tips on how to make everybody’s experience as smooth as possible. Do your homework. Most trucks post what they’re serving online, giving you a chance…
Glee Goes Glam
I stopped watching Glee somewhere around its third season, right around the time it reached that irreversible breaking point where kitsch outweighed quality many times over. But just when my left eye stopped twitching, along comes Rock of Ages, the big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical directed by Adam Shankman, who helmed the movie…
Culture Jamming
TOP PICK Heart: Strange Euphoria (Epic/Legacy) Three CDs and one DVD tell the story of the most kick-ass sister band to ever come out of Seattle. The box is arranged like a history lesson — from “Magic Man” (taken from an early demo) to “These Dreams” (their first No. 1) to a couple of cuts…
CD Review: Guided By Voices
Now that he’s resurrected Guided by Voices, Robert Pollard writes like his life depends on it. Class Clown Spots a UFO, the second of three GBV albums planned for this year, channels the anything-goes attitude of early band albums but with a higher quality of the group’s trademark low-fi. As usual, Pollard displays his gifts…
We Get Mail
We Screwed Up In our May 30 Summer Guide, we told you on our cover you could win tickets to the Irish Cultural Festival, the Cuyahoga County Fair, and the Cleveland Labor Day Oktoberfest, but we never told you how. Here’s how: Please send your name and address to giveaways@clevescene.com. Entries received by July 16,…
Local Band in Focus
Meet the Band: Thaddeus Anna Greene (vocals and guitar), Anthony Foti (drums), and Matthew Augusta (bass). Runs in the Blood: Greene’s father ran the independent rap label Red Eye Records in the mid ’90s. But classic rock struck the biggest chord. “My dad bought me [a guitar], and I sat in my room for three…
Our Home Town
Shortly after being hung in the Cleveland Clinic’s main building in 2007, “My Home Town” ignited controversy that forced it down off the wall. The painting by Michelangelo Lovelace, Sr. depicts an imaginative panorama of the Cleveland skyline, and a crowd of hundreds of residents. Many of the faces on the right hand, “West,” side…
CD Review: Lestat
It’s been 18 years since Lestat’s last album, and the time away has made the band more accessible. Or maybe the rest of the world has finally caught up with their dark industrial sounds. Either way, some things remain the same: The group still samples dialogue from old movies, which adds a haunting quality to…
At the Arthouse
Detachment Since making the terrific neo-Nazi skinhead drama American History X in 1998, Tony Kaye has laid kinda low, except for a couple of barely seen arthouse films. No surprise then that the prickly British director’s new movie is his best in 14 years. Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher in a public-school system who…
Schlock This Way
I fucking hate American Idol. Even though I’m pretty sure I’ve never made it through an entire episode of the show, I hate everything it’s about. I hate the contestants. I hate the judges. I hate the songs the contestants have to sing for the judges. And I hate the fans, who waste their valuable…
On View This Week
Akron Art Museum Gravity and Grace. “Dzesi II,” a massive red and gold field assembled from bottle caps and wire, has been a prize of the museum’s collection for years. Now its creator, Ghana-born sculptor El Anatsui, displays a dozen mostly monumental-scale works assembled with industrial metal trinkets, inviting an examination of modern economic and…
Savage Love
Dear Dan: I’m a 28-year-old guy who was broken up with via text by a girl I had been dating for two months. She is dealing with the loss of a family member and some other personal issues, and she sent me this message while out of state for a week or so. Two months…
CD Review: Bobby Womack
Time has done wonders for Bobby Womack. The 68-year-old Cleveland native and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has never sounded so ingrained with the music as he does on The Bravest Man in the Universe, his first album of new material in almost 20 years. Producers Damon Albarn (who recruited Womack for the last…
On Stage This Week
Damn Yankees at Porthouse Theatre: Play Ball! A promising underdog baseball team reviles the big, bad Yankees and pins all its hopes on a promising rookie player: Sound familiar? Enter Damn Yankees, the musical comedy whose sentiment Indians fans can appreciate. When down-and-out real estate agent Joe Boyd makes a pact with the devil to…
You Gotta Have Friends
The musical chemistry and friendship between Akronites Ryan Humbert and Tracey Thomas doesn’t seem intuitive. Thomas, 52, was Akron’s hot New Wave chick when she fronted Unit 5 in the mid-’80s. She put music aside to raise her family after her attempts to scale the music biz mountain fizzled in the ’90s. Humbert, 31, is…
Concert Calendar
Fun. Buckle up. Fun.’s takeover of pop radio has just begun. It all started at the beginning of the year, when “We Are Young,” the first single from the New York City band’s second album, started picking up airplay, thanks in part to a spot on Glee. Days after “We Are Young” aired in a…
Meetup
The internet is great for finding people just like yourself to talk to. But there’s been one lingering problem: We increasingly hide behind a screen to do it. Although social media is isolatingly comfortable for some, psych 101 suggests it’s best to socialize face-to-face, not pixel-to-pixel. What if there was something that made it easier…
CD Review: The dB’s
It’s been 25 years since the last dB’s album, and since then their influence has spread all over indie rock. The NYC-by-way-of-North-Carolina power-pop band’s snappy jangle and taut songwriting have been adapted by everyone from Fountains of Wayne and the New Pornographers to the Shins and Spoon. Falling Off the Sky, their first album featuring…
Drink Up
Bar Louie is kicking it up a notch, both in the kitchen and behind the bar. For cocktail connoisseurs, that means a recently launched menu of sassy, creative libations: drinks like the cocoa-loco Kiss My Aztec, with Patron XO Cafe, cinnamon, and cayenne, or our pick, Elliott’s Pepper ($10), made with cucumber-flavored Hendrick’s Gin. We…
Home Movies
The Gold Rush (Criterion) Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 comedy The Gold Rush isn’t his best silent movie, but it’s his most popular and iconic film. This is the one where his Little Tramp eats a shoe and makes his dinner dance. But more importantly it’s the movie where Chaplin whittles down the sugary pathos found in…
Keepin' It Wheel
It’s hard to believe that this whole food truck craze is only two years old. It was 2010 when Chris Hodgson rolled his crazy Dim and Den Sum rig into our town and into our hearts, launching a bona fide movement in the process. By our latest guesstimation, there are nearly two dozen rigs circling…
Q&A: Chucklefck’s Funny Guy
The first Chucklefck evening six years ago was nothing to laugh at. It wasn’t that funny: a coffee house grab-bag of poetry, music, and only fitful stabs at comedy. That changed when Ramon Rivas II took the reins. A stand-up with a motor geared for promotion, Rivas quickly turned Chucklefck into Cleveland’s most reliable up-and-coming…
