MGK Inspires Something Other Than a Flash Mob
Rapper Machine Gun Kelly just released a follow-up video to the August one he made about a wheelchair-bound fan (who looks an awful lot like MGK, except for that whole wheelchair part), who was inspired by the Cleveland rapper to “walk someday.” It starts in the parking lot at a Blink-182 concert, where the Brunswick-based…
Art McKoy: “I May Even Go Out With a Bang”
McKoy back when he had a job The Sunday night spot on WTAM 1100 quietly went from the “listen to this show to get your medulla straight!” admonitions of Art McKoy, to the everything’s-coming-up-roses for Cleveland attitude of Ward 2 Councilman Zack Reed. Reed took the reins in late November. “Simply put, I was fired,”…
Cleveland Band Snags Yahoo!’s Most Epically Awful Video of 2011
You know you’re in for a rough time when the headline proclaims “Even Worse Than Rebecca Black.” Topping the list of Yahoo!’s Most Epically Awful Videos of 2011 is Alternate Reality’s “The King That Never Was.” And score another one for Cleveland: Alternate Reality are one of us. And yeah, the video (and song, let’s…
New Clothing Shop Opens in Gordon Square
The ever-burgeoning Gordon Square Arts District will get another new tenant on December 10 when I Love the Hype, a Clevo-based clothing brand founded by Glen Infante, opens its first flagship store there. (5304 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland; Hours: 12-7pm Tuesday-Saturday) iLTHY, which had previously only been available online at ilovethehype.com and select retailers like NEXT,…
Shortened NBA Season Cost Cuyahoga County $800,000
Now that the NBA lockout has been shelved, it’s easier to measure the damage inflicted upon those who aren’t already rich enough to care less. Downtown bars and restaurants that rely on basketball traffic are among the casualties, but Cuyahoga County is sharing in the pain. As part of the original arrangement to build Quicken…
Cleveland Finally Gets a Great Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
Clear the stage — egos coming through It wasn’t too bad in 2009, when Metallica was inducted. Run-DMC were there, and so was Jeff Beck with Jimmy Page. But the less said about the 1997 in Cleveland — the one with Crosby, Stills & Nash — the better. But when the Rock and Roll Hall…
2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Primer
The list has finally arrived of which rock icons are going to earn a place in the pantheon by the lake. It’s actually a pretty awesome list, ‘ask us. We decided to put together a little who’s who to go with your morning coffee. Guns N’ Roses
Ohioans less healthy, says study
Eat more of these, Ohioans! Yesterday, the nonprofit United Health Foundation released its annual America’s Health Rankings, and the news for Ohio isn’t so good. We ranked 36th in the country, down from 33rd last year. The percentage of people who smoke, which has been shrinking in the last decade, showed an uptick from 20.3%…
Anything About a Cleveland Zombie Preserve is a Must Read
The effect of too much Christmas Ale We hate to admit that we left something out of last week’s gift guide, but we did: The absolute most perfect thing for those post-apocalyptic fiction fans and zombie lovers on your list. We will remedy that here. A lot of national love has been heaped on After…
Occupy Cleveland Earns Bid for Statehood … or Something
Occupy Cleveland … it’s working! Isn’t it? It’s only been a month ago that Occupy Clevelanders were getting rounded up and arrested as the city’s patience for their Public Square shantytown was growing thin. Now the Occupy movement has earned the love of Cleveland City Council, which voted last night in favor of a resolution…
Med Mart Seeks Help Selling Non-medical Shows
MMPI, the developer bringing us the $465 million Med Mart, is looking for someone to beef up convention center bookings. That, in itself, is not odd. The idea of the taxpayer-funded project is for the Med Mart part to cause medical conventions and trade shows to pour into town and they, in turn, will render…
Marcia Fudge rolls out firepower to announce re-election campaign
Ya gotta have friends: Ohio congresspersons Tim Ryan and Marcia Fudge (with former congressman Louis stokes, left) This morning, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, of Cuyahoga County’s 11th district, drew a couple of hundred people to Phil the Fire restaurant in Beachwood for a hardly unexpected announcement: that she is filing to run again for the congressional…
NYT Spotlights University Circle—But Gives It a New Name
Art Museum Lagoon at University Circle — or “Uptown”? Last week the New York Times shone the spotlight on the development boom going on in Cleveland’s University Circle area. Keith Schneider’s article is titled “Cleveland Turns Uptown into a New Downtown.” It focuses primarily on the new-mixed use development called Uptown that’s going up at…
Harvey Pekar Memorial Fund Blows Past Goal
Back in early November, we told you about the Kickstarter campaign to raise $30,000 to build a statue memorializing Cleveland writer Harvey Pekar. The beloved contributor to the art of comic-book storytelling died last year. The campaign launched November 3 and and has officially ended, having far surpassed its goal; the fund now totals $36,888.…
Lunch Break: A Power Lunch @ Crop Bistro
Hmm. Pig. The recently relocated Crop Bistro isn’t quite as close to the Scene offices as it used to be. But commanding the corner of Lorain Avenue and West 25th, the spot isn’t nearly far enough removed to keep me away for long. Case in point: a recent Thursday’s late lunch. Even well past noon,…
Rock Hall Secrecy Highlighted
“Old rock ’n’ rollers don’t fade away. They just hope for a nod from Cleveland.” That’s how New York Times writer Janet Morrissey started Saturday’s nicely done Rock Hall piece. And we appreciate the recognition going to the city, not just the museum we happen to have here. Votes for the 2012 Rock Hall inductees…
R.I.P. Purple Man
It’s a sad time for Purple Man fans. The southwest Akron icon who, for almost three decades, waved to rush-hour passers-by in full purple regalia died Friday. He was 94. Many people probably caught a glimpse of Earl Baker waving from the front yard of his purple-trimmed home and wondered—Why?—before tucking the odd experience into…
Concert Review: Randy Newman With the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall
In the spirit of year-end list-making, the best concert performance of 2011 is a two-way tie between Jimmy Buffett and Glee Live! in Concert! No, no, redact that. Such high accolades belong to Randy Newman and the Cleveland Orchestra. On the way to the majestic Severance Hall this past Saturday evening, I was singing “Oh,…
Democrats Say Photo of Sherrod Brown in Attack Ad was Doctored to Make Him Look Shabbier Than Usual
Sherrod Brown isn’t going to be named one of the country’s best-dressed politicians anytime soon. No GQ photoshoot awaits the Senator, who at times can be described as frumpy, disheveled, and unkempt. Which isn’t to say that Brown isn’t a fine looking man who suffers from the toll of his job. Yeah, our man could…
Fox 8 Newscaster Loses It in TV Anchor Fail Video
Everybody loves to see the clips of news anchors losing it on screen or twisting a simple word into a four-letter soap-to-mouth monstrosity that makes senior citizens spontaneously combust once it hits their ears. These videos are great end-of-the-year time killers, and this one below features some local talent. If you skip to the 21…
Brettany Walton, Shoplifting Mama, Leaves Baby Behind When Cops Arrive
“What baby?” You have to love the editorially administered morality of this headline, courtesy of 19ActionNews, one outfit that’s never been afraid to call it like it is. “Mother” abandons sleeping baby while shoplifting Those quote marks burn. Once you dive into the meat and potatoes of the story, you’ll probably share the headline writer’s…
Read an Interview With Harvey Pekar’s Widow About His New Book
The Harvey we all knew and loved If you have some spare time today, Previews, which is a monthly overstuffed catalog/publication filled with everything geeks love, has a pretty good and kinda long interview with Joyce Brabner, Harvey Pekar’s widow. She talks about the upcoming book Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, which the writer completed before his…
Peyton Hillis Likes Ron Paul a Little Bit
Peyton Hillis is shown here decked out from head to toe in Ron Paul gear. You can’t see it, but there’s also Ron Paul keychain hooked around his junk. (Via Ron Paul Forums)
The Black Keys Come to the Q in March
The Black Keys are hitting the road in March for a month-long tour in support of their new album, El Camino, which comes out Tuesday. And they still love us! They’ll play the Q on March 20, the second-to-last date on the tour. So make room on your calendar now. —Michael Gallucci
The Rest of the World Catches Up With Cleveland’s Best Band
All that glitters? Mr. Gnome — or as we like to refer to them here at the Scene office, the Best Band in Cleveland — are finally getting the attention they deserve in some places of the world that aren’t so cold and miserable. Rolling Stone named them a Band to Watch in its new…
Cleveland NOT a Big Life Sciences Center
The idea that Cleveland is a burgeoning biotech and healthcare hot spot has been touted ad nauseum by city leaders and the media in recent years. But it turns out that this particular why-we-should-feel-good-about-the-future stance isn’t true. Despite the Clinic, UH, and Metro; despite the biotech companies and incubators here, our city doesn’t make the…
Occupy Ashtabula Has a Nice Gazebo Is Done
Update: Breaking news out of Ashtabula today — it is no longer occupied. At its height, Occupy Ashtabula counted 15 protesters and one dynamite gazebo. That number dwindled, and eventually the campers packed up and headed home. Via the Star Beacon: City Manager Anthony Cantagallo said he believes the winter weather is partly responsible. Logical.…
Cleveland Poet Captures NPR’s Heart
Like “jumbo shrimp,” “famous poet” is pretty much an oxymoron. Still, if any contemporary Cleveland wordsmith is poised to make that leap, it’s George Bilgere. The John Carroll professor and Cleveland Arts Prize winner will be a featured performer on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday December 10. Bilgere, 60, calls it “the…
Ohio Schools Fill Up List of 30 Druggiest Colleges
PCU was not in Ohio, right? Like just about every major news source trying desperately to understand the interwebs, The Daily Beast stakes a lot of its journo-cred on lists. You know, because having the unpaid intern burn down a week or two “crunching numbers” is an essential research effort in keeping democracy safe, or…
Youngstown Band Gets Little Steven’s Seal of Approval, Needs Your Vote
Steven Van Zandt knows a thing or two about being cool. First of all, he’s been Bruce Springsteen’s guitar-slingin’, bandana-sportin’ sidekick for 40 years. He also played Silvio Dante on The Sopranos. So when the dude says something’s cool, you tend to believe him. One of the things Miami Steve thinks is cool is Youngstown…
Craigslist Ad of the Day: Calling Cleveland Groupies Dancers for an NBA Party
The NBA lockout is over, and that means arena employees, bartenders, scalpers, and fans are all happy. So too is the talent that keep the players entertained. The league is again open for business. For example, somebody is throwing a soiree in downtown Cleveland to welcome back the NBA, and no party populated by NBA,…
Anti-Mercury Rally Set for This Morning
Mercury: It ain’t all bad. Disillusioned by the odd tangents and flagging energy of your local Occupy movement? Still prefer complaining about things rather than gainful employment? The Sierra Club’s got a lunch date for you: This morning at 11, they’ll be rounding up a passel of local families and environmentalist types to rally 1)…
Tribe 2012: Somebody Thinks We Won’t Suck
2012 Tribe: Still tied for first! The keister end of another lost Browns season seems like as good a time as any to bust out a little summer optimism. Today’s dose comes courtesy of Jonah Keri at the sports ‘n’ culture website Grantland. In his rundown of what each American League team needs to accomplish…
Coventry North End Garment District Debuts ‘First Thursdays’
Avalon Exchange on Coventry Road The burgeoning block-long strip of clothing stores on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights now has an official name and a brand-new signature event. The merchants have dubbed themselves the Coventry North End Garment District. And tomorrow from 7-11 p.m., they are kicking off their monthly “shop hop” a.k.a. First Thursday…
French Fried
First-time director Joann Sfar has said that he didn’t want to make a straightforward biography about Serge Gainsbourg. So it’s no surprise that Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life — which Sfar adapted from his own graphic novel — is less standard biopic and more a fantasia of the popular French singer and songwriter, who, as the…
We Get Mail
Smoke It if You Got It An appeal to Prohibitionists: Most of us are aware by now that individuals who use illegal drugs are going to get high “no matter what” [“Ohio’s Ganja Gauntlet,” November 9, 2011]. So why do you not prefer they acquire them in stores that check IDs and pay taxes? Gifting…
Better Than It Sounds
Jammy Buggars just may be the worst restaurant name in the history of dining. It is so bad, in fact, that it causes me physical discomfort just to utter it. So, from here on out I will refer to it only as JB’s. The good news is that behind the distasteful moniker lies a very…
Local Band in Focus
Meet the Band: Jeremy Willets (vocals, guitar), Drew Doman (guitar, vocals), Chris Scianna (bass), and Larry Glicken (drums) Off the Rails: In the late ’90s, Doman (pictured, right) was Willets’ guitar teacher. In 2001 they formed the Rails, rolling through numerous rhythm sections. Scianna and Glicken joined a year ago. The melodic alt-rockers have released…
Say What?
Some U.S. citizens tend to be offended when they travel to another country and the natives don’t speak their language. These clichéd “ugly Americans” are invariably and justifiably seen as pushy and arrogant. But when the American business traveler in Convergence-Continuum’s staging of The Internationalist encounters communication problems abroad, he’s more the victim than the…
Zinc on the Brink
For weeks there have been rumblings of a major restaurant shake-up in downtown Cleveland. It finally can be revealed what that fuss is all about. Chris Hodgson, owner of the popular food trucks Dim and Den Sum and Hodge Podge, has paired up with Scott Kuhn, owner of Washington Place Bistro and Welshfield Inn, to…
On Stage
Great Lakes Theater: Ghosts of Christmas Past When Gerald Freedman’s evergreen adaptation of A Christmas Carol returns this Friday to Great Lakes Theater, it will mark the 23rd year the Dickens classic has graced the Cleveland stage. In that time, theater sources say, the show has spread holiday cheer to more than 570,000 playgoers and…
Savage Love
Dear Dan: I’m a 21-year-old woman from Canada who sleeps with other women. Two questions for you: 1. My LGBT friends and I disagree about what we girls who sleep exclusively with girls should call ourselves. Everyone else prefers “lesbian” and bitches at me for hating that word. Can’t I call myself gay? 2. I…
Concert Calendar
Street Dogs “We all need a little punk rock & roll,” sings Michael McColgan on the Street Dogs’ latest album, pretty much summing up his band’s decade-long manifesto. The Boston quintet makes populist, pub-packing music that reaches out to and connects with its working-class fans. You can credit McColgan’s past gigs as a firefighter and…
On View This Week
At Harris Stanton Gallery: Wee Wonders The Harris Stanton Gallery’s newest exhibition, Small Gems, illustrates how creativity need not be stifled — and can even flourish — under all sorts of random constraints. In this case, size is the salient factor: The exhibition showcases works by nearly 40 local and international artists, all under 11×14…
CD Review: Dan Miraldi
Dan Miraldi’s got sort of an asshole swagger about him that goes back generations. It’s the kind that’s required if you’re going to sing about “the shimmy in your hips” and title an album Rock N Roll Band! If it wasn’t for a reference to skinny jeans in “Mystical Queen,” you might think these songs…
CD Review: Ben Folds
Before he became an online hit with his funny and clever Chatroulette videos, and before he became a somewhat humorless Sing Off judge, piano-pounding Folds was one of modern rock’s most tuneful smartasses, releasing four increasingly ambitious albums with his Ben Folds Five trio in the mid- and late 1990s. This three-CD survey of his…
Rolling Into Town
The Cleveland Orchestra is getting ready for one of its biggest concerts of the season this week — or at least one that will bring in a very different type of crowd than they usually draw over at regal Severance Hall. Randy Newman comes to town on Saturday for a show that spans his entire…
Home Movies
Another Earth (Twentieth Century Fox) Despite its mind-blowing setup — a planet that looks exactly like ours suddenly appears in the sky one day — this indie hit is more ponderous personal drama than sci-fi epic. After spending four years in prison for a drunk-driving accident that wiped out most of a family, a young…
Get Out!
Thursday | 01 Arty Party Here’s One for the Critters Eat, drink, and help prevent pet overpopulation during tonight’s kickoff to Orange Art Center’s Animals in Art exhibition. Featuring animal-themed artwork from nearly three dozen creatives, the party doubles as a fund-raiser for PetFix, a local nonprofit that provides affordable spay/neuter options for pets, ferals,…
Film Capsules
Hugo (PG) Asa Butterfield plays Hugo Cabret, a wide-eyed boy whose clockmaker father dies unexpectedly, leaving the kid to be raised by his drunken Uncle Claude, who keeps the clocks running at a Paris train station. Rather than be gathered up as just another orphan and given over to authorities by the villainous Station Inspector,…
Stay In!
The first of our special, slightly expanded gift-giving editions of Culture Jamming. This week: home videos. The Essential Daffy Duck (Warner) The 21 cartoons on this two-disc DVD collection come from some of the all-time greatest animators, including Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, and Chuck Jones. (Stick with the classics from the ’40s and ’50s; the…
The Gimme Guide
Drawing another blank now that gift-giving season has arrived? Maybe it’s time you retrained your focus on the wonderful gifts growing in our own backyard. Who says manufacturing is dead? Not a single recipient of these locally mined delights. In addition to the Clevo-centric options that follow, take time to scour your own neighborhood for…
Petty Pony
Last Friday, Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports published one of the stranger in-season reports that an NFL fan could hope to read about his favorite team. Of course it’s about the Browns, and while none of the answers to the questions raised by it are especially good, they might nevertheless be useful as the team…
At the Arthouse
The Mill and the Cross How’s this for high concept? This new movie starring Rutger Hauer and Michael York takes a 16th-century painting — Pieter Bruegel’s “The Procession to Calvary” — and brings it to life. The painting is a widescreen landscape that shows Christ carrying the cross up a hill as scores of people…
CD Review: John Fahey
John Fahey was a folk revivalist, a blues purist, and an occasional musical weirdo. But more than anything he was a spectacular guitarist — a profound and proficient instrumentalist whose style spanned continents and genres. He hit his stride in the early 1970s, but this terrific five-disc box includes 115 songs from his earliest years,…
CD Review: Elvis Presley
The year after he recorded his final historic Sun sessions was a crucial one for Elvis. He was a long way from home, making records in New York and Hollywood instead of Memphis. He was a major investment for a company ready to sink large amounts of money into its new commodity. And he was…
