The Author of ‘The Whore of Akron’ Brought a Copy to LeBron’s House
Scott Raab’s book, “The Whore of Akron,” hits bookshelves next week. The Cleveland native and Esquire scribe has been burning up the promo lines in advance of the release, from radio shows to interviews to video shoots, the first of which has him hand delivering a copy to LeBron’s house in Bath. Nice touch. In…
Radio Host’s Browns Rant
The Factory of Sadness Yesterday we had Mike Polk’s on-point, funny take on the Browns’ season. Today we have WKNR’s Tony Rizzo’s rant. Well, meltdown really. And it’s actually from last week, before the Browns got trounced by the Texans on Sunday. We can only imagine how it would sound now. Our favorite line: “I…
Election Day Round-Up of Suburban Campaign Shenanigans
Go out and be American today. Happy Election Day! With the noise level up to 11 regarding Issue 2 and other statewide initiatives, plus the rack of needed-now-more-than-ever school levies on the ballot grabbing most of the attention, we almost completely forgot about the most entertaining aspect of the political season: the candidates, those special…
Election Day Round-Up of Suburban Campaign Shenanigans
Happy Election Day! With the noise level up to 11 regarding Issue 2 and other statewide initiatives, plus the rack of needed-now-more-than-ever school levies on the ballot grabbing most of the attention, we almost completely forgot about the most entertaining aspect of the political season: the candidates, those special personalities that for the better part…
New Information in Frank Dienes-Joe Kopp Murder (Updated)
Update: Last week, Frank Dienes pleaded guilty to killing Joe Kopp. This morning, he was sentenced to life in prison for the crime. Dienes will be eligible for parole in 16 years. (NewsNet5) As James Renner points out, there’s a little more: One bit of good news to take away from this ordeal: the state…
People Tried to Steal One of the Dead Lions From Zanesville
Is the bizarreness of the Zanesville exotic animal episode finished? No, of course not. The AP reports that five people were charged with trying to steal the carcass of one of the lions that was shot, killed, and buried. Surely they had good reason to…. nevermind. We can’t even finish that sentence. What the hell,…
“Yes on 2” Camp Unleashes Secret Weapon
“Yes on 2” answers the bell with authority. With “Yes on Issue 2” lagging badly in the polls, the No campaign closed with a powerful ad featuring former U.S. Senator from Ohio and astronaut John Glenn, while teachers, firefighters, and cops fanned out across the state knocking on doors. But it was the folks who…
News Stations Across State Let You Tour Crime Scene
Scene of bad things. We know you. We know you wouldn’t be interested in popping the lid on a teacher-student sex scandal and taking a tour of the house of the former-gym teacher now Ohio penal system inmate who allegedly held booze and drug-fueled sex parties with the football team. Nah, that’s not you. But…
Former Metroparks Chief Arrested for Public Indecency in the Metroparks
You’d think the former head of the Metroparks, a man surely familiar with some of the seedier activities that go on beneath the blossoms and trees, a man undoubtedly aware that the Metroparks and police run stings to catch individuals involved in those seedy activities, would not go to the Metroparks and indulge in those…
Some Cavs Fan Got LeBron to Sign a Copy of Dan Gilbert’s Comic Sans Letter
Jay Schnurr, a loyal Cavs fan and a clever soul, says he was at St. Vincent St. Mary last week when LeBron was hanging around his alma mater filming a commercial. Schnurr additionally says that he tricked LeBron into signing a copy of Dan Gilbert’s infamous post-Decision Comic Sans letter by folding up the piece…
ODOT Recommends Ear Plugs for People Living Within Earshot of Overnight Inner Belt Construction
Beautiful, but best enjoyed with earplugs. ODOT wants to begin three weeks of overnight work on construction for the Inner Belt bridge. The city of Cleveland has to approve the move; it’ll do so after judging just how much noise the pile driving will cause. Not that much noise at all, says ODOT. And by…
Folks Still Talking About FitzGerald Running for Governor
We’ve had this talk before: Ed FitzGerald, a powerful Democrat in the post-Dimora era, charged with ridding Cuyahoga County of corruption and siphoning the waste spigot that’s gone unfixed for decades, a possible candidate for Ohio’s top spot? Sure, it makes sense. A sizable population along Lake Erie— a sizable Dem-leaning population — a clean…
Mike Polk Reacts to Yesterday’s Browns Game
We’ll see everyone down at the Factory of Sadness on Sunday. That name could really catch on.
Fans Dressed as Exotic Animals for Game against Ohio U-Zanesville
What better way to show support for your team and taunt the opposing side when you’re Mount Vernon Nazarene and you’re playing Ohio U-Zanesville than dress up as a bunch of escaped exotic animals. They even included the authorities with guns. (Via @DarrenRovell)
Unfortunate Typos: Um, You Spelled ‘Clocks’ Wrong
A friendly reminder from the News Herald about daylight saving and turning your clocks back. Wait, turning our what back? Oh, that is one unfortunate typo. (Via Reddit)
New Ohio City Sandwich Shop Satisfies Late-Night Cravings
Late-night noshers, rejoice! There is a new late-night pig-out option in Ohio City. Opened this week by chef Nate Williams, who for a dozen years worked in the fine-dining kitchens of Flying Fig, Bogtrotters Doorstep (1848 W. 25th St., 216-861-5515) will dispense high-quality, hand-crafted sandwiches until 3 a.m. on weekends. “I’ve always wanted to do…
Father and Daughter Beat Down House Prowler with Wooden Ornamental Dog
You know a police report is really cooking with the goods when there’s a reference to “a wooden ornamental dog wood shop project” used as a bludgeon. This particular blunt object was the self-defense weapon of choice in a tag-team beat down delivered by a father and daughter when they discovered a vandal in their…
Peyton Hillis’ Hamstring Hurts . . .
“You see this face? It hurts to make this face. It also costs money.” . . . like the innocent bedtime dreams of the children at the Boys & Girls Club. If you haven’t heard, the Brown’s big question mark injured himself in practice this afternoon. The development looks like it will clear a place…
Lakewood Residents Come Out Against McDonalds (Updated)
“Get this corporation off my back.” Update: The Lakewood Planning Commission gave the OK for the McDonalds to be built at the corner of Detroit and Woodward. The decision last night came despite the vocal effort of residents to keep the Golden Arches out of the location. Lakewood Patch says construction will begin soon. *****…
John Kasich Thinks the Browns Went to the Super Bowl
Ohio Governor John Kasich has been stumping for the heading-for-defeat Issue 2 around the Buckeye State. Kasich, when asked whether his tour around Ohio could stir a last-minute upset, he made an analogy. A sports one. A wrong one. Even for a Steelers fan like himself. “We never thought (former Cleveland Browns quarterback) Bernie Kosar…
Is this the Worst TV News Clip Ever — Or the Best?
We guess you can write this off to sweeps week, that pocket of the calendar year when TV stations have license to literally throw the kitchen sink at any story with enough headline juice in order to kick things up to 11, all in the name of ratings. What we have here is a textbook…
Elyria Man Throws Pumpkin at Girlfriend
Note: Don’t throw at girlfriend. Now that Halloween is back on the shelf for another 12 months, everybody’s got those pumpkins lying around, rotting away on the porch. What are you supposed to do with them? You spent some hard earned change on that sucker, so why just throw it away, or watch your investment…
Harvey Pekar Statue Campaign Launches
A piece of work — now a work of art. A few weeks back we mentioned the proposed statue honoring late Cleveland comics author Harvey Pekar, who died in July 2010. The “Harvey Pekar Library Statue: Comics As Art & Literature Desk” will sit outside the bookstore in the Cleveland Heights/University Heights Library, one of…
Dennis! likes Ohio’s new congressional districts because they benefit … Dennis!
One of the most frequent charges critics have lobbed at Congressman Dennis Kucinich is that he’s addicted putting Dennis! first — Dennis! running for President, Dennis! playing coy about how he’ll vote on the health-care bill until President Obama flies him out to Cleveland on Airforce One to persuade him, Dennis! keeping HIS congressional seat…
Note: Next Halloween, Leave the Real Hardware at Home
This picture . . . yeah, I just don’t know what to say about this picture. “What, Officer? No, sir, I didn’t think this was a bad idea at all. Why is everyone so upset?” Via, Avon Patch Someone in the North Doovys called Avon Police around 6:17 p.m. Monday, during trick-or-treating time in town,…
24-Year-Old Arrested at Occupy Cleveland
From out here in the cheap seats, the Occupy Cleveland movement, while adding a local voice to the big guttural shout of nation displeasure with the Way We Live Now, has also had its fair share of issues on the home front, from their struggles to get the proper permits to accusations of less-than kumbaya…
County Laying Off Auditor’s Office Employees Today (Updated)
Update: As we noted earlier this morning, according to a phone call from a source inside the building, today Cuyahoga County handed out pink slips to employees in the fiscal office. Around noon, County Executive Ed FitzGerald’s office confirmed that 33 employees have been let got. This afternoon FitzGerald took a couple minutes to address…
Drink of the Week
When it comes to celebrating Sundays, a light, bright, go-with-everything bubbly is a no-brainer. But there’s got to be something more interesting to do with Prosecco than mix it with orange juice. Turns out, mixologist Greg Kobunski thinks so too — and he’s poured his sparkly thoughts onto the brunch menu at Washington Place Bistro.…
CD Review: G Huff and Vice Souletric Beats
Newsflash from G Huff and Vice Souletric Beats: The situation in Youngstown is worse than we thought. Where Do We Go From Here? pokes around the rapper’s hood and finds nothing but bullet holes and easy women. Yes, the Glocks and cocks combo is an old one, but Huff saves himself with rapid-fire rhymes that…
CD Review: The Decembrists
This six-song EP of leftovers from The King Is Dead sessions adds nearly another half-hour to the Decemberists’ most successful and accessible album. And like the full-length, which came out earlier this year, the tracks on Long Live the King play around with more traditional song structures and styles than those found on the five…
Max Impact
Bellflower may be packaged in garbage, but it delivers gold. It will either horrify you or captivate you in the same way a heaping portion of psilocybin mushrooms and crank would: with a crash-landing after a nonstop emotional and visual 105-minute rush. Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and best pal Aiden (Tyler Dawson) spend their time drinking,…
On View This Week
The Sculpture Center: An Ode to the Odd The title of the new two-man show at the Sculpture Center — Gentlemen of Oddity/Look! See!/Marvel of Marvels — sets a lighthearted tone for a thoughtful exhibition. The participating artists, sculptor Steven Jones and photographer Barry Underwood, take advantage of the sideshow vibe to experiment with the…
Film Capsules
Margin Call (R) The 2008 financial collapse was so large in scale that it begged for Hollywood’s blustery myth-making. Margin Call, thankfully, resists the urge to go big, as it depicts the very moment when the owner of a fictional securities firm (played by the perfectly snaky Jeremy Irons) realizes the error of his firm’s…
At the Arthouse
Amigo Director John Sayles’ latest movie is another political allegory, this time building a story around the Philippine-American War that happened at the turn of the 20th century. Chris Cooper stars as an American soldier who settles in a Filipino village with his troops as they try to convince locals that their occupation is a…
Savage Love
Dear Dan: I’m gay, been gay for years now, and I want to be with a man as a life partner. My problem is that I honestly don’t enjoy anal, but I like my boyfriend to be dominant, the man, the boss — however you want to define it. Is that just plain weird? Will…
Amped Up
It’s been almost five months since Jeff Jarrett took over as top toque at Amp 150. In that time, he’s kept a pretty low profile — at least, as low as possible for a guy running the enormous kitchen at the Cleveland Airport Marriott. But now, armed with a new website and menu, and with…
Concert Calendar
Willie Nelson Willie Nelson has been such a singular figure for so long, it’s easy to gloss over the fact that he comes from a songwriting tradition that goes back almost a hundred years. Churning out compositions for more established singers in the 1950s allowed Nelson to see the business from the inside, as he…
CD Review: The Beach Boys
There are so many myths and legends surrounding Smile, the Beach Boys’ 1967 never-released follow-up to Pet Sounds, that it’s hard to keep tabs on what’s fact and what isn’t. Even after all these years, fans still can’t agree on what songs would have been on the album, let alone the order they’d run. The…
The Misfit Toymaker
Most folks wouldn’t waste two glances at the row of shambling, low-slung buildings on Karl Street in Berea — just door after nondescript door looking out on a vast weed-strewn field. But behind one of those doors lies not a tangle of cubicles, but shelf upon shelf piled with boxes, plus the occasional display that…
Home Movies
Water for Elephants (Twentieth Century Fox) Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson get big-top billing in this love story set in the 1930s circus world. But Christoph Waltz (so good as the scheming, strudel-eating Nazi in Inglourious Basterds) steals the movie as the not-too-nice ringleader. So does the period dressing, which coats everything in dusty, golden…
CD Review: Justice
Forget the fact that Justice’s 2007 dance album † grinded harder than most metal, and that this follow-up rock record is more cleanly produced than anything else in 2011. How about the mere movement of it, the lack of numbing repetition, the shifting tonal structures … and the fact it’s played on actual guitars? The…
Local Band in Focus
Meet the Band: Eddie “Johnny La Rock” Fleisher (vocals, programming), Vinnie “Furface” Furman (DJ, keyboards, programming), and Aaron “Mush Mouth” Donahoo (vocals) Clean Break: Fleisher (pictured center) and Donahoo (right) have been making music together since they were teens. Furman got on board a few years ago. After breaking up with his former band and…
We Get Mail
Vintage Form I’ve read plenty of Scene articles about local characters and lawsuits over the years, but since “Retro Ruckus” [October 5, 2011] was about the vintage store Suite Lorain — a place and people I know firsthand — I really ate it up. I enjoyed the subject matter and thought the writing was thorough…
Year in Review
T his might as well be the last column written here about the Browns this season. Seven games in, and the only question left is whether they’ll manage to equal the 5-11 record of the last two seasons, because it’s a virtual certainty that they won’t surpass it. The experience of following the 2011 Browns…
Burgers On Board
In July, Mike Mariola jumped into the increasingly crowded gourmet burger bar market. The chef and owner of two popular Wooster restaurants — South Market Bistro and City Square Steakhouse — obviously did things right: Located in a new exterior section of Akron’s Summit Mall, the Rail is one of the most appealing adaptations of…
Swing Time
Ralph Carney’s career stretches back to the mid-’70s, when he played with the Akron proto-punks Tin Huey. His musical tastes go back even further. On Seriously, his new album with his group the Serious Jass Project, the saxophonist (who now lives in San Francisco) dusts off mostly obscure jazz cuts from the ’30s, ’40s, and…
Get Out!
Thursday | 03 At the Improv A New, Improved Mencia Famous for his brutally honest and sometimes divisive humor, Carlos Mencia — probably best-known for Comedy Central’s Mind of Mencia — is bringing his 50-city, cross-country tour to the Improv tonight. Turns out he loves our town. “It’s not like Boston or L.A.,” Mencia says. “Cleveland…
Cold Outside
Being a buzz band sucks. Sure, the first four or five months can be the most awesome time of your life, as every Pitchfork-aspiring blogger on the planet strains to find new ways to say your band rules. But then the backlash starts. And then people start hating you. Then they forget about you. And…
Stay In!
TOP PICK – VIDEO GAME Dark Souls (Namco Bandai) It takes a special kind of gamer to master RPGs. It take an even more special gamer to conquer this follow-up of sorts to Demon’s Souls. You’re a warrior, pretty much on your own in a landscape filled with hordes of demonic beasts – some big,…
Sexy Time
There are many dandy reasons to have sex — and most of them are elucidated in one form or another in A Little Night Music, now being produced by the Fairmount Performing Arts Conservatory in Mayfield. Set in 1900 Sweden, the play is highlighted by Stephen Sondheim’s intricate score and piercingly witty lyrics. And the…
