CityBeat | February 16, 1995

Cincinnati

Weekly Issues, Arts and Events

Suspicion

Old worries linger, new concerns arise^ about contaminated well water in northwest and western Hamilton County

Page 8

MUSIC

The next installment of CityBeat's look at up-and-coming local bands

Page 15

EVENTS

Sampler Weekend offers* smorgasbord of local arts groups and venues

ART

Carrie Mae Weems' photo exhibit at CAC puts a face on a seldom-seen culture

Page 25

editor/co-publisher John Fox

GENERAL MANAGER/CO-PUBLISHER Dan BoC.krath

MANAGING editor Alison Tranbarger

news editor Nancy Firor

essayist Daniel Brown

contributing editors Mike Breen, Music; Dale Doerman, Onstage; Rick Pender, Onstage; Steve Ramos, Film Fran Watson, Art

contributing writers Karen Amelia Arnett, Brian Baker, Elizabeth Carey, Jane Durrell, Jeff Hillard, Jon Hughes, John James, Billie Jeyes, Josh Katz, Jonathan Kamholtz, Michelle Kennedy, Brad King, Kim Krause, Craig Lovelace, Perin Mahler, Susan Nuxoll, David Pescovitz, Jeremy Schlosberg, Peggy Schmidt, Althea Thompson, Kathy Y. Wilson,

photographers

listings

editorial

cartoonists

art

production

News&V/eivs

CityBeat

PRINTED

DailySred

Family The ups and downs of downsizing lifestyles 12 Environment Backyard Naturalist discusses the buds of winter 12

UtterKiosk

Index to calendar listings 13

Music The second installment of CityBeat's look at up-and-coming local Alternative hopefuls 15

Taking Care: Jason Antoon (left in photo at right) and David A. Penhale provide intense portrayals in the Playhouse’s production of Harold

Film Cobb explores the bitter baseball legend’s last year 20

Art The CAC’s Carrie Mae Weems exhibit both reaffirms and questions African-American identity 25

Onstage Hamlet offers mix of

Well Shut My Mouth: Nicolas Cage (right, at last month’s Sundance Film Festival) was once Hollywood’s rabble-rousing rock ’n’ roll actor who wanted to be the next James Dean. He tells CityBeat that now, at 31, he just wants to stay himself. See our exclusive interview.

Sampling the Arts: More than

The Straight Dope

Did the Swiss army really use the Swiss army knife?

Matthew Steiner, via the Internet

Bu k ut of course. I know this because I 'heard it from one Tanya, a Swiss Ecitizen living in the United States 'whose father served in the Swiss army. Tanya confirms that her dad was issued a regulation Swiss army knife not unlike the ones we civilians are familiar with. I was going to ask Tanya for more details, but unfortunately I lost her phone number, one of the hazards you face in this business when you start doing research via talk radio rather than the library. But I’m confident Tanya would have told me that the main difference between her father’s knife and, say, Mrs. Adams’ was that the handle was anodized aluminum rather than red plastic. (Red is supposed to make the knife easier to find when dropped in the snow, a mishap to which military personnel are apparently immune.) I am also certain she would have told me the knife was furnished with the standard soldierly assortment of tools, consisting of a thick stainless steel blade, two screwdrivers, a can opener and an awl. That is, unless her father was an officer, in which case his knife might have included a corkscrew. The privileges of rank.

Two Swiss manufacturers, Victorinox and Wenger, each supply 25,000 knives annually to the Swiss army, which amounts to a little more than one day’s production. The rest of the two companies’ vast output together they produce about 7 million knives a year is mostly exported, the United States being by far the largest customer. (Non-Swiss knockoffs also are available; the real thing will have Victorinox or Wenger stamped on one of the blades.) Hundreds of models are available, ranging from a basic twoblade version to an 8-ounce, 29-tool octopus that will let you simultaneously rebuild an Edsel, perform open-heart surgery and pick your teeth. You can get everything from corkscrews and magnify-

ing glasses to aspirin-bottle-cotton pullers. There’s even a model with a blade that will let you perform I am not making this up an emergency tracheotomy, no doubt inspired by an actual emergency tracheotomy performed with an SAK aboard an airliner in flight. The in-store demonstrations must be quite a sight.

The modem Swiss army knife dates to 1891, when Victorinox founder Karl Elsener began supplying the Swiss army with knives made in Switzerland, previous army blades having been manufactured in Germany. The original wooden-handled knife featured a blade, a screwdriver, a can opener and a punch, but Elsener didn’t really hit his stride until 1897, when he invented an officer’s version that used a special spring mechanism to enable more utensils to be added without increasing the size of the handle. In 1908, the Swiss army decided to split the contract, with half the order going to Victorinox, in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and the other half to a firm run by rival cutlery maker Theodore Wenger, with headquarters in a canton where everybody spoke French. They claim they did this in the interest of national harmony, but they may have also figured a little competition would keep the price down. If so, they were right. Today you can get a Swiss army knife for as little as nine bucks.

American GIs discovered the Swiss army knife during the World War II era, but it’s only in the last 20 years or so that it has become a mass-market item in North America. Today the knife has become emblematic of almost comical versatility. Some feel the knife is overrated, and Cecil must say his personal panacea for life’s littie crises is duct tape and drywall screws. (They work wonders with kids.) But neither can be conveniently carried in a business suit, and an emergency tracheotomy with drywall screws is not a pretty thing to contemplate. All things considered, a Swiss army knife is probably still your best bet.

Is there something you need

get straight?

mm

A Letters

problems without the needed context and without the free-wheeling sort of thinking that allows for new, creative approaches.

The goal, lest we forget, is to create an environment where basic human needs like food, clothing and shelter are met and, beyond that, to offer a quality of environment that allows for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for us all.

mm

Dedicated To...

Enjoyed Billie Jeyes’ article, “Exorcising Demons” (Dec. 814, 1994). 1 remember reading David Morrell’s First Blood in its first paperback publication and thinking what a great novel, one of those that you pass along to friends enthusiastically.

The traditional view holds that the answer to job concerns comes from attracting major corporations to the area and fulfilling their need for employees. This is certainly still valid, but too much emphasis on this approach may lead to neglect of other possibilities. Here are some thoughts for your consideration.

Wasn’t the “William Ted” mentioned in the quotation about Morrell’s Penn State days actually William Term? First Blood was dedicated to William Term and Philip Klass. Mr. Term was a worthy writer himself. Keep up the good work. Tom Gibbons, Cincinnati

People are the Neighborhoods

The assumption has been that for our society to function effectively, each residence must have at least one primary wage earner, thus making them “productive members of society.” We assume this because of the underlying assumption that the industrial model is the only one available. But this implies that those who don’t conform to the model are failures. It takes no account of our widely diverse backgrounds, education, genetics, culture, intelligence and so on. More importantly, it takes no account of the inherent value of each human being. Instead, our value is directly correlated with how well we support the existing industrial paradigm.

While some attention has been given to encouraging entrepreneurial development in depressed neighborhoods, it generally still follows the old paradigm of establishing “for profit” businesses working in a traditional manner. This ignores a number of flexible working opportunities.

The following is an open response to Cincinnati City Councilman Charles Winbum’s request for a committee to explore “job creation and retention” for the city. I have sent copies to several other council members as well.

Mr, Winbum, it is gratifying to see your concern with job retention and creation for the City of Cincinnati. It’s an obvious need in any modern community. Yet often we find ourselves attempting to solve such

Corrections

For example, why not encourage “appropriate technology” attitudes for our neighborhoods, where people are encouraged to develop skills in making their own clothes, producing their own food and building or rehabbing their own dwellings? Small-scale cottage industries like bakeries, fabric and clothing manufacturing, co-op retail establishments, dependent care, education and transportation services could all be wonderful opportunities for many who don’t “fit” into the traditional employee model. And such a subculture would allow for genuinely meaningful human interaction, in sharp contrast

to the alienation so prevalent today.

Consider some of the other ramifications of this sort of approach: increased contact and a strengthened sense of community for those involved; reduced displacement (i.e. Main Street); enhanced self-esteem; less crime; better safety; and increased self-reliance.

Taking this a step further, we could be examining ways to remake our neighborhoods into “eco-villages” where shopping, working and community activities can take place within walking distance to many or most of the neighborhood residents. We might even reach the point where the trend toward transient residency is reversed, where families or groups might again share the same residence for generations.

The Importance of Being Important

Wallow in the luxury of loved ones for at least half a day

BY JOHN FOX

Ever get to the point in your daily routine when all of life’s so-called “important” issues are almost overwhelming? Well, I’m there.

It’s Valentine’s Day 1995, and my brain hurts. Is the balanced budget amendment the best way to convince our idiotic elected officials to save this country from financial ruin? Does Cincinnati really need a new baseball stadium and a new football stadium? Is water, our body’s sustaining force, actually harming the people who drink it? Why do some men desire to coerce everyone else into living according to their specific religious beliefs?

Will someone please explain what’s wrong with a doctor nominated to be U.S. Surgeon General performing legal abortions during his career? Is there truly any hope of ending war in the Middle East, Ireland, Bosnia, East Los Angeles? Why do people actually care if O.J. Simpson is guilty or not?

reduced welfare and unemployment costs and reduced expenses related to crime, drugs and safety issues.

Americans have indicated they want substantial change without big government. It is somehow fitting that the movement suggested here is very much in keeping with that sentiment.

And that’s just the big-picture stuff. That doesn’t even count the “important” issues in my own life, like if this paper is going to continue prospering, if I can afford the new car I want to buy and plenty of other personal matters you don’t want to hear about.

aren’t dedicated enough to take on the responsibility required for this new urban culture. In contrast, my sense is that peopie always do what they believe will make them happy. It’s just that many of us don’t seem to understand where happiness comes from, having been convinced that more money, more sex, more toys or more something will do the trick though somewhere in our hearts we know such is not the case. If people can perceive the value in trying something new, even if it involves hard work and is foreign to what they’re used to, they’ll give it a try. And success will breed success.

Detractors will claim that the urban unemployed aren’t motivated, aren’t educated or

THIS W«RL» by TOM

THINGS HAD BEEN GETTING PRETTY ROUGH LATELY, EVEN BY THIS TOWN'S STANDARDS A NEW MOB HAD MOVED IN $ THEY WERE ABOUT AS GENTLE AS A HERD Of ELEPMANTS...IN FACT, THEY WERE A HERD OF ELEPHANTS...

In last week’s “Burning Questions” column, Karl Graham, solid waste coordinator in Cincinnati’s Office of Environmental Management, should have been quoted as saying the city’s curbside recycling program was responsible for relieving 10,000 tons of waste a year from city landfills. The mistake was an editor's error.

In last week’s cover story on the history of Riverfront Stadium and its correlation to the city’s current stadium debate, Boone County judge executive Ken Lucas should have been identified with Cincinnati Mayor Roxanne Qualls and Hamilton County Commissioner Guy Guckenberger as co-leaders of a regional stadium task force. We apologize for the omission.

TOMORROW

THEIR LEADER WAS A SLIMY CHARACTER CALLED THE Wflvr.,,FANCIED HIMSELF A MAN OF ERUDITION...RUMOR WAS HE'D EVEN TAUGHT AT SOME Two-BiT («W COLLEGE BEFORE GETTING INTO THE RACKETS...

...YOU SEE, MEN CAN LIVE IN DITCHES EATING GIRAFFES -’CAUSE WE DON’T GET NO INFECTIONS ! GoSH YOU’RE ,SMART. BOSS

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m trying to select which

While subsidizing this type of activity might not be prudent, the city could at least provide the thought leadership and information resources that would make such “marginal” lifestyles more viable. The expense involved need not be overwhelming and would potentially be offset by

Some of this may seem a bit radical, but it is not without precedent. Alternative-style urban communities are sprouting up in cities like Philadelphia and Seattle, and while there are some serious hurdles to -overcome, the goal of reshaping our culture and lifestyles into something more satisfying and healthy is surely worthwhile. And while this is obviously a simplified view, that does not invalidate the premise.

Every day that nothing is done leaves a host of our brothers and sisters in needless confusion and suffering. Every time we continue with business

TROUBLE WAS, THE MOBS IN THIS TOWN ALREADY HAD A BOSS... BILLY CEE, BETTER KNOWN AS THE WAFFLE... A MAN SO SPINELESS HE GAVE JELLYFISH A BAD NAME... SURE NEWT-1’D WAAND SHINE: BE HAPPY TO HVOUR SHOES? WASH YOUR CARlWuH-OKAY/NO mssrzUA problem /

one of these topics corners of my cranium it’s no use. I just or Cincinnati City All I can actually four hours to find with my wife. Hopefully ly, when) I tell her anything. After all, cial reports to read afternoon. Later laughs and make It’s Valentine’s tie, the ringing fax think of loved ones who live no closer old niece, my first, My parents in Tennessee. and Washington, Columbus and Mount Today brings giving out little “Be kids in class (yes, of my high school cover of a spiral incredible first kisses. “important” and All of which may suppose, but I won’t and wallow in the friends both nearby They won’t miss back at the grindstone See you again “important” issues Valentine’s Day.

ME, I WAS JUST A PRIVATE EYE TRYING TO KEEP MY BEAK CLEAN... BUT WHEN THE OLD CODGER CAME THROUGH MY DOOR. X KNEW IT WOULDN’T BE EASY...

MR PENGUIN-THE NEWT SAYS HE’S GOT A CONTRACT WITH ME-BUT 1 NEVER SIGNED A THING l

IMHIIE QUESTIOIS

BY BRAD KING

A Bridge to Nowhere

Nine years hasn’t been long enough for local officials to figure out what to do with state and federal funds reserved for a new bridge between Cincinnati and Covington.

Because of indecision about where the Covington bridge should go, $31 million in federal funds might be on its way to Maysville, Ky., for construction of a bridge there. But only if U.S. Rep. Jim Bunning, R-Covington, can get the money transferred to Maysville before the expected congressional budget cuts wipe the fund away, said Bernie Moorman, Kenton County Commissioner and executive board treasurer for the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI).

Kentucky already has $28 million in state funds that were to be allocated to Maysville. If the $31 million goes to Maysville, Kentucky lawmakers might try to redesignate their $28 million for a Cincinnati-Covington bridge. But why earmark $28 million when local officials couldn’t decide how to use $31 million?

“Why lose that $31 million?” said Covington Mayor Denny Bowman. “(The state fund) is already put away for Maysville.”

Bowman pointed out that the OKI task force, with a $3 million federal grant, will conduct a three-year study on the condition of existing Covington-Cincinnati bridges as well as the possibility of building a light-rail system that would run from Kings Island through Cincinnati and Covington and end at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

The Advocate and the Advocate

The Clermont County Library Board again is facing the question of whether to remove a gay, lesbian and bisexual magazine from its shelves. But an important part of the story might be about one of the library board members who is personally involved in the case.

On Jan. 9, three Christian-based groups asked the board to consider removing The Advocate after the Dec. 13 issue featured depictions of male and female genitalia as well as a cover illustration of Jesus Christ wearing the freedom rings a symbol of gay pride while being crucified. The magazine was made available to all library patrons.

One of the groups asking for the removal of the magazine was Citizens for Community Values (CCV), a grassroots educational organization combating pornography and obscenity. Its chairman, Phil Burress, is on the Clermont County Library Board.

Are there any rules to prevent board members with a vested interest from participating in or voting on the decision?

“I can’t really give you an answer,” said Dave Mackson, library board director. "The bylaws don't directly address a conflict of interest with a board member.”

At the Feb. 13 library board meeting, Burress made a motion to move the magazine to an adult-only section in the library. The motion did not pass.

BURNING

An Alternative Look at How and Why It Happened

Malaise at Convention Mall

Convention Place Mall trustee, City of Cincinnati

clash over money and vision

BY BRAD KING

With expansion plans for Cincinnati’s Albert B. Sabin Convention Center on the horizon, developing a clear vision for the adjacent Convention Place Mall has divided the parties involved.

'Convention Place Mall trustee Joe Reis, who leases out the retail space on thq mall’s first three floors, is accusing the City of Cincinnati of not supporting minority-owned businesses he has brought there. They do not fit the image that city officials have envisioned for businesses to complement the convention center, he says.

Now, Reis says, city officials want to push him out. Adding to the conflict are tensions between Reis and managers of the mall’s Office Tower, the upper five floors that house private business space. Ron Goldschmidt, president of the general partnership that owns Office Tower, describes his relationship .with Reis as two people with separate agendas. Reis’ practices have left the mall rundown and unattractive to business owners, Goldschmidt says. Who can referee?

The city doesn’t want to get involved, says Mark McKillip, supervising development officer in Cincinnati’s economic development department.

While the city has tried to help Reis, he has defaulted on his lease, McKillip says, and city officials cannot sit back and be patient with him any longer. The city is taking legal steps against Reis, McKillip says.

“We are not jumping up for joy that we have to pursue this,” he says.

Image concerns

Reis says his problems with the city started when he made efforts to lure minority-owned businesses into Convention Place Mall, which he bought in 1989.

Eat at Joe’s Restaurant, a minority-owned business, began drawing large crowds in the evenings in 1992, he says. To accommodate restaurant patrons, he says, the mall’s food court was turned into a dance club in the evenings even though it did not have the required permits.

The city, Reis says, thought the type of atmosphere being created was not in keeping with the image it wanted to present. City officials were unwilling to help him work out a deal to keep the restaurant open, Reis says. And in 1993, he says, he and his partner were

arrested for operating the dance club. It was a move, he says, to force him to change his agenda for the mall.

That message to change, Reis explains, is spelled out clearly by City Manager John Shirey in a May 27, 1994, letter to Reis. In the letter, Shirey wrote that the Convention Place Mall retail businesses, 50 percent of which are minority-owned, were not “maintained as first class retail space.”

Minorities own half the businesses in Convention Place Mall, across Fifth Street from Cincinnati’s convention center.

That was the last straw, Reis says, and he became determined to develop the mall the way he wanted to with or without the city’s help.

“The city has acted in an unconscionable way,” he says.

Reis calls the Convention Place Mall today a haven for minority-owned businesses, which still make up 50 percent of the stores. It is a trend he does not expect to sit well with the current city administrators.

Despite the trouble with the city and the high turnover rate of retail businesses, Reis says the retail mall is filled to capacity with the exception of three food court spots on the second floor.

Office, retail owners split

Goldschmidt says office space leasing is becoming increasingly more difficult as the downstairs mall goes through its troubles. And he has a different take on the why the retail mall is floundering.

Problems with the lack of money being spent on mall upkeep and a general lack of direction from Reis not the city’s administrators have caused many of Convention Place Mall’s problems, Goldschmidt says.

In addition, he says, Reis’ problems are affecting Office Tower business. Though office space is filled to capacity at the moment, Goldschmidt says he has been forced to lower the leasing prices for office space and cut deals with other businesses just to keep the space occupied.

“I don’t think the mall is in good shape at all,” he says. “It doesn’t have any direction.”

The O’Leary-Kientz Inc. insurance company moved out of the Office Tower in 1994 because, Goldschmidt says, “it wasn’t worth putting up with the first three floors anymore.”

But the mall and the Office Tower are owned sepaCONTINUES ON PAGE 11

Modern Art’s Intellectual Fraud

Marcel Duchamp's legacy continues to this day

ESSAY BY DANIEL BROWN

Marcel Duchamp represents the intellectual fraud of the 20th century, both as artist and man. How and why his art and life captured the impoverished imaginations of Europeans and Americans early in this century with a resurgence beginning in the early 1970s will always elude me.

Duchamp and the Bloomsbury aesthetes in England (Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, Vanessa and Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, et al.) were the first artists of this century to publicize themselves and their personae rather than admit or acknowledge that their work was weak, secondary and relatively unimportant. Duchamp and Woolf in their differing fields, but for similar reasons, may be considered this century’s first marketing experts; the personality and aura of the bohemian won out over artistic or literary contribution.

Duchamp’s life and art set the stage for Andy Warhol, along with the marginalization of art from society to academia, from art to words, from images to personality-as-icon.

Duchamp began his career in Paris when both Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse also first appeared. The painting for which he became famous, “Nude Descending the Staircase” (first shown in America in 1913), did indeed shock the bourgeoisie, as intended. However, the avant-garde in Paris, including American expatriates such as Gertrude Stein, saw the greater merit in Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” made in 1907.

Picasso was widely viewed as possessing greater power, talent, promise and merit. Thus, Duchamp, I would propose, decided he could not compete with Picasso; although both paintings fracture the picture plane and present woman in Cubistic forms, and both are great paintings, Picasso’s profligacy and ambition made his art stand out. Picasso was pegged as the winner.

Shocked at the lack of ongoing acclaim, Duchamp backed off and reinvented himself as an ongoing work of art. He became the first “celebrity artist” as we now know the concept.

Only a few key, seminal works stand out as Duchamp’s life work: “The Nude,” “The Fountain” (widely known as “The Urinal”) and the glass sculpture “The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even).” These three pieces were completed by 1923, but their impact on art and society became legendary and changed the course of art’s meaning throughout this century. His legacy lives on in performance art; conceptually, he became the theoretical underpinning for Minimalism,' which, for me, makes a minimal statement; and Duchamp-as-idea induced Conceptual and Neo-conceptual art, where idea takes precedence over artistic product.

Lacking genuine talent and creativity, Duchamp may be as well-known when photographed playing chess as for the his works of art which seized an impoverished academic mind. He understood when to be seen, where and with whom.

Chess is the consummate intellectual’s game; Duchamp became the king, and the art world his pawns.

With Duchamp, intellect is all, removing all passion and joy, all spirit and soul, from modern and contemporary art. Unlike the Dada artists in Switzerland between world wars, whose nihilism deliberately reflected a world without meaning, Duchamp manipulated such tragedies for his own egoistic self. He married well, repeatedly, once to one of Matisse’s daughters.

His cynicism was picked up by Americans in the early 1970s. Irony, Duchamp’s specialty, is always a poor substitute for wit. From Duchamp we receive the elitism and snobbery which pervade the art world to this day.

Duchamp was indeed a complicated and complex man. He purchased a urinal and placed it in a museum, proving that any object, the so-called “found object,” when recontextualized could be considered “art.” So later did Warhol. Thus, the anything-is-art school emerged and entered our galleries and museums, lives and minds, an amusing intellectual sleight-of-hand, an ongoing one-line joke.

The last laugh would be Duchamp’s, who succeeded wildly in creating an aura about himself and his work. By removing himself to New York late in life, he lived in quasi-obscurity but always made certain that the press knew his whereabouts, as the art world waited for that one last “great” work which of course never came.

What fascinates the contemporary

mind and gender sensibility is Duchamp’s other invented persona. Dressed as a transsexual, he called himself Rrose Selevay. On the fringes of the Surrealist group he was often photographed in drag by Man Ray. Titillating, ambiguous, androgynous, possibly bisexual, Duchamp’s creation has been puzzled over by scholars to this day. He re-created himself, again, as the work of art.

Since Parisian life often mixed bohemians, gays and lesbians, intellectuals and the aristocratic demimonde, perhaps Duchamp re-created those groups all within himself. His model could easily have been the world recorded by Marcel Proust in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu published serially in Paris in the early 1920s while Duchamp was there. Duchamp blended and blurred the lines between life and art. His brilliance in re-creating himself looks backward to Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde and forward to Warhol and the image-makers of our times.

“The Nude,” “The Fountain” and “The Large Glass” combine in Rrose Selevay to demystify Duchamp; all the work and the man eventually are deconstructed into an ongoing intellectual obsession with the ambiguities of sex. By consciously fragmenting, renewing and re-creating his identity, Duchamp continues to fascinate until we realize that posturing is neither art nor life and that he is the biggest phony in modern art.

This is the third installment in a series about the careers of great artists of the 20th century. Next: Alberto Giacometti.

This Fear’s Mardi ©ras

Dineat a downtownrestaurant,and yourreceiptgets youand a friend into theparty at one lowprice:

Bring your masks and join Le Krewe of Lestat in a benefit for The Contemporary Arts Center, complete with Zydeco and Rhythm & Blues by Ricky Nye & The Red Hots. Enjoy all the traditional Mardi Gras trappings-parades, masks, dancing, food and fun-with a macabre twist. This year’s “Interview with a Vampire” theme encourages dramatic dracula attire. Costumes will be judged.

Mardi Gras Party Extraordinaire Saturday, February 25 8 p.m. - midnight

The Contemporary Arts Center Fifth and Walnut, Downtown Call 345-8400 for reservations and information.

WEEKENDS DOWNTOWN Escape The Ordinary.

*Dinner receipt must befor more than $20 and dated now through Feb. 25. Regular ticket price is $15.00 at the door. $12.50 in advance.

Bach #o Bock Fun, and Final Friday, all weekend long. February) may) be sport Suit, ibs.certainly) not sPorf on Dver-tPe-RPine as ypu I3ac(a aromd tine BlocP during tine fain, Hop on tPe BocPMobile and stop in any one oftPe 14 BacP Music Festival, And tape tine Final Friday) gallery) bars and restaurants celebrating BocPfest, Listen to tPe walP on Main Street, From Renaissance to Barogwe to melodic tones from tPe Magnificent Pipe Organs of Historic SAodem Art, tow tPe centuries in one fan weePend,

Escape The Ordinary.

A creek that runs south of Fernald above the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer.

no official study has proven a link between ill health and the radioactive uranium contamination at the Fernald plant site.

Residents from New Haven to Clevesfear contamination lurks in private wells

STORY

BY

NANCY

F I R O R

PHOTOS BY J Y Ml BOLDEN

William Arand has leukemia. He was told by doctors last year, about a month after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Arand’s mother-in-law and father-in-law died of cancer. All four of them had lived or currently live in the Arand house in New Haven, about two miles west of the former Fernald uranium-processing plant.

In the mid-1980s, Arand recalls, government workers tested the home’s private well water, drilled into the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer. The underground water source spans from north of Dayton to the Ohio River along the Great Miami River basin. Part of the aquifer beneath and just south of Fernald is contaminated with uranium.

Despite the test, Arand remains suspicious of his water.

“It showed a positive reading but, according to the statement, it said it wasn’t high enough to be dangerous,” Arand says.

Concerns about potential medical problems related to Fernald have loomed for more than a decade, while

While studies continue, concerns about the aquifer, ground water and private well contamination are spreading beyond Fernald in Crosby Township and beyond the mile-long plume of uranium which officials say has been confined in the aquifer just south of Fernald. The concerns come from those who do not receive water from public treatment plants. As development continues in those areas, mostly in western Hamilton County, many residents rely on private water systems, including wells. The Hamilton County General Health District issues about 50 permits for such systems each year.

Also concerned are county health officials who say state regulations requiring just one test for bacteria at the time a private well is installed might prevent investigation.

“I think that if we are around documented sources of pollution and there’s a possibility that these areas could spread into these newly dug wells, that we should not only be anticipating where this plume is going but also test for those substances,” says Tim Ingram, Hamilton County health commissioner. “You’ve got Fernald, you’ve got a leaky landfill. You’re developing around these areas, so maybe something more needs to be done. If I was on a private well and I was nearby a facility I know I would be testing my water for parameters other than just bacteria.”

In addition to uranium at and near Fernald, concerns being raised about aquifer and ground water contamination include:

Hydrocarbon compounds such as benzene that

William and Angela Arand of New Haven.

have been found in the aquifer beneath an old refinery in Hooven, which has officials at the Cleves Waterworks evaluating options for alternate drinking water sources.

A portion of the aquifer that has been contaminated with organic and inorganic substances south of the uranium plume.

Possible contamination of private wells resulting from malfunctioning private sewage disposal systems and run-off from agricultural and feed-lot areas.

Possible ground water contamination from landfills such as one on Bond Road in Whitewater Township, which has applied for a permit to expand.

Containment at Fernald

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is the owner in charge of the Fernald Environmental Management Project, as the plant site is now known. It will test wells such as the one that serves Arand’s home if requested, but Arand says he does not want the DOE’s test because of “distrust that we have in the accuracy or the honesty in those tests.”

“And there’s nothing else,” Arand says. “I’ve tried repeatedly since we have lived here, which has been approximately five years. I can’t get anybody. When they hear I want to test for uranium in the water, they just drop it.”

In response to Arand’s concerns and others, Hamilton County health officials want to require routine testing of private wells for an array of contaminants, Ingram says. After more than a year of controversy over pollution caused by the health district’s lax oversight of private sewage disposal systems, Ingram became health commissioner in 1992. While he since has implemented a routine inspection program aimed at bringing the systerns into compliance, the extent to which sewage pollution and other contaminants have affected private wells is not known because the wells are not subject to routine testing.

Adopting more stringent testing standards might not be as simple as it seems, Ingram says.

While Ohio Department of Health (ODH) officials say the county is free to require regular testing for any contaminants it chooses, ODH rules require the county to test only for bacteria and only at the time a private

Fernald and Working on Clean-Up Plan

Since work to halt tion in the Great Miami Fernald began in 1993, um-tainted water have

Four recovery wells feet south of the former plant, pumping out 1,400

This effort, officials of contamination from underground water. But pumping and up to 30 level down to proposed Agency drinking water proposal for clean-up (DOE), which owns the to the Ohio Environmental Contamination is the duction at the plant that

“Right now, the goal Tom Schneider, Fernald Dayton office. Under clean up the aquifer, actually different in that and the other's trying

WATER: FROM PAGE 9

owners of the systems. Ingram has requested an opinion from the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office, which has not yet been rendered.

Slowing the plume

DOE officials say that in New Haven Arand is unaffected by the portion of the aquifer that contains heavy concentrations of uranium. That portion extends from the Femald site about a mile south.

The contamination, in the aquifer and on the Fernald site, is the result of uranium releases that occurred during the plant’s 38 years of production, which ended in 1989.

Uranium contamination on the ground surface entered the Great Miami Aquifer in areas where the aquifer was directly accessible or very close to the surface, DOE officials explain.

Uranium is a known carcinogen and also has been shown to cause kidney damage when exposure is chronic, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offi-

Medical Impact Studies

The following are studies designed to determine medical impacts from uraniurn contamination at the Fernald plant site that are being conducted or will be conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

Expected to be released this week were results of an ATSDR study of radon releases from the capped, K-65 silos that contain waste at the former Fernald uranium-processing plant. While radon releases were detected, the ATSDR report concludes that the levels of radon were not great enough to be a health concern, says Burt Cooper, a supervisory environmental health scientist at ATSDR headquarters in Atlanta.

The CDC is currently working on a dose reconstruction study that utilizes existing data to estimate the level of radiation exposure that occurred as a result of production at Fernald. When complete, the reconstruction will be used by the ATSDR in conducting a health assessment. The ultimate goal is to determine if there were health problems related to exposure, says Steven Adams, CDC project officer.

The ATSDR is working on a study on the milk from cows that graze on the Fernald site.

« The ATSDR will conduct a study of produce grown around Fernald and the ground water beneath it. dais say.

Because of a southward flow of water in the portion of the aquifer that holds the uranium plume, the contamination would slowly move southward at the rate of about 200 feet a year if extraction wells had not been installed to pump out contaminated water, says Dennis Carr, director of the environmental media division for the Fernald

Environmental Restoration Management Corp. (FERMCO), which is under contract with the DOE to clean up the site.

So even if it was uncontained, the contamination would not be moving northwest, toward Arand’s home, he says.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) officials agree. After the uranium contamination was discovered in the 1980s, 750 wells were installed to monitor contamination and define its specific locations. It is not unrealistic to believe that the DOE and FERMCO know exactly where the areas of heavy contamination are, says Mike Proffitt, a hydrogeologist in the OEPA’s Dayton office.

“One of the interesting things about uranium is that it has a natural property that causes it to cling to particles in the aquifer, clay particles,” he says. “And what happens is the uranium moves slower than the ground water flow through the aquifer. So even though we’ve got uranium out there, we’ve got contamination.... You can define exactly where it is because it has not gone everywhere.”

Since 1993, the DOE has been pumping out the contaminated water, treating part of it and discharging it, with OEPA approval, to the

Great Miami River. No negative impact from that discharging, as well as the discharging that occurred when the plant was in operation, has been measured, OEPA officials say.

Nor has there been a positive reading for radiation in routine tests done on water that is treated and distributed by the Cincinnati Water Works’ Bolton Treatment Plant, which is about two miles northeast of Fernald and draws water from the Great Miami Aquifer, says David Rager, Water Works director.

In addition to radiation, the plant routinely tests for an array of contaminants as required by environmental regulations.

In response to any concerns that Fernald contamination might affect the plant, DOE officials reiterate that the plant is “upgradient,” or upstream, of the contamination. The contamination is to the south, in an area of the aquifer where the water flows south, they say.

The Bolton plant distributes treated water to the northwest corner of Hamilton County that includes areas of North College Hill, College Hill, Green Township, Colerain Township, Mount Healthy and Mount Airy.

Other contamination

The Great Miami Aquifer follows the river basin and also is a source of private well water, primarfly just west of the river, for some residents in communities that include Crosby, Colerain and Whitewater townships, says George Cummings, conservationist with the Hamilton County Soil and Water District.

Determining the number of private wells on the aquifer would take extensive research, he says, because the records are not kept locally.

Under a proposed remediation plan that the DOE has submitted to the OEPA, the number of extrac

tion wells used to remove contaminated water would be increased in an attempt to restore the aquifer by reducing levels of uranium in the plume. Uranium is now measured at up to 800 parts per billion, but the DOE hopes to reduce that to what it calls a proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency drinking water standard of 20 parts per billion.

The proposed uranium standard is for drinking water, not ground water, says Tim Gill, former regulation manager in the U.S. EPA’s drinking and ground water department and it is 20 micrograms per liter, not parts per billion. The proposed standard has been the focus of much public debate and has not been finalized.

Meanwhile, the OEPA is working toward similar remediation efforts with industry owners responsible for another area of contamination south of the Fernald uranium plume known as the Paddy’s Run Roadsite Plume.

And similar pumping, removal and treatment efforts have been ongoing in Hooven where Chevron bought a refinery and then discovered contamination hydrocarbon compounds including benzene and toluene in the part of the Great Miami Aquifer that lies beneath it, says Mike Ekberg, a geologist in the OEPA’s Dayton office.

The refinery is upstream and.across the river from the Cleves Water Works plant, which draws water from the aquifer, treats it and disperses it to customers in Cleves, North Bend, Miamitown and other areas.

Chevron’s clean-up efforts, under a federal order, involve two phases: remov-

A creek that runs south of Fernald above the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer.

Cows that graze south of the plant are part of a study the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will conduct on the cows’ milk.

CoverStory

MALL: FROM PAGE 5

ing the contamination that floats on top, then pumping out the dissolved compounds, treating the water and discharging it to the Great Miami River, Ekberg says. But, he says, “The contamination is still there. Cleves has decided to look at their water supply.”

Kevin Hopper, the water works’ lawyer, says the water works tests regularly for contamination and no water has entered the plant carrying the refinery’s contamination. But officials are taking steps to identify other sources of water should they become needed.

“We’re actively looking,” he says. “The board is not sitting idly by waiting for something to happen.”

Chevron, Hopper says, has made efforts to remove the contamination through extraction wells and to protect the water supply by drilling and monitoring wells on both sides of the river, which would show if the contamination had spread.

“They’re pumping like mad to contain it,” he says.

Ultimately, officials say, providing publie water is the only way to deflect concems. Currently underway is the first phase of expansion at the Bolton plant that will provide public water sendee for Crosby Township, where many people have relied upon bottled water or special water treatment systems since contamination in the aquifer was discovered.

Future Bolton plant expansion eventually also will extend water lines to Whitewater Township. But Whitewater Township resident Hubert E. Brown says he will not wait for that expansion to resolve concerns he has about his private well.

Brown, a member of Residents Against Local Landfill Expansion, is among those raising questions about whether contaminants have leaked out of a landfill on Bond Road, owned by Monsanto Co. Monsanto officials have asked the OEPA for a permit to expand the landfill, which the company wants to sell to a company that would use it for commercial, industrial and residential waste.

Neither the landfill nor Brown’s well sit above the Great Miami Aquifer, says Steve Lowry, a hydrogeologist in the OEPA’s Dayton office. Instead, he says, both sit above an area of shale and limestone from which the water in Brown’s well comes.

Monsanto, Lowry says, is following requirements that include ground water testing, and the OEPA will consider those results in determining whether to grant the permit to expand.

But as with water plant expansion, Brown is not waiting for OEPA conclusions. Since the health department does not do it, he says he will pay to have the water his family relies upon privately tested.

“I think people (around Femald) are still concerned, and they’re going to be concerned until they put the public water system in,” says Lisa Crawford, president of Femald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health.

“I’ve got children,” he says. “I don’t want to screw up their lives.” ©

rately, so Goldschmidt says he is left to deal with whatever decisions Reis makes concerning the mall.

“It was a screwball deal that (the mall) got separated in the first place,” he says.

Eventually, Goldschmidt says he wants the mall and the Office Tower to be run by one person or group so a clear vision for the future of Convention Place Mall can emerge. He also is interested in operating the entire mall.

But while Goldschmidt is waiting, McKillip says, city officials have decided they cannot wait any longer.

Reis has been officially declared in default on his lease. After several years of problems will mall upkeep and Reis’ inability to meet all monetary terms of his lease, litigation might be the city’s next step, McKillip says.

“We really hope we can get this worked out ...” he says. “This isn’t a way of pushing Mr. Reis out.”

Nor is it a reflection of racist attitudes from city officials, McKillip says.

“That’s totally unfounded,” he says. “This is not a racial issue.”

If the city and Reis cannot work out their differences, the city will take control of the mall portion of the building and will try to find another operator as quickly as possible, McKillip says. Goldschmidt would not necessarily be the one expected to run the whole building, he says, and city officials are not convinced that the building would operate better under one owner. Center

The Center currently of exhibit the 240,000 according conducted sultants.

The sented early officials’ space cies ing the center conventions considered Not The to reposition ter attract possible least space business ers, he “This feeds the convention can’t turn around.”

BACKYARD NATURALIST

BY KAREN AMELIA ARNETT

Promises About to Be Kept

After the last ice storm passed through Cincinnati, when all the trees shone in the sun and the wind in their branches creaked a special kind of music, enjoyed an image of delicate beauty: the winter buds of the trees, encased in ice, almost luminous in their crystalline shells.

As stopped many times to gaze at these glazed structures, it occurred to me that this was a seasonal equivalent of taking time to stop and smell the flowers.

As the finest of leaded crystal captures and refines ordinary daylight, transforming the mundane act of seeing to the level of the exquisite, so too the ice-covered buds seemed to concentrate the promise of spring into a pure, sparkling image.

I am often amazed at the seeming nonchalance of the bare and dormant trees, at the apparent ease with which they withstand winter’s rigors. Winter is a virtual desert to plants and animals alike. In the form of ice, water is unavailable to plant roots. The conifers have special adaptations to protect against dehydration: Their needles have an extra thick skin, or cuticle, and the pores by which they breathe are sunk into the leaf surface.

But the deciduous trees close up shop for the season.

Having formed the first leaves of the spring-to-come in the thick of last summer’s growing season, the bare trees exist as if in a still life. The miniature, already perfectly formed leaves fold together like tightly clasped hands, surrounded by a protective wrapper of waxy, modified leaves, called scales. The buds of spring-flowering trees the ashes, maples, oaks, dogwoods, redbuds hold not only leaves, but nascent blooms as well.

Just as the leaves of each species have special shapes and arrangement on the twig, so too the winter buds bear the signature of the tree’s identity.

There's a striking variation in the buds of some of the more familiar native species. On the ashes, small brown or gray-brown terminal buds (at the growing tip of the twig) look like triangular grains of buckwheat, flanked by two smaller, opposing lateral buds. The tulip tree, state tree of Indiana and Kentucky, bears flatfish buds that resemble the bill of a duck, or of a platypus.

The flowering dogwood holds its globe-shaped flower bud at the tip of each slow-growing twig, as different in shape from its narrow, wispy leaf buds as Jack Spratt from his rotund wife. The buckeyes, whose leaves are the first to unfurl in early spring, have big knobby yellow buds, 1 to 2 inches in length. The sycamore bud, as it forms in summer, is surrounded completely by the swollen leaf stalk; as the leaves fall, the slightly rounded cones sit covered by one seamless scale, like a miniature dunce cap. The beech holds out its inch-long, slender, finely pointed buds, with rows of overlapping scales, like elegant fingers.

Below each bud is a scar marking the site of the leaf's connection to the twig. It is covered with a waxy, protective layer that prevents water loss. Vestiges of the leaves’ life-support system can be found within the leaf scars. Small dark dots mark where the “veins" of xylem and phloem once attached. Through them flowed water, minerals and food, passing from root to leaf and back again. The deltoid leaf scars of some hickories look like small faces, with three clusters of bundle scars resembling two eyes and a mouth. The maples' thin, crescentshaped leaf scar is distinctive on its slightly raised platform. The round leaf scars of the tulip tree display numerous randomly placed bundle scars. Yet another shape is the semicircular leaf scar of the oaks.

There are many more shapes to discover, yet there is repetition. To encounter these patterns time and again is as comforting as seeing the familiar face of a friend.

When winter seems long and gray, and begin to think that flowers exist only in the dreams of honeybees slumbering in their hives, take a walk and admire the winter buds. For it is here, in these inconspicuous somnolent nubs, that the promise of spring can truly be found.

Walnut Hills resident KAREN AMELIA ARNETT finds green even in parking lot.

DailyBred

The Ups and Downs of Downsizing

Area career counselors say trend toward is going strongfour years after it began

BY ELIZABETH CAREY

In April 1991, Time magazine’s cover story focused on the then-relatively unheard of trend of downsizing one’s life. People were leaving good-paying, high-stress corporate jobs and busy lives of relative decadence for easier, simpler lives. Flocks of yuppies threw off their blue suits and power ties and headed for the country.

According to Time, people began to realize they were interested in spending more time with their kids and less time on the job. In the words of Peter Lynch, then an investment manager for Fidelity Mutual Fund and now a stay-at-home dad, “No one ever looked back on their life and wished they had spent more time at the office.”

Yuppies grew up to become parents. In the meantime, the economy took a downturn and money that once flowed from the pockets of brand executives and corporate raiders now trickled into their savings accounts.

Four years later, was downsizing worth it? What did it all do? What changes did the trend of simplifying one’s life bring about if any at all? And is it still a trend in the post-yuppie era?

Demographic Side Effects?

Why leave?

Some interesting side notes to the downsizing trend:

As Americans have less discretionary income, they spend more of on better values. They are foregoing “name brands” and opting for lowerpriced items.

• Americans are saving more for the future than ever before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The U.S. Department of Commerce says this may have fueled the recent economic recovery.

“I don’t see the trend reversing,” says Kim Post, president of Career Solutions, a Springdale-based careerconsulting firm. “In fact, as I see it, even more people are looking away from the corporate structure.”

10 people in the Other problems thing,” Post notes, hours is a myth. keep doing it until raise his kids and Steve fears leave, they’ll fire not any fun anymore,” the security of a and a wife who ties.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, divorce rates have fallen from a high of 5.8 per 1,000 Americans in the mid-’80s to a low of 4.1 per 1,000 in the ’90s.

Recommendations

★ CityBeat staffs stamp of

To be included

BAND Brass. 9 p.m. Thursday. Stache’s, 2404 N. High St., Columbus. 749-4949 or 614-263-5328.

MATTHEW SWEET Alternative.

7 p.m. Thursday. Bogart's, 2621 Vine St., Clifton. $10. 281-8400 or 749-4949.

Listen and learn how Native Americans PASS ON their knowledge and history as the Sunwatch Archaeological Village presents Native American Storytelling. (See ETC listings.) Wm. HOWARD

TAFT was a big, big figure in Ohio and U.S. history, really big! Check out the richness of artwork in Taft in Caricature at UC’s Blegen Library. They don’t draw ’em like that anymore or do they? A photographic display at the Public Library renders the GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS of AfricanAmericans in Greater Cincinnati as well the library highlights the NAACP on its 86TH ANNIVERSARY. The Columbus Museum of Art will allow you to delve into your GENEALOGY Saturday. (See Art listings.) The Underground Railroad Museum director presents The Road to Freedom in Canada, a lecture on the brave efforts of AfricanAmericans and sympathetic white Americans to secure freedom for fleeing slaves before and during the CIVIL WAR. Also, see more than 140 YEARS of firefighting heroics at the Cincinnati Fire Museum. (See Attractions.) Holocaust survivor and author Ruth Kugler will describe her ordeal, and Alexander Stephen, a professor in German at the University of Florida, will speak about the FBI files kept on German emigres, primarily artists and writers, who forged a new life in the United States before, during and after WWII. (For details, see Upcoming.)

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: 665-1369.

Please include a contact name and daytime phone number.

AWADAGIN PRATT WITH THE CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA “Classical meets the Blues.” 8 p.m. Friday. Music Hall, 1243 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine. $15/$20 day of show. 345^1490. OVERKILL WITH KNOW DEATH Metal. 7:30 p.m. Friday. Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St., Clifton. $8.75/$10 day of show. 281-8400 or 749-1949. THE BRITAIN/MOORE QUARTET Jazz. 8 p.m. Saturday. Sungarden Lounge at the Hyatt Regency, 151 West Fifth St., downtown. 579-1234.

BLACKFOOT WITH THE DALLAS MOORE BAND Southern Rock.

AND JACK KINNEY Jazz. 8 p.m Friday. Borders Books and Music, 11711 Princeton Pike, Springdale. 671-5853.

QUEEN CITY BRASS AND THE CHRIS MILLER CHORALE Classical. 7 p.m Friday. Council Chambers of City Hall, 801 Plum St., Downtown. $8/$10 day of show. 381-6868.

NANCY BICK CLARK Celtic harp. 7:30 p.m. Joseph-Beth 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.

RICHARD GOERING Classical guitar. 8 p.m. Saturday. JosephBeth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Madison and Edwards roads, Norwood. 396-8960. SWEET ALICE HOSKINS

7 p.m. Monday. Coyote’s Music and Dance Hall, 400 Buttermilk Pike, Fort $8/$10 of

Blues. 1 p.m. Saturday. Media Play, 4488 Montgomery Road, Norwood. 531-5250.

GREG MAHAN Acoustic. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Blue Jordan Coffeehouse, 4573 Hamilton Ave., North College Hill. 681-9418.

CINCINNATI CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Classical. 1 p.m. Borders Books and Music, 11711 Princeton Pike, Springdale. 671-5853.

STEVE ADKISSON AND JILL SMITH Folk. 7 p.m. Sunday. Leo Coffeehouse, University YMCA, 270 Calhoun St., Clifton. 321-8375 or 829-8360.

BRIAN EWING Alternative Folk. 9 p.m. Tuesday. Mama Earth’s Coffee House, 31 W. High St., Oxford. 513-521-0686.

SONGWRITER NIGHT Open mike. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Borders Books and Music, 11711 Princeton Pike, Springdale. 671-5853.

Music

McGuffy’s. Cover.

★ HOWLIN’ MAGGIE WITH MISS MAY 66 With great guitarbased, hook-laden Rock, Columbus’ Howlin’ Maggie is Ohio’s best new band. Sudsy Malone’s. Cover.

IVORY’S OPEN HOUSE Jazz. Ivory’s. Free.

JOHNNY SCHOTT WITH AIN’T HELEN AND JOELLYN DAVIDOFF Open mike. Courtyard Cafe. Free.

KEN COWDEN AND CHRIS GOINS Acoustic Rock. Shady O’Grady’s Pub. Free.

KEVIN TOHLE Classic Rock. Zipper’s. Free.

KRIS BROWN Folk. Blind Lemon. Free.

LEN CALLAHAN Acoustic. Local 1207. Cover.

MILHAUS Alternative favorites. First Run. $2/$4 under 21.

MODULATORS Eclectic' Mt. Adams Pavilion. Cover.

PLOW ON BOY Folk. Ripleys. Cover.

POSITIVE REACTION Reggae. Ozzie’s. Cover.

SNOWSHOE CRABS Alternative Rock favorites. Salamone’s. Cover.

SONNY AND THE DOGS Blues. Burbank’s Eastgate. Free.

TIME MARKET Jazz. Blue Wisp. Cover.

UPTOWN RHYTHM AND BLUES Rhythm and Blues. Stow’s. Cover.

FRIDAY FEB. 17

ALICE’S JAM GARDEN Rock. Annie’s. Cover.

ANN CHAMBERLAIN JAZZ TRIO Jazz. Coco’s. Cover.

ANVIL SLUGS Alternative favorites. Murray’s Pub. Cover.

APRIL ALOISIO Jazz. Ivory’s. Cover.

THE AVENUES Rhythm and Blues. Chatterbox. $2.

BANJO Alternative. Zipper’s. Free.

BLUE LOU AND THE ACCUSATIONS Blues. Mansion Hill Tavern. Cover.

BOB CUSHING Acoustic. Village Tavern. Free.

BRIAN EWING Alternative Folk. Empire. Cover.

BRIAN LOVELY AND THE SECRET Rock. Shady O’Grady’s. Cover.

BRITTON-MOORE BAND Jazz. Blue Wisp. Cover.

CRAWDADDY Alternative favorites. Club Gotham. $3.

DOUBLESHOT WITH ANNIE

ELLIS Pop. Briarwood. Free.

FRONT RUNNER Rock. Jim and Jack’s. Cover.

Clubs Directory

MUSIC

ALLYN’S CAFE 3538 Columbia Parkway, Columbia-Tusculum. 871-6779.

ANNIE’S 4343 Kellogg Ave., Columbia-Tusculum. 321-0220.

ARLIN'S 307 Ludlow Ave., Clifton. 761-6566.

ARNOLD’S BAR A GRILL

210 E. Eighth St., Downtown. 421-6234.

BLIND LEMON: 936 Hatch St., Mount Adams. 241-3886.

BLUE NOTE CAFE 4620 W. Eighth St., Price Hill. 921-8898.

BLUE WISP JAZZ CLUB 19 Garfield Place, Downtown. 721-9801.

BOBBY MACKEY'S MUSIC WORLD

44 licking Pike, Wilder. 431-5588.

BOGART’S 2621 Vine St., Corryville. 281-8400.

BRIARWOOD

7440 Hamilton Ave., Mount Healthy. 729-2664.

BURBANK’S REAL BAR-B-Q 11167 Dowlin Drive, SharonviUe. 771-1440. 211 Forest Fair Drive, Forest Park. 671-6330. 4389 Eastgate Square Drive, Eastgate. 753-3313. 7908 Dream, Florence. 371-7373.

CANAL STREET TAVERN

308 E. First St., Dayton, Ohio. 513^161-9343.

CHATTERBOX 3428 Warsaw Ave., Price Hill. 921-2057.

CLOVER LEAF INN

3269 North Bend Road, Monfort Heights. 661-6669.

CLUB A 9536 Cincinnati-Columbus Road, Route 42. 777-8699.

CLUB GOTHAM 1346 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 362-0770.

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.

COYOTE’S

Alternative. Top Cat’s. Cover.

GROOVE TRIBE Rock. McGuffy’s. Cover.

GROOVE YARD Rock. Stow’s. Cover.

JIM GILLUM Folk. Blind Lemon. Free.

Complex, Fort Mitchell. 341-5150.

DADDY WARBUCKS

230 Pete Rose Way, Downtown. 632-6646.

DANIEL’S PUB

2735 Vine St., Corryville. 281-1026.

FIRST RUN

36 E. High St., Oxford. 513-523-1335.

FAT FRANK'S 6121 Dixie Highway, Fairfield. 874-6933.

FOLEY’S IRISH PUB IN O’BRYONVILLE 1998 Madison Road, O'Bryonville. 321-6625. 6407 Glenway Ave., Western Hills. 574-7700. THE FRIENDLY STOP 985 Congress Ave., Glendale. 771-7427.

GILLY’S

132 S. Jefferson, Dayton, Ohio. 513-228-8414.

GREENWICH TAVERN 2440 Gilbert Ave., Walnut Hills. 221-6764.

HAP’S IRISH PUB 3510 Erie Ave., Hyde Park. 871-6477.

HURRICANE SURF CLUB

411 W. Pete Rose Way, Downtown. 241-2263.

IVORY’S JAZZ CABARET 2469 W. McMieken, Fairview Heights. 684-0300.

J A FLATS

Ozzie’s. Cover. KEVIN FOX Acoustic Alternative. Stanley’s. Cover. LABYRINTH Rock. New90’s. Cover.

LAGNIAPPE Cajun. Arnold’s. Free.

631-3212. SLEEP OUT LOUIE’S 230 W. Pete Rose Way, Downtown. 721-8636.

SONNY'S CAFE AND LOUNGE 1227 California Ave., Bond HilL 242-4579.

SOUTHGATE HOUSE 24 E. Third St., Newport. 431-2201. STACHE’S 2404 N. High St., Columbus. 614-263-6318. THE STADIUM 16 S. Poplar St., Oxford. 613-523-4661. STOW’S ON MAIN 1142 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 684-0080. THE STRAUSHAUS 630 Main St., Covington. 261-1199. SUDSY MALONE'S 2626 Vine St., Corryville.

671-LIVE.

JIM S JACK'S RIVERSIDE SPORTS BAR 3456 River. Road, Riverside. 251-7977.

KALDI'S COFFEE HOUSE & BOOKSTORE 1204 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 241-3070.

KATMANDU CAFE NEWPORT 1811 Monmouth St., Newport. 291-7600.

THE KELLOGG CLUB 4343 Kellogg Ave., Columbia-Tusculum. 321-9354.

KNOTTY PINE BAR 6847 Cheviot Road, White Oak. 741-3900.

LOCAL 1207 1207 Main St., Downtown. 651-1207.

LOGO'S 8954 Blue Ash Road, Blue Ash. 791-7700.

LONGWORTH’S 1108 St Gregory St., Mount Adams. 579-0900.

MANSION HILL TAVERN 502 Washington St., Newport. 431-3538.

MCGUFFY’S 5418 Burkhardt Road, Dayton. 800-929-2354.

MILLION'S CAFE 3212 Linwood Ave., Mount Lookout. 871-1148.

MOLLOY'S ON THE GREEN 10 Enfield Place, Greenhills. 851-5434. MS. KITTY’S SALOON

SATURDAY FEB. 18

ALICE HOSKINS AND THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS BAND Blues. Stow’s. Cover.

218 W. Third St., Downtown. 721-9620.

MT. ADAMS PAVILION 949 Pavilion St., Mount 721-7272.

MURRAY’S PUB 2169 Queen City Ave., Fairmount. 661-6215. NEW NINETIES NIGHT 3613 Harrison Ave., 481-9013.

OZZIE’S PUB & EATERY 116 E. High St., Oxford. 513-623-3134.

PALACE CLUB 2346 Grange Hall Road, Ohio. 513-426-9305.

PEEL’S PALACE 646 Donalson Road, 727-5600. RIPLEYS

2507 W. Clifton Ave., 861-6506.

QUIGGLEY’S DOWN 433 Johnson St., Covington. 431-3303. SALAMONE’S 5800 Colerain Ave., 385-8662.

SCOOTER’S 1483 Millville Ave., Hamilton. 887-9779.

SHADY O’GRADY’S 9443 Loveland-Madeira Loveland. 791-2763.

SILKY SHANOHAN’S 1582 E. Kemper Road, Sharonville. 772-5955.

SKIPPER’S LOUNGE 1752 Seymour Ave.,

KEVIN FOX Acoustic Alternative. Stanley’s. LABYRINTH Rock. Cover.

GOSHORN BROS. Classic

JOHN FINK AND THE INTRUSIGNS Blues. Allyn’s Cafe.

NEW POTATO CABOOSE WITH UNCLE SIX Rock. Ripleys.

ALICE’S JAM GARDEN Rock. Annie’s. Cover. APRIL ALOISIO Jazz. Ivory's. Cover.

MA CROW AND THE Bluegrass. Arnold’s. MICHAEL DENTON Lemon. Free.

MYSTERY WAGON

400 Buttermilk Pike, Oldenberg Forest Fair Mall, Forest Park.

Cover. GREENWICH TAVERN JAZZ ENSEMBLE Jazz. Greenwich Tavern. Cover. GUNSHY MINISTERS Alternative. Stache's. Cover.

GOITHER Folk. Blind Lemon. Free. KEVIN FOX Acoustic Alternative. Stanley’s. Cover. THE MENUS Rock favorites. Katmandu Cafe. Cover.

NOAH HUNT Acoustic open jam. Lockl 1207. Cover.

OVERDUE AND THE MENUS Rock favorites. Blue Note Cafe. Cover.

PIGMEAT JARRETT Blues. Allyn’s Cafe. Cover.

RUSTIK SOULS Classic Rock. Ozzie’s. Cover.

SONNY AND THE DOGS Blues. Fat Frank’s. Cover.

SPECTRUM WITH AIR MIAMI AND RADIOLARIA Alternative. Sudsy Malone’s. Cover.

TRILOGY Classic Rock. Mt. Adams Pavilion. Cover.

UNCOOL WITH GONGKICKER Alternative. Top Cat’s. Cover. THE WEBSTERS Alternative favorites. Salamone’s. Cover.

Spectator

CINCINNATI CYCLONES IHL hockey vs. Cleveland, 7:30 p.m. Friday; vs. Kansas City, 6 p.m. Sunday. $6-$12 adults; $4-$10 students. Cincinnati Gardens, 2250 Seymour Ave., Norwood. 531-7825.

NKU NORSE NKU men’s basketball vs. Indianapolis, 7:45 p.m. Saturday. NKU women’s basketball vs Indianapolis, 5:30 p.m. Saturday. $4 for both games; students $3. Regents Hall, NKU Campus, Highland Heights. 572-5193.

TURFWAY PARK Live racing.

7 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 1:30 p.m. weekends. Simulcasts from Fairgrounds, Golden Gate Fields, Gulfstream, Oaklawn, Garden State Park and Aqueduct. Parking $2,

Shooting a Gift Hogscraper in the Filament?

New bands rely on diverse influences, but when there's always inspirationfrom Fat Albert

INTERVIEWS BY MIKE BREEN

With the national success of local Alternative giants such as Throneberry, Over The Rhine and the Afghan Whigs, it seems like the spotlight may not be big enough to expose all of the deserving talent in Cincinnati.

So to spread around the light, CityBeat is profiling Alternative up and comers that might otherwise miss exposure. This is the second in a three-part look at diverse new groups that may or may not be the next Cincy band to bust into the big leagues.

Shoot the Gift

The Cincy foursome Shoot the Gift digs Fat Albert’s gang big time.

Bassist Paul Carmack has the entire Bill Cosby-created group inked into the skin on his back. The band thanks the animated crew in their new single’s liner notes and samples audio from the TV show on the record. And when Carmack and drummer Bones decided to form a new band after their previous one (AMF) called it quits, they seriously considered playing all Fat Albert cover

Shoot the Gift is (from left)

Andy Capp, Paul Carmack, Bones and Troy Raszka.

capable playing, lies a loose, ragged jammy vibe that would make big ol’ Mr. Albert chuckle. That spontaneous feel comes from the group’s method of writing.

Some songs are written by individual members, but more often songs are a collaborative effort. “I come up with a lot of bass riffs when I’m at home just chillin’ by myself, watching TV and doing bong hits,” says Carmack. “I’ll come up with one little part and then (guitarist/singer) Troy (Raszka) will come up with a part or two off of that, and that’s how we’ll get a song.”

“I really don’t think say they sound alike,” says and Roll, and then there’s there’s funky stuff."

They jokingly refer to Prince” when pressed about Carmack admits to growing shit like Wendy and he listens almost exclusively vehemently denies it when was allegedly a soldier

With a new tape, Monday free from the band while for playing music, Shoot performing for performance’s just-start moving to their pie don’t dance anymore,” barely annoyed. “Three shit and people would just everybodyjust stands there

Filament

Raszka, who played bass for the now-defunct Schwah, songs. “But then we found out a bunch of transvestites in California were already doing it,” says Bones. Maybe the musical influence of the cartoon junkyard band on Shoot the Gift isn’t obvious. But beneath the developed songwriting and

The troubles of being like the problems groups rent’s cheap and it’s fairly trio Filament knows all everyday barriers to playing Besides the basic problems space, coming up with some efforts to schedule schedule, Filament also that, in its home-base, as important as how well

“It’s extremely political,” Brumm. “It seems like pie to get anywhere here, do that. It’s like anything at it and you’re good, then to go away.”

Brumm, along with bassist Cale Arthur and drummer Dave Cahill, has been “pounding away” at trying to develop Filament’s

BY JOHN M. JAMES

Reassembled, Fresh, Never Frozen

New Tunes

BANDS: FROM PAGE IS

“You’ve got to be patient,” he calmly adds.

Filament, which will perform at Top Cat’s on Feb. 23, attributes the unique and organic sound to the members’ diverse influences and how their differences play off of each other.

POSITIVELY YEAH YEAH YEAH

British techno outfit u-Zig (pronounced as “music," really) has just released on the Astralwerks label a reinterpretation of four tracks from the Auteurs' latest album, Now I'm a Cowboy, and reassembled them in their own fashion under the title u-Zig vs. the Auteurs.

British rag Melody Maker calls this minialbum one of the best of the year. But don’t expect pumped-up mega-mix versions. These reworkings strip the sounds down to electronic bleets and blurts, bits of vocals and isolated instruments for a very ambient sound.

Hole-ly Love, Caped Crusader!

Courtney Love of Hole is the creative music director for the upcoming film Tank Girl, based on the hot underground comic book of the same name. She’s selecting the music for the soundtrack so far

Veruca Salt will be one of the bands on the project due at the end of March on Elektra. Hole is also reported to be taping

water

an MTV Unplugged this month for future broadcast.

“I grew up listening to a lot of Jazz,” Arthur says. “My mom was a big Miles Davis and John Coltrane fan, so that’s kind of my roots. And then I found British music and started listening to Joy Division and things like that.”

just sitting around getting drunk and talking bullshit,” says Grim about the initial inception of the band. “I went over to (McHenry’s) house one day and we were sitting around drinking, and I saw the banjo sitting on the couch. So I sai/l, ‘If you really learn how to play it, I’ll figure out how to build a washtub bass.’ I came back a week later, and he had his Earl Scruggs book and he was playing it.”

Adds McHenry, “The initial idea was just a joke, and within a week or two it got real serious.”

Upcoming Releases for Tuesday

Cahill’s inspiration came quick and held strong “I was 2, and I discovered the Beatles,” he says. “And they’ve been my favorite ever since.”

And like the winds, young grasshopper, are subject to change 5ive Style “Kiki’s Cookout" (SubPop), 7-inch single; Above the Law “Kalifornia” (Ruthless), 12 inch and cassette single; BMX Bandits Life Goes On (Creation); Bone Thugs N Harmony “Foe Tha Love of $” (Ruthless), CD 5 inch, 12 inch and cassette single; Chrome Having a Wonderful Time With Tripods (Corn-Four), best of 1975-83; Cosmic Psychos Thank yer Mum for the Rabbits (Amphetamine Reptile); Foreigner Mr. Moonlight (Rhythm Safari); Klark Kent Kollected Works (I.R.S.), a.k.a. Stewart Copeland of the Police; Morrissey World of Morrissey (Sire / Reprise), Bsides and live tracks; MX 80 Sound Hard Attack & Big Hits (Atavistic); Royal Trux Thank You (Virgin); the Sylvers Boogie Fever: The Best Of (Razor & Tie).

Brumm says, “Everybody has kinda the same approach to their instruments even with all of our different influences. Dave approaches the drums very melodically because his thrust is melody and songwriting from his influences. My feel is more rhythmic because drums were my first instrument. And Cale adds shape with his jazz leanings. So everybody’s influences play into the way this works.”

It’s those influences that have led to some of the comparisons that people have made to the band. While a markedly American, guitar-based band, those early influences of Joy Division and other English bands creep into the music, giving the group a non-slack, non-slop approach that sets it apart from peers.

“Some of the responses we’ve gotten have been like, ‘Hey, you sound like Swervedriver or Ride’ or something British,” says Arthur. “At first it’s kind of like a stigma, but then it’s OK. Because Pavement sounds like the Fall (laughs). It’s odd because nobody has drawn a straight line and said that we sound exactly like someone. Which makes me really happy.”

Adds Brumm, “There’s never been any concern of ours to not sound like anything and also has never been something stressed upon us to sound like X or Y or whatever. Some people are out to prove that they don’t sound like this or that, but to me it’s not a focus.”

Hogscraper

FREE AFTERNOON SHOW!

Check out Columbus, Ohio’s WATERSHED in a free performance. Saturday, Feb. 18, 3-5pm at Streetside Records, 169 W. McMillan, Clifton. Free cassette samplers with two tracks from their debut release “Twister” available at Streetside through Feb. 18.

LIVE AT RIPLEY'S • SATURDAY, FEB. 18 AT 9:00PM

“The whole band is kind of like a psychodrama of demented patriotism, backwoods weirdness and Satanism,” says singer/washtub bassist Lariat B. Grim about his band, the backwoods, bluegrass, Punk, jug band Hogscraper.

The group’s approach to playing Bluegrass and jug music has the markings of the do-it-yourself ethic of Punk rock, making Hogscraper (which also features banjoist Henry McHenry and drummer Mister Lanious) an odd bird in Cincinnati’s heavily guitar-based Alternative scene.

“It was a little joke thing when I was

Grim, clueless on how to build a washtub, decided to get industrious after a discovery at an “Old Time” music store.

“They’re some kind of elitist country bumpkin club, and they weren’t going to tell me anything,” Grim says. “But there was a washtub in their window that had an outline of a foot and ‘foot here’ and ‘pull here’ written on it in marker.”

After getting their equipment together, McHenry and Grim recorded a cassette of their twisted tunes, passed them out to a bunch of friends and sat back to watch the extremely enthusiastic reactions.

“People were just fanatic about it, so we had, to start a band,” McHenry says matter of factly.

The group’s first show was at the Real Movies theater, where technical difficulties caused Grim to smash his instrument in frustration halfway into the first song. “We couldn’t appease the crowd musically, so we put on a little unusual spectacle,” says Grim. It wasn’t until after that show that the group acquired Lanious who, besides playing drums, is responsible for the odd electronic gadgets, smoke and lights that add another surreal dimension to the band’s shows.

Hogscraper members, who are currently preparing to take their “spectacle” to other cities and also to record in a “real” studio, say that it wasn’t until after the band was together that they started appreciating the Bluegrass music that is the backwoods cousin to their sound.

“When we started doing this, just to figure out the whole theory behind the banjo, I started listening to Earl Scruggs and stuff,” McHenry explains. “It wasn’t until after we were into it for a while that any Bluegrass started actually coming into it. Initially, it was just whatever previous rock ’n’ roll influences we had, we tried to do that on banjo and washtub.”

And now, to band members’ surprise, true, die-hard fans of Bluegrass are joining their regular fans at the live Hogscraper rituals. “People’s relatives who actually live out in boonie areas are starting to come to the show,” McHenry says. “They appreciate this kind of music being rejuvenated.”

Adds Grim, “A lot of people go to see shows, and they sit there and dissect and critique bands. There’s too much of that. But when people come to see us they seem to have a good time, and that’s pretty much what it’s all about.” ©

JOHN JAMES can be found behind the counter at Wizard Records in Corryville.

Hogscraper is (from left) Henry McHenry, Mister Lanious and Lariat B. Grim.

Local Scene

SPILL IT

BY MIKE BREEN

Local Release-O-Rama

on its sleeve, the influences are diluted enough to give them their own identity. Vocalist Wade Newhouse’s gritty voice is definitely one of the strongest heard around these parts, and his knack for melody and harmony is impeccable. Highlights from the debut cassette, Her (available from Lavaskag Inc., Box 19739, Cincinnati, OH 45219), include the infectious "Come With You,” the dynamic “Little Hope” and the soaring, edgy yet lush slow-dance “Sink-Her.” (Flowerfist plays Thursday at Top Cat’s with Tierra Del.) Common Ground’s sound is a lot like the title of the Folk duo's CD, Light Painted Shadows (733 Beechwood Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45232). Like wispy pencil sketches, the band has an airy quality, but the talent here is very strong. Tara Dill-Rsher's voice is splendid, and the flourishes of recorder and acoustic guitar lend an almost New Age quality to the record. Fans of Folk in the Indigo Girls vein will find this CD very engaging.

It’s time for a roundup of the newest tapes and CDs by area musicians. These are a varied bunch of recordings in both format and sound. Go to your favorite record store and ask if it carries the ones that interest you. If not, tell the clerks they should carry local music. You also may be able to obtain copies by writing the bands. Or just go to one of their concerts and harass them until they give you a copy.

Ditchweed’s “Flat Earth Society” vinyl 7-inch is the power trio’s second single for the local singles-only label MonoCat 7 (Box 19880, Cincinnati, OH 45219-0880). The wonderfully schitzo sound is steeped heavily in acidic Rock, but there's nothing retro about it. Driving rhythms and slicjng, manic guitar lines prevail throughout the single. In general, the group seems to be experimenting more with the songwriting resulting in a creative, artsy feel. Ditchweed has managed to squeeze three tunes on this single, and each one is markedly different.

Jayne Sachs music has been compared to Cincinnati’s Over The Rhine, but this Dayton-based singer/songwriter's non-pretentious, affable Pop sensibilities definitely set her in a league apart from her ethereal state-mates. Her breathy, sensual voice (mildly recalling the Breeders' Kim Deal) and bouncing, sassy and clever songwriting on her self-titled tape strongly indicate that Sachs is on her way to bigger things. This cassette (from Peer Productions, Box 5673, Dayton, OH 45405) is refreshingly non-contrived and an extremely enjoyable listening experience.

Former Bear Chris Arduser leads the dynamic, soulful and twangy Graveblankets, and the Pop/Country/Folk blend has the same addicting quality as Arduser's other band, psychodots. With Arduser's soothing mandolin and Karen Addie’s diversified fiddle playing, the band evokes a back-porch jam, which is almost misleading given the intelligent and skilled songwriting. The band is rounded out by psychodot Bob Nyswonger on bass, guitarist George Cunningham and vocalist Bridget Otto. All in all, this is a finely crafted self-titled debut (from Sacred Moment Monument and Recording Co., P.O. Box 141409, Cincinnati, OH 45250-1409).

Send all music-related materials to MIKE BREEN, Cincinnati CityBeat, 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 617, Cincinnati, OH 45202.

With a murky, garagey feel reminiscent of the late, great, local group the Mortals, Metro Rouge has an excellent sound that is full of somewhat Surf Rock guitar lines and a ’60s Garage Punk edge. Stick around till the end of the self-titled tape (available from Porkopolis, Box 3529, Cincinnati, OH 45201-3529) as the band ends with a spoken-word-type bit called “Broken Hearts” that recalls ArtPunk underground stars Bongwater and King Missile. This cassette is a surprising treat try to get a copy.

Flowerfist plays aggressive and melodic guitar Rock that is more than just eye-level with the national Alternative big wigs. What sets these guys apart is the fact that there’s no contrivance, and while the band’s heart may be

MONDAY, MARCH 27,8 PM

RESERVED SEAT TICKETS ON SALE SATURDAY FEBRUARY 18,10AM

UtterKiosk

Short Takes

RE.VIEWS BY MIKE BREEN

THE HAIRY PATT BAND Buford’s Last Pusser (Choke Inc., 1376 W. Grand, Chicago, IL 60622).

Like a backwoods growl grissling with both angst and insanity, Buford’s Last Pusser is the debut CD by this Columbus duo. Drummer Joe Patt’s skittish and erratic drumming more than aptly compliments the over-the-top possessed squeal of guitarist/vocalist Jason Drenik. Mixing avant-Punk with a Neohillbilly twist, the Patt Band’s sound resembles a late-night acid trip through the swamps of Louisiana. The leadoff track, a rendering of Johnny Cougar’s “Jack and Diane,” is pure and maniacal and provides a firm introduction (or warning, depending on personal taste) to the rest of this twisted adventure.

Buford's not an easy pill to swallow for fans of standard, easily pigeonholed fare thankfully. The Patts are a welcome deviance in the often predictable world of music. CityBeat grade: A.

THE CHIEFTAINS The Long Black Veil (RCA).

Although it may seem like these Celtic music legends are unable to make a record by themselves (prior releases have included guests ranging from Burgess Meredith to Elvis Costello), the Chieftains’ records are greatly augmented by the slew of famous fans they enlist to record with them. It’s not merely a padding of popularity to help sell albums although it helps that, too. On the group’s latest, Mick Jagger lends a country swagger to the title track, Sting’s reading of the traditional Gaelic tune “Mo

Ghile Mear” is superb and Sinead O’Connor’s voice on two tracks is eerie and mesmerizing and precisely fitting. Another standout is Van Morrison guesting on his own “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” the best recorded version of that song to date. The great renditions, coupled with chief Chieftain Paddy Moloney’s brief explanations of the history of the songs, make the record a Celtic music must-have. CityBeat grade: A.

THE ROOTS Do You Want More 7111771 (DGC).

These Philly cats float easygoing rhymes over real Jazz beats and take Hip-Hop to the logical next level. While fellow “Jazz Hop” artists such as US3 and Digable Planets oversaturate their albums with boasts about how “hep” to the Jazz they are, the Roots come off as 100 percent legit without the need to tell you every two minutes. Rhymers Question and Black Thought are the outward soul of the Roots with their fluid, grainy voices. The rappers’ improvisational style points out the spiritual influence of Jazz on Rap as they update the old-school, freestyle skills. The heart of the band lies with the musicians. There’s minimal sampling, and, contrary to the band’s peers, almost all of the music is live. Unlike Guru, who recorded with Jazz veteran Donald Byrd for his solo debut, the Roots use younger players such as the prevalent keyboardist Scott Storch, the stunning vocalist Cassandra Wilson and stellar saxman Steve Coleman. The youthful spirit of such a coalition gives the tracks an organic energy that is unparalleled. CityBeat grade: A.

FEBRUARY 17 & 18

CHUG-A-LUGS (7899 Dream St - Florence)

FEBRUARY

★ A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE This soft-spoken poem of a film stands distinctly apart from the flash and crash standard of most movies. Its story of a Dublin bus conductor, Alfie Byrne (Albert Finney), who finds personal happiness elusive, is joy to behold. Funny and touching, A Man of

SUMMARIES AND CAPSULE REVIEWS BY

STEVE RAMOS

Opening

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE

On a residential street, in a Los Angeles suburb, something a bit strange is going on. It’s 1995 and TV’s favorite pre-disco family, the Bradys, is still hanging around. The twist is that the world around them has moved on, but that wacky Brady Bunch is trapped in the 70s. Well, nine fish out of water (counting Alice) must be funnier than just one or two. Keeping true to her TV roots, actress Shelley Long (Diane of TVs Cheers) takes a spin at portraying pulp icon Carol Brady. Just like Abba, The Brady Bunch is suddenly pretty hip with the alternative crowd. Let’s see if this film sustains the momentum or sends them reeling. Hey TV fiends, that Sgt. Bilko movie is just around the corner. With Gary Cole and Michael McKean. (Rated PG-13; opens Friday at area Loews Theatres.) No screening.

COBB In the movies, the vile seldom get top billing. In his latest film, Cobb, director Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump) looks at the closing days of baseball great iy Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones) and turns this theory upside-down.

Cobb the athlete holds little interest for Shelton. Based on the 1961 biography My Life in Baseball that sportswriter A1

Stump (Robert Wuhl) co-wrote with Cobb, Shelton's film begins with Stump’s agreement to help Cobb write his biography. During a cross-country trek to Cooperstown, N.Y., for a Hall of Fame banquet, Stump learns of Cobb’s boozing, racism, bigotry and overall obnoxious behavior.

Jones jumps headfirst into the role with relish. The result is a performance that should have earned an Oscar nomination. More than a sports'biography, Cobb shows a rotten man who must face his impending death. With Lolita Davidovich. (Rated R; opens Friday at Showcase Cinemas Cincinnati.)

CityBeat grade: B. FORREST GUMP You can’t keep a good Gump down. After raking in 13 Oscar nominations, our man Gump is bouncing back to a theater near us. The more money one makes, the more boxes of chocolate one can buy.

Ducks. Big surprise. With Stiller. (Rated PG; opens area Showcase Cinemas.) screening.

JUST CAUSE Paul (Sean Connery), a Harvard professor answers a cry from Bobby Earl Ferguson Underwood), a convict Death Rqyy. Ferguson innocent. As Armstrong gates the details of an case, he encounters resistance from the arresting officer, Tanny Brown (Lany Fishburne). Soon, Armstrong is knee-deep web of small-town deceit threatens his own life. Arne Glimcher leaves passionate romance of effort, The Mambo Kings, tackles the thriller genre Two talented screenwriters, Stuart (Die Hard) and (Charade), come along make this film adaptation John Katzenbach’s best box-office hit. With Ed Kate Capshaw. (Rated Friday at area Loews Theatres.) No screening.

THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE Adapting Bennett’s successful stage Madness ofGeorge III ver screen, director Nicholas Hytner creates an abundance cinematic pomp and circumstance that’s equal to this grand royal intrigue. Thirty years reign and still smarting the American Colonies, George III (Nigel Hawthorne) begins to lose his senses. the Prince of Wales (Rupert Everett), does not hesitate at the chance of wresting from his father. What a power play that acquires ments of a smart thriller. Madness ofKing George its story as a fairly funny, drama more than some crisis. In the process, to the domestic shenanigans today’s House of Windsor inevitable. Boosted by nations of Best Actor Hawthorne and Best Supporting Actress for Helen Mirren, Madness ofKing George cross over into mainstream cess. Its quality deserves tion. With Ian Holm and Graves. (Unrated; opens the Little Art Theatre, Springs.)

CityBeat grade: B. QUIZ SHOW Juiced nominations for Best Picture, Director and Best Supporting Actor for Paul Scofield’s mance as the elder Mark Doren, Robert Redford’s Show returns to the nation’s offices looking for that that never materialized. because Quiz Show is away the best American 1994. Taking a cue from Richard N. Goodwin’s Remembering America: From the Sixties, director Redford has crafted his to date. Today, many people the scandals involving show Twenty-One as Through phenomenal mances from Ralph Fiennes contestant Charles Van Turfway and Forest Fair.)

tips

(Rated R; opens Friday at Norwood and Turfway Park.)

AND THE

★

needs

(Rated R; closes Thursday at Showcase Cinemas Cincinnati.)

★ DESTINY IN SPACE Sure, 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 as it repairs the Hubble, and the images are amazing. Move over Star Trek Generations, here’s a real out-Qf-space adventure. (Unrated; at Robert D. Lindner Family Omnimax Theater.)

★ DISCLOSURE Sex. Power. Betrayal. Disclosure, director

Nic’s Wild Years

Barry Levinson’s film of the bestselling novel by Michael Crichton, rightfully sidesteps any controversy and sticks to pure entertainment. Set in the offices of Digicom, a high-tech 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. With Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. (Rated R; at area Loews Theatres.)

Putting his rock ’n’ roll image behind him, Cage steps into the limelight with a new agenda

INTERVIEW BY STEVE RAMOS

Not so long ago, actor Nicolas Cage was a real wild child. A ketchup bottle would be smashed against a restaurant wall. Women were not safe from his insistent flirtations. His rock ’n’ roll rebel was something that Cage worked hard at.

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 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 Hollywood’s man with the Midas touch for ’94. Rumors are that in France, people have thrown out their posters of Jerry Lewis and replaced them with ones of Carrey. A new slapstick god is bom. With Teri Garr and exMTV veejay Karen Duffy. (Rated PG-13; at area Showcase Cinemas.)

FAR FROM HOME THE ADVENTURES OF YELLOWDOG After seeing Lion King for the umpteenth time, children may be sick of animated fare. Sure, there’s the new version of Jungle Book, but how about an adventure that takes place a bit closer to home?

“When I was 15,1 went to see Rebel Without a Cause and East ofEden and decided that I wanted to be like James Dean,” says Cage while attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival last month in Park City, Utah. “I wanted stories to be told about me that were told about my favorite actors like Dean and Marlon Brando. The problem was that I was just a kid then. I’m 31 years old now, and I don’t need to be the Sex Pistols or The Who. It’s not me anymore, and it can become dangerous if people connect these stories from yourpast to how you are now.”

Look into his pale blue eyes. Believe me, they seem to say. I’m a bad boy no longer.

20th Century Fox comes to the rescue with this tale of a young boy who becomes lost at sea. His trusted doggie leads him hoihe.

It has been four years since he played the part of Sailor Ripley, the ex-con protagonist in director David Lynch’s controversial love story, Wild at Heart. Today, Cage seems more at home doing Jimmy Stewart imitations as a good-guy cop in last summer’s Frank Capralike comedy, It Could Happen To You.

Too bad theater owners won’t let pets inside. This one is for the pooches. Woof. With Jesse Bradford, Mimi Rogers and a certain yellow dog. (Rated PG; closes MORE, PAGE 20 / V

Is the rebel now a member of the establishment? Well, Cage came to Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival to accept the Piper-Heidsieck Tribute to Independent Vision. The award honors actors who embody a willingness to take risks and an independent spirit.

“Independent film is like a laboratory where I actualize my fantasies,” Cage says. In the 1989 film Vampire’s Kiss, Cage played a Manhattan literary agent who believes that he’s turning into a vampire. Patterning his role after German actor Max Schreck’s performance in the 1921 film Nosferatu, Cage would stick his shoulders up next to the top of his neck, position his fingers like claws and spread his eyes wide open.

Qtyfieaf

“I was scared when I was doing Vampire’s Kiss, but when I saw the movie, I felt relieved,” he says. “That’s what I mean by taking a chance, that you can dream something up and you can make it happen.”

offers its readers special admission flyers to the Dove Family Film Festival

Cage knows the difference between a big Hollywood movie and a smaller independent film. In independent film, actors can eat bugs. Adding a splash of realism to his portrayal as a bloodsucker in the film, Cage slurped down a live cockroach.

Admission is FREE for all children 12 and under and only $1 for older children and adults.

“I could not get away with that in a huge $30 million studio film,” Cage says. “They’d say, ‘You want to eat a cockroach? You’re out of your mind.’ The thing is that I just saved a movie $2 million in special effects money. They just got the same reaction from me eating a bug as blowing up a bus in Speed, and all I did was eat a bug.”

Admission flyers are available at: Children’s Museum of Cincinnati

Back when eating bugs made more sense, a 6-yearold Cage already knew that he wanted to act. At his

700 W. Pete Rose Way

Barnes & Noble Bookstore

family’s home in Long hours watching Jerry little people inside the fessor August Coppola, Hills, Cage took a stab Beverly Hills High School. Conservatory, a branch Conservatory Theatre, television movie The went to work with his way. He remembers how Alan Parker’s Birdy. and I didn’t have the monologues. When I I was just vomiting emotion thought?’ But, I look see that there was a never be regained.” This confidence enabled beliefs. When his uncle Charlie Bodell in Peggy it down. “I told Francis, unless you let me go The Gumby and Pokey Cast members rolled Kathleen Turner wanted mance stayed in the The actor whom people has stepped back into

When he walks into

Lounge, the staff refer studios place him in

Cage’s mind rests

Thursday at area Showcase Cinemas; opens Friday at Norwood, Turfway Park, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

★ HEAVENLY CREATURES It may be the most famous criminal case in New Zealand’s history. Two young girls, Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), look to escape their homes in 1952. Would you kill for love? This is the question that Pauline and Juliet must ask themselves. Leave it to New Zealand director Peter Jackson to make a movie that is one part love story and one part horror movie. His zombie flick Dead Alive is

HIGHER

HIGHLANDER 3 Christopher

Lambert returns as the Scottish clan leader who finds that being immortal can be a real pain. No surprise. This time around, Mario Van Peebles turns up as an evil sorcerer. Sooner or later, somebody always loses his head in these Highlander movies. Maybe for Lambert, the third time is the charm. (Rated R; closes Thursday at area Showcase Cinemas; opens Friday at Norwood, Turfway Park, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

HOOP DREAMS Documentary filmmakers Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx spent years following the lives of Arthur Agee and William Gates, two African-American boys from Chicago’s inner-city. Gates and Agee share a common dream.

These two envision a time when NBA uniforms will drape their bodies. It’s the source of their hope. Coming from backgrounds full of hardship, this wish sustains their beliefs for a better tomorrow.

Crossing into the realm of a dramatic narrative, Hoop Dreams packs more emotional punch than recent movie dramas. Tragedies such as a father’s struggles with drug addiction or a family sitting around a dark apartment because the electricity has been turned off take on more meaning when they’re real. Hoop Dreams weaves together the best elements of two different film genres. It has all the emotional intensity of a dramatic narrative and the educational impact of fine documentary filmmaking. Hoop Dreams hits both the head and the heart with equal intensity. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at 1994’s Sundance Film Festival, Hoop Dreams offers a hard and personal look at the most American of stories: families striving for better life. (Rated PG-13; at the Esquire Theatre and the New Neon Movies, Dayton.)

HOUSEGUEST Kevin Franklin (Sinbad) is a con artist on the run

Rea and Christian Slater. (Rated R; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair, Biggs Place Eastgate and Westwood.)

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS

Director John Carpenter’s In the Mouth ofMadness puts a great twist on Stephen King-mania through its tale about a best-selling horror author whose books literally turn readers into monsters. Insurance fraud investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) is brought in by the publishing company of megaselling author Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). Cane is missing. Trent believes that it’s just a publicity hoax. Unfortunately, he discovers otherwise, and his life will never be the same.

In past films, (Prince of Darkness, Halloween), Carpenter used less-clever material for a more-frightening effect. Here, the terrible irony is that he wastes what might be the best idea for a horror film in some time. There is not one single sequence that frightens to the point that you will squirm in your seat. For a Carpenter film, such scenes are normally a given. Don’t give up hope. His version of horror classic Village of the Damned arrives later this year. With Julie Carmen and Charlton Heston. (Rated R; at area Showcase Cinemas.)

★ I.Q. As the niece to renowned physicist Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau), Catherine (Meg Ryan) emphasizes her head over her heart. 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 col : leagues 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. 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. With Charles Durning and Gene Saks. (Rated PG; at Loews 275 East.)

THE JERKY BOYS Those pop cultural phenomena who go by the name of Jerky are siting on the cusp of mass stardom. This feature movie may push them over the edge. Hey, what film did for those Ninja Turtles, it could do the same for the Jerky Boys. Now what this movie really needs is a Ren & Stimpy opening cartoon. Maybe for the sequel. With Johnny Brennan and Kamal. (Rated R; at area Loews Theatres.)

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 togethfun way for young people to learn something new about their world. With Sam Neill, Cary Elwes and Lena Headey. (Rated PG; at area Showcase Cinemas.)

JUNIOR Director Ivan Reitman (Kindergarten Cop, Twins), more than any other filmmaker, should know how to make Arnold Schwarzenegger funny. In Junior, he has the best sight gag, a pregnant Schwarzenegger. Reitman blows this golden, comic opportunity by miscasting Danny DeVito as a straight man and Emma Thompson as some slapstick clown. Junior could have been hilarious instead ofjust being cute. With Pamela Reed and Frank Langella. (Rated PG-13; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

★ LEGENDS OF THE FALL As

Jones Brings Sympathy to the Devil That Was Baseball Legend TV Cobb

In the movies, the vile seldom get top billing. It’s a matter of giving people what they want. Movie audiences expect the bad guys to stay away from the marquee. That’s for heroes, you know.

In his latest film, Cobb, director Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump) looks at the closing days of baseball great Ty Cobb and turns this theory upside-down.

Shelton pulls an awful man from the shadows and thrusts him into the spotlight. Audiences may not realize what’s in store for them. Well, maybe they do. Fueled by praise for actor Tommy Lee Jones’ portrayal of Cobb, Warner Bros, released Cobb in select cities in December. Ticketbuyers stayed away. It’s their loss because Cobb offers an extraordinary, Academy Tommy Lee Jones as Ty Cobb. Award-worthy performance by Jones. Hollywood is in the business of myth-making, but Cobb unveils the myth of a great athlete and shows him for the louse he truly was.

It’s the mythical side of Cobb that people remember. The first ballplayer to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, Cobb holds the records for highest lifetime batting average (.367) and most career runs scored (2,245). He ruled the ball fields during his playing years with the Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Athletics from 1905 through 1936.

Still, Cobb the athlete holds little interest for Shelton. He begins his stoiy when Cobb has not played ball in more than 30 years. Shelton’s movie is based on the 1961 biography, My Life in Baseball, that sportswriter Al Stump (Robert Wuhl) co-wrote with Cobb and a True magazine article from that year titled “Ty Cobb’s Wild Ten-Month Fight to Live.”

In 1960, Stump agrees to help Cobb write his biography and accompanies him on a cross-country trek from his mountain lodge near Reno, Nev., to Cooperstown, N.Y., for a Hall of Fame banquet. Stump’s first encounter with Cobb is filled with gunfire and profanity. And that’s just the beginning. Shelton shows no sympathy for this devil. Acts of violence from Cobb become more frequent and ferocious. At a casino in Reno, Cobb spots a woman he knows with another man and starts firing a gun in anger. There’s booze, pills, racism, bigotry and basically behavior that is consistently rude and obnoxious.

Who’d want to watch this? Well, Jones jumps headfirst into the cesspool and bathes in Cobb’s wickedness. This is his movie, and everyone else fades into the background. Luckily, Jones’ performance never dwindles to the level of some raving tirade. To his credit, Cobb remains a monstrous man but never fades into some characterization of a monster. It’s a tight rope walk. Because Cobb’s few redeeming qualities pale in comparison to his nastiness, he never achieves the status of anti-hero. He’s simply despicable. Shelton’s movie leaves the sports-biography genre far behind. Cobb focuses on a terrible man who must face his impending death. In most hands, this movie would feel abusive. Jones makes it entertaining.

CltyBeat grade: B.

UtterKiosk

Place Eastgate and Westwood.)

★ LITTLE WOMEN A cherished literary classic receives a wonderful adaptation at the hands of director Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career). Almost everyone knows Louisa May Alcott’s tale of the young March women, but Armstrong brings this story alive with such visual flourish and for her actresses that this film takes its place as a classic in its true right. Told through the narration of the tomboy Jo (Winona Ryder), Little Women emerges as one of those few family films that deserve to be described as a treasure. Leaving behind her persona as some Slacker-generation role model, Ryder excels in a role that perhaps she was destined to play. Beautiful to watch, touching to hear and so moving upon its end, Little Women touches the hearts of young and old alike. Sure, you know how the story ends, but the tears will fall anyway. With Susan Sarandon, Trini Alvarado and Kirsten Dunst. (Rated PG; at area Showcase Cinemas.)

★ THE MASK In this specialeffects-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 summer, The Mask possessed the most originality. With this hit, Carrey became a million-dollar baby. Who knows if he will ever lose his Midas touch? With Peter Riegert and Cameron Diaz. (Rated PG-13; closes Thursday at Norwood.)

MIXED NUTS Still smarting from the utter failure of his last film A Simple 7\vist ofFate, Steve Martin searches for a hit movie. Director Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle) may provide the vehicle that Martin needs to jump-start his career. As proprietor of the Lifesavers suicide-prevention hot line, Philip (Martin) faces crises

both personal and professional in this adaptation of the hit French film Le Pere Noel est une Ordure. American audiences have yet to find suicide as funny as the French. Next time, Martin better team up with Jim Carrey. With Juliette Lewis and Madeline Kahn. (Rated PG-13; closes Thursday at Norwood, Turfway and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

MURDER IN THE FIRST A young man, Henri Young (Kevin Bacon), faces unrelenting brutality during his incarceration at the notorious prison Alcatraz. Fighting for his humanity, Young finds himself facing a charge of first-degree murder. His quest for justice teams him with an idealistic public defender, James Stamphill (Christian Slater). Based on a true story from the AOs, Murder in the First addresses themes of cruelty and hope in a story that may hit a bit close to home. With Gary Oldman and Embeth Davidtz. (Rated R; at area Loews Theatres.)

★ NELL Nominated for another Best Actress Oscar, Jodie Foster has emerged as the industry’s most powerful woman. So what does Hollywood’s superwoman pick as her latest project? Based on the stage play Idioglossia, Nell tells a story about a young woman who lives in a cabin deep in the woods. 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. Well, it’s no wonder Foster leapt at this chance to play a backwoods Solomon. Nell is the antithesis of a Hollywood star. Nell’s strengths have little to do with beauty or personality. In Nell, Foster proves she can tackle arole that is far removed from how audiences perceive her (very smart, articulate and attractive) and makes it work. Foster pulls off a master-stroke. It is an exercise worth watching. With Jeremy Davies. (Rated R; at area Loews Theatres.)

★ NOBODY’S FOOL An American acting treasure returns to the silver screen with a melancholy tale of an older man named Sully (Paul Newman), who faces up to abandoning his family in a small New England town.

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; closes Thursday at Norwood and Turfway.)

Magazines may declare that Newman is the sexiest 70-year-old alive, and that may be true. More importantly, he is an extraordinary talent that lights up a movie with his presence. Based on the novel by Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool offers Newman fantastic dialogue, touching scenes and a character worthy to his abilities. Academy voters thought so; they nominated Newman for Best Actor. Here is a movie that stands heads and shoul ders above the competition. A classic. With Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith. (Rated R; at area Loews Theatres.)

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 a cartoon. A young boy, who is afraid ofjust about everything, is transported into a cartoon land, where he must battle with famous figures from classic novels Unfortunately, this cool world is not that cool after all. What did the kiddies think? Well, this reviewer saw The Pagemaster with a coupie hundred children one Saturday morning, 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 Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

★ THE PROFESSIONAL Filmmaker Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, Subway) revolves his bloody action story around an unlikely protagonist, a young girl. Just as cinema violence begins to seem blase, Besson shakes things up by throwing a child in the mix. Did we also mention that she’s sexy? The Professional thrills like few recent films. With Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. (Rated R; closes Thursday at Norwood, Turfway and Forest Fair.)

★ PULP FICTION Director Quentin Tarantino has shifted from cult favorite to Academy darling. Pulp Fiction received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (for John Travolta) and Best Supporting Actor (for Samuel L. Jackson). With wild frenzy, Tarantino mixes 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 Uma Thurman. (Rated R; at area

Showcase Cinemas.)

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD Just because two gunfighters are facing each other in the middle of dusty street doesn’t director Sam Raimi’s (Darkman, The Evil Dead Trilogy) latest film is a western. The Quick and the Dead is a series of cliches taken from standard western elements and lumped together to form a film that possesses nothing resembling a story.

British screenwriter Simon Moore attempts to fashion a narrative around a young woman, Ellen (Sharon Stone) who rides into the town of Redemption to take on its ruthless leader Herod (Gene Hackman) in deadly gunfight. Unfortunately, Moore’s script contains none of the wacky sense of humor that audiences expect from a Raimi film. Stone survives this ordeal relatively unscathed. She’s believably dirty and ragged in her cowboy clothes although, her cleavage seems a bit out of place. Poor Hackman gets beaten up the worse. Here’s a character who thrives on dialogue, stuck in a movie that’s interested only in funky camera angles. Still, Raimi’s eclectic brand of cinematography remains intact. Chances are that no other western will literally show a gunslinger’s bullet hole much like The Quick and the Dead. Aficionados of film photography may find pleasure in The Quick and the Dead. Chances are, one else would. (Rated R; at area Showcase Cinemas.)

★ RED People either love or hate Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski. This year, Academy voters seem to love him. They nominated Red for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. In his stories, emotions are not simply expressed by his actors. They are represented visually through objects like telephones and shortwave radios. Here, dramatic narrative is powered solely by the force of picture metaphors. Closing out a three-film series based on the French tricolor, Red (which was preceded by Blue and Whitej addresses the theme of ffatemity. Valentine (Irene Jacob), a young Swiss model and student, steps into the life of a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintgnant) who has become bitter with life. His anger puzzles her. Still, she cannot keep this old man out of her thoughts. The ex-judge’s daily ritual of eavesdropping into the privacy of his neighbors intrigues the young woman. Together, they form a friendship that reveals some new information about themselves.

In Red, dialogue takes a back seat to the director’s photography. It’s style that sometimes leaves audiences questioning. Here’s the rule for enjoying a Kieslowski film: Don’t think, just feel. You will get nowhere by trying to theorize something that exists primarily on the emotional level. Red is a film to immerse yourself in, not contemplate. (Rated R; at The Movies, formerly Real Movies; and at the New Neon Movies, Dayton, Ohio.)

★ RICHIE RICH A little 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 simple message about the importance of friendship with a lighthearted 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. Hey, any film that has a character called Professor Keenbean has to be fun. Plus, Warner Bros, unveils its first new Roadrunner cartoon, a short titled Chariots ofFur, in more MORE, PAGE 2 2

Theater Directory

DOWNTOWN

EMERY THEATRE 1112 Walnut St., Over-the-Rhine. 721-2741.

THE MOVIES 719 Race St., Downtown. 381-3456.

CENTRAL

ACT 1 CINEMA 11165 Reading Road, Sharonville. 733-8214.

CENTRAL PARK 11 CINEMAS 4600 Smith Road, Norwood. 531-7655.

ESQUIRE THEATRE 320 Ludlow Ave., Clifton. 281-8750.

LOEWS KENWOOD THEATRES 1&2 7860 Kenwood Road, Kenwood. 793-6100.

LOEWS KENWOOD TOWNE CENTRE THEATRES 7875 Montgomery Road, Kenwood Towne Centre, Kenwood. 791-2248.

SHOWCASE CINCINNATI 1701 Showcase Drive, Norwood Lateral and Reading Road, Bond Hill. 351-2232.

WEST

LOEWS COVEDALE THEATRES 1&2 4990 Glenway Ave., Price HilL 921-7373.

LOEWS NORTHGATE THEATRES 9727 Colerain Ave., Northgate Mall, Bevis. 385-5585. LOEWS TRI-COUNTY THEATRES 11500 Princeton Pike, Cassinelli Square, Springdale. 771-4544.

ROBERT D. LINDNER FAMILY OMNIMAX THEATER

13pf Western Ave., Museum Cejjter at Union Terminal, Queensgate. 287-7000.

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 EASTGATE Route 32 and Interstate 275, Summerside. 753-6588. LOEWS 275 EAST Highway 28 and Montclair Boulevard, Mulberry. 831-8900. SHOWCASE CINEMAS EASTGATE 4601 Eastgate Boulevard, Summerside. 752-9552.

NORTHERN KENTUCKY

LOEWS FLORENCE MALL ROAD CINEMAS 7685 Florence Mall Road, Florence. 525-8400. MARIANNE THEATER 607 Fairfield AVe., Bellevue. 291-6666.

SHOWCASE CINEMAS ERLANGER Route 236 West off Interstate 75, Erlanger. 342-8866.

TURFWAY PARK 10 7650

PHOTO: ELLIOTT MARKS

Mike (Gary Cole) and Carol Brady (Shelley Long) begin their day with help from Alice (Henriette Mantel) in The Brady Bunch Movie.

Film

than 30 years. Now that’s something that even adults will get excited about. With Jonathan Hyde and Edward Herrman. (Rated PG; at area Showcase Cinemas.)

★ THE RIVER WILD Meryl 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 whitewater 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 girl just wants to have fun. With Kevin Bacon and David Straithaim. (Rated PG-13; at Norwood, Turfway 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 boxoffice do not always match. With Judge Reinhold and Peter Boyle. (Rated PG; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

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. With Christopher Reeve and Bonnie Bedelia. (Rated PG-13; closes Thursday at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

STARGATE Cutting-edge special effects wrap around a rather oldfashioned science-fiction epic. Unlike recent action films, Stargate takes nothing seriously. Its childlike innocence is refreshing. ConsiderStargate 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; at Norwood, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

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 screen. 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: TYekkers 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. With Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes. (Rated PG; at area Showcase Cinemas.)

★ DAZED AND CONFUSED Before there were even highpower meetings in Hollywood about The Brady Bunch Movie, filmmaker Richard Linklater crafted this funny and affectionate look back at the 70s. After his cult classic Slacker, Linklater proved himself to be an up-and-comer with this thoughtful story about a group of teen-agers set in a Texas high school, circa 1976. Just another example of inspired programming from the brothers at the Westwood Cinemas and now the Movies downtown. (Rated R; midnight Friday and Saturday at the Movies and at the Page Manor Cinema, Dayton, Ohio. 513-258-2800.)

THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR

Another entry in Xavier University’s Women as Artist film series. Director Joseph Mankeiwicz adapts author R.A. Dick’s novel, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Living at a seaside home, a widow (Gene Tierney) refuses to allow the ghost of a sea captain (Rex Harrison) to frighten her away. With its stunning cinematography and fine lead performances, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir brings some serious, high-class production values to a rather whimsical story. (Unrated; 7:30 p.m. Friday at Kelley Auditorium in Alter Hall, Xavier University. 745-3550.)

STREET FIGHTER Jean-Claude Van Damme might have finally found the perfect vehicle for himself. Inspired by the video game, Street Fighter puts the Muscles of Brussels in a cartoon environment that requires few thespian skills. Van Damme leads an Allied Nations commando team against the psychotic warlord Gen. M. Bison (the late Raul Julia). Steven De Souza has proven his knack for action by writing the successful screenplays for Die Hards 1 & 2. Now, he gets the chance to prove if he can direct all the cool stuff that his imagination comes up with. When the children get bored with their toys, this may be the movie they want to see.

THE NARROW MARGIN/ MR. LUCKY Easily the strangest double bill that the Emeiy folks have come up with in some time.

In The Narrow Margin, director Richard Fleischer creates a taut thriller out of this story about a police officer trying to protect a witness on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles. Originally released as a small B picture, The Narrow Margin possesses A-level quality. (Unrated; 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Emery Theatre.)

With Kylie Minogue and Wes Studi. (Rated PG-13; at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

Actor Cary Grant reminds audiences that good performances can’t always save lackluster stories. In Mr. Lucky, gambling ship meets a woman (Laraine Day) and turns his life around. Other than representing a notch in Grant’s prolific career, Mr. Lucky possesses little entertainment value.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS DEMON KNIGHT That giggling ghoul the Crypt Keeper has developed a huge following from its TV airings of Tales of the Crypt: Now, this unique mix of black comedy and pulp horror makes its way to the big screen. One wonders if these adaptations of the old EC Comic can be any more gross and disgusting.

(Unrated; 8:55 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Emery Theatre.)

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Local lovers of the time warp may want to travel up Interstate 75 for the opportunity to throw toast and toilet paper. Hey, how far will you go for sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania? (Rated R; midnight Saturday at the New Neon Movies, Dayton, Ohio.)

Director Ernest Dickerson (Juice) does his best to keep the horror and gross-out fiends happy. With Billy Zane and Jada Pinkett.

ZOO WINTER MOVIE SERIES

(Rated R; closes Thursday at area Showcase Cinemas; opens Friday at Norwood, Turfway, Forest Fair and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

The zoo has a great idea: Come out and watch the animals play, and then stick around and enjoy a family movie. This week, White Fang and the Hunter offers the kiddies an exciting tale about a hunter and his trusty dog who help out a young widow and her son. No word yet if the animals are invited.

★ WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE Forget Frankenstein and those hip vampires, Freddy outscares them all. Director Wes Craven takes the monster that made him famous and puts him in a twisted movie-within-a-movie plot. With Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund. (Rated R; at Turfway and Biggs Place Eastgate.)

(Unrated; 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Coors Pavilion Lodge, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens. 281-4701.)

Repertory

A TALE OF TWO AFRICANAMERICAN AUTHORS The Main Library’s Filmagic series places the spotlight on AfricanAmerican authors Faith Ringgold’s The Last Story Quilt and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll ofThunder, Hear My Cry. (Unrated; 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Main Library, Downtown. Roll ofThunder, Hear My Cry. repeats at 2 p.m. 369-6922.)

mediums while focusing on major issues, both social and cultural. Through Feb. 28.1-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. weekends. Union Terminal, 1301 Western Ave., Queensgate. 241-7408.

ARTS CONSORTIUM OF CINCINNATI, LINN STREET —Artfor City Walls is a yearlong exhibit focusing on local artists. 1-8 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekehds. 1515 Linn St., West End. 381-0645.

★ BABA BUDAN'S ESPRESSO BAR Colorful and cartoonish oil paintings by Laura Herman. Through Feb. 28. 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.-ll p.m. Sunday. 243 Calhoun St., Clifton. 221-1911.

BASE ART Using photographs and words, Cincinnati native Jay A. Plogman rips apart racial and ethnic stereotypes while searching into the philosophical, emotional and concrete aspects of Being American. Through Feb. 22. Noon-4 p.m. Saturdays and by appointment. 1311 Main St., Overthe-Rhine. 491-3865.

Place, Mount Adams. 241-4591.

Openings

BEAR GRAPHICS AND ILLUSTRATION GALLERY Chris Payne’s illustrations and Jan Knoop’s paintings, prints and sculptures. Through February. Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 105 E. Main St., Mason. 398-2788.

BLEGEN LIBRARY Taft in Caricature, an exhibit of historical political cartoons, can be found in the University Archives on the eighth floor. Through Feb. 28. Noon-10 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.5 p.m. Saturday, 1-10 p.m. Sunday. UC, Clifton. 556-1959.

★ ADAMS LANDING ART CENTER Five in Photography features color photos by Barry Anderson, hand-colored photos by Diane Kruer, Polaroid transfers by Ann Segal, light boxes by Connie Sullivan and installations by Mike Wilson. Opening reception, 58 p.m. Thursday. Through April 15. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. WednesdaySaturday or by appointment. 900 Adams Crossing, Downtown. 723-6737.

MACHINE SHOP GALLERY Juried DAAP Undergraduate Show opens Feb. 17. Through March 17. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. TuesdaySaturday. 100 E. Central Parkway, Over-the-Rhine. 556-1928.

BORDERS CAFE ESPRESSO Works by Thomas Greene III. Through Feb. 28. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday. Borders Books and Music, 11711 Princeton Road, Springdale. 671-5852.

CAFE ELITE Features photographs by Lisa Britton which illuminate direct connections between human beings and natural environment. Through Feb. 28. 11 a.m.10 p.m. daily. 364 Ludlow Ave., Clifton. 281-9922.

★ C.A.G.E. Paintings by Mark Shafer, light sculpture by David Schaeffer and wearable sculpture by Stephanie Dal Pra. Through Feb. 19. There will be a reception for Mark Shafer, 6-10 p.m. Saturday, noon-8 p.m. Friday, noon-6 p.m. Saturday, noon-4 p.m. Sunday. 1416 Main St., Over-theRhine. 381-2437.

★ CHIDLAW GALLERY, ART ACADEMY OF CINCINNATI Inside the Outsiders an exhibition of Folk Art from Regional Collections, holds its opening reception 5:30-9 p.m. Friday, with music by Katie Lauer, a cash bar and a country buffet provided by Riverhouse Restaurant of Ripley. $15 single, $25 couple. Through March 10. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. MondayFriday. Art Academy of Cincinnati, Eden Park. 562-8777.

CARL SOLWAY GALLERY An exhibition of new interactive sculpture by San Fransisco multi-media electronic artist, Paul DeMarinis, is on view. DeMarinis’ recent series of installation works, “The Edison Effect” uses optics and computers to make new sounds by scanning phonograph records with lasers. Through March 31.... Painter Julian Stanczak, who was bom in Poland and studied under Joseph Albers, displays paintings that ereate intense perceptual effects by working in a systematic way; often referred to as “Op Art.” Through March 31. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. MondayFriday, Saturday by appointment. 424 Findlay St., West End. 621-0069.

FITTON CENTER FOR CREATIVE ARTS Class Act, a student exhibition, holds its opening reception 1-3 p.m. Saturday. Through March 3.... In the lobby, there will be Chinese New Year paintings. Through March 19. 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.

28. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. 1223 Central Parkway, Over-the-Rhine. 381-4033. GALLERY 99 Twenty artists from this co-operative gallery have contributed to put together their show, Faces. Through Feb. 28. Noon-6 p.m Thursday-Sunday, noon-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 1101 St. Gregory St., Mount Adams. 651-1441.

★ GALLERY AT WELLAGE & BUXTON Ballard Borich, a noted poet, displays his abstract paintings on paper in A Larger Group of Smaller Paintings. Through March 25. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. 1431 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 241-9127.

GLASS CRAFTERS

★ HEIKE PICKETT GALLERY PORTRAIT SELF PORTRAIT. Opening reception, 5-8 p.m. Friday. Through March 17.10 a.m.3 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 522 W. Short St., Lexington, Ky. 606-233-1263.

CARNEGIE ARTS CENTER Art-The Universal Language celebrates diversitynvith abstract landscapes by Korean artist Yung Ja Lee, African-American Old and New Memories by Richmond, Kentucky’s Betsy Johnson, painting and pottery by living Native American Artists, curated by Alice Lambert and Linda Whittenberg and Sacred Run Photographs by Alice Lambert. Through Feb. 25. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, noon-4 p.m. Saturday. 1028 Scott Blvd., Covington. 491-2030.

★ JULIA’S GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY An exhibition of photographer Carol Henry’s work, Imagery Without A Camera, opens Friday. Opening reception, 5-8 p.m. Through April 1. Civic Center Shops, 410 West Vine St., Lexington, Ky. 606-225-8260.

★ CINCINNATI ART CLUB On exhibit is Masterworks a juried show for artists over 53 years old. The winner will receive $600. Through Feb. 26. The gallery is open 1-5 p.m. Friday-Sunday, closed Feb. 22.1021 Parkside

Galleries & Exhibits

★ ARTERNATIVE GALLERY

Coffee Break features oils and pastels by Carole Meyer, pottery by Terry Kern, wearable art by Suzanne Poag, Kimberley Henson and Vera Stastny and dolls by Michele Naylor. Through March 25.

221-1875.

HEIKE PICKETT OALLERY Kentucky Folk Art. Through Feb. 28. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 522 W. Short St., Lexington, Ky. 606-233-1263.

HILLEL JEWISH STUDENT CENTER Michal Koren, Jonah Tobias, Nate Waspe and Pam Zelman, students from UC’s school of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning, display their work. Through March 31. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday. 2615 Clifton Ave., Clifton. 221-6728.

★ IN SITU Gregory B. Saunders’ The Kentucky Series: A Personal Archeological Dig is a collection of large scale drawings based on the Kentucky landscape. Saunders, bom and raised in Newport and now living in Florida, combines remnants and artifacts of his past unearthed recently during a visit to his now torn-down former residence with these powdered graphite drawings. Through March 18. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. TuesdaySaturday. 1435 Main St., Over-theRhine. 651-4613.

INNER SPACE DESIGN Presents one-of-a-kind 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 Features an exhibition of recent oils, watercolors, landscapes, florals and nudes by Yuri G. Savchenko, a renowned Ukrainian artist who will be honored by the Ukraine Government with an exhibition of his works in Kiev this year. Miniature Lithographs by Valerij Demyanshyn Oils by Italian artist Guido Buson Plus new arrivals of antique Russian icons, tryptychs, crucifixes and crosses. Through Feb. 23. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday. 135 W. Fourth St., Downtown. 333-0022.

★ JULIA'S GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY Sixty Years of Photography, a retrospective of the work of Ruth Bernhard, pioneer of American photography, focuses primarily on the nude figure and still life. Through Wednesday. Civic Center Shops, 410 West Vine St., Lexington, Ky. 606-225-8260.

KALDI'S COFFEE HOUSE ft BOOKSTORE Exquisite Drawings by 6-year-old Lexan Rosser. Through Feb. 26. 7 a.m.1 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-theRhine. 241-3070.

KZF GALLERY Paintings and drawings by Ken Landon Buck; sculpture by Barbara Beatrice; paintings and prints by B.B. Hall. Through April. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. 655 Eden Park Drive, Seventh Floor, Walnut Hills. 621-6211.

LEFTHANDED MOON A continuing exhibition of hand carved and painted fimo pendants by Jeni B. and ceramic rattles by Nance Emmet.... Tarot readings noon3 p.m. every Saturday. 11:30 a.m.-

7 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 48 E. Court St., Downtown. 784-1166.

LOUISVILLE VISUAL ART ASSOCIATION Oddities, such as losing lottery tickets, mattress tags and underwear, are part of Bart Kasten’s Permanent Collection, through Feb. 26.... DinnerWorks features of the nation’s best handmade original dinnerware by 16 talented artists or teams of artists. 3005 Upper River Road, Louisville, Ky. 502-896-2146.

★ MARTA HEWETT GALLERY

Seeing Things: 5th Year Anniversary Exhibit features pieces by gallery artists including glass, ceramics, furniture, paintings and prints. Through Feb. 20.

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday. 1209 Main St., Over-the-Rhine. 421-7883

★ MALTON GALLERY

Head Lines

BY GARY GAFFNEY

UtterKiosk

★ LAURA PAUL GALLERY

Presents Key to the Heart featuring jewelry artist Angela Cummins’ work5 in sterling silver and 18K gold with a special donation to the Cincinnati Heart Association.

Through March 11. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, or by appointment. Dixie Terminal Arcade, 49 E. Fourth St., Downtown. 651-5885.

PENDLETON ART CENTER

This building houses a multitude of artists. 1310 Pendleton St., Overthe-Rhine. 721-6311.

★ GRETA PETERSON GALERIE

Cincinnati & Beyond, a show investingating the landscape, presents watercolors by Bruce Kreidler and monotypes by Mary Farrell, both Cincinnatians.

Curator Tom Bryant’s Tomar Collection features paintings by Spaniard Evaristo Alguacin, Swede Mona Starfelt, Neil Di Teresa, from Berea, Kentucky and Cincinnatian Mark Rozic, also, sculpture by Jeff Johnston, textiles from Sweden, Portugal, Italy and South America.

Through Feb. 28. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 2709 Observatory Ave., Hyde Park. 321-8614.

Through April 1.11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 7696 Camargo Road, Madeira. 561-6785.

MIAMI UNIVERSITY'S HIESTAND GALLERY Two and Two features works by graduate students at UC and Miami. Through Feb. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday. Maple St., Miami Universty, Oxford. 513-529-1883.

★ PUBLIC LIBRARY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY

A photographic display recognizes the exceptional achievements by African-Americans in Greater Cincinnati, through Feb. 28.... 86fh Anniversary of the NAACP highlights selections of extensive resource materials in the Library’s collection related to the history of the NAACP, through March 3. Both exhibits are on view on the first floor of the library.

MILLER GALLERY Giftsfrom the Garden focuses on floral paintings in oil, acrylic and watercolor by 10 nationally recognized artists. Through Feb. 25.10 a.m.5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 2715 Erie Ave., Hyde Park. 871-4420.

9 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.6 p.m. Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday. 800 Vine St., Downtown. 369-6900.

RAYMOND GALLERY

MULLANE’S PARKSIDE CAFE

Paintings of Our Town and Travels features the works of Connecticut artists Lief and Katherine Nilsson. Through Feb.

The paintings and drawings of John Moylan will be on display through March 4. 11:30 a.m.-lO p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.11 p.m. Friday, 5-11 p.m. Saturday. 723 Race St., Downtown. 381-1331.

28. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday and Wednesday. 2700 Erie Ave., Hyde Park. 871-7373.

★ THE RIFFE GALLERY More than 80 works of art from West Africa are on display. Included are carved wooden stools, masks, figures, staves, jewelry and hats that have religious, philosophical and historic and aesthetic functions. Through March 25.11 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; 11 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Vern Riffe Center for the Government and the Arts, State and High streets, Columbus. 614-644-9624.

★ NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY The Main Gallery features Ana England’s Finite Yet Unbounded, and Suzanne Fisher’s Dark Flowers, The Third Floor Gallery features Reconsiderations, works by Darryl Curran and Kenda North. Through March 10. 9 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays, 1-5 p.m. weekends. Fine Arts Building, NKU, Highland Heights. 572-5148.

★ SCHOOL FOR CREATIVE AND PERFORMING ARTS The Voices of Harmony festival, celebrating ethnic and cultural diversity in the arts, continues with The Familiar Voice: The Sounds and Sight ofFamily Through Feb. 20.

OLMES GALLERY Works of Nancy Suddeth Corbett 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.

MORE, PAGE 24

Dabble in the Arts

Fine Arts Fund Sampler Weekend offersfree performances and events Events

BY RICK PENDER

You’ve probably heard someone say it: “Cincinnati’s a great place for the arts.” If you haven’t, you’ve not been listening carefully, but there’s a chance to rectify your inattentiveness Saturday and Sunday when the Fine Arts Fund presents its Sampler Weekend, a smorgasbord of free performances and special events all over the Tristate.

There’s so much to do 73 events from nearly 50 area groups, presented at 33 locations that some judicious choosing is required to be certain your sampling takes in a reasonable selection. Here are a few suggestions.

On Saturday:

“We Got The Beat!” at the Arts Consortium, 1515 Linn St., West End (11:30 a.m.) Attend this program, and you’ll get to create African drums, shakers and instruments. Once you’ve done that, you can put them to immediate use in a dance class.

Guitar-a-Thon at Contemporary Arts Center, 115 Fifth St., Downtown (2 p.m.)

The Cincinnati Guitar Society will bring together about a dozen of its members, many of whom are products of the excellent program at UC’s CollegeConservatory of Music. The two-hour program will feature duos and trios, and some numbers for guitar with flute and with voice. According to coordinator Richard Goering, the program will include some light South American tunes and popular numbers like sambas.

Cincinnati Men’s Chorus at Memorial Hall, 1225 Elm St., Over-theRhine (3 p.m.) The popular vocal ensemble will present a musical program that includes some favorite pop songs, patriotic numbers and ballads. You can also enjoy the acoustics and the ambiance of the beautifully restored Memorial Hall, adjacent to Music Hall, across from Washington Park.

Eugene Goss and His Volition Quartet at the Cincinnati Art Museum Auditorium, Eden Park (4 p.m.)

Presented by the Arts & Humanities Resource Center, Goss and his ensemble offer up a Jazz program that focuses on Black History Month.

Cincinnati Artists Group Effort (C.A.G.E.) at 1416 Main St., Over-theRhine (10 a.m.-5 p.m.; also noon-5 p.m. Sunday) The C.A.G.E. gallery is featuring works by three artists with Cincinnati roots. Painter David Schaeffer, working on a retirement portrait for Cincinnati Bengal Tim Krumrie, will be at work at the gallery. Also on view will be wearable sculpture by Stephanie Dal Pra, works that make political statements about women’s issues; and a light sculpture by Mark

Shafer, focusing on the speed of light between Cincinnati and the artist’s new home in Fargo, N.D.

On Sunday:

Shawn Womack Dance Projects at Raymond Walters College, Blue Ash (12:30 p.m.) One of Greater Cincinnati’s most innovative dance groups will offer a preview of three new works in “Making New Dance.” Following this presentation, the audience will be invited to join in with simple exercises led by company members.

Drums for Peace at Memorial Hall, Over-the-Rhine (12:30 and 2:30 p.m.)

It’s another chance to enjoy music at beautiful Memorial Hall. Drums for Peace is a Cincinnati-based percussion group presenting world-beat rhythms to tell stories and convey social messages.

Women Writing for (a) Change at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church, 103 Wm. H. Taft Road (1:30 p.m.)

Facilitated by writer Mary Pierce Brosmer, this program will feature readings by 10 women who have chosen works on the role of difference: being black or white, straight or gay, and so on. Their readings together create a sense of community. Those in attendance will be invited to write and share their products. According to Brosmer, “The results are often substantive and authentic.”

Fahrenheit Theatre Company at the Carnegie Center, Covington (2:30 p.m.)

This relatively new theater group is turning up the temperature in Greater Cincinnati with its emphasis on classic drama. Company members offer selections from last fall’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night full of .word play and romance. Also presented will be scenes from their current worldpremiere production, an adult drama called The Color Wheel.

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at Music Hall, Over-the-Rhine (4 p.m.)

This is the only event truly requiring advance planning. The CSO, back from its tour of Europe, will be led by charismatic associate conductor Keith Lockhart, just named music director of the Boston Pops. Free vouchers for this concert can be obtained at the Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center, the Carnegie Center or Cincinnati Bell’s office, downtown at Fourth and Main streets in Atrium I. Pick up your voucher ahead of time, then redeem it for two tickets at the door.

9:45 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Friday, noon4 p.m. Saturday, 4-8 p.m. Sunday. Thomas More College Library. 333 Thomas More Parkway, Crestview Hills. 606-344-3309.

★ TONI BIRCKHEAD GALLERY

9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday. SCPA Theatre. 1310 Sycamore St., Over-the-Rhine. 632-5936.

Group show focusing abstract painting highlights the works of Tarrence Corbin, Alan Crockett, Stuart Fink, Peter Gooch, FYank Herrmann, Tom Levine and Thom Shaw. Through Feb. 24. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays, Saturday by appointment. 342 W. Fourth St., Downtown. 241-0212.

SEMANTICS GALLERY The Little Art Show That Could, an exhibition of miniature art, runs through Feb. 18. 1-4 p.m. weekdays, noon-5 p.m. weekends. 1125 Walnut St., Over-the-Rhine. 684-0102.

TOON ART GALLERIES

Disney Dimensions highlights limited-edition and one-of-a-kind 3-D pieces from raku pottery to collector plates and jewelry. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. By appointment Monday. 21 E. Fifth St., Westin Hotel, Downtown. 651-3500.

★ STUDIO SAN GIUSEPPE AT THE COLLEGE OF MOUNT ST. JOSEPH Seventeen regional artists are featured in At Issue:, Our Environment, an exhibition surveying the diverse views of the American environment from romantic and traditional natural vistas to works conveying the environmental issues of the present. Through March 5. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, 1:30-4:30 p.m. weekends. College of Mount St. Joseph, 5701 Delhi Road, Delhi Township. 244-4314.

★ UC CLERMONT COLLEGE ART GALLERY Clermont Art Gallery hosts A Kaleidoscope: Appalachian Art of Southern Ohio. Area Appalachian artists combine their talent for an eclectic show with works ranging from pine-needle baskets to artwork on hard-shelled gourds. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays. 4200 Clermont College Drive, UC Clermont College, Batavia. 732-5224.

★ UC HEALTH SCIENCE

LIBRARY Jeff Casto and Melissa Steinman’s show, Lost and Found, combines mixed media and found objects. Through March 3. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. 231 Bethesda Ave., Clifton. 558-5627.

★ STUDIO 701 Art From the Heart showcases large and small works 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.

10:15-11:30 a.m. Feb. 25 and March 4 and 1:15-2:30 p.m. Feb. 21 and Feb. 28.... $5 adults; $4 students and seniors; children free. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. Eden Park. 721-5204.

March 10.

works of L. Field Estate, B. Mack, Guttman and Mierzwa, opens Tuesday. Through Feb. 27.10 a.m.9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon7 p.m. Sunday. Kenwood Towne Centre, 7875 Montgomery Road, Kenwood. 791-5023.

★ WOLF PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS

Ana England’s “Dimensional Curling” is on display at Northern Kentucky University Art Gallery through Art

PATRICIA WEINER GALLERY Features 19th and 20th century museum-quality paintings with special interest in Cincinnati artists. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. WednesdaySaturday, or by appointment. 9352 Main St., Montgomery. 791-7717.

WENTWORTH GALLERY —Art Deco includes the work of Erte, Shao, Kiraly and Jiang. Through Feb. 20. Figures, featuring the

★ TANGEMAN FINE ARTS

GALLERY The annual Faculty Exhibition for UC’s College of D.A.A.P. includes the works of faculty members John Stewart, Roy Cartwright, Denise Burge, Jane Alden Stevens and Nicholas Chaparos, to name a few. Through Feb. 17. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays. Tangeman Student Center, UC, Clifton. 556-2962.

THOMAS MORE GALLERY

Akron-area artist Jack McWhorter displays his new work, Iconic Images, through Feb. 17. 8 a.m.-

Spanning the Ohio: Photographs of Cincinnati’s Bridges by local photographer J. Miles Wolf and Innervisions: Largeformat Black and White Photographs by Florida artist Woody Walters will be on display through March 15. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

COLUMBUS MUSEUM OF ART Landscape As Metaphor is a special exhibit highlighting multimedia works by 13 living American artists. Through March 5. The museum has two important collections: the Sirak Collection of French Impressionist and German Expressionists that includes Degas, Renoir, Monet, Ensor, Picasso and Klee; and the Howald Collection of American painters that includes O’Keefe, Homer, Bellows and Cassatt. The museum collection is free. Special exhibits $3 adults, $2 children. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. TuesdayFriday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday. 480 E. Broad St., Columbus. 614-221-6801.

★ CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER Carrie May Weems examines the status of AfricanAmericans in today’s society through narrative photographic images, through March 26. Cincinnati sculptor Patricia Renick explores the loss and violation of identity and the metaphoric voyage of the spirit through her installation of female figures atop boat forms in 2068, through March 12. Sponsored by Reece Campbell Inc./Chronis Inc. Omope Carter Daboiku presents a morning of combined storytelling and toyrnaking. Each child should bring an orphaned sock. 10 a.m.-noon Saturday. Free to Contemporary Kids, $5 for others. In Memory Spaces, Pittsburgh artist Paul Glabicki uses state-of-the-art computer programs while working simultaneously with paintings, drawings, photographic sequences and installation plans to create a continuous architectural landscape for the viewer to experience when projected three-dimensionally and viewed through polarized glasses, through April 5. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, ThursdaySaturday. $2 adults; $1 students and seniors; children 12 and under free; free to CAC members; free to all on Mondays. 115 E. Fifth St., Downtown. 345-8400.

weekdays. 708 Walnut St., Downtown. 381-3222.

WOMEN'S ART CLUB OF CINCINNATI Meets at 1 p.m. the second Saturday of every month. Room 501,1310 Pendleton St., Over-the-Rhine. 522-0117.

WOODBOURNE GALLERY

Renewing their CincinnatiArtist of the Month series, the Woodboume Gallery presents the Tuscany Hill hand-wroughtjewelry of Stuart C. Nedelman. Through Feb. 28.10 a.m.-8 p.m. MondayThursday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday. 9885 Montgomery Road, Montgomery. 793-1888.

DAYTON VISUAL ARTS CENTER Mixed Media Constructions of Craig Lloyd explores the interaction between the natural and reconstructed worlds. Through Feb. 18. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, 1-4 p.m. Saturdays, or by appointment. 40 W. Fourth St., Dayton, Ohio. 513-222-3822.

★ YWCA WOMEN’S ART

★ INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART Indiana Jacquard Coverlets features coverlets woven by professional male weavers in the 1840s and 1850s; through Oct. 8. Cabinet of Curiosities and The Natural History Museum is a site-specific wall installation by Shelagh Keeley, a Canadian conceptual artist.... German painter Albert Oehlen and American artist Christopher Williams are featured in a joint exhibition titled Oehlen Williams 95. The jointly selfcurated exhibit introduces new

840 GALLERY Students of electronic media in the School of Art exhibit their work. Through Feb. 17. in graphs 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. Free tours include Manet to Toidouse-Laulrec, 1 p.m. Thursday, 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday; American Portraits -1750-1850, 1 p.m. Friday, Highlights of the CAM, noon Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday; Object of the Month: “Italian: Composite Armor, 2 p.m. Sunday; and thefamilyfun tours, Wildlife in Art, 1 p.m. Saturday and Animal Safari, 3 p.m. Saturday. Explore the sights, sounds and words of the Renaissance and Baroque eras with an in-depth gallery tour.

WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERIES Urban Landscape features the works of Rackstraw Downs, John Moore and Yvonne Jacquette. Through March 19.10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. weekends. Creative Art Center at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. 513-873-2978.

GALLERY Twelve artist^ craftswomen present works ranging from multi-media artwork, quilts, decoupage boxes, ceramics, stained glass, birdhouses, baskets, cut paper collages and assembled textiles in Assemblage ’95. Through March 3. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. 898 Walnut St., Downtown. 241-7090.

★ XAVIER UNIVERSITY GALLERY Paintings and drawings by Johana. Through Feb. 24. Noon-4 p.m. Monday-Friday. 3800 Victory Parkway, Evanston. 745-3811.

PHOTO: ANA ENGLAND

Theater

BROADWAY SERIES Presents Cats. Feb. 21-27. 8 p.m. MondayFriday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. $29-$39. Taft Theatre, Fifth and Sycamore, Downtown. 749-4949.

CALICO THEATRE Brown’s A Tribute to Will Rogers tells the great humorist’s life story using his bon-mots, articles and radio monologues. 7:30 p.m. Friday. $7. 4200 Clermont College Drive, Batavia. 732-5224.

★ CINCINNATI PLAYHOUSE IN THE PARK Continues its 35th anniversary season with the world premiere production of The Brothers Karamazov, a new play by Anthony Clarvoe based on the classic novel by Dostoyevsky. Opens Feb. 23 and runs through March 23. Public previews only cost $16 and take place 7 p.m. Tuesday and 8 p.m. Wednesday. The play that catapulted Harold Pinter to international fame, The Caretaker, continues through March 5. 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. $22-$29. Thompson Shelterhouse. Tickets to all shows are half-price when purchased noon-2 p.m. the day of the show. Eden Park. 421-3888.

DRAMA WORKSHOP Presents A.R. Gurney’s The Snowball. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closes Feb. 18. $7. Westwood Town Hall, Montana and Harrison avenues, Westwood. 741-8303.

ENSEMBLE THEATRE OF CINCINNATI Presents a fastpaced adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 8 p.m. WednesdaySaturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Through Feb. 26. $20 adults; $15 students; group rates available. 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine. 421-3555 or 721-1000.

FAHRENHEIT THEATRE The world premiere of Stacy Jordan’s The Color Wheel the story of two young women struggling to survive and find love, happiness, and independence in 1990s America opens Thursday. Through March 12. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. $7.50 adults; $6 students and seniors; $5 groups of 12 or more. Carnegie Theater, Carnegie Arts Center, 1028 Scott Blvd., Covington. 559-0642.

★ FIFTH THIRD VOICES OF HARMONY A seven-week festival celebrating ethnic and cultural diversity in the arts continues 8 p.m. Saturday with Voices of Movement, featuring Khamisi Drum and Dance, Renee Michen, Maki Kabayama, Nicholaas Hilferink, SCPA’s Dance Ensemble and SCPA’s Percussion Ensemble. School for the Creative and Performing Arts Theatre, 1310 Sycamore St., Over-the-Rhine. 632-5910.

FOREST VIEW GARDENS

Enjoy three-hour meal brought to you by singers-servers who perform The Fabulous Forties. Through Feb. 26. Reservations required. 4508 North Bend Road, Monfort Heights. 661-6434.

MIAMI VALLEY DINNER THEATRE Gypsy, the musical based on the life of Gypsy Rose Lee, opens Thursday. Through April 29. $26.95434.95. Route 73, Springboro. 513-7464554.

NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY THEATRE DEPARTMENT Pippin one of the most popular musicals of the ’70s with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz,

creator of Godspell, opens Thursday. 8 p.m. TuesdaySaturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Closes Feb. 26. $7 adult; $6 NKU faculty; $5 NKU students. Mainstage, NKU Theatre Department, Highland Heights. 572-5464.

TRI-COUNTY PLAYERS

Presents their 34th annual speakeasy and melodrama musical variety show, A Night at the Albee and Shiver My Timbers. Cabaret seating. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and Feb. 24-25. $8. College Hill Town Hall, 1805 Larch Ave., College Hill. 825-0094.

VICTORIA THEATRE ASSOCIATION Forever Plaid, a musical tribute to the “guy groups” of the ’50s and early ’60s, opens Tuesday. 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Through March 5. $13417. Victoria Theatre, 138 N. Main St., Dayton, Ohio. 513-228-3630.

VILLAGE PUPPET THEATRE Charles Killian, the original founder of the theater, presents The Dream ofPrince Shiraz, an original work written and directed by Salil Singh with music by Ewar. The play is based on tales from Indian folklore and mythology, and uses both marionettes and shadow puppets. Through May 28. 4:30 and 7 p.m. Friday, 12:30, 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. Saturday and 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. $5.25. Special showings and prices available for groups of 15 or more. 606 Main St., Covington. 291-5566 or through Select-A-Seat at 721-1000.

★ WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS Bill T. Jones/Amie Zane Dance Company forthrightly addresses the difficult questions of how we all live and how we all die in the critically acclaimed Still Here. 8 p.m. Saturday. $549, $10-$18 non-members. Mershon Auditorium. In conjunction with this performance, Bill T. Jones will conduct a symposium on Managing Mortality. 4 p.m. Friday. Free. Rhodes Hall Auditorium. North High Street at 15th Avenue, Columbus. 614-292-2354.

WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY Oliver Goldsmith’s restoration comedy, She Stoops To Conquer, opens Thursday. 8 p.m.Thursday, Friday, Saturday; 3 and 8 p.m. Sunday. Closes Feb. 26. Festival Playhouse, 3640 Colonel Glenn Highway. $11 —$14 adults; $10—$11 students. 873-2500.

Classical Music

★ CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA In their first performance since the hectic pace of the European tour, the Symphony and Principal Guest Conductor Ivan Fischer, will unwind with the acclaimed African-American pianist Awadagin Pratt. The 29year-old pianist, winner of the 1992 Naumberg International Piano Competition, will play Beethoven’s Concerto Number 4 in G Major for Piano and Orchestra. Covington resident Philip Koplow’s centennial tribute to the CSO, Clear to the Final Ocean, will receive its world premiere. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Music Hall, 1240 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine. $10440. 381-3300.

COLLEGE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC Chamber Choir and Chorale, CCM Children’s Choir and Philharmonia Orchestra combine to present Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $10 adults; $5 students and seniors. Not recommended for children. Corbett Auditorium, UC’s Clifton campus. 556-9569.

CLASSICAL TRIO FROM CINCINNATI CHAMBER

ORCHESTRA Performs 13 p.m. Sunday. Borders Espresso Bar, 11711 Princeton Pike, Springdale. 671-5852. MORE, PAGE 26

Informed History

Retrospective of Carrie Mae Weems' sometimes autobiographical photos puts a face on culture too seldom seen

Politics is the linguafranca of American art, particularly the politics of the besieged: Women, gays and lesbians, and racial minorities are speaking their minds about the oppressions of the patriarchal mainstream, homophobic conservatives and racist white America. Unfortunately, as art becomes purely political, it turns into propaganda.

-It is telling that in the exhibition of AfricanAmerican photographer Carrie Mae Weems on view at the Contemporary Arts Center the quieter, more personal pieces in this five-part retrospective succeed more than the most blatantly polemical work by putting a human face on a harsh political message. The best work in this exhibition has a documentary and autobiographical quality and invites the viewer into a world to which he/she might otherwise never be exposed. Most viewers, and most Americans, exist outside this world and see black America in terms of social issues (particularly true today as the “new” Congress debates government’s role in welfare, education, health care and women’s issues) rather than as a distinct culture with its own rich heritage.

Weems creates work that is intensely informed by history, both personal and social, and how that history connects with the present. It is the history of her family, with all its triumphs and defeats, that has ereated her character, just as it is the tumultuous history of her people in this country that has created contemporary African-American culture.

In one of its most successful segments, the exhibition starts with “Family Pictures and Stories” of 1978-84. The mellifluous voice of the artist fills the gallery with an account of four generations of the Weems and Polk families and is accompanied with captioned photographs. They document a reunion of the artist with her family and were part of what she describes, as “a desperate search” for her identity as an African-American. This identity is the subtext of these works. The larger picture that emerges is complex: It is not always ingratiating but never censored. It depicts phenomenal strength in the face of economic adversity and racism, the profound love between family members and also certain failings of character.

Some of the more disturbing episodes involve violence (a gunfight between her father and brother, a cousin’s sadistic treatment of women) and teen-age pregnancy. (Weems flatly declares that “like my mother, my sisters and I all had children by the time we were sixteen or so.”) These narratives will do nothing to dispel notions of

African-American violence and sexual irresponsibility but patently explode the myth of the dissolution of the black family. This is obviously a tightly knit group.

Weems takes up the narrative form again in the “Kitchen Table” series of 1990. This fictionalized tale depicts an African-American woman entirely on her own, struggling with the need to maintain her identity in a romantic attachment. We follow her through the relationship and its eventual dissolution, culminating with the reasonably content solitude of the protagonist. The artist, who received a master’s degree in folklore at the University of California at Berkeley, stylizes her descriptive language with conventional phrasing and references to African-American pop culture. This style would seem cliched if we did not know that she was exploring how perspective and behavior are filtered through cultural mythologies. Weems also addresses mythologies outside black culture. Drawing on the collection of American humor she encountered during her graduate studies, the artist created the “Ain’t Jokin’” series of 1987-88 in which racist jokes are accompanied by illustrative photographs. The viewer is shown how racism is entrenched within culture through the seemingly innocuous medium of humftr. Similarly, the “American Icon” series of 1990 depicts African-Americans caricatured in ceramic tsatskes strewn about kitchens and living rooms, evincing the insidious presence of racism in everyday life. Along with “And 22 million very tired and very angry people” of 1991, which catalogues the tools of African-American rebellion, these segments have a didactic point to make. As in all art that becomes preachy, however, the dialogue between viewer and work ends once that point is made. Weems here begins to merge history with propaganda. The most successful works of art carry a multitude of associations. They can be read as historical documents, as metaphors for the human condition or as beautiful images. The series’ “Family Pictures and Stories” and “Kitchen Table” function as engaging and affecting stories that draw the viewer into their world. But that complex world contains a strongly political aspect. The specter of racism figures in the history of any African-American, and the messages of the evils of racism, proffered so bluntly elsewhere in the show are embedded in the fives of people with whom we can all empathize. The results provide an opportunity for a deeper understanding of what it means to be an American.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS’ work is on display at the CAC through March 26.

The text accompanying Carrie Mae Weems' “Untitled (Woman standing alone)” (1990) reads: She working, making long money, becoming what called ‘bourgie’, he wasn’t working and this truly messing with his mind. He was starting like a Black man wasn’t supposed to have nothing, like some kind of conspiracy was being played and he was the fall guy, like the mission was sible, like it ain’t a man’s world, like just cause was working and making so much dough, she getting to where she didn’t love him no mo...

Art

PHOTO COURTESY

Onstage

DAYTON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Isaiah Jackson conducts music from Bizet’s Carmen, with guest violin soloist Tania Davison, the 1994 winner of the David L. Pierson Young Musician’s Solo Competition.

Davidson has selected Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25 by Pablo Sarasate for her debut. 9:30 and 11 a.m. Wednesday. $3.75. Memorial Hall, 125 E. First St., Dayton, Ohio. 513-224-9000.

DAYTON PHILHARMONIC STRING QUARTET Enjoy a menu of light musical fare. Bring your own lunch or purchase a Bach’s Lunch on site. 11:30 a.m.-l:30 p.m. Friday. One Dayton Centre, 1 S. Main St., Dayton, Ohio. 513-224-9000. *

Dance

DAYTON BALLET Courtiers’ Party, Tarantella and Once in a Blue Moon are- some of the pieces offered in this repertory program.

8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. $15-$28 adults; $10-$18 children 12 and under; 10 percent discount for seniors. Victoria Theatre, 138 N. Main St., Dayton, Ohio. 513-449-5060

Comedy

GO BANANAS Trip Wingfield and Mike Juris through Sunday. Rick Kearns and Dan Davidson.

8:30 and 10:45 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. $5 weekdays, $7 weekends. 8410 Market Place, Montgomery. 984-9288.

their work 9-11 p.m. on the last Tuesday of every month. Mt. Adams Bookstore and Cafe, 1101 St. Gregory Place, Mount Adams. 241-9009.

OMOPE DABOIJU The local story teller conducts a Black History Story Hour. 11 a.m. Saturday. UC Bookstore, 123 W. University Ave., Clifton. 556-1336.

NATHALIE DUPREE The author Nathalie Dupree Cooks Everyday Meals From a WellStocked Pantry and host of the PBS cooking show, will sign her book. 7-8:30 p.m. Tuesday. JosephBeth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Madison and Edwards roads, Norwood. 396-8960.

CRYSTAL FAULKNER Signs and discusses 95 Ways to Save in '95. 2 p.m. Saturday. Barnes & Noble, 7663 Mall Road, Florence. 647-6400.

Readings Signings & Events

CAROL FEISER LAQUE The poet signs her published works. 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday. Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Madison and Edwards roads, Norwood. 396-8960.

NORM R. ALLEN The executive director of African-Americans for Humanism, editor of an anthology of humanist writing and PR director for Free Inquiry, discusses African-American Humanism. 7:15 p.m. Tuesday. Geier Center, corner of Gilbert and Elsinor, Walnut Hills. 557-3836.

★ SY MONTGOMERY The celebrated nature writer gives lecture and slide show at the Cincinnati Zoological Society. Her latest book, Spell of the Tiger, describes the mysterious relationship between the man-eating Bengal Tiger and the people of the Sundarbans. Montgomery is also the author of Walking With The Great Apes 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Rockdale Temple, 8501 Ridge Road, Amberly Village. 559-7767.

BORDERS OPEN MIC NIGHT

Poets are invited to read their works. 7 p.m. Monday. 11711 Princeton Road, Springdale. 671-5852.

★ LISA MARIE BRONSON

MICHAEL RAMUNDO The author of The Complete Customer Service Model Letter and Memo Book explains how to use compelling, effective customer service letters effectively. 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Madison and Edwards roads, Norwood. 396-8960.

The nationally known performance artist will conduct a poetry workshop. Bronson attended Walnut Hills High School before going to Yale University. Her full-length piece, The Medusa Project was featured at Women One World Cafe. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. May Sarton Room, Crazy Ladies Center, 4039 Hamilton Ave., Northside. 541-4198.

NANCY TUCKERMAN The author will hold a workshop of The Amy Vanderilt Book ofEtiquette: Entirely Rewritten and Updated for all you social climbers. 7-8:30 p.m. Saturday. JosephBeth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Madison and Edwards roads, Norwood. 396-8960.

★ ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT The author of four volumes of poetry, including The Lotus Flowers and Two Trees, reads from her work. 1 p.m. Friday. Her visit is sponsored by the Poetry Circuit of Ohio. Elliston Room, Langsam Library, UC, Clifton. 556-1570.

CYNTHIA BROWN The local poet reads from her work. 8 p.m. Monday. Kaldi’s Coffeehouse and Bookstore, 1202 Main St., Overthe-Rhine. 241-3070.

CELEBRATION OF THE POET

Local poets are invited to read

JIM WILSON The author of Landscaping with Herbs and regular guest on PBS’ The Victory Garden gives two presentations. 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday. The cost for each session is $15, $25 non-members. 2715 Reading Road, Mount Auburn. 221-0981.

PUBLIC LIBRARY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY The African Story Vine takes place at 7 p.m. Friday. Main Branch, 800 Wine St., Downtown. 369-6900. Library branches offer a variety of children’s storytimes groups, activities and reading groups. Call your local branch for details.

7TH ANNUAL CINCINNATI MAGAZINE AND MERCANTILE LIBRARY SHORT STORY CONTEST This year’s judges are Jonathan Valin, author of the Harry Stoner novels, author and director of the UC writing program Jon. C. Hughes and novelist Kay Sloan. They will award extra points for the succesful use of Greater Cincinnati locales. Submit five photocopies of each entry, which must be under 2,000 words, typed and doublespaced. Submissions, of course, must be unpublished fiction. All manuscripts must be sent to the Mercantile Library, 414 Walnut St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. Please enclose a $15 entry fee. Deadline is April 1. Cincinnati Magazine will publish the winning story in their August issue. The winner will also receive $300 and round-trip airfare to the 1995

Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference, courtesy of AAA. The runner-up will receive $250 plus Mercantile membership. Third prize is $150 plus Mercantile membership and an honorable mention will grant you Mercantile membership. Call 621-0717 for more information.

Groups

BLACK HISTORY BOOK CLUB Meets at 7 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of the month. Walnut Hills Branch Library, 2533 Kemper Lane, Walnut Hills. 369-6053.

BOOKED ON THURSDAY The general interest reading group will discuss Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven. Meets at 7:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of every month. Thursday. Little Professor Book Center, 814 Main St., Milford. 248-BOOK.

BOOKSHELF BOOK CLUB Meets at 9 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Coffee Please, 6930 Miami Ave., Madeira. 271-9140.

CHRISTIAN WRITERS’ FELLOWSHIP Critique group meets at 7:30 p.m. on the second Thursday of the month at Vineyard Community Church, 1391 E. Crescentville Road, Springdale. 521-1913.

CINCINNATI PLAYWRIGHTS Critique group for playwrights meets at 7 p.m. every Monday at the Carnegie Arts Center, Robbins and Scott streets, Covington. 556-3914.

CINCINNATI WRITERS PROJECT Support group for writers of every genre offers monthly meetings. 689-5283.

CINCINNATI WRITERS PROJECT FICTION CRITIQUE GROUP Meets at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. Arnold’s Bar & Grill, 210 E. Eighth St., Downtown. 441-5573.

CRAZY LADIES BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP Meets the fourth Monday of every month at 7 p.m. in the May Sarton Room. Crazy Ladies Center, 4039 Hamilton Ave., Northside. 541-4198.

GATHERING HOUSE Founded in 1993 by journalist, author and community activist Susan Kammeraad-Campbell to offer a safe environment for women to gather, write and work creatively, it now offers classes and workshops designed to help both men and women discover their innate ereativity. 100 S. College Drive, Oxford. 513-523-4284.

GREATER CINCINNATI WRITERS LEAGUE Critique group meets at 8 p.m. on the second Friday of every month at the Regency, 2444 Madison Road, Hyde Park. 753-5697.

MURDER AND MAYHEM The mystery book group is currently reading Earl Emerson’s Fat Tuesday. It meets at 7:30 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month. Little Professor Book Center, 814 Main St., Milford. 248-BOOK.

OHIO VALLEY ROMANCE WRITERS OF AMERICA Local chapter of the national organization meets at 1 p.m. on the second Saturday of every month at the

WRITING LIVES WRITING WORKSHOP Workshop women writers. 871-8702.

Young Readers' Events

CHILDREN'S BOOKERY STORYTIME Twoolds can join Cathy Diane Volk for stories friends. A parent or accompany children. Tuesday. $1. Registration Children’s Bookery, Ave., Forest Park.

CHILDREN'S STORYTIMES Aunt Sandy and her conduct stories and preschoolers. 10 a.m. Wednesday in February.... will also be storytimes ties. 7:30 -8:30 p.m. 11 a.m.-noon Saturdays. Noble, 7663 Mall Road, 647-6400

CINNAMON TREE Angelina Ballerina party. 1-3 p.m. Saturday. Montgomery Road., Township. 489-TREE.

JOSEPH-BETH KIDS for tiny tots. 10:30 followed by African by Blume Sway at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Edwards roads, Norwood. 396-8960.

JOSEPH-BETH YOUNG DISCUSSION GROUP discussion is Phyllis Grand Escape. 7-8 Thursday of each month. Thursday. Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Rookwood Madison and Edwards Norwood. 396-8960.

LITTLE PROFESSOR, CHESTER, STORY Preschoolers can listen and make take-home

11 a.m. every Thursday. Professor Book Center, Road, West Chester.

OAKLEY BLUE MARBLE TIME In honor of Month, African storytelling crafts will be

in

Free. 10—4 p.m. Saturday.

Featuring CAPPUCCINO, LATTE ©ESPRESSO M-F 6:30 am-5:30 pm SAT 7:45 am-3:00 pm 120 East 4th Street Mercantile Arcade Downtown 721-2233 e: e Union Terminal, Western Ave., Queensgate. 651-RAIL.

CINCINNATI ZOO AND BOTANICAL GARDEN Explore the Jungle Trails, the zoo’s newest exhibit, which re-creates the natural habitat of orangutans, bonobo chimps and other animals. Also, check out the Komodo dragon exhibit, which holds the world’s record for the most baby Komodo dragons to hatch. The zoo continues its 1995 Winter Movie Series with White Fang and the Hunter. Showings are free with zoo admission. 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Zoo hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. $7.50 adults, $4.50 children'2-12, $5.25 seniors; $4.50 parking. Annual membership: $54 for families, $46 for single parent families, $35 for individuals and $22 for students. 3400 Vine St., Avondale. 281-4700.

DELHI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The restored 1880 farmhouse has reopened with a pictorial display by Price Hill’s infamous George Remus.... Everything Old is New Again features a then-and-now exhibit of tools for the house and farm. 468 Anderson Ferry, Delhi Township. 451-4313.

DINSMORE HOMESTEAD The historic farmstead built in 1841-42 was home to the Dinsmore family who never threw anything away, leaving a fascinating collection of letters, diaries and receipts.

1-5 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. $3 adults; $2 seniors; $1.50 children under 12. 5654 Burlington Pike, Burlington, Ky. 586-6117.

FOUNTAIN SQUARE ICE RINK Open 10 a.m.-8 p.m. MondayThursday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday; closed Sunday. The ice-skating rink will be open 4-8 p.m. Thursday; 4-9 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday and noon6 p.m. Sunday. Through Feb. 20, weather permitting. $1 to skate, $1 skate rental. You can skate for free by presenting a receipt for Sudafed. Downtown. 684-4945.

GREATER LOVELAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY Features its winter exhibit, Antique Valentines. Highlights include a tum-of-the-century kitchen and the Nisbet Library. Through Feb. 26. 201 Riverside Drive, Loveland. 683-5692.

MORE, PAGE 28

Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark

ETC production leaves question: Is ‘Hamlet to be or not to be taken seriously?

REVIEW BY RICK PENDER

Drew Fracher, director of the Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati’s current production, Hamlet, says many people told him he was insane to undertake Shakespeare’s “greatest achievement.” His response, he writes, is that a director should be drawn to “plays that are very well written” and that “contain such universal subject matter.”

He’s right. That’s also the challenge.

Hamlet is indeed one of the greatest works of literature ever written. It’s also one of the most familiar, full of speeches that we’ve all heard, whether we’ve ever seen the play on stage.,How to make it fresh, vital and meaningful is the real question, taking the play’s universality and bringing it to life for audiences today. Shakespeare’s greatness is that this is possible.

Unfortunately, ETC’s production of Hamlet while it has some excellent production concepts and a standout performance by Jim Nelson in the title role doesn’t hang together in ways that make the audience come away with a sense of Shakespeare’s insights into human nature.

Hamlet is a long show, and Fracher has done some judicious pruning. He has taken liberties with a few characters and scenes, reducing the play which can run well more than three hours to slightly more than two, including an intermission. The pace is lively, frequently choreographed by Fracher, an experienced fight master. He has stylized some scenes in ways that work very well, especially those with King Claudius’ fawning servants nodding together at his pronouncements and clapping in unison.

WE’RE READY TO FLY! COME TASTE THE WORLD GRAND OPENING SATURDAY! 8PM FEB. 18TH INTERNATIONAL TEAS, COFFEES, CUISINE & SPIRITS MUSIC FROM A1NT HELEN & PLOW ON BOY 738 YORK STREET NEWPORT, KENTUCKY 261 -9675

But as the king discovers, “Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Too frequently in Fracher’s Hamlet, characters mouth familiar speeches that don’t quite connect to the action. This is sadly true of Claire Slemmer’s Queen Gertrude and Christine Whitley’s Ophelia, neither of whom plumb the emotional depths of their roles.

We need to sense the tragic breakdown of Ophelia’s mind as Hamlet toys with her; Whitley simply shifts from sanity to madness. Slemmer plays Gertrude as a sort of blowzy Marilyn Monroe, and her potentially powerful scene of confrontation with Hamlet falls completely flat.

A similar observation applies to Gordon Greene’s Polonius: The character is an old windbag, but we should care for him as a man who loves his son and daughter. When he dies by Hamlet’s hand in this production with a bit too much blood and gore, it might be added we’re almost glad to see him go. Greene is back later for a better turn as the gravedigger, whose antic commentary he handles more comfortably.

Nelson does a standout job as Hamlet, and Fracher should be credited for some of Nelson’s success. The director has changed the concept of the “ghost” haunt-

ing Hamlet from father’s spirit. Instead, seizure and speaks this that his torture Nelson an intriguing speeches. He handles power and meaning, speech when Hamlet existence. Also to be commended Claudius. He has cept of the character’s his lust for power that he has committed Sadly, two good to redeem this production. stagings of Shakespeare’s guage and the stimulation valued and treasured. those depths to a sented with an overabundance (Hamlet’s “Get thee reduced to a violent

Jim Nelson does a great job as Hamlet in plays Queen Gertrude.

and a Chickering. 1-6 p.m. weekends. Group tours available by appointment. $4. 412 E. Second St., Covington. 261-9000.

Attractions

PROMONT Completed in 1867, this Italianate villa belonged to former Ohio Gov. John M. Pattison. All rooms are furnished with period antiques. 1:30-4:30 p.m. Friday and Sunday. $2 adults; $1 children; group tours can be arranged. 906 Main St., Milford. 831-4704.

HARDING MUSEUM OF THE FRANKLIN AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Open 1-6 p.m. Sunday and by appointment. 302 Park Ave., Franklin. 513-746-8295.

SHARON WOODS VILLAGE

JOHN HAUCK HOUSE MUSEUM

Guided tours of eight restored and furnished 19th century homes. 1-5 p.m. weekends. $5 adults; $3 seniors; $2 children 6-12; free to children 6 and under. Sharon Woods Park, Route 42, Sharonville. 563-9484.

The Victorian house and garden has reopened with a display of Antique Valentines, circa 1840-1900, through March 5. .Cincinnati at the Turn of the Century, a postcard exhibit, runs through the fall. Collector Martha Rogers conducts a free appraisal of antique dolls. 1-5 p.m. Sunday, group tours by appointment. 10 a.m.^4 p.m. Thursday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. $2 adults; $1 seniors; $.50 children. 812 Dayton St., West End. 721-3570.

STAR OF CINCINNATI

Featuring lunch, dinner, weekend and brunch cruises which 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 furniture and an extensive collection of paleontological and archaeological artifacts. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 105 S. Broadway, Lebanon. $3 adults, $1 students. 932-1817.

KROHN CONSERVATORY

WILDER-SWAIM HOUSE This 1832 farmhouse, originally owned by the Wilder family, is now home to the Montgomery Historical Society. By appointment only. Free. Zig-Zag and Cooper roads, Montgomery. 793-0515.

Cincinnati's flower house continues its Pre-Spring Floral Show. Florists will create the aura of New Orleans with lampposts, fountains, mirrors and thousands of blooming early spring bulbs. Through March 5.... The African Violet Society’s display can be seen this weekend. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. 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.

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

Designated by Congress in 1969, this Greek Revival-style house has been restored to its appearance during the years Taft lived here a child and young adult, and serves as the only memorial to the nation’s 27th president and 10th chiefjustice. Free. 2038 Auburn Ave., Mount Auburn. 10 a.m.4 p.m. daily. Closed Monday. 684-3262.

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. The house also features two player grand pianos: a Mason and Hamlin

Call (513)345-8400for reservations and information

REVIEW

BY

DALE DOERMAN

H★ FINE ARTS SAMPLER This annual free festival kicks off the Fine Arts Fund Drive. Highlights include the free Symphony Concert, 4 p.m. Sunday at Music Hall; Shawn Womack Dance Projects, 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Raymond Walters; and Men’s Chorus, 4 p.m. Saturday at Memorial Hall. Brochures can be found at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center, Taft Museum and area libraries. Call 230-5000 for more information.

arold Pinter returns to the professional stage in Cincinnati after a lengthy hiatus, as the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park produces The Caretaker. His second full-length play and the one that earned Pinter an international reputation for thrilling and threatening theater, The Caretaker (1960) has held up well over the years, as this production proves. Creating an odd blend of terror and humor, Pinter puts two mysterious brothers at odds with a newly hired handyman of dubious identity. One of the brothers, Aston (Jack Willis), brings an old vagrant, Davies (David A. Penhale), home to escape a violent encounter. Davies proves to be a racial bigot motivated by fear and threats from the unspecified “them.” Aston is docile, yet he appears to have his secrets, too.

GREATER CINCINNATI CONVENTION CENTER Hosts the Dealemews Powersports Expo Annual Meeting. Estimated attendance is 10,000. Saturday-Monday. 525 Elm St., Downtown. 352-3750.

text with objects he recognizes. Antoon shows remarkable agility and control, as he walks the razor’s edge with Mick, a character who totters on the edge of the ridiculous and the reckless. (Look for this young actor to be going places in the future.) Willis handles the more subtle nuances of Aston with a quiet edginess that suggests an impending outburst. (You just keep praying that Aston is on his medication.)

Onstage

Aston’s brother, Mick (Jason Antoon), is the most menacing character on stage. He doesn’t speak with people;'he crossexamines them. Mick also has a quirky penchant for naming off lists of items in an effort to place personal reality in con-

Penhale saves the show (literally) by stepping in as a replacement for an ailing actor and going on in a role he has never done with less than a week’s rehearsal. Even though his accent was inconsistent and he was on book for the last act of opening night, the life of the character never dropped, as Penhale worked to maintain one of Pinter’s classic enigmas. Special mention should be made of the wonderfully effective and detailed set from Ursula Belden, as well as James Sales’ evolving light scheme. If you haven’t experienced Pinter, don’t miss this opportunity to see this production that promises only to improve with age.

THE CARETAKER continues at the Playhouse in the Park in Eden Park through March 5. 421-3888.

CCM to Send Up Moving 'War Requiem’

BY PEGGY SCHMIDT

PUBLIC LIBRARY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY Low Fat Eating Made Easy offers tips for heart-healthy eating by registered dietician for the American Heart Association Kathy Haugen. Noon Thursday. 800 Vine St., Downtown. 369-6900.

NATIONAL RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS DAY It’s that time of year again. Time to be nice for a change. So, instead of grunting at strangers and friends alike, try to surprise people by being uncharacteristically generous. It’s not that hard, you can do it. After all, you only have to make the effort this Friday.

NKU BLACK HISTORY MONTH LECTURES Prince Brown, asso-

1962. Temperatures are rising in the Cold War. In a gesture of reconciliation as well as remembrance, the famous Coventiy Cathedral in England, bombed by the Germans in World War II, is rededicated. Its beautiful new nave does not replace the shelled ruins but is built as an extension of them. The horrors of yet another conflagration, “the war to end all wars,” are relived through the poetry of a British soldier set to music by a British composer. The occasion is the first performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.

1995. Elmer Thomas, after 28 years of teaching in the Choral Department at the College-Conservatory of Music and just six months from retirement, looks back on a career full of accomplishments and dedication to the choral art. Now, he prepares for his final concert at CCM.

While the two years don’t have parallels, they are connected.

Thomas, who will conduct the War Requiem on Friday and Saturday at CCM, says he chose the work for this special occasion, not as an anti-war statement, but simply because it is a “very moving piece of music.” Thomas has conducted the piece twice before and is intimately familiar with it. He is quick to point out its message about the brutality of war, as well as how the music has been used to bring about reconciliation. In the music’s final poem (“I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark. ...”), Thomas says, “war is

reduced to ‘I am going to kill you,’ to a one-on-one.” Despite the technology of war today, the message is “applicable to all wars,” he says. Britten was commissioned to write this music for the rededication of Coventry Cathedral. The day after it was bombed, Thomas says, the parishioners “went through the rooms of the cathedral and prayed to forgive the Germans.” Britten chose to use the Latin text of the Mass for the Dead, interspersed with war poems by Wilfred Owen.

Owen’s poetry is personal and universal. Britten prefaces his score with Owen’s words: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity All a poet can do today is warn.” At the age of 25, Owen was killed in action in France, just one week before the Armistice in 1918.

One of Owen’s poems used in the War Requiem is a retelling of the story of Abraham, who prepared to kill his son Isaac in obedience to God. In the biblical account, God, having seen that Abraham was truly obedient, provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in Isaac’s place. But in Owen’s version, Abraham ignored the “Ram of Pride” and “slew his son / And half the seed of Europe, one by one.” It is a powerful moment in the poem and in the music.

Elmer Thomas will conduct WAR REQUIEM featuring the CCM Chamber Choir with soloists Barbara Honn, soprano: David Adams, tenor; and Gary Kendall, bass-baritone. Performances

ciate professor of Sociology, and Robert Wallace, professor of Literature and Language, will speak on Race in Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno: Intent and Interpretation. 3 p.m.

Tuesday. UC 303.... James Westheimer speaks on I Am Not A Draft Evader, IAm A Runaway Slave: African-Americans and Draft Resistance During the Vietnam Era War. 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. UC 108, NKU, Highland Heights. 572-6388.

UC BLACK HISTORY MONTH

LECTURE John Johnston, a third-year medical student, will discuss Origins of the Kente Cloth. 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. Room E-351, Medical Sciences Building, UC, Clifton. 281-6142.

UC DISTINGUISHED AFRICAN AMERICAN LECTURE SERIES

Edward Blakely, dean of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern California, will discuss Gated Communities. 4 p.m. Thursday. Room 636, DAAP, UC, Clifton. 556-1204.

Classes & Exhibits

AFRIKAN AMERICAN DRUM AND DANCE ENSEMBLE

Offers classes 12:30-2 p.m. every Saturday. $5 adults; $2.50 children 12—16; $1 children under 12. West End YMCA, 821 Ezzard Charles Drive, West End. 281-7909 241-9622.

ART ACADEMY Offers Saturday art classes for children, ages 5-14. Drawingfrom Life and Printmaking and Drawing run through March 4 and Junior High Drawing and Painting runs through April 22. 1125 St. Gregory St., Mount Adams. 562-8748.

ARTS CONSORTIUM OF CINCINNATI Offers an array of photography, art, dance, martial arts, music and theatre classes. 1515 Linn St., West End. 381-0645.

C.I.C. PERCUSSIONS Offers adult drum classes in Djembe and Conga, 3:30-6 p.m. Saturdays; children’s class in Nigerian Drum and Dance, 10 a.m.-noon Saturdays. Classes run through March 25. The Miller Gardette Loft, 2401 Concord, Walnut Hills. 221-2222.

CINCINNATI BALLET Offers classes for both adults and children. Adult Ballet Class Session II takes place 7:15-8:45 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. $10 per class. 100 E. Central Parkway, Over-the-Rhine. 621-5219.

CINCINNATI MARLIN MASTERS Coached swim workouts for all abilities. Monday and Thursday

evenings and Sundays at noon. Keating.Natatorium, St. Xavier High School, 600 Northbend Road, Finneytown. Call Chris Gilligan at 232-0382.

CITIZENSHIP CLASSES

Travelers Aid International continues its citizenship classes. The non-profit group also offers English for the foreign born, immigration counseling, application assistance, finger printing and photos. 707 Race St., Suite 300, Downtown. 721-7660.

CIVIC GARDEN CENTER OF CINCINNATI In this two-part workshop, From The Ground Up, students will start seeds during the first class then transplant and take them home after the second class which will be conducted March 8. 7-9 p.m. Wednesday. $12, $18 non-members. 2715 Reading Road, Mount Auburn. 221^0981.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE THEATER Offers classes in tap, jazz, ballet, modem dance, African dance, creative movement for children and yoga. Vine and East Daniels, Corryville. 751-2800.

FLYING CLOUD ACADEMY OF VINTAGE DANCE Offers classes in 19th and 20th century social dance at 8 p.m. every Wednesday. $3 members; $5 non-members. University YMCA, 270 Calhoun, Clifton. 351-7462 or 733-3077.

GLASS CRAFTERS STUDIOS Offers classes in the art of stained glass. 11119 Reading Road, Sharonville. 554-0900.

GOSPEL STUDY Father Jim Willing presents and discusses the Gospel for the coming Sunday 12:05-12:55 p.m. every Wednesday in the Undercroft. Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains, 325 W. Eighth St., Downtown. 421-5354.

SCRIPPS HOWARD SCHOOLS PROGRAMS —Intensive, multilayered, first-hand experience with original works of art designed for students in grades 1-12. Scheduling is arranged to meet the teacher’s needs. $5 per student for the year covers gallery admissions, teacher manuals and materials. Contemporary Arts Center, 115 E. Fifth St., Downtown. 721-0390.

SUNWACH ARCHAEOLOGICAL VILLAGE The village hosts a Native American Storytelling Festival. Noon-4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. $4 adults; $3 children. Participants will fashion and MORE, PAGE 30

UtterKiosk

The Talented Ms. Patricia Highsmith

Underrated author of ‘Strangers on a Train and Hitchcock productions dies

REMEMBERED BY BILLIE JEYES 'Mr. Ripley mysteries

Patricia Highsmith, who died Feb. 5 at the age of 74 from an as yet undisclosed cause, was probably one of the most underrated writers of her time. She is probably best known, however, for her first novel, Strangers On A Train which was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. He also used her as a writer for his television show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Highsmith’s work merits more attention than it has ever received, but her books are usually relegated to the mystery sections of bookstores, a section generally pooh-poohed by literati.

Not that there is anything wrong with mysteries. In fact, most writers could learn a few lessons from the masters of the genre (Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler, to name a few) and trim down their overblown prose into a lean narrative.

Patricia Highsmith was adept at delving into the minds of sociopaths. Her most original character, Tom Ripley, must be one of the most likable and compelling murderers ever created.

Like the late, great Jim Thompson, Highsmith was adept at delving into the minds of sociopaths. Her most original character, Tom Ripley, must be one of the most likable and compelling murderers ever created. Unlike Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, Ripley feels no such remorse for his actions. After all, he generally gives his victims every opportunity to escape their fate.

(Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an advocate of homicide, but I do get tired of literary conventions, such as the one where the criminal always gets caught. After all, in real life, quite a few get away. It’s as if we overcompensate for our failure to capture or convict the guilty by making fictional criminals pay.)

Highsmith enjoyed writing about the dastardly Tom Ripley so much that he ended up in five of her books: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), Ripley Under Ground (1970), Ripley’s Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980) and Ripley Under Water (1992).

The Talented Mr. Ripley won the Mystery Writers of America Scroll and France’s Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere. In 1963, it was made into the film, Purple Noon. Ripley’s Game was filmed as The American Friend in 1978.

Bom in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Highsmith spent the last 12 years of her life in Locarno, Switzerland. Before that, she lived in England and France.

She wrote more than 25 books, including a “how-to” titled Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966). One book, The Price of Salt (1952), was written under the pseudonym Claire Morgan.

Random House has reprinted quite a number of her works under their Vintage Crime/Black Lizard imprint.

Check them out. They.’re awfully good.

Also Gone, Paul Monette, James Merrill

It was not a good week for good writers.

Paul Monette, whose autobiography Becoming a Man: Haifa Life Story won a National Book Award in ’92, died Feb. 10 of complications from AIDS. He was 49. Also, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill died of a heart attack Feb. 6 while vacationing in Tucson, Ariz.

His death, at the age of 68, came as a shock to his friend and fellow poet Galway Kinnell, who was in Cincinnati, reading to a packed house at the University of Cincinnati.

After reading selections from his new book, Imperfect Thirst, including the crowd pleaser, “Holy Shit!,” he spoke about Merrill’s death, commenting on how close they were in age, and read a poem from Merrill's forthcoming collection, to be published sometime this year.

Kinnell finished up the evening with a moving recital (by heart) of William Butler Yeats’ masterpiece, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”

The crowd, silent throughout the evening, roared to life as Kinnell stepped down from the podium, and I found out, much to my pleasant surprise, that poetry is alive and well in Cincinnati.

Timely Releases

The last couple of years has seen a long overdue proliferation of books on African-American history and culture. Listed below are a few February releases, timed to coincide with Black History Month:

Famous Black Quotations, edited by Janet Cheatham Bell (Warner, $7.99).

In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry, edited by E. Ethelbert Miller with woodcut illustrations by Terrance Cummings (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $24.95).

Juba to Jive: A Dictionary ofAfrican-American Slang by Clarence Major (Penguin, $14.95) (Feb. ‘94 ).

Talking Drums: An African-American Quote Collection, edited by Anita Doreen (St. Martin’s Press, $14.95).

Timelines ofAfrican-American History: 500 Years ofBlack Achievement by Tom Cowan and Jack Maguire (Perigree, $15).

The Timetables ofAfrican-American History by Sharon Harley (Simon and Schuster, $35).

The Underground Railroad by Raymond Bial (Houghton Mifflin, $14.95).

Who’s Who in African-American History by John Bowman (Smithmark, $14.98).

Words To Make My Dream Children Live: An African-American Book of Quotations, edited by Deirdre Miller (Anchor Books, $14.95). ©

Etc

every third Thursday of the month. Cincinnati Bible College, Room 251, 2700 Glenway Ave., Price Hill. 541-9073.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD ASSOCIATION OF CINCINNATI 2314 Auburn Ave., Mount Auburn. 721-7635.

decorate a coiled put in the style of the Fort Ancient people of Sunwatch. 3-4:30 p.m. Tuesday. $5. Ages 10 and up will paint symbols on a precut vest, then sew and decorate it. 3-5 p.m. Wednesday. $10. All fees include materials. SunWatch Prehistoric Village, 2301 W. River Road., Dayton, Ohio. 513-268-8199.

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.

UNITED WAY HELPLINE Provides counseling, supportgroup information, crisis intervention and assistance 24 hours a day. 721-7900.

TREASURE ISLAND JEWELRY

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.

Offers classes on stained glass; basic, beaded and wire-wrapped jewelry; polymer clay; and lamp work beads. 34 W. Court St., Downtown. 241-7893.

VITAL VISIONS PROGRAM

9 TO 5, CINCINNATI WORKING WOMEN Founded in 1973, 9 to 5 is the local chapter of a national membership organization dedicated to working for rights and respect for working women. It operates the nation’s only toll-free Job Survival Hotline: 1-800-522-0925. 22 W. Seventh St., Downtown. 381-8925.

Targets at-risk students. A multifaceted program includes a visit with an artist of international and/or national reputation, plus a tour of the materials and techniques employed by the artist. Each student receives a complementary exhibition-related workbook. Free to eligible schools. Contemporary Arts Center, 115 E. Fifth St., Downtown. 721-0390. Heights. 572-6500.

Auditions & Opportunities

ART ON THE SQUARE SEEKING ARTIST ENTRIES All artists living within a 150-mile radius of Cincinnati can participate in the three-day celebration of Cincinnati’s rich cultural and artistic heritage taking place May 19-21. Four different juried exhibitions are available for open application, and artists may enter as many works as they wish. There is, however, a non-refundable application fee of $20 for the first entry and $5 for each additional entry. Deadline is Feb. 21. Call 744-8820 for an application.

WINTON WOODS RIDING CENTER Register for the spring session of horseback riding lessons. Registration must be made in person between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25 and 26. Classes begin March 4. 10073 Daly road, Springfield Township. Call 931-3057 on Fridays and Saturdays for more information.

Groups & Programs

BOOKFEST ‘95 BANNER CONTEST Individuals, schools, scouts and other organizations in Hamilton County are invited to create felt banners for Bookfest ’95. Contest winners will win books signed by this year’s authors, Natalie Babbitt and Marilyn Sadler. Deadline for entries is March 11. Call 369-6945 for more information.

AIDS VOLUNTEERS OF CINCINNATI An estimated 1,000,000 Americans are infected with HIV. AVOG offers support groups for persons living with HIV, as well as their families, friends and loved ones. All services are free and confidential. Become a foster parent of a glass piggy bank for $3 and the money collected will benefit the caring programs of AVOC. The event will conclude in early July with a FunFest HOG Calling in Shooter’s parking lot. 2183 Central Parkway, West End. 421-2437.

C.A.S.T. AUDITIONS The Cincinnati Museum of Natural History’s Creativity and Science Together (C.A.S.T.) Theatre is holding auditions for the April and May productions of Mama Earth Strikes Back. 1 p.m. Saturday. Museum Center Auditorium, 1301 Western Ave., Queensgate. Call Matt Hisel at 287-7020 for more information.

CHILDREN'S MUSEUM The newly opened museum is seeking volunteers who can explain and demonstrate exhibits and guide children through the hands-on learning facility. Training will be provided. H.O.T., the museums' Hands on Team program, seeks 14to 18-year-olds who want to contribute to the community, learn life skills and make new friends. H.O.T. volunteers must be able to provide their own transportation to and from the museum. Call Jenny Niesen Luken at 421-6136, Ext. 217.

BEECH ACRES SINGLE PARENT CENTER Offers a single parent support group which meets at 6 p.m. Tuesdays, through March 21. Southern Ohio Baptist Church, Lexington and Reading, Avondale. 231-6630.

CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER

CAFE MATIN Vous etes invite a nous rejoindre tous les samedis matins au cafe Baba Budan a partir de 11 heures. Bienvenue aux etudiants, professeurs et connaisseurs de la langue frangaise. Baba Budan’s Espresso Bar, 243 Calhoun St., Clifton. 221-8952 or 556-7474.

Seeks volunteers to become museum tour guides, or docents. Training sessions for the Gallery Assistant Program will be held Tuesdays through March 21. Call Sambi at 345-8400.

FAHRENHEIT THEATRE BOARD

MEMBERS WANTED The theatre company is looking for eight additional Cmcinnati/Tristate residents who would be interested in lending their experience and expertise. Call Andrea at 831-0664 or send a resume with references to: Board of Directors, Fahrenheit

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.

Theatre Company, P.O. Box 140734-NL, Cinti, OH 45250-0734.

GRANT APPLICATION WORKSHOP 6-8 p.m. Tuesday. The workshop is free but registration is required by Friday. Call 352-1595 for details.

SHOWBOAT MAJESTIC AUDI-

TIONS The Showboat Majestic is looking for 10 men and women for the April 19-May 7 production of The Wizard of Oz. Performers should prepare a song, bring sheetmusic for the accompanist and be prepared to be tested for dance ability. 7-10 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, Westwood Town Hall, Harrison and Montana avenues, Westwood. 241-6550.

SMALL ARTS ORGANIZATION

GRANT PROGRAM Applications for grants must be in by March 15. Organizations must be non-profit and must be based in the City of Cincinnati. The applications are available at Room 158, City Hall. 352-1595.

TRI-COUNTY PLAYERS AUDITIONS Auditions for the April 28-30 and May 5 and 6 production of Wendy Wasserstein’s Isn’t It Romantic will be held 2 p.m. Sunday, and 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. College Hill Town Hall, 1805 Larch Ave., College Hill. 731-7074.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED AT MIAMI WHITEWATER FOREST AND WOODLAND MOUND The Hamilton County Park district is looking for dedicated adults to join the volunteer staffs. Volunteers will greet visitors, answer the telephone, operate the cash register and assist the Naturalist staff. Call Nancy Hemmer at 521-PARK for more information.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR FLOWER AND GARDEN SHOW

The Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnti needs volunteers for the children’s exhibit'at the Cincinnati Flower and Garden Show. April 27-30. 2715 Reading Road, Avondale. Call Bobbie Shields at 221-0981, ASAP.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR 1995 APPALACHIAN FESTIVAL

The May 12-14 festival at Coney Island, which celebrates the area’s rich mountain heritage with downhome entertainment, crafts, food and cultural attractions, needs volunteers. Applicants must be at least 18 years old. Call Jerry Sebastian at 606-441-8684.

WOMEN’S SPORTS ASSOCIATION AWARD APPLICATION

The Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Women’s Sports Association is distributing applications for its second annual awards banquet. Anyone can nomi

Suburban Torture

nate the players, coaches and businesses. This year the association will present the Tina Siegel Scholarship to an outstanding high school basketball player. Call Diane Tomasick at 482-7109 for more information.

YWCA CAREER WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT Nominations are being accepted through Feb. 20 for the 16th Annual Salute to Career Women of Achievement which recognizes women in the Greater Cincinnati area who provide exceptional role models in our community. The awards ceremony will take place April 27 at the Hyatt Regency with NPR’s Nina Totenberg, the keynote speaker. Call 241-7090 for nomination forms.

Blue Ash.

Onstage

745-5705.

BEECHMONT PLAYERS Bottoms Up, a by Greg Kreutz, 8 p.m. Friday and Sunday. Closes $6 students and College Theatre, College Drive, Batavia.

OVER-THE-RHINE QUARTET Performs the 42nd season Museum Chamber 2:30 p.m. Feb. 26. Museum, 316 Pike 241-0343.

XAVIER UNIVERSITY GUITAR SERIES

Henley, who has guest artist with Chamber Orchestra, tions from Bach, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Ravel. 2:30 p.m. University Center 3800 Victory Parkway.

CINCINNATI CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

popular Monday with a performance ductor Jindong will also feature Tryon on the flute Philpotts on the performance of Concerto da Camera English horn. 7:30 $15 adult; $10 senior;. Memorial Hall, 1225 the-Rhine. 723-1182.

ARTS CONSORTIUM

NATI Presents Morton’s production Trombone, a rousing powerful oratory preacher with great 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26. $22.50 day of show. available. Music Over-the-Rhine.

MUSIC LIVE WITH Pianist Katharine 12:10 p.m. Feb. Cathedral, Fourth streets, Downtown. 621-1817.

ARTS CONSORTIUM NATI AND THE ARTS CENTER Carrie Mae Weems’ Arts Consortium act plays: Ted Shines' butions Douglas Happy Endings. and 4. $10 in advance, door, $8 for CAC Linn St., West End.

COLLEGE OF MOUNT

JOSEPH MUSIC

Cathy Moore and Schiebler direct Ernest musical comedy Wilde’s The Importance Earnest.

COUNCIL ON SELF ESTEEM Meets at 7 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of every month.

NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY BRASS CHOIR The program includes trumpet ensembles by F.G.A. Dauveme and Andre Danican Philidor plus Moravian brass music of the 18th century, a sonata from Cesare Bendinelli, Tutta L’arte Della Trombetta, ca. 1614, and “Suite for Five Trumpets” by Ronald lo Presti. 8

Roommates Travel & Getaways

Wedding & Party Planner

How to Submit Classified Ads

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 25 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, 5 p.m.; 7 days prior to publication. Ads should be mailed to CityBeat Classifieds, 23 E. Seventh St., Suite 617, Cincinnati, OH 45202. 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 accomparty 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.

$25 per hour. In the Roselawn area. Outcalls are available for $30-$50 per hour. Male, Ohio licensed therapist. Hours by appointment only. Call 284-3421.

ACTRESSES & UNDERSTUDIES

am forming a new theater group and need four actresses and three male understudies. Experience helpful, but not necessary. I am also seeking experienced production people. Call Phil at 831-0118.

WRITING GROUP

Seeking young, twenty-something, ereative fiction writers to form new writing group. Hoping to meet monthly or bimonthly in northern Kentucky at the York St. International Cafe. Call Brad, 542-9411.

Automotive

CHEVROLET

1988 Red Chevy Baretta, power steering, power brakes, am/fm stereo cassette. New tires, brakes, and exhaust. With 47,000 miles, its in excellent condition. Asking $5800. Call Dave, 471-3228.

Body/Mind/Spirit

A MORE NATURAL WAY TO LOSE

WEIGHT

Looking for a more natural way to lose weight? Fed up with diets that leave you hungry and unsatisified? We can help! Call Kathy now, 681-3754.

ASTROLOGY CLASSES

Professional reader and experienced astrologer is offering beginner astrology classes. Every Monday starting March

1, join in exploring

MASSAGE THERAPY

Licensed massage therapist specializing in stress management, relaxation, and injury. House calls and gift certificates available. Flexible hours. Strictly non-sexual. Oakley area. Sherry Meinhardt, L.M.T. 731-0490.

PROFESSIONAL ASTROLOGER/ READER

Spiritual minister, teacher, lecturer, and counselor offers group parties and individual services. For your personal tarot readings and astrology chart readings, call Deborah Williams. Tarot reading classes begin March 9th!

606-371-7044.

STRESS MANAGEMENT NATURALLY

Creative Visualization, Attitudinal Healing, Progressive Relaxation, and Meditation. Individual or group consultation, over 20 years experience, licensed as a Professional Clinical Counselor. Sophia Paparodis, L.P.C.C., 677-6090. THE BODY MALL

Understand yourself and those you love better. Professional astrologer Jeri Boone offers counseling through the art of astrology and numerology. Or join Jeri and Beverly Boone, both licensed massage therapists, as they offer therapeutic massage, Swedish massage, cranial sacral, body reflexology, polarity therapy, and accupressure. The Body Mall has a fully trained professional staff, and offers study groups, development workshops, children’s classes, and many alternative methods of caring for yourself. 3519 Glenmore Avenue, 662-5121.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR GIFT

No Time To Shop?

Our custom gift service answers all of your pain-in-the-neck gift buying needs. Employees, co-workers, in-laws...we can customize a gift basket for that person who is impossible to buy for. Free gift wrap! Free shipping anywhere in the U.S.! It’s fast, it’s painless, and you don’t have to go to the mall! 481-7161.

SECRETARIAL SERVICE

Experienced executive secretary offers small businesses a smart alternative by contracting out secretarial and business services. Business documents, word processing, bookkeeping all done at reasonable prices. Short and long term assignments considered, pick-up and delivery available. Call Kim Blair, 821-0036.

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.

VIDEO EDITING DreamSand Video & Print

You can save money on corporate, meeting, event & training videos. Discover our new JVC Edit Desk to edit camcorder, VHS dnd SVHS footage into professional programs. FREE titles! Call DreamSand Video & Print at 541-9078.

CURIOUS ABOUT UFO’S?

NerveNet offers free access to Paranet library files focusing on sightings, speculations, history, coverups, etc..UFO photo library. 751-7515.28.8k

CUSTOM SYSTEMS IN MS ACCESS Database design and programming in a personable manner. Professional references available. For specifics call Speier Associates at 481-1828.

USED IBM COMPUTERS

Do you want a computer, but don’t want to spend thousands on a brand new systern? have used computers that will meet your needs. All are IBM compatible XTs, 8088s, 286s, and 386s. All under $600! I also have faxes, tape back-ups, modems, printers, and P.C. mouse. If you have any questions, please call me. Remember, don’t buy a computer that’s new until you see what mine can do! Call Kevin Birchfield at 598-9703 and leave a message.

Education

BEADS BEADS BEADS

Your complete jewelry and bead shop. We offer a variety of classes, including wire wrap jewelry and stained glass. Please call for details. Treasure Island Jewelry, 241-7893.

CREATIVE KITCHEN COOKING CLASSES Join Carol Tabone, director of Lazarus Creative Kitchen, for her winter cooking program. Italian to French, Chinese to Thai, and more. Classes include Strictly Seafood on February 20, A Cozy Supper By The Fire on February 22, and An Italian Family Meal on February 23. Evening and day classes available. For reservations and a free brochure, call 369-7911. HOME

Other is a Miata 310 12-speed with large frame and lots of extras. Both in good condition, both for $240- but willing to separate. Call 621-4748.

ROLLERBLADES & EQUIPMENT

Rollerblade monoblades (4 wheels) for sale. Two years old, hardly ever worn, so they are in excellent condition!

Help Wanted

full and part-time. We’re ready for a mid-February opening, so stop by and apply in person at 724 Madison Avenue, Monday-Friday, from noon to 4 p.m. Or call 581-5646.

MERL’S

Merl’s, located Downtown at 815 Elm, is now hiring servers, bussers, dishwashers, and delivery people. Experienced or inexperienced, stop by and grab an application Monday through Friday, 2p.m.4p.m. No phone calls, please!

PERSONAL CARE ASSISTANTS

People with disabilities are seeking assistance to achieve an independent lifestyle. Need assistance with personal hygiene, housekeeping, driving. Must be dependable and punctual. Transportation and telephone required. Call 241-2600.

ART-DECO MUSIC

Professional swing fiddler seeks other serious musicians to form '30s era swing band. Call Jeff, 421-9689.

BASS PLAYER WANTED

Bass player wanted. Arranca wants you if you think Dee Dee is better than Rea Flea. Bilingual (English/Spanish), pop punk. Leave message, 557-3466.

DRUMMER SEEKING BAND

Drummer seeks established jazz, fusion, or funk band. am also willing to form new band with other serious musicians. I have over seventeen years of experience! Call Rob at 356-5346.

DRUMS Pearl Black 6 piece drum set for sale. In flawless condition, not even one year old. Asking $1850, or best offer. Call 943-0032.

FENDER STRATOCASTER

1993 Fender Stratocaster guitar for sale. Blue with wood grain. Red, blue, and silver lace censor pick-ups. Rosewood neck. Great condition, asking $800 or best offer. Call 985-8694.

FLEA MARKET

Sunday, February 19, from noon to 5 p.m., join us at the Musicians Rea Market. Located at Bellevue Vets, Interstate 471 and Route 8, next to the Party Source. $3 for admission, $25 for booth space. Enter the door prize for an electric guitar! For more information, call Ron at 606-441-8001.

KEYBOARD FOR SALE

Kurzweil K-1200 Pro keyboard with full 88 keys for sale. In excellent condition, hardly ever used, has midi hook-ups and 168 pre-set memory voices. Originally $2400, asking $1200 or best offer. Call 851-0261 or 931-1411.

KEYBOARDS & BASS Keyboard

Classifieds 665-4700

USED IBM COMPUTERS UNDER $500

Kevin 598-9703. Leave Message. See classified ad on inside page!

WHERE NOTHING IS ORDINARY

LeftHanded Moon 48 E. Court St, 784-1166

BAD HABIT

UVE ROCK-N-ROLL

FEBRUARY 17 & 18 AT CHUG A LUGS

AFFORDABLE MASSAGE!

Roselawn, male therapist, $25/hr 284-3421

THE MOVIES PRESENTS: RED

a film by Krzysztof Kieslowski GRAND RE-OPENING 719 Race Street 381-FILM

FLIPSIDE MUSIC

WANTS YOUR USED CDS CASH PAID FOR ALL POPULAR TITLES

1305 Main St, Over-the-Rhine 241-2212

GJ’S GASLIGHT

Homemade specials $4.95 INCLUDES ENTREE & 2 SIDES 354 Ludlow, Clifton, 221-2020

CRAZY LADIES BOOKSTORE

BOOKS, MUSIC, & GIFTS BY AND ABOUT WOMEN 4034 Hamilton Avenue, 5414198

The Playhouse In The Park presents THE CARETAKER by Harold Pinter

A compelling combination of laughter, tears, & goosebumps. Feb. 7-March 5 For reservations, call 421-3888.

SONGWRITERS

NEED A PROFESSIONAL DEMO OF YOUR SONG? WE CAN ARRANGE & PRODUCE IT AND PROMOTE IT TO RADIO STATIONS FOR YOU.

JEWEL RECORDING 522-9336

ONLY ARTISTS

CONTEMPORARY FOLK ART

GALLERY presents a new inventory of works by Howard Finster, Michael Finster, R.A. Miller, Mose T., and others.

Tuesday- Saturday 11 A.M.-5 P.M. 1315 Main St, Over-the- Rhine 241-6672

Sunshine Promotions presents LAURIE ANDERSON Monday, March 27, at 8 p.m. TAR THEATRE

Reserved seat tickets on sale Saturday. February 18,10 am. at all Ticketmaster locations, by phone, 7494949, or at the Taft box office at 5th & Sycamore

VIDEO DESIGNER

Do you have a project that needs that special touch? Specializing in documentation of events, arts and commercial projects, & non-linear editing. Call Bob Leibold, voice/fax 481-1444

STILL HUNTING FOR A BIRTHDAY PRESENT? STOP LOOKING! Call our custom gift service and order a fabulous personalized gift for that fabulous certain someone! Theme baskets are available. 481-7161.

FAHRENHEIT THEATRE CO. PRESENTS

Stacy Jordan Pershall’s THE COLOR WHEEL Feb. 16 - March 12. For information and ticket reservations, call 559-0642.

ONENET COMMUNICATIONS

THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION IS HERE!

For more information on Internet connectivity, video conferencing, WAN/ LAN solutions, or virtual marketing call 326-6000 or 326-6001, login as “new” info@one.net http://www.one.net

CINCINNATI CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

KEITH LOCKHART, MUSIC DIRECTOR

Extend your weekend with the Intimate Orchestra, Monday, Febraury 27, 7:30 p.m. With Jidong Cai as guest conductor, Rebecca Tryon- flute, and Christopher Philpotts- English hom. Complimentary buffet at 6:30 p.m. For ticket information, call 723-1182.

CINCINNATI RECREATION

ROWING & FITNESS CENTER $40 PER QUARTER

Located at Montgomery Inn at The Boathouse. Call 241-BOAT.

SYLVAIN ACHER & FABIEN

invite you to celebrate the release of their new compact disc MAN O’ WAR at the Blue Wisp Jazz Club, downtown ^Friday, Feb. 24 9:30 p.m. Concert* *Sat, Feb. 25 7:00 p.m. CD release party* *Sat, Feb. 25 9:30 p.m. Concert* For reservations & info, call 721-9801

MIAMI UNIVERSITY CONCERT BOARD PRESENTS:

Welcome to Back Beat, the back page of Cincinnati CityBeat. This last page is your last chance to have the last word.

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