Edge
Jailhouse Rock! The Elvis graffiti cited by Imperial Mayor Mike White as evidence of racism in the police department has turned out to be a joke — literally. The whole business started with a cop in the Sixth District who is so obsessed with the King that he has an Elvis tattoo covering most of…
Dr. Think Good
The most striking thing about philosopher Lynn Levey is that she doesn’t look like a philosopher. She isn’t male or bearded or dead. She speaks for as long as she can in a raspy turbo rush of ideas, despite a voice-altering cold. Over coffee and crumpled tissues, Levey tosses around tenets of Socrates and Lao…
Dog Gone
Those who find their lives incomplete without their weekly visit to the Cedar-Lee to experience the latest cinematic depiction of alienated couples edging toward the abyss will view Cleveland Public Theatre’s Sweet Phoebe as a sweet surprise. In particular, devotees of Stanley Kubrick’s icy surrealism will find themselves happily at home. Sophisticates who moaned their…
Pop! Goes the Easel
The grainy 8 mm home movie shot by Abe Zapruder on November 22, 1963, has insinuated itself into the American consciousness. It’s been analyzed from beginning to end and, by now, practically everyone has seen the President’s head explode in frame 313. The clip, strangely enough, has even taken on a detached life of its…
Life Is Juicy at J Café
Donna Chriszt, one of Cleveland’s outstanding young chefs and culinary artists, has really hit her stride in her new East Side restaurant, the tasteful and tasty J Café. Chriszt opened her new kitchen in Woodmere’s Eton Collection in late June with partner Ed Dunlop. After several weeks of commuting between J Café and her original…
Kramer vs. Kramer
Everybody has an agenda, you say? That may well be true, but it’s hard to imagine Creed, Fastball, or whatever selections you can order from the BMG Music Club putting sentiments like these on their album covers: “We are a lonely people, pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition, and we need…
The Anarchist’s Cookbook
“Perhaps a fine recording of noises extracted (at knifepoint) from a guitar, but don’t be fooled — it ain’t music.” “Not very musical . . . This is supposed to be an acoustic guitar CD, but there is precious little music on it. Each cut may have a note or two, no more. Save your…
The Boys of Summer
When the book on ’90s rock is finally written, a couple of names are going to come up over and over as the inspiration for all sorts of sensitive, SG-wielding members of Chain Wallet America: Slint, Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses, Jesus Lizard, Rodan, Fugazi, Hoover, Drive Like Jehu, Unwound. These are the extraordinary bands…
Livewire
Tori Amos Alanis Morissette Blossom Music Center September 8 Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette, two earthy white chicks with rabid followings of neo-hippie girls and sensitive, pony-tailed guys, share suspicious, if little known, pasts. Victims of flashdance fashions and bad music (Amos embraced pop metal with her first band, Y Kant Tori Read, and Morissette…
Scrambling Man
In this modern era of air travel, where complacent passengers are whisked from city to city in hermetically sealed 747s with seats more comfortable than most movie theaters, it’s easy to forget how exciting flying really is. Mankind has invented machines capable of shattering gravity’s chains, of lifting him upward to the domain of eagles…
Playback
Iggy Pop Avenue B (Virgin) Iggy’s getting old. And somewhere between immolating himself onstage with shards of glass and blowing out fifty candles on his birthday cake, he realized it. Fortunately, he makes no bones about the event. Instead of checking into the rock and roll geriatric wing, where aged rockers try to strut their…
On a Bender
While stumbling around Europe on a tavern tour, young Mickey Krivosh had a revelation: He’d open his own European tavern, but in Rocky River. It wasn’t just the alcohol talking. With the help of some money from his folks, he opened a wooded village collective on the Alpine outpost of Detroit Road. Twenty-five years and…
Soundbites
Lured by the prospect of free food, Soundbites rolled up to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame early Friday morning for the live taping of the Russ Parr morning show, which was being broadcast locally on KISS 107.9. Parr was doing his show there to kick off Hip-Hop: A Cultural Expression, a three-day conference…
Pitcher’s Game
“You and me?” asks catcher Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly) of his old friend, veteran pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner). “One more time?” It’s a poignant moment, the top of what may be the last game of Chapel’s career before he either is traded or quits the game he has loved and mastered all his…
Two for One
There is something fairy-tale-like, but also deeply human, about Twin Falls Idaho, a gentle, beautifully realized tale of love and intimacy that marks the feature film debut of Mark and Michael Polish. Identical twin brothers, Mark Polish wrote the script, Michael Polish directed it, and both brothers star. It is what they star as that…
Hit-Skip Specialist
Since his TV show ended, Martin Lawrence has gotten more ink for his off-camera life than for his movie career. There’s nothing about Blue Streak that is likely to change that. It’s a shame, because the basic plot — which sounds like something from one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder novels — is promising. While…
Season Finale
It has been almost forty years since Eric Rohmer, riding the crest of the French New Wave, embarked on the first of his Six Moral Tales. The series would eventually include at least two classics — My Night at Maud’s (1969) and Chloe in the Afternoon (1972). Linked by theme, style, and Rohmer’s native wit,…
The Big Gamble
Chef-restaurateur Marlin Kaplan and a few stragglers from a Tuesday-morning construction meeting are standing on the sidewalk at the corner of East Ninth Street and Walnut Avenue, studying the spot where Kaplan hopes to place the sign for his new restaurant, when a well-heeled executive strolls by. Kaplan waves, and the gentleman turns around. “Marlin…
