A Diamond in the Rough
The golden-ager at the next table was petite, well-coifed, and in a state approaching ecstasy. “That duck was so good,” she sighed to her octogenarian companion. “It was all I could do to keep from moaning out loud.” I knew exactly what she meant. I, too, had ordered the succulent roasted duck breast, napped with…
Certified Zirconium
Sure, it was great that Nirvana launched a musical revolution in the ’90s. It beat Hammer and the New Kids and whatever other crap was all over the airwaves before Kurt and company smelled teen spirit and decided to act on it. But not all of the good stuff shipped platinum. Or gold. Or actually…
Too Close to the Flame
Management says that Cheap Trick is in “stringent rehearsal,” which is odd. Unlike most bands with any longevity, the Tricksters didn’t follow the Behind the Music template. They didn’t taste success and then have a mother of a fallout. Lawsuits weren’t hurled at each other. No one became a gentleman farmer only to realize the…
A Royalty Pain in the Ass
The word “independent” doesn’t begin to describe the music programming at the Phoenix Coffee Co. on Detroit Avenue. In April, owner Julie Hutchison decided not to sign a licensing contract with BMI or any other performing rights organization. To play by the rules without such an agreement, she has limited herself to background music from…
Playback
Basement Jaxx Remedy (Astralwerks/XL) Techno just isn’t as fun is it used to be. Sure, the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim bring occasional smiles with the jams, but besides the rare “Rockafeller Skank” (hell, the new Chems isn’t even that much fun), electronic dance music has given way to arty thinking projects like Orbital and…
A Tall Order
In this era of wash ‘n’ wear, bedhead is about the closest women get to the crowning coiffure of the early 1960s: the Beehive Hairdo. Thank gahd. Some of those Ionic updos were so “up” that the wearer could sublease them to a family of gnomes. But though they didn’t stand the test of time,…
Livewire
R.E.M. Wilco Blossom Music Center August 25 “For a week now I’ve been telling people . . . I have this vision,” Michael Stipe began. And for a split second, the gangly singer received complete silence: a full pavilion and a packed lawn holding its collective breath, waiting for the icon to speak. And he…
Fayre Necessities
The masses are assembling for dinner in the king’s lushly decorated quarters. Ten-foot puppets wander the grounds, while a crowd gathers around an enormous dragon hatching from an egg. There is absolutely nothing unusual about this at the annual Baycrafters Renaissance Fantasy Fayre. The jousting gets under way again this Labor Day weekend, as role-playing…
Soundbites
In the club business, the hours before the show can shred the sturdiest of nerves. Tour vans and buses break down or get lost. Bartenders flake out. Sound systems crash. Acquaintances try to pester their way onto the guest list. Wilbert’s owner Michael Miller had that and more to worry about last Friday evening, the…
Farrelly Well-Mannered
When last we encountered Peter and Bobby Farrelly, they were pelting movie houses with industrial-strength jokes about retarded kids, lost semen, found excrement, and exploding house pets. Good plan. There’s Something About Mary turned into last summer’s surprise hit and catapulted the brothers to the top of Hollywood’s A List — where “A” proudly stands…
Lesbian Lite
It seems like only yesterday that movies dealing with gay and lesbian life were synonymous with extravagant displays of gloom and doom. From the suicides of The Children’s Hour and Advise and Consent to the serial killers of Cruising and Basic Instinct, same-sexuality was no fun — in the worst possible way. But what a…
Keep It Cold
It’s bad enough when a major studio — in this case Warner Brothers — blows $40 million on a by-the-numbers film. It’s worse when they blow it on a by-the-numbers film made by people who don’t know how to count. We’re not talking literal math here, but rather the ability to negotiate simple plot development…
Street Smart
Walking the three disproportionate blocks of Prospect Avenue between Ontario and East Ninth streets is the quickest way to see all of Cleveland. Over the course of a day, the city’s entire human spectrum sidles by. In the morning, transvestites near the Domino Lounge give way to construction workers wearing hard hats and tool belts.…
Market Values
It’s 8:30 on a Friday morning, and already the West Side Market is a jumble of activity. The 87-year-old produce and meat market is Cleveland’s closest experience to an authentic European market or even Jerusalem’s Old City, with a mix of suburban pilgrims and older women in babushkas maneuvering past each other in the crowded…
Edge
Everyone should have a contract like Jerry Patrick, the former Medical Mutual marketing executive who was exiled in January amid allegations of sexual harassment. The exile went no further than MM’s plush West Market office in Fairlawn, where Patrick is in and out these days, despite receptionists’ insistence that “Jerry Patrick is no longer with…
Taking Stock
Between late August and mid-September, Cleveland theater imitates Mother Hubbard’s cupboard by going bare. While nervous fund-raisers put finishing touches on their annual grant proposals, and casting directors seek likely prospects for their plays, forlorn theatergoers have little to do but wait in anticipation of the new season. Fallow times like these have an advantage,…
Beyond the Pail
Visitors to Timberline Lodge, a ski resort on Mount Hood in Oregon, might not notice that the supports are made out of telephone poles and that railway iron is forged into log grates. Recycling was definitely a priority in the ’30s, when this famous Works Progress Administration undertaking was conceived, and it is also the…
Encore
Mud. The new Piece of People, or POP, Theater Company ensconced at the Brick Alley Theatre has hopes to “dissect humanity.” To begin the operation, we have Marie Irene Fornes’s fascinatingly grotesque fantasia, from its lustful evocation of sow rape to its microscopic depiction of two shack dwellers who destroy their nurturing earth mother. It…
