The Lawsuit Myth
The Lawsuit Myth Going after BigCorp. whacks us all in the end: We need to stop the myth that lawsuits against the government, doctors, or big corporations are “kicking the ass” of these corporations and “teaching them a lesson” [First Punch, February 4]. This is what all the lawyers who specialize in personal injury want…
Passion of the Chriszt
We always figured that chefs’ secret fantasies involved Nigella Lawson and unorthodox uses of melon ballers, but what the heck. The Sixth Annual Chef’s Fantasy fund-raiser, slated for Tuesday, March 23, is still shaping up to be one fabulous six-course feast. Those who have missed inventive chef Donna Chriszt (since the demise of OZ, she’s…
Diamanda Galás
With her late-’80s three-album opus Masque of the Red Death and its terrifying epilogue, Plague Mass, classically trained pianist and singer Diamanda Galás confronted ignorance and apathy toward AIDS with blasphemous appropriations of biblical texts, horrific speaking-in-tongues vocalizations, and sacred-profane blood rituals onstage. On the two-CD set Defixiones: Will and Testament — her first new…
Spoiler Alert
Steve Vasler tools around Cleveland in the same ’96 Ford Escort Pony he drove in college. The cherry-red hatchback with 100,000 miles hasn’t failed yet to get the 24-year-old systems analyst from Point A to Point B and back. But maybe he’s due for something more. Auto makers hope the Greater Cleveland International Auto Show…
The Weird Girl
Erykah Badu lives only minutes from where she grew up in South Dallas. The house she lives in now is bigger, the neighborhood safer, and the air’s cool and quiet. All you hear when you step outside her home is the sound of crickets, not the abrupt, terrifying pop-pop-pop of pushermen’s pistols that she heard…
Spittin Image
Aside from some profanity — it is hip-hop, after all — Spittin Image’s Broken Mirrors is a good reflection on the upbringing of these four white guys. MC Krossword’s parents are jazz singer Angel Rossi and drummer Jack Hanan. MC Verbal’s mother is N.Y.C.-based jazz singer Nora McCarthy. His dad has a record collection deeper…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, February 26 It’s an old argument: Which was better, the book or the movie? The new Book-to-Movie Book Club at Borders brings the dispute to a group discussion tonight. And you needn’t be familiar with both the print and screen versions; one or the other will do. This week’s inaugural topic is a good…
White Hot Russian
Lev Polyakin doesn’t just play crossover; he lives it. A thoroughly schooled and extensively recorded musician, the violinist is assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra. He’s also a jazz player, recording on his own label. There’s no conflict between the two wildly divergent styles, he says; peaceful coexistence is the rule. Why would it be…
Greazyspoon
It’s hard to imagine that an instrumental guitar-bass-and-drums lineup doesn’t equal a power trio, and Greazyspoon won’t entirely change this. There are ample moments for firing up the bong here, but these fellas also show off their music smarts by dropping in frequent moments of invention within their classic-rock context. They come off as three…
Kid Rockin’
Dan Zanes once basked in the lifestyle you’d expect of a 1980s indie-rock hero. His band, the Del Fuegos, was at the center of America’s college-radio boom, thanks largely to his gift for penning jerky, rootsy tunes about cars, girls, and futilely chasing the American dream. The Del Fuegos eventually signed to a major label,…
Small Stone, Big Deal
Cleveland stoner-rock standouts Red Giant have signed a two-album deal with Detroit’s Small Stone records, home to esteemed ’70s-throwback bands including the Fireball Ministry, MTV VJ Iann Robinson’s Puny Human, and Porn (the Men of). Red Giant’s relationship with the label dates back to 2000, when the band contributed a cover of “Lord of the…
Humor Depot
2/16-2/29 Maryellen Hooper’s recent purchase of a “fixer-upper” house has supplied plenty of material for her comedy act — and plenty of injuries for her husband. “It’s usually me following behind him, sweeping up and getting Band-Aids,” she says of her home life these days. “I spend a lot of time at Home Depot, which…
Got Death for Sale
I have a mother. And a girlfriend. And I love Cannibal Corpse. Like vomit on velour, the three don’t always mix so well. Throughout history, bands that churn out songs like “Entrails Ripped From a Virgin’s Cunt” and “Addicted to Vaginal Skin” have seldom gone over well with the lady folk. Throw in album covers…
Athens Greased
2/27-2/28 Nothing can be taken for granted in the world of boxing, and Juan McPherson learned the hard way. The 19-year-old welterweight from Cleveland, one of the nation’s best chances to earn Olympic gold, won’t even appear at his hometown trials — the U.S. Olympic Box-Offs taking place this weekend at Cleveland State. A loss…
Terrence Simien and the Zydeco Express
The Louisiana World Exposition in 1984 was likely the worst world’s fair in history. Forget that New Orleans has a festival every February that puts any world’s fair to shame. Ignore the fact that the Crescent City is party central every day. In August, New Orleans is so ungodly hot and humid, it’s more a…
A-Dora-ble
2/27-2/29 In her New York apartment a couple of years ago, Christina Bianco babysat two toddlers who spazzed out whenever Dora the Explorer came on the tube. So she was well aware of the hit Nick Jr. ‘toon when she landed the lead role in the live stage version of Dora the Explorer Live!: The…
Hearts of Darknesses/Girl Talk
This is what happens when hyper extroverts get their mitts on newfangled gadgets: Four-fifths of hell breaks loose and sonic comedy ensues. Cleveland gadfly/Bard College student Frankie Musarra (a.k.a. Hearts of Darknesses) just released a 24-track, 36-minute blurt of spazztronix that probably had his laptop’s motherboard crying uncle. HOD’s music splutters and careens in a…
Unsettled Score
WED 3/3 The creepy things happening at Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital are standard fare for the prolific horrormeister. Pained howls echo down the corridors, a paraplegic inexplicably recovers, and demonic secrets are revealed. The 15-part drama, which premieres Wednesday on ABC, is an assortment of dark comedy, chills, and atmosphere. “I don’t approach Stephen King…
BR5-49
Though their first studio album with a newly reconfigured lineup (including the grandson of bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs) is due out any day now, BR5-49’s well-deserved reputation has been built on its live shows. The five members raised themselves playing five-hour sets four nights a week at Robert’s Western Wear — a combination bar and…
Points of View
2/27-3/21 Amy’s View pits a mother and daughter against each other in both their personal and professional lives. “It juxtaposes a dynamic relationship with a very static setting,” says Sonya Robbins, director of the production opening this weekend at Dobama Theatre. “It grapples with really, really big questions, but it doesn’t try to answer them.…
Jay-J
It’s impossible to overstate the influence that Jay-J Hernandez has exercised on the American house community over the past 10 years. When he founded Moulton Street Studios in San Francisco in 1997, he was still just a part-time DJ/producer trying to avoid paying for studio time. Between 1997 and 2000, Hernandez used the fledgling studios…
Suffer Unto Mel
This Jew has spent several hours in the past week reading all four Gospels, as well as various supplementary (and often inflammatory) texts upon which Mel Gibson based his The Passion of the Christ. I’ve read the interpretations of scholars, the apologias of popes, and the damnations of zealots. I’ve read dozens of articles documenting…
Tough as Males
Author Douglas Coupland once wrote that he could think of only three activities that separate humans from animals: smoking, writing, and bodybuilding. For evidence, he could have pointed to the LifeWorks gym in Middleburg Heights at 6 a.m. on a recent Thursday. Surely animals would know better than to be lifting heavy objects at this…
Sizzle? Fizzle
This is not a good movie. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is, in fact, a bad movie. The script bleeds one cliché after another, the female lead can’t fire up the heat necessary for her role, and the plot resolves nearly every conflict it introduces within minutes. Worse, even as the movie wants to mock American…
Koufax
Recalling the organ-rich strains of garage rock and the punchy rhythmic bounce of new wave, Koufax goes retro in several directions at once. While at times they approximate the sonic fussiness of chamber pop with bright, richly orchestrated pieces, their last album showed considerably more shimmy in their sway. The band’s second full-length release, Social…
Island Slop
Broken Lizard’s Club Dread is a whole lot better than the comedy troupe’s last feature, Super Troopers. Unfortunately, measured by any other standard, it’s simply a mediocre effort, the sort of laid-back slasher comedy with gratuitous tit shots that companies like Troma have been cranking out for years, usually with better gore effects on a…
Coco Montoya
Finding the right teachers can do wonders for one’s education. In Coco Montoya’s case, the teachers found him. The super-journeyman blues guitarist and vocalist has been in the right place at the ideal moment more than once in his career, and the tutelage he received has paid in spades. Backing up his formidable blues chops…
Rationality Will Not Save Us
At the opening of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed, and middle-aged Robert McNamara, preparing to brief the press on the Vietnam War. He asks two questions: first, whether the chart he’s set up is visible, and second, whether the cameras are ready…
The Get Up Kids
On message boards and mix tapes, the Get Up Kids once galvanized “emo” as the emotionally relevant rebirth of punk for the Y Generation. The Kansas band led the vanguard of a cultural coup that revolutionized the underground zeitgeist by fusing post-punk staples (Braid, Jawbox, etc.), navel-gazing confessions, and crunchy pop choruses. The band’s fourth…
Don’t Be a Savya Hata!
Ohio scientists are circulating a document they say proves that Christian activists are trying to sneak their teachings into public schools. The discovery comes on the heels of the State Board of Education’s approval of teaching “intelligent design.” For decades, public educators were restricted to lessons on evolution, the theory that life began as a…
Drag Wag
All subcategories of the performance arts have their eternal masters. Classical guitar has Segovia, ballet has Nureyev, and drag queen put-down comedy has Barry Humphries, in the guise of Dame Edna Everage. For some 40 years, Dame Edna has been tottering about in her heels and excessive sequin-drenched costumes, skewering various breeds of pomposity with…
Mary Lou Lord
Were Mary Lou Lord and Jewel separated at birth? Here we have a couple of cute blondes with musical talent to spare. But while Jewel uses her perkiness in pursuit of superstardom, Mary Lou, like any good evil twin, just wants to rock. Lord is no riot grrrl on Baby Blue. Neither is she a…
Blue Mob
This town was in much better shape when the mob ran it. Now it’s a war zone and crackhead-controlled ghetto . . . Young cops run around like the Gestapo setting up checkpoints and harassing non-criminals . . . Who’s making the real money? Not the black dealers, it’s the attorneys that keep them on…
Here’s the Shot
You know the story. It’s David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, Petri-dish study of the “smile and a shoeshine” crowd, the swampland salesmen in discount suits and pinky rings who scrabble for decent leads in pursuit of their Holy Grail: a solid sale. There are now two versions of Glengarry Glen Ross in town, the all-male original…
J.C. Chasez
You have to feel for J.C. Chasez. He’s watched ‘N Sync bandmate Justin Timberlake beat him to all the important career milestones: boffing Britney, going solo, groping a Jackson on national TV. But Chasez has more than just halftime hijinks on his mind, and the proof’s in this collection, which is giddily adventurous enough to…
Schooling the Big Boys
The ankle biting permeating the presidential primary has been an embarrassment to good Democrats everywhere. So far has the party fallen, even its tradition of quality knife fighting now resembles a bitch-slap contest between rival figure skaters. Fortunately, the fine Democrats of Cleveland still play old school. Witness evidence in the DUI case of Mark…
Wait/Gain
Was it 40 minutes? Or was it only 35? To tell you the truth, I’ve forgotten myself. But what you have to do, fellow foodie, is ask yourself a question: How long is too long to wait for some really fine sushi? Roving gourmets would do well to consider the answer before heading out to…
Jonny Greenwood
The U.K. documentary Bodysong is the visual equivalent of Radiohead’s last few records: A Guardian review described the film as a “free-form collage of images” that “strive to evoke a poetry of the human body with ideas about birth, death, sex, violence, and dreams.” Naturally, Jonny Greenwood — Radiohead’s lead guitarist and sound manipulator of…
