contributing editors Mike Breen, Music; Dale Doerman, On Stage; Rick Pender, On Stage; Steve Ramos, Film
contributing writers Karen Amelia Arnett, Brian Baker, Maureen Bloomfield, Terry Brown, Elizabeth Carey, Jane Durrell, Jon Hughes, John James, Billie Jeyes, Josh Katz, Jonathan Kamholtz, Michelle Kennedy, Brad King, Kim Krause, Craig Lovelace, Perin Mahler, Lori McClung, Susan Nuxoll, David Pescovitz, Jeremy Schlosberg, Althea Thompson, Fran Watson, Kathy Y. Wilson.
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News&V/eivs
Editorial Downtown! Things’ll be great when you’re downtown!
Everything’s waiting for you 4
Burning Questions Does the GOP believe voters want unconstitutional acts from Congress? Is cutting power on takeoff a safe solution to airport noise? Do dollars for substance-abuse prevention really work? 5
News After shutting down the highways last January, Kentucky officials say they’re ready for snow 6
Putting It Together America’s obsession with human sexuality comes full circle 12
deadlines:
Dec. 29, 1994.
PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER WITH SOY-BASED INKS
ON THE COVER:
UtterKiosk
Index to calendar listings 14
Music Mike Breen provides the latest word on the Ass Ponys 19
DailyBred
Onstage Ex-Defense official offers a guide to classical music for “dummies like me” 25
Literary “Boss thriller” from firsttime novelist Craig Holden has junkietumed-surgeon-tumed-detective as a protagonist 27
Family/Education Ralph Nadef^ style book asks America what it is feeding its children 13 Environment Observations on the busyness of winter 13
ClassifiedAcfs
How to submit an ad 31
Classified Ads Help wanted, for sale, for rent, music, services 31
Back Beat Answer CityBeat’s question of the week 32
Police division: Contract negotiations of Cincinnati and the police force
week, though an internal rift between cers remains. News, 5 Foster in the forest: Jodie Foster (right) plays the antithesis of her Ivy League, Hollywood-sawy self by venturing deep into the North Carolina woods to portray Nell. She comes out with a hip new style and a deep-woods cool. Film, 17.
Views on Valor. Maureen Bloomfield, an Ohio Arts Council grant in criticism, Hayil: Women of Valor, a show American artists at Hebrew Union Museum. Art, 23.
How is it, during the days of tight money whenfew peopie, particularly those bom in this country, caii secure loans to start businesses, that Koreanowned-and-operated deli/grocery stores continue to spring up like mushrooms on almost every block of most major U.S. cities? Where does this money comefrom? Second, how do these placesjustify charging 50 to 100 percent more for common groeery items than other groeery outlets?
-Steve Glave, New York
Cecil is struggling to suppress his irritation, not with entire success. Where do you think the money comes from? The Koreans save it up, just like you could if you hustled more and whined less. They also borrow from relatives and form fund-raising clubs, in which 10 to 20 people contribute to a cash pool each month. The ante can range from $75 to thousands of bucks. The pot is given to a different member each month, who invests it as he or she sees fit, usually in a business, home purchase or the like, although there’s nothing to prevent somebody from blowing it at the track. When everybody has had a turn, the club disbands. The money is not a loan, and you don’t have to pay it back.
trough. What discourages this is a combination of trust and savvy. Kye members often belong to the same church or share some other bond, and they know that if they stiff the others, they’ll be considered slime for the rest of their lives. In addition, kyes usually are organized by a wise head who knows enough to keep out the losers.
Kyes aren’t the only thing Koreans have going for them. Although they’re not subsidized by the Korean government or the CIA, as some envious native-
born types believe, they’re usually not destitute when they arrive in this country. (In fact, they’ve become so prosperous in recent years that traditional fundraising devices like the kye have become less prevalent.)
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Many are college educated, and while an engineering degree doesn’t give you much help stocking shelves with toilet paper, education does confer a certain amount of sophistication, the example of Notre Dame grads notwithstanding. (By contrast, Southeast Asian immigrants, many of them poor peasants, have had a tougher time.)
PLUS, FABULOUS SELECTION OF DESIGNER COVERS IN STOCK.
In Korea such a fund-raising club is called a kye (pronounced “keh”). Dating from the 17th century, it’s one of the main ways Korean small-business owners and investors historically have raised money. The concept is hardly confined to Koreans; Chinese have the hui, West Indians the susu, and Ethiopians the ekub. But Koreans seem to be especially adept at it.
The number of Korean
Koreans share the essential traits of all successful immigrant groups, namely tight-knit families and a willingness to work like dogs for peanuts. Finally, many stretch their money by buying businesses in tough inner-city neighborhoods that the previous owners are willing to sell cheap.
As to why the prices are higher I don’t know that I’ve found this to be universally true, but let’s note that Korean
Dates start at
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Talking Back
Each week, Cincinnati CityBeat poses a question on its back page. Our staff selects the best responses to print the following week, with published responses meriting a CityBeat T-shirt.
Here are some of the responses to last week’s question: “The couple next door is having a knock-down, dragout fight that has moved to your front yard; what do you do?”:
ROBERT BRUNNER: I would rush out of the house, turn on the in-ground sprinkler system and watch.
BECCA RACHFORD: 1) Tell them to “give peace a chance”; 2) Proceed with caution; and 3) Tell them to get on The Jerry Springer Show.
BRYN LEWIS: Get out the video camera and call Hard Copy.
DAVID RADTKE: Any civilized person would stop the fight, offer advice or counseling and make sure that no one is hurt so of course I would turn out the lights, crack the blinds an inch or two and watch the show.
NICK KREMER: Get out the camcorder, and maybe I’ll win a prize on that goofy Bob Saget video show!
BILL HAUSER: Call George Foreman to referee.
MICHELLIA SANDLIN: Yell out the window: Could you please quiet it down; we’re trying to have sex up here!
LARRY GOINS: I’d turn the hose on the peace disturbing, trespassing jerks.
JERI TOLLIVER: Videotape them; who knows, maybe Inside Edition, Hard Copy, A Current Affair or Channel 19 might buy their story someday.
KEVIN WILHELM: Have a yard sale.
It’s safe. See above.
The architecture is generally appealing, especially along Fourth, Ninth and Court. Even many of the new buildings (P&G, Mercantile Center, Tower Place, Westin Hotel) are interesting. Over-the-Rhine is amazing, of course, but that’s another story.
Downtown’s Christmas Gifts
Fountain Square serves as Cincinnati’s “city center.”
Musing on the positives, negatives and visionfor downtown Cincinnati
1 accomplished much of my Christmas shopping duty on both days last weekend, all of it downtown. I parked at the Tower Place garage and, often using the skywalk, moved around easily throughout the area between Fourth and Seventh streets. The stores were crowded but not jammed, the sidewalks bustling but not packed. I got just about everything I needed.
BY JOHN FOX
Looking back on the experience and the fact that I drive into downtown every day to work
I see myself as a one-person research group for Cincinnati’s current state of downtown affairs. Nobody asked, but I’m offering my help.
My credentials are: I’ve lived in (and paid taxes to) the City of Cincinnati for 10 years; I’ve worked downtown for six of those 10 years and chose to locate this new publishing busi-
ness downtown; downtown is my shopping destination of choice; I can name the non-numbered downtown streets in order from east to west; and I’ve spent significant time four or more visits of at least a long weekend in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
Our two majqrdeague sports teams play there.
The riverfront park system is. exceptional (see clean/safe above) with grass, trees, kids’ areas, bandshells and great vantage points for people- and boat-watching.
Editorial View
The floating restaurants and excursion boats play up our river-city heritage.
Traffic flows well along the one-way streets and on/off the highways.
Now the bad points:
Public transportation in and out of downtown is OK, but getting around downtown is difficult.
All of which means I like downtowns in general, I enjoy Cincinnati’s specifically and I’ve seen what other major U.S. cities offer in their downtowns. Which doesn’t make me particularly unique, perhaps, but bear with me here.
First the good points about downtown Cincinnati: It’s clean. Pick any other major city and compare.
Few amenities exist for regular everyday living: grocery store, movie-theater complex, video-rental shop and late-night UDF-type store.
You’re charged for parking... if you can find parking.
There’s this sense that, except for the stadium/coliseum complex and the Contemporary Arts Center, downtown has no big “gee-whiz” draw or attraction, no reason to pack up the
kids or take out-of-towners for repeat visits.
Over-the-Rhine (see amazing above) is, by turns, ignored, coveted and dumped on by downtown political and business interests. It has never been embraced or promoted as part of downtown.
As you can see, I’m convinced that downtown Cincinnati has plenty more positives than negatives. And developments such as the Aronoff Center for the Arts and the proposed Kroger superstore should help. Downtown is in a sentence clean, interesting, somewhat user-friendly, fun but not exciting. A decent place to visit, but you wouldn’t really want to live there.
Having enjoyed other downtowns in comparable cities, I think Cincinnati is not that far off from being in a position to capture more of my attention and more of my dollars (and everyone else’s). City officials propose a future that seems to move in two contradictory manners at the same time: finding a one-of-a-kind state-of-the-art fill-in-the-blank (IMAX 3-D theater, aquarium) or building a newer version of something we already have (conservatory, Broadway theater, stadium, Lazarus store). Their vision seems built on a foundation of grand one-time schemes, embodied in the parking lot that is Fountain Square West.
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For the same money of a huge riverfront baseball stadium project, downtown Cincinnati could move into the next century supported by a strong web of interrelated development projects good, fun transportation such as streetcars that connect attractions and Over-the-Rhine; one-of-a-kind retailers such as Tower Records, Crate & Barrel and Niketown; daily amenities such as movies and grocery stores; more and cheaper parking; more police; even cleaner sidewalks. But the key is to make all these projects work together. Last year Cincinnati city officials formed Downtown Cincinnati Inc. (DCI), a group of prominent business leaders charged with determining an official “vision” for downtown in the year 2020. I’m sure they considered much of what common, ordinary people like me think of downtown before coming up with their recommendations. Next week’s issue of CityBeat our year-ending look at what lies ahead in 1995 explores that vision in detail.
YES, THE REPU8LICANS REALLY MADE FOOLS OF THEM" SELVES, TRYING TO demonize THIS SENSIBLE SOLUTION AS 'SOCIALISED medicine’-
Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich has announced that he will violate the U.S. Constitution by requiring a three-fifths majority vote to push tax legislation through the House of Representatives.
Other than specified situations such as the impeachment of a House member or overriding a presidential veto, the Constitution requires a simple majority to pass general legislative issues. With a three-fifths vote, it will be more difficult for Democrats to pass tax legislation in the future.
Shannon Jones, district manager and press secretary for Congressman-elect Steve Chabot, R-Cincinnati, said Gingrich’s proposal was one Chabot would support. But she did not want to discuss the plan's constitutionality.
Bruce Taylor, political director for the Hamilton County Republican Party, said that with the mandate the Republicans received in the recent midterm elections and their Contract With America, Congress members are getting back in touch with voters and trying to create change.
So is this disregard for the Constitution in line with the type of change the voters had in mind when they went to the polls in November?
“It’s right on target,’’ Taylor said. “I guess (Congress is) just going to have to amend the Constitution.’’
BRAD KING
Less Noise, Less Power
A plan to reduce noise from some of the airplanes leaving the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport will be launched in the next two weeks.
The plan, approved for airplanes taking off to the west from Runway 27, is expected to reduce noise over communities within about two miles of the airport, said Dale Huber, deputy director of aviation. The “close-in" plan reduces noise over close-in communities because, instead of increasing power at 1,000 feet, the pilot does not accelerate, said Jon Woodward, director of Landrum & Brown, the consultants developing the airport’s environmental impact statement. Instead, he said, the airplane climbs at reduced thrust until it reaches 3,000 feet, which is about five or six miles away from the airport.
Given that pilots normally accelerate at 1,000 feet, how can airport officials be sure that climbing to 3,000 feet with less power does not pose a safety threat?
“The procedures have been developed by an industry-related group that included the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration),” Woodward said.
And under the plan, he said, the pilot has enough power to maintain the specified “climb gradient” even if an engine goes out.
NANCY FIROR
A Dollar of Prevention?
Ann Collins, executive director for Citizens Against Substance Abuse (CASA), has said publicly that teen-age alcohol and other drug use appears to be headed for an increase in 1995 after a seven-year decline.
According to a CASA survey on the trends of drug and alcohol use for youth between the seventh and 12th grades, the percentage of teen-agers usihg alcohol or other drugs dropped from 75 percent in 1987 to 55 percent in 1993. The drop in use leveled off in 1993, which Collins said could be the result of cuts in prevention funding that supports many substance-abuse programs.
Four other substance-abuse prevention agencies contacted by CityBeat had similar statistics on file. While agency workers think there is a link, none of the agencies has documented the connection between funding cuts and increased drug use that Collins cites as a possible cause.
So what evidence is there to show that an increase in prevention dollars leads to a decrease in teen-agers using alcohol and other drugs?
“I have no real idea about that (link) at this time," Collins said.
BRAD KING
BURNING QUESTIONS is our weekly attempt to afflict the comfortable.
An Alternative Look at How and Why It Happened
FOP: Police Get the "Squeeze”
Rift between Cincinnati's top cop and his officers widens with disputes over contract and safety
BV CRAIG S. LOVELACE
Contract negotiations between the City of Cincinnati and its police officers are the latest blow in a series of problems that are dividing the city’s police chief and his officers, Sgt. Paul Hilmer, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), said this week.
Those negotiations, he said, began with an offer of no pay raises for 1995-1996 and a comment from one of the city’s lawyers suggesting, “The only thing you get is what we’re going to squeeze out of you.”
Further driving a wedge, Hilmer said, was Police Chief Michael Snowden’s participation as a member of the city’s negotiating team that pushed for measures which would hurt the city’s officers.
“The chief has split himself from the rest of the Division,” Hilmer said Tuesday before the FOP approved an agreement with the city.
Snowden, however, told CityBeat that he did not view his role on the city’s negotiating team to be a negative.
“I don’t look at it that way.” Snowden said. “I have to do what I have to do. I’m not looking to screw any officer.”
But in his December newsletter to the Cincinnati Police Division’s officers,
“(Snowden is) the tional level of the (Cincinnati) not a part of the bargaining Gustavson, Cincinnati’s
“I don’t look at it that way,” says Cincinnati Police Chief Michael Snowden (above) about his role on the city’s contract-negotiating team being considered negative.
“I have to do what I have to do.
Let It Snow
After last year's statewide highway shutdown Kentucky officials say they're better prepared now for storms
BY LORI MCCLUNG
Two-way radios. More trucks. Inter-county communication.
Before the roads were even cleared and while angry motorists were stranded, Kentucky politicians promised to investigate what went wrong during the four days in January 1994 that the commonwealth’s interstates and parkways were shut down.
Kentucky transportation workers also vowed to determine what they could have done to make the cleanup easier and quicker. As a result, preventive measures have been put into place for the 1994-95 winter season.
“In our heart of hearts we know that’s not going to happen again, but we do have the responsibility to be ready,” said Don Armstrong, emergency information supervisor for Kentucky’s Disaster and Emergency Services Department.
The Martin Luther King Day storm impaired much of the United States and almost paralyzed Kentucky. Up to 2 feet of snow with 1 to 3 inches of ice below that forced Gov. Brereton Jones to close Interstate 75 south of Florence Mall. An average of 63,000 vehicles travel on the highway daily.
While Kentucky officials don’t expect another storm
of that magnitude for 15 years, they have revamped their system of winter cleanup mostly with commonsense measures. One change to be tested this winter could soon become standard operating procedure.
Science vs. nature
Two-to-10 hours before it is forecasted to begin snowing, road crews will spray liquid Magnesium Chloride onto the pavement. In theory, this will help salt already sprayed with the chemical melt any ice that begins to build on the roads.
“If it starts to rain before the storm, it could be washed away,” said Bob Yeager, branch manager for highway operations in Northern Kentucky. “But if not, it could have a residual effect for up to 48 hours.”
Salt is most effective when the air temperature is at least 20 degrees above zero. Magnesium Chloride, used in different forms nationwide, will increase salt’s effectiveness to at least 5 degrees above zero.
> But there’s a catch. The chemical will be tested at two highway sections only Interstate 75 at Interstate 275 and Interstate 275 at Interstate 471 during this pilot period.
A stockpile of salt also has been purchased. For the 11-county Northern Kentucky area, there is 35 percent more salt on hand now than there was last year. The 20,000 tons of salt already warehoused for the district is 95 percent of the amount of salt used throughout all of last winter.
Two trucking companies also have been contracted on a standby basis and will be used only when there is at least two hours of work for them. Kentucky Hauling Inc. and Bray Trucking will be paid over a five-year period to add eight all-purpose trucks to their existing truck fleets and dedicate three drivers for each truck. The companies will be paid a flat hourly rate when used.
Still a lot to be done
Although it seems both the politicians and the transportation department have attempted to fulfill their promises, only an act of nature will be able to test the changes.
Armstrong hopes to complete his Emergency Handbook for Kentucky Radio Broadcasters by the end of this month. Pre-recorded messages will advise peopie on everything from how to winterize their homes to survival tactics while stranded in an automobile.
Armstrong acknowledges, however, that changes in the system have been slow.
“Human beings what we are, we have to be closer to the reality to get us to move,” he said. “There’s still a lot to be done.”
A month after last year’s storm, the Kentucky Legislature proposed that a Strategic Weather Emergency Response Plan be developed. The plan became law in May.
“Basically we asked other counties what can they provide to us,” Yeager said. “We don’t have to guess what they can do. We have the name of a person to contact in each county that said they could help us if needed. There were counties that said they could have helped us (last year) if we had asked them.”
“People ask if we got more trucks,” Yeager said. “But it’s about available drivers. There’s no use in having more trucks if there’s no one to drive them. Now we’ve got a pretty good balance.”
For the first time, two-way radios have been installed in each of the snow- and ice-removal trucks in Northern Kentucky.
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But Hilmer said there were other problems at the heart of internal department ill-feelings that included:
Cop Talk
BY MICHELLE KENNEDY Officer Recruitment
How is it that months of testing to find the absolute best qualified candidates yield Cincinnati Police Academy classes with several recruits who have no business being there? Why do admission qualifications vary depending on who the applicant is? Why is this acceptable to the city’s police administration? And do the peopie of Cincinnati know they are being served by potentially unqualified officers?
When representatives from Spouses for Officer Safety met with Police Chief Michael Snowden in September concerning various safety issues within the Cincinnati Police Division, the topic of qualified police recruits was raised. The chief first stated that the city's personnel office takes a long time to pare thousands of applicants down to the most qualified 30-50 needed for an academy class. In the next breath, he said there are always a couple of less-qualified people who make it through the process and you just have to live with that fact.
The personnel department’s recruiting practices need to be overhauled. In order to attract qualified applicants for the police force, department officials seem to think that an advertisement in the Sunday Enquirer announcing the next exam is sufficient. If the City of Cincinnati is genuinely interested in getting qualified.officer candidates, it should hire professional recruiters. It doesn’t hesitate to do so for other offices such as city manager or safety director.
The Police Division allocates five trained officers on a full-time basis to travel around the United States recruiting at college campuses. They simply hand out and collect applications and perform background checks, which must be completed by the Police Division because civilians are not permitted to conduct criminal background checks. The rest of the recruiting process, however, could very well be handled by people actually trained in the field.
The Cincinnati Police Division fails to scrutinize prospective recruits the same way the public will once they’re hired. Different types of candidates seem to have different qualification requirements. Background checks, for instance, have been known to be modified or the results ignored for recruits in certain categories. A recruit’s test score is interpreted based on his/her gender and race; candidates are divided into three lists for separate evaluation— white males, African-Americans and females said Sgt. Jack Stahl of the training/ recruiting office.
The city’s police administration seems pleased with its recruitment policy. However, according to officers who asked not to be named because they feared retaliation, at least seven veteran officers connected with the recruiting and training of recruits have been transferred in the past five years after they questioned the qualifications or lack thereof of recruits. Snowden said there has never been any retaliatory acts under his administration. (He became chief in 1992.)
This isn’t to say that all recently hired Cincinnati police officers are incompetent. Most of them are qualified to wear the uniform. It’s those few candidates who should have been weeded out, but somehow made it through the recruitment process, who are questionable. They could be the officers responsible for determining who was at fault in your car accident or the officers responding to a prowler call at your home.
There's one simple fact: If the City of Cincinnati wants quality police officers, it needs to actively look for them. It must also be willing to set standards and stick to them. If police officers are going to be held to a higher standard once they don the uniform, potential officers should be held to the same higher standard during the recruiting process.
MICHELLE KENNEDY, married to a Cincinnati police officer, is a founder of Spouses for Officer Safety. This column runs monthly in CityBeat.
Efforts by the city to reduce overtime pay, including an attempt to limit pay for any court appearance an officer has to make outside of his or her normal working hours. The fact finder, however, recommended that current overtime procedures remain the same.
A 24-hour-per-week cap, imposed by the administration, on the number of hours officers can work offduty details.
A $1.60-an-hour surcharge for administrative costs that the city is leveling at those who hire off-duty officers to work details.
Snowden, who has received a 13.3 percent pay increase since he became chief in 1992, did not return three follow-up calls from CityBeat.
When officers faced the potential of no raises as negotiations began two months ago, Hilmer pointed out Snowden’s pay raises in the monthly FOP newsletter. The chief earns $91,318.76 a year.
“When I was promoted to police chief in November of 1992,1 agreed to certain conditions of employment (besides residency),” Snowden responded in his December newsletter. “One condition was that I would receive absolutely no overtime pay or compensation. I was to be considered on duty, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”
But repairing the rift, Hilmer and others said, has a lot more to do with listening than it has to do with money.
According to a September daily report in Hilmer’s possession from a commanding officer CityBeat agreed not to name, the officer wrote to Snowden: “I think you need to slow down and LISTEN.”
As more patients seek non-traditional cures, Cincinnati hospitals and doctors 'complement’ modern medicine with acupuncture, natural drugs and biofeedback
BY KATIE REYNOLDS
Words
After several years of remission, Ruth Keefe’s cancer has returned. So has the pain. Though she conquered uterine cancer 20 years ago, the silent killer has reappeared in her lymph system.
With a self-deprecating chuckle, the Hyde Park woman explains what that means: “It means you are in bad shape.”
For years, she has faithfully followed the prescribedtreatment of chemotherapy and steroids recommended by her oncologist. But about five years ago, articles about acupuncture caught her eye. Keefe, 70, now receives acupuncture every other week with her doctor’:' blessing.
“After a day or two of treatment, I feel perked up,” she says. “You feel more inclined to do things and not think about the pain.”
Like many chronically ill patients, Keefe seeks relief from a method that has been dubbed “alternative” by conservative medical standards. According to the medical industry, these are methods not taught in medical schools, not covered by insurance and not considered tc have enough proof of safety and effectiveness. But even though it was once considered quackery, so
called “fringe” medicine is quietly becoming mainstream. Connotations of shady storefront practitioners fade as more patients supplement visits to the family doctor with therapies such as massage and megavitamins.
Patients seek alternatives
A study by the New England Journal ofMedicine estimates that a third of Americans spend $14 billion a year for such treatments as chiropractic medicine, biofeedback and massage therapy. Eighty percent of those continue to see their regular doctor.
National recognition prompted the National Institutes of Health, an otherwise traditional think tank, to open an Office of Alternative Medicine two years ago.
To several Cincinnati hospitals, these statistics have presented an opportunity to latch on to new avenues to keep patients coming to them for medical services.
“We are integrating some services that patients are already getting,” says Sister Joanne Schuster, president of Franciscan Sisters of the Poor Health System Inc. “I think the whole future of health care is how accessible you can make it to people.”
In January, Providence Hospital will unveil its
Franciscan Wholistic Health Center the first facility in the Franciscan system, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., to try to respond to patients’ non-traditional needs.
The center, which will be housed in the former Crosley Mansion on the grounds of Providence Hospital in Mount Airy, will offer such services as massage therapy, biofeedback, tai chi and yoga. Therapies are geared to complement not replace treatment programs by Providence staff physicians.
“It’s not about getting herbs and telling people they don’t need their medicine,” Schuster says. “We are trying to be very responsible and bring the best of both worlds together.”
The concept seems to be catching on.
In May, Mercy Hospital Anderson opened its Holistic Health and Wellness Center. Good Samaritan Hospital is considering a center to house “complementary therapies,” says Jeannette Wiesner, a hospital educational services instructor. The Wellness Community, a nonprofit support center in Kenwood for cancer patients and their families, is host to a number of alternative therapies, including guided imagery and self-hypnosis.
“Most hospitals have something like this in the works or are exploring it to some degree,” says psychologist
Joseph Wicker, who sits on advisory committees to Mercy Anderson and Providence’s holistic centers.
“People have identified it as a huge market.”
Guarded acceptance
Lack of insurance coverage is the greatest concern for patients. For example, acupuncture, which can $40 to $60 a session, is covered by Employers Health Insurance. However, the insurer restricts its use to treat only chronic pain.
“The criteria is always what is medically necessary and is understood to be safe and effective according to the prevailing opinion of the medical community,” says Jon Drayna, spokesman for Employers Health.
Like many companies, the Green Bay, Wisc.-based insurer will cover chiropractic services for back pain and musculo-skeletal disorders. Other carriers, such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Ohio, cover chiropractic care when recommended by a primary care physician.
Most insurers, however, are hesitant to cover such treatments as homeopathy, which is not approved by
CONTINUES ON PAGE 10
DECEMBER 22—28, 1994 9
MEDICINE: FROM PAGE 9
the Food and Drug Administration.
Still, local hospitals are pushing insurers for coverage, arguing that many therapies are preventative and should be covered.
Reaction in the Cincinnati medical community is a mix of skepticism and guarded acceptance.
Physicians often fear patients will be lured away and victimized by people trying to take advantage of their conditions.
Dr. Clarke Baxter utilizes acupuncture in his Norwood-based family practice.
i“The concern is that it will mask the pain, but also that it doesn’t work,” says Dr. Clarke Baxter, who uses acupuncture in his Norwood family practice.
One physician contacted by CityBeat declined to be interviewed about his side practice of acupuncture, citing possible resistance from his peers at a local hospital.
But there also are a growing number of traditional doctors who acknowledge the importance of patient initiative in the' healing process.
“i don’t think I’m ‘into’ alternative healing,” says Dr. Philip Leming, an oncologist at Hematology & Oncology Inc. in Hyde Park. “But I think the human response is to look at anything they might come by. Sometimes it may be the person’s ability to do something on their own even if the treatment might not help that adds something positive.”
Empowering the patients
Many physicians who practice alternative methods say it’s something they arrived at later in their careers. These doctors seek help most often in cases where modern medicine has nothing more to offer those with chronic illnesses.
Here’s a look at some local health-care givers, their practices and thoughts on seeking new treatments, some of which are thousands of years old.
At first glance, Dr. David Fabrey’s office has a familiar, comfortable feel.
A young patient’s drawing scrawled on white paper hangs on a wall below Fabrey’s framed diplomas from Dartmouth College and Ohio State University College of Medicine. On the opposite side of the room, a small couch holds stuffed animals waiting to comfort a child.
Fabrey whistles in the hallway as he enters his office. Light brown hair and a beard specked with gray frame his face. He speaks to a visitor in a soft, reassuring tone.
What’s revealing about Fabrey’s practice are the books and bottles that fill his shelves and crowd his desk. Titles such as The Complete Book of Minerals
Using guided imagery, psychologist Debbie Andrews helps cancer patients further the healing process.
for Health, The Yeast Connection and Natural Healing stand on a shelf. Below them are large plastic and glass containers of pills derived from such exotic plants as nightshade and Leopard’s Bane.
For about 15 years, Fabrey’s Holistic Health Center in Springfield Township has quietly promoted the healing abilities of medicines made from small amounts of natural substances a practice known as homeopathy. In addition, Fabrey uses herbal medicine, vitamins and minerals. His center also houses a number of massage therapists.
Though he recognizes that he’s a rarity in Cincinnati, Fabrey hesitates to label his practice “alternative.”
“For a long time I used that term, but I decided it was the big drug companies’ and medical schools’ term, not mine,” he says. “I didn’t go to medical school so I could be a retailer for the pharmaceutical industry. For more and more people, it’s not alternative. It’s their main method of taking care of themselves.”
Though his early training was in traditional family medicine, Fabrey became disillusioned with the power of drugs as the sole means of treatment.
“I wanted to look at better ways to help people,” he says.
Like many who pursue non-traditional medicine, Fabrey learned his trade by traveling through the West Coast and watching those in the field.
Though he treats his share of colds, coughs and flu, his greatest interest has been chronic problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis and allergies.
As a doctor, however, Fabrey is quick to acknowledge the limitations of his practice and also to refer patients to other specialists.
“What I offer cannot replace what other doctors can offer,” he says.
For example, if a cancer patient seeks his advice, he encourages the patient to find out about the success rate of different treatments.
“If they have good statistics, that’s great. Then if not, I think we need to find better ways to treat them,” says Fabrey, who concedes his practice isn’t designed to treat cancer patients.
Most of his referrals come from chiropractors, massage therapists and psychologists. Rarely do they come from medical doctors.
“The medical community here reflects the entire community,” he says. “It is conservative.”
But as more and more patients shop for alternative solutions, Fabrey says, local physicians will gradually start to recognize the role of non-traditional treatments in modern medicine.
Methods at a glance
Here’s a quick look at methods patients seek as alternatives to modern medicine:
Acupuncture: An ancient Chinese practice of inserting needles at specific points on the body along energy pathways to cure disease or relieve pain. The Oriental theory believes acupuncture restores the body’s energy flow. The Western theory believes acupuncture releases the body’s pain killers known as endorphins.
Biofeedback: The technique of making unconscious or involuntary body processes such as heart beat or brain waves perceptible to the senses in order to manipulate them by conscious control.
Homeopathy: A system of medical practice using small amounts of natural substances such as plants and minerals.
Tai chi: An ancient Chinese discipline of meditative movement practiced as a system of exercises.
“We believe a person can have a positive influence on health by their habits,” he says. “That’s riot too radical.”
Attila the Hun is an unlikely warrior Debbie Andrews wields against cancer.
For patients facing terrifying and painful treatments of chemotherapy, it is a powerful image she gives her patients to envision what the drugs are trying to accomplish inside their bodies.
Andrews recalls a patient recently laughing about having Attila as an ally.
“You don’t like him very much, but it’s good to have him on your side,” she says.
As a psychologist who specializes in working with cancer patients, Andrews uses relaxation and mental imagery to tear down psychological barriers to the healing process.
“If they can use imagery when they are going in for therapy like picturing the drug as a golden light flowing through the body it gives them a sense of empowerment.”
She also uses relaxation to help patients take a positive attitude toward taking care of themselves. Too many times, she says, cancer patients will try to put on a good face while repressing their feelings.
Andrews, a Fort Thomas native, first became interested in the therapy 20 years ago as a graduate student taking biofeedback courses. The method, which teaches people to manipulate involuntary bodily processes, led her to make the connection with oncology.
“I began reading more and thinking more about it,” she recalls. “I got hooked.”
Though she has a sizable psychotherapy clientele at her Mount Adams practice, Andrews devotes most of her practice to cancer patients and those with chronic pain from injuries, arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
She says attitudes are changing among the local medical community.
“When I first started biofeedback, it was considered very way out,” she recalls.
But now she gets regular referrals from some local oncologists who recognize the impact the mind and outlook can have on quality of life.
She says the greatest concern among physicians is that patients will rely on this technique and not use traditional medicine.
“They don’t want patients to be sold a bill of goods,” she says. “It needs to be a cooperative venture. It’s not a case of either/or. I would never suggest doing this and only this.”
As a medical student in Taiwan, Dr. Peter Sheng grew up a skeptic of the ancient Chinese practices of acupuncture and herbal medicine.
Though familiar with those practices, Sheng chose the route of traditional oncology. A blending of practicing traditional and alternative medicines was relatively unknown while he was a student in the early 1970s.
“Years after I started practicing, I realized the limitations of medical oncology,” Sheng says. “Sometimes there is very little we can offer them for quality of life.”
Curiosity about his heritage led him to study acupuncture by watching it performed on the West Coast and in Taiwan.
It is now a feature of his oncology practice in Eastgate.
“I am not ready to say I can treat cancer” with acupuncture, Sheng says. “It is a support to control its symptoms.”
Sheng, who sports rimless glasses and a white lab coat, eagerly explains the procedure and his quest for more scientific and anecdotal proof of its effectiveness.
Providence To Open Holistic Center
Dr. Peter Sheng began studying acupuncture after years of traditional medical practice.
According to Oriental theory, acupuncture restores the normal flow of energy throughout the body. This energy flow can be stimulated or restored by the insertion of a number of needles at precise locations on the body. Because of the hairlike thinness of the needles, most patients report only a slight stinging sensation as the needles are inserted.
On some patients, the results are dramatic, Sheng says. He recalls several sessions of acupuncture that cured a young boy of migraine headaches.
“I know there is something to it,” he says. “It’s not just hocus-pocus. But it’s not going to work 100 percent of the time.”
For the most part, acupuncture is widely recognized and accepted as a legitimate practice because of extensive media coverage, Sheng says. Nonetheless, most insurers don’t cover the procedure, and there’s a mixed reception among local doctors.
Formerly Providence Hospital’s administrative offices, the estate is being transformed into a hub of alternative medicine methods.
Over the next few months, Franciscan Wholistic Health Center will introduce several therapies, including massage, biofeedback, mind/body classes, tai chi and yoga.
The center, on Kipling Avenue, is the first of its kind for the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Franciscan Sisters of the Poor Health System Inc., which owns Providence and St. Francis-St. George Hospital in Westwood.
“We are looking for integration, trying to connect the mind, body and spirit and look at the total person and things in their lives that are preventing the healing process," says Franciscan President Sister Joanne Schuster.
With its conservative reputation, Cincinnati seems an unusual choice for Franciscan’s first holistic center, but Schuster says it’s just a matter of logistics.
“Here we had the facilities,” she says. “And also, it’s a relaxing, beautiful environ-
NEW YEAR HOUSE WARMER
ment. We’ll learn from this one.”
The idea started to take shape about a year ago after the hospital conducted surveys and found that a large number of patients use alternative jjnerapies along with traditional medicine. By having a center on campus, the hospital hopes to increase physician involvement in the therapies.
“Physicians are very leery of it, but we have been reassuring them of what we are not going to do expose patients to something that might not be effective," Schuster says. “We want them to know that what we are doing will facilitate what they are doing."
A full-time medical director will oversee the center, while therapies will be offered by hospital staff as well as independent contractors such as massage therapists and chiropractors.
Though holistic centers are new to the Franciscan system, Schuster says it’s not radical because it fits the hospital’s mission. “We try to address the person as a whole, including their spiritual and emotional experience,” she says. “We want it to be a part of the way medicine is practiced.”
KATIE REYNOLDS
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An old Tudor mansion in Mount Airy is being transformed into an experiment in medicine.
The Century of Sex
America's obsession with human sexual nature comes full circlefrom Sigmund Freud to Joycelyn Elders
ESSAY BY DANIEL BROWN
Liberals really don’t get it. Dr. Joycelyn Elders, recently fired as Surgeon General, actually wanted our children to be taught about masturbation in grade school and whined that American Catholics are, in essence, hung up about sex. Liberals complain that Christian fundamentalists blur the lines between church and state, but can’t they see the parallel? Elders crossed the same boundaries while offending believing Catholics and no doubt many others in the deal.
and technology the gods of the 20th century thanks to Freud and secondarily to Marx and to science. Freud was fearful of his evolving theories entering America, convinced that Americans would rigidify his theories and that psychoanalysis would be reduced to an empty shell of his ideas. His concerns have been proven to be accurate; psychoanalysis is rarely practiced anywhere else in the world and even rarely in America in contemporary life.
Freud’s office was filled with antiquities, placed so that his patients would see certain ones only. He was, in a sense, an archaeologist of the soul. He believed that the greatest psychologists were novelists, and is known to have read Dostoyevski. All novels are psychological, particularly mysteries, which brings us full circle to the mystery of the mind: “What is the nature of man?”
His obsession with sex paralleled an obsession with that which is “normal” or “abnormal” and an assumption that human nature can be “cured.” By replacing the biblical and Shakespearean beliefs in good and evil with normal and abnormal, Freud unleashed a Pandora’s box where human behavior could be written off to childhood experiences and the repression of “primitive impulses.”
Putting It Together
The whiff of liberal hypocrisy pervades the air of America. As we rid ourselves of Elders, let’s wish her luck in establishing a Master’s Degree in Masturbation, perhaps at Harvard; imagine the admission criteria and the grants that would roll in. Her department could include other sexual behavior scholars such as Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer,, purveyors of soft-core porn for the prurient American viewer/voyeur.
Elders’ remarks remind us that the 20th century has been the Century of Sex. They were an absolute blur of the fields of psychology, sociology and urban anthropology, with plenty of warmed-over psychobabble.
Sigmund Freud’s ideas about sex, many of which havejbeen revised and repudiated, are not even 100 years old. Freud was a pessimistic man, an undoubted genius whose ideas influenced this century as much as those of Albert Einstein and Karl Marx. But it is time to rethink much of Freudian psychology and re-examine the culture in which Freud wrote, lived and thought. Vienna, between approximately 1880 and World War I, was one of the most sexually promiscuous societies in recorded history. Freud, an ambitious Jewish outsider (Vienna being absolutely anti-Semitic), may well have envied what he was aware of but could not participate in. He must have had one eye on Victorian London for career enhancement to have evolved his theories on sexuality. All the arts in Vienna reflect the sexualization of a very loose culture, evidenced by the work of artists and writers such as Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele, Brod and von Hofmanstahl and the legendary sexual careers of Cosima Wagner and Alma Mahler.
Psychology is really a “B-team” branch of philosophy, which, since the original split between Plato and Aristotle, always investigated and speculated about “the nature of man.” Freud was a philosopher as well, studying, through self-analysis (as did St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Rousseau, Hobbes, Kant, Locke, Nietzsche and others), the same nature of man. One notes that this “nature” never included women, and neither did Freud’s theories.
No precedent in the history of philosophy existed for an examination of sexuality as the single guiding principie of human destiny. Freud’s well-documented ambition coincided with the acceptance of science, so he probably made a choice to “go modern.” Freud’s obsession with sex and science have pervaded American culture and became diffused through secular humanism.
The rejection of religion, which Marx called “the opiate of the masses,” can be traced directly to Freud. The need for religion has re-emerged through art, medicine
As Erich Fromm, one of this century’s great psychoanalysts, often wrote, ethics and morals the major civilizing influences of religion and philosophy somehow got dropped from psychology. The Ten Commandments were the basis for all Western legal codes, and they’re all based on moral and ethical concepts. What Freud called the “superego” was once called “conscience.”
Sociology and anthropology, also liberal fields, may be seen as branches of psychology, which is a branch of philosophy. The meddling and social engineering from contemporary liberals who constantly tell us what we should and should not do with our children can be traced to Freud, whose theories became integrated into American education in the 1930s at the University of Chicago, where he lectured.
Educational, psychological and sociological theories soon began to blur together. David Halberstam’s “the best and the brightest” who failed us in Vietnam were the origins of a love affair with Harvard academics, which brings us back to Elders and the psychology of sex and education.
The teaching of masturbation to children in grade school cannot but strike one as incredibly absurd. We all remember the awkwardness of the adolescent body; few parents educate their children about sex, but the expectations of public school teachers are completely out of control. Politically, therefore, attempts are made to legislate sex and morality. The excesses of psychology, a field which has an uncanny way of reflecting current trends, are where we are now.
Liberals fear use of the word “religion,” and so the word “spirituality” has been its replacement. Freud split with Jung, in certain areas, over differences concerning religion and the role of sexuality in human life. Jung may hold the key to our future, though, as his theories evolve into what we now qall “the new spirituality” (Both he and Nietzsche were influenced by Buddhism.)
But the word “psyche” in Greek means “soul,” and “analyze” means “to break down.” Thus “psychoanalysis” means “to break down the soul.” Before the Enlightenment (have we been enlightened?), the worst medical disease that one could have was called “soullessness.” In more modern language, we sometimes refer to a person as “dying of a broken heart.” The difference is semantics, but the overemphasis on Freudian theory, at the expense of Jungian theory, has brought us to a gridlock about “the nature of man.”
The best Christmas present, everybody knows, is the one not expected. Sometimes it’s not even something that can be held in the hand or put in a drawer. Sometimes it’s just something that happened.
This year, something happened. I am a volunteer tutor in an adult-literacy program at Emanuel Community Center in Over-the-Rhine. It functions a lot like an old-fashioned, one-room school. Eight or 10 students may be working at the long tables at any one time, each occupied at his or her own level. In another room tutors conduct classes, pointed toward the glimmering goal of most of these students: to pass the GED test and receive a General Equivalency Diploma. In the main school room, though, we work individually with students, going over workbooks and math and reading with them.
Last spring and summer Thomas was a frequent pupil of mine. He was older than most, a man of middle years, grave and mannerly. Thomas had business experience and was clearly no dummy, but reading was just one minefield, roadblock, snag-ridden experience after another. He stumbled and paused, losing the meaning from the effort of piecing out the words. We tried one thing and another without making any real progress in engaging a perfectly good mind with the. print on the page.
I felt miserably inadequate; two Saturday workshops in the “Laubach Way to Reading” hadn’t prepared me for Thomas. I called an old acquaintance, a professional in reading difficulties, and from her learned of a pilot program using video as a teaching aid for problem readers. A few more calls and I had the information in hand for Thomas, but then school closed for summer break. In the fall I was away for several weeks. When af last I came back to the school, there was no particular word of Thomas. Early in December, he appeared on my morning at the center. He had something to show me, he said, and we sat down together. Taking a little book out of his pocket, he opened it and began to read aloud. Down the page without a pause, through to the end perfectly. Neither he nor I could stop smiling.
What a Christmas present.
Thomas read to me.
BACKYARD NATURALIST
BY KAREN AMELIA ARNETT
Winter’s busyness
Almost winter. It is one of those benign mornings that feel like the calm after tempestuous fever. Everything in my postage stamp urban backyard seems fragile. Even the near-solstice sunlight seems wan.
The air stirs in puffs, as imperceptible as a sleeper’s breath. Feather-light gnats hover like columns of smoke, drifting and rising in the warming air. They drift as gracefully as schools of fish suspended weightless in an undulating ocean. A spider’s silken strand glistens in the sunlight as it waves delicately between brown twigs, hanging on the breath of morning. The sun's rays feel like precious drops of some rare substance, rationed sparingly. Elixir of life for the long nights of winter.
On the lowest rosettes of ground-hugging vegetation, a white fuzz of frost lingers, then vanishes as fingers of light probe the shadows. Up close, pentagonal pillars of ice relax from their rigorous forms to rest on the tips of foliage in droplets clear as crystal, prismlike reflecting the sun in flashes of pure light. The tender leaves are darkened, their waterlogged appearance the result of cells burst from the cold.
So much disarray the trees all seem a hopeless tangle of brown, their branches looking like a mass of uncombed hair. Sparrows send out tentative chirps, the sweet sounds, to my ears like thanks for such a mild day on the threshold of winter. In the garden, skeletons of spent plants drape over each other. Tomato vines droop their angular brown limbs over a litter of unpicked fruit in various stages of ripeness. Caught by an earlier freeze, their reds, greens, whites have deepened to a rich translucence. Husks of basil, now devoid of chlorophyll, still proudly offer their slender flower stalks to the sun, as if in frozen memorial to their former splendor.
The flower beds are a chaos of shapes and shades of brown. Twigs and stems mat the still frosty soil. Wizened flower stalks rise in clumps from the tangle, displaying an ingenious variety of seed cases, the culmination of a summer’s frenzied growth. A patch of bee-balm, globes of its dried blooms looking like little spheres of coral, stippled with texture, waves gently in the rising breaths of air. On brittle stalks, pods of hosta cluster, split open and empty of seeds. A few remnants of green stand out like oases: a rosette of robust, hairy comfrey, as green as if it were summer; the feathery foliage of feverfew drooping over itself.
The compost pile overflows with the garden’s remains. Patches of color amid the brown: red, purple, yellow the harvest’s overflow in the process of returning to earth, blanketed by leaves of ash, oak, hackberry. Jutting from the top is the stalk of the giant sunflower that was home to a praying mantis all summer. recall heavy golden blooms like a constellation of suns shining high above our heads. It now looks like a broken scarecrow, lying atop the rubbish. All food for the soil-makers. love the disorder, the-"messiness” of this season. It is a sign of health, of energy, like the clutter of a person so active and engaged in living fully that there's no time to stop and tidy up. From the opening of spring’s buds, life races to catch the sun, to store away its energy, to revel in growth, to bloom in dazzling displays and to prepare for the long nights of winter. The clutter of the garden, this brown tangle, is a vestige of summer’s busyness. Green life has receded into roots, buds, seeds, shedding its outer garments. Reminders of a season past, promises of a season to come. The evanescent beauty of summer is now to become nourishment for the next generation. Earth gives back to earth. In this time of slogans about the spirit of giving (read: buying), the earth shares her wisdom. Might we too complete the cycle of receiving and giving that binds us, like a sturdy lifeline, to the earth? pour fresh water onto the solid ice of the birdbath by the garden. With the turn of a pitchfork into the well-fed compost pile, steam rises.
KAREN AMELIA ARNETT of Walnut Hills finds the green even in a parking lot.
DailyBred
Issues ^ Bom of Everyday Living
Into the Mouths of Babes?
New Ralph Nader-esque book asks America what isfeeding its children
BY BILLIE JEYES
Written by Michael F. Jacobsen, Ph.D., and investigative reporter Bruce Maxwell, What Are We Feeding Our Kids? is a ground-breaking new book in the tradition of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe At Any Speed.
The resemblance is not coincidental. Before founding the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit organization that has led a nationwide campaign to improve America’s nutrition, Jacobsen worked with the aforementioned consumer activist.
Jacobsen and Maxwell have collaborated before on a report discussing the marketing of alcoholic beverages and tobacco to Hispanics.
This time, they turn their eyes toward the industry as a whole and the ways in which food conglomerates influence today’s youth by using sophisticated marketing techniques, such as television and movie tie-ins, premiums and kids clubs to undermine parental control. The result is a generation of children more interested in the packaging of food than in the food itself.
What Are We Feeding Our Kids? (Workman, $8.95) offers a wealth of nutritional information and provides the reader with both ammunition and incentive to enact change.
To combat the powerful force of advertising, Jacobsen offers a simple solution: “Turn off the TV.”
“The amount of TV watching in this country is quite astonishing,” he says. “And it doesn’t make sense to expose your children to these kinds of programs.”
The line between advertising and programming has become increasingly blurred with popular cartoon characters such as Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble peddling Cocoa Pebbles, Fruity Pebbles, Dino Pebbles, Yabba-Dabba-Doo fruit drink and Flintstones Push-Up Sherbet Treats.
But despite a Federal Communications Commission
aimed at kids,” Jacobsen
Although the odds overwhelmingly in industry’s feel powerless, he says. you know, the less you Feeding Our an essential
“The most can do is to dren,” Jacobsen, good diet. But not eat salads eating fatty, sugary
“It is very important,” stock the house and celery sticks fruit on the table. around and then
“If you look three Americans very liigh rates expect more obesity come.”
One of the main factors is the traditional American meat and dairy products.
“Milk is one of the children’s diets,” Jacobsen people should drink 1
The problem is not War, U.S. Army pathologists vicemen killed in battle of these 22-year-old men disease. The arteries trast, clear and healthy.
Jacobsen explained one word, “Rice.”
He continues: “Asians very little fat, whereas dogs, baloney sandwiches, The proliferation of helped the situation
CityBeat staffs stamp of approval
To be included
city. New Zealand director Peter Jackson leaves behind his schlockhorror movies and takes a brilliant stab at retelling this tale of two young female friends who plot to kill. Combining elements of movie musicals with all the trappings of a psychological thriller, Jackson’s film emerges as a truly creepy original production. With Melanie Lynskey and Kate Wmsle.t. (Rated R; opens Friday at the New Neon Movies, Dayton, Ohio.)
This Week’s Theme: Geograph j
The Christmas season finds many of us hanging out at HOME doing the family thing, but if you’re looking to get OUTSIDE for some action, here’s our ROAD MAP of activities. A bunch of movies open this week, including STREET Fighter; Vanya on 42ND STREET; the all-star sendup of FRANCE’S fashion industry, Ready To Wear, and WINONA Ryder’s Little Women. See the capsule reviews beginning on this page for viewing DIRECTION. Local good guy Chip Chinery, currently a big-time HOLLYWOOD comedian, returns home to headline at Go Bananas through Wednesday. Go, laugh, take photos. Details in the Onstage listings. An exceptional new show of RUSSIAN artists opens Monday at Jamar Gallery, DOWNTOWN. Particulars in the Art listings. MISSISSIPPI Freedom Summer Remembered: 1964-1994 continues through the week at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce. Info on the photo exhibit can be found in Art under “Museums.” An entirely different sort of retrospective can be found at Circle CD’s rock concert posters from the ’60s, mostly from SAN FRANCISCO artists and musicians. Like dig the Art listings, man. Last, and certainly least, the Bengals close out another sorry season Saturday at Riverfront Stadium against PHILADELPHIA, losers of six straight. Something’s gotta give, and it’ll once again probably be the fans. Merry Christmas!
Submit information for CityBeat calendar listings in writing by noon Thursday, seven days before publication. Mail to: Billie Jeyes, Listings Editor, Cincinnati CityBeat, 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 617, Cincinnati, OH 45202. Fax: 665-4369.
Please include a contact name and daytime phone number.
CityBeat grade: A. I.Q. With the new year just a week away, someone may toss around phrases like best romantic comedy of the year with credibility. Catherine (Meg Ryan) emphasizes her head over her heart. As the niece to renowned physicist Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau), her priorities come as no surprise. Still, life has a way of tossing a wrench into things just when one least expects it. Ed (Tim Robbins) reads sci-fi magazines when he is not
busy fixing cars at the local gas station. Upon seeing Catherine, Ed knows that she is the woman he loves. Ed is just an Average Joe with an Average Joe-like noodle. Catherine only has eyes for whizkids like herself. Here, her Uncle Albert and his group of loopy colleagues come to Ed’s rescue. Director Fred Schepisi (Roxanne, Six Degrees of Separation) has taken a screenplay from two seasoned TV writers, Andy Breckman and Michael Leeson and fashioned the most enjoyable romantic comedy of the year. I. Q. reveals more of Schepisi’s intelligent handling of actors and dialogue. In a time when Hollywood believes laughs only occur in broad slapstick, I.Q. reminds us that believable characters with humorous dialogue create the finest comedy. Failures like Speechless remind us how special films such as I.Q. are. This is the type of movie that inspires one to return and watch it again. With
Charles Duming and Gene Saks. (Rated PG; opens Sunday at area Loews Theatres.)
CityBeat grade: A. THE JUNGLE BOOK Because it’s just too hard to get children to watch National Geographic videos, here’s a new adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic that combines great photography of the Indian landscape and wildlife with a timeless story. Children love animals and the idea of a wild jungle boy like Mowgli (Jason Scott Lee). Sounds like Disney has put together a fun way for young people to leam a something new about their world. With Sam Niell,
No screening.
NELL With her own production company (Egg Pictures), Jodie Foster has emerged as the industry’s most powerful woman. So what does Hollywood’s superwoman pick as her latest project? Nell, based on the stage play Idioglossia, tells a story about a young woman who lives in a remote cabin deep in the woods. Nell communicates in a series of sounds that are uniquely her own. Discovered by Dr. Jerome Lovell (Liam Neeson), a local physician, Nell gains the attention of some university psychologists, including Dr. Paula Olsen (Nastasha Richardson). Lovell believes Nell should be left to live on her own. The university psychologists feel that Nell should be placed in a hospital under their care. Questions concerning Nell’s rights arise. For
these doctors, her secret language holds the mystery to her life and her capabilities. Foster must see the character as some great challenge. With a dirtsmudged face and tattered clothes, Nell possesses a hip style that is certainly her own. Nell is also the smartest person around. She teaches an important thing or two to these doctors.
Well, it’s no wonder Foster leapt at this chance to play a backwoods Solomon. Nell is die antithesis of a Hollywood star. Nell’s strengths have little to do with beauty or personality. In Nell, Foster proves that she can tackle a role that is far removed from how audiences perceive her (very smart, articulate and attractive) and makes it work. It is an exercise worth watching. With Jeremy Davies. (Rated R; opens Sunday at area Loews Theatres.)
CityBeat grade: B. READY TO WEAR Just because Miramax changed the title from Pret-a-Porter to Ready To Wear doesn’t mean that this grandiose blunder by director Robert Altman suddenly turns into a decent film. Hey, when you have a career as long as this filmmaker, there will always be ups and downs. There’s a continuity to Altman’s problems. Ready To Wear offers further evi
dence that Altman does not write as well as he directs. This story that he cowrote with Barbara Shulgasser brings together an inane plot about a possible murder into the high-tension world of the Parisian fashion shows. Too many characters, little story development, no definite conclusions to any of these varying subplots and very few laughs results in a mess that may remind filmgoers of Popeye. Just.because Altman was on a roll after his last two fantastic films (The Player, Short Cuts) doesn’t mean that he can’t screw up. Ready to Wear is one highproduction waste of time. The only footage that excites are the straight, documentary footage of the fashion shows. Worst of all, Altman ends this movie with a tired version of the old emperor without clothes joke. If you enjoy high-fashion, stay home and watch Elsa Klensch on TV. There’s too much waste to sift through to make Ready To Wear’s few redeeming qualities worth searching for. With Marcello Mastroianni, Julia Roberts and a cast of seemingly thousands. (Rated R; opens Sunday at area Loews and the Esquire Theatre.)
CityBeat grade: D. RICHIE RICH A Uttle rich boy in real life, Macaulay Culkin has
finally found the role that he has been groomed to play. Based on the popular children’s comic book, Richie Rich weaves a rather simpie message about the importance of friendship with a light-hearted romp about kidnapped parents and a search for hidden loot. What makes Richie Rich an enjoyable family movie is that' director Donald Petrie never weighs the story down with heavy, adult concerns. Unlike other kiddie movies that pound the youngsters with ultra-serious plots about the environment, Richie Rich keeps
PHOTO:
Two past lovers (played by Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren) try to
Theater Directory
(Rated PG; closes Thursday at Turfway.)
★ CARO DIARIO Italian director Nanni Moretti won the Best Director Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for these three humorous vignettes on life in his contemporaiy Italy. With a nodding wink at the Cinema Verite movement, Moretti offers a tour of Rome (“On My Vespa"), visits a friend who has become addicted to TV (“Islands") and hops doctor to doctor in search of solving pesky body itch (“Doctors”). Now, after wowing audiences at this fall’s New York and Chicago film festivals, Caro Diario finally makes its way to Cincinnati. For those who are tired of Tim Allen in a Santa suit, there may be no better alternative than Caro Diario. (Unrated; closes Saturday at the Esquire Theatre.)
★ CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER Some critics refer to Harrison Ford as the thinking man’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ford deserves better kudos than that. Clear and Present Danger brings some unexpected substance to a normally flimsy genre. Canadian actor Henry Czerny excels in his role as Jack Ryan’s nemesis. This movie is for those who like a little brain with their brawn. (Rated PG-13; closes Thursday at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
★ CLERKS Smart people stuck in stupid jobs. That awful truth sums up life for many young men and women today. Film-school dropout Kevin Smith lived the life of a convenience-store clerk and made a film about it. Clerks is sometimes crude, often rude but always hilarious. This cheaply shot, black and white movie is as far away from Hollywood as any film be. Just when you thought that Miramax Films was becoming another blase, big studio, it takes a chance on a refreshingly honest American independent. With Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson.
(Rated R; closes Thursday at the New Neon Movies, Dayton, Ohio.)
★ DESTINY IN SPACE Sure,
PHOTO: JOSEPH LEOERER everything looks cooler when it’s blown-up super huge in the IMAX format, but too often the initial excitement fades fast. (Remember Antarctica?) This time, IMAX cameras follow the space shuttle qs it repairs the Hubble, and the images are amazing. Move over Star Trek Generations, here’s a real out-of-space adventure. (Unrated; at Robert D. Lindner Family Omnimax Theater.)
★ DISCLOSURE Sex Power Betrayal. Disclosure, director Barry Levinson’s film of the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, rightfully sidesteps any controversy and sticks to pure entertainment. Set in the offices of DigiCom, a hightech computer firm, Disclosure turns sexual harassment upside down. Few topics are as timely and volatile as sexual harassment. Still, Hollywood is not in the business to develop polemics. Hollywood makes movies that simply entertain. Those who go to Disclosure expecting an intelligent treatment of a controversial issue are forcing their brains where they do not belong. AD of which makes Disclosure great entertainment. With Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. (Rated R; at area Loews Theatres.)
DROP ZONE If skydiving itself is exciting, then one would think that a movie about the sport also would be riveting. Putting scenes of people jumping out of planes into a plot about terrorists steahng secrets from the Drug Enforcement Agency should guarantee an exciting time. Wrongo. Director John Badham (War Games, Blue Thunder) wastes the talents of Gary Busey and Wesley Snipes. Drop Zone’ also throws away a strong female performance by Yancy Butler (Hard Target). Action movies seldom are blessed with a great female action role. Butler is fantastic. Unfortunately, everything around her is awful. What is reaUy frustrating about Drop Zone is that the skydiving sequences do not even look beDevable. In this era of stateof-the art special effects, Drop Zone comes off like some flick from the ’50s. In a hoDday season with few adult action movies to choose from, Drop Zone arrives like coal in a Christmas stocking. No one is so bad that they deserve this turkey. With Michael and Corin Nemic. (Rated R; at area Showcase Cinemas.)
DUMB AND DUMBER Before movie audiences get to see Jim Carrey vamp it up as the Riddler in Batman Forever, he returns just in time for some Christmas tomfoolery. This time, he teams with Jeff Daniels to play bumblers who cross the country to return some stolen loot to its rightful owner. Carrey has emerged as the surprise
ROBERT D. LINDNER FAMILY OMNIMAX THEATER 1301 Western Ave., Museum Center at Union Terminal, Queensgate. 287-7000.
Hollywood success stoiy for ’94. Dumb and Dumber was the No. 1 film in America this past week. We’D have to wait to see if the big crowds keep coming this hoDday weekend. With Teri Garr and ex-MTV veejay Karen Duffy. (Rated PG-13; at area Showcase Cinemas.)
★ EROTIQUE Three female filmmakers together to explore issues of sexuality but with an emphasis on the woman. For the male-dominated movie industry, their project is legitimately unique. Erotique teDs three stories: “Let’s Talk about Sex," directed by Lizzie Borden; “Taboo Parlor,” by German director Monflva Treut; and “Wonton Soup,” by Hong Kong director Clara Law. To be honest, don’t bother looking for grand political statements in Erotique. Its pleasures are not that cerebral. They’re basically carnal. The sex scenes in Erotique are not any more graphic than the countless soft-porn titles that line the shelves at Blockbuster. The difference is that with Erotique women are not the victims but the victors. For that one quaDty alone, the film reaches above the level of base excitement. With Kamala Lopez-Dawson, PrisciDa Barnes and Hayley Man. (Unrated; at Real Movies.)
★ FORREST GUMP The phenomenon continues. America never tires of Forrest Gump. Tom Hanks combines the right amount of syrupy pathos with humor. Those people who complain about the movie’s glorification of the retarded are forcing politics where it does not belong. Let’s hope that the Christian CoaUtion does not use Gump kind of twisted poster boy. With Gary Sinese, Robin Wright and Sally Field. (Rated PG-13; at area Loews
SHOWCASE CINEMAS SPRINGDALE 12064 Springfield Pike, Springdale. 671-6884. SUPER SAVER CINEMAS 601 Forest Fair Drive, Forest Fair Mall, Forest Park. 671-1710. WESTWOOD CINEMAS 1&2 3118 Harrison Ave., Westwood. 481-3900. EAST SUPER SAVER CINEMAS BIGGS PLACE
Theatres.)
★ INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE It stiD puzzles why Anne Rice took a full-page ad out in Variety (later reprinted by producer David Geffen in the New York Times) to praise NeU Jordan’s adaptation of her novel. Her grandiose, self-congratulatory
★
out crap. With Travis Tedford and Bug Hall. (Rated PG; at Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate; closes Thursday at Norwood.)
LOVE AFFAIR Real-life couple Warren Beatty and Annette Bening take their turn at another remake of the classic tear-jerker An Affair to Remember. Glenn Gordon Caron is the credited director, but Beatty produced, cowrote and controlled the final cut of this stiff treatment of a forbidden relationship. He and his wife look great. It’s too bad that the film is so flat. With Gary Shandling, Kate Capshaw and Katharine Hepburn. (Rated PG-13; opens Friday at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
MAKING UP! / THE CORIOLIS
EFFECT Making Up!, a boxoffice hit in its native Germany, looks at two women who search for love and find it in unexpected ways. Frenzy (Katja Riemann), an artist struggles to find fresh material for her comic-strip character, a sexy mosquito-woman. She finds inspiration in the antics of her best friend Maischa (Nina Kronjager).
Making Up! offers a wise and funny look at mature women in love. Now, that’s something that is often foreign to American movies. With Daniela Lunkewitz and Max Tidof. Two weather scientists, Ray (Dana Ashbrook) and Stanley (James Wilder) question their feelings of love and fidelity while in pursuit of tornadoes in first-time director Louis Venosta’s The Coriolis Effect. The Coriolis Effect received a lot of positive feedback at this year’s New Directors/New Films series in New York. With Jennifer Rubin and the voice of Quentin Tarantino. (Both are unrated; at Real Movies.)
★ THE MASK In this special-effects-laden comedy, Jim Carrey’s performance resembles a Tex Avery cartoon. Still, his manic contortions remain true to the spirit of the film. Of all the fluff from this past summer, The Mask possessed the most originality. With this hit, Carrey became a million dollar baby. With Dumb and Dumber coming out this Christmas, the pundits are waiting to see if he strikes gold again. With Peter Riegert and Cameron Diaz. (Rated PG-13; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
MILK MONEY Other than catching a glimpse of some local scenery, this tale of two young boys who match their dad up with a prostitute possesses few redeeming qualities. Director Richard Benjamin (My Favorite Year, Racing with the Moon) piles on the mush and forgets about the laughs. An ultra-thin Melanie Griffith as a hooker with a heart of gold gets lost in the process. With Ed Harris and Malcolm McDowell.
(Rated PG-13, opens Friday at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
1k MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET Sure, we have seen this tale of a department-store Santa Claus who insists he is the real thing before, but this version really shines. Give credit to the wonderful performances from its leads, Richard Attenborough and young Mara Wilson. It’s not often that young girls experience strong role models such as Wilson at the movies. Of all the family-movie fare out there, this new take on the 1947 original really hits pay dirt. With Elizabeth Perkins, Dylan McDermott and Frasier’s Jane Leeves. (Rated PG; at area Loews Theatres.)
★ NATURAL BORN KILLERS
Director Oliver Stone (Platoon, Wall Street) pushes his cinematic skills to new heights. As a result, Natural Born Killers may be the most daring studio release of the year.'Stone’s script is based on a original story by Hollywood hot man Quentin Tarantino. What the film lacks in substance, it makes up with hypnotic visuals. (Rated R; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
★ OLEANNA Rata-tat-tat-tat. That’s the sound of dialogue as written by playwright David Mamet. Words rattle off fast and furious like gunfire. They also have the impact of a weapon. Cinema often tosses aside the spoken word for visuals. With Oleanna, Mamet reminds us that the spoken word has its place in the film medium. Language is a key to this story about a male college professor (William H. Macy) and a young female student (Debra Eisenstadt). Their power plays bring together themes of sexual harassment, political correctness and gender identification. Oleanna tackles a delicate topic with intelligence and fury. Spend the rest of the evening arguing over what the film really means. Consider yourself lucky. Can you even remember the last time a movie even made you think? Entertainment does not have to be brainless. Think of Oleanna as an intellectual option to Disclosure. (Rated R; closes Thursday at the Esquire Theatfe.)
THE PAGEMASTER The older Macaulay Culkin gets, the less kids like him. At least, that’s what Hollywood fears. Well, the folks at 20th Century Fox have found a way to keep Mac just the way kids want him turn the child-star into cartoon. A young boy, afraid ofjust about everything is transported off into a cartoon land, where he must battle with famous figures from classic novels. The Pagemaster teaches kids some great lessons about bravery, friendship and more importantly good reading skills. Unfortunately, this cool world is not that cool after all. His wacky new friends are more boring than wacky. What did the kiddies think?
Well, this reviewer saw The Pagemaster with a couple hun-' dred children one Saturday moming, and they cheered more during the trailer for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers The Movie than the feature movie. The children have spoken. With the voices of Patrick Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg. (Rated G; at area Loews Theatres.)
★ PULP FICTION After only two films, director Quentin Tarantino has shifted from cult favorite to mass media darling. With wild frenzy, Tarantino mixes MORE, PAGE 18
UtterKiosk
Backwoods Solomon
Ivy League Foster ventures deep into theforest, succeeds in role as feral but wise teacher
REVIEW BY STEVE RAMOS
In Hollywood, power is a career necessity. With it, a person acquires the privilege of creating and choosing his or her own work. Now armed with her own production company (Egg Pictures), Jodie Foster has emerged as the industry’s most powerful woman. Foster could play any role she chooses. So what does Hollywood’s superwoman pick as her latest project? Nell, based on the stage play Idioglossia, tells a story about a young woman who lives in a remote cabin deep into the woods. With no civilized contact, Nell communicates in a series of grunts and sounds that are uniquely her own. Discovered by Dr. Jerome Lovell (Liam Neeson), a local physician, Nell gains the attention of some university psychologists including Dr. Paula Olsen (Nastasha Richardson).
A legal tugof-war ensues.
Lovell believes Nell should be left to live on her own. The university psychologists feel Nell should be placed under their care. Questions concerning Nell’s rights arise. For these doctors, her secret language holds the mystery to her life and her capabilities.
Soon, all the mysteries of this child/woman are revealed. Along the way, the two competing doctors learn much about themselves. Of course, all of life’s great lessons do not unfold within a classroom. Sometimes, the most valuable teachings take place beside a cabin deep inside a North Carolina forest.
Foster must see the character of Nell as some great challenge. With a dirt-smudged face and tattered clothes, Nell resides at her lakefront cabin like some feral princess. She is. Nell runs through the woods with the agility of a deer. She swims like a fish. Sure, she may be ignorant of all that is urbane and chic, but Nell possesses a hip style that is certainly her own. Call it deepwoods cool.
Nell is also the smartest person around. She may not talk like an Ivy League graduate (like Yale alumni Foster herself), but Nell teaches an important thing or two to these doctors. Her lessons are basic, regarding matters of happiness and the heart. They are the type of lifetruths that everyone can relate to. Because Nell’s messages are simple, soon she becomes very easy to understand.
Well, it’s no wonder that Foster leapt at this chance to play a backwoods Solomon. Nell shows that a woman can be strong without any of the standard attributes. Nell is the antithesis of a Hollywood star. Here is a woman who is devoid of any makeup, primp or polish. Nell’s strengths have little to do with beauty or personality. The impact that she makes on those around her
comes from her innocence. dens and concerns, plistic.
The advice she shares basically a. child-woman. didactic. That’s just Unfortunately, Nell’s grate on one’s nerves. so sweet, your teeth Melodrama need not
Still, these too-mushy Nell. Foster and director Daughter, Gorillas level of decorum for adult’s film, remember?
Real-life husband provide an additional play straight-man to is not a fun job. They ways. They scratch things she does. For given roles that simply react. Only in scenes Richardson get any juicy
together gun play, drug abuse and racial epithets into a series of interrelated crime tales. Certain to send teen-age boys into wet-dream heaven. Adults may rather emphasize Tarantino’s skill at fast and funny dialogue. If Pulp Fiction did not reveal strong growth in Tarantino’s technique, his personal hype might have overshadowed this fantastic film. An accurate reflection of what really makes America go round, violence, drugs and racism. With John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman. (Rated R; at Showcase Cincinnati.)
★ THE PUPPET MASTERS Now that the Cold War is over, Robert Heinlein’s story may have lost its ideological punch. Simply as a creepy sci-fi thriller, The Puppet Masters hits the mark. Gooey aliens and the always unnerving Donald Sutherland come together for a fun and frightening ride. With Eric Thai, Julie Warner and Will Patton. (Rated R; at Norwood.)
★ QUIZ SHOW Finally, a film whose qualities are proportional to its critical acclaim. Now after receiving Best Picture from the New York Film Critics Circle, Quiz Show may return to the public’s eye. Taking a cue from attorney Richard N. Goodwin's book Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties, director Robert Redford has crafted his best movie to date. Today, many people may regard the scandals regarding TV game show Twenty-One as trite. Through phenomenal performances from Ralph Fiennes star contestant Charles Van Doren, Rob Morrow as Goodwin and John Turturro as discontent Herb Stempel, Quiz Show both entertains and educates. Sure, it’s not historically accurate, but that makes Quiz Show pleasurable. With Mira Sorvino, David Paymer and Paul Scofield. (Rated R; closes Saturday at Northgate and Florence.)
★ THE RIVER WILD Meiyl Streep takes a successful leap as an action heroine in the latest effort from director Curtis Hanson (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle). Streep’s character leads her husband and son on a white-water rafting trip, only to face terror from two criminal goons. What the story lacks in substance and character development, it makes up with frantic action and breathtaking photography. For her fans, Streep’s role may seem like slumming. Hey, the girljust wants to have fun. With Kevin Bacon and David Straithaim. (Rated PG-13; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
THE SANTA CLAUSE Tim Allen makes the leap from TV stardom to the big screen. His sense of ease for kiddie comedy is wasted on this unimaginative story. Hopefully, Disney has Allen in mind for another Son ofFlubber. Kids may eat up the story about a grouchy dad who becomes Kris Kringle. Do they know what “tool time” even means? In film, quality and box-office draw do not always match. Moviegoers have made this turkey a huge hit. Maybe next year, Tim Burton will make his Santa Claus movie. Now that will be funky. With Judge Reinhold and Peter Boyle. (Rated PG; at area Showcase Cinemas.)
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
Based on the Stephen King short story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, director Frank Darabont (screenwriter of Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein ) inspires more than frightens with his tale of friendship behind bars. What King's tale lacks in depth, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman make up with their performances. With William Sadler and Clancy Brown. (Rated R; closes Saturday at Loews Kenwood Towne Centre, Florence and closes Thursday at
Little Arts Theatre, Yellow Springs, Ohio.)
THE SPECIALIST Two of Hollywood’s hardest bodies, Sly Stallone and Sharon Stone, come together in a soft-and-limp action vehicle. On paper, the film looked like a winner. The sad reality is a story with too much talk and not enough action. It’s frustrating when Hollywood starts missing the mark on this type of fluff. With James Woods, Eric Roberts and Rod Steiger. (Rated R; opens Friday at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair, Biggs Place Eastgate and Westwood.)
SPEECHLESS Director Ron Underwood’s Speechless tackles the most basic of stories two adults falling in love. Two political speech writers, Kevin Vallick (Michael Keaton) and Julia Mann (Geena Davis) meet incognito in the middle of a tense campaign for a New Mexico congressional seat. The film should have appropriated All’s Fair, the book that chronicles the romance between President Clinton’s campaign manager James Carville and head of the George Bush campaign, Mary Matalin. Carville and Matalin’s real-life story contains more laughs than anything that Speechless screenwriter Robert King dreamt up. Speechless takes two seemingly intelligent adults and forces them to say stupid things and act in foolish ways. With Christopher Reeve and Bonnie Bedelia. (Rated PG-13; at area Showcase Cinemas.)
SQUANTO A WARRIOR’S TALE
This movie is so bad that Native Americans may cry defamation. Poor Squanto (Adam Beach), this could have been his big break at making a huge impact on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers crowd. Instead, he comes off as a boring chump at he hands of the white man’s camera. With Mandy Patinkin and Michael Gambon. (Rated PG; closes Thursday at Norwood and Turfway.)
STARGATE Cutting-edge special effects wrap around a rather old-fashioned science-fiction epic. Unlike recent action films, Stargate takes nothing seriously. Its childlike innocence is refreshing. Consider Stargate as a hip Forbidden Planet. In true ’90s fashion, The Crying Game’s Jaye Davidson steals the show instead of Robby the Robot. With Kurt Russell and James Spader. (Rated PG-13; opens Thursday at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair, Biggs Place Eastgate and Westwood.)
STAR TREK GENERATIONS
There is a changing of the guard in the Star Trek movie universe. TV’s Next Generation has pushed James T. Kirk and company off the silver Who would have thought that a seemingly momentous occasion would result in such a dull affair? Generations’ flimsy story about an evil scientist who harnesses a rift in time is high on technology and low on drama. Too bad, trekkers deserve better and non-fans won’t get any of the inside jokes. A mediocre movie doesn’t seem to stop moviegoers from crowding the multiplexes. Then again, Star Trek Generations was the only family-adventure movie out this holiday. That doesn’t mean the rest of us have to follow the masses, especially when they’re wrong. With Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes. (Rated PG; at area Showcase Cinemas.)
★ THE SWAN PRINCESS
Rather than seaing The Lion King for the umpteenth time, take the kids to this new take on the legend that inspired Swan Lake. Director Richard Rich’s (The Fox and the Hound) 14 years at Disney are evident from Swan Princess’ highquality animation. In this version, a prince’s sexism, more than an evil sorcerer’s spells becomes obstacle to young love. How very modern. Parents,’ you may have some explaining to do. With the voices of John Cleese, Sandy Duncan and Steven Wright. (Rated G; opens Friday at Norwood, Turfway,
Forest Fair, Biggs Place Eastgate and Westwood.)
TIMECOP Jean-Claude Van Damme desperately wants to be another Sylvester Stallone. To his frustration, goals once considered easy quickly turn difficult. Timecop pales in comparison to Sly’s earlier take on sci-fi Demolition Man. The Muscles of Brussels may be a second banana now, but Street Fighter is just around the comer. Looks like his banana status may be here to stay. With Mia Sara and Ron Silver. (Rated R; ends Thursday at Norwood and Turfway.)
TRAPPED IN PARADISE Three small-time crooks from the Big Apple are soon overwhelmed by the sincerity and kindness from the inhabitants of a small town named Paradise. Bringing together the talents of Nicholas Cage, Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz should guarantee some laughs. Unfortunately, Junior acts as a painful reminder that great cast is only half the battle. Still, any film that sounds like My Cousin Vinny, multiplied by three may work. With Madchen Amick and Donald Moffat. (Rated PG-13; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
TRUE LIES Big Arnold Schwarzenegger does not save the day here. A better editor would have. Director James Cameron has made a movie so big that it needs two plots. The part that focuses on Arnold's home life bores. To no surprise, the action sequences excel. See if the theater manager will let you sneak in for the last 30 minutes; that is the only portion of the movie worth seeing. With Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold and Tia Carrere. (Rated R; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)
THE WAR First, Kevin Costner had to answer for Wyatt Earp, and now this. Well, there is not anything more difficult for actors to hold onto than superstar status. Hey, there’s always Waterworld. Director Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes) contemplates issues of poverty, racism and violence in the Deep South, circa 1970. The young stars of director Jon Avnet’s drama, Elijah Wood and Lexi Randall, shine. Its seasoned performers, Kevin Costner and Mare Winningham, languish. The disappointing result is a mixed film, which should have been great. With Christopher Fennell and Donald Sellers. (Rated PG-13; at Norwood.)
Repertory
★ MONTY PYTHON'S THE MEANING OF LIFE As another year closes, one’s thoughts often dwell on the metaphysical. Well, here comes that crazy British comedy troupe to give its 2-cents’ worth. In this series of manic
Times Square
Threefriends come together on 42nd Street, ’ which speaks
INTERVIEW BY STEVE RAMOS
Since its inception, Vanya on 42nd Street has been a project rich in friendship. In 1989, Andre Gregory brought together his friend Wally Shawn with some other actors at the Victory Theater in Manhattan’s Times Square to rehearse Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya.
With a new adaptation by playwright David Mamet, Gregory rehearsed his select group for the next few years. By 1991, word about these practices had spread. Gregory began to invite groups of 30 friends to come and watch. Suddenly, these Uncle Vanya rehearsals were a hot commodity. One of the many friends who saw the rehearsals was director Louis Malle. Gregory and Shawn worked with Malle in 1981 on the movie My Dinner with Andre. Malle was so taken by their work that he decided to film their practice sessions. Set in the New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street, Malle filmed for just two weeks this past May.
Gregory always saw this project as a true labor of love. “Nothing is lovelier in the world than working with people you love,” he says.
Vulnerable in 'Vanya’
Gregory has known Shawn since 1970. In addition to working together on My Dinner with Andre, Gregory was Shawn’s original acting teacher and directed his first play. Now, they are reunited with Malle. “It’s sort of like on its way to My Dinner with Andre 2, Gregory says. “If you were interested in
Wallace Shawn
Andre Gregory
AND ELECTRIC BLUE 7 p.m. Tuesday. Coyote’s Music and Dance Hall, 400 Buttermilk Pike, Fort Mitchell. $7/$10 day of the show. 721-1000. THE ROTTWEILERS WITH MADHATTERS, GRAND POOBAH FUTON, JOY HAMMER, SOFT CACTUS AND GINGHAM 7 p.m. Tuesday. Music Hall, 1241 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine. $7.50 plus a canned good. 749-4949.
Backed by Their Words
In a rare move for a major label, A&M Records own lyrics to advertise 'Electric Rock Music'
uses Ass Ponys' Music
Spectator
★ CINCINNATI BENGALS NFL football vs. Philadelphia. 1 p.m. Saturday. It’s the final game of a long season, which featured the emergence of QB Jeff Blake and yet another high draft choice for next year. See if local fans emulate those in Philly and boo Santa Claus. $27: Riverfront Stadium, Downtown. 621-3550.
CINCINNATI CYCLONES IHL hockey vs. Peoria. 7:30 p.m. Monday. $6-12 adults; $4-10 students. Cincinnati Gardens, 2250 Seymour Ave., Norwood. 531-7825.
TURFWAY PARK Live racing with post-time 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 1:30 p.m. Monday-Wednesday. Simulcasts from Churchill Downs, Hollywood Park, Bay Meadows, Fairgrounds and Aqueduct. Parking $2, valet parking $3; grandstand admission $3.50, clubhouse $2.50. 7500 Turfway Road, Florence. 371-0200.
XAVIER MUSKETEERS Men’s basketball vs. University of Maryland-Baltimore City. 8 p.m. Wednesday. $6-10. Cincinnati Gardens, 2250 Seymour Ave., Norwood. 745-3411.
Recreational
AMERICAN COUNCIL OF THE BLIND WALK Sighted walkers are needed to help with the three-mile walk, which begins at 10 a.m. Saturday. Sharon Woods, Route 42, Sharonville. 921-3186.
CUyBeat’s music listings are free of charge and are for all concerts as well as clubs which feature live music on a regular basis. For information call MIKE BREEN at 665^1700 or fax at 665-4369. All listings are subject to change. The following listings for Dec.
INTERVIEW BY MIKE BREEN
Getting busted by the cops for throwing rocks at brick walls, marveling at “the Windbag’s” 40-pound colon and schmoozing high with Soundgarden. You pick the nightmare.
Varied Venues
For Cincinnati’s latest musical export, the Ass Ponys who perform New Year’s Eve at Bogart’s such bizarre incidents are becoming increasingly normal. Last month, A&M Records released the group’s third album, Electric Rock Music, and since then the Ass Ponys have found themselves in a whirlwind of unusual, yet satisfying, activities.
MOVIN' MERVYN AND GUESTS Trinidadian Folk. 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Zarabanda World Cafe, 3213 Linwood Ave., Mount Lookout. 321-1347.
BRIAN LOVELY AND THE SECRET Unplugged Alternative. 8 p.m. Friday. JosephBeth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Madison and Edwards roads, Norwood. 396-8960.
BRIAN EWING Alternative Folk. 8 p.m. Saturday. Blue Mountain Coffee Co., 3181 Linwood Ave., Mount Lookout. 871-8626.
JEFF ROBERTS Country/ Bluegrass. 9 p.m. Tuesday. Kaldi’s, 1204 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 241-3070.
PAM BEATTY Acoustic guitar.
Their recent tour took them throughout North America, and the record is already doing well on college radio. A&M has put the band on high priority for ’95 with a full-ori press attack (Entertainment Weekly has already given the record a thumbs-up) and a push to get the first video, “Little Bastard,” on MTV. And they’ve popped up mi/its magazine, posing with industry weasels and members of labelmates Soundgarden and Monster Magnet! Not bad for a bunch of normal, easy-going Midwestern guys.
“It’s just embarrassing,” says singer/guitarist Chuck Cleaver about the growing attention the band is garnering. “And it will always be embarrassing. I don’t understand the aesthetic
ALICE AND THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS BAND Blues. Allyn’s Cafe. Cover.
of people wanting to see a pieture of me with the guys from Soundgarden. We don’t even like getting our .pictures taken with each other.”
THE BLUE BIRDS Blues. Shady O’Grady’s Pub. Cover.
BLUE LOU AND THE ACCUSATIONS Blues. Burbank’s Forest Fair. No cover.
“What the hell is that?” he continues, inadvertently quoting his own lyrics from “Earth to Grandma,” Electric’s ode to a demented grandmother who makes crafts out of beer cans and other household items.
THE DOGS Blues. Burbank's Eastgate. No cover.
ED MOSS Jazz.' Ivory’s. Cover.
It’s those unusual kinds of observations in lyrics that make the band which also includes drummer Dave Morrison, bassist Randy Cheek and guitarist John Erhardt so unique.
ELECTRIC BLUE Rock. Club One. No cover.
FOREHEAD Alternative favorites. Blue Note Cafe. Cover.
Rarely is a band so heavily pushed on the strength of its lyrics. A&M has taken quotes and put them in advertisements for Electric Rock Music and has made a point to send full lyric sheets to all press outlets.
FRANK POWERS TRIO Eclectic. Arnold’s. Free.
GOSHORN BROS. Classic Rock. Tommy’s. Cover.
“They’re all true stories, but they’re not necessarily my own,” says Cleaver of his lyrics, which include such quirky couplets as “Standing on the highway/ pants around my knees/ I’d write her name out on the road/ But I can’t piss Denise” (from “Grim”).
HIGH SCHOOL BAND CHAL-
LENGE Various. Bogart’s. $6.50.
Other than their words, the Ass Ponys whose demeanors are completely humble and down-to-earth, affecting “Aw shucks” mannerisms don’t really know why A&M snagged them from indie oblivion.
IDENTITY Reggae. One Hundred West. Cover.
JENNY HALL Folk.'Canal Street Tavern. Cover.
“I don’t know,” replies Cleaver, when asked what about their music caught the major label’s ear.
“And I don’t think they do either,” Erhardt adds, laughing.
JOHNNY SCHOTT WITH FRED
STEFFEN AND MYSTERY
WAGON Open mike. Courtyard Cafe. No cover.
LEN CALLAHAN Acoustic. Local 1207. Cover.
Chuck continues: “I think a lot of times people don’t know why they like us. The A&R (artists and repertoire) guy that got in touch with us initially liked the fact that it didn’t sound like anything else. There are parts of other things in it, but it isn’t exactly like anything.”
Down time gets them down
Touring extensively, a new experience for the Ponys, has its ups and downs. The group has found itself sharing the stage with modem Rock luminaries such as Pavement and American Music Club on certain nights, while on others playing to sparse and/or unreceptive crowds.
The Ass Ponys are (from left) Dave Morrison, Chuck Cleaver, John Erhardt and Randy Cheek.
(“Canada,” Cleaver Says with displeasure. “We should have just stayed home.”) The Ponys found that, while they enjoy playing around the country, the down time can get them a little crazy.
“We had a few days’ layover in Philly,” explains Cleaver. “And we started getting bored.”
Cheek continues, “We went to this medical experiment museum. They had two-headed babies under glass and stuff.”
“A 40-pound colon,” chimes in Erhardt excitedly.
“That they got out of a guy called ‘the Windbag,”’ finishes Cleaver as the band collectively cracks up at the memory.
Then there was a little run-in with Johnny Law just outside Detroit.
“Dave and John almost got arrested for throwing rocks at a brick wall,” says Cleaver. “It was this huge, as far as we could tell, unbreakable brick wall. There was nothing to be broken within several hundred yards.”
“(The cop) was like, ‘Can’t you guys think of anything else to do?’ says the delinquent Morrison. “We both just shook our heads like, ‘No.’
Erhardt says, “We’d been in the van for too long.”
With all the talk about the lyrical content, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the band also has an extraordinary talent for writing great songs. Almost every song on Electric Rock Music rings with unforgettable melodies. It’s a challenge to try and forget the choruses of songs such as “Little Bastard” and “Ape Hangar.”
Despite attempts to pigeonhole the band by noting
Music
Cover.
UPTOWN RHYTHM AND BLUES Rhythm and Blues. Stow’s. Cover.
WILLIE RAY Blues. Burbank’s Sharonville. No cover.
FRIDAY
ANN CHAMBERLAIN JAZZ TRIO Jazz. Coco’s. Cover.
AUNT BEANIE’S FIRST PRIZE BEETS Eclectic. Canal Street Tavern. Cover.
THE BEAUMONTS Blues. Burbank’s Forest Fair. No cover.
BLUES ALL STARS Blues. Burbank’s Eastgate. No cover.
BLUE LOU AND THE ACCUSATIONS Blues. Mansion Hill Tavern. Cover.
BRITISH STEELE Judas Priest favorites. Annie’s. Cover.
CRUISIN BAD DADDY Alternative. Club Gotham. Cover.
THE DOGS Blues. Burbanks Florence. No cover.
GOSHORN BROS. Classic Rock. Tommy’s. Cover.
HOPPER AND BORGIA POPES Alternative. Sudsy Malone’s. Cover.
KENTUCKY SUNSHINE BAND Rock. Katmandu Cafe. Cover.
LAZY WITH CIGARHEAD AND MISS MAY 66 Alternative. Palace Club. Cover.
MISSING PERSONS New Wave. Hurricanes. $5/$6 day of the show.
NEW BEDLAM Rock. Club One. No cover.
OHIO VALLEY ROUNDERS Bluegrass. Arnold’s. No cover.
UPTOWN RHYTHM AND BLUES Rhythm and Blues. Stow’s on Main. Cover.
THE WEBSTERS Alternative. Salamone’s. Cover.
WILLIE RAY Blues. Burbank’s Sharonville. No cover.
THE ZIONITES Reggae. Top Cat’s. Cover.
SATURDAY
GOSHORN BROS. Classic Rock. Tommy’s. Cover. IN THE POCKET Rock. Club One. No cover.
SHIRLEY JESTER JAZZ TRIO Jazz. Coco’s. Cover.
SUNDAY
BLUE BIRDS Blues. Allyn’s. Cover.
JOHN KOGGE AND THE LONESOME STRANGERS Folk The Stadium. Cover.
JOHNNY SCHOTT WITH ANTHONY MORRIS, BEN CLARKE AND MORE Open mike. Tommy’s on Main. Cover.
MORE, PAGE 22
HURRICANES
CINCINNATI'S ROCK ALTERNATIVE FOR LIVE MUSIC IV. PETE ROSE WAY DOWNTOWN *tl-L ALL SHOWS $5 IN ADV./SG DOOR TICKETS AT SELECT-A-SEAT 721-1000, PHIL’S RECORDS, EVERYBODY’S RECORDS, CD WAREHOUSE, MOLES & SCENTIMENTS
Friday, December 23
Clubs Directory
MUSIC
ALLYN'S CAFE 3538 Columbia Parkway, Columbia-Tusculum. 871-5779.
CLUB ONE 6923 Plainfield Road, Silverton. 793-3360.
COCO’S
322 Greenup St., Covington. 491-1369.
COURTYARD CAFE
1211 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 723-1119. 0
COYOTE’S
400 Buttermilk Pike, Oldenberg Complex, Fort Mitchell. 341-5150.
DANIEL’S PUB
2735 Vine St., Corryville. 281-1026.
FIRST RUN
36 E. High St., Oxford. 1-523-1335.
FLANAGAN’S LANDING
212 Pete Rose Way, Downtown. 421-4055.
GREENWICH TAVERN
2440 Gilbert Ave., Walnut Hills. 221-6764.
HURRICANE SURF CLUB
411 W. Pete Rose Way, Downtown. 241-2263.
IVORY'S JAZZ CABARET 2469 W. McMicken, Over-the-Rhine. 684-0300.
JIM & JACK’S RIVERSIDE SPORTS BAR
3456 River Road, Riverside.
New Tunes
MS. KITTY’S SALOON
218 W. Third St., Downtown. 721-9520.
POSITIVELY YEAH YEAH YEAH
MT. ADAMS PAVILION
949 Pavilion St., Mount Adams. 721-7272.
BY JOHN M. JAMES
MURRAY’S PUB
2169 Queen City Ave., Fairmount. 661-6215.
Ambient Dreamscape Dub
NEW NINETIES NIGHT CLUB
3613 Harrison Ave., Cheviot. 481-9013.
From the moment you crack open the entirely black molded jewel case and dose your CD player with its shiny disc, be prepared to lower your heartbeat and become lost for the next 47 minutes. Bill Laswell’s latest venture into ambient texture and rhythm comes in the form of three audio explorers under the moniker of Automaton and their Strata Records release, Dub Terror Exhaust.
ONE HUNDRED WEST
100 W. Sixth St., Downtown. 431-ROCK.
OZZIE’S PUB & EATERY
Laswell was the founder and bass guitar visionary for the 1980s musical chameleon Material and, since then, has been one the most well-respected names in progressive musical experimentation. What makes Automaton so brain-tasty is that the rhythms are woven in and around the beats of drummer Sly Dunbar (half of the master reggae production and studio MVPs Sly & Robbie) drifting in and out of the mix alongside soft audio samples and Laswell’s driving underwater bass. if these sonic journeys are up your aural alley, more of Laswell’s bass-oriented anarchy can be found in the stream of releases on the Axion, Subharmonic and Strata labels, with varying degrees of Funk, African/fusion Jazz, white noise and murky colors.
116 E. High St., Oxford. 1-523-3134.
PALACE CLUB 2346 Grange Hall Road, Dayton, Ohio. 1^126-9305.
SILKY SHANOHAN’S 1582 E. Kemper Road, Sharonville. 772-5955.
The third CD single from Sugar’s latest, File Under Easy Listening, is “Gee Angel” and is due out in January on Rykodisc. As always, a handful of bonus tracks fill out the disc live versions of “Explode and Make Up" and “The Slim” and the unreieased “After the Roads Flave Led To Nowhere.”
SONNY’S CAFE AND LOUNGE 1227 California Ave., Bond Hill. 242-4579.
SOUTHGATE HOUSE 24 E. Third St., Newport. 431-2201.
Naughty, Naughty
A fascinating book is out The Great White Wonders: A History of Rock Bootlegs by British author Clinton Heylin from Viking Press. It’s an in-depth 440-page investigation into the beginnings of the “unauthorized live recording” and its place alongside the mega-fan culture of rock ’n' roll from the late '60s to the present.
STACHE’S 2404 N. High St., Columbus. 614-263-5318. THE STADIUM 16 S. Poplar St., Oxford. 1-523-4661.
The name of the book is taken from the first rock bootleg an album of unreleased Bob Dylan recordings that surfaced in Los Angeles in a plain white sleeve, rubber stamped GWW in 1969.
STOW’S ON MAIN 1142 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 684-0080.
Heylin does a superb job in re-creating the psychedelic enthusiasm that fostered this new “industry” with interviews with the original bootleggers themselves, along with musicians and record-industry personnel. Every attachable aspect of “personal” and “home” recordings is discussed with a variety of players, including the taxes on blank cassette tapes, the introduction of the recordable Sony Walkman and the future of corporate control with the advent of digital technology.
TOMMY’S ON MAIN 1427 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 352-0502.
An excellent winter’s read, indeed.
TOP CAT’S 2820 Vine St., Corryville. 281-2005.
Looking Ahead to January
Sorry, no new releases for Tuesday because the record labels are on holiday. But fear not, music junkie, these hot ones are scheduled for January:
ZIPPER’S 604 Main St., Covington. 261-5639.
DANCE
CLUB CHRONIC 616 Ruth Lyons Lane, Downtown. Call for days and times. 621-4115. THE CONSERVATORY
640 W. Third St., Covington. 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Friday-Saturday. 491-6400.
Extreme Waiting For the Punchline', Throwing Muses University: Easy-E Str.8 Off the Streez of Muthaphuklin Compton: Van Halen Balance: Robyn Hitchcock reissues of / Often Dream of Trains and Black Snake Diamond Role; Swans —The Great Annihilator, Laughing Hyenas Hard Times: The Wolfgang Press Funky Little Demons: The.Jerky Boys original motion picture soundtrack to self-titled movie; Guided By Voices six-LP or five-CD box set; Kitchens of Distinction Cowboys & Aliens: Jason & the Scorchers A Blazing Grace: The Waterboys The Secret Life Of. JOHN JAMES can be found behind the counter at Wizard Records in Corryville.
COOTER’S University Plaza, Vine Street, Corryville. 8 p.m.-2 a.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Until 4 a.m. Friday and Saturday. 751-2642 THE DOCK
603 W. Pete Rose Way, Downtown. Until 4 a.m.
The Blood on His Neck From Success
Guitarist John Frusciante comes back with a vivid and vulnerable piece of unconventional aural art
REVIEW BY MIKE BREEN
When John Frusciante left the Red Hot Chili Peppers right before their stint headlining the 1993 Lollapalooza tour, it was pretty clear something was wrong with the guitarist. Concert appearances leading up to his departure showed him a broken man, playing slumped over for most of the set and looking completely disinterested in his fellow musicians’ stage antics and inevitable success. With his first solo album, Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt (American), Frusciante has made two things clear.
First, it’s evident that the guitar player was largely responsible for the new direction the Chili Peppers took on Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Moving away from mere Funk and more into the realm of Jimi Hendrix (a careerlong ambition of the band’s), the Chili Peppers hit a stride that will be hard for them to continue.
On Frusciante’s debut, he opts for a completely stripped down forum that shows that he was at least half of the soul of his old band. Frusciante lays himself bear with only his vocals (a little strained, but bizarrely soulful) and his brilliant acoustic and electric guitar work. By being able to work on an entire piece himself, it’s clearer that Frusciante was a big factor in the Chili Peppers move toward a more naked, enigmatic approach.
The other thing made distinct by Niandra is that
REVIEWS BY MIKE BREEN
having control over an entire project is where Frusciante feels most at home and where he is most artistically, an asset to the world.
The first half of the record
(Niandra Lades) is composed of tiny sonic sketches with fluttering guitar lines that float from being utterly beautiful and formless to matching his disorientating, bitter sounding vocals.
As a solo artist, Frusciante recalls Syd Barret in that
This Cincinnati quartet plays ’70s-inspired rock with a subtle sense of humor and a knack for strong, memorable melodies. Highlighted by the husky rasp of singer and main songwriter Dan Michel, Nez Peach sounds like the Black Crowes if Paul Westerberg fronted them. Highlights include “The La La Song,” “Fishes” and the bluesy, soulful “Rollin’ Low.” Fans of the current crop of 70s music interpreters (Lenny Kravitz, etc.) take note: Nez Peach is the real thing. By not hiding behind its musical influences, the band creates music that breathes with honesty and compassion. (See the band live Wednesday at the Blue Note or Dec. 29 at Salamone’s.) CityBeat grade: A.
ANTIETAM Rope-A-Dope (Homestead, 150 W. 28th St., No. 501, New York, NY 10001).
With an endearing stumble and swagger, Antietam has a little in common with fellow Lo-Fi-sters Pavement and Yo La Tengo in that the group writes great songs and doesn’t get bogged down with overproduction and over-perfectionism. Driven by singer Tara Key’s slicing guitar and a stompy rhythm section, this NYC-based trio forms undulating clouds of distorted love and joy while retaining a darker edge amid all the smoke. The band alternates from punky drive to noisy experimentation, but the noise-factor never overrides the songs. The emphasis is on the mood and not precision. The lead-off track, “Hands Down,” features an eerie organ part by Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan. Another highlight is the ominous, edgy and searing “Hardly Believe.” CityBeat grade: b.
THE BUDDY RICH BIG BAND Burning For Buddy: A Tribute to the Music of Buddy Rich (Atlantic).
It was Rich’s dying wish to keep his band working, so
Neil Peart (drummer for Rush) set about putting together this tribute to perhaps the greatest drummer of all time, enlisting Rich’s bandmates to play the music. The selections on the disc are the standards that made Rich famous as well as other songs, and Peart compiled some of Rock, Jazz and Pop’s best drummers to record them. The sound is Big Band with an improvisational, Bebop edge. Highlights include the Monk classic “Straight No Chaser,” which features Kenny Aronoff; Bill Bruford’s original composition “Lingo”; and perhaps the percussionally superior track on the album, “The Drum Also Waltzes,” by the amazing Max Roach. An excellent album for die-hard Jazz fans. Even the casual listener will find this a glossy treat. CityBeat grade: A.
HELMET WITH QUICKSAND AND CASPAR BROTZMANN MASSAKER Seen live at Bogart's on Dec. 13.
The night of repetitive guitar Rock. C.B. Massaker opened the night with the most experimental sounds of the evening. Brotzmann’s inventive guitar playing was the focus of the set, backed by a droning, free-form rhythm section. The band recalled a sinister, distorted and metallic King Crimson as Brotzmann shot sonic guitar bursts out and over the heads of the mosh-craving crowd. Quicksand fared a little better with the audience, with its heavy, Fugazi-esque grooves and bouncy, energetic stage presence. The band’s too-short set consisted mostly of songs from its debut, Slip, although band members did throw in some new tunes and closed with their lashing B-side cover of the Smith’s “How Soon Is Now.” Helmet came out and gave the people what they wanted consistent, suburban Altemative/Metal. Despite the redundancy of its recording track record, Helmet still remains a powerful and entertaining band live, ripping through energetic renditions of songs off Meantime and Betty. CityBeat grade: b.
the general feel of his music is that of madness. His lyrics are DaDa-esque, jumbled and often nonsensical. With song titles like “Your Pussy’s Glued to a Building oh Fire” it’s pretty clear that it’s no use trying to decipher meaning from words that probably only mean something to the artist.
The stream-of-conscience outpouring recalls Captain Beefheart in both the music and lyrics, making for an almost
John Frusciante takes a stripped down approach on his solo debut.
hallucinogenic listen. Part 2 of the record (Usually Just a T-Shirt) is one long concept piece that, again, doesn’t have any recognizable rhyme or reason. The sound of T-Shirt doesn’t stray much, but there is more of a Robert Johnson death-march feel to it.
Somber chord progressions and weeping tones along with a little backward guitar and Zappa-like “noodling” make this a fascinating peek inside the mind of one of music’s most intriguing guitarists. There’s no precision here, and this record is by no means perfect (far from it). But as it is, it’s a fascinating testament to Frusciante’s raw, bleeding talent. At one point, he sings, “I’ve got blood on my neck/ from success.” After his initial exit from the Chili Peppers, he may have felt that way. But now he seems to .have found suecess on another level by achieving artistic satisfaction. Let’s hope he sticks around for a while this time. CityBeat grade: B.
THURSDAY, DEC. 22: TWISTOFFS
FRIDAY, DEC. 23: RIVERRUNT SPOOK FLOATERS
FRIDAY, DEC. 30: PSYCHODOTS
Music
LUBE, OIL AND FILTER Rockabilly. Mt. Adams Pavilion. Cover.
MARK COOPER Rock. Club One. No cover.
MILHAUS Rock favorites. Blue Note. Cover.
OPEN JAZZ JAM Jazz. Sonny’s. No cover.
PIGMEAT JARRETT Blues Stow’s. Cover.
SNOWSHOE CRABS Alternative Rock favorites. Salamone’s. Cover.
STILL Alternative. Sudsy Malone’s. Cover.
WEDNESDAY
THE ARK BAND Reggae. Ripleys. Cover.
ARNOLD’S WEDNESDAY NIGHT
GUYS Eclectic. Arnold’s. Cover.
BLUE BIRDS Blues. Tommy’s. Cover.
BLUE WISP BIG BAND Jazz. Blue Wisp. Cover.
FOREHEAD Alternative favorites. Murray’s Pub. Cover.
HIGH SCHOOL BAND CHAL-
LENGE Various. Bogart’s. $6.50.
BRIAN LOVELY AND THE SECRET Alternative Rock. Shady O’Grady’s. Cover.
STACY THE BLUES DOCTOR WITH BLUES U CAN USE Blues. Local 1207. Cover.
NOAH HUNT Acoustic open jam. Local 1207. Cover.
CLARK AND LEE Blues. Burbank’s Sharonville. Cover.
OVERDUE AND THE MENUS Rock favorites. Blue Note Cafe. Cover.
MONDAY
PIGMEAT JARRETT Blues Allyn’s. Cover.
CLARK AND LEE Blues. Burbank’s Sharonville. Cover.
SHINDIG Rock favorites. Murray’s Pub. Cover.
FRED GARY AND DOTTIE WARNER Eclectic. Arnold’s. No cover.
STEVE MCNALLY Country. Coyote’s. $2.
MARC MICHAELSON Rock. Mt. Adams Pavilion. Cover.
SYNAPSE WITH FLY AND DAVE ENRIGHT Alternative. Sudsy Malone’s. Cover.
STAIN Alternative Rock. Sudsy Malone’s. Cover.
TARNISH Alternative. Top Cat’s. Cover.
TUESDAY
TRILOGY Classic Rock. Mt. Adams Pavilion. Cover.
BRIAN LOVELY AND THE SECRET Alternative Rock. Tommy’s. Cover.
WARRANT WITH BROKEN IMAGE Metal. Annie's. $10.
THE WEBSTERS Alternative favorites. Salamone’s. Cover.
CLARK AND LEE Blues. Burbank’s Sharonville. Cover.
THE DIXIE CRUISERS
Dixieland. Arnold’s. No cover.
JOHNNY SCHOTT WITH REBECCA VIE AND MYSTERY WAGON Open mike. Zipper’s. No cover.
MARK COOPER AND KEVIN FOX Rock. Club One. No cover.
OPEN MIKE NIGHT Folk. Canal Street Tavern. Cover.
OVERDUE Rock favorites. Salamone’s. Cover.
SHINDIG Rock favorites. Blue Note Cafe. Cover
national'success and popularity of other Punk Pop bands as the inspiration. The Edge is working in a bassist and should be ready to spray the local clubs in two or three months.
Local Scene
Wyph of fresh air
BY MIKE BREEN
The local Metal band Wyph has an album coming in January called In Light of Reality. The band has had a refreshingly busy and giving holiday season. They played the “Rock for Tots’’ show at Annie’s, which raised $300 for needy kids; helped put up a Christmas tree at the Oasis of Peace/Helping Hands Church in Over-the-Rhine, which also helps needy kids; and Friday will autograph mini-guitars for kids at the church.
New local releases
Etc.
Local singer songwriter Brian Ewing has just released his latest cassette, Nine O’clock Friday Night. Ewing's sound is in the modern Alternative Folk vein, and fans of such folkies as the Indigo Girls, James Taylor, Timbuk 3 and Counting Crows will find solace in his work.
The singer has been performing around town for two years and can be found playing at 8 p.m. Saturdays at the Blue Mountain Coffee Co. (3181 Linwood Ave., Mount Lookout).
Also new, noteworthy, folky and local is Definition, an EP cassette from Plowboy. The band plays Alternative sounds with an acoustic base, and the tape features the crafty songwriting of singer/guitarist Rolland Justice and the fiddling sounds of Tiffani Smitha's Lisa Germano-like viola work. Definition is available at Wizard Records (2629 Vine St., Corryville).
The Afghan Whigs' show Friday at Bogart's (2621 Vine St., Corryville) has been canceled because drummer Steve Earle has left the band. (Refunds are available at the Bogart’s box office.) On a positive note, Alias recording artists Throneberry still will perform that night with Columbus’ Howlin’ Maggie and locals Mr. Universe Cincinnati Punk-Hop band Bu Bu Klan has just finished work on its forthcoming vinyl debut for Monocat 7. The single is due out in mid-January and will feature songs the band recorded at the newly revitalized Ultrasuede studios Other newish local releases that make great stocking stuffers: Stitch and Roundhead's debut 7-inch singles (Violently Hip); the Borgia Popes’ “Valentine” single (Monocat 7); the Goshorn Brothers' debut CD, True Stories (self-released), and Sweet Alice Hoskins’ Cornin' Home to the Blues (self-released).
Send all music-related materials to MIKE BREEN, Cincinnati CityBeat, 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 617, Cincinnati, OH 45202,
ASS PONYS: FROM PAGE 19
The Edge comes back
alleged country or bluegrass influences (there is a subtie twang throughout the songs), the band seems to just be giving into the spontaneous overflow of creativity.
“It just comes out like it sounds,” says Cleaver. And with one listen to Electric, it’s evident that the band members’ collective musical influence and resulting output defies categorization. “Whatever it sounds like, it sounds like,” he says.
The band began playing in Cincinnati in 1989, and the following year Okra Records (distributed by the illfated Rough Trade Records) released the Ponys’ twisted debut, Mr. Superlove.
Another veteran Punk band from the original Cincy Hard Core scene is reforming. The Edge was one of the most popular bands to play the Jockey Club-era local scene, and founders Jim Burke and Victor Garcia Rivera are getting ready to enter the current scene. Although the local Hard Core scene went through a down period lasting several years, it seems to be resurging. Burke cites the recent
After nightmarish label problems, Safehouse Records finally released the stunning sophomore effort, Grim, in ’93, around which time the Ass Ponys recorded what would become, unbeknownst to them, their major label debut.
“(The record) was ready to go, and I think we all thought that if we didn’t (record) it then, it wouldn’t be as good later,” says Erhardt. “It was almost like it had to
Holidays
from Equus Entertainment Group and Queen’s Roan Records
Bringing You...
Shag Simple Aggression
Dock Ellis Groove Spoon
Heavy Weather Uncle Six
Jason Dennie The Verve Pipe Papertown The Zionites
come out and be recorded. And that was all there was to it.”
Adds Cleaver, “We were actually going to put it out ourselves. We were really tired of other labels. Then (A&M) got it, heard it, liked it the way it was and wanted to put it out.”
It was the label’s enthusiasm and support that lured the band, but it was also the fact that A&M was the only label that originally approached the group. After it was noted in industry mags that the group had been signed, other majors began calling the band but wanted the group to rerecord the completed project.
“I guess word got around,” says Cleaver. “And then a few other labels were interested. But they thought of the record more as a demo, whereas A&M never talked about it as being anything other than a finished product. The record was the best it could be for us. It’s the way it’s supposed to sound.”
Quit the day job
With a possible six more records for A&M and with about half a dozen new songs ready to record for the next project, the Ass Ponys are in for the long haul with no looking back. And it sure beats a “real” job.
“I think we’ve had enough time to toil in the everyday world,” explains Morrison. “So we can identify what we like about this and be realistic with what we don’t. Having had time to see what a regular, everyday job is like, it’s a little easier to see this for what it is, and see the positives of it. I don’t think any of us have illusions of a million seller or will be disappointed if it isn’t a hit. We just want to be able to keep making records the way we want to and not have too much intervention.”
artists, and a member of the Neo-Ancestralist group. Through Dec. 31. 1-8 p.m. TuesdayThursday; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekends. 1515 Linn St., West End. 381-0645.
BABA BUDAN’S ESPRESSO BAR Paintings by Jeff Holt. Through Dec. 31. 7 a.m.-ll p.m. Monday-Thursday; 7 a.m.-l a.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-l a.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-l 1 p.m. Sunday. 243 Calhoun St., Clifton. 221-1911.
BASE ART Voices highlights works by 18 Cincinnati art therapists. 12-4 p.m. Saturdays and by appointment. 1311 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 491-3865.
BEAR GRAPHICS AND ILLUSTRATION GALLERY Paintings, prints and sculptures by Jan Knoop show constructions using animal bones and images of imaginary creatures. Also exhibited are illustrations by commemorative stamp designer C.F. Payne. Through Dec. 31. 12-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 105 E. Main St., Mason. 398-2788.
★ JAMAR GALLERY Works by five artists include: photographs by Boris Yusupov titled “New Eyes on Cincinnati;” oils and watercolor/ papercuts by Russian artist Oleg Lazarenko; oils by C. Savchenko; floral watercolors by Crimean artist Elvira Letz; and the cloissonne enamel pieces of Joseph Treppetti. Jamar’s ongoing interest in Russian art is manifested again. Opens Monday; through Jan 31. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. 135 W. Fourth St., Downtown. 333-0022.
WENTWORTH GALLERY
TONI BIRCKHEAD GALLERY Collaborative studio furniture by husband-and-wife team Rob Gartzka and Kathie Johnson, who jointly combine painting and sculptur'e, functional and sculptural “artiture.” Through Dec. 30. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday; Saturday by appointment. 342 W. Fourth St., Downtown..241-0212.
BORDERS CAFE ESPRESSO Illustrations by Cincinnati Post cartoonist Jeff Stahler. Through Dec. 31. 9 a.m.-ll p.m. MondayThursday; 9 a.m.-l 1 p.m. FridaySaturday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday. Borders Books and Music, 11711 Princeton Road, Springdale. 671-5852.
Artists Whitney, Whiting, Mouly and Picot are featured in Matisse-like. Opens Tuesday; through Jan. 2. 10 a.m.-l 0 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 12-7 p.m. Sunday. Kenwood Towne Centre, 7875 Montgomery Road, Kenwood. 791-5023.
CAFE ELITE Recent Quilts and Sculpted Dolls by Cody Goodin. Through Dec. 31.11 a.m.-lO p.m. daily. 364 Ludlow Ave., Clifton. 281-9922.
C.A.G.E. The Cincinnati Artist Group Effort’s annual Holiday Bizarre, now in C.A.G.E.’s new headquarters on Main Street, offers works hand-crafted by local artists. Through Saturday. 128 p.m. Friday; 12-6 p.m. Saturday; 12^1 p.m. Sunday. 1416 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 381-2437.
Galleries & Exhibits
★ ADAMS LANDING ART CENTER A thoughtful reassessment of artwork from each artist’s varied career: paintings by Stewart Goldman, photographs by Thomas Schiff and sculpture by Joel Otterson and Derrick Woodham. Through Dec. 30. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday or by appointment. 900 Adams Crossing, Downtown. 723-0737.
ARTERNATIVE GALLERY
Eclectic gallery of contemporary crafts featuringInjinate Melodies, a collection of minimalist paintings by Alan Hoofrmg. Through Dec. 30. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. MondayWednesday and Friday; 10 a.m.-jB p.m. Saturday; 12-5 p.m. Sunday. 2034 Madison Road, O’Bryonville. 871-2218.
CARNEGIE ARTS CENTER —A Primordia and the Continuum: Watercolors by Karen Shunk in Duveneck Gallery. Heaven and Earth features the oils of Kentuckian Frances Hemmer in McCarthy Gallery. Acrylic paintings by Cincinnatian Mary Linn White in Downstairs Gallery. Beautiful Things Remembered As The Art ofHealing Hands highlights mixed-media works by the physicians of St. Elizabeth Hospital in Downstairs Gallery. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 12-4 p.m. Saturday. 1028 Scott Blvd., Covington. 491-2030. ★ CELIO! Includes paintings by Roger Pelton, Rocky Woods and Lisa Schare. Good work from MORE, PAGE 24
MODERN ROCK ART
NOWON SALE*
Circle proudly offers limited edition lithograph and silk screen rock art prints. Qorn in die 1960's, this uniqueform ofart continues to be an important part of rock t§? roll's history. .National artists include Jiozik .Jdess, cKuhn, Getz and others, Iffady toframe, these amazing color prints make great gifts.
ARTS CONSORTIUM OF CINCINNATI, UNION TERMINAL Art for City Walls is a year-long exhibit focusing on local artists. 1-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 12-5 p.m. weekends. Union Terminal, 1301 Western Ave., Queensgate. 241-7408.
As seen in Time and Rolling Stone magazines!
★ ARTS CONSORTIUM OF CINCINNATI, LINN STREET
Creating an environment within a space, art within art, Thom Phelps shows Afro-American Framed Reflections #i. A solo show from one of Cincinnati’s midcareer
Women of Valor
Too literal interpretations of verses of Aishet HayiV attest to Jewish women's sustaining of the home
REVIEW BY MAUREEN BLOOMFIELD
Blessed art thou, the Lord God, who hast not made me a woman.
Daily prayer quoted from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Menahot 43b "Jews had long sanctified creation by separating its various items, and in this spirit, women were relegated to a separate spherefrom their menfolk, just as they were to keep milk separatefrom meat in their kitchens. In practice, this meant they were regarded as inferior.
Karen Armstrong in A History of God
Aishet Hayil: Women of Valor has its origin in an invitation to 2-9 Israeli and American artists to respond to a verse of “Aishet Hayil,” an acrostic poem from Proverbs (31: 10-3 L) in which King Lemuel, recounting the words of his mother, describes the good wife: “A woman of valor, who can find? Far beyond pearls is her value. ...” In this context, “valor” has as its attendant meanings “virtue” and “accomplishment,” Implicit in the speaker’s skeptical tone (who can find?) is the complicated history of Jewish attitudes toward women.
When a religious Jew gets up in the morning, he thanks God he wasn’t born a gentile, a slave, or a woman, primarily because women were not obligated to perform daily prayers, worship in the synagogue, or study the Torah. Thus, the joys of invoking, praising, and disputing God were denied them. Enjoined to maintain the home’s purity by observing the laws regulating diet and sex (e.g., seclusion during menstruation and seven days after, followed by the ritual bath), women were required to heed only two other commandments, both concerning ceremonies for the Sabbath: the preparation of the Hallah dough and the lighting of the candles.
Liberated from the religious obligations to study and to pray, women were free to work. In The Jewish Woman In Contemporary Society, Adrienne Baker writes, “Jewish women of the shetl and ghetto and of the early immigrant period supported their Talmudstudying men, reared children, ran the family business, trafficked in the hostile gentile world, and in every practical and active (italics mine) way made possible the economic and cultural survival of the Jews.”
Thus, it’s not surprising that these artists respond to the text of “Aishet Hayil” in a literal, emphatically practical way. The Talmudic spirit of inquiry and exegesis is almost entirely absent from this show; indeed, the majority of the artists take the verses at face value. For example, Martin and Joan Benjamin-Farren Sharon choose not to comment on Verse 9 (“She discerns her
enterprise is good so her lamp is not snuffed out by night.”) but to exemplify it with an actual lamp. Similarly, the artwork accompanying Verse 11 (“She spreads out her palm to the poor and extends her hand to the destitute.”) is a woven purse (Laurie Gross’ “Tyedakah Pocket”).
This one-to-one correspondence is especially dispiriting when Judith Cohen Margolis responds to Verse 10 (in praise of the good wife’s weaving) with a relentlessly straightforward drawing of hands (“The Works of Our Hands”). Missing from this literal rendering is any indication of the legacy that so powerfully informs Cynthia Ozick’s novella, The Shawl, in which Corrine Strauss’ “Arbor: Heaven and Earth” recalls the marriage canopy.
a survivor of the Shoah replaces the spirit and the story of her dead child with the weaving that continues to sustain life because it sustains memory.
That these works evince neither the lyricism nor the complexity of Ozick’s story is troubling, especially since the show’s avowed premise was to demonstrate “Aishet Hayil’s” “significance and relevance to the post-war, post-feminist Jewish woman.” In effect, these works were commissioned to overcome the suspicion that the woman and the world “Aishet Hayil” describes are alike anachronistic. With this agenda, the show perhaps could have reconciled terms that seem, to many secular Jews, mutually exclusive: feminism and faith, activism and piety.
While sidestepping these larger issues the show evokes the generous mother who steadfastly places her family’s needs before her own and who deftly arranges her life accordingly. As tributes, many of these works have undeniable poignancy. Sparely designed Hallah dishes, beautifully woven wedding garments, a humorous ceramic vessel (Susan Garson’s “Box of Nourishment”) and a superbly crafted inlaid jewelry box (Lorelei and Alex Gruss) attest to the other, more enduring experience of Jewish women: Though excluded from the rabbinical ranks until 1972 when, significantly, Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College ordained Sally Priesand, women were and are honored by their communities and loved by their husbands.
In contrast to Roman Catholicism’s gothic attitudes toward sex, Judaism considers sexual pleasure (within a procreative marriage) a blessing a fact which lightens the yoke of marriage and indeed confers on the woman a measure of autonomy and power. The painted silk arras that Corrine Strauss has suspended from the ceiling (“Arbor: Heaven and Earth”) alludes to the marriage
CONTINUES ON PAGE 25
emerging regional talent.
11 a.m.-7 p.m. WednesdaySaturday. 1341 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 352-0090.
CHIDLAW GALLERY, ART ACADEMY OF CINCINNATI The students, faculty and alumni of the Art Academy bring together artwork, crafts and unusual objects in The Showflake Extravaganza for show and sale. Through Thursday. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday. Art Academy of Cincinnati, Eden Park. 562-8777.
CINCINNATI ART CLUB Club members are presenting work at the Golden Lamb restaurant in Lebanon, 27 S. Broadway. Through Dec. 31. 621-8373.
CINCINNATI ART GALLERIES
Panorama of Cincinnati IX spotlights more than 70 works by deceased regional artists such as Robert Duncanson, Edward Potthast, Elizabeth Nourse, Joseph Sharp and Henry Mosler, and living Cincinnatians Cole
Carothers, Michael Scott, Tom Bacher and Margot Gotoff. Through Dec. 31. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. 635 Main St., Downtown. 381-2128.
CIRCLE CD'S & RECORDS
Holiday exhibition of limited-edition silkscreen prints and Rock concert posters by artists such as Derek Hess, Frank Kozik, Linsey Kuhn, M. Getz, J. Hollans and Uncle Charlie. Through Jan. 16.
CIVIC GARDEN CENTER OF GREATER CINCINNATI Laura Clevenger exhibits new works through Tuesday. 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Tuesday-Friday; 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
Saturday. 2715 Reading Road, MORE, PAGE 26
Viewing the Land in Era of Science
REVIEW BY
JONATHAN Z. KAMHOLTZ
Whether you are a hard-edged mapmaker by taste or converse with the spirit of the place, landscape is supposed to be the art that puts you in your place. Seven artists’ works have been shoehorned into the jewelbox space of Over-the-Rhine’s in situ Gallery to suggest, with works both provocative and lush, that we experience landscape in a very second-hand way.
Our natural vision is veiled by many intermediaries: the wind and the weather, a blizzard of words, natural science and art itself Perhaps all artists’ landscapes are ultimately made for museums. But the show isn’t glum or cynical to have discovered that our encounters with nature may be partial or at many removes. Our visual experience still has immediacy and depth, in both formal and emotional terms.
Laurie Rousseau makes stark black and white shadow boxes from illustrations of plants’ root systems. The networks of lines (are they cascading down or gathering strength and ascending?) are as serpentine as the hair of a baroque maiden. They illustrate, of course, a landscape that is normally invisible. The roots themselves are part of nature’s dirty little secrets. But these are roots with science and taxonomy barely washed off them. They are both evocative and bookish.
Joan Nelson finds nature in the tropical and overripe fecundity that lurks in the dark
CINCINNATI
corners of old-master paintings. Her untitled lithographs pay homage to what nature meant to other artists’ eyes. But her appropriations are neither smug nor ironic. They love the ways that densely ribbed leaves and plumy tendrils punctuate the open space of a preposterously bright, painted sky. They celebrate the wisdom of our layered knowledge of nature.
Katleen Sterck and Terry Rozo show large photo enlargements of tiny details of Polaroids of figures outdoors. Everything is an epic blur. Each lens, each film surface, adds a distortion and makes its mark. The.photographs capture the networks of rivulets in which pigment is bound to developer, and the multiply-enlarged figures are reduced (or enlarged) into mirages.
These are the only works in the show to feature humans in the landscape, and they may be a bit heavy-handed in they way they pose the question of where exactly we fit in. But the work in Inside/Outside is scarcely impersonal. Wade Hoeffer’s monotypes are both second-hand and visionary. They connect Degas’ plein-air monotypes with the steamy palette of Corot. On the one hand, we see a landscape as a Barbizon painter might have. On the other hand, we find ourselves looking into a scorching light from nature or from the history of painting that has scrubbed the sky clean of details and stands ready to scrub our eyes next. And Ellen Phelan’s tiny elegant monotypes refresh the question of how a single brush stroke can imitate a cloud. Each touch of the artist’s hand is
potentially precious, creating, like the God of Genesis, a world. But Phelan’s worlds have not yet fully evolved; the blurring veil seems as important as form, causing us to savor every color.
This is not dry stuff, though it’s not as engaged as the materials from X-Art Foundation might suggest. Literally a trunk of mostly anonymous writings spilled out on a table, “Blast Box #3” is sometimes on target (“Problems of accumulating knowledge”; “definitions fragment, boundaries dissolve”) and sometimes seems like intellectual chatter. But the other works in the show are not out of control or self-congratulatory.
And they are not afraid to be sensual. Phelan, Hoeffer, Sterck and Rozo lavish great attention to their surfaces, as does Suzanne Caporael in her ravishing monumental drypoints of flowers. Though titled “Dissection: Morning Glory,” the spirit of analytical science stands no chance against the elegant lines and luminosity that create a blossom partly as architectural as an Art Deco lampshade and partly as mythic as a cornucopia.
The Romantics were skeptical about the value of our culture’s steady accumulation of natural knowledge. They feared it killed the spirit. This tightly curated show (by Paul Amsbary) is skeptical that we still have any natural knowledge left and that very lack may be the way to preserve and celebrate the spirit. At the end of the show, you are unlikely to feel closer to nature. But you might see your own eyes with new eyes. And you’ll have enjoyed rediscovering that our wealth of second-hand experience with our world can be so rich.
INSIDE/OUTSIDE continues through Jan. 21 at in situ Gallery.
ORCHESTRA
JESUS LOPEZCOBOS-MUSIC DIRECTOR Celebrating 100 Years of Sensational Music
>njoy Jesus Lopez-Cobos conducting tbe Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in a concert including...
Bernstein: Overture to Candide
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
Copland: Appalachian Spring
Jolia Strauss, Jr.: Overture to Die Fledermaus, Care Free Polka, On the Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz and others
Guest artists include pianist Michael Chertock and members of the Cincinnati Ballet, Peter Anastos, Artistic Director
jAer the concert, if you wish, you can he whisked away to the ballroom for dinner and dancing in a setting which unites the past and the future. Usher in the New Year and celebrate the Orchestra’s 100th Anniversary with a champagne toast.
Saturday, December 31, 1994, 7:30 p.m. You may purchase tickets for the concert and the hall, or the concert only.
Sponsored by Mercantile Stores Company, Inc. and the Frieda Schwenkmeyer Charitable Trust
AISHET HAYIL: FROM PAGE 23
canopy while it comments on Verse 7: “She envisions a field and buys it. From the fruit of her handiwork she plants a vineyard.” As a portal that marks the initiation, as a ladder that, like Jacob’s, spans heaven and earth, Arbor alludes to the mehizah (the screen that separates men from women in Orthodox services) but affirms the solidarity and strength derived from such seclusion. The folds of suspended silk, moving in response to the viewer’s presence, link the seemingly divisive ideas of fertility and transcendence. By extension, they imagistically connect other dichotomies: the union of a woman and a man, for instance.
Equally interesting is Elaine Perlon’s pair of serpentine hats (one for the wife and one for the husband) that speak to Verse 12: “She fears not snow, for her entire household is clothed in scarlet wool.” Eileen Eichel’s silk robe and outer tunic (responding to Verse 16, “Strength and majesty are her raiment. ...”) similarly envision the woman of valor in her public persona as one who makes and controls money and who earns, as a consequence, the community’s praise.
Here the objects that beautify and the clothes that adorn speak more eloquently than the actual images of women. Naomi Sorel’s soft sculpture/tableau, in which a doll-like effigy is propped up on tapestries, is darkly comic in effect, though the joke doesn’t extend beyond its initial comment on the ambiguity between the seller and the sold. With a similar impulse, Arona Reiner examines Verse 22 (“Give her but the fruits of her own hand and let her be praised in the gates by her own deeds.”) with a cut-out sculpture (oil, collage, plastic) whose title overturns the daily benediction, “Blessed is He who hast made me a woman.” Each side of this intentionally naif piece depicts a woman and a tree: the dark, demonic Lilith is mirrored by the fecund Eve. Collaged on the trees are fragments of popular songs and of biblical verses, most notably from Genesis: “Unto the woman he said in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children and thy husband shall rule over thee.” Again the serious issues are mockingly intoned without being illumined.
In general then, these images of women fail to convince, perhaps in part because they exist without prototype. When parents bless their daughters at the Sabbath seder, they invoke Sarah, Leah, Rachel, etc., in words only; the Mosaic expostulation against graven idols is in effect still. While equally conflicted in its attitudes toward women, the Roman Catholic system nonetheless perpetuates an monographic tradition that proffers images of Mary, Elizabeth, Anne, Magdalen, et al. By confirming the spirituality of some women, these images enhance the value of all women, because as historian Peter Brown so beautifully put it, “The icon has the validity of a realized dream.”
Cut off from this monographic tradition, the Jewish artist who chooses to address spiritual realities while working with the figure is forced to break new ground. Aishet Hayil never fully rises to that challenge, although as a succession of heartfelt tributes, it is deeply affecting. (One is tempted, however, to imagine an alternate show of Cincinnati artists such as Diane Fishbein, Andrea Knarr, Miriam Karp, Merle Rosen, Sandy Rosen and Judy Wacksman.)
The viewer who starts his/her tour of the Skirball Museum on the second floor has to mount a flight of stairs to reach Aishet Hayil Stenciled on the walls to her right are names of some of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The indubitable reality of those names is such that one comes to this exhibition in a heightened state of emotion. Whatever its failings, Aishet Hayil attests to the fact that Jewish women heroically sustained (and continue to sustain) the idea/ideal of a home that asserts the reality of God’s presence, even when He has turned away. That was and is their valor, and that is the truth to which this show bears witness.
UtterKiosk
Music Lessons
Ex-Defense official offers otherwise intelligent novices a painless way to explore classical music
Onstage
BY PEGGY SCHMIDT
Some people spend a lifetime avoiding classical music. They’re sure that if they expressed the slightest interest in it, someone would corner them at a party and force them to discuss the comparative merits of early Callas and Sutherland, the effects of patronage on music of the Baroque or the justification for authentic instrument performances.
It would mean if you go to the symphony, you would feel obligated to have an opinion or, worse yet, an insight about what you heard. That seems overwhelming, even if you do sit there before the concert poring over the program notes like you’re cramming for an exam. You think: I’m an intelligent person; I’m making a name for myself in my career; I learned on-the-job parenting; I try to keep up with the tax-law changes, City Council politics and VCR programming so why does classical music seem so difficult to deal with? When I accidentally hear some classical music, why do I sometimes notice that, darn it, I actually like it?
Phil Goulding was once in your shoes, and he found answers. After careers as a Washington newspaper reporter, assistant secretary of Defense (under Robert McNamara) and petroleum-industry executive, he realized that classical music held some small interest for him, but he knew nothing about it.
So Goulding wrote a book.
In early retirement with time on his hands, Goulding went to record stores in the D.C. area and asked for suggestions (beyond Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, which he had heard of) for starting his own CD collection. He tried the library and looked for books with titles like, as he says, “Classical Music for Dummies Like Me.”
He listened to the local classical radio station, but no one talked about the music. The program guide listed too many composers he never heard of. Nothing helped. So in typical newspaper-sleuth style, he started doing research. He filled reams of legal pads with notes about composers’ lives, music history and famous works. At the time none of it was geared to writing a book, only to satisfy his own curiosity. Goulding’s enthusiasm for his topic was growing. The book, which ultimately developed six years later, ended up on Ballantine’s Top Ten National Bestsellers list and has already been translated into Swedish and Chinese.
Now he has been asked to write a book about opera. Classical Music: The 150 Greatest Composers & Their 1,000 Greatest Works (Ballantine Books, $22.50) is a readable guide for the intelligent person who just never happened to have any interest in classical music until maybe now. Goulding assumes the reader is ignorant about the music but otherwise wefl-versed
about life on Earth.
“Most books on sports are written for people who follow sports,” he says. “You don’t expect to find in a sports book a section titled ‘This is a Linebacker.’ But some people want to know that. The same is true for most music books and columns by music critics.”
The Classical Top 20 or So
Purchasing one of Phil Goulding’s top recommended classical works could be the answer if you’re stumped for that last-minute Christmas gift, or if you’re already trying to dream up a painless New Year’s resolution. If you’re starting out from ground zero Goulding suggests you go for the warhorses. (They may not be the best works of a' given composer, but they became famous for a reason.)
BACH: Brandenburg Concertos; Toccata & Fugue in d minor (organ).
MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 40 and 41; Piano Concertos Nos. 20, 21 and 23.
BEETHOVEN: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 9.
HAYDN: Symphonies Nos. 94 and 104; Trumpet Concerto in E-flat.
SCHUBERT: Unfinished Symphony; Trout Quintet.
HANDEL: Water Music; Messiah.
TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Concertos; Violin Concerto; Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6.
FRANCK: Violin Sonata (a favorite of Goulding).
Goulding decided to write a book for non-experts.
The author throws caution to the wind and proposes a “Master List” of the 50 best composers, dividing them into “Immortals,” “Demigods,” “Composers of Genius” and “Artists of a High Order.” Experts might quibble with the placing of Monteverdi as No. 34 or Mendelssohn as No. 11, for instance, but the rankings are nevertheless helpful to the uninitiated. The writeups on individual composers (which include entertaining sidebars) offer a look at their lives as well as a “Starter Kit” of their best, or at least best-known, works. If you hear the listed pieces by Bach, for example, and decide you like him, you can go back to the book for 25 more selections in Bach’s “Master Collection.”
There’s background information on the symphony orchestra, musical terminology and historical periods. It also includes comments composers have made about one another (often humorous and usually negative).
As his research for the book progressed, Goulding forced himself to listen to those pesky 20th century composers Stravinsky, Bartok, Janacek and others. He kept listening until the strange sounds didn’t sound so strange anymore, and he discovered he really liked some modern music. But, ultimately, the Mozart piano concertos ended up being his all-time favorites.
AISHET HAYIL: WOMEN OF VALOR is at the Skirball Museum through Feb. 25.
Avondale. 221-0981.
CLOSSON’S GALLERY DOWNTOWN Continuing exhibition of maritime paintings and prints by Cincinnati favorite John Stobart. Paintings From Our Past includes oils on canvas by Frank McElwain. Closson’s commemorates artist John Ruthven’s 30-year anniversary with a special print, “Cardinals on the Ohio.” All through Dec. 31. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. weekdays; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; 12-5 p.m. Sunday. 401 Race St., Downtown. 762-5510.
CLOSSON’S GALLERY KENWOOD Continuing exhibition of maritime paintings and prints by Cincinnati favorite John Stobart through Dec. 31. Wildlife oils and prints by John Ruthven through Dec. 30. Reflective Moments spotlights paintings by Adeline Hoagland. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 7866 Montgomery Road, Kenwood. 891-5531.
COLLECTOR BOOK AND PRINT
GALLERY Toys and. Carousels features paintings by William Malczan and hand-crafted wood toys by Takashi Kariya. Through Jan. 3. 3-6 p.m. WednesdaySaturday; 1-5 p.m. Sunday. 1801 Chase Ave., Northside. 542-6600.
SHARON COOK GALLERY Spotlights oils on canvas, pastels on paper, nude wrestlers and mixed American tropical pieces by Key West, Fla., artist Scott Jones. Through Dec. 31. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 1118 Pendleton, Over-the-Rhine. 579-8111.
FITTON CENTER FOR CREATIVE ARTS Sculptures by Alan LeQuire and paintings by Louise LeQuire in the gallery. Painted silk angels by Margaret Agner in the first-floor lobby. Through Friday. Center closed for the holidays through Jan. 2. 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday; 9 a.m.-noon Saturday. 101 S. Monument Ave., Hamilton. 863-8873.
GALLERY AT WELLAGE & BUX-
TON Photographs by Jon .Yamashiro through Jan. 5. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. 1431 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 241-9127.
GALLERY 48 New works by Cindy Matyi investigate images rooted in Celtic heritage and impressionist paintings. Through Jan. 3. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. 1223 Central Parkway, Over-the-Rhine. 381-4033.
GALLERY 99 Features works by 20 gallery members through
Dec. 31. 12-6 p.m. Thursday and Sunday; 12-9 p.m. FridaySaturday. 1101 St. Gregory St., Mount Adams. 651-1441.
★ GOLDEN RAM GALLERY Features antique fishing equipment; sounds interesting. Through Jan. 10. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. 6810 Miami Ave., Madeira. 271-8000.
HARROGATE Works exhibited are mostly of maritime themes including 19th and 20th century paintings, ship models, and artifacts. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. MondaySaturday. 3075 Madison Road, Oakley. 321-6020.
HEBREW UNION COLLEGE SKIRBALL MUSEUM —Aishet Hayil: Woman of Valor features paintings, textiles and sculptures. Through Feb. 25. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 2-5 p.m. Sunday. 3101 Clifton Ave., Clifton. 221-1875.
★ HEIKE PICKETT GALLERY A one-person show by Steve Armstrong featuring carved and painted wooden pieces with wooden gear mechanisms; one of the strongest faux naif carvers, combined with one of the oldest and most prestigious Kentucky folk art groups. Concurrent invitational group show features 27 artists. All through Jan. 15. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 522 W. Short St., Lexington, Ky. 606-233-1263.
MARTA HEWETT GALLERY
Solo show by Salvatore Ventura featuring large-format architectural watercolors. Through Jan. 15. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 12-5 p.m. Saturday. 1209 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 421-7883.
★ IN SITU Inside/Outside is a group exhibition featuring landscape multiples by national and regional artists Laurie Rousseau, Suzanne Caporael, Joan Nelson, Wade Hoefer, Ellen Phalen, Sterck/Rozo and the X-Art Foundation. Known for its exquisite installations, in situ presents landscape works from fresh, well-conceived perspectives. Through Jan. 21. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 1435 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 651^613.
INNER SPACE DESIGN Contemporary Works on Paper includes the works of Kelly, Dine, Motherwell, Rauchenberg, Indiana and Lichtenstein. Through Dec. 31. Also on display are one-of-akind necklaces by New York jewelry designer Nancie Taphorn. Through Feb. 28. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 2128 Madison Road, O’Bryonville. 533-0300.
JAMAR GALLERY Quietudes features realist paintings by
Cincinnatian Blair Beavers through Friday. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. 135 W. Fourth St., Downtown. 333-0022.
KALDI’S COFFEE HOUSE & BOOKSTORE Sculptures by Brian Huff through Dec. 31. 7 a.m.-l a.m. Monday-Thursday; 7 a.m.-2:30 a.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-2:30 a.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.-midnight Sunday. 1202 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 241-3070.
KZF GALLERY Paintings and drawings by Ken Landon Buck; sculpture by Barbara Beatrice; paintings and prints by B. B. Hall. Curated by Steven V. Clark. Through March. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. 655 Eden Park Drive, Walnut Hills. 621-6211.
LOUISVILLE VISUAL ART ASSOCIATION Presents Mainz Art: Paperworks through Dec. 31. 3005 Upper River Road, Louisville. 502-896-2146.
★ LEFTHANDED MOON Black and white prints and photographs transferred to stones and tiles by Robert Giesler and landscapes by Susan Naylor; who is one of Cincinnati’s “artist’s artists”; her work’s versatility is always a surprise. Both run through Dec. 31. 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. MondaySaturday. Tarot readers available 12—3 p.m. every Saturday. 48 E. Court St., Downtown. 784-1166.
MACHINE SHOP GALLERY Closed for the holidays. Will re-open Jan. 9 with Chairs an exhibition by University of Cincinnati industrial design students. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. TuesdaySaturday. 100 E. Central Parkway, Over-the-Rhine. 556-1928.
MALTON GALLERY —Artistic
Park explores diversity in media and process using animal imagery with works by Anne Embree, Kendahl Jan Jubb, Martha Wolf and Bill Reid. Through Saturday. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 2709 Observatory Ave., Hyde Park. 321-8614.
★ MASON FINE ART GALLERY
A well-curated exhibition showcasing mostly regional talent and featuring silverpoints, watercolors and egg tempera paintings by Cincinnatians Ken Landen Buck and Jan Brown Checco and New Yorkers Irwin Greenberg and Kenney Mencher. Buck’s work is a must-see. Through Jan. 15. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 6-9 p.m. Wednesday. 108 W. Main St., Mason. 398-2625.
MILLER GALLERY Objects of Desire III features eclectic ceramic teapots, decoupage by Cincinnatian Alice Balterman and crystal sculptures by Christopher Reis and Gary Fitzgerald. Native Americans and the West features
the works of W. Steve Selzer, Robert DeLeon and Hubert Wackermann. All through Dec. 31. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 2715 Erie Ave., Hyde Park. 871-4420.
MULLANE’S PARKSIDE CAFE First watercolor exhibition from Art Academy star alum Heinz Pradac. Through Dec. 30.11:30 a.m.-l0 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-l 1 p.m. Friday; 5-11 p.m. Saturday. 723 Race St., Downtown. 381->1331.
NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY Student show. 9 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays; 1-5 p.m. weekends. Fine Arts Building, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights. 572-5148.
★ OLMES GALLERY Lynda Riddle’s explosive career continues on the mark, and her new works are currently on display. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 3515 Roundbottom Road, Newtown. 271-4004.
★ ONE SHOT GALLERY Presents new works by Cincinnati artist Mils, with vintage political cartoons by fellow Cincinnatian Claude Shafer. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays; weekends by appointment. 658 Main St., Downtown. 72J-1193.
ONLY ARTISTS —For the Holidays... From the Hand and the Heart explores the traditions of folk art with a unique selection of hand-carved ornaments, Santas, angels, Bybee pottery and Joe De Luco furniture. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 1315 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 241-6672.
★ LAURA PAUL GALLERY An elegant mix of work in a classy gallery setting, The Art of Giving... The Giving ofArt includes original works by Enrico Embroli and Bruce Hall, sculpture by Charles Herndon and jewelry by Angela Cummings. Through Jan. 30. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. MondaySaturday. 49 E. Fourth St., Dixie Terminal, Downtown. 651-5882.
★ GRETA PETERSON GALERIE Swedish folk art is on view in SODays of Christmas which also includes new paintings, textiles and decorative art. The gallery continues its strong tradition in eclectic international exhibitions. 11 a.m.^4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 7696 Camargo Road, Madeira. 561-6785.
★ RAYMOND GALLERY First-ever prints by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jim Borgman of The Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati Post cartoonist Jeff Stahler; a coming art form internationalized by Art Spiegelman. Through Dec. 31. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday and Wednesday. 2700 Erie Ave., Hyde Park. 871-7373.
CARL SOLWAY GALLERY —Alan Rath: Recent Sculpture highlights new works by the San Franciscoarea artist. Through Dec. 31. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; Saturday by appointment. 424 Findlay St., West End. 621-0069.
★ STUDIO 701 Art From the Heart showcases large and small work on canvas and paper by M. Katherine Hurley, winner of a recent Artist’s magazine award. A good look at conservative landscape work. Studio 701 of the Pendleton Art Center, 1310 Pendleton St., Over-the-Rhine. 241^123.
SUB.GRESSIVE Works by Peter Huttinger, Vicki Mansoor and Marion Wilson. Organized in conjunction with in situ gallery. Through Dec. 24. By appointment only. 1412 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 651-4613.
TOON ART GALLERIES —Disney Dimensions highlights limited-edition and one-of-a-kind three-dimensional pieces from raku pottery to collector ilat?s and jewelry. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. By appointment Monday. 21 E. Fifth St., Westin Hotel, Downtown. 651-3500.
UC CLERMONT COLLEGE ART GALLERY Student exhibit runs through Dec. 31. 4200 Clermont College Drive, Batavia. 732-5224.
★ UC MEDICAL SCIENCE LIBRARY Paper, Scissors, Rock features construction, watercolor, pastel and sculpture by Jerome dander and Diane 'Szczepaniak. A thoughtful look at the “new” abstraction and wall sculptures (constructions). Through Jan. 13. 231 Bethesda Ave., Clifton. 558-5627.
PATRICIA WEINER GALLERY The holiday exhibit features recent acquisitions of paintings by European and American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Through Jan. 6. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday. 9352 Main St., Montgomery. 791-7717.
WENTWORTH GALLERY Originals spotlights Soler, Parsons, Rosell, Shao, Tarkay, Shue and Anderson through Monday. 10 a.m.-l 0 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 12-7 p.m. Sunday. Kenwood Towne Centre, 7875 Montgomery Road, Kenwood. 791-5023.
WOMEN’S ART CLUB OF CINCINNATI Group show by members through Jan. 2. Parisian Gallery, Forest Fair Mall, 1047 Forest Fair Drive, Fairfield. 922-3585.
YWCA WOMEN’S ART GALLERY Celebrate! features watercolors by Jane McCullock and an exhibition by members of the Art Bank cooperative. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. 898 Walnut St., Downtown. 241-7090.
XAVIER UNIVERSITY GALLERY A mixed media exhibition by Xavier art students. Through Jan. 13. 12-4 p.m. Monday-Friday. 3800 Victory Parkway, Evanston. 745-3811.
★ 840 GALLERY Works by Dana Saulnier. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. D.A.A.P. Building, University of Cincinnati, Clifton. 556-2962.
Museums
★ CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM New Art 3 is a photo-based installation investigating memory and loss by Christian Boltanski, a cutting-edge contemporary international artist. This brilliant, interactive installation utilizes light as metaphor, as well as being beautifully installed and executed. Through Jan. 26. Manet to Toulouse Lautrec: French Impressionists to PostImpressionist Prints and Drawings proves that all great art is based upon drawing. Through March 5. Also, Divine Intervention is a modern-day memorial to AIDS vietim Richard Allen Shiffler by artist Joel Otterson; through Jan. 1. Acquisitions of Costume and Textiles, 1974-1994 are on display through Jan. 29.... Edward Potthast 1857-1927 features eight paintings by the native Cincinnatian; through March 5. Richard Bitting: Nine Summer Haiku is a suite of nine color lithographs with music and text transformed into designs; through April 9. ...Air in Motion, Heart in Motion includes 14 prints by Shinoda Toko, trained in calligraphy but best known for her paintings; through May 14. The Questfor Quality highlights museum acquisitions from the 20-year directorship of recently retired Millard F. Rogers.
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. $5 adults; $4 students and seniors; children free; free to all on Saturdays. Eden Park. 721-5204. ★ CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER Horizons: The Art of Healing includes paintings from psychologically or physically abused children utilizing art-as-therapy for healing. Contextualized in a gallery/museum setting, the artwork plays off other “folk” and “outsider” art. Through Jan. 8.... Light Into Art features light-as-sculpture, including virtual reality, contextualizing computerized virtual reality with well-chosen, eclectic group of
a pantomime is a great family outing that allows for audience participation. Through Dec. 31. 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Tuesday; 2 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m. Wednesday. $20 adults; $15 students and seniors. You can eat lunch in the enchanted forest and receive a Snow White coloring book and souvenir photo as part of ETC’s Panto Picnic at 1 p.m. Wednesday. $10 children; $5 adults. 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine. 421-3555.
FOREST VIEW GARDENS Sit down to a three-hour meal brought to you by singers-servers who perform Festival of Carols. Through Dec. 30 (closed Saturday and Sunday). Reservations required. 4508 North Bend Road, Monfort Heights. 661-6434.
MIAMI VALLEY DINNER THEATRE Presents the musical revue Memories ofChristmas through Dec. 31 (closed Sunday). $26.95-34.95. Route 73, Springboro. 1-746^4554.
VILLAGE PUPPET THEATRE Presents The Elves and the Shoemaker. 4:30 and 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Through Friday. 606 Main St., Covington. 291-5566.
Dance
★ CINCINNATI BALLET The long-running seasonal favorite, Tchaikovski’s Nutcracker continues through Dec. 27. 2 and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday. $8-36. Music Hall, 1241 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine. 749-4949.
Comedy
★ GO BANANAS One of Cincinnati’s funniest native human beings, Chip Chinery (a.k.a The Cheeseman), headlines with Mary Beth Murphy as the featured act through Friday. Dennis Piper headlines with John McClellon as the featured act beginning Wednesday. 8:30 and 10:45 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. 8410 Market Place, Montgomery. 984-9288.
RAY COMBS CINCINNATI COMEDY CONNECTION Boasts a new MC, Todd Lynn, who hails from the Queen City and has appeared on DefComedy Jam. Headliner is Jeff Wayne through Saturday.
8 p.m. Thursday and Sunday; 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. Friday. Over 21. $6.50 weekdays; $8.50 weekends. Carew Tower, 441 Vine St., Downtown. 241-8088. AMERICAN MUSEUM OF BREWING HISTORY AND ARTS Houses the largest display of brewing and beer artifacts in the world. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; 10 a.m.-5
UtterKiosk
PAGE 28
Passing the Syringe
Craig Holden'sfirst novelfollows in the with junkie surgeon-tumed-detective
INTERVIEW BY BILLIE J EYES
When James Ellroy recommends a novel, I’ll read it. After all, this is the guy who wrote The Black Dahlia. So when I received a (photocopied) letter from the maestro himself informing me that Craig Holden’s The River Sorrow was a “boss thriller,” I picked it up immediately. I was not disappointed.
The River Sorrow (Delacorte Press, $21.95) is so good that it is hard to believe it’s a debut novel. Its hard, driving prose hooks you right away, and once you get into it, God help anyone who disturbs you.
The story revolves around Dr. Adrian Lancaster, a surgeon who is thrust sharply into his past when he is confronted with a string of drug-related murders. The drug in question is a lethal synthetic heroin called Fang, a drug that hasn’t been around since the time Lancaster was a heroin addict himself.
“I didn’t choose him with the flaw in the beginning,” says Holden. “At the very beginning, I just decided to write about a doctor. And it didn’t really work. It didn’t really go anywhere until I began thinking about this doctor as a character.”
If it seems unbelievable that a doctor could be a heroin addict, think again. Junkies come in all shapes and sizes. It’s just a lot easier to think of them as down-and-out losers.
“There was a round of heroin deaths in New York about six months ago,” says Holden, “It was real heroin, but it was not cut down. They did a profile of some of the people that died. One of them was a lawyer, one of them was a chef in a good restaurant, one of them was a chauffeur. It was amazing how established these people were.”
Holden’s portrayal of Lancaster is remarkably sympathetic. Especially in these times of knee-jerk reactionism against the drug culture.
“I’m taking something that most people find very distasteful and showing it to them in a real way. It’s like any sort of prejudice. You’re only prejudiced against the category, you’re never prejudiced against the individual.”
Holden has had first-hand experience with junkies, when he worked as a lab tech at a “ghetto medical center in Toledo.”
“I drew blood from a lot ofjunkies. And it’s a strange thing because their veins are totally shot. It’s all scar tissue. You think you feel a vein, but then you put in a needle and nothing comes out. But they’ll save you spots.
“They’ll say, ‘Right here is the only place.’ And in the beginning you don’t believe them. And they don’t care how many times you stick them because the needles mean nothing to them. They’ll watch you and they’ll finally say, ‘Now try it where I said.’
Also on the track of this synthetic heroin is detective Frank Brandon, an iconoclastic figure with problems of
tracks ofSherlock Holmes
his own, problems that he associates with Lancaster, the surgeon who was there the night his daughter died and his wife suffered brain damage after a drug addict crashed into their car.
Known as a recovering addict, Lancaster soon becomes the prime suspect in these murders and as Sherlock Holmes, junkie detective, would say, “The game is afoot.”
Holden did not start out to write suspense novels.
“I have an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. It was a very good training ground, but it was obviously oriented around literary fiction.”
He changed his mind after reading
Inspired by the writing in Gorky Park, Craig Holden decided to take the literary plunge with his first novel, a thriller called The River Sorrow.
Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park:
“Right when I got out of graduate school, I was living with my grandparents and they had this copy of Gorky Park. It just amazed me because I thought is was an incredibly well-written book with a very complex study. And yet, at the same time, it’s an incredible thriller.
“So I went to New York the next year, for about a year, and began to see how the business worked, and realized that I wanted to write a book that could sell.”
He showed the first draft to Ellroy, who made some suggestions for future drafts. They had met while Holden was working as a contract-rights manager at Nat Sobel and Judith Weber.
“I was representing him for film rights, and he was one of our clients. He found out that I was writing a book and said, ‘When it’s done, let me see it.’ I showed it to several people but most of them didn’t respond. They knew it wasn’t very good, but they didn’t know what to say about it. But Ellroy was a novelist, and that’s what he knew.”
The River Sorrow is selling very well in the independent bookstores but hasn’t yet struck it big at the chains. Holden is patient.
“The point, I think, is to get the career launched, to get the book out there and start building a readership and to follow it up with another strong book.”
He doesn’t say much about his second novel, which he hopes to finish by spring.
BB RIVERBOATS Lunch, dinner, sightseeing, Nutcracker cruises with area high school choirs available. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Cruises depart from BB Riverboats base at Covington Landing. $4.50-$27.95. 261-8500.
BEHRINGER-CRAWFORD MUSE-
UM Housed within the historic Devou family home, it is the only museum of Northern Kentucky natural and cultural heritage. Holiday Toy Trains includes characters from Thomas the Train and the Lionel American Flyer. Through Jan. 8. Silent Testimony: The Prehistoric Earthworks of the Central Ohio Valley, a photographic show by Cincinnati artist Alice Weston, has been extended through Jan. 8. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 1-5 p.m. weekends. $2 adults; $1 students and seniors. Devou Park, Covington. 491^003.
CINCINNATI CHILDREN’S MUSEUM Newly opened interactive museum celebrates World Beat Weekwith gypsy music from Ensemble Europa at 1:30 and 3 p.m. Tuesday and from Khamisi •Drums at 1:30 and 3 p.m. Wednesday. Museum hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday; 12-5 p.m. Sunday. $5 admission; children under 5 pay their age in dollars. Longworth Hall, 700 W. Pete Rose Way, Downtown. 421-5437.
CINCINNATI FIRE MUSEUM Featuring the permanent exhibit, The Early Volunteer Fire Fighters of Cincinnati. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays; 12-4 p.m. weekends. $2.50 adults; $1.50 children 2-12. 315 W. Court St., Downtown. 621-5553.
★ CG&E HOLIDAY TRAINS
The B&O model train first pulled into the CG&E lobby in 1946 and The Trains of Christmas has been an annual event ever since. Through Dec. 31. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; 12-5 p.m. Sunday. 139 E. Fourth St., Downtown. 287-2639.
BENNINGHOFFERN HOUSE
This restored Victorian mansion, built in 1861, provides the setting for the Butler County Historical Museum. 1-4 p.m. TuesdaySunday. $1 adults; free children 12 and under. 327 N. Second St., German Village, Hamilton. 893-7111.
BICENTENNIAL COMMONS
More than 300,000 lights are displayed throughout the riverfront park for the Honda Starlight Celebration. The lights are on 5-10 p.m. daily through Jan. 2. Skating hours: 4-9 p.m. Thursday; 5-10 p.m. Friday; 12—10 p.m. Saturday; 12-6 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $2 adults; $1 children 12 and under. $1 skate rental; $2 rollerblade rental. Bicentennial Commons at Sawyer Point, Downtown. 352^4026.
BUCKINGHAM LODGE A pre-Civil War house deeded to the Indian Hill Historical Society by previous owner Lola Bonnell. By appointment only. Camargo Road, Indian Hill. 891-1873.
CINCINNATI HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM Philanthropist Frederick Hauck, who will turn 100 Wednesday, will be honored at pre-birthday luncheon at 12 noon Tuesday; reservations: 287-7044. Temporary exhibits include Modernist Visions of Urban Housing, featuring materials introduced at the Wessenhof housing project in the 1920s by Mies van der Rohe; through Jan. 1. Winter Light: Festive Art From the Collection of The Cincinnati Historical Society features paintings by Frank H. Myers, John H. Twachtman and John Weis and etchings by Caroline Williams and E.T. Hurley; through Jan. 15. Model Railroads includes balloon-stack wood burners of the mid-1800s; through Jan. 15. Permanent exhibits include Cincinnati: Settlement to 1860, a re-creation of the city’s origins from a Western frontier outpost to a booming manufacturing center, and Cincinnati Goes to War, portrait of the homefront during WWII. Museum hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. $4.95 adults; $2.95 children; members free. Museum Center at Union Terminal, 1301 Western Ave., Queensgate. 287-7030.
CAREW TOWER OBSERVATION
CINCINNATI MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Dinamation’s Carnivore Caper features five animated dinosaur replicas that move and roar; through Jan. 2. The new computer-animated Simulation film Dino Island takes view
DECK Come to the top of the tallest, building in Cincinnati for a breathtaking view of the city’s
THORS,FRl SAT. 6-10 PM 3213 Linwood Avenue
Ml. Lookout 321-1347
ers on a hair-raising expedition in a virtual reality theater called The Reactor. $5. Through Jan. 8. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday; 11 a.m.-lO p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 10 a.m.-lO p.m. Friday-Saturday; and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Daytime prices (9 a.m.-5 p.m.): $4 adults; $2 children 3-12. Evening prices: $5 adults; $3 children 3-12. Museum hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. $4.95 adults; $2.95 children 3-12; members free. Museum Center at Union Terminal, 1301 Western Ave., Queensgate. 287-7020.
CINCINNATI PLANETARIUM The holiday season includes Holiday Skies at 1 and 3 p.m. Friday, Saturday, MondayWednesday and Laser Nutcracker at 2, 4 and 7 p.m. Friday, Monday-Wednesday and 2 and 4 p.m. Saturday. Other continuing shows include Laser Doors, 8:15 p.m. Friday, Monday-Wednesday; Lazerpalooza, 9:30 p.m. Friday, Monday-Wednesday; Laser Zeppelin, 10:45 p.m. Friday, Monday-Wednesday; and Laser Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon, midnight Friday, MondayWednesday. Closed Sunday. Evening shows $6; afternoon shows $4 adults, $3 children 12 and under. Located in the Geier Collections and Research Center of the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, 1720 Gilbert Ave., Walnut Hills. 395-3663.
★ CINCINNATI ZOO AND BOTAN-
ICAL GARDEN The annual Festival ofLights transforms the zoo into a winter wonderland with lights, reindeer, caroling, rides and a holiday ice-skating show. Through Dec. 31. 5-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 5-9:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Zoo hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. $7.50 adults, $4.50 children 2-12, $5.25 seniors; $4.50 parking. 3400 Vine St., Avondale. 281-4700.
DAYTON MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY A seven-month-old red fox who was too tame to be re-introduced into the wild can be seen in Wild Ohio, a zoo containing animals native to Ohio. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday; 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday; 12-5 p.m. Sunday. $3 adults; $1.50 ages 3—17; free to children 2 and under. 2699 DeWeese Pkwy., Dayton, Ohio. 1-275-7431.
DELHI HISTORICAL SOCIETY
A restored 1880 farmhouse. The exhibit room features antique dolls in winter scenes and the parlor will be decorated for a Victorian Christmas. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 1-3 p.m. Sunday. Free. 468 Anderson Ferry, Delhi Township. 451-4313.
DINSMORE HOMESTEAD A historic farmstead built in 1841-42.
1-5 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. $3 adults; $2 seniors; $1.50 children under 12. 5654 Burlington Pike, Burlington. 586-6117.
★ FOUNTAIN SQUARE CHRISTMAS VILLAGE See the lights and trimmed trees, visit Santa’s
toy-making village and then skate around awhile. Ice skating rink open 12-8 p.m. MondayWednesday; 12-5 p.m. Thursday; 12-9 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Through Feb. 20 (weather permitting). $1 to skate, $1 skate rental. 684-4945.
GINGERBREAD VILLAGE The Hyatt Regency presents its 11th annual Gingerbread Village made from 225 pounds of gingerbread, 280 pounds of candy and 22 gal.Ions of icing. Through Jan. 2. 151 W. Fifth St., Downtown. 579-1234.
HARDING MUSEUM OF THE FRANKLIN AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Open 1-5 p.m. Sunday and by appointment. 302 Park Ave., Franklin. 1746-8295.
I&O SCENIC RAILWAY Join Santa Claus and his favorite elf on a nostalgic excursion train. Weekends. $12 adults; $10 seniors and children 11-16; $6 children 3-10. The Mason Station is just off U.S. Route 42 in the heart of Mason; the Lebanon Station is on South Broadway in downtown Lebanon. Call 398-8584 for departure times.
JOHN HAUCK HOUSE MUSEUM Enjoy a Victorian Christmas complete with a 14 foot Victorian Christmas Tree, German Pyramid Tree, a manger scene and toys at the Italianate townhouse and garden. Through Dec. 30. Closed Saturday and Sunday. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays. $2 adults; $1 seniors; $.50 children. 812 Dayton St., West End. 721-3570.
KROHN CONSERVATORY Krohn’s annual live nativity scene features donkey, sheep, cow and twin lambs. The Sugarplum Tree is a six-foot tree bearing fruit, candy and blossoms populated by gnomes, poinsettia trees and model trains. The railway landscape was created by Krohn florists and nationally-acclaimed landscape architect Paul Busse, who also designed and constructed the New York Botanical Garden’s major holiday show. Through Jan. 8. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Admission free for Cincinnati residents, children 5 and under and school groups; $2 adults; $1 children, seniors and groups of 25 or more. 1501 Eden Park Drive, Eden Park. 421-4086.
LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE Built in 1873, the brick house served as a school for 63 years. Restored by the Indian Hill Historical Society, it is now a museum. By appointment only. Free. 8100 Given Road, Indian Hill. 891-1873.
★ MIMOSA MANSION Built in 1853-55 as a Tuscan Villa featuring 1850s laminated Rococo Revival furniture and an exceptional collection of early lighting devices. Ghost of Christmas Past features antique trees including an aluminum tree from the 1950s, a revolving tree with bubble lights and 1930s Marklin table-top train display. You can also hear Liberace’s rendition of White Christmas on a Mason and Hamlin grand player piano! 1-8 p.m. weekends; weekdays and evenings by appointment. $4. 412 E. Second St., Covington. 261-9000.
PROMONT Completed in 1867, this Italianate villa belonged to former Ohio Gov. John M. Pattison. All rooms are furnished with period antiques. Victorian Christmas runs through mid-January.
1:30-4:30 p.m. Friday and Sunday. $2 adults; $1 children; group tours can be arranged. 906 Main St., Milford. 831^704.
$3 adults; $2 children. Proceeds are used to support the continuing collection, preservation, education and exhibition programs at the Railway Exposition Company. 34th and Roger Sts., Latonia. 491-RAJL.
SHARON WOODS VILLAGE Drive-through display of over 80,000 lights including Santa in Space through Jan. 1. 6-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 6-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $6 per car Sunday-Thursday; $7 Friday and Saturday. Also, guided tours of eight 19th century homes, restored, furnished and seasonally decorated. 1-5 p.m. weekends. $5 adults; $3 seniors; $2 children 12-6; free to children 6 and under. Sharon Woods Park, Route 42, Sharonville. 563-9484. STAR OF CINCINNATI Featuring lunch, dinner, weekend and brunch cruises. Cruises depart from Star Landing at 15 Mehring Way, Downtown. 723-0100. WARREN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM Features artifacts from 1790 to the present, including Shaker and Victorian furfuture, as well as an extensive collection of paleontological and archaeological artifacts. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 105 S.
Groups
$4.95 (includes entree and 2 sides) 3S4 iiudhw C!<{ton
QUEEN CITY RIVERBOATS Lunch, dinner, sightseeing cruises. $6-$24.95. All cruises depart from Queen City Landing, 303 Dodd Drive, Dayton, Ky. 292-8687. RAILWAY EXPOSITION CO.’S CHRISTMAS TRAIN Children of all ages can board the historic passenger coaches for a 20-minute ride with Santa. With more than four acres of track and switches, this is the largest Christmas train display in the tri-state. Doors open at 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday with the last train departing at 8:30 p.m.
roads, Montgomery. 793-0515.
FOR BEDLAM The
poetry contest will be
Wednesday
at 8 p.m. The winner gets $50, the runner-up receives a poster poem and the bronze medalist takes home Paul Blackburn Official Underwear (unused). Kaldi’s Coffee House & Bookstore, 1202-04 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 241-3070.
CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLD Take a break from shopping and come to Joseph-Beth Kids
begins at 10 a.m. Thursday. Oakley Blue Marble, 3054 Madison Road, Oakley. 731-2665.
BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP Takes place the fourth Monday of every month at 7 p.m. in the May Sarton Room. Crazy Ladies Center, 4039
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE Designated by Congress in 1969, this Greek Revival-style house is the only memorial to the nation’s 27th president and 10th chief justice. Free. 2038 Auburn Ave., Mount Auburn. 684-3292. Readings, Signings & Events
FLYING
A Brew of One’s Own
are living with HIV. Meets at 7 p.m. every other Wednesday.
THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING OPTIONS An agency that works with people with disabilities to achieve goals of independence. 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 601, Downtown. 241-2600.
From pumpkin to cranberry to vanillaflavored beers, Americans experiment in the kitchen
ENJOY THE ARTS Offers substantial discounts to various arts organizations. Only full-time students are eligible. $24.50 for one year, $39 for two years. 751-2700.
BWe’ve all had it. Well, almost all of us. I guess there are some of us who could say we tasted it but never swallowed. Among libations it is one of the oldest and most widely imbibed potables around.
GAY AND LESBIAN SWITCHBOARD Open from 6 to 11 p.m. every night. 651-0070.
LAVENDER LIGHTS Gays and lesbians helping the hungry and homeless in Cincinnati. To volun-. teer or get information, call 793-7937.
NAAMEN’S RETREAT African-American community based support group for HIV-challenged individuals. 559-2933.
PLANNED PARENTHOOD ASSOCIATION OF CINCINNATI 2314 Auburn Ave., Mount Auburn. 721-7635.
Between the average, everyday, mass-marketed Bud and Bud Lights and specialty or microbrews such as Samuel Adams from Boston and Blackened Voodoo from New Orleans, beer is experiencing a market surge. Many attribute the increasing popularity to the diversity of flavors available. With tastes running the gamut from cranberry Iambic to pumpkin ale, one can see why.
TRI-STATE HARVEST A volunteer organization whose sole purpose is to transport surplus food to those who need it in the community. To donate food or become a volunteer, call 281-FOOD.
There are those, however, who would prefer to make their own. The temptation of creating one’s own brew is hardly new. Though home-brewed beer has been a standard since the days of the Pilgrims, more and more people are becoming interested in this cottage hobby/industry.
Groups & Programs
dependency. Meets at 8 p.m. every Wednesday. Womancare For women who
*:71
UNITED WAY HELPLINE Provides counseling, support-group information, crisis intervention and assistance 24 hours a day. 721-7900.
Beer, in whatever form, is at a minimum 6,000 years old, according to American beer expert F. Paul Pacult. In a recent article in The New York Times Pacult writes that beer has been used as a dietary supplement for everyone from infants to women in labor to the aged.
YWCA PROTECTION FROM ABUSE PROGRAMS Alice Paul House and House of Peace are emergency shelters providing housing, advocacy and support to battered women and their children. 241-2757.
Events
“Being out of beer was a threat to the very lives of the colonists,” Pacult continues. “Voyages, such as the Mayflower’s, carried more beer than water in the hold.”
In harder times ale-wives, or brewmasters, substituted whatever was available to make their beer. Corn, persimmons, Jerusalem artichokes and pumpkins took the place of the wheat or barley to produce that year’s ale. In New England, where hops were in short supply, many
YOUTH CONVENTION The Cincinnati Convention Center hosts the Wesleyan Church International Youth Convention Monday through Dec. 29. Estimated attendance is 400. 525 Elm St., Downtown. 352-3750.
A Brew With a View
★ 1994 INTERNATIONAL HOLIDAY FESTIVAL Come see arts and crafts from around the world this weekend. Saturday’s entertainment includes Carol Mays singing selected arias from favorite operas, barbershop quartet Just Do It, carolers Liz and Leslie plus a surprise act. Through Dec. 31. Findlay Market, Elder Street between Race and Elm streets, Over-the-Rhine. 352-0710.
For those daring connoisseurs too overwhelmed to begin a home brew, brew pubs are becoming the night spot of choice.
Cincinnati recently acquired its own micro-brew pub, The Main Street Brewery, at 1203 Main St., Overthe-Rhine. Its eclectic American menu, ranging from Louisiana fare to Queen City Quesadillas, complements the relaxed ambiance of off-white walls, exposed brick and rich, wood accents. Even the music 70s and ’80s adds a calming tone. It’s a perfect atmosphere in which to unwind with a special beer.
Opportunities
£<8S E-Mail: RBOFF@aol.com
■ K 513-621-9444 Imagination All services are available on an hourly or Contingency fee/Commission Basis.
CINCINNATI OPERA Accepting applications for artistic and technical internships during the 1995 Summer Festival Season. Interns must be available late May through July. To apply, contact Thomas
Brewmaster Toby Hunt, a New Zealand native, has produced an outstanding selection of six brews guaranteed to delight the beer enthusiast. Hunt, using recipes he developed specifically for this area, has spent the past five to six years brewing beer in New Zealand and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
He says he has toned down much of his selections.
brewers substituted the flavorant with pine, sassafras, birch and walnut. That enterprising spirit continues today.
With such a plethora of choices of beers available to buy, why would anyone want to make their own? Economy for one. With a minimum investment of about $30 in parts and another $30 in ingredients, you can get started. Why Phil Undercuffler grinds hops, the first step in brewing one’s own beer. else? Freshness. Nothing could be fresher than popping it out of the bottle at its peak of flavor. Another benefit is variety. Only you limit the diversity of tastes you can create.
Local home brewer Phil Undercuffler explains, “There’s a certain s'Sfisfaction in knowing you’ve made your own, and that it tastes good.”
That self-sufficiency can produce varied results. Undercuffler will soon begin working on his third batch of ale, hoping to produce a porter, or weak stout, similar to one he bottled this summer. His “Oven-Buster
CONTINUES ON PAGE 30
“I didn’t want to shock people,” he says. “I wanted them to like it. I’ll let them get used to it and then maybe make it a little stronger.”
Using American malts and his own yeast strains (he harvests them himself to assure quality), Hunt offers four “mainstay brews” (Main Street Pale Ale, Woody’s American Wheat, Abigail’s Amber and Steamboat Stout) and two specialty brews (Dunkleweizen, a darker German wheat beer, and Over the Rhine Raz, a “raspberry” wheat ale).
Do they add raspberries for flavoring? Hunt says he’s sworn to secrecy.
So, was Hunt a home brewer in a past life?
“Nah, 18, 20 hours of work for what? Why go to all that trouble for a couple of glasses of beer?” Hunt asks.
So, Why is he brewing now? “Good beer’s expensive,” he explains. “I’d rather make it myself and have someone else clean up.”
MERRETT CAREY
Bankston, Director of Operations, Cincinnati Opera, 1241 Elm St., Cincinnati, OH 45210 before March 1. 621-1919, Ext. 226.
CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER
Seeks volunteers to become museum tour guides or docents. Training sessions for the Gallery Assistant Program will be held on Tuesdays beginning Jan. 17 and ending March 21. Call Sambi at 345-8400.
ENSEMBLE THEATRE OF CINCINNATI Will be accepting one-act and full-length plays until Dec. 31. Local playwrights may send their work to David A. White III, Artistic Director, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Cincinnati, OH 45210. Please include a self-addressed stamp envelope if you want your work returned.
OHIO ARTS COUNCIL Provides matching money grants to artists, arts programs and major institutions. Call for applications. Summer fellowships for teachers of the arts also are available. Contact Christy Farnbauch. Nominations for the Ohio Arts Council’s 1995 Governor’s Awards for the Arts are being accepted. Contact Bill Nordquist, Ohio Arts Council, 727 E. Main St., Columbus, OH 43205-1796. 614-466-2613.
SAVE OUTDOOR SCULPTURE (SOS) A public/private initiative designed to document and increase public awareness of outdoor sculpture. Workshops are being planned for early 1995 in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton. People interested in participating should contact Patricia Henahan at the Ohio Arts Council. 727 E. Main St., Columbus, OH 43205-1796. 614—466—2613.
Concerts
ASS PONYS, LAZY AND HONEYBURN Two of Cincinnati’s most recent local-band-to-national-artist success stories, the Ass Ponys and Lazy team up to-ring in 1995 correctly. Check out the Ponys’ interview elsewhere in this issue. 8 p.m. Dec. 31. $6. Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St. 281-8400.
Onstage
CSO NEW YEAR’S EVE CONCERT AND BALL Celebrating its centennial season, the Cincinnati Symphony offers its New Year’s Eve concert featuring members of the Cincinnati Ballet.
7:30 p.m. Dec. 31. Dinner and dancing follow. $15 and up for concert only; $100 and up for the ball; combo packages available. Music Hall, 1241 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine. 381-3300.
Events
for
and the
Foundation presents
with Dennis Banks as Master of Ceremonies, Dec. 31-Jan. 2. Native crafts and foods will be available and dance sessions will be held daily. No drugs or alcohol allowed. Doors open at 9 a.m.
BOAR'S HEAD & YULE LOG FESTIVAL More than 200 singers, actors and musicians perform an elaborately costumed and orchestrated pageant for the 55th annual festival, carrying on a tradition that began in 14th century England at Oxford University. Dec. 31-Jan. 1. Christ Church Cathedral, Fourth and Sycamore Sts., Downtown. 621-BOAR.
STARS OF BASEBALL SHOOT OUT Major league baseball players will play in a double elimination exhibition basketball tournament. Between-game activities include a slam dunk contest, 3-point shooting contest and designated autograph sessions. Proceeds from the event will benefit St. Rita’s School
749-4949.
HAPPY ZOO YEAR Created especially for families, this celebration is the grand finale of the Cincinnati Zoo’s Festival ofLights. Skating, camel rides and wagon/train rides will be available throughout the night, which will culminate in glittering fireworks and a momentous countdown to the New Year at 9 p.m. Starts at 5 p.m. Dec. 31. Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, 3400 Vine St., Avondale. 281^700. NEW YEAR’S EVE TRADITIONAL SOBRIETY POW WOW
KING DAY BREAKFAST CELEBRATION The fifth annual breakfast honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. is presented by the Arts Consortium of Cincinnati and The Cincinnati Historical Society. 9-10:30 a.m. Jan. 16. $15 adults; $9.50 students. Hyatt Hotel’s Regency Ballroom, 151 W. Fifth St., Downtown. 381-0645. Gear off the desk, open the brown bag and taste the music.
WEEKDAYS & SATURDAYS at NOON 89.7$FM WNKUI
BY JULIE LARSON
Suburban Torture
BEER: FROM PAGE 29
Porter” had a slightly smoky, caramel, roasted flavor with a touch of hops and a smooth, light finish. “Oven-Buster”?
“Well, we named it that because it burned out the heating coils on our oven during the brewing process,” he says. The hazards of brewing one’s own, though, are relatively few, and it’s possible to produce quality beer in two months. You can either put together your own setup from items mostly found at hardware and cooking stores, or go with a kit that costs about $35.
Resources
Green also recommends joining, of course, the Bloatarian Brewing League, or any other local home-brewers organization.
Here’s a short and incomplete source list for home brewers:
BLOATARIAN BREWING LEAGUE, contact Dave Green at 451-2496 or write to Bloatarian Brewing League, 7012 Mt. Vernon Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45227. The organization meets monthly at the Drawbridge Inn in Erlanger.
JOE & SONS BEER & WINE MAKING SUPPLIES, 2776 Baker Ave., Fairmount. 662-2326. THE PARTY SOURCE, 95 Riviera Drive, Bellevue. 291^1007.
VINTAGES WINE & COFFEE, 11804 Springfield Pike, Springdale. 671-2085.
Dave Green, a member of Cincinnati’s Bloatarian Brewing League, suggests another prime initial purchase: “Buy a good book.” (He recommends The Homebrewers Companion by Charlie Papasian; Avon Books, $11.) Without a good guide, Green contends, you’re more likely to come out with mistakes or just plain bad beer.
“The homebrewing network is unbelievable,” Green says. “Before I joined, I was just brewing on my own. This gives people a place to go where someone can tell them what was wrong with their beer, or how to develop a different style.”
Green has a raspberry stout on draft in his basement and is still fermenting a Christmas beer flavored with vanilla, hazelnut, almonds and orange peel.
Above all, both Undercuffler and Green focus on the league’s philosophy: “Relax, don’t worry, have a home-brew.” Green furthers that philosophy with “if something’s going to go wrong, it will. Who cares?”
Free Classifieds are available to private parties not advertising a commercial concern and non-profit organizations not charging for services. Limit one free ad per week. Free ads must be typed or neatly printed on a 3x5-size card. Ads are limited to 26 free words. Each additional 25 words (or portion thereof) costs $5, and payment must accompany ad. Examples of free ads include the selling of your personal items such as a bicycle, furniture, guitar, etc. and ads for roommates.
Deadline for receipt of free ads is Thursday, 6 p.m., 7 days prior to publication. Ads should be mailed to CityBeat Classifieds, 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 617, Cincinnati, OH 46202. Free ads run for 2 weeks.
Sorry, we cannot accept phone inquiries concerning free ads. Publisher reserves the right to categorize, edit or refuse classified ads
Paid Classifieds are for businesses, individuals and other ongoing, profit-making enterprises that charge for goods or services. All housing ads, with, the exception of Roommates, must be placed at commercial classified rates. Rates and discounts will be quoted upon request by calling 665-4700 during regular business hours.
Deadline for receipt of paid classifieds is Friday, 5 p.m., 6 days prior to publication. To keep our rates as low as possible, payment must accompany all ad orders. We accept cash, local check, money orders, Visa or MasterCard. Ads can be placed by phone, in person or by mail.
(Note: Deadlines will likely be advanced during holiday weeks).
Please check your ad and report any errors to us within 1 week of publication so that corrections can be made. Publisher will not be responsible for errors or failure to run an ad except to the extent of the cost of the first insertion of the ad. Publisher reserves the right to categorize, edit, cancel or refuse ads.
BEADS BEADS BEADS Your complete jewelry and bead shop. We offer a variety of classes, including wirewrap jewelry and stained glass. Please call for details. Treasure Island Jewelry, 241-7893.
CHILDRENS FURNITURE Simmons crib, Child Craft 4 drawer chest with flip top changing table. Excellent condition. $250. Call 271-3828.
JENSEN SPEAKERS Medium size bookshelf 10 year old Jensen 2-way loud speakers wood grain. Full power. Very reasonable.$35 Firm. Call 961-2366. Leave message. WANTED TO BUY! Private collector wants to buy magazines from the 20’s-60's and 33 1/3 LP records from the 50’s & 60's and paperback books from the 30’s-50's. Call 791-2273 from 9AM to 7PM.
WATERBED BEDROOM SET Beautiful modern dark hardwood queensize waterbed with headboard, chest of
druggies, ego freaks. Please call. Jack 244-2382
DRUMMER WANTED Feeder Needs a Drummer Heavy, Alterna-punk band needs ative, commited, talented drummer for travels, fun and ambitious pursuits. No flakes. Call 559-9625 or 861-2346.
FLUTE Artley Symphony flute with silverhead in good condition available for $150.00. Call 281-8208.
GUITAR 1974 Gibson Hummingbird, Excellent condition w/original hardshell case, $950 or possible trade. (513) 385-9134.
PRO BASSIST SEEKING WORK Versatile player with vocal capabilities and studio/touring experience. Call 321-0390.
Boston A120 speakers with stands. Excellent condition. Used only one year. $250. Call, leave message, 861-2075.
STUDIO EQUIPMENT 8-track studio - 8-track Otari tape machine with stand and Ramsa mixing console, 16x4. Both for $1999 or will separate. Also, Yamaha C-l portable music computer with color monitor, $800 or best. James, days, 684-8900; evenings, 721-6646.
FREE FIREWOOD Call Monday to Friday 9 AM to 5 PM, 922-3270. MODELS NEEDED. Models needed for art student. No experience necessary. Nude poses required. Females
BackUeaf
Classifieds 665-4700
USED IBM COMPUTERS UNDER $500 Kevin 598-9703. Leave Message.
WHERE COOL SANTAS SHOP
SCENTIMENTS - ROCK CITY
2614 Vine St. University Village, 281-1667 Open Mon-Sat, 11-8; Sun, 1-6
TRINIDAD FOLKSINGER & CANDLELIGHT
ZARABANDA WORLD CAFE 3213 Linwood Ave. 321-1347
GJ’S GASLIGHT
Where you get real mashed potatoes - with lumps. 354 Ludlow, Clifton, 221-2020
BEADS BEADS BEADS FROM AROUND THE WORLD CALL ABOUT CLASSES
Treasure Island Jewelry, 34 W. Court, 241-7893
DID YOU KNOW UMPIRES MADE APPROX. $15 PER HOUR? Call Eggleston Park at 369-8399
ANGRY HOUR Fridays, 4pm-9pm DOLLAR NITE Tuesdays
EMPIRE BAR
Take 8th St. viaduct to State Ave. at the old West End Bank
DO-IT-YOURSELF VIDEO EDITING
use our new JVC VHS & SVHS Edit Desk. DREAMSAND VIDEO & PRINT S18/HOUR 541-9078 PHONE/FAX
BUSINESS MEETING ROOM:
BOOK KALDI’S MEETING ROOM For your next breakfast or lunch meeting. Accommodates up to 12. Call KALDI’S 241-3070
WE PAY CASH!
Wizard’s pays top dollar on the spot for your quality CDs, cassettes & LPs 2629 Vine, 961-6196
FINDLAY MARKET
INTERNATIONAL HOLIDAY FESTIVAL Fri. & Sat. 10-4 through December 31 Arts & Crafts from around the world, Entertainment & Additional Vendors
MOONSHINE SCREEN PRINTING
T-Shirts, sweats, hats, bumper stickers. Full art staff.
FREE PICK-UP & FREE DELIVERY
Give us a call at 523-7775
ATTN: MUSICIANS/BANDS
Record in a pro studio on pro equipment. Get pro results & pay budget studio rates. Call Backstage at 292-TUNE
EXPERIENCE THE MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE
LIGHT INTO ART
FROM VIDEO TO VIRTUAL REALITY Now through Jan. 14, 1995
THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER Call 345-8400 for hours and information
ROCK ART NOW ON SALE
Limited edition lithograph and silk screen rock art prints. As seen in Rolling Stone.
CIRCLE CD & RECORDS
5975 Glenway Ave. 451-9824
THE GOOD DEED EXCHANGE
Send information about skills and services you can contribute. We’ll find a worthy match. Write: PO Box 9316 Cinti., OH 45209-0316
SEND NO MONEY OPEN YOUR HEARTS PASS THE WORD
AVALON CLOTHING CO.
For all your holiday gift needs:
SHOES, BOOTS, HATS, JACKETS, SHIRTS - YOU NAME IT!
Comer of Clifton & McMillan M-F 10-8, Sat 11-7, Sun 12-5. 651-3847
IZIONITES!
FRIDAY, DEC fc'MBER 23RD Top Cat’s, ;’°.20 Vine St.
Welcome to Back Beat, the back page of Cincinnati CityBeat. This last page is your last chance to have the last word.
So talk back to us! Answer our sometimes silly, sometimes cerebral weekly question. Then beat it to the nearest mailbox, fax or modem. If we print your response in our letters section next week, you get a free Cincinnati CityBeat T-shirt. Not a bad deal for the cost of a stamp or fax, eh?
This week’s question: Ifyou were a city leader, what would you build on Fountain Square West?
Send responses by 5 p.m. Tuesday to: Back Beat, Cincinnati CityBeat 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 617, Cincinnati, OH 45202 fax: 513/665-4369
Name:
Address: Daytime voice telephone number:.
VIDEO DESIGNER
Do you have a project that needs that special touch? Specializing in documentation of events, arts and commercial projects. Call Bob Leibold 481-3011 Fax 481-1444
CRAZY FINGERS
REUNION - DECEMBER 29 TOP CAT’S, 2820 VINE Crazy if you do, crazy if you don’t. COMING IN JANUARY Queen’s Roan Records presents UNCLE SIX DEBUT RELEASE, “HEARTLAND SOUL” and ZIONITES
“SOUNDWAVE” For distribution info or for bookings Call Bill at Equus Entertainment, 281-2733.
