Further proof of the Chinese Master Race
While the departure-in-disgrace of Cuyahoga County Elections Board Director Michael Vu had brought conflict to our Asian stereotypes — he practiced Karate, yet was a complete moron — 18-year-old Yuan Yuan, a student at Western Reserve Academy, is intent on setting it straight. Yuan Yuan, who goes by “Stanley” when he’s interfacing with the rest…
Baseball season is here
Opening Days is just day away. The experts love the Tribe, giving us all the more reason to plop down big bucks for tickets, and to open that line of credit to buy us some peanuts and Cracker Jacks. But if things follow tradition and go south, there is plenty of other, cheaper baseball to…
This Just In: Concert Announcements
Barenaked Ladies come to town June 17 This week, 38 new shows including Britain’s lovely Lily Allen, arena-rock icons Rush, and mope king Morrissey. THIS WEEK: SUNDAY, ARPIL 1 The Moog: 7 p.m., no cover (all ages). Happy Dog, 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474. THIS JUST IN Bryan Adams/George Thorogood & the Destroyers: Fri., Aug. 10,…
The Elf milks Casimir Pulaski
Casimir Pulaski was a Polish military officer who joined the American colonists during the Revolutionary War. It’s said that Ben Franklin himself recommended to George Washington that Pulaski be added to his cavalry. After saving Washington’s life at the Battle of Brandywine, Pulaski was made a general and formed his own cavalry. He beat the…
Free Nine Inch Nails Preview Party
Hear the entire new Nine Inch Nails CD, Year Zero, at House of Blues’ (308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-BLUE) preview party Tuesday, March 27. The album is set for release Tuesday, April 17. You can pre-order the disc at the party — you’ll get a voucher that’s redeemable at any FYE store — and though you…
DoHM review was pretentious
This photo has nothing to do with DoHM; we’ve just been dying to run it and can’t wait any longer. Matt Gorey proves that the only thing worse than a poor critic is a pretentious critic. As a longtime fan of DoHM [Regional Beat, February 14], I have enjoyed the distinct pleasure of hearing this…
Denny Blaze cracks Top 3 Viral Video Countdown
VH1 viewers have voted Cleveland rapper Denny Blaze’s viral video, “Average Homeboy,” no.3 on the countdown special Web Junk Presents: 40 Greatest Internet Superstars. The Canton native topped internet phenomena including MySpace, LonelyGirl 15, and Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday.” The special debuted this weekend, and will air six times a day for the next…
The award goes to… Darius Goes West
Darius Goes West, an uplifting documentary about a group of college kids who travel across the country with their friend Darius Weems, a 15-year-old suffering from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, picked up top awards at the International Film Festival last night. The movie won both the audience choice and best documentary awards, the first coming with…
Mikey G’s Picks of the Week
The Blood Brothers This week’s top arts and entertainment picks around town, from the guy who’s paid to pick them: Monday: Seattle’s Blood Brothers make post-hardcore punk that really tears at their songs’ melodic core. Their latest album, Young Machetes, pretty much lets the song titles fill you in: “Set Fire to the Face on…
“You’re an asshole,” says reader
The following was received anonymous via email under the headline, “You’re an asshole:” You have no idea how hard it is to be a guidance counselor [“Animal Kingdom,” March 21]. That woman tried as hard as she could to put a stop to the violence and bullying that goes on in that school district. I…
Glenville center charged with murder
Ryan Driggins, in better times In late 2005, when we needed a photo for our cover story about Ted Ginn Sr. [“Thrill in the ‘Ville,” Sept. 21, 2005] and the making of Glenville’s football powerhouse, choosing the art was a no-brainer. It captured the energy, focus, and excitement that was constant during the few weeks…
Halle Berry comes to Valley View
LaTonya Halliburton caught everybody’s attention as she stood next to the red carpet at the Cinemark Valley View theater (6001 Canal Road in Valley View; 216-447-7900) on Thursday night. The diminutive mother-of-three turned up the volume when she opened her mouth. “Holly Berry! Holly Berry! Come here, girl!” she screamed as she unintentionally elicited a…
Don Plusquellic is pissed
Don Plusquellic Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic isn’t known for being a delicate man. So when the Akron Beacon Journal inferred that he was a cowering sissy in Wednesday’s paper, the Don was taken aback. The Beacon’s criticism comes on the heels of the Akron Police Department’s most recent PR disaster. When 19-year-old Demetrus Vinson was…
Mikey G’s Top Weekend Picks
Black 47 This weekend’s top arts and entertainment picks around town, from the guy who’s paid to pick them: Friday: Do people still watch Texas hold ’em tournaments on TV? Do people still play Texas hold ’em? The folks behind tonight’s Casino Night at Grays Armory are banking on it. You don’t get to pocket…
Red the Steakhouse goes pro
Look for Beachwood’s Red The Steakhouse to make its Playboy debut soon. Beginning April 6, restaurateur Brad Friedlander’s contemporary bastion of beef will be on the website’s A-List, a monthly Top-10 roundup of cool stuff, as one of the best steakhouses in the country. (The list should show up again in May, in the mag’s…
The Presidential MySpace tally
Do you feel distant from the new batch of presidential hopefuls? Don’t really know what they’re all about? If so, MySpace has the answer: the Impact Channel is where you can register to vote, enjoy news and politically oriented music videos, and, most important, pore over well-sanitized profiles of the candidates. (Except Rudy Giuliani —…
Why whites flee Cleveland Heights
An anonymous caller from the East Side had this to say about “Paradise Lost,” our article about Cleveland Heights’ struggle to deal with white flight from its schools: “Bottom line is, white kids in predominantly black schools are threatened, intimidated and beat up on, that’s a fact. I’ve known guys that have been there, and…
Whole Foods opens in University Heights
Ohio’s second Whole Foods Market has opened at the corner of Cedar and Warrensville Roads in University Heights. The upscale, 43,000-square-foot grocery peddles everything from organic roses to dry-aged beef, along with more than 300 cheeses, 1,800 wines, an olive and antipasto bar, and an 18-seat trattoria, featuring hot Italian entrees and hearth-baked pizza. While…
Tino Roncone takes over Cloud 9
A game of musical chairs between PR flacks continues to change the landscape of Cleveland’s nightlife. Just days after the abrupt and unexpected firing of marketing manager Marcus Sims at the View, his Velvet Dog counterpart, Tino Roncone, has dropped this grenade: He’s resigned from the trendy nightspot to buy into Cloud 9. “The only…
Taking the Predatory Lending Fight to D.C.
The East Side Organizing Project has long been known for sticking it to unscrupulous mortgage lenders in Cleveland, a.k.a. Predatory Lending Land. The non-profit has saved over 1,600 local families from foreclosure. And while Ohio politicians were cashing contributions from shady lenders like Ameriquest and Citifinancial, ESOP was wrangling them in, forcing them to sign…
Talking Girl Metal from Kittie’s Morgan Lander
Kittie plays Peabody’s ( http://www.peabodys.com) (2083 E. 21st St., 216-776-9999) Thursday, March 22. Check out this week’s Scene for a story about the Canadian grrrls, who were one of the most promising bands to emerge from the nu-metal movement. They’re touring behind their fourth album, and it’s been quite a ride. After two increasingly lackluster…
The Black Diamonds Call it Quits — Kind of…
The Black Diamonds — the killer retro-rawk band behind “Cold, Cold Heart,” Scene readers’ song of the year for 2006 — weren’t born when Van Halen and singer David Lee Roth split. So you can’t blame the teenage prodigies if they didn’t learn a lesson from that sad situation. Still, they’re such studied classic-rock fans…
Cindy George to go free?
Today the Ninth District Court of Appeals overturned Cindy George’s murder conviction. For the past six years, the Akron socialite’s story of infidelity and cold-blooded murder has unfolded like an Emmy season of All My Children. The former prom queen’s downfall was chronicled in dozens of Akron Beacon Journal articles, from her rags-to-riches marriage in…
Does Liking Joshua Radin Make You Part Girl?
Since I discovered this guy while watching a Zach Braff movie and, later, What About Brian, I’m pretty sure I already know the answer, but I figured I’d put it to the people: if I like Joshua Radin’s music, am I still a man? This is an important, timely question, because Radin, a Cleveland native,…
Another Showing for Darius Goes West
More Film Fest updates: Because the movie Darius Goes West has gotten so much publicity, Festival organizers have decided to add another viewing on Sunday at 7:15. If you didn’t listen to us before, listen now: Run — run! — and get tickets, y’a hear! — Rebecca Meiser
Ooops, We Forgot to Tell the Theater
From the Mixed up Files of the Cleveland International Film Festival: Last night’s showing of the French romantic comedy Change of Address went off without a hitch, though the film had its own changing address problems. Festival rganizers decided to show one movie at the Cedar Lee on the East Side. Only they forgot to,…
Halle Berry’s Coming to Cleveland
Halle Berry will be at the Cinemark Valley View to promote her new movie We’re not the type to encourage paparazzi-style action among our readers, but how often do celebrities come to Cleveland? And how often is the red carpet laid out? Thursday night, two of the stars of the new psychological thriller Perfect Stranger…
Holy Mountain
Florida has always been a haven for two things: retirement communities and aggro bands. Doesn’t matter whether we’re talking thrash, death metal, grindcore, black metal, power violence, speed metal, or anarcho-punk — if it’s truly brutal and pissed off, you can find it in America’s Disneyfied shit hole. This is the last go-’round for Gainesville’s…
Threat Level: Killer Tadpole
Gross-out horror is never far from comedy, and The Host, Bong Joon-ho’s giddy creature feature, has the anarchic-mess factor of a pile of old Mad magazines. A broadly played clown show full of lowbrow antics, Bong’s big splat is itself a sort of monster — the highest-grossing movie in South Korean history — and since…
Lust in the ‘Dust
It doesn’t take a Mensa member to figure out what local band Sindust has on its collective mind. The cover of its latest CD Back From the Back (yes, that title is a clue too) features a bloody knife resting on a pair of fishnet-covered breasts. But these rockers don’t force the sleaze. Their songs…
Broke Banks’ Mountain
Cleveland’s annual Oscar Night party was to take place at the tony lakeside Clifton Club. Filmmaker Robert Banks had spent weeks planning the event with his partners. It would be a blowout affair, black tie with hard-to-pronounce food, local film and TV impresarios strolling down the red carpet. For Banks — a man with more…
Amiina
Sometimes, the most useful music is soothing white noise that you can chill to — or simply ignore. Sigur Rós is pretty good at making that kind of ambient background drone, but it’s always only a matter of time until the band drops a crescendo of simulated whale-song. For pure, uncut Icelandic bliss, check out…
No More Words
The budding novelist or poet, eager to explore unique and revolutionary methods of communicating, will sometimes consider employing gimmicks to make the world take notice of his scribblings. He might write without capital letters or eliminate punctuation, but little does he know that it takes a master — say, e.e. cummings — to make such…
Crazy for Coco’s Riffs!
Like Eric Clapton, California guitarist Coco Montoya mentored under veteran bluesman John Mayall. On his new solo album, Dirty Deal, Montoya unleashes one mean guitar lick after another. He’s occasionally a fluid player (like Clapton), but he’s at his best when there’s some fire to his riffing. His tattered voice shows that he learned a…
Paradise Lost
First they came to East Cleveland, then Warrensville and Bedford Heights. They spread out to Lakewood, Euclid, and Shaker. The poorest city in America breeds poor families eager to escape, and it’s just a matter of time before they end up on your suburban doorstep. Only the idealists of Cleveland Heights believed they were immune.…
El-P
El-P drops a hip-hop classic every five years. In ’97, his group Company Flow released Funcrusher Plus, a declaration of independence for anybody alienated from mainstream rap. And after launching Definitive Jux in ’02, he dropped the solo disc Fantastic Damage, a daring effort wandering far from hip-hop convention while also giving his new label…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
The Clean House — It’s safe to say that the central conceit of Sarah Ruhl’s play is not cracking any new ground. Centered on a Brazilian immigrant maid who is trying to conjure the perfect lethal joke, it’s a collection of unlikely situations stitched together. Matilde (Ursula Cataan) is the young live-in maid hired to…
Tumbling Guys
The Peking Acrobats have wowed audiences with their Human Chair Stack. But their biggest fans might be the filmmakers behind Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, and the upcoming Thirteen, who cast troupe member Shaobo Qin as a contortionist capable of cramming himself into a small box. “[George] Clooney loves him,” says Don Hughes, who’s produced Acrobats shows…
Tribal Outcry
When Major League Baseball went looking for teams to play in its inaugural Civil Rights Game, an exhibition scheduled for March 31 in Memphis, the Indians seemed a perfect fit. The Tribe, after all, employed the game’s first black manager (Frank Robinson), the American League’s first black player (Larry Doby), and the league’s first special-needs…
Air
Predictably, Jarvis Cocker’s appearance on Pocket Symphony’s “One Hell of a Party” is causing a stir. But it really only suggests that Air made this album in the same mind-set as Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55, which Air essentially wrote with Cocker. This spells good news and bad for anyone who noticed that 2004’s Talkie Walkie captured…
Tennessee Schmaltz
No matter how good a mood playwright Tennessee Williams was ever in, he never dotted every “i” with a heart or doodled daisies in the margins of his manuscripts. Given that he grew up in a rather gothic family environment, his characters often suffer from dark torments such as mental instability (his sister Rose was…
What’s Cookin’
Food Network host Robin Miller knows you’re busy. She realizes you don’t have time to stand over a hot oven for three hours when you come home from work. That’s why she wrote Quick Fix Meals, based on her same-named TV show. “It’s for people with crazy busy lives who want to free up mealtime,”…
Animal Kingdom
You have to be Michael to understand. He was but 11 when it started — just a shy, well-mannered boy tossed into that shadowy swamp of pre-adolescence: junior high. Examine him with a magnifying glass, and you’ll find no bull’s-eye. But you understand through the reticence of eyes and limbs, and the way he explains…
MiG
After cutting his teeth in musical theater, MiG Ayesa made a splash on RockStar: INXS, belting out Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Now leading his own band, he’s performing radio-friendly rock that’s just as ambitious, but less bombastic, like the power ballad “You and I.” He’s still good for some classic-rock covers — a mellow, unplugged piano-power…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Pedestal and Off the Wall — The two-part title is a sign: This sculpture exhibition, juried by Cleveland artist Don Harvey, boasts a sharply split personality. The meatier, stronger half boldly pushes all sorts of relevant buttons. The second half, by contrast, is pure goofiness — creative, technically accomplished froth. Guess which half Dietrich…
What’s That Sound?
If Dr. Dog’s lo-fi, jam-band, harmony-filled retro rock leaves you at a loss for descriptive words, you’re not alone. Singer and guitarist Scott McMicken can’t really narrow his depiction of the band to a single catch-all term either. “My totally self-indulgent [description] is just as confusing as what you would come up with,” he laughs.…
Exorcise Thyselves!
Would the real bad guys please stand up? I have followed the Gravelle controversy since its inception, and I must say that this is the most repulsive excuse for an article I have read [“The Exorcists,” March 7]. Jared Klaus accepts the self-serving claims of the Gravelles as if they had been proven true. Actually,…
Elise’s Playground Geisha Ball
Maybe Elise isn’t actually from Japan, but here’s what makes Elise’s Playground Geisha Ball an authentic Asian bash you’ll never forget: Before relocating to the Rust Belt, she learned to throw a party in New Orleans. Her fetish cabaret show stimulates all five senses, with emphasis on the visual and auditory. Cleveland electro-rock dance machine…
Diamonds in the Rough
Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.) Ed Zwick’s Blood Diamond, about the civil war over diamonds that devastated Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, plays like a guilt-ridden Jerry Bruckheimer movie. It’s little more than action-adventure pulp drenched in someone else’s blood — which it tries to wash off by proselytizing to the audience about the evils…
Winner Takes It All
At today’s Party & Play Drawing at the Corner Alley, the victor will score six loge tickets to the Cavs’ April 18 game against the Milwaukee Bucks. The prize package also includes free food, drinks, and parking for the game, plus a $50 gift certificate to bowl at the Corner Alley afterward. Sun., March 25,…
Twice Bitten
“We have a serious hex on our band,” confides an exasperated Johnny Whitney, singer and keyboardist for the Blood Brothers. Whitney’s been hard to contact since the band’s record label, V2, ceased operation in January, just months after the release of Young Machetes, the Brothers’ best collection of art-damaged hardcore to date. Interestingly enough, ArtistDirect…
Modest Mouse
Ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr knows a little something about dealing with strong-willed vocalists (ahem, Morrissey), so it’s no surprise that his contributions to the poppiest Modest Mouse record yet are solid. But it’s still a treat to hear how focused Isaac Brock and company are on this lushly arranged disc, perhaps thanks to Marr’s veteran…
Our top DVD picks for the week of March 20:
Batman Beyond: Season Three (Warner Bros.) The Bridge on the River Kwai (Sony) Burning Annie (Warner Bros.) The Caine Mutiny (Sony) The Care Bears Movie: 25th Anniversary Limited Edition (MGM) Come Early Morning (Weinstein) Eragon (Fox) The Guns of Navarone (Sony) JAG: The Third Season (Paramount) Justice League Unlimited: Season Two (Warner Bros.) Killing Machine…
Strip Club
At today’s Comics Symposium at Lakeland Community College, cartoonists, writers, and other comic creators meet their fans. The daylong convention features workshops and lectures hosted by Daily Cartoonist editor Alan Gardner, Black Lightning cartoonist Tony Isabella, and Kathy Dow and John Forgetta, who created The Meaning of Lila. “There’s something in the water here, because…
Man in the Box
When Ken Andrews walks into the studio, he hears the unwritten songs crawling across its walls. “I just have to find them,” says Andrews, talking from his home studio in Los Angeles. “Sometimes when I’m writing — if I’m going to be starting something from scratch — I honestly feel there are songs inside my…
chk chk chk
If you’re not already a fan, this disc isn’t going to change that. One of the few punk-funk acts dedicated to deep-seated grooves rather than jagged guitars and disjointed rhythms, !!!’s (often pronounced ‘chk chk chk’) third album only checks the air and changes the oil. After a decade in existence, this eight-piece has a…
Here are the week’s best releases from the pop-culture universe:
CD — Sly & the Family Stone reissues: Before all the drugs he ingested wrecked his brain, Sly was one of soul’s most vital players. He could make you think and dance with the same song. The seven remastered albums in this long-overdue series range from good (Stand!) to great (Fresh). Best is 1971’s There’s…
I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night (and Paint Every Day)
The traveling Rock Art Show comes to town this weekend with 100 pieces of artwork inspired by rock legends. It also features photos and prints made by musicians. In addition to a famous pic of Jerry Garcia showing off his missing middle finger (shot by Summer of Love photographer Baron Wolman), Paul McCartney contributes the…
Queens of England
There are 3,700 Scissor Sisters fans gathered at Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom. The New York City quintet is here on this late October night to support the just-released Ta-Dah, its sophomore record. Everyone in the front row — populated by hip, young gay men and their straight girlfriends — howls at the top of their…
Caetano Veloso
While many of his contemporaries are simply reissuing their hits, 64-year-old singer Caetano Veloso stubbornly continues to push himself forward. Cê’s stripped-down instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums) is a nice change from the larger productions of his samba and Tropicalia albums. Most of the songs are painfully honest and reflect the Brazilian’s melancholia during recording. “Não…
Hell on Wheels
There’s one similarity between Ghost Rider and most videogame movie tie-ins: Get too close to either, and your ass will probably get burnt. Though it stars goofy Nic Cage and Sam Elliott sound-alikes, Ghost Rider claims only to be an offshoot of this year’s soul-sucking blockbuster — not a direct videogame adaptation. The game even…
Fun Central
There’s absolutely no reason your kids should wait another two months to experience Cedar Point-type thrills. The I-X Indoor Amusement Park, which opens today and runs for the next three weeks, includes junior versions of all the faves: ginormous slides, spinning rides, and, of course, several roller coasters. Now in its 18th year, the annual…
Texas Hold ‘Em
For the past 96 hours, I’ve been listening to free music, drinking free booze, and wearing a badge that sports my vitals alongside a grainy digital snapshot of my mug. From March 14 through 18, this dangling laminate grants me access to a zillion clubs at Austin’s annual South by Southwest music festival. But it…
Various Artists
From Ohio to Cali, Cleveland rapper Johnny La Rock (aka Eddie Fleisher, a Scene freelance writer) brings together some of his favorite rhymers for The Necker Cube Volume One. Pittsburgh sample fiend Amerikkkan Hostage cuts up warped grooves and stitches them back together for the woozy “G.O.P. Kills Me,” while La Rock and Mush Mouth…
The Write Stuff
San Francisco-based comedian Bill Santiago had every intention of being a journalist. But he switched careers when he realized he was “a joke as a reporter.” Still, Santiago occasionally pens columns for the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones, and much of his stand-up act revolves around politics and how it relates to his Puerto…
Instant Karma
At tonight’s Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, Anne Warren fills folks in on why yoga, karma, and the Dalai Lama are so cool. The Tremont-based Jewel Heart has been a haven for local Buddhists for years. For the next two Wednesdays, it’s holding free orientation classes for the curious. The focus is on Vajrayana Buddhism, which…
VH1 Gets Blazed
VH1 will shine a spotlight on Cleveland rapper Denny Blaze in Web Junk Presents: 40 Greatest Internet Superstars. Featuring Blaze’s “Average Homeboy” video, the special debuts Friday, March 23, at 8 p.m. “Picking Denny’s clip was an easy choice,” says Bernie Kaminski, the show’s executive producer. “Some of his rhymes are funny, and the lo-fi…
Fangboner
With songs like “Quiet Riot,” “Corpse of Chewbacca,” and “Banana Jammin’ Your Daughter,” it’s obvious that Fangboner’s debut ain’t sophisticated — but sometimes, cheap laughs are the best ones. Hailing from the western ‘burbs, the quintet plays chunky power-pop beefed up with choruses common to ’80s club rock: earnest sing-alongs about lookin’ for love and…
Balls Out
A dozen players and coaches from Cleveland’s soccer past sign autographs at today’s Soccer Expo at the Western Reserve Historical Society. The ex-pros include the Force’s Zoran Karic and the Crunch’s Nick DiCello. “Some of these guys were popular in their day,” insists Scott Longert, Western Reserve’s sports archivist. “There are still a lot of…
Kittie
Kittie Seven years after making their first splash, the Canadian girls of Kittie still have a career — and it’s finally on an upswing. Spit, the group’s underrated 2000 debut, was arguably one of the top five albums of the nu-metal era. Singer-guitarist Morgan Lander, then a teenager, alternated sweet melodies and guttural outbursts seething…
Cold Comfort
Don’t let her advanced age fool you: Mother Nature is a tease, particularly at this time of year, when she exposes just enough sunshine and warmth to make us crazy, then smacks us down with another round of snow and ice. Still, we need our fix of pleasant weather. And if Ma Nature isn’t putting…
St. Pat’s Redux
It doesn’t matter that St. Patrick’s Day was a week ago. It’s gonna be a celebration of the green all over again when the Bronx-based Black 47 plays Wilbert’s tonight. While the band’s brand of Celtic rock isn’t as rousing as the Pogues’ or as revelatory as Van Morrison’s, it’s way more sociopolitical than either…
Wzt Hearts
Baltimore’s white-noise trio Wzt Hearts explores numbness with guitar, drums, a laptop, and a mixing board. Unlike a good percentage of bands featuring laptops — and, most likely, thanks to the drums — there’s more going on than the usual bleep-bloop farting that all too often defines such acts. Heat Chief, the group’s 2006 album…
Notso Shabby
Closed since November, the former Park City Diner (8111 Rockside Road, Valley View) will reopen this spring as a Yours Truly restaurant. The property, adjacent to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s popular Towpath Trail, will become the region’s eighth YT location, joining spots in Chagrin Falls, Beachwood, Medina, Hudson, Shaker Square, Mentor, and Mayfield Village.…
Cleveland: Land of Hopelessness
There’s more than history on display in the Cleveland Artists Foundation’s Visions of a City With a Soul: Four Photographers in Cleveland, 1925-2005 — Arthur Gray, William Barnhill, Jasper Woods, and Andrew Borowiec. There’s also a sense of place. The photographers worked during different eras — Gray shot in the ’20s, while Borowiec documents modern-day…
Chad & Jeremy
Chad & Jeremy’s bio in the All Music Guide credits the British Invasion duo with “essentially creating the template for the kind of lush, sensitive folk-pop embraced by followers from Nick Drake to Belle & Sebastian.” It’s true; when I was checking out YouTube videos of Devendra Banhart, the Kings of Convenience, and others from…
Again With the Serious Face?
As Charlie Fineman, a New York dentist who lost his wife and three young daughters in one of the September 11 plane crashes, Adam Sandler sports a mass of bedraggled locks and walks with his head hung low, the sounds of the city drowned out by the Who or Bruce Springsteen blaring from his ever-present…
A Good Bet
Poker, blackjack, and slot fans converge at Grays Armory tonight for the third-annual Casino Night. The high-rolling event — which typically draws more than 1,000 people — benefits the Make-a-Wish Foundation. It was launched during the Texas Hold ’Em craze of 2005. “We thought, ‘Let’s give it a shot, and see if people like this,’”…
Tequila Sunrise: A Tribute to the Eagles
Lets just hypothesize for a minute that the last time classic-rock billionaires the Eagles passed through town, you couldn’t go. Maybe you were incarcerated or one of those goddamned kids who broke their goddamned arm or something and needed a trip to the emergency room. Or maybe you simply couldn’t scrape together the $600 for…
Forget Gun Control
In the same week that sees Adam Sandler playing a grieving 9/11 widower in Reign Over Me, another lone figure reeling from post-traumatic stress fills the central role in Antoine Fuqua’s Shooter. Named Bob Lee Swagger and played with appropriately gruff machismo by Mark Wahlberg, he’s a former Marine gunnery sergeant and sniper who’s also…
Piece of the Rock
Even though he’s not nearly as famous as his big brother Chris, Tony Rock has carved out a pretty good career. His CW sitcom, All of Us, just completed its fourth season, and he recently wrapped filming on Homie Spumoni, a movie about a black kid raised by Italian-Americans. Yet, Rock longs for the gig…
Magik Markers
Wherever you think the gritty sound of American rock and roll begins — be it Chuck Berry’s chicken walk or Lou Reed’s shades circa 1967 — it ends with Magik Markers, a basement band from Hartford, Connecticut, named after a misheard Simon Finn lyric. “Mellifluous, murky, medicinal, and muskratish ’cause we smell,” says drummer Pete…
Bob Shaye’s New Line
Hardcore fantasy geeks will relish role-playing every enemy of The Last Mimzy, a family-style sci-fi adventure whose director, Bob Shaye, is better known to them as the evil wizard — the alien executive who peed all over the Fellowship. Shaye, in his other job as New Line Cinema topper, has let it be known that…
The First Lady of Song
The First Lady of Song Ella Fitzgerald recorded the best-ever version of the holiday perennial “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” She’s also the woman whose pipes used to shatter wine glasses in Memorex’s ubiquitous TV commercials back in the day. The Cleveland Play House pays tribute to the jazz giant in…
