New Rules
Teaching Mrs. Tingle Written and directed by Kevin Williamson. Starring Helen Mirren, Katie Holmes, Barry Watson, and Marisa Coughlan.
Mystery Man
When charges of sexual harassment were leveled earlier this year against Jerry Patrick, the chief marketing officer and executive vice president of Medical Mutual of Ohio, the company seemed to do the right thing. Patrick was replaced and vanished from the giant insurer’s downtown headquarters. But Patrick is still receiving money from Medical Mutual. According…
A Hard Lesson
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction . . . The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be…
Hoodwinked
Their pictures never go away. There’s always another rally, always another reason to put them on television and the Internet. They try to look proud and righteous, hoping to evoke the terror of their legacy. But the pictures show them for what they really are — ridiculous men in white robes and pointy hoods badly…
Edge
The Cleveland Clinic will not be renewing its contract to run the MetroHealth pharmacy, a decision that could put an ugly dent in health care services on the near West Side. The pharmacy, which serves a sizable low-income and uninsured clientele, is a financial loser that Metro tried to close in 1995. Community pressure forced…
Relief Pictures
The early twentieth-century composer Camille Saint-Saëns departed from his complicated piano works when he created Carnival of the Animals. The witty picture of animal life in sound was also the bane of his existence. He actually tried to suppress its publication, fearing that if it got out, people would tag him as a composer of…
Ladies They Talk About
Every year a hopeful crop of theater companies attempts to break through the Cleveland rocks to add needed heft to an undernourished theater environment. So it went this past week when a plucky new generation of baby entrepreneurs decided to try its luck sending out smoke-signals and press releases to proclaim its new troops. One…
Encore
Measure for Measure. One of Shakespeare’s darkest, surliest, and most intriguing works, Measure for Measure is a verbally ornate scandal sheet, cataloguing every moral failing short of flatulence. Cleveland Public Theatre’s production is youthful and vibrant. The performers in the five leads are so highly charged they could light up a skyscraper. Director Timothy Saukiavicus…
Chef’s Choice
The concept isn’t unknown to Cleveland’s forward-thinking chefs. Donna Chriszt has a version of it at her new J Café. So does Chef John D’Amico at Vermilion’s Chez François. It’s an option at Parker Bosley’s Ohio City restaurant, and Lola’s Michael Symon sometimes gives it a whirl. But by and large, the notion of a…
Spellbound
Hear the name “Sully,” and a back alley transaction comes to mind. Whether it’s a bet with the local numbers racket or the acquisition of contraband, the name has a dark connotation. For Godsmack lead singer Sully Erna, a rough life seemed to be written in the stars as soon as his parents took one…
Love, Death, and Vaseline
Flaming Lips singer/guitarist Wayne Coyne is in a phone booth outside a small club in Memphis, explaining the highfalutin concept behind “What Is the Light,” a track off the new Lips release The Soft Bulletin. The song explores the possibility that the chemical in our brains that compels us to fall in love is actually…
Things Fall Together
Despite a five-year run with Geffen Records and a mountain of press suggesting the Roots were the next big band, year after year, the innovative hip-hop act remains relatively obscure. And for that reason, they’re mad. Included in their scorned crosshairs are Geffen, the white-run music industry machine, and the African American community. The Roots’…
Playback
Alison Krauss Forget About It (Rounder) With Alison Krauss, country music isn’t always as simple as it appears to be on the surface. As a bluegrass fiddle prodigy, Krauss slips fashion and dynamic into her performance. But over the years, as she warmed to Nashville’s ways — and Nashville to hers — Krauss has become…
Called on the Carpet
Talk about hospitality. At the Hoover Historical Center in North Canton, all the displays suck, and the guests get to pick up lint. Like the collection of a crazy aunt with a cleanliness complex, the mini-museum boasts six rooms of vacuum cleaners — or “suction sweepers,” as the pre-electric dinosaurs were called — from the…
Livewire
The Pretenders Nautica Stage August 12 Not much about Chrissie Hynde (including the haircut) has changed in the last twenty years. We should all be so lucky. She still possesses an integrity that was cut in the late ’70s and has never needed sharpening. That explains why the line “When you own a big chunk…
Put It in Park
Big hair, faux flames, and the ambiance of a third-rate nightclub full of empty seats weren’t what Minneapolis filmmaker Rolf Belgum was really going for in his heavy metal documentary. He was trying to get the hippopotamus walking through the water. A longtime fan of nature films, the director of Driver 23 says that when…
Soundbites
Last Friday Soundbites received an e-mail from Anne Candela, Anne E. DeChant’s manager, scolding us for not announcing that DeChant was chosen to play the Lilith Fair date at Blossom. Ms. Candela did not want the note published as a letter to the editor, which we will respect. However, Soundbites would like to reply to…
Blue in the Face
Lo and behold: the plight of the American gangster. John Gotti, the Dapper Don, has been sent down the river. His big-time heavy, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, is famous and facelifted for being a no-good dirty-rat stool pigeon. And Robert De Niro, the reigning deity of hoodlum heavies in films such as Goodfellas, Casino, and…
