Men Behaving Badly
Immodesty becomes Guy Ritchie, the British writer-director who makes a jovial debut on a Jovian scale in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. In this wayward gangster comedy set in London’s East End, Ritchie cooks up a gleefully improbable tale out of mismatched ingredients–a rigged card game, a hydroponic marijuana factory, and a pair of…
Shallow End of the Pool
The Deep End of the Ocean starts out as a maternal horror movie and ends up as a family therapy session. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the photographer wife of a restaurateur (Treat Williams) and mother of two sons and an infant daughter. While checking into a jammed hotel for her fifteenth high school reunion, she briefly…
The Straight Dope
Cecil, how can dogs walk around in snow and subzero weather without getting frostbite on their feet? –Lisa Burns, via the Internet Consulting the veterinary section of the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board, we found diverse opinions on this topic, which may be summarized as follows: (1) Dogs do so get frostbite on their feet.…
Letters
Boring Info for Lazy People Every week I pick up Scene at my local watering hole, and I read many of the features, including Cecil Adams’s The Straight Dope. And every week I wonder why there are people who are too lazy to research a question themselves but have the energy to e-mail, write, or…
Gold Card Shower
Hey guys, another hard day at work? Not in the mood to clean out the garage like the wife wants? Or maybe you’re just tired of the bar scene and the growing threat of a trumped-up sex lawsuit. Hey, maybe you’re a lawyer who’s learned firsthand that the only contractually safe sex today is the…
From Moldova With Love
Vitally Grigoryev’s paintings are as polished and precise as a Bach fugue. Bachian humanity, however, is conspicuously absent in Nostalgic Realism, a show at GSIFine Art that consists of thirty technically breathtaking oil paintings. When he works without the human touch, which is all too often, Grigoryev is a master without a message, a technical…
A Revived Problem Play
The Waiting Room is very much a first play, as divided and schizoid as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Playwright Lisa Loomer came up with a solid gold concept and then weighed it down with a leaden subplot. It’s a work precariously balanced on a theatrical scale. The play opens in a present-day doctor’s waiting…
Call of the Wild
The Cleveland Play House, in cahoots with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has reeled in a fine catch–a musical biography of 1960s rock icon Janis Joplin, who faithfully fulfilled the cardinal rule for popular immortality: “Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse.” It’s a safe gamble that almost anyone who hasn’t…
A Night Out at Home
Pass that slow-roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and cherry pie. Is it Sunday dinner at Granny’s? Nope, it’s just some of the homestyle food dished up daily at Fanny’s Restaurant, an East Side institution since 1947. For many of us, these are the meals–meatloaf, liver and onions, roast beef, and pork chops–that memories of home are…
Playback
Steve Earle & the Del McCoury Band The Mountain (E-Squared) Ricky Skaggs Ancient Tones (Skaggs Family) If the Del McCoury Band wants to change its name to the Dukes and stay with this guy permanently, who can complain? Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band were not strangers before The Mountain was recorded last autumn.…
Livewire
Kansas The Nudes Palace Theatre March 6 How things have come full circle. Once derided for its grandiose arrangements and neo-orchestral rock pastiche, Kansas fully embraced its classical leanings as the band and its guest, the Playhouse Square Festival Orchestra, turned in a memorable performance Saturday night. It may be because four of the original…
Soundbites
Violinist David Wilson’s best crowd was sweaty with creeps, psychopaths, and gangsters. The Olmsted Falls native was playing a fiftieth birthday party at a Los Angeles hotel, when two beautiful women asked if he would delight their small party in the next room with his violin. He agreed. Sitting at a table with their dates…
Queens From Queens
The lure of easy money first brought the sassy Cheryl “Salt” James and the robust Sandra “Pepa” Denton together. A chance meeting took place in a Queens Community College lunchroom, where James, as an employee of Sears, was soliciting credit applications to anyone who would listen. Denton, who was more interested in finding out how…
Night & Day
Thursday March 11 When not busy bowing down to Beelzebub, satanic ska band Mephiskapheles has been sharpening its heavy metal blade, adding a second guitarist (Cleveland Heights High School alum Bill McKinney) to its horn-and-pitchfork section. Best known for its bastardization of the Bumblebee Tuna jingle, the New York-based group’s more recently been finishing up…
The Ruminator
For such an evocative songwriter, Bill Callahan always gets painted a bland shade of gray. In print, his name and his music come modified by the usual synonyms of introspection: “miserabilist,” “chronically depressed,” “depressive lonerism,” the unpardonable “sadcore.” This is likely because Callahan’s albums–all released under the band name Smog, though he’s the only constant–are…
The Last Iconoclast
Classical music audiences the world over would someday speak his name in reverent tones. But before he could become an internationally venerated composer, Donald Erb had to survive Youngstown. “It was a tough, tough town,” he recalls of his boyhood home. “Everybody got drunk on Saturday night and broke each other’s noses. I had my…
A Nip and a Prayer
Seven Hail Marys for the librarian pouring beer down his shirt front. Fourteen acts of contrition for Mr. Red Nose, the human keg spigot. And for Debbie Down-the-Hatch: Today’s novena is tomorrow’s bowl of aspirin. You’ll pardon the members of the Cleveland Pioneers Total Abstinence Association if they don’t throw lollipops as they march by…
