Just a Bowl of Jell-O
After an exhausting week of slinging the hash, pushing the buttons, and downsizing the staff, the last thing any jaded executive needs is a mind-expanding theater experience. Insights into the soul, triumphs of the spirit, AIDS metaphors, and sophisticated bon mots can be so taxing. Those carefree souls who patronize Cabaret Dada need have no…
A Taste of the Old Country
You’ll never know how good a cabbage roll can be until you taste one at Balaton Restaurant. When Erika Nagy, Balaton’s cook, makes cabbage rolls, she doesn’t bother with little piggies-in-a-blanket with thin tomato sauce. Instead, she creates massive babes weighing in at about a half-pound each, filled with ground pork, beef, and rice, wrapped…
Playback
Collective Soul Dosage (Atlantic) To sum up the appeal of Collective Soul in thirteen words: DAA na na NAA na na NAA na na NAA na NAAAH (yeah). There you have it: the amazingly catchy, omnipresent guitar riff in “Shine,” Collective Soul’s one-way ticket to butt-whippin’ rock stardom. Those thirteen syllables moved several million copies…
Makin’ the Scene
Aspiring filmmakers can wait for a wealthy uncle to die or pray for the vacuum to suck up the right SuperLotto balls. Or they can hit up the local Laundromat. Kent collective Phat Phive Productions is shooting a low-low-budget film in Northeast Ohio. The members of the group maxed out their credit cards, secured a…
Catch of the Day
If the Queen of the Blues has an heir apparent, it’s probably Sandra Hall. Should Koko Taylor ever decide to call it quits, the unofficial title she has held for many years should be in good hands with the roly-poly lady from Atlanta. Hall has been drawing comparisons to Taylor ever since last year’s release…
Night & Day
Thursday February 11 Lions, tigers, and bears are the stuff of romance in the 1933 film Zoo in Budapest, a rare bird that’s falling to dust–it’s not on video, and the fragile old prints probably won’t be restored. A teenage Loretta Young stars as a runaway orphan who takes refuge in the artificial Eden of…
Arrested Development
Comic books, PlayStation games, dirty dishes, and Star Wars paraphernalia dominate his Painesville bachelor pad. He finds the phrases “cool beans,” “arse,” and “booty smackin'” hilarious. He has the boyish good looks of Leonardo DiCaprio. He never touches alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs, but 25-year-old Harrison Chadwick still claims to be living the rock and roll…
Party Like It’s 1949
“I don’t want it to look like a costume,” the young woman says uneasily. She is trying on a salmon-pink 1960s dress with matching jacket–think Jackie Kennedy–at Linda Bowman’s Legacy Antiques and Vintage Clothing on Larchmere Boulevard. “You don’t think it’s too vintage to wear to a wedding?” “It’s a classic,” Bowman assures her. “It’s…
Livewire
The Slip Jim’s Big Ego Wilbert’s February 3 The Slip fell into the same trap most jam bands do. There were plenty of wincing and knowing nods. But whatever the band was up to, it didn’t let the audience in on the secret. Playing that same impenetrable, soupy music, the Slip often held little regard…
A Rink in Time
The decor is more ’70s rec room than ’40s ballroom: Under a drop ceiling, red and green disco lights flash in time to “Love Theme from Superman” and “The Rose.” But at Brookpark Skateland, time isn’t really linear, it’s more like a figure eight through which roller skaters glide in an endless loop-de-loop. From the…
Return to Sender
Short of nuclear holocaust, a major sale at Kmart, or a confirmed Clint Eastwood sighting back in rural Iowa, there’s probably no way to keep the movie version of Message in a Bottle from overwhelming the tender emotions of the hearts-and-flowers crowd. After all, this relentless assault on the tear ducts features 1) Kevin Costner…
Two forthe Road
Directed by Walter Salles (1995’s Foreign Land), the Brazilian film Central Station concerns the relationship between a homeless nine-year-old boy and the insensitive, acerbic woman who reluctantly agrees to help him find his father. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film (as well as numerous other awards), the movie explores themes of…
Manson: The Florida Years
Not so long ago the international rock star Marilyn Manson played dives such as the now-defunct Plus Five in Davie, Florida. Launched in 1990 as Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, the band evolved from an obscure novelty act with adolescent stage names to a wildly popular novelty act with adolescent stage names. Along the…
Letters
Leave Jesus Alone I’d like to voice an unfavorable opinion on the Jesus of the Week cartoon. As a committed Roman Catholic, I am deeply offended by Mr. Gilstrap’s use of Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith as a vehicle for humor. Would the editor print a cartoon suggesting racist or anti-Semitic humor, possibly a…
It’s Da Boss!
Ain’t it a bitch when the boss shows up unannounced? Hey, we’ve all been there. And pity the poor clown with his back turned, who continues telling some sick Viagra joke while the boss surveys a roomful of people suddenly trying to look busy. Why couldn’t he show up when we were heroically fixing that…
The Straight Dope
I was at a lecture on existential philosophy, and it was mentioned in passing that Nietzsche proposed to someone early in his life. She turned him down, and he got bitter. Later, in the same lecture, I was told that another famous philosopher met this same woman at an artists’ colony and had an affair…
Electric Blues
Robert Thurmer’s Installations will make electricians and fire marshals cringe, and if a Shop 101 teacher catches a glimpse, he might well blow a fuse. After all, transformers, exposed wires, and fluorescent lights figure prominently in these multimedia installations now on view at Hiram College’s Frohring Art Gallery, and when Thurmer submerges a live fluorescent…
Early August
Eugene O’Neill is our great Irish-American scourge, poetically replaying our collective guilt as American Greek tragedy. Arthur Miller is our stern Yankee conscience, chiseling our moral failings into theatrical stone tablets. Tennessee Williams is our national plumed peacock, calling out our sins, desires, and our obsession with death and mortality. Making his way into the…
