Power Rankings
A weekly roundup of the top newsmakers around town. 1. Ohio: New York Times stat guru Nate Silver says it’s 50-50 whether Ohio decides the election. It’s also 50-50 whether we earn the nation’s undying scorn for the next four years for making the wrong decision. 2. Zack Reed: The coolest councilman in Cleveland nonchalantly…
The Weekly Beef: Wake Up
Sometimes it takes an outsider to bring perspective to a situation. Case in point: The current election conundrum in Cleveland’s Jewish community, noted above, which brought the globe-trotting New York Times columnist Roger Cohen to town. In his column in Tuesday’s paper, Cohen neatly captured the intensity of the battle with a few choice details:…
The Quality of Cleveland Life Report
Your guide to living in fabulous Cleveland. First steps are taken in renovating the haunted and infamous Franklin Castle. Like all previous renovations and reclamation projects at the Cleveland landmark, step two is never expected to be completed. Winking Lizard announces it will no longer serve Bud Light or Miller Lite on draft. Not because…
6,298 Pints of Christmas Ale on the Wall
Has this become a Cleveland pilgrimage? Is it our version of the iPhone release? Looks eerily familiar — hordes of fans traveling long distances and lining up early. A lot of them called off work, with some even requesting time off in advance. The others just took a very extended lunch hour, or downright played…
Cleveland Heights High School Goes to Court Over Football Playoffs
Cleveland Heights High School is pretty serious about getting into the Ohio football playoffs. So much so that they’re going to near-laughable lengths in the courtroom to get their way. The school finished off the regular season with a 8-2 record — nothing to go home angry about, that’s for sure. Even better, the school…
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”
We are only a few weeks away from TNT’s constant barrage of the cult classic A Christmas Story. By now, everyone knows that the backdrop for this story is a small house on an obscure side street of trendy Tremont. This home has become one of Cleveland’s most visited tourist attractions, especially around the holiday…
Mother Stabs Son, Chokes Daughter, In Westlake Hotel Freak-Out
Need something to distract you from the inches of water dumping down out of the sky? How about a little dumb criminal news, so you can swing your attention off Mother Nature’s ongoing temper-tantrum and onto something a little less unpredictable and uncanny — like a mother recklessly attacking her own children with a knife.…
Derek Hess’s Rush poster selling fast
Local graphic artist Derek Hess is best known for having designed posters and album covers for hardcore and metal bands. But he’s also a Rush fan — he was sitting on the floor just a few rows back from the stage at last night’s concert at Quicken Loans Arena — and he’s just created a…
Concert Review and Slideshow: Rush at Quicken Loans Arena
Often accused of being pretentious and humorless, the guys in the Canadian prog rock trio Rush have actually lightened up over the course of their 30-year career. Sure, they still take their music seriously but instead of trying to replicate what they do in the studio on stage, the guys’ live show has evolved to…
Concert Review and Slideshow: American Music Masters Series Tribute to Chuck Berry
Joe Kleon When singer-guitarist Chuck Berry turned 60, he held a birthday concert that attracted the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray. You’d think at least a few of those A-list stars would be on hand for the Rock Hall’s week-long American Music Masters Series tribute to the man, which…
Pic of the Day: A Deer Swims in Lake Erie
Yes, that’s a deer swimming about 1000 meters offshore in Lake Erie. A fisher spotted the buck, snapped some photos, and tada, here’s one. More on the Cleveland Metroparks Facebook page, where there’s a short account of the encounter. Yes, the deer made it back to shore safely.
Video: Bone Thugs and Homeless
From Key and Peele. Great line about pooping in alleys here, friends, which is about all you can ask for on a Friday afternoon.
Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall
Robin Ticciati What a treat to hear Sibelius’s second symphony at Severance last night! A complex work that breaks many rules of the form, it demands technical excellence from every section of the orchestra. Young conductor Robin Ticciati has not quite mastered the piece, but the Cleveland Orchestra was more than up to the challenge.…
Food Trucks “Howling” into Tremont
South Side Food Truck Beer Dinner A flotilla of food trucks will be rolling into Tremont this weekend. Their first stop: The South Side in Tremont, which is hosting tonight’s Food Truck Beer Dinner event. It will be held in the open field directly next to the restaurant. Wiesel Boy and Sierra Nevada breweries are…
Former County Auditor Frank Russo Finally Heading to Prison
Collector’s item. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like the Frank Russo Party-Til-You-Drop Tour 2012 is finally hobbling to a long-awaited finish. After months of rumors and reports about the former Cuyahoga auditor gunning around to Cleveland hot spots and living the high life, the don of county corruption is finally going to jail. This…
Pic of the Day: Christmas Ale On Tap Now
This was the scene at Great Lakes at 11:06, just six minutes after GLBC unleashed Christmas Ale on tap for the first time this year. There were TV crews and reporters, thirsty folks who apparently had nowhere else to be and nowhere else to be next (soberly) in the middle of the day, Santa Claus,…
Concert Review: Meat Loaf at the State Theatre
Meat Loaf is an entertainer in the old-fashioned sense of the word. The guy knows how to work a crowd, something that was readily apparent during last night’s two-hour show at the State Theatre. The performance wasn’t a terrific one — Meat Loaf didn’t select his best songs and often sounded out of sync with…
Concert Review: Circa Survive at House of Blues
Alyssa Osborn Many think a great crowd is a sold-out crowd; the kind that packs into a venue like sardines. And sure, numbers don’t lie, but if you saw the crowd that attended the Circa Survive show last night at House of Blues, you would understand how their enthusiasm could put a better attended show…
Letters We’d Like to Get
Dear Scene: I’m writing to say good luck to the Cavs this year. You guys have a strong crop of young bucks. Coach Scott is gonna drill them into contenders! See you on the court. LeBron James Miami *** Dear Scene: [CENSORED] that ego-bloated [CEN-SORED]! I hope he [CENSORED] and [CENSORED] [CENSORED] while everyone [CENSORED]…
The Weekly Beef: Enough About Ohio
By: Ralph E. Shaffer The experts are wrong. Ohio is not the key to the White House. Mitt Romney may lose without Ohio, but history shows he could also lose despite winning the state. Since the first Republican ran for President and carried Ohio in 1856 (he lost the election, by the way), 16 different…
West Park’s Food Facelift
Located in the heart of Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood, Kamm’s Corners is getting a food facelift. According to the Kamm’s Corners Development Corporation, numerous buildings on or near Lorain are being renovated into restaurants. This comes on top of the award-winning Peace, Love and Little Donuts opening earlier this year. Also, The Panini’s in West…
Details, Details
Coordinating all the moving parts that make for a successful restaurant is more difficult than it appears. In the minefield of possible flubs, experience nearly always trumps dreams, and nothing stacks the odds for success like the talents of well-seasoned pros. We were reminded of that by two recent visits to Eddie ‘n’ Eddie, Eddie…
Whispers from the Spirit World
When you’re seven years old, your biggest worries are getting your field trip form signed and deciding what juice box flavor you’ll have for lunch. That is, unless you’re Mary Ann Winkowski, and you spend first grade wondering why you’re the only one in the class who can see spirits walking around during recess. Known…
Atlas Shrugs
Cloud Atlas is nothing if not ambitious, a sprawling, nearly three-hour omnibus that spans eras, continents, and even galaxies. Sibling filmmakers Andy and Lana (née Larry) Wachowski, of Matrix fame and Speed Racer infamy, along with German filmmaker Tom Twyker, have taken a huge risk in bringing David Mitchell’s complex, highly praised 2004 novel to…
Opening: The Paperboy
This adaptation of Pete Dexter’s acclaimed 2005 novel wallows in the most depraved elements of its Southern-grotesque swampland narrative, even adding a few of its own. Director Lee Daniels displayed a similar tendency in the overpraised Precious, which dwelled on vomit and hairy pig’s knuckles; here, we get alligator disemboweling, a woman urinating on a…
All Hallow’s Cleve
At the same time Hollywood was filming The Avengers in Cleveland, the city was also being used as the setting of Fun Size, a more modestly budgeted Halloween-themed movie from Nickelodeon. In Fun Size, shot in various Greater Cleveland locations, Cleveland isn’t posing as Detroit or Stuttgart—it looks like Cleveland, albeit a slightly idealized version.…
Band of the Week
Band of the week: Lowly, the Tree GhostMeet the Band: Andrew Arbogast (vocals, guitars), Emily McKitrick (vocals, keyboards), Laura Simna (violin), Joe Piedmonte (bass), and Nick Evert (drums) Room to Grow: In 2009, Arbogast used some longtime friends and Craigslist postings to transform Lowly, the Tree Ghost from a one-man bedroom project into, he says,…
Cavs Hall of Shame
Sure, the Cavs’ history book has a lot of space taken up by all-time greats. But along the way, the team’s rosters have also featured some memorable bombs— the wash-outs, has-beens, over-hyped, and just plain terrible. We reminisce. <p.Danny Ferry (player, 1990–2000; GM, 2005-10) Although the name will probably click with most fans as the…
CD Review: Solipsist
(reverbnation.com/solipsistohio) From the very start of this six-song EP, this Cleveland metal band sets the stage for a brutal and rewarding experience. And on “Steal the Sun,” Solipsist reveal just how interesting they can be at times, relentlessly twisting and turning until breaking into a relative smooth interlude. “The Bringers of Eternal Sleep” shows off…
Savage Love
Dear Dan What the hell do I say to my straight 14-year-old son about porn? Should I say anything? My sister tells me that all the research shows my son has been looking at porn for three years already. Am I too late? Distressed Anxious Dad According to the Today show and the Boston Globe…
Opening: Chasing Mavericks
The story behind Maverick’s, the big wave surfing spot in Northern California, is a good one. The waves there are so huge, they weren’t even deemed surf-worthy until the ’70s, and even now the risk is so great that many experienced surfers steer clear of the area. Sixteen-year-old Jay Moriarity was one of the youngest…
Punk Purists
Back in the mid-’70s, before singer Keith Morris founded the iconic punk band Black Flag with guitarist Greg Ginn, he was an avowed derelict who’d regularly escape to the beach near his home to do a lot of drugs with his derelict friends, some of whom would go on to become his derelict band mates.…
Culture Jamming
TOP PICK Peter Gabriel So (25th Anniversary Edition) (Real World) Available as both a single disc and as a box set, this reissue of what has to be Peter Gabriel’s most commercially successful album has been re-mastered to show the sonically dense structures of songs such as “Red Rain,” “Sledgehammer,” “In Your Eyes” and “Big…
Square Tactics
Though the group was originally founded in 2000 by Jamie “Johnny 5” Laurie, Flobots went through a metamorphosis before it made its impression on millions of people in 2008 with the massively successful single “Handlebars.” Flobots combines alternative-rock instruments with hip-hop vocals and lyrics that make you think, and although the reception to the follow-up…
Celluloid Closet
Sometimes, a single scene can justify your attendance at a show. Such is the case with The Little Dog Laughed, now at the Beck Center. But you’ll have to wait for it. This sneaky, snarky play by Douglas Carter Beane is about a film star, Mitchell, whose flickering fascination with gay sex is causing problems…
Hail! Hail!
Now in its 17th year, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s American Music Masters Series is an annual event that honors an inductee of some stature. The weeklong celebration includes a series of lectures, concerts, and films, culminating in a gala concert. This year’s concert, which will acknowledge the life and music…
Great Scott
Now in his third year as the Cavs’ head coach, Byron Scott has a young team and a lot of promise on his hands with the Wine and Gold this season. Scott previously coached the New Jersey Nets, taking them to the NBA finals twice, and the New Orleans Hornets. Before that, he was a…
Ballin’
So the Tribe tanked, and the Browns will be lucky to win two games. But hope springs eternal in the hearts of Cleveland sports fans, which makes the Cavaliers’ season opener next week even more welcome than usual. But don’t get too excited yet. Much as we love coach Byron Scott’s hard-nosed optimism, there are…
Culinary Calendar
Thursday, October 25 Mahall’s Guest Chef Event Co-owner Kelly Flamos couldn’t have said it better: “French food plus gypsy music equals awesome.” That pretty much sums up this Guest Chef event featuring Ohio City’s Le Petit Triangle at Mahall’s in Lakewood. Le Petit Triangle owners Tom and Joy Harlor will be delivering delicious French-European delicacies…
Drink Up
Margarita Martini at Lolita Peanut butter and jelly. Bread and butter. Chips and salsa. Michael Symon and a pig. Bring the right combinations together, and magic will happen. Case in point: This popular cocktail invented in 2006, when maverick mixologists Rebecca Yody and Frank Ritz first thought about fusing two wildly popular libations. Out of…
