iPod Intrigue In Case You Want to Know Where Your Craigslist iPod Really Came From
If you’re counting on including a cheap, stolen gently-used iPod from a Craigslist ad on your holiday shopping list, you may want to consider that the people hawking them may soon increase prices to account for hazard pay. Artur Bytyci of Rocky River, reportedly quite an active Craigslist businessman, found out about the hazards the…
Ohio Legislators Want School Kids to Read Constitution, Other Old Stuff
A candid photo from yesterday’s Ohio House session. The Ohio legislature wants to mandate what’s on school reading lists, all in the name of Amurica. According to the Dispatch, yesterday the house debated and passed a bill that will require schools to teach and test students on the documents central to American history. It’s all…
Pic of the Day: Cleveland is for Real People
Via Reddit, with no explanation of time or circumstance, our favorite picture of the week…
ODOT Made a Horrible Rap Video Starring Optimus Prime
What better way to educate the public about driving safely than a rap video. Better than that, a rap video starring Optimus Prime. Better than that, a rap video starring Optimus Prime that was obviously made after paying someone’s nephew $15.87 to rap into a mic in his basement. Bravo, ODOT. Bravo. These are the…
Clevelanders Agree: We Got Some Ugly People Here
It’s like looking in a mirror, isn’t it? A new study reveals that Clevelanders consider themselves the least attractive people in the United States. We’re not surprised. When we hit Marc’s over the weekend for our weekly Little Debbies stocking, we saw some of the ugliest people in the nation blocking the aisles. The survey,…
Bobby Kennedy, Drunk and High, Goes on Police Chase with Kids in Car
Additional charges pending for t-shirt. As history has shown us time and again, and again, and again, it’s usually not dad who hops behind the wheel after one too many and goes for a cruise with the kiddies rolling around in the backseat. But this just proves the News Gods above are always ready with…
Jobs Jobs Jobs: Cuyahoga Seeing More Employment Opportunities?
The 99 percent. Is it getting better out there? Are more people finding steady, good paying gigs? Is it possibly time to sideline the bath salt running and return to a 9 to 5 you can tell your mom about? If you’ve been plugged into the local news cycle over the last 24 hours, you…
Chef Michael Symon wants to help you stuff your sausage
symon fondles the sausage And grind your meat and press your burgers. The Cleveland celebrity chef (Lola, Lolita), who’s got his fingers in more pies than we can count, now wants to let you get your fingers on restaurant-style food processors — and make himself still more money in the process. He’s just launched his…
Not a Shocker: Ohio GOP ignored public input into new congressional maps
John Boehner: the wonderful wizard of gerrymandering Back in mid-September, the Republicans in the Ohio legislature tasked with creating the new congressional districts pulled a wild and wacky map out of thin air and pushed it to a vote in 48 hours. That left no one with time to study it and ask questions like,…
Pic of the Day: Kobe Awed By the Deep, Rich River that is Mike Brown’s Basketball Knowledge
Sing, great one, of the mysteries of the court . . . (A tip of the hat to the guys at Waiting for Next Year who posted this first)
Mushroomhead Stream Concert Tomorrow
Merry effin’ Christmas We’re still more than two weeks away from Mushroomhead’s annual Old-School Christmas show at Peabody’s. But fans can prep by pulling out their favorite cow-head mask and logging on to The Rave Live tomorrow night. The website will stream the Cleveland band’s concert at the Rave in Milwaukee at 8 p.m. And…
Governor Kasich Not Interested in Drug Testing Welfare Recipients
Help, not handcuffs. Year one of John Kasich’s time behind the desk was marked with a lot of bullish and baiting commentary issuing out of governor’s mouth. Now it seems like the governor is trying to turn around his public image and show Ohio he’s got a warm gooey center just like the rest of…
The Boobie Gibson-Keyshia Cole Reality Show Could Really Happen
TV ready. If you scoped out the Plain Dealer’s story on Daniel Gibson’s off-season, you probably came out with the interesting takeaway that the Cavs guard has been boxing in the offseason back home in Houston in order to impro . . . No, let’s be honest, you just remember that Boobie and his wife…
Government Tells Us What We Already Know: We Have More Vacant Houses
The number of vacant houses in Cleveland nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. Of course, any astute Clevelander doesn’t need a report to tell them that housing vacancies went from 11 to 19 percent —all one has to do is drive around to see that. The GAO…
MGK Debuts New Music Video
Machine Gun Kelly showed up on BET’s 106 and Park the other day with his new boss Puff Daddy Diddy to talk about his upcoming debut album, Lace Up. You didn’t miss much. The Cleveland rapper also performed and unveiled his new video for the song “Wild Boy.” In it, he and fellow rapper Waka…
Your Daily Black Keys Update
You probably got your Black Keys tickets for their concert here at the Q in March, right? They went on sale Friday. And unlike some other cities — in particular, their NYC show at Madison Square Garden, which sold out in 15 minutes — there are still some seats left for the Cleveland date. The…
Old Guy Pulls Stun Gun on Mom Over Wendy’s Cuisine
A senior citizen, apparently desperate for an Old Fashioned Hamburger and Frosty, pulled his Z-Force stun gun on a mom and her 5-year-old in the drive-through line of a Fairlawn Wendy’s last week. Holliday stress? Anger management issues? Frankly, we can’t imagine an acceptable excuse for this behavior, but naturally, this perpetrator had one: It…
Metromix to Go Dark; We Hardly Knew Ye
Cheer up … we’re still here. The crew at Metromix Cleveland are promoting a New Year’s Eve party they’ll be throwing at the Blind Pig downtown. It looks to be their last soiree. News surfaced late last week that Metromix — an arm of Gannett, with entertainment and nightlife websites in dozens of U.S. cities…
License Plate of the Day: ‘8th OVI’
Folks down in Columbus probably should update their standards to preclude this sort of thing and worry less about OSU fans taunting Michigan fans. (Via all-star Twitterer @musicman06)
Sun Press exposes major holiday light dispute!
Demonstrating that the Sun papers are your go-to source for hard-hitting news — at least the type that might set tongues a-twitter in some place like Ottoville, Ohio (pop. 900) — this week’s Sun Press features a front-page story titled “Shaker Square’s holiday lights not pleasing to all.” http://www.cleveland.com/shaker-heights/index.ssf/2011/12/shaker_squares_holiday_lights.html This important investigative report reveals that…
A Non-Critic’s Critique of The Nutcracker
Vaguely Canadian, but who’s nitpicking? The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Nutcracker opened last night at the State Theatre at Playhouse Square. It’s the second year the Canadian troupe has made the holiday trip to Cleveland, and with an orchestra of 46 local musicians and a slew of young dancers-in-training culled from area schools, it was a…
Life Lessons from the Police Blotter: Do Too Much, Might See Dead People
He’s alive, don’t worry. Sumtimz wen youf had some tooo much you see stufff that iznt therr. Ink that koan into the side of this news story, which comes out of Westlake thanks to that community’s Patch outfit. According to police, a household on Clauge Road was rudely awaken in the middle of the night…
Troopers Uncover Dumb Driver, More Bath Salts
Calgon, take him away. Today’s dumbass drug-running traffic blunder award goes to Zeeshan Ali Ghani, a 26-year-old South Carolina man who was trailing a fellow motorist just a tad too close for comfort for an observant state trooper on a stretch of the Ohio Turnpike yesterday. As fate would have it, Zeeshan’s rented Ford Explorer…
Towpath Trail Wins More Grant Money
The planners behind the 101-mile Towpath Trail project got some good news this week when the county announced it will receive a nice-sized chunk of change for the completion of the project. According to the Plain Dealer, the state is going to kick-in $500,000 in grant money. That funding goes into a pot holding an…
On This Day Last Year: Big Snow
Count your blessings as you contemplate your upcoming commute on this bright, sunshiny afternoon. One year ago today your trek homeward looked like this: That was the day Lake Erie clouds stalled over Cleveland and dumped more than 10 inches of white stuff in six hours. The snow plows couldn’t get out to plow. We’re…
Oberlin Students Arrested After Protesting Fracking
When college students gear up for a road trip, that usually means a trunkful of beer and a backseat full of misappropriated sorority girls. But over at Oberlin College, where the student body is known as much for its activism as its handsome selection of black turtlenecks, five kids took a less frivolous trip that…
V 107.3 to return to snooze music format
Yanni: Human Ambien In late 2009, Elyria-based WNVW 107.3 FM abandoned its rapidly fading “Wave” format — “smooth” jazz & soft R&B — in favor of something a little more contemporary and upbeat. It became V 107.3, which featured a “Triple A” format— a mix of contemporary and classic rock, with artists like Steely Dan…
Kaptur & Kucinich draw another primary opponent
Graham Veysey at the Old Ohio City Firehouse With Ohio’s congressional primary filing deadline yesterday — assuming that district map and the primary calendar stay as they are now given the challenge presented by the drive to repeal the map — we can get a clearer look at what these races might look like. As…
Schools Ban Penis-Shouting Comic CEO
An Archie Comics CEO has been uninvited to tell kids at Gilles-Sweet Elementary in Fairview Park and two Elyria Catholic schools tomorrow about how comics are drawn up and produced. Is it because Nancy Silberkleit is credited with introducing a gay character into the Archie comics line and the kids might ask about that? No.…
The Black Keys Media Blitz Rolls Out
We’re not gonna talk about every single TV show the Black Keys play the next few weeks. Things would just get way too crazy with that, since they’re playing, like, all of them. Plus, they don’t live here anymore. But since their new album, El Camino, came out yesterday, and tickets for their show at…
Forest City Suspends Shopper Tracking Program After Senator Raises Privacy Concerns
They know you’re going to Spencer’s. Cleveland’s own Forest City Enterprises used Black Friday to launch a program that tracks shopper traffic via their cell phones as they wander Forest City’s malls. Guinea pigs in California and Virginia were anonymously monitored and their movements logged on a map. (Ohio malls were not used because obese…
Film Capsules
Melancholia (R) The first thing Lars von Trier does in Melancholia is destroy the world. As is typical of Trier’s mature work, it’s masterful, visually sumptuous, surprising, and provocative. But as has been typical of Trier’s work all along, the movie boasts its share of distracting idiosyncrasies. There are moments that are as transfixing as…
Concert Calendar
Rocket From the Tombs Rocket From the Tombs are like comets: Their reputation precedes sporadic sightings, and when they do show up, it lasts only long enough to barely satisfy longtime fans. The band’s historical mark was made after it splintered in the mid-’70s into avant-garage art-rockers Pere Ubu and in-your-face punks the Dead Boys.…
Home Movies
Cowboys & Aliens (Universal) This big-budget summer action blowout was a box-office bust, but it’s still kinda fun. How can it not be, with James Bond (Daniel Craig), Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), and Iron Man’s director (Jon Favreau) kicking space-alien ass? It’s part old-fashioned western, part sci-fi laser show … and that’s part of the…
Get Out!
Thursday | 08 The Royal Winnipeg Ballet at Playhouse Square The Nutcracker Battling mice, toy soldiers, and dancing snowflakes come to the State Theatre on Playhouse Square this weekend when the Royal Winnipeg Ballet takes its turn in providing Clevelanders with one of their most cherished holiday fixes. While old-timers remember the decades when the…
Scale Model
Omakase. That one lyrical word is the key to a nearly flawless meal at Ginko, Dante Boccuzzi’s new sushi spot in Tremont. Simply take a seat at the horseshoe-shaped bar — preferably on the side manned by chef Taishi Noma — and say “omakase.” The Japanese equivalent to “I place myself in your hands,” the…
Stay In!
The second of our special, slightly expanded gift-giving editions of Culture Jamming. This week: books. The Bionic Book Reconstructed (BearManor) Everything you ever wanted to know about The Six Million Dollar Man and its distaff spinoff The Bionic Woman is in this fact- and trivia-stuffed book by super-fan Herbie J. Pilato. There’s a detailed episode…
Party at Ground Zero
Within the first couple minutes of the documentary Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, Ice-T sums up the band’s music: “It wasn’t rock, it wasn’t metal, it wasn’t hip-hop, it wasn’t funk. It was just some different shit.” And for 30 years, the Los Angeles group has shuffled genres, members, and expectations while building a…
We Get Mail
A Better Life Than Grandpa’s In response to Sfc Mac’s letter “Dear Occupy Morons” [Feedback, November 23, 2011]: I don’t doubt that our grandparents and great-grandparents worked harder for less and suffered a miserable life compared to ours now. Among other things, the working conditions were brutal while the majority of Americans lived in poverty…
CD Review: Paul Simon
Paul Simon hand-picked the 32 songs featured on his latest compilation, a two-disc set that focuses on his nearly 50-year career as a songwriter. And as you would expect from an occasionally cranky musician who draws a line between artist and entertainer, it’s not filled with his most popular hits (though some of them, like…
CD Review: Various Artists
Before he wigged out, Phil Spector was the mastermind behind some of the greatest pop singles ever made. You’ll find many of them on this seven-disc set, along with lots of other cuts — 87 in all — by his stable of singers. The box includes the first six albums released by Spector’s Philles Records,…
Cover Story
Still looking for a perfect holiday gift for the music fan in your life? Not the friend who thinks he’s on top of things because he has Mumford & Sons’ album or the sister-in-law whose iPod contains all three remixes of will.i.am’s latest single, but the person who misses old-school vinyl because he loves just…
On Stage
Dobama presents The Seafarer: A Devil of a Christmas Tale Dobama Theatre continues its 52nd season with The Seafarer, a funny, chilling, heart-wrenching work by award-winning Irish playwright Conor McPherson. (McPherson, incidentally, also wrote St. Nicholas, now playing at Ensemble Theatre). The play debuted in London in 2006, then garnered multiple Tony Award nominations during…
Murder, He Wrote
Those of us who howl our way through “Happy Birthday” stand in awe of singers who are blessed with perfect pitch. Likewise, many playwrights must admire Ken Ludwig, the author of The Game’s Afoot (or Holmes for the Holidays), a murder mystery/comedy having its world premiere at the Cleveland Play House. Ludwig demonstrates the theatrical…
Savage Love
Dear Dan: I’m a happily married woman. I have a great sex life with my husband of many years. He’s helped me discover things I didn’t know about myself sexually. The problem: Three years ago, my first love contacted me after 23 years. He was married at the time — although he didn’t want to…
On View This Week
At Pentagon Gallery: Studies in Compassion Pentagon Gallery’s new show, Conscious Compassion, showcases works by three artists who reflect contemporary life by borrowing styles from the past. Among them is local artist Natalya Romanovsky, whose imagery at times resembles that of Picasso or Klee; in those instances, we find her rendering childish imagery with a…
CD Review: Ray Charles
Even though his most influential and celebrated work was recorded for Atlantic a decade earlier, Ray Charles’ tenure with ABC Records in the 1960s and early ’70s yielded some terrific material, including the classic Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. This five-disc box gathers all 53 singles, both A- and B-sides, from his dozen…
At the Arthouse
A Christmas Story Cleveland Cinemas kicks off its special holiday film festival this weekend with Cleveland’s favorite seasonal classic. Of course we love A Christmas Story more than Elf, Miracle on 34th Street, or Scrooged; those movies weren’t filmed in Cleveland, were they? Cleveland Cinemas has a whole lineup of things going on through Christmas…
X-Mas Ale Cabal
Great Lakes’ Christmas Ale has been dubbed “liquid crack” by those who find its charms especially intoxicating. To the Ohio City brewery, it is liquid gold. But to some smaller area bars and retailers, the hugely popular seasonal offering can be a liquid headache. Supply has always been the problem, what with Christmas Ale’s exorbitant…
Dante’s Next Step
The only way I was going to do this was if I found a great chef,” says Dante Boccuzzi, explaining what led him to embark on his fourth restaurant. That restaurant is DBA, which stands for Dante Boccuzzi Akron. When it opens in late spring or early summer, DBA will bring Boccuzzi’s unique brand of…
Sounds of the Season
Along with dropping temperatures, a losing Browns season, and a wild scramble to get some shopping done, this time of year always brings a new batch of holiday albums to add to our rotation of Christmas classics. Here’s a rundown of five of the biggest. *** Tony Bennett The Classic Christmas Album Bennett’s masterful voice…
Cheap Date
There are at least two very good reasons to get to know Kan Zaman, the Middle Eastern restaurant, hookah bar, and bakery just up the street from the West Side Market in Ohio City. One is the unlikely nightlife that spills forth from the place on weekend nights, when traditional belly dancing and Arabic singers…
CD Review: Mr. Gnome
Recorded at the L.A. home studio of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, Mr. Gnome’s third album sounds as great as you might expect. Singer-guitarist Nicole Barille shifts effortlessly from soft and seductive to dark and haunting, then on to straight-up feisty. Meanwhile, Sam Meister’s trippy, hypnotic beats and rhythms provide the perfect…
The Mysterious Mister Tien
The city of Cleveland and Cleveland Public Power made up their minds back in 2008: A revolutionary system that would vaporize trash was definitely the way to go. The so-called “gasification plant” would fit nicely at the city’s Ridge Road garbage transfer station, and it would save oodles of cash that for years has been…
Local Band In Focus
Meet the Band: Cassie Bishop (guitar, vocals), Genevieve Jencson (keyboards, vocals), Myra Wasylyna (bass, vocals), and Lisa Paulovcin (drums) Breathe Deep: The band began as a solo project for Bishop (pictured right), who wanted the name to reflect her own boundary breaking. “People are capable of much more than they think,” she says. “Limits come…
An Intern Walks Into a Theater…
She’s a beauty. One of the perks of being an editorial intern at Scene is the chance to catch some crumbs off the Media Relations table. So it was that I found myself at the Allen Theatre on Playhouse Square for opening night of Ken Ludwig’s world premiere, The Game’s Afoot (or Holmes for the…
Girl Talk’s ‘All Day’ the Subject of the Longest Music Video Ever
Girl Walk, the 71-minute music video/”docudrama” accompaniment for “All Day,” will be unveiled at a premiere December 8th in Brooklyn. A trailer has been released, as has the first part, which you can see below. What’s it about? Via Slashgear: The plot follows a lovely dancer as she drops out of ballet class, moves to…
