The Cincinnati Monocle

Eric Deters is Going Nuts!

2012-02-16T18:50:00.001-08:00

Eric Deters is going nuts. He was fired from 700 WLW last year and still hasn't learned his lesson, because he never will, because he is mentally ill and/or on drugs. Mr. Deters posted this to his Facebook page on 2/16/12:

But it gets way more disturbing:

All this coming from a man who, when he first started hosting shows on 700WLW in 2008, identified himself as a Democrat and an Obama supporter.

Duke Energy's Utility Claims Debunked by Photos of Existing Streetcar Lines

2012-02-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

Perhaps as a political favor to Gov. John Kasich and others intent on embarrassing Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory, this past week Duke Energy triggered a round of fevered talk radio folderol by announcing it had stopped negotiating with the City of Cincinnati with regard to relocation of its utilities near streetcar construction. Specifically, Duke demanded that the City pay for all utility work within eight feet of streetcar operations, increasing by several orders of magnitude the volume of work previously budgeted by the City.

In the past, Duke might have gotten away with such a preposterous demand, but dozens of people around town, expecting no payment for their work, have compiled a large number of photos of utilities near recently-built streetcar and light rail tracks in other cities around the country. These photos are not a pie in the face of Duke so much as a pie in the face of those members of the public who allowed themselves to get tricked by Duke's move. To be fair, not all of the utility access points pictured below are the same type as those Duke owns and maintains in Cincinnati, however some surely are.

Portland

Manholes between tracks:

Immediately next to the tracks:

Next to light rail tracks:

Between tracks:

Immediately next to the tracks (I'm seeing three):

Immediately next to the tracks:

Next to the tracks:

On a station platform:

Immediately next to the tracks:

On the right:

Seattle

Immediately adjacent to the track:

Immediately next to the track (bottom of frame):

Phoenix, AZ light rail

Charlotte, NC light rail

And one more from Portland, OR:

12,874

The Tyranny of DSLR Video

2012-02-08T17:56:00.001-08:00

If you took a film or video class between 1908 and 2008, your end product looked like what it was: crap. Then, just as the world economy was in free-fall, full-frame DSLR video appeared like that lobster in Multiple Maniacs:

...and suddenly your amateur crap looked like Soy Cuba. On February 7, 2012, the second generation of DSLR video cameras arrived. Nikon just released this ridiculous promo video for its D800 camera on Vimeo:

So here's the dilemma presented by the ubiquity of DSLR video: will it kill film in the same way it killed photography? I believe it will, at the very least, kill independent film culture as we currently know it because with the point of entry so much lower, young people will cease being seduced by films and filmmaking. Photography and film schools thrived until the appearance of digital technology because photography and film students got off on the barrier created by their exclusive knowledge. Photographs and movies were everywhere before 2008, of course, but only people who took an intro class or two had any familiarity with the tools and processes.

The other fundamental challenge facing the future of independent film is that web videos need to "go viral" (I cringe as I type that) if there is any hope for them being seen by a wide audience. Since the appearance of Youtube in 2006, people have been producing videos designed to go viral -- and such videos can never be serious. What's more, people paradoxically click on low-res videos that look funny, rather than slickly produced videos like the frivolous motorcycle doctor we saw above, so save the $2,999 you budgeted for a Nikon D800 and just pay bums $5 to punch each other.

[...]

On the matter of not owning a television, I recently got in this tangle with someone online:

>People who don't watch tv LOVE pointing out that they don't watch TV

People who make fun of people who say they don't watch TV are like hipsters who say if you complain about hipsters you are one.

>Not watching TV doesn't make you special.

Oh yeah it does. Don't own a TV and you're a one-percenter. Subtract a car from the equation, and you're Warren Buffet, or maybe Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.

Sleazy Art School Advertising

2012-02-01T21:07:00.000-08:00

Higher education is a dirty business, especially art/music/writing/theater or any program that takes advantage of an 18 year-old's impulse to be famous or work for or around people who are. I periodically click on art school advertisements that appear on my computer, and today happened upon this:

[Click Here for a larger version of this image]

You have just been disappointed by a screenshot from the opening page slideshow of the Nossi College of Art in Nashville, TN. I mean, if they really wanted to reel them in, they should have just posted this (scroll way down):

(almost there, keep scrolling)

(a little more...)

[Man up and make this image your desktop wallpaper]

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Doc Thompson: Oh How The Mighty Have Fallen!

2012-01-30T19:46:00.000-08:00

Ho-lay schadenfreude, mang.

My guess is a $50/show gig after Eric Deters at 1160am isn't going to pay his mortgage (or Medifast). So don't be surprised if the next time you hear Doc Thompson's voice he'll be asking if you prefer Extra Crispy or The Colonel's Original Recipe.

Early on in the brief tenure of Doc Tampon, I thought to myself this guy's never been burned -- I mean, everyone knows you can't chisel the fryers if you let them cool off past a certain point. But no, Thompson kept sniffing Glen Beck's jock:

www.jobswithkfc.com

TGI Friday's new Prog Rock soundtrack

2012-01-27T19:53:00.000-08:00

"...in the twentieth century, that's all there is: jazz and rock-and-roll. The rest is term papers and advertising.”
-David Hickey from 1997's Air Guitar

It's the twenty-first century, jazz and rock & roll have been destroyed by Disney and hipsters, and this blog post is an example of all we have left: Hickey's terrifying prediction of term papers about advertising.

On June 6, 2011 I whined about the music of Iggy Pop being used to sell Chrysler sedans. Tonight I saw something even more disturbing: a TGI Friday's commercial set to the music of...Primus. Specifically, "John The Fisherman", from 1990's Frizzle Fry:

The album version of the song wasn't used in the commercial (said commercial has yet to appear on Youtube), but rather some cheesy rerecording by LA studio musicians. Again, how did the marketing people arrive at the use of this 22 year-old song? After months of research, did they find that John the Fisherman, and John the Fisherman alone, called the average Discovery Channel viewer to action?

[...]

Let me take this moment to thank Mark D_____ for introducing me to this band in the fall of 1992.

Western-Southern: Move the Arch St. Houses to The Banks!

2012-01-25T20:27:00.000-08:00

The internet is percolating with rumors regarding Western-Southern's tower plans at Third & Broadway, currently site of the old orange parking garage with the spinning clock. Some claim that the company is planning a new office tower for the site taller than Queen City Square.

But if a new tower is built in place of the old orange garage, no doubt Western-Southern will want the land currently occupied by a trio of old town homes on Arch St. At present, those homes are not serving as residences -- in fact they were used as construction offices while Queen City Square was erected on the next block.

Instead of demolishing the houses, Western-Southern should move them to The Banks. They are hidden at present but could be given new life on the riverfront as homes, bars, or retail. And while they're at it, they need to find a new home for the spinning clock.

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Tila Tequila's "Cincinnati" Song

2012-01-24T18:09:00.000-08:00

Two or three years ago Tila Tequila channeled Dr. Rockso...and somehow all this commotion has something to do with our fair city:

I like all the boys and the girls that come to playI-I like eating birthday cake's and party everydayI like all the boys and the girls that come to playI-I like eating birthday cake's and party everyday
I'm choppin' it up on the way to the bathroomCh-choppin' ut up on the way to the ba-bathCh-choppin' it up on the way to the bathroomCh-choppin' it up on the way to the ba-bath
Cincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCome baby come uhCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCome baby come uh
Some famous wanker walked up to meHe says do you like publicitySo I spit my tea up in his faceGet your bloody hands off my birthday cakeI dont know what you came here to doI'm waiting in the q tryin' to get to the uSo I can chop it up on the 1's and 2's1's and 2's1's and 2's
I'm choppin' it up on the way to the bathroomCh-choppin' ut up on the way to the ba-bathCh-choppin' it up on the way to the bathroomCh-choppin' it up on the way to the ba-bath
Cincinnati comin' back Cincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCome baby come uhCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCome baby come uh
Choppin' it upChoppin' it upChoppin' it upChoppin' it up
I like all the boys and the girls that come to playI like all the boys and the girls that come to playI like all the boys and the girls that come to playI like all the boys and the girls that come to play
Cincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCome baby come uhCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCome baby come uh
Cincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCincinnati comin' backCome baby come uh

The circumstances surrounding this recording are murky. I first learned of this track in November 2010, while scanning this thread. I spent a minute just now researching the matter, but found nothing new. Apparently "Cincinnati" didn't appear on either of Ms. Tequila's albums, nor was it ever released as a single. It is not available on iTunes, and I'm suspicious that the various scammy-looking sites that promise an MP3 download will mess up my computer. So it appears we're stuck with this "leaked" version, at least until a Tila Tequila box set is released just in time for Christmas 2019.

11,550

Is Meg White campaigning for Mitt Romney?

2012-01-23T16:44:00.000-08:00

Walk with me, Suzy Lee:

Cincinnati Enquirer mistakes downtown Marietta for downtown Cincinnati!

2012-01-22T13:04:00.000-08:00

On January 22, The Cincinnati Enquirer featured the 1937 Flood in its Forum section. On the back page, it ran this photo of "Downtown":

[Click Here for a larger version of this image]

Wondering what part of downtown we're looking at here? I was too -- the bridge is similar but not shaped quite like our old C&O Bridge. About two minutes of image searching for "Ohio River Bridge" on Google revealed the answer: it's the Williamstown-Marietta Bridge, 165 miles east of Cincinnati. What makes this mistake all the more inexcusable is that all of our bridges are visible from The Enquirer's offices.

Photos of Calhoun St. and McMillan St. in 2003

2012-01-21T19:35:00.000-08:00

I took these photos of Calhoun St. and McMillan St. in 2003, right before everything was demolished. Work just began this week on University Square at the Loop (I can't remember what the project was originally called), about seven years behind schedule.

Model in a shop window:

Prime Time (Vine & Calhoun):

Vine & McMillan, looking west:

Vine at Calhoun, looking south:

McMillan at Moerlein looking west (Pomodori's and the new Adriatico's are to the right of this frame):

Calhoun St. looking south near Hartshorn:

Inn the Wood & 227 Tavern:

Looking east from Hartshorn (the white cinder block building at right was Shirley's Laundromat, demolished in 2010 for the new Adriatico's):

Arby's and Hardee's opposite Calhoun Hall (Taco Bell was just to the right of this frame):

South side of Calhoun, east of Hartshorn:

Hardee's:

UPA under construction:

Digging UPA parking garage -- Wendy's and row houses are on south side of Calhoun St.:

Swift Hall:

All 3 Sisters:

Empire Theater emergency demolition (now a parking lot):

Former Empire Theater:

Old Riverfront Stadium skywalk:

Great American Ballpark before construction of the Reds Hall of Fame:

Ford factory renovation in Walnut Hills:

Freedom Center construction:

Wiedeman Hill in Newport:

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Public Transportation is Communist!

2012-01-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

The Morning After actually published this:

Streetcar is a Communist Idea

'Throughout this nation’s great history, we have fought many evil forces. The Axis powers in he 40′s, The USSR during the Cold War, The terrorists as of late. In Cincinnati, there is a new battle of good vs evil. That is why I am shocked that many in Cincinnati want to emulate the USSR and build a communist streetcar system.

Do not let this monstrosity be built. Our forefathers wouldn’t let it happen.

Clive Johnson

Franklin

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/letters/2011/05/09/streetcar-is-a-communist-idea/

Is this letter a joke? If so, some readers certainly didn't interpret it as such, since the UAW did successfully fight SORTA's 1979 and 1980 ballot issues by calling buses "communist".

And Reagan certainly thought public transportation was a joke:

I remember seeing this exact clip on the nightly news as a kid. The absence of such propaganda in the 20 years since George H.W. Bush left office is part of the reason why our country's young adults don't care so much about cars. But those naive conceptions of "communism" still motivate those who laugh at mention of our old subway and cheered the scrapping of our original streetcar system.

Smitherman gets his own show on 700 WLW -- just like I predicted back in May

2011-12-31T01:19:00.001-08:00

On May 5, 2011 I posted my suspicion that political monster Chris Smitherman was working to get his own show on 700 WLW. Unfortunately, my worst fears have been realized:

When will The Enquirer start reporting the online activities of public figures?

2011-12-27T04:20:00.000-08:00

On December 23, The New York Times reported that the Tea Party mayor of Troy, MI rejected federal stimulus funds for a transit center in her city. Included in the article was a sophomoric anti-gay marriage remark that the mayor posted on a social media website:

[Click Here for a large version of this file -- quote is highlighted in the third column below graphic]

In 2006, CityBeat reported SORTA board member Stephan Louis's racist online remarks. Unfortunately, despite this and his 2002 reprimand from the Ohio Elections Commission, other news outlets have continued to contact Louis for his (predictable) comments on transit-related matters. This past fall, during the Issue 48 debate, Louis was a guest on various radio shows and on Channel 12 Newsmakers. He continues to announce himself as a "medical devices salesman" when in fact he does bathroom remodeling and other odd jobs.

In recent weeks, Mark Miller of COAST has been sending outrageous tweets:

This tweet was in reference to his December 21 claim that fire station brownouts were responsible for the death of a child in Westwood -- except there weren't any fire station brownouts that day in that area. What's more, planning for the streetcar has in no way affected the fire department's budget -- in fact state law prohibits it. Miller knows this but keeps doing it, because that's the only thing he and his group do.

Mark Miller on streetcar:

Meanwhile, Cincinnatians have died thanks to the likes of Mark Miller. They're among the 4,000+ who were killed in Iraq during the 2003 invasion and ensuing eight-year occupation. Miller, St. Xavier Class of '83, never mentions the two St. Xavier High School graduates who died on August 3, 2005 in a roadside bombing so that he can afford to drive his cowardly self from con-job to con-job.

We could go on all day long about pathetic activities of Miller, Louis, and the rest. Instead, let's get straight to the point: if The New York Times finds the online comments of public figures with Tea Party affiliations fit to print, why doesn't The Cincinnati Enquirer? Oh yeah -- because doing so would bite the hand that feeds.

9650

You've got to pay your dues...to write for Yahoo News!

2011-12-15T16:51:00.000-08:00

Today, this appeared on Yahoo News. At first I thought it was a link from The Onion:

Why Working at Starbucks for Three Weeks was the Toughest Job I've Ever HadBy Aimee Groth | Business Insider –

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to work for Starbucks as a barista.
I had recently moved to New York City, and I was freelancing at the time. But I had to get a part-time job in order to pay next month’s rent. So one afternoon, I printed off a stack of resumes,and hand-delivered them to nearly 30 Starbucks in Lower Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.
Only one manager called me back: the one from Brooklyn, just a few blocks from my apartment — and the last store I visited. She offered me the job at $10/hour; and if I worked part-time for three months, I'd be eligible for health insurance.

I'd later find out that the store is located next to the busiest transit hub in Brooklyn, which makes itthe busiest Starbucks outside of Manhattan. My initial idea of working a leisurely part-time job was completely false. This was going to be hard work. And a lot of it.

My first day was deceptively easy – watching videos of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on the store’s laptop with my fellow three trainees, and taste-testing coffee and tea. We had some pamphlets that explained the drinks, and our task was to memorize all of them — including some several dozen variations of shots, sizes and flavors.

We tried making a few of these with our trainers at the bar, but it wasn’t easy. There was usually a steady stream of 20-some people waiting in line, and there simply wasn’t the space or environment to train properly. It was always chaotic, with several people on the floor, calling orders, shifting from station to station, and asking you to get out of the way. Not to mention 10 customers waiting at the end of the bar for their drinks.
Photo: Daniel Goodman, Business Insider
My first real 7:30 a.m. shift was jarring. The intensity of what goes on behind the counter is simply not visible from the customer’s point of view. During the peak morning hours, we’d work through around 110 people every half hour with seven employees on the floor.
Since there was no chance my new colleagues — or “partners,” as Starbucks calls its employees — and I would ever memorize all the drinks, we handled everything else: brewing and changing coffees (staying on top of which ones are decaf, light and bold roasts, while rotating them via Starbucks’ “coffee cadence” using 2-minute timers and grinding the beans, having them all prepared to brew — and never leaving one pot sitting longer than 30 minutes without dumping, since it’s no longer “fresh”), marking drinks (there’s a complicated shorthand that you’ve got to memorize, while translating what a customer is saying into “Starbucks speak” and calling it properly), rotating pastries, the food case, and tossing hot items into the oven — all while managing the register.
Just as I was tempted to remind my coworkers that they were new once, too, I wanted to tell customers that I was way over-qualified for this job, and hoped they’d see me on the street in normal clothes, not in khakis, a black T-shirt, bright-green apron and baseball cap.
On my third day, my boss handed my fellow trainee — who would later disappear after a 10-minute break never to return — and me a mop and supplies to clean the bathroom, because the toilet was broken. It turned out not to be so horrible, but again, I quickly learned to swallow my pride.
We got two 10-minute breaks and one unpaid 30-minute break for every 8 hours on the floor, where we’d have to decide between running next door to use the restroom (because ours was always had a line of customers in front of it), quickly eating a bag lunch (there was never time to stand in line and buy something from the store), or making a cell phone call. If you’re lucky, you got to sit down on the one chair in the break room, or on the ladder, because there were never any open seats in the store.

Some of my coworkers were more demanding than others. Most were nice and welcoming. And there were office politics. On more than one occasion I walked into the break room to see someone crying, or talking about other coworkers. I mostly avoided this, until what would be my last week on the job.
I told my boss that I got a new, full-time job, and could work until I started at Business Insider. Butthe next day my name disappeared from the schedule.
For many people, service industry jobs are not a supplementary income or short-term solution. And hats off to them — especially those who do it without even complaining.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-working-starbucks-three-weeks-141100878.html
The author on Twitter: http://twitter.com/aimeegroth

Again, at first I thought this was a piece of satire, but no -- this girl apparently had never had a retail or restaurant job of any kind until, it appears, age 22 or 23. What's so astonishing is the writer's presumption that she will never return to menial work...because she's such a goddamn good writer (did Yahoo News pay her more for this piece than she made during her three week Starbuck's tenure?).

Out there in folksy middle class land, there exists the belief that a brief visit to the blue collar world as a teenager "builds character", or something. After a summer or two mowing the cemetery's grass, it's off to college and its fabulous internships, then dinner parties with similar people in a condo your parents helped you buy (I know you can't wait for just the right time to tell everyone that you bought that Chinese-made imitation Sri Lankan vase in Pago Pago).

I haven't paused in the last few years to think about "what I've learned" from my various restaurant, warehouse, office temp, and manual labor jobs. Putting myself on the spot, I suppose the main things are:

Most people are quitters
Few people recognize that "common sense" is a trick laid out by people much smarter and wealthier than themselves.

That's about it. Oh, and most white people who are "doing well" (those condo people I just mentioned, as well as most young white adults who moved to New York City after college, and of course most white people who started "their own" business) benefited from money given to them by their parents and/or deceased relatives. Such people on one hand think poor people (you know, real poor people) are cute, but on the other hold people from their native culture who still operate in that world in high contempt.

Is this post really just about me? It certainly is with respect to my deep suspicion of anyone who I spot "Playing Magazine". That phrase popped into my head one day at age 21 or 22 to describe under-30 college graduates who aren't yet "Playing House". Instead they've moved to New York City, or pretend that they have, and consume the specific elements of yuppie culture that magazine articles and advertisements promise will trick similarly insecure members of the opposite sex.

Just one final word to Ms. Groth (who is, like seemingly all who write for magazines, certainly playing magazine) -- I never took a writing class in college, but I hear they say something like "write about what you know". Reading this piece, we all know Starbuck's was in fact your "toughest" job because it was the closest you'll ever be to having a real one.

9,319

Gov. Kasich: Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Coming

2011-12-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

14 months ago, Kasich promised to kill the 3c's plan if elected:

He was elected and he did kill the project. I have plenty to say myself, and probably will return to this subject at some point, but here I'm simply reposting recent remarks by All Aboard Ohio's Ken Prendergast from page 179 of UrbanOhio's discussion of Ohio's defunct 3C's rail plan.

The 3C Corridor is one of the top-10 most heavily traveled intercity routes in the United States, according to the US Dept of Transportation. And the 3C project would have given Columbus Amtrak service to the east via Cleveland then through New York state -- the flattest and fastest route to the east. The link wasn't touted as much as it probably should have, but such travel would been possible had the guv kept the money to upgrade the rail lines to the same quality as the direct Chicago-East Coast lines through Toledo and Cleveland. Instead, Columbus remains the largest metropolitan area in North America and possibly the Western Hemisphere without any regularly scheduled passenger rail services, and few local officials seem interested in doing anything about changing that dubious honor. Consider this recent, sad example.... US Railcar Corp. had to ask the Toledo Lucas County Port Authority to sponsor a grant to develop a manufacturing facility in the Columbus suburb of Gahanna! Why? Because local officials wouldn't support it. If Central Ohio won't financially support passenger rail while other states/regions do, then why should passenger rail come there?

But why does Northern Ohio have Amtrak service? Because congressional leaders along that route, especially in Cleveland, fought for it in 1975 as Amtrak's first experimental route. Today, the Lake Shore Limited is one of Amtrak's most heavily used trains. The Capitol Limited was rerouted through Toledo and Cleveland in 1990 after track was downgraded through Canton, Mansfield and Lima.

Then why does Cincinnati have Amtrak service? Because Congressman Harley Staggers Sr. and Senator Robert Byrd both of West Virginia fought to include the Cardinal route in Amtrak's initial system in 1971 to link their state with the East Coast and Chicago. And they fought to keep it, albeit with service reduced to thrice-weekly operations, in the face of repeated Amtrak budget cuts in the 1980s and early 1990s. Cincinnati got and kept its trains because there was no higher quality rail route between West Virginia and Chicago.

No Senator or Congressional leader in Columbus has fought to keep passenger rail since Amtrak's creation 40 years ago. It's why Columbus lost the New York City-Kansas City National Limited in 1979. If a Congressman didn't fight to put or keep your city on the Amtrak route map, then Amtrak isn't going to do it for you. Same deal happened with mapping out federal highway routes. Ohio had won $400 million in no-match federal funds -- as good as it gets -- to put Columbus back on Amtrak's map. Never before has no-match federal dollars been provided for passenger rail, let alone in such large amounts. And Ohio threw it away. Why? In the hopes of getting a better deal?

If you want rail infrastructure that enables fast, drive-time competitive Amtrak service between Columbus and Pittsburgh to the East Coast, as well as to Columbus to Chicago, be prepared for a price tag in excess of $400 million. The highest quality, least expensive route with the greatest ridership potential for Columbus is the 3C Corridor. But if Central Ohio wants something else, then it should seek funding leveraged by some of its own because the no-match rail grants were a one-shot stimulus deal and they're all gone. Local officials should be prepared for a higher start-up cost, leveraged by a 20% non-federal funding match such as from the state or local governments (meaning if Ohio wants to reapply for a $400 million grant, it will now have to pony up $100 million of its own funding to get it). The per passenger-mile operating subsidy would be higher too, based on the Ohio Hub studies, since no Ohio-involved passenger rail route was as promising as 3C when it came to ridership, revenue or operating subsidy per passenger-mile.

But we keep hoping and fighting for change. And I hope you will too, including sharing some ideas on how to get train service back to Ohio's third-largest metropolitan area.

Read more: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,18328.5340.html#ixzz1fuxJWclG

The Furnace is ON!

2011-11-24T20:38:00.001-08:00

Cincinnati Enquirer scooped by blogger in South Korea!

2011-11-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I received this email:

This morning Randy Simes, who has been working in South Korea for the past six months, posted his TIGER III story on UrbanCincy.com and all hell broke loose.

Jane Prendergast quickly patched together a story of her own, which is now the top item on Cincinnati.com:

Then Channel 19 did a significant piece on the grant application:

The Business Courier and Channel 5 also filed reports.

[...]

In other news, Peter Bronson hasn't updated his website in close to a year. I'd bet he was getting just 100-200 hits per day, or approximately what this infrequently updated blog gets. In other words, he was getting smoked by UrbanCincy.com (which has been operated for the past two years by someone who has lived, at minimum, 500 miles from the city) and even the dreadful Cincinnati Beacon.

So if The Enquirer disappeared tomorrow, and Barry Horstman and the lot each started their own blogs, would any of them build any kind of following? I doubt it, because nothing about their work at our city's daily paper indicates that they actually care enough to write about civic affairs for free.

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Chris Finney lurked outside No on 48 Party

2011-11-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

They say arsonists like to watch the fires they set.

Chris Finney, the one-man wrecking crew who has concocted one crisis after another for the past 20 years, lurked outside Tuesday night's No on 48 party at Arnold's.

Finney was the author of the Issue 48 ballot language, the charter amendment that promised to kill the modern streetcar and all other transit or passenger rail efforts until 2020. With the exception of their October 3 fundraiser at Mecklenburg Gardens, which I reported only drew about 15 people but nevertheless attracted TV coverage, their campaign consisted only of Mark Miller's insane tweets, which might put the Hyde Park bum behind bars, and endless free publicity provided by the leg humpers at 700 WLW and The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Unlike 2009's Issue 9, Finney and COAST had no election night party (if you remember The Enquirer's photos from that "event" two years ago, it consisted of Finney, Chris Smitherman, and maybe two other people sitting in an empty Pleasant Ridge bar). Instead, the group's Tuesday night activities consisted entirely of Chris Finney, alone, mugging for the media that gathered for the No on 48 event:

What is so frightening about it all is that Issue 48 came so close to passing, with the pro-campaign having raised under $200. It's safe to say that without the efforts of 100 volunteers, and Cincinnatians for Progress having raised tens of thousands of dollars, the charter amendment would have passed.

So this near-miss means that Finney will almost certainly launch a third charter amendment ballot issue to kill the streetcar project in 2012. AND he will word it in such a way as to affect all other passenger rail. AND although Cincinnati city council saw significant turnover, the local media will be the same local media, and will keep humping Finney's leg.

If Smitherman's inexplicable election to council means an end to the NAACP infrastructure that had allowed Finney to lob four charter amendments onto city ballots in the past24 months, he will surely busy himself with lawsuit after lawsuit aimed at blocking the streetcar project, when he's not filing frivolous lawsuits against streetcar supporters themselves.

No doubt Finney took notice of Chris Seelbach's election to city council last night -- Seelbach's entrance into local political affairs was the successful 2004 campaign to overturn the 1993 Finney-authored Article XII charter amendment. Finney's outrageous activities have caused many others -- including myself -- who formerly watched civic affairs from the sidelines to get involved.

That it takes a loose network of 100 people and tens of thousands of dollars annually to contain this man is testament to the total absence of a functioning media in this town.

Don't trust anyone under 30!

2011-11-06T19:12:00.000-08:00

Rock & Roll used to be about how lame your parents were -- now it's about how lame your kids are.

After several months of 20th anniversary chatter, this past weekend I gave my 19 year-old copy of Nirvana's Nevermind its first spin in about 10 years. My first thought was of the old Teen Spirit deodorant commercials, and how today's teenagers can't possibly understand the context from which Nirvana emerged...then it occurred to me that some odd soul might have uploaded those commercials to Youtube:

That ad campaign was the very picture of the era -- stupid shit was shoved down your throat day after day and if you didn't swallow you were cast out. Then one day in the fall of 1991 MTV aired an uproarious video by some new band that presented a crushing critique of that word. A month or two after that first airing, Nevermind unseated Michael Jackson's Dangerous as the #1 album in America.

So back in 1991, when I had just turned 13, the #1 album in the United States of America sounded like this:

Nevermind exploded for several reasons unrelated to the music itself: first, the title of the album's first single was a brilliant piece of guerilla marketing -- nowhere does the copped slogan "Smells Like Teen Spirit" appear in the track of the same name, but it was spectacularly appropriate. Second, the video was a call to action -- it operated quite explicitly as a pep rally to millions of youth who hated jocks -- jocks who would soon jump on the Nirvana bandwagon. Third, and most importantly, because Sub-Pop didn't expect Nevermind to sell more than 50,000 copies, and didn't have the infrastructure in place to fully capitalize on the band's sudden popularity, Nirvana's rise had an authenticity that hasn't happened since.

I vividly remember seeing the Smells Like Teen Spirit video for the first time -- I didn't know what, specifically, the guy was saying (in fact I didn't know most of the lyrics until I looked them up on the internet ten years after the fact), but I knew in my gut what the song and what his band was about.

Smells Like Teen Spirit was about total contempt for jocks, total contempt for teachers, total contempt for pop music, total contempt for Hollywood and celebrity worship, total contempt for college fraternities and sororities, total contempt for DARE and public service messages, total contempt for shopping malls and the era's status symbols, total contempt for Homecoming dances and phony charity balls, etc. It expressed total frustration that the symptoms of the mainstream's insecurity went unacknowledged and were even useful in establishing status within the mainstream, while people of high character were vilified -- often by parents, teachers, and others positioned as moral authorities.

So where are we 20 years later? Crank Nevermind for a room full of today's 8th graders, and they'll curl up and cry for all that noise to stop. Why? Because we're back to that cold-blooded world portrayed in the Teen Spirit ads.

Fall 2011: New Lou Reed and Beach Boys Records

2011-10-18T20:07:00.001-07:00

That's right, it's 2011 and the only interesting records coming out are by the same people who were making the most interesting records 40 years ago. The two are scheduled to be released within hours of each other on October 31 and November 1.

Lou Reed/Metallica: Lulu

I'm trying to keep an open mind with this one, but I fear the worst. The leaked track on Youtube doesn't sound too promising:

What was Lou Reed's loudest song before getting together with Metallica? Probably Kill Your Sons, off 1974's Sally Can't Dance:

Folks, that is one helleva song, off one of the best albums ever. I mean, listen to some of what else is on that album:

Just listen to how that piano, electric piano, and hammond enter and leave. And structurally it's the opposite of Reed's familiar silly-song-turns-serious formula (Coney Island Baby, She's My Best Friend, etc.). He flips it, with the nagging roommate in the outro letting you know this song really was just about an annoying roommate!

The Beach Boys "Smile" (1967/2011)

Well, it's almost here. I admit that I was one of those people who spent a lot of time on the internet ten years ago reading and speculating about this album, then ran out to the record store the day the re-recorded Smile was released in 2004. But that album was frustrating because the instrumentation and certainly the vocals were no match for the original Beach Boys. One could hear the inferiority from the first second of Our Prayer to the frumpy re-record of Good Vibrations.

My opinion of Brian Wilson was unfortunately marred by seeing him perform Pet Sounds live in 2002 in Boston. He was painful to watch, his singing was way off, and his band was of course technically competent but didn't sound good. Apparently he got an entirely new band and started eating his vegetables by 2004, when this impressive performance was taped:

I'm definitely looking forward to the originally recorded version of Heroes & Villains (not the low-fi version from Smiley Smile), which should be outstanding, and of course Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, which won the 2005 Grammy for Best Instrumental, but sounded clinical (and digital!) compared to what I'm hoping for with the original 1967 recording:

It's a miracle that this record is finally being released under the auspices of the guy who wrote the songs and engineered the recording sessions. Get this record and listen to it on a real stereo, not your stupid computer!

Enquirer Anti-Intellectualism Sinks to New Depths

2011-10-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

Each day, The Cincinnati Enquirer astonishes us with its anti-intellectualism. It is dedicated to perpetuating folksy myths for the benefit of our city's nastier controllers of wealth. Its non-stop harassment of Cincinnati's long-planned modern streetcar project -- peppered with all sorts of libelous episodes -- reached a new low on Sunday, October 16:

This graphic is such a stunner that it needs little commentary (Click Here for a larger version), but it should be pointed out that the train the couple is riding on is NOT a modern streetcar, it's a light rail train. What's more, it's a circa 1990 first generation light rail train of the sort in operation in St. Louis and Baltimore:

Technology has advanced, meaning these boxy type of light rail trains with mixed hi-low cars will never again be manufactured. The Enquirer, of course, did not bother in its half dozen published graphics to include an image of a modern streetcar, such as the one that was displayed on Fountain Square last year at this time:

Instead, they ran this photo of a 1930s-era PCC streetcar:

But look closely: they credited this 60-80 year-old photo to Joseph Fuqua II, the Enquirer photographer who is about 35-40 years old. This hints that one of his photos of the modern streetcar that visited Cincinnati last year was switched out by a bought-and-paid for editor.

Hey Cincinnati Media: Every Bridge and Tunnel in NYC is "Functionally Obsolete"

2011-10-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

It stands to reason that Cincinnati should adopt a transportation strategy that mimics that of the world's most important city. But that wish seems impossible in a town where the local media can't execute a Google search.

The Brent Spence Bridge, the object of recent national media attention, is classified as "Functionally Obsolete". This term has been abused by Bill Cunningham, Barack Obama, and everyone in between. An effortless Google search for "Functionally Obsolete Bridge Definition" directs us to this passage from ODOT's website:

"A functionally obsolete bridge is one that was built to standards that are not used today. These bridges are not automatically rated as structurally deficient, nor are they inherently unsafe. Functionally obsolete bridges are those that do not have adequate lane widths, shoulder widths, or vertical clearances to serve current traffic demand, or those that may be occasionally flooded.
A functionally obsolete bridge is similar to an older house. A house built in 1950 might be perfectly acceptable to live in, but it does not meet all of today’s building codes. Yet, when it comes time to consider upgrading that house or making improvements, the owner must look at ways to bring the structure up to current standards.

And "Structurally Deficient":

A bridge sufficiency rating includes a multitude of factors: inspection results of the structural condition of the bridge, traffic volumes, number of lanes, road widths, clearances, and importance for national security and public use, to name just a few.
The sufficiency rating is calculated per a formula defined in Federal Highway Administration’s Recording and Coding Guide for the Structure Inventory and Appraisal of the Nation’s Bridges. This rating is indicative of a bridge’s sufficiency to remain in service. The formula places 55 percent value on the structural condition of the bridge, 30 percent on its serviceability and obsolescence, and 15 percent on its essentiality to public use.

The point calculation is based on a 0-100 scale and it compares the existing bridge to a new bridge designed to current engineering standards.

The bridge’s sufficiency rating provides an overall measure of the bridge’s condition and is used to determine eligibility for federal funds. Bridges are considered structurally deficient if significant load carrying elements are found to be in poor condition due to deterioration or the adequacy of the waterway opening provided by the bridge is determined to be extremely insufficient to point of causing intolerable traffic interruptions.

Every bridge constructed goes through a natural deterioration or aging process, although each bridge is unique in the way it ages.

The fact that a bridge is classified under the federal definition as “structurally deficient" does not imply that it is unsafe. A structurally deficient bridge, when left open to traffic, typically requires significant maintenance and repair to remain in service and eventual rehabilitation or replacement to address deficiencies. To remain in service, structurally deficient bridges are often posted with weight limits to restrict the gross weight of vehicles using the bridges to less than the maximum weight typically allowed by statute.

To be eligible for federal aid the following is necessary (a local match is required):
Replacement: bridge must have a sufficiency rating of less than 50 and be either functionally obsolete or structurally deficient.
Repair: bridge must have a sufficiency rating of less than 80 and the jurisdiction is prevented from using any additional federal aid for 10 years.

Again, those definitions are from ODOT's web glossary of bridge terminology, which appears to have been uploaded upwards of ten years ago and has been available this entire time to anyone writing a story involving the Brent Spence Bridge. So what's happening here is the media is being tricked by the highway lobby into tricking Cincinnatians into thinking the bridge is exceptionally dangerous and in an exceptional state of disrepair. Perhaps three more people will be killed, per decade, on an interstate highway bridge with no emergency shoulders versus one with shoulders. Meanwhile, in that same amount of time, dozens if not hundreds of Cincinnatians will be killed falling in the shower.

Up in New York City, every single vehicular link between Manhattan, New Jersey, The Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn is functionally obsolete. None of these bridges or tunnels have breakdown lanes, and there are no plans to replace any of them:

The Brooklyn Bridge:

The Manhattan Bridge:

The Williamsburg Bridge:

The Queensboro Bridge:

The George Washington Bridge:

The Holland Tunnel:

The Lincoln Tunnel:

The Queens-Midtown Tunnel:

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel:

Instead of worrying about its "crumbling, outdated, obsolete, etc." bridges and tunnels, billions are being spent on major mass transit capital improvements:

The $3 billion East Side Access tunnel will bring Long Island Railroad commuter trains into Grand Central Station by 2016
Construction of the 8.5-mile, $17 billion Second Avenue Subway resumed in 2007 after a 30-year hiatus. The first 3-station segment is scheduled to open in 2016.
Construction of an extension of the #7 subway from Times Square southwest to Chelsea is underway and will be completed in 2013. This project sets the stage for further extension of the line beneath the Hudson River to New Jersey.

So since 2007, when Cincinnati City Council first allocated funds to the Cincinnati Streetcar, the local media has attacked the relatively small project on a nearly daily basis. Meanwhile, during that same time period, New York City has spent billions digging new subway and commuter rail tunnels that have attracted no organized opposition. And nobody who writes or reads The Cincinnati Enquirer can figure out why the young people -- all of whom can execute a Google search -- want to leave if they haven't already.

Nobody Showed Up to the Oct 3 COAST Fundraiser!

2011-10-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

COAST, the nasty anti-tax, anti-facts organization that concocted 2009's Issue 9, is attempting to block all rail public transportation in Cincinnati again. 2011's Issue 48 will block planning and construction of ALL RAIL TRANSIT in Cincinnati until 2020 -- no American city has ever voted itself into such a corner, and Cincinnatians will not this November.

But COAST's outrageous activities have received HUNDREDS OF HOURS of free promotional time on local talk radio over the past few years, and they keep having their legs humped by Eric Deters, Doc Thompson, Brian Thomas and the other shills who make a living tricking former high school athletes and the little old ladies who bore them. If not for these three or four assholes (and whatever mysterious entity funds them), Cincinnati would enjoy a much more civil public discourse. Oh -- and the long-planned streetcar would be under construction as we speak.

On Monday Oct 3, COAST staged a fundraiser at Mecklenburg Gardens. Whereas a NO ON 9 Cincinnatians for Progress event in 2009 drew hundreds to that very same restaurant, tonight's COAST pro-Issue 48 event attracted maybe 25 people. That's being kind -- I'm counting about 15 heads in this photo:

But you guessed it -- TV COVERED THIS NON-EVENT!

Any COAST event, no matter how small, is always accompanied by exotic vehicles:

No sign of any elected officials or anyone seeking office (like, say, Chris Smitherman). This event was a TOTAL BUST and indicative of just how feeble an organization COAST is. But no doubt the butt sniffing and leg humping will continue straight through the election, and deep into the 21st century.

Steve Albini talks Hipsters, Mephiskapheles

2011-09-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Steve Albini, the guy who produced In Utero (which I bought the week it was released back in 1993 and still think is one of rock & roll's greatest records), was recently interviewed by The Gothamist. Albini threw some warranted jabs at New Yorkers, setting their bloggers into a frenzy so intense that they've all overlooked the gem that is the conclusion of the interview:

"...What it boils down to is that I’ve maintained a scrupulous cultural ignorance since about 1985 when I realized that what’s going on out there in the regular world means nothing to me...there was a period there, in the ‘90s, when people who were my friends even, started trying to rationalize an appreciation of mainstream pop music. Bullshit like Madonna and that fuckin’ Cher single that was everywhere...
“Believe.” Right. Shit like that, people would pretend that it somehow lessened me as a person that I had no connection with this shit that I despised. Saying that this stuff is culturally significant, that it’s going to influence arts and letters for decades. Well I’m not going to read any of those letters then and I’m certainly not going to watch any of that art. I’m not going to give a shit about that. I don’t care. I don’t care what influence Fonzi has had on music, art, and sculpture. I’m not interested in that music, art, and sculpture. I mean, to use a dated metaphor there. Fonzi. The entertaining thing about that is that it was the beginning of the snake swallowing its tail of retrograde nostalgia that we’ve been wallowing in ever since.
I guess Fonzi has been very influential in a strange way. I think the way that it was influential is that it showed a lot of people that you could make a lot of money making people look and act the way that children think that they did twenty years ago. [Laughter] This is kind of weird. Did you ever see the Woodstock movie?
Do you mean the documentary? Yeah. Okay, well the band Sha Na Na appear in that film. As weird as that sounds. You know Sha Na Na...
The TV show. They had a TV show for children, yeah. That was probably the beginning of the retrograde snake consuming itself that I was discussing. Right?
Woodstock the movie and Sha Na Na being in it. But if you think about it let’s say the period that Sha Na Na were trying to evoke was 1959. When was Woodstock? ‘69 or ‘67. I’m going to Google it right now while I’m on the phone with you so that I can continue this conversation... Alright, 1969. So Sha Na Na seemed stupid and out of place in 1969 when they were evoking nostalgia for an era that was ten years earlier. Now, we’ve got so many layers of nostalgia that we’ve got a nostalgia for the second or third revival of something as nostalgia. I totally expect a fourth wave of ska to roll through at some point.
I think there may already be. My brother actually played in a pretty well known ska band and he claimed that ska is more popular now than it ever has been. Oh, which band was it?
They were called Mephiskapheles. I was going to say please let it be Mephiskapheles. Was he horn?
No, he was a guitar player. That’s a super easy gig. Guitar in a ska band? I mean half the time you can even just shut your amp off.

Please be seated.

The defenders of New York City transplants (all New York transplants themselves, of course) are in a huff looking to slight Albini on this point or that, but I haven't seen any of them target his misstep with the matter of defunct NYC satanic ska band Mephiskapheles. Now, around age 14-15, I had a blank tape ready to go in my radio at all times, ready for whatever might be broadcasted by WAIF. Late one night, this came on:

I caught the second half of The Bumble Bee Tuna Song on that tape, including its nutty a capella outro, then the WAIF hosts struggling to return to Planet Earth. It was nice knowing that I heard the song for the first time along with at least one of the hosts and maybe 500 people scattered around Cincinnati, and I was in love with all of them, and them with me. I ended up seeing Mephiskapheles live twice: at Bogart's in 1996 (opening for The Buzzcocks) and in 1998 headlining at Ripley's (it was an L-shaped bar with two entrances, now the McMillan St. Starbuck's and W. Clifton Chipotle).

Let's get to the point...this band was totally outrageous in a totally different, and much more intelligent way than, say, GWAR. Also, the ska scenesters didn't realize that the band was mocking 3rd wave ska (sort of like The Pietasters) while trouncing nearly all contemporaries in sheer creative and musical prowess. I mean, these guys were damn good musicians who were blowing their 20s playing in a faux-Satanic ska band that wasn't making them money or getting them girls. Then, after putting out two records of mock-Satanism, including a cover of an old canned tuna jingle that has now attracted 200,000 views on youtube, their third and final record, 1999's Might-ay White-ay, was actually satanic. They were a difficult listen to begin with, then they attacked their "real" fans with this:

Frank Zappa would have loved these dudes. I mean, just listen to those mischievous chromatic runs -- it's hard not to imagine a manic Zappa vibraphone in their place. In the hands of the right producer, the highlights from their catalog could have been crafted into neo-Muffin Man.

Speaking of which...the great bit of irony here is that Albini had little if any knowledge of this band (since a wise-ass loves a wise ass, I would have expected him to be an admirer of Mephiskapheles' wise-assery, but the text of the interview indicates that he steam rolled right over his knowledge gap) and insulted their guitar player sight unseen...without knowing that his snarky playing mocked the very sort of vacant playing that plagued the genre.

But honestly they could have used Albini or someone of his ilk in the studio... imagine the character of In Utero applied what you just heard. Might-ay White-ay as-is barely happened due to the preposterous circumstances of this band, but it needed to sound more like the band members themselves were only coaxed into the studio by the slimmest of margins.

That sense of exhaustion and the emotive effect of a drone without there being an identifiable drone is what makes In Utero so special. And chances are the average person complaining about Albini's jabs doesn't consciously recognize this, let alone know that it takes an awful lot of thinking about music, and what it can do in the mind of a receptive listener, to structure an album's worth of songs around that idea.

What rail transit reporting looks like in one of Cincinnati's peer cities

2011-09-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

Nashville, TN is home to the worst-performing rail transit line in the United States, The Music City Star. This 32-mile commuter rail line began service in 2006 and attracts under 1,000 riders daily -- a fraction of the number who will ride Cincinnati's two-mile modern streetcar.

So five years into this failed experiment with commuter rail a hardened Cincinnatian would expect the who's-who of Nashville talk radio hosts, anti-tax groups, and the local newspaper to be calling for the service to be halted. Except in Nashville -- also a Republican hotbed -- the exact opposite is happening.

On Sunday, The Tennessean ran a front-page feature on The Music Star, which not only condoned its atrocious ridership, but called for similarly inauspicious lines to be built in every direction:

And:

Zero negative voices appear in this article. Officials are happy, riders are happy, and more of the same is on the way. Meanwhile, up in Cincinnati, anti-intellectualism reigns:

Here is a video of one of the short Music City Star trains leaving downtown Nashville:

Why does The Music City Star perform so poorly? The primary reason isn't its used equipment (The Star uses retired Chicago commuter rail passenger cars), or its unimpressive average speed, or its threadbare stations. Rather, the main problem is that Downtown Nashville is simply not a major employment center -- it is home to perhaps half as many workers as Downtown Cincinnati. What's more, the line's terminal station is on the edge of downtown, a hilly walk away from most office and state government buildings.

Cincinnati's proposed Oasis Commuter Rail (read my August 2010 UrbanCincy.com article) would attract more riders, but with its $400 million capital cost (10X more expensive despite being less than half as long as the Music City Star's line) and an annual operating subsidy of between $10 and $20 million, it should not be built according to current plans.

But the point of this post was not to get into the details of what exists in Nashville and what is proposed for Cincinnati. The point is that two nearby Republican-controlled metro areas have very different media coverage of this same issue. Nashville's business community has, since about 1990, copied the growth strategies of Atlanta and Charlotte. Meanwhile, Cincinnati's business community perpetuates the narrative of decline that it concocted soon after WWII so that a short list of companies and wealthy families can retain their positions of power, to the detriment of the City's overall development.

Over-the-Rhine Hipsters:be the first to see photos from Main St.'s meat market heyday

2011-09-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hipsters have typically overrun neighborhoods that have been abandoned for decades, especially industrial areas. But somehow, the colony of hipsters who took root in Over-the-Rhine in the past two years think that they "discovered" it, when ten years ago all the Cadillac Ranch-type people flocked there by the thousands every Friday and Saturday night.

On Thursday I succumbed to peer pressure and went to one of those overhyped Vitamin Water music thingies at "1130 Main St.". As I stepped through the front door, my nose was tickled by the lingering stench of a bygone era, and it all came rushing back to me -- This Space Used to Be Bar Cincinnati. Or Maybe Have A Nice Day Cafe. Sure, there was fresh paint on the walls, and some funky (remember when every high camp piece of interior decoration was "funky"?) furniture on loan from Ikea, but more than anything it was the boomy acoustic characteristics of the space that triggered headaches of bar hops past.

Courtesy of Google, I'm able to confirm that the space was in fact Have A Nice Day Cafe. I don't have any photos from that place, but I do have a few pictures from a night at Bar Cincinnati, which was right next door, maybe in the same building. The following photo, from the evening of December 28th, 2002 (I know because it was the night before they blew up Riverfront Stadium, and there are photos of that on the same roll of film), tells you all you need to know about what Main St. used to be about:

Hipsters, I'm Talking to You

Which brings us to the matter of the peculiar strain of under-25 hipsters who can be seen regularly in the neighborhood these days. These people are completely oblivious to the fact that a half dozen meat market bars flourished on Main St. after all the Pete Rose Way bars were demolished in 1997.

A month or so ago, some bicycle hipster, aged about 22, asked me if I "live in the neighborhood". I said no, and he gave me a dismissive look, as if I had first set foot in Over-the-Rhine only in the past two months or so. Fact is, what he and his kind are doing is pretty much as ridiculous as pretending that they discovered Newport-on-the-Levee.

So these hipsters think they have discovered some untouched 19th century neighborhood, when in fact they have discovered the ruins of this:

They gave free drinks to the girls to dance on the bar, just like all the chain bars do:

Bar Cincinnati paid a few midgets to dance every weekend:

I posted this one as a warning to all with image files on backup hard drives...yes they do corrupt over time (look at the bottom strip if you didn't notice it already):

Upon closer inspection, I realized that this photo is not from Bar Cincinnati but rather the Covington Waffle House:

Last but not least, the exterior of Neon's in 1999 or 2000:

Also, somebody out there must have photos from The Warehouse...regrettably I never went there but know people who went there regularly for years. Now the hipsters and yuppies stroll by with no idea what used to occupy 1313 Vine St. (or Club Venus), or how intimidating that area used to be. But they sure have convinced themselves that they know more about OTR than people who were active there 10 and 20 years ago.

Colerain football coach doesn't understand St. X sarcasm

2011-09-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

The controversy over St. Xavier High School students chanting "We've Got Jesus" during last week's defeat of Colerain has now received national attention. What's hilarious about all this is that nobody from Colerain or the local (or national!) media seems to understand that St. X students have always made a habit of poking at their own mythology. The fact is less than 50% of St. Xavier's student body is Catholic and relatively few St. X alums regularly attend church. So in laymen's terms St. Xavier is pretty damn close to being a secular school.

So to be perfectly clear, yes, I am saying that the St. X students were making fun of the sort of people who would say "We've Got Jesus" and the sort of people who would actually believe they were serious.

Dude, it was a joke (skip to 8:00):

We've Got Roast Beef:

And this "We've Got Jesus" thing was hardly the most obnoxious shibboleth to emerge from a St. X mouth of late...the Arby's "Good Mood Food" guy is St. Xavier Class of 1996's own Andy Breving:
(BTW my VHS camcorder footage of Andy being booed while singing Morrissey songs back in 1995 is coming sometime soon to a youtube near you...)

St. Xavier doesn't really care about football
No disrespect to the football coaches or the players, but St. Xavier's culture doesn't revolve around athletics (Colerain's certainly does). The average St. X student doesn't care if the team wins or not. St. X would still be the best high school in the city if it had no athletic programs whatsoever. Because we've got Jesus.

DSLR Video unintentionally enables annoying "Folk Band in Subway" Youtube genre

2011-09-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

September 17, 2008: the day the world changed.

That day the $2,499 Canon 5D Mark II was released to the public, for the first time enabling cinema-quality video at extremely high ISO's. Suddenly high-quality hand-held video was possible on the New York City subway system (good grief, who remembers Pi?), and young folk bands far and wide descended its staircases to create Youtube promo videos. There is quite literally a Youtube channel dedicated entirely to these faux-impromptu videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/subwaysessionsdotcom.

They all look and sound the same:

What's particularly aggravating is that none of these folk hipsters in any way pay homage to the great innovator of subway station music videos:

Guys Named Todd

2011-09-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

It's tough to say who the best recurring Beavis & Butthead character was, because each of them was such a stick of dynamite. Today I looked up Todd on youtube and there he was, just how I remembered him:

When I was a kid, before Beavis & Butthead appeared, there was this teenager up the street named Todd. Todd was exactly like Todd. He was the sort of mulleted appalachian character who belonged in Ross but whose family had oddly migrated to the comparatively civilized Catholic neighborhoods. Todd was always working on or at least leaning against a non-functioning 1970's Nova in his driveway with his buddy Travis, who had one of those white trash wispy mustaches as early as 8th grade. Iron Maiden was usually blaring from an unseen boom box in the garage.

Amongst the neighborhood boys, the activities of Todd and Travis were the object of intense speculation. These guys were above the law, and we were all secretly rooting for them. We felt lucky just to know such towering badasses.

One summer bags of trash and/or house paint (like all good rumors, nobody actually saw the damage) were thrown into the neighborhood pool. The incident lifted their credibility to dizzying heights, even though we had no evidence that Todd and Travis had in fact perpetrated the crime. We just really wanted them to have done it.

Southeast Engine at MOTR 9-3-11

2011-09-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

Skeletonwitch and Southeast Engine are the two bands still together and touring from my time at Ohio University. I saw each of these two bands 3 or 4 times in the early-mid 2000s, including Skeletonwitch's third show ever and the CD release party at The Union for Coming to Terms with Gravity (the photo at right and the one I put on the video below are from their performance at the infamous "Big One" music festival at the Athens County Fairgrounds on September 17, 2005).

I hadn't seen Southeast Engine since 2005 until they played at MOTR back in March or April 2011. The lineup changed yet again, but was probably better overall than what I remember from 2005. After the show I bought the band's new record, Canary, which has several nice moments but is built around a problematic idea.

The reason why the new record is disappointing is because back in 2003-04 the band appeared to be unstoppable. They were certainly much better than bands like The Black Keys who are now famous but had people walk out on them when they played The Union back in 2003. Coming to Terms with Gravity was a decent record and the title track was a terrific song -- one that I'd place along the dozen or so great Arcade Fire songs that appeared on that band's first albums. Listening to it again, I'm still in disbelief that this song was written by an unassuming OU undergrad and recorded in somebody's Athens, OH apartment:

This band needs to stop putzing around and get on a major label. That step would get a big-time producer in the studio with these guys, and would get them over the hump so far as having them better recognize their strengths and gut some of the so-so concepts and lyrics.

Black Gold, from 2007 or so...fast forward to 3:20:

This song is an example of what I'm talking about -- if you're compelled to write an attack on capitalists, and you want to argue that what you do (play music) is better than what they do, you can't screw anything up. There are some okay moments in this song's first half, but the bad outweighs the good. The bridge and especially the final 45 seconds are totally brilliant, but not enough for me to ignore what doesn't work earlier. It's so frustrating when a band is so close to really nailing it!

Anyway, Southeast Engine is a pretty good live band and you won't notice the sometimes clumsy lyrics, and of course MOTR is free. Also, seeing an Athens band is a firm rebuke to the various rankings-obsessed (I'm looking at you, DAAP and CCM) Ohio University haters in this city.

Cincinnati Enquirer afraid to use the T-word!

2011-08-17T20:33:00.001-07:00

Blink and you missed it, but on Tuesday Aug 16, 2011 The Cincinnati Enquirer announced it's changing to a tabloid print format in fall 2012. They left this news off their website (too busy featuring photos from the Keith Urban concert), perhaps afraid that bloggers would subject it to a round of ridicule. But at least one person under age 120 still buys the print edition with some regularity, and spotted this gem today while reading it today in McDonald's:

Click Here for a larger version of this article.

What does The University of Cincinnati know about partying...or anything else?

2011-08-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

UC giveth and UC taketh away. Sure, it has some top programs, and is our city's largest employer, but the place is no fun. UC hasn't been a fun school in a long time, if it ever was, and it lacks a proud alumni culture because of it. The no-fun attitude of UC students and alums is a serious drag on the City of Cincinnati's overall mood, and it's actually gotten worse in the last ten years since the collapse of Short Vine and Calhoun Street nightlife and the influx of more "top" (read: no fun) talent.

Look no further than last Friday's OTR street takeover for yet another example of how Cincinnati doesn't know how to party. This "flash mob", or whatever this blogger chose to call it, appears to have consisted of just 20 or so people. I was in the area at the time and I didn't know anything was happening (then again, once at OU I didn't know people flipped a car in front of my apartment until I woke up around 3:30 the next afternoon).

Whatever that OTR incident was, it was nothing. This is what a typical street takeover looks like in Athens:

Let's get some perspective...
I attended Ohio University, once again named America's #1 Party School, for 3 years. At my previous school, the most kegs I had personally bought for a party was 4, and the most I had seen in one place was 6. So I assumed that they were exaggerating when I heard my first or second weekend there that a pair of houses on Lancaster St. were getting 20 kegs.

Well they did in fact get over 20 kegs, and when I showed up at 10pm THEY WERE OUT OF BEER. That's right, a few backyards of Bobcats had just consumed beer at a rate of over 100 gallons per hour and the party was over well before midnight.

The stuff of fantasy elsewhere, at OU 20+ keg parties were merely par for the course:

In the ten or so minutes we muscled through that Lancaster St. crowd (and tripped over empty beer kegs), my buddy Beerwolf managed to meet a girl and brought her along to The Union, where by chance a band was performing as The Stooges. Beerwolf volunteered his new woman's rabbit fur coat to the singer, who bled all over it after cutting himself with a beer bottle ala Iggy Pop. Soon after, my $400 camera was destroyed, and so we are lucky to have this photographic documentation:

There were many events from that evening which I cannot share with the public, and other frames from that roll of film would disturb the dead, but suffice to say it was one of at least 300 hard partying nights I had at OU, and typical of what could be expected any night of the week in Athens. Stuff this rowdy never happens at UC, and if it does, you're stuck walking home intoxicated through neighborhoods where you just might get your teeth knocked out.

The urban context of UC versus OU...
Despite being in the middle of nowhere, OU is a more functionally urban campus than is UC. Most OU students don't bring a car to school, and the campus has just two or three small parking garages. The City of Athens has just one municipal parking garage. People walk or bike everywhere, and there is a fantastic rails-to-trails bike path that starts on campus and travels 17 miles north to Nelsonville. Pound-for-pound it is a much more interesting bike trail than is our Loveland trail.

Court Street:

The legendary Ridges stain:

Where the grass is green and the...
OU girls love to party and there are tons of them. UC girls stand there with their arms crossed and a scowl on their face.

Some fun OU girls at Palmerfest:

OU versus CCM:
UC is home of a top-ranked music school, but Cincinnati's music scene sucks. This is the town that doesn't believe that James Brown recorded most of his classic hits here. This is the town that never supported The Afghan Whigs.

When I was at OU, there were at least 15 great student bands at all times, a huge number of people who supported local live music, and great venues to see them play. With the disappearance of Sudsy's, Top Cat's, and Ripley's, the only real live music venue (sorry people, Baba Budan's is pretty weak) left within walking distance of UC is Bogart's, which barely has shows anymore.

Athens natives Skeletonwitch, their third show ever...the back of my head's in this video:

Sabbath Sundays:
Casa Neuva was known for playing Black Sabbath records for Sunday brunch. I remember seeing one of my buddies straggle in there around noon one Sunday after we had parted ways around 1:30am the night before. I went and partied somewhere in town, but he took a friend of his to the hospital to get stitches after a brawl in front of The Junction. Then he, the stitched up guy, and a few others drove to Parkersburg at 3am for unknown reasons. At dawn, they decided to visit a steamboat museum, realized it was Sunday so it wouldn't open until the early afternoon, and so climbed over the gangway gate and toured the boat at their leisure (again, more details withheld).

So some Sunday at OU you're drinking at noon while your buddy tell you he just stole the captain's wheel off of an antique steamboat with Fairies Wear Boots playing in the background. At UC you'd be in Panera Bread with some Mickey Mouse Club autotune crap playing and the guy would just be telling you how he spent the night watching his Family Guy Season 4 DVD again.

College Radio:
UC doesn't have a college radio station anymore, but it really never had one at all, since you couldn't pick it up more than a mile or two away. Those of us growing up in Cincinnati never enjoyed the type of energetic college radio stations people in so many other cities did. We did have WAIF, but it was also very low wattage, and I strained to pick it up at my house when I was a kid.

WAIF, of course, is where I first heard the song I stole this post's title from...I wouldn't expect almost any UC student to have heard it.

OU drinking innovations:
The Flambongo and Slap The Bag are both OU innovations:

I could go on an on...
But I'm not going to. Nobody who went to OU exaggerates or makes stuff up. All that stuff an OU alum tells you really did happen. Pretty much everywhere else is pretty weak by comparison.

OU drums to its own drinker. It doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks about it, and that's how it's able to be and stay a special place. Meanwhile, The University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati generally are obsessed with winning the respect of bigger universities and bigger cities by weakly imitating them. It's upsetting to see young people here getting hyped up for this or that, since whatever has caught their attention is usually an obvious imitation of something they just read about on some hipster blog.

Update 8:24pm:
Given the controversy this post has generated, I'll write a follow-up in the next week or so.

The Getup Kids -- a middle class Insane Clown Posse?

2011-07-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you spent several hundred nights in high school and college at small music venues and a few of those bands you saw ended up being sort-of famous. Now when someone annoying talks about their favorite obscure band at a party, you get to say In 1994 I saw them open for Letters to Cleo at The Haunt and they sucked. And Letters to Cleo sucked too.

But for me, one chance encounter with an unknown band stands above (or rather below) the rest. At the time I had no idea that the four dudes dressed like my grandpa who I saw play in the fall of 1996 in the basement of a Kansas City coffee house were destined not just to be somewhat famous, but were in fact founding members of one of the worst genres in the musical spectrum.

I recall seeing the term "Emo" in various mid-90s zines without having actually heard the style or knowing anyone who had. It was often mentioned in zines that also discussed punk, hardcore, ska, and other DIY underground movements and sub-movements of the decade. Later, when Emo rose to pop prominence, I read that The Getup Kids were cited as one of the genre's prime influences, and realized that I had seen one of their very first shows.

Those little circa 2002 emo kids would have killed to have been me in that coffee shop basement in 1996, except not in the way they think. Because if they were me at that age they would have been listening to Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, and DANZIG (basically the same stuff I listen to now!).

Why didn't I heckle them when I had the chance? The whole world would be a differ ---- a BETTER place!

What compels someone to play and/or listen to Emo? It's this simple: they're L-A-M-E. Emo kids are (were? is it still going on? I dunno the only emo show I ever went to was the one I'm writing about) basically middle-class Juggalos. They think they're part of something, but are actually missing out on everything.

Why do all the good bands who never quite made it break up but all the sh*tty ones get back together (Dammit We March, I daydreamed about you guys frying the audience at the Grammy's! Gil Mantera's Party Dream, we need you now more than ever!)? All those and more are gone, but 15 years later somehow The Getup Kids remain, and are commanding $17 at the door this Saturday night at The Southgate House. The thought that these guys are going to haul $2-3K out of that place early Sunday morning is well...hmmm...ummm...okay I won't end with some snappy thing about robbing the vans of high-paid emo bands.

Slap the Bag -- Ohio's Greatest 21st Century Innovation?

2011-06-28T20:47:00.000-07:00

It was sometime in 2003 or 2004 when I walked down the Mill St. hill in Athens and first heard it, then turned and first saw it. A group of 7 or 8 undergraduates were tossing around the bag from a box of Franzia boxed wine as part of some sort of pseudo-pagan spiritual cleansing. Little did I know then that I was witnessing an early version of Slap The Bag -- the first great American drinking game of the 21st Century.

The origins of "traditional" songs like Kumbaya or Sloop John B. are often mired in controversy. But there is no doubt that Slap The Bag was anonymously authored at my alma mater, perpetual Top 10 Party School, Ohio University.

The title of the game is not in dispute, but what, exactly, happens during the game is.

Official Rules of Slap the Bag

According to me, Slap the Bag is played thusly:

Bag of wine is extracted from Franzia box.
Bag of wine is guzzled for 30-odd seconds by Player #1, who after said introductory guzzle rants for 30 to 60 seconds about ex-girlfriend or boyfriend who did them wrong.
Rant builds to a crescendo, whereupon player guzzles again, slapping the bag savagely (observers are welcome to slap said bag as well, when compelled to do so).
At conclusion of follow-up guzzle and related slapping, bag is passed, or even tossed high in the air, to next player.

Yeah, so that's pretty much it. Hilarity and hi-jinks ensue, and all that. But what's significant is the insinuation of cheap wine, which despite its cheapness, insinuates class, and so elevates the whole thing from a mere drinking game into a drinking ceremony:

And:

And (it gets good at 1:30):

Since moving back to Cincinnati four years ago, I have yet to hear the home-grown Afghan Whigs played in public, either on the radio or on a bar's juke box. Similarly, I haven't seen Slap the Bag. Cincinnati is in real danger of hearing about yet another Ohio innovation from Hollywood.

Barry Horstman is twice your age and can walk twice as fast!

2011-06-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

Back in May, Barry Horstman claimed that the 3-mile streetcar route could be walked in 34 minutes. The next day, instead of retracting Horstman's preposterous article, Morning After editor Carl Weiser dismissively challenged those who challenged Hostman's methodology to

walk the streetcar route themselves.

Carl, why didn't you make Horstman prove that he actually walked 6mph (the pace of an Olympic Power Walker) by using a GPS app on his cell phone? They're free, after all.

I got around to doing it today, and my walk proves that Horstman more or less used his one-way time as his round-trip time, if he even made the walk at all. I'm half Horstman's age but somehow he can walk twice as fast?

Here is my GPS data (the mileage is exaggerated due to the GPS errors which occur around tall buildings, but the time is correct):

[Click Here for a link directly to this Runkeeper activity]

Predictably, this lie introduced by The Morning After keeps being told and retold (skip ahead to :58):

This whole thing smells like a set-up so it's unclear if replacement of The Morning After's entire staff with a crop of desperate young j-school grads would make any difference.

Update 6/23/11 11:32am

That's their story (and in this case it really is a story) and they're sticking to it:

Mr. Mecklenborg

Thanks for the post. I'm confident Barry did walk that route in the time he said. But, as my follow-up blog notes, it may be a faster time than other pedestrians may experience.

I did not intend for the blog to be 'dismissive,' but hoped it would spur others to walk it - like you did - and submit their times.

Thanks

Carl Weiser
Government/Public Affairs Editor
Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.com
312 Elm St.
Cincinnati, OH, 45202
(513) 768-8491

Instead of Current Events, schools should teach Current Propaganda

2011-06-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

Our nation's grade school and high school teachers are paid, ostensibly, to instill honesty, respect for writing, and respect for adults. But what happens when the writing of adults is a calculated lie?

My favorite class in grade school was Current Events, which if I remember correctly took the form of everyone bringing in a newspaper article one day per week and the class discussing a half dozen issues until the bell rang. Unfortunately, we took those newspaper articles at face value, and so we (including the teachers) were all duped.

What if we instead taught students how to spot hit pieces, and how propaganda often masquerades as general news?

Below I have marked up an anti-rail piece that appeared in the June 1, 2011 edition of USA Today. Yellow designates typical anti-rail dialogue, magenta marks the four appearances of the word "safety", and green marks instances in which the supposed debt of Chinese rail projects portends similar problems in the United States:

[Click Here for a larger version of this graphic]

Unlike China, our founding documents and laws permit teachers to introduce propaganda detection lessons -- after all, developing "critical thinking skills" is another supposed central task of our schools. But they don't do it.

Why?

First of all, most Americans seem to think that there isn't much propaganda here, think that they can spot it when it does appear, and quickly dismiss anything they don't agree with as "bias". It never occurs to them that what they perceive to be "common sense" is actually a pile of concocted junk. Second, if such a program were introduced, parents would never admit it to each other or to themselves, but they'd fear the loss of credibility in the eyes of their children.

But a central dilema of our time is that parents, and especially grandparents, are losing credibility. Young adults routinely fact-check news items against trusted internet sources and post contradictions on sites like this. Old people still take newspaper and television reports at face value. They keep believing the same old crap that was never true and often never even existed. They might use the internet a little, but it's mostly to email folksy chain letters that I suspect are planted by party operatives.

As high unemployment continues, and as retirees (who often didn't go to college) keep taking church van trips to the casinos while their college-educated children and grandchildren reluctantly take part-time jobs at Home Depot, we are headed for a showdown.