“Sleep” Is a Many Splendored Thing
The “focus exhibit” is the curatorial equivalent of a film director’s close-up shot. The Cleveland Museum of Art is currently doing some film directing of its own with an exhibit that takes a close look at one of its most important eighteenth-century paintings: an oil painting of a sleeping winged male figure by the French…
The Great Steak Out
Friday, March 12 Dear Diary, Everything at Morton’s of Chicago is big: big wine list, big steak knives, and, most of all, big steaks. Our first peek at the meat came during what the Tower City establishment calls its “visual menu presentation,” a silly distraction wherein a humorless waitress methodically introduced us to behemoth slabs…
Soundbites
The panel I sat on at South by Southwest three weeks ago was supposed to offer lessons to music writers about covering their local scene. Numerous musicians, hoping to get a peek inside the mind of the media beast, attended, and the discussion devolved into a how-does-my-band-get-noticed thing–which was fine, because the original concept stiffed.…
Livewire
Rufus Wainwright Imogen Heap Odeon March 31 While there may not be as much mainstream hype associated with this second generation singer/songwriter as there is with a Lennon or Dylan scion, Rufus Wainwright–the offspring of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle–showed the sparse Odeon crowd that his talents are distinctly his own. No living off…
Paperback Writers
This, thought Rosavelt, is the way to make an album. For four glorious days last fall, the band members ensconced themselves in a cabin on the banks of a lake in Michigan. With little more than an eight-track digital recorder and a vintage microphone, guitarists/vocalists Chris Allen and Kevin Grasha put down the heart of…
Cleveland’s Cleavage
During the Blizzard of ’99, when other Clevelanders were slogging across the downtown tundra, Sue Berry didn’t go into work. She stayed home and washed dead people’s underwear. While the storm pelted the windows, she soaked negligees in the kitchen sink. While cars spun out across four-lane highways, she hung silk stockings over her bathtub.…
Shine On
Back when Mark Linkous, the man behind Sparklehorse, was dirt poor, he would venture into the woods near his Virginia farmhouse and root around for pieces of old rusty tin. “I’d make whirligigs out of them or shoot them up with a shotgun and write, ‘This was shot with a twelve-gauge shotgun at 3 p.m.…
Night & Day
Thursday April 8 Explore your inner Swen with The Art of Self-Massage, a do-it-yourself take on the full oil-and-towel rubdown. Students in the four-week course will learn to ease their aching backs, spleens, and kidneys by applying pressure to parts of the hand, palms, and feet. (No word on what happens when you rub your…
The Great White Hope
On a cold Thursday night at Detroit’s Wired Frog nightclub, a who’s who of the Motor City’s hip-hop scene checks out the weekly talent showcase put on by local rap group Da Ruckus. Attention turns to the video screen when Eminem’s “My Name Is” video comes on. It’s a strangely exciting moment. A year ago…
No Score
Self-serving confessions are a mainstay of bestseller lists; now we’re doomed to see their ilk on-screen. 20 Dates is the not-so-verite story of Myles Berkowitz, a tyro filmmaker in his mid-thirties who tries to advance his career and up his happiness quotient by filming himself on a score of dates. (Apparently, he raised $60,000 for…
Demon 2000
It’s the end of the world as we know it–and the devil is a bit grumpy. In The Book of Life, director Hal Hartley’s contribution to the Cleveland Cinema-theque’s end-of-the-millennium film series, 2000 Seen By . . ., the prince of darkness (played by Thomas Jay Ryan, the title character of Hartley’s previous pic, Henry…
Death as an Amateur Theatrical
Has any major American director had quite so many career swings as Robert Altman? Maybe not, but if there’s one thing the last thirty years have made clear, it is that it’s never safe to count Altman out. The mid- and late ’90s have been particularly unfriendly to him. After his big comeback with The…
No Go
After seeing Doug Liman’s first effort, Swingers, I could hardly wait to see what he would do next. However, thirty minutes into a viewing of his second film, Go, I had doubts as to whether I could make it through to the end. Set in the squalid underground of suburban Los Angeles, Go attempts to…
True Drew
Courage comes in infinite forms and faces, but who among us would be brave enough to go back and relive our high school years, face the horrors of homeroom, and confront hallways so fraught with danger that the most treacherous battlefield would look as placid as a meadow? It is precisely these horrors that must…
End of the Line
Superior Avenue was cold, quiet, and nearly deserted on the morning of March 12, but the United States District Courthouse was buzzing with activity and anticipation. Clerks scurried about, and television cameramen took up positions on the courthouse stairs near Public Square. Word had spread quickly that the jury had reached a verdict in the…
The Edge
Port Boss Gives Lerner the Business Finally, a city agency not slobbering to win the Who-Can-Bend-Over-Furthest-for-the-Browns competition! Now that the lakefront is crowded with tourist attractions, Al Lerner & Co. are in desperate need of parking space–and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority just happens to have a ton of it. In a remarkable spirit of…
Latin Lovers
Julio “Cesi” Castro stands behind an archaic gray cash register at the Caribe Grocery on the near West side, ringing up cigarettes and soda pop and the occasional Latino newspaper. From this spot over the past 32 years, Castro has watched neighborhood businesses close and customers move away. “The neighborhood’s been going down,” he says…
Letters
The View From Evil’s New Home While taking a moment after wrapping up my sordid media duties in Washington, I just wanted, as an expatriate from your fine city, to drop you a brief note regarding your newspaper. In the past, an old Cleveland friend has sent an occasional issue of the Scene so I…
