Shooting for the Stars
The closest thing NASA has to an interstellar space capsule, hurtling through galaxies at warp speed, is an office cubicle parked in Cleveland. Even Dr. Who, famous for traveling to other dimensions in a hotwired British call box, had ritzier digs. But hey, if a humble call box can make it from Earth to the…
Soundbites
Slipknot and Cleveland-based Mushroomhead, two bands that put on sinister masks and jumpsuits when they perform live, have developed a rivalry not unlike that of two sports teams. When Des Moines’s Slipknot played Cleveland last summer at Nautica on a bill with Coal Chamber and Machinehead, Mushroomhead fans started chanting “Mushroomhead” and throwing things at…
The Edge
Testy! Add Cleveland public schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to the growing list of educators who’d like to deep-six the state proficiency tests. “They are biased and ill-conceived,” she told a meeting of the local NAACP last week, insisting they leave “deep and perennial scars” on children. Byrd-Bennett has started raising hell in Columbus, where the…
Machiavellian Mayhem
Don’t confuse Willoughby Hills, “where the city meets the country,” with its northern neighbor Willoughby, “The Courtesy City.” Though Willoughby Hills is full of quaint homes scattered along a gently rolling U.S. highway and hidden in beautiful, secluded pockets of the Chagrin River Valley, the civic life of this East Side suburb of 9,000 people…
Letters
In Search of J.R. “Bob” DobbsIn response to “Slack Is Back,” by Jeff Niesel, in the April 6 issue of Scene: This wouldn’t be the first article on “Bob” I’ve seen in which the writer doesn’t really have a handle on the material. Perhaps it might have helped if the writer had listened to more…
The redemption of Bret Easton Ellis
Even if you have devoured every word about the cinematic adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel American Psycho, about a Wall Street yuppie obsessed with using skin-care products and devouring the entrails of prostitutes, you have not read this one particular fact. And it is a fact. No one could fabricate this. At this…
Quiet Elegance
Lynn Geesaman’s photograph of Antietam National Cemetery makes one think not of high school history lessons, but rather the smoke and blood of September 17, 1862. On that day, during the Civil War, the Confederates’ first invasion of the North was stopped, and 35,000 soldiers died in the struggle. Geesaman evokes a misty, dew-swept morning…
Wilder and Wilder
When Cleveland Public Theatre wrestles the classics, it’s invariably in the spirit of darkness and nihilism: Shakespeare imprisoned in a punky madhouse or fiendishly creepy bits of German expressionism to commit suicide to. This makes Raymond Bobgan’s profoundly alive staging of Thornton Wilder’s valentine to human endurance, The Skin of Our Teeth, a truly amazing…
Bringing It All Back Home
Don’t come whining to J. Scot Jones with sad stories about your extended daily commute. The Akron native — a graduate of Hoban High School and the University of Akron, as well as the Hyde Park, New York installation of the Culinary Institute of America — spent nearly a decade motoring between his central Summit…
Touch Cops a ’50s Feel
Look for Touch, a modern take on the 1950s supper-club concept, to open later this month at 2710 Lorain Avenue. The Ohio City location, two blocks west of the West Side Market, was originally a bank, and owner Doug Berg (former guy-in-charge of the Brillo Pad at 65th and Detroit) has maintained the rich woodwork…
The Moron Chronicles
Somewhere in Sri Lanka, Arthur C. Clarke must be pondering whether 2010 truly will be the year we make contact, while George Orwell can continue to rest in peace, knowing his vision of 1984 did not come to pass. On the other hand, Ray Bradbury is a tad perturbed that some form of the future…
Over the Edge
It’s been seven years since Negativland ventured out to the heartland to relate its strange tales and stranger execution on the stages of America. Don Joyce, one of the band’s human interfaces, can barely believe the lapse in time himself. He has one concrete fact at his disposal that makes the impending Negativland tour a…
A Show of Hands
Drumplay founder James Onysko has laid the skin of his palms on a huge variety of percussion instruments, mostly from cultures outside of North America. “I took a lot of grief in the beginning,” he admits. “Like “Hey, what are you doing with that drum, white man?’ I happen to think music is not about…
Overseas Sensation
These days, it’s no different for 34-year-old Virginia Rodrigues than for any other international celebrity. The fame, the concerts, the glowing press, the people in her hometown who once ignored her and now court her favor. “Everybody in Bahia has heard about me now,” she says via translator from her home in that city. “Whenever…
The Killer Inside
It’s quite possible that American Psycho is a brilliant movie. It’s also quite possible that it’s a dreary, obvious chop-’em-up dressed in Alan Flusser suits and Ralph Lauren boxers, drenched in Pour Hommes aftershave, all to disguise it as bracing satire on the greed-is-good ’80s. The option audiences choose to accept (most likely, the former)…
Pump Up the Volume
Founded by film developer, writer, and producer Marc Gerald and actor Wesley Snipes, [S] Affiliated is a new publishing venture featuring black pulp fiction aimed at the hip-hop crowd. The goal, in Gerald’s words, is “to foster literacy and develop a book market for a demographic that’s largely been ignored by the mainstream publishing houses.…
Detox for Dummies
Rehab, sweet rehab. Last resort of the alcoholic, the drug addict, and the would-be suicide. Free room and board, lots of tender loving care, and a whole herd of fellow recovering screw-ups who’ll always be there for you and are willing to apologize and admit their imperfections at the drop of a hat. Throw in…
Elliott Smith
Misery loves Elliott Smith. And Smith, in turn, loves misery. On his fifth album, Figure 8, Smith, along with co-producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, pumps up the volume and turns his gloom into an arty reflection on life, love, and desolation. In other words, nothing new for the cult hero/singer-songwriter/king of pain. But unlike…
Crazy Math
Where the Money Is is the latest attempt at a geezer vehicle — in this case for Paul Newman. Despite his unassailable star credentials and his still handsome mug, Newman is faced with the dilemma of the leading man: either make a film that appeals only to oldsters, step down to lesser parts, or risk…
Speedy-J
Speedy-J (Jochem Paap) is one of those rare electronic artists who redefines sound itself. Having gotten his start (and his nickname, Speedy-J) from throwing together the quickest mixes of rave and early techno at the turn of the ’90s, Paap learned that his talents lie in producing sound. He set forth with Ginger, a dynamic…
Boy Meets Goy
Like some pilot for a new ABC series titled Two Guys, a Girl, and a Synagogue, Keeping the Faith is a banal sitcom masquerading as religious deepthink dolled up as boy-meets-goy love story. The movie — about a rabbi (Ben Stiller), a priest (Edward Norton, also the film’s director), and Anna, the girl who loves…
Tino Derado
During the ’70s and ’80s, there was an impressive group of jazz musicians in the Cleveland area, some of whom have left town and become aesthetically if not always commercially successful on a larger musical stage. The best known is tenor man Joe Lovano. Others include guitarist Michael Bocian, bassist Abe Loboriel, and drummer Jamey…
Sexual Healing
After 18 months of sex-offender rehabilitation, three inmates at the Lebanon Correctional Institution want to show their booklets. Frayed and scuffed from being opened and closed so many times, they contain handwritten confessions as varied, pain-filled, and unnerving as the offenders themselves. One raped numerous women throughout his adult life. Another tried to rape a…
Dread
Dread performs on April 14 at the Blind Lemon.
