What do these guys have in common?
Ace Hardware, Clifton
Ace Hardware, Northside
Adrian Durbin Florist
Algin Office Equipment
Ambar India
American Apparel
American Heritage Flooring
Amol India
Antonelli Institute of Art
Apna India
Aquarius Star
Aronoff Center
Arby's
Arlin's
Baba Budan's
Bacall's
Bagel Brothers
Below Zero Lounge
Biagio's Bistro
The Blue Jay
Bruegger's Bagels
Cadillac Ranch
Campus Cyclery
Chameleon
Check Smart
Chicago Gyro
China Kitchen
Chipotle
Cincinnati Main Library
Clifton library
Clifton Natural Foods
Clifton Post office
Clifton Wines
College Hill Coffee
The Comet
Contemporary Arts Center
CVS
Darou Salam
Donato's Pizza
Ellanet
Esquire Theatre
Extreme Fashions
Good Samaritan Hospital
Goodie's Barbecue
Graeter's
Grammer's
Greg's Antiques
The Grove
Habaneros
Hamilton County Court House
Happen
Harry's Bar & Pizza
Hazel Glas
Honey
Javier's ~ or whatever it's called now
Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse
Jerusalem Restaurant
KFC/Taco Hell
Kilamanjaro
KoSho
La Rosa's
Lenhardt's
Mac's Pizza
Main Event
Mediterranean Foods
Melt
Mishiella's
Mixx
MOTR Pub
Murphy's Pub
Nada
Naru
National City Bank
Nicholson's
Northside Bar
North Side Bank & Trust
Northside library
Northside Tavern
NorthSlice
NVision
NYPD
Ohio Book Store
Ohio Check Cashers
Olive's
Park & Vine
Park Chili
Penn Station
Picnic & Pantry
PNC Bank
Proud Rooster
Richter & Phillips
Rohs Street Cafe
Schaeper's Pharmacy
Schwartz's Point
Shadeau Breads
Shake It Records
Shell Gas
Sidewinder Coffee
Sitwell's Coffee House
Skyline
Some Clothing Store in Clifton
Some Jewelry Store in Clifton
Starbucks's
Subway
Sophia's
Take the Cake
The Tax Place
Taylor Jameson
Thai Cafe
Thai Express
Tink's
Toko Baru
U.C.
White Castle

Yep, if you want a burrito, a coffee, listen to jazz, rock, bluegrass or maybe just get a master's degree - it's all available on Metro's RT 17.
~ and, yeah, I know the list isn't complete….

Searching old Newspapers
ok, this is probably old news to everybody else but it's pretty cool. Google has scans of some old newspapers at Google Newspapers. It's not a lot. No Cincinnati or Dayton but a little Springfield, some Covington, 35 years of Urbana & a damn century of Portsmouth.
Springfield Daily News 1861-2
Covington Journal 1849-76
Champaign Democrat (Urbana, OH) 1887-1916
The Urbana Democrat 1913-1915
The Urbana Daily Democrat 1915-1922
Portsmouth Daily Times 1900-2004

Attendance at Hamilton County Fair Almost Doubles

Photos from the HCF FaceBook site
Meanwhile neighboring fairs had decreases in attendance along the lines of almost 20%. Still, the Fishwrap has to grouse about it.
oh, yeah, a goat was born there last week (at the fair - not the Enquirer).

The Road to Hell
My name is Chris and I'll be your driver

In the latest episode of the Sillyman Hour on Time Warner Local Access Cable, Smitherman wanders a residential area of Avondale bemoaning all the vacant abandoned housing. Besides breaking into the Mr Rogers theme repeatedly he tries linking the blight to a proposed health clinic (shot down by Smitherman's Republican comrades) and the proposed streetcar.
I agree that the buildings need to be occupied & so does the city. The city's law department has been vexed with banks like Wells-Fargo & Deutsche Bank and their cavalier handling of their properties.
Smitherman has a plan, tho, and as he repeatedly states, "It's not rocket science". The city should use eminent domain to seize the properties and then sell them to responsible people for $1 each.
He doesn't mention that the government is required to compensate property owners a fair value for their properties & that the process is long and costly. He also ignores the fact that his plan is unconstitutional. Remember the (other) Gamble House that did get saved in Norwood? You can't use eminent domain to transfer property from one owner to another.
The city can, however, use infrastructure to make places more convenient to live in. That's the core of the streetcar plan that Smitherman so despises as bringing in new residents is characterized as gentrification. Wouldn't that be the result of his unconstitutional plan for Avondale? Or maybe the issue is the right people.

And the First Salvo is Fired

The Fishwrap, AKA the Area Around Cincinnati Enquirer has fired off it's first doom & gloom article about the Hamilton County Fair, which runs from today through Saturday, complete with 29 black & white photos shot during the 50s & 60s. Probably the last time they sent a reporter. Many of the pictures, like above, showing empty stands. The black & white subtly indicating the event is old & out of date. The lack of highlights indicates dark, murky undesirability.
waytogoboys…..

Read all about it here

Diversity for Dollars

NPR had an article about Hollywood Heroes Losing the Fight for Diversity with author John Ridley. Ridley complained that the various movie adaptations of white comic book characters should replace those characters with Black & Hispanic actors to kinda mix it up & get a more diverse audience.
Ridley suggests:

"But for a real leap, how about casting Will Smith as Superman; Denzel Washington as Superman's father, Jor-El; and Michelle Rodriguez as Lois Lane? I guarantee you non-stop chatter until the film opens."

A kind of stereotype there I think. Black males & Hispanic females...
Ya want real flips John? How about Gina Torres as General Georgette Patton portrayed as a vampire prostitute that preys on children? How about a hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, gun totin' Mother Theresa played by Tom Selleck? How about Brad Pitt as Dutty Boukman?
Or howabout you do what Robert Rodriguez did & create your own damn hero as in Machete? Or Disney with The Incredibles?
If your aim is parody, fine. Weapon Brown and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies were both great as parodies. If you want to do an adaptation, do it straight. I think maybe Ridley has been in Hollywood too long.
As Bruce Campbell pointed out:

"If you go to Hollywood, you've already sold out. By the sheer act of going there, you're saying, 'I need to go there because this is the only way I can get my movie made.' Baloney! Indiana's the place to make your movie. Pontiac, Michigan. Whatever. Then you're just making it on the merits of the movie."

.
Disney knows that it's characters are it's main asset. Ya don't fuck with 'em. Valerie D'Orazio brought this up on her now locked down blog, The Occasional Super Heroine. If Marvel or DC want to piss away their characters (and Marvel definitely seems to) that's their choice. The comic book reader is pretty conservative, tho, and while the illiterate popular movie audience may go for it today, it's not a good long term strategy. If you just want some money for your next fix, whoring could be the way to go. I suggest getting creative, however.

Die You Zombie Bastards

Die You Zombie Bastards (2005), is quite simply a masterpiece of film making. Red needs to find his wife, Violet, after count Nefarious kidnaps her to be his queen in a world where he has transformed the population of Earth into mindless zombie slaves. Helping to reunite the cannibal couple is Hasil Adkins in his dramatic debut as Red's sensei. Jamie Gillis delivers a blockbuster finale as Stavros, the mysterious man who aids Red along the way.
Paired with a powerful soundtrack by top recording artists, this globe trotting action adventure is bound to thrill and delight.

Support your local newspaper.
Piss off Jeff Ruby.

Return of the Brownshirts?

photo by CSPAETHC
One of the things I like about the blogosphere is that it gives the "man on the street" a chance to self publish & then the interconnectedness of the intertubes has a viral component that kinda resembles an anarchist AP.
Originally published at CincyVoices by CSPAETHC. He witnessed a campaign worker sporting a Chris Smitherman shirt collecting signatures & then emptying a news box of City Beat papers and depositing them in a nearby trashcan. The edition of the City Beat had this article taking Smitherman to task for recent political positions. Smitherman, who is president of a Cincinnati chapter of the NACP has taken a number of positions that seem to run contrary to mainstream & national NAACP positions.
The result to CSPAETHC's post is that it spread like wildfire through the local blogosphere. It's been repeated at The Cincinnati Blog, The Cincinnati Asylum & Metro Cincinnati as well as on local message boards.
I'm no pro editor so I don't know if this merits MSM coverage. The Fishwrap's Politics Extra Blog seems well suited. The Asylum demands Smitherman give City Beat an apology. There are a number of ways Smitherman can get out of this but they all require that he address the issue. Ignoring it could be pretty costly in the end.

M

Yes, this marks my 1,000th post on this thing. Dumb luck should have provided for at least 1 worthwhile post. I mean a chicken or a monkey would be able to churn out something…..
Well, if people don't arrive via "next blog" they appear to be searching for Grace Slick, Iggy Pop, Mrs Butterworth or Leslie Ghiz.
~ok~
After the Grace Slick article, my most popular page is a countdown of the 10 Hottest Robo-Cyborg Babes. A crowning achievement.
I mainly focus on SW Ohio but, after Cincinnati, the next highest ranking city to hit the site is Columbus. But that comes in behind Sydney, Lower Hutt & friggin' Madras.
I admit it, I only signed up with Blogger so I could post a comment on a Rob Zombie blog. I only started making my own posts because I had nothing to do at work.
I started out griping about Republican fiscal irresponsibility in the county government. I haven't had much of an impact there. Then I campaigned for Ron Paul & railed against Obama. That went well. Condemned state gambling. fail. Ragged on the CCV - they're still looking for ways to crawl down our throats & into any other unprotected orifice. I wanted to change the world. Maybe I should just learn how to make bombs…
or go into real estate - regardless, I will endeavor to improve my use of commas & not mix up tenses so much in my next 1,000 bits of blathering.

Shorts

From Lemmy
Pet Peeve #279 - why do guys have to wear big long baggy shorts? There's no point & they look dumb. They're more like culottes. Lemmy gets it. Girls get it. Usually girls are the vain ones who wear impractical things but in this case, the guys got 'em beat in spades. It's hot. It's muggy.
jeezle…

Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie

WCPO reports that Paul McCartney's request to not serve meat at his shows will not be honored in Cincinnati. Hamilton County Commissioner Greg Hartmann says fans need not worry and hot dogs will be served.
ok, how hard would it be to serve vegetarian hot dogs & just not tell people? In my experience, carnivores & vegetarians have a knee jerk reaction to the word "vegetarian" with carnivores blurting out "HELL NOES" & vegetarians getting all giggly & tittery.
If it tastes good, people tend to eat it.

The Teacher Is NOT Your Friend

Missouri has passed a law preventing teachers & students from "friending" on social media services that allow private messaging. Apparently they don't want kids to turn out like Waldo.
Thing is, teachers and students have always lived amongst us. Teachers have always had rules limiting their behavior. Kids have always been stupid & misinterpret the intentions of teachers.
This legislation is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It also highlights a problem with social media which is that none of us is just one person. Short of establishing a number of accounts, it's hard to address that with junk like PhaseBuch, MySpaz or Tweeter. Why would an adult teacher want a student reading about cousin Jimmy's upcoming operation? I know I wouldn't have wanted my high school teachers reading about my personal teenage crap.
That being said, being a middle aged geek who likes cartoons, punk rock & zombies, I have accumulated a lot of young "friends" on the intertubes. Some of these kids clearly don't get the idea that they are posting personal crap to the entire world. More than once I have thought about asking to talk to their parents. Maybe their teachers could do this. Well, not in Missouri.

NPR story here.

Could The Guy Do Something More Arrogant ?
After campaigning on an austerity / small government platform & lambasting the incumbent governor for his use of a personal aircraft, it appears the new sheriff is in line to quadruple his use of the same plane. His spokesman has said they realized after the election just how handy the plane was. What else did Kasich fail to think through? Could a rail line across the state have actually been a good idea? Running through the state's capitol, perhaps a gubernatorial rail car set up for meetings & press conferences could have been handy too.

WKYC story here.

Greg Hardman of Christian Moerlein Brewing & Lager House

New Wave Hookers
Ever wondered what a pimp's office looked like? How their phones worked? There was a time when porn was fun, had some semblance of a plot & wasn't just gross, mind-numbing sex-a-thons.

Our Leaders
Fuck you
no - fuck you
no - fuck you
no - fuck you
no - fuck you
no - fuck you

A COA T/CCV Vision For Libraries?

From the Film Agora
State budget cutting will have a profound impact on Ohio's libraries. Hamilton County, after creating a brand new $60+K job to cut red tape (instead of just cutting red tape), diverted $35+K from library funding as well. The Hamilton County Library has cut it's budget about 23% over the last decade as costs for materials, energy, maintenance & everything else have increased. Recently Cincinnati transferred all their materials for the blind to Cleveland. The state has now cut $5 million from libraries for access to that material. Presumably there's a lot of recorded media in that collection.
Looking at places to cut, Tom Brinkman of COA T, CCV, Make Let Ohio Vote, Article XII, etc. proposes eliminating movies and music.

"They've gotten too far away from their core mission which is providing reading material and materials to help people do research and improve their lives,"

It's not a core mission issue, it's a technology issue. In the olden days there wasn't much in the way of film the average shmoe could watch at home. Nowadays all sorts of documentaries are made and distributed on DVD. Music has been available in libraries for years on vinyl, tape and now CDs are in the mix. Libraries have existed for centuries originally housing clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, later, scrolls of papyrus were used. Papyrus was pretty easily destroyed, heck, it destroys itself but the fires and sackings of the libraries of Alexandria are famous. One of the famous destructions happened around 400 when Christians took to destroying non-Christian works. This was depicted in the recent movie, Agora. Will Ohio's Christianist zealots use budgeting to mold Ohio's libraries to their vision? Is Brinkman's "core mission" code for a library system that promotes his anti-gay, anti-abortion, generally anti-sex agenda?

Fishwrap story here.

More on Alexandria here.

Overtime

76 or Fight

Sally LeRoy
Looks like we'll get to vote on judge's age limits this November. Back in 1968 Ohio decided to put an age cap of 70 on judges. There are no upper age limits on any other elected office in Ohio. 1968 was also a huge year for youth as the median age made a sharp shift downwards due to the baby boom generation. In 1971 the voting age was dropped from 21 to 18. Ironically, these younguns now want to raise the age limits they applied when they were younger. Lessee, Sally LeRoy would be 68 this year….
This handy chart can kinda show how U.S. age distribution has changed over the years.

Notice how the top keeps getting thicker & that bulge in the middle keeps getting higher? That's ME!
Whatever. I don't see why we need to have an age limit on judges anyway. Our state legislature just likes controlling things, I guess.

Gem City Noose story here

Science Fiction Fun in Cincinnati
or
神圣的睾丸

whew!, there's some good free sci fi this week in Porkopolis. First off, on July 26 at MoBo, is Serenity @ 9PM. The New York Dolls will be at Shake It Records @ 5PM, so you'll probably just want to make a night of it in hot sticky Northside Tuesday. Maybe grab a burrito with the liberals at The Comet @ 7:30
The next night, the 27th, at the Mercantile Library will be 2001: A Space Odyssey (or as VegasAnt called it, "the movie about the funky magnet") @ 7P (reservations requested.
Beam me up, daddyo!

Annual County Fair Ranting

2010 Clark Co. Fair Queen Amanda Haddix
Barely 2 days in a and the Clark County paper of record has two optimistic articles on their county fair and 52 80 98 133 282 photos.
This year the Hamilton County 4H has expressed their contempt, fear and loathing of the city of Cincinnati and boycotted the Hamilton County fair and held their own at an amusement park in western Hamilton County. The Fishwrap has 2 glowing articles & 1 picture about the 4H fair but no followup deeming it a success (other than a headline) or, as many commenters say, an abject failure - basically a club event. 4H hasn't been crowing about their fair on their website of FaceBook page. From the Fishwrap article, there's no evidence they even sent a reporter.
The Hamilton County Fair intends to go on without the 4H. There is no doubt the absence of the 4H will impact attendance negatively
I am numb to Liberal accusations of racism but the language the 4H, Hamilton County Extension Director , Tonya Horvath, and County Commissioner Greg Hartmann use in describing the city environs most certainly deserves the label. I never witnessed the hatred of the county seat from suburban and rural residents in Clark County like I have in Hamilton County. Add in the contempt from the local paper and their glee at fanning the flames of divisiveness… Perhaps the Fishwrap should change it's name to The Area Around Cincinnati Enquirer.
If a goal of 4H is to develop good citizens - running away & hiding isn't a good lesson.

Hamilton County Fair August 9-13
Clark County Fair July 22-29

Judge Denies COA T's Ludicrisity
Judge Norbert Nadel, who you may know from his appearances on the McRothengerg Group which frequently features COA Ters who may or may not quit the show halfway through, dismissed their argument against the city/mayor over the mayor's car allowance.
Nadel pointed out:

giving an allowance for a car is undoubtedly less of a burden on taxpayers than the city (owning) and maintaining a vehicle for the mayor's car

Again, another COA T scheme that would wind up costing us more.

Fishwrap article here.

Old Springfield High

Springfiel High School
On Preservation Ohio's Top 10 Most Endangered Historic Sites list
The old Springfield High school building was built 100 years ago in 1911. For the past few years it has sat empty. In 1960, due to an increasing population and a northward trend in this population, a new high school was built on a large tract of land at the north end of the city. It was called Springfield North and the old Springfield High became Springfield South.
As the population migration to the north was primarily white, the whiter, wealthier families were drawn to the district even more & North became the "white school" and South became the "black school". The irony of North adopting the fetish of a panther, especially in the 60s, was not lost on many.

As the overall population shrank from the 80s on, the need for 2 schools, the rising cost of maintaining the older building became prohibitive. With state school building money flowing like water & the vast grounds around North, it was decided to build a new building there, demolish the old North & close South.
While North was fine, it was certainly no architectural gem. An orange brick mess of boxes, it was typical 60s institutional crap. South was designed and built at a time when architecture meant something, buildings were built to last and to inspire the people using it. Unfortunately, it wasn't built for upgradability. Heating is probably antiquated. There is no air conditioning (I never had AC when I was in school). The thick walls & floors would make wireless networking problematic. The auditorium is probably antiquated. Trying to find a use for this building is going to be hard and expensive. Now it has made Preservation Ohio's Top 10 Most Endangered List.
Springfield schools tried foisting it off on Catholic Central. Their building erected in 1958 probably needs replaced but the last thing they need is an even older building. Wittenberg or Clark State might be able to use it but would need help paying for renovations. Those 2 seem to be slowly gobbling up the city anyway.
About the only thing saving this school right now is nobody having the cash to demolish it. As South Fountain sees a bit of a renaissance, it would be sad to see this place go. Maybe Harry Denune could fill it with garbage.

I’d rather be a laid-off municipal employee than a private sector worker
boy, at a time when public sector labor unions are getting major scrutiny, this is about the last thing they need.
A City of Cincinnati worker with a history of writing bad checks, running stop signs, theft by deception and working for Tom Luken was obviously the right person to head up a local city workers labor union, CODE.
She's been accused of siphoning off over $750,000 from the 800 member union over it's 8 year history & right before her indictment she goes off on a "vacation" that nobody seems to know about. She explained that away handily saying the other union members were "idiots".
yow
Hope the Harry's Law folks are watching.

Fishwrap "missing" story here.

Fishwrap "indictment" story here.

BYTE BACK

Byte magazine, started in 1975 pretty much reported the birth of personal computing. At one point there were a gazillion PC magazines but with the advent of the intertubes, the geeks migrated online & the paper publications began to suffer. McGraw Hill dumped the magazine on a tech publisher who promptly killed the magazine around 1998.
This July it came back online under InformationWeek.
Wondering how to make a Mac 10.7 install disk? Check out Byte.

Harry's Law

The Fishwrap reports that the TV show Harry's Law will be making more of an effort to establish itself in Cincinnati in it's second season. They have taken area glamour footage of the usual landmarks & are targeting Arnold's as a bar location that will be recreated in far off TV land.
I wanted to like this show. I like Kathy Bates ok & some of the creator's other shows have been ok. The thing is Cincinnati is a goddamn soap opera in itself. The producers of the show have focused on 60s liberalism crap with saint-like poor black people & demonic wealthy white people. If the second season doesn't take some shots at Ohio's "new sheriff", I would be amazed. But the first season's homage to Cincinnati & Ohio were some Ohio flags in the background and a shot of the city skyline shot from KY but depicted as from OH. Unfortunately they completely skip the border town nature of the city. Not even a mention of the neighborhoods.
The local NFL team is rated the worst in the league & leader in arrests in the league. That's gotta be good for something. The real life cartoon characters of Tom Luken, Chris Smitherman & Bill Cunningham would fit right in. The liberal & idealistic causes of things like The Drop Inn Center, NURFC, The Museum Center & The Gamble House would be right up Harry's alley. The CCV, COA T, The Creation Museum? A field day. They should, at least, have some copies of StreetVibes lying around the office.
This town is a goldmine for the producers of Harry's Law. All they have to do is subscribe to the Fishwrap.

Devil Games

Media Bridges, Cincinnati's community access cable channel' June Horror Camp came up with this short piece. Haven't seen it on TV but with all the Sillyman programming, I don't know when they would have time to air it. Too bad they didn't get him to play the devil….

Windfarms Will Destroy the World


Onion story here.

3D !!

YouTube has a 3D function. I don't know how good it is. This was made with a 3D animation program, Strata 3D. I don't know if stuff is too close, if the cameras are placed well…..
Basically you take 2 videos, upload 'em, pop the left & right videos into place & YouTube does the moshing. It syncs them up using the soundtrack. If you have an animation with no sound it freaks out but there is a manual sync to avoid that.
And don't tell me you don't have the goofy glasses - you know you do.

Clap Your Hands

Great editing…..
Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band will be at Shake it Records in bucolic Northside, Cincinnati, OH on 8/1/11

Magic Mushrooms

From the beginning, the shooting of David "Bones" Hebert
circumstances have been sketchy. This call is what got police involved. While Hebert was extremely intoxicated at the time, a person's drunken behavior, while different from his sober behavior, is usually pretty consistent. As he had no reputation for violence the idea of him attacking a police officer is kinda suspect. With a .33 BAC, his staggering or stumbling makes perfect sense. The wildcard was that he was reportedly on "Magic Mushrooms" too. What one usually finds around here is Psilocybe cubensis - Psilocybin mushrooms. It's a hallucinogenic that is really just kinda like pot on steroids. But there's another kind of mushroom, Amanita muscaria, which is a little more intense and can cause "bouts of marked agitation with confusion, hallucinations, and irritability followed by periods of central nervous system depression".
After almost 3 months autopsy toxicology reports verify Bones had "Psychedelic Mushrooms" in his system - but what kind? That'd be too much to ask our local media.
Unless the mushrooms in question were the Amanita muscaria type, it sounds like the incident was likely the result of an over zealous police officer misinterpreting a highly intoxicated person's erratic movements.
Bonesfest will continue tonight at Bogart's and tomorrow, 7/10, in Hoffner Park

Fishwrap story here

WLWT story here

Vanishing Heritage

Iconic silent film star Theda Bara's work is not well known due to the destruction of her films. Not many people in her home town of Cincinnati know much of her. Her image is actually better known than her work. People who went to Xavier University might have a better idea of who she was since the school owned the house she built when she retired to Cincinnati.
No more. Xavier has decided an empty lot will serve the school better.
Bara's legacy continues to slip away piece by piece.
Cincinnati should really do something to memorialize all the folks from here who have gone off to make it in the theater. Theda Bara, Doris Day, Janice Rule to name just a few. I don't know where or what, but we just really shouldn't forget.

A previous post on Theda Bara here

Fishwrap article about demolition here

Cartoons !

A long time ago, during the Cold War, I worked at an engraving shop & once in awhile people would come in with the weirdest shit. Mainstream printers wouldn't work with the average Joe wandering in off the street but we were a small company and we had a lot of weird old tech lying around. The basement was a complete trip.
Anyway, one day this young woman came in with some old engravings she wanted to get some prints made from. Apparently they were from a German Nazi era underground paper that was decidedly anti-Nazi. I believe there was some intrigue involved with them getting into her or her dad's or grandfather's hands. They were dirty and corroded but this is what we got. (We assumed any captions were set in type outside the illustration)

Is John Kasich Suffering Dementia?

In a recent AP article, Kasich's erratic and often contradicting habits are discussed.
His animated mannerisms sound ominously like Sillyman's. Gayle Channing Tenenbaum's description, "it’s a rare day when Kasich doesn’t say something that surprises" is the kind of thing echoed by nurses in nursing homes full of Alzheimers patients. "It’s interesting to watch him because you just don’t know what particular thing he’s going to be grabbing onto at that particular moment".
The article further points out irrational, conflicting behavior, "He is candid yet secretive. He is acerbic yet personable. He quibbles over media access yet is omnipresent on Twitter and Fox. He’s made a cause of taking on public workers after spending most of his life as one". Compounded with what the article describes as a constantly manic demeanor, a disheveled appearance and not caring about personal consequences, it kinda makes a guy wonder if the new sheriff might just be suffering schizophrenia.

In a recent Fishwrap article about Cincinnati possibly using battery powered streetcars they posted pictures of old trolley cars from the 20s to the 60s. If this is how they will cover the replacement bridge proposed to span the Ohio River, I guess we can expect slideshows like this.

FWIW, needing a recharge every 5 miles makes the battery idea sound kinda pointless. I think we should be thinking about Mentos & Diet Coke rocket powered vehicles instead.
Imagine the possibilities….

Happy Independence Day, Y'All

For the Lame Challenged

Incendium Arts
Sunday, July 3 @ The Northside Rock-n-Roll Carnival in vibrant Hoffner Park:
6:00 Umin
7:00 Darlene
8:00 The Harlequins
9:00 Pickled Brothers Sideshow
9:30
Incendium Arts Fire & Light Performance
10:00 Ford Theatre Reunion (Lexington, KY)
11:00 Buffalo Killers
12:20am Mallory

Fireworks

Dante's Gypsy Circus
Tonight @ 11 at Northside Rock-n-Roll Carnival in lush Hoffner Park the fireworks will be supplied by Dante's Gypsy Circus
Also on the bill or tonight...
6:00 Todd Hepburn
7:00 Mack West
8:00 Kry Kids
9:00 Soapland
10:00 Chick Pimp, Coke Dealer at a Bar
11:00 Dantes Gypsy Circus
11:30PM to 1AM | Brian Drabant and Kevin Frey spin Lost 80's, Classic House and Nu-Disco

It's All About Safety
From the Globe Gazette:

Little Amyrillis Vermont was trampled to death by the Thompson High School marching band after rushing out into the street chasing candy thrown out by the local Shriners in the Independence Day Parade.
"It was awful" commented Alma Hix, "First it was the trombones, then the cornets and then the reeds. oh God, the reeds…
"It was relentless" claimed Ewart Dunlop
"The Thompson High offensive line has nothing on the marching band", quipped Mayor Shinn.

Sound kinda nuts? That's because it is. Even though area officials know of no "candy-related injuries" at parades they are banning the practice of parade participants throwing candy out to kids due to pressure from our shadow government, the insurance industry.
An organizer in Kettering cited a child being injured rushing into a parade to greet her parents. No candy involved. Maybe the solution is a minimum age for parade attendees. Shackles for minors has always been a good idea in my mind. Maybe chicken wire along the parade route. Maybe everyone should sit at home and watch parade entries walk past a camera in a studio in front of a green screen. Viewers could then select the background of their choice.
ugh - how much safety do we need?

Noose Son story here.

Restricting Our Way to Prosperity

Remember the 2010 election? Remember the message? JOBS, ECONOMY, 300,000 LOST JOBS, NO NEW JOBS, AN ENTREPRENEURIAL ENVIRONMENT, HOPE
What did we get?
Outlawed passenger rail, mass transit cuts, eviscerated schools in favor of a failed charter school system, gave away liquor sales money to an unaccountable venture capital scheme, trampled womens' rights virtually outlawing abortion, privatized prisons using unproven theories, expanded gambling against the voters' wishes, attempts to compensate teachers, police and firemen as poorly as possible, more state laws restricting municipal authority, bait and switch legislation and taxation.
What's next?
Boy Howdy. Instead of freeing up alcohol sales, legislators have decided to continue to restrict beer content in Ohio while neighboring sates, Indiana, Michigan & Kentucky impose no such restrictions. Talk about making the state competitive.
You ever think you've been lied to?

Dayton Daily Noose story here.

Public Restrooms
The closing of the Washington Park restrooms while a parking garage is being built underneath (fairly eliminating the park temporarily) has sparked a rather goofy protest & looks at the issue as an affront to a particular group of people, the homeless.
Community leaders & homeless advocates say the developers claimed they would make public "Portapotties" available which seems reasonable since some have already been brought in for the construction crews. The Fishwrap article has a big no comment from the developers, 3CDC, however. Apparently a restroom is planned for the new park. Still, since the park is closed, why have restrooms?
Meanwhile, there are a number of relief agencies in the area who should likely find it in the framework of their mission to provide restroom facilities for this demographic.
Over at the Asylum, the Dean kinda gets it. Where you have a large pedestrian population, regardless of financial status, you need more frequent restroom facilities. If you're driving or biking you can usually get to a large business or gas station that offers public facilities (actually they are for customers). Malls, with their large pedestrian populations always offer restrooms. An area like downtown Cincinnati, unlike a mall, does not have one manager / owner so organizing adequate public facilities is kinda difficult. The area from the Ohio River to McMicken Avenue and from Dalton to Gilbert is a wee bit larger than the average mall, too. The Dean brings up a technological solution, and there are others, but it's going to be more of an organizational & political challenge than that. Also, as we clamor for pedestrian friendly neighborhoods the need will arise there, too. Clifton has Burnett Woods & a public library, but neighborhoods like Oakley & Northside pretty much just have public libraries. These smaller communities don't have the public buildings or large stores that offer facilities like the CBD, either.
There is a real issue here but tying it to a construction zone & the homeless is really distracting & politically shortsighted.

Fishwrap story here

Cincinnati names new police chief. Howls of racism in the Cincinnati.com comments in half an hour.
Go Cincinnati!!

Why does LULAC not link to my blog?

Ohio Cities & Police Numbers
As Ohio cities grapple with diminishing tax revenue, cutting into their safety budgets has become inevitable. Urbana has cut 14% of their officers giving the city 1.6 officers/1,000 residents. Cincinnati is around twice that with about 3.3/1,000.
One of the budget saving options law enforcement is taking is going high tech.

"High-tech equipment like red-light traffic cameras and computerized dispatching systems help enforce the law with fewer officers and reduce redundancy in paperwork functions."

Cincinnatians, after a fear campaign by COA T & NAACP, banned red light cameras. Now we get to pay more for less service.
As the state gobbles up more and more of our tax dollars & offers less and less in return Ohio cities are going to be hurting. As the state hamstrings the cities through budget cuts and ham fisted legislation, there looks to be a very bleak future.

Noose Son story here

The Cemetery & Community Involvement

In a piece at The Daily Undertaker, Mr McNally points out, "A Cemetery remains relevant only when it is involved in the life of the community it serves." and goes on to illustrate his point with the story of a jazz service at a Delaware cemetery. Such events at funerals aren't too uncommon but in this case the deceased expired some 50 year ago.
Locally, Spring Grove Cemetery has a number of activities and the local Kiwanis have resurrected Memorial Day services at Wesleyan Cemetery but those are cemetery wide events. Dunno what their policies are for grave specific events like this jazz memorial.
Delaware Online article (and video) here.

I was just going to post this on PhaseBuch but they said my message was "spammy and abusive".

Whither the Old SCPA ?
REPOST

Originally posted in January.
Cincinnati's old SCPA building is probably one of the most beautiful warehouses in the world. Valued at over $10 million, it is probably one of the most expensive per square foot, too. It's proximity to the future casino has any number of possible developers as well as community leaders thinking.
Unfortunately, state law forbids the school board from selling the property, instead demanding it be offered to the someone involved in the failed Ohio charter school program. Would we want these guys getting their mitts on this place? While almost unfathomable, I think that would be worse than CPS owning it. Otherwise getting real estate, especially prime real estate out of the hands of Cincinnati Public Schools hands can almost always be a good thing.
Will our new TEA inspired Republican Ohio let CPS sell the property to a private developer? It would seem to fit into their smaller, less intrusive, business-friendly rhetoric. Or will their blind hatred of public schools & the dreaded, evil teachers lead them to "just say no" to any request by a school district?

WCPO 6/22/11 story here

WLWT 1/13/11 article here.

For images of the building & it's interior, click, here.

Cut Taxes ?
Republicans run around saying, "cut taxes" like they have tourette's syndrome. Facing a budget deficit of about $33M, Republicans on the Cincinnati city council want to cut taxes and ~koff koff~ cut spending. They are not really bringing anything to the table for cutting, tho. Hell, even COA T is questioning their logic.
Lippert, as usual, has nothing. Murray wants to merge city and county services. Nice but that could take years. Ghiz wants to eliminate the Department of Environmental Quality which, I thought, had never been funded anyway. She wants to cut convention subsidies, close rec centers & cut the pay of non-union workers. This Republican love affair with unions in Cincinnati is so strange. Bortz wants to privatize, cut health clinics, cut departments, charge waste fees & generally get about 1/6th of the way to a balanced budget.
The Fishwrap reports on the issue here and has a handy but ham fisted "what would you cut" doohickey for your amusement.
I came up with a $7M surplus with no earnings tax increase which I actually might support if it was sunsetted in a year or two to get us past this current economic period. I opted for a $20 trash fee but I think it should be lower. Perhaps no trash fee but every other week trash pick up and fees for yard waste. Appliance & furniture pick up should probably be eliminated or charged for. If the state & county offer health clinics, I see no reason for Cincinnati to continue with them. I'd need more details on that one but I opted to close them. I'd bag DARE, school resource officers & school nurses. The schools have their own budget, let them deal with it. Save human resources but scrutinize recipients. I saved pools, neighborhood support & even opened rec centers. I put a freeze on union raises (sorry conservatives®). I didn't screw local workers home communities. I saved council pay but I think that should be reduced. If you pay any attention to the complaint authority, it's pretty obvious we don't need it. They find (rightfully) for the cops 99% of the time. I kept 144 firemen. The aging building stock in the city demands that. I fired 127 cops which is kinda crazy but I couldn't fire fewer. I paved the streets but as noted in a previous post that needs to be made more efficient.
One of the Windbag's suggestions was to privatize the management of off duty police details. The police department estimated that cost $900,000 a year. Another option was to take it out of off duty pay received by the officers to the tune of almost $5/hr. At $900,000 a year this would mean about 10 people in the police department are working full time just to manage this service. That's crazy. Like the road maintenance, I don't know as the number of people is the problem so much as gross inefficiency and abysmal management. With modern technology, how many people do we need, tho?
Anyhoo, go for it. See if you can balance the budget.

Don't Know Much About History

When I was a kid I liked old stuff. Loved tales of old and mythology. But I hated history classes. In high school I used summer school to get them out of the way. Thing is, here and there, a teacher might deviate from the book, show a movie or bring in a guest lecturer & I would find myself enthralled. After years of believing I hated history I realized what I hated was how it was taught. From what I have seen, nothing is improving & Pat Buchanan's latest post, The Dumbing Down of America, points out it may be worse than I thought. As the concerted effort to improve kid's math and science has had limited results, history has taken a back seat.
Nowadays I can't get enough history. It's incredibly important to know how we got here if we want to set a proper course for the future. It's important to understand our American role in a holistic world history. Revisionist special interest oriented history needs to be avoided. Unfortunately the latter begets the former and it seems to be the way the education industry is headed.

Horror Sells

Rob Zombie Woolite Ad
Used to be "sex sells" was the bottom line in advertising. Nowadays it seems to be horror. Above is an ad for Woolite made by horror rock horror movie impresario Rob Zombie. Recently Sears did up their website for zombies. And now Dirt Devil gives us this bit of horror.

Laundry detergent? Department stores? Vacuum cleaners? All pretty standard home & family type stuff. The spate of vampire TV shows is one thing but the creep into advertising mainstream stuff is kinda odd. This probably says something about the mood of our society. Hopelessness? Fatalistic? Out of control? Beats me. It might just be a warped sense of humor.
Whatever. I like it.

Take Your Bike Lane With You

Emily Brooke, a student at the University of Brighton has created BLAZE, a bike mounted laser that projects a bike lane/sharrow image onto the road to alert zombies motorists of the bicycle's presence. It helps with blind spots. It won't do anything for willful blind spots, of course.
I think what it really needs is some way to mark the passing distance to the left of the cyclist and where a car traveling, at some set speed, should begin to move over to accommodate the cyclist. Brooke notes correctly that most bike/car collisions occur when the motorist pulls out in front of the cyclist and her device addresses that quite nicely.
Brooke intends to develop the invention in Massachusetts at Babson College.

Any Way the Wind Blows

Ohio governor Kasich has reached a deal with casinos who already had a deal with the voters of Ohio that increases/decreases tax revenue but more importantly expands gambling in the state without voter approval.
When trying to plug a hole in the state budget, Democratic governor Strickland proposed slots at race tracks. He was set to have the state legislature vote on it & believed it would pass. As I posted before, this measure was opposed by a coalition of Republicans and church groups who demanded Ohio voters make the decision. This effort was led by Cincinnati Republican Tom Brinkman, COA T founder, ally of the CCV and no stranger to campaign ethics violation charges. Let Ohio Vote was was no exception.
The result was no slots at tracks and the cancellation of a tax cut extension for Ohioans that was capitalized on in the next gubernatorial campaign by Kasich, who characterized it as a tax hike.
One of the anti-slots campaign leaders is actually a Kasich appointee today. Do these guys talk? Will these conservative® Republicans cry foul and demand a public vote again or will this be a case of, it's ok if a Republican does it?

Job Security ?
Looking for job security> Get onboard the road crew redoing Hamilton Avenue. In almost 4 years they have yet to complete resurfacing 1.2 miles between Groesbeck and Ashtree. The right turn lane from eastbound Ashtree onto southbound Hamilton has been closed & under construction for over a month. At this blistering pace, the entire city of Cincinnati could be repaved / paved by the year 5000. You want to talk about boondoggles…..
hell, maybe Tom Luken just likes watching men working with big machines.

Rapid City Flood of 1972

On the night of June 9, 1972 the Canyon Lake Dam failed & the Rapid Creek flooded sending a wave of water & debris down foam the Black Hills into Rapid City, South Dakota killing 238 people and destroying over a thousand homes.
Heavy rains in the mountains, approx 15" in 6 hours, produced the destructive wave crashing through town late at night. The river levels were back to normal early the next day.
A devastated area of Rapid City has a new life now as Memorial Park.

Rapid City Library

Wikipedia

Apple's New Digs

Dunno why they didn't just go ahead & make it look like a Quicktime logo
This article discusses & has a video of Steve Jobs hawking his new Apple HQ to the Cupertino city council.
While there's some amazing stuff in the presentation, the most amazing thing is that he never asks the city for money. That would never happen around SW Ohio.

Wednesday Fun in Central Cincinnati

On Wednesdays, the Clifton Cultural Arts Center presents Wednesdays on the Green – two months of free outdoor evening performances, every Wednesday in June and July at 7 p.m. Pack a picnic from the Northside Farmer’s Market (4 - 7:30) or get some grub from the Habanero Burrito Truck, Café de Wheels and Dojo Gelato & enjoy:
June 8 - The Faux Frenchmen
June 15 - Tracy Walker and Friends
June 22 - Firelytes Steel Drum Band
June 29 - The Honeycombs
July 6 - Acapulco Salsa
July 13 - Art Gore and the Jazz Knights
July 20 - Jake Speed and the Freddies
July 27 - Rebecca Pronsky
There are free hands-on art activities for kids. CCAC is located at 3711 Clifton Ave. – shows will be on the front lawn, unless it rains - then the third floor auditorium. Northside Farmers Market is at Hoffner Park on Hamilton @ Blue Rock.
The 17 will connect Northside & Clifton on a pretty regular frequency.

Stuck In A 2D World

It appears that Springfield's monopoly cinema ownership plan isn't paying the dividends they expected. None of the Chakeres cinemas have gone digital yet, hence - no 3D for the Champion City.
I was raised, like my mom, going to Chakeres theaters in Springfield. I went to school with the kids who, I guess, now run the show. I felt weird going to their competitors theaters. Nowadays I have no more desire to watch a movie in a dark room full of strangers than to read a book projected on a screen in a dark room full of strangers.
I have always found 3D movies to be cheesy & gimmicky with directors "creating" scenes for the effect that have nothing to do with good 2D layout. While the technology may have improved of late, I'm not so sure my aging hardware is compatible anyway.
Still, I worked in an industry dominated by film and, after years of hearing the industry would soon be filmless, it finally was. The Sleeping Giant needs to get a move on.
Anyway, I'm surprised the author of this Noose Son article didn't find any film enthusiasts who, like vinyl enthusiasts like their music on old LPs, prefer their movies on film, scratches & all.
Yes, there was a time when scratches weren't a post production effect.
Well, ok, it was a post production thing, but…..

The Dynamics of Community
In a previous post, I mentioned a book about the origins of an upscale neighborhood in Springfield started almost 100 years ago. I got sidelined with colonial history tho, but now I'm back in early 20th century Ohio (will be back in 18th century England this afternoon).
What's blowing me away is the community's community and level of self serving altruism (?) of the developers. One resident had a barometer and, lacking up to date Doppler weather radar among other things, would hoist a flag to let neighbors know the weather forecast. New residents were given fliers explaining the flag code. The developers had purchased a large area of land and were developing in sections. In the unstarted sections they provided tennis courts that could be flooded and frozen over in the winter for ice skating. They helped out with polo fields, quoits courts, baseball diamonds & horseback riding areas. The neighborhood opted out of city garbage pickup & using mandatory 5 year homeowners association fees, funded their own trash pickup. The fees also covered sidewalk snow removal using a horse-drawn plough. I don't know if a neighborhood can opt out of trash pickup nowadays. With all the red tape, it might cost the city more to avoid a particular area. Last residential developer I heard about was the Erpenbecks & their crazy soap opera of lies, cheating & dealing. These homeowner association rules & fees are frequently challenged nowadays and are defeated in courts by cranky neighbors.
The neighborhood was tied to an adjacent country club and there was pretty much just one business district in Springfield at the time. It was likely the neighbors all recreated at the same place, worked in the same business district & ate at the same restaurants, went to the same theaters, etc. Nobody had TV's or internet & radio was just aborning.
I would guess that less than half the residents in "the Country Club District" are members of the Springfield Country Club today. Today, in Cincinnati, one could probably track a block of residents to workplaces scattered all over town & across state lines. That's mainly attributable to the automobile but everybody has cable or satellite TV, internet, game stations & whatnot as well. The latter techs fairly kill any of the hope Jane Jacobs might have expressed in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
There are still communities but they tend to be more like skeletal overlapping networks. Even the more old style neighborly communities seem kind of inbred, incestuous & creepy to me. It frequently seems like the leaders are more social activists than just caring neighbors.
I dunno. Maybe it's just me. Then, again, if we had had 21st century communications & jet airliners in the 18th century would America still be part of Great Britain in a larger more skeletal networked empire ?

I Don't Ask Anymore

Memorial Day Weekend Fun
ok, sure, you can go downtown to Taste of Cincinnati (aka Linefest) and likely get murdered (because everybody who goes downtown DIES !!!)
Or you can enjoy a safe, comfy extended weekend in the pastoral splendor of tranquil Northside without the fear of C.H.U.D. eating your children.

Saturday
Veterans Traveling Memorial Wall - all weekend
Spring Grove Cemetery - 4521 Spring Grove Avenue
all weekend
Whale of a Tale
Family Enrichment Center - 4244 Hamilton Ave.
noon
Square Dance
North Presbo Church - 4222 Hamilton Avenue
7 - 10 PM
Bostic Family Tent Revival Band Playfully Yours
Northside Tavern - 4163 Hamilton Avenue
10PM
Coliseum (I'm guessing not that Coliseum_, Sweet Cobra, Autumn Rising
Mayday - 4227 Spring Grove Avenue

Sunday
Giant Fundraiser Garage Sale
4319 Haight Avenue
9AM - 2PM
Salute to Veterans
Spring Grove Cemetery - 4521 Spring Grove Avenue
2 - 4PM
Northside Tea Dance
Off the Avenue Studios - 1546 Knowlton Avenue
4 - 7 PM
The Tillers
Northside Tavern - 4163 Hamilton Avenue
10 PM
Arts & Education Center Fundraiser
The Comet - 4579 Hamilton Avenue
11AM - 2AM
Comet Bluegrass All-Stars @ 7:30 PM
The Ted Clark Show
Mayday - 4227 Spring Grove Avenue

Monday
Clifton Memorial Day Parade
Middleton @ McAlpin Avenue
10:30 AM - 1:30 PM
Memorial Day Services
Wesleyan Cemetery - 4003 Colerain
1 PM
Monday Knights
The Comet - 4579 Hamilton Avenue
10PM

Columbus Vice
Senator Tim Grendell R of Clevo wants more money for the sale of Ohio's liquor sales to John Kasich's private VC group than what Kasich has proposed. This is certainly in keeping with Kasich wanting to soak private businesses for every possible penny, but in defying Kasich's "best deal", is a mere elected official stepping out of bounds?
Kasich doctrine indicates the people of Ohio are best represented by private consulting firms in New York - not by their votes or elected representatives. Will Grendell's defiance earn him a Seitz-like smackdown?

Cowtown Dispatch article here.

Animal Rights Crazies Thwarted in Tragedy Exploitation
PETA couldn't find a billboard vendor in the Dayton area to carry their planned billboard comparing eating meat to infanticide citing the death of a baby microwaved by her mom (who was later convicted of murder).
The race baiting Southern Christian Leadership Conference found it racist (no surprise). I don't think that's what the billboard vendors were opposed to.
Noose Son story here.

Ensuring Ohio's Representation
To ensure that "the [Ohio] taxpayers interests are represented" in new casino deals Ohioans did not vote for, "Wall Street" John Kasich is having his high priced consultants talk with the casino operators slated for Ohio's 4 voter approved casinos.
If you want to go - you can't. It's private. If you wanted to go anyway, you would have to travel to New York City, NY.

The Springfield Arcade

The Springfield, Ohio Arcade many years ago. This is where the Springfield Inn is today. The upstairs was a hotel with a lobby and bar at the south east corner (far left). This would have been about a block from the old train station. The bar still existed as The Ringside when I was a lad. The hotel degenerated & closed. I always wondered why malls didn't have residential built in. Maybe in some kind of Mad Max future, people will just live in cars in the mall parking lots….
The image and a bunch of other pictures of old Springfield can be found on the Springield History site.

American Can Remodeling

Video by Driven31

Failing Newspaper Resolves to Fix Government
Taking a page from the Nancy Spungen playbook, the Cincinnati Enquirer has decided to solve the problems in City Hall.
Can we strengthen city leadership?
Complete with polls (interactivity!) and video (multi-media!), the Fishwrap gets off to a really slow start in examining the people and organizational structure of municipal government while stroking their exurban readership. How unbiased the extremely Republican® publication can be isn't even debatable. They vow to keep this up through August. Can they make it that long without any more layoffs? Stay tuned.

Macho Man

Randy Macho Man Savage died today in a 1 car wreck - or maybe his dying caused the wreck...
The video above is a good snapshot of all the glitz, drama & melodrama that is professional wrestling. Macho Man gave us all a lot of great memories and made a lot of money for some people.

What the hell ever happened to Mean Gene ?

Northside Farmers Market at Hoffner Park

Northside Farmers Market at Hoffner Park Wednesday, May 18
(pay no attention to the date in the video)
Because the weather is all nice, warm and sunny, Northside's Farmers Market crawls out of the catacombs at North Presbyterian Church and returns to scenic Jacob Hoffner Park on Hamilton @ Blue Rock on Wednesdays from 4 - 7:30 PM to celebrate it's 10th year running!

Follow the Northside Farmers Market on FaceBook.

Bicycling is Dangerous
OK, so I'm careening down a hill and miraculously I'm going to get a green light at the bottom. Just gotta look out for idiot cage pilots pulling out / turning in front of me. A guy from the right hand side street pulls up & starts to run the light, sees me & stops. I made the next light but got stopped at the one after that. While standing there waiting for the light to change a motorist pulls up next to me. He starts shouting "hey" & "guy". I finally look over & the guy is looking at me. Lo & behold, it's the guy from the last traffic light. He tells me riding a bicycle is dangerous. He tells me he almost "clipped" me. I told him I knew "cycling was dangerous" and "you have to watch where you're going".
So did the guy think cycling was inherently dangerous? Balancing a couple hundred pounds on 2 skinny wheels with maybe 2 square inches of surface contact? Or did he want to inform me that, because his ilk was spastically bouncing around in 2,000 pound fire bombs like pinballs, bicycling was dangerous?
Seriously, dude, watch where you're going. Next time it may not be a bicycle & I doubt you want to be as cavalier when that Kenworth is bearing down on you at 60 MPH.

Northside Community Council Meeting Concerning Shooting of David "Bones" Hebert

Northside Community Council Meeting 5/16/11

2.5 Men ?
OK, time for the heavy stuff.
It's been announced that 2.5 men will continue without Charlie Sheen. Ashton Kutcher will be replacing him but his character has yet to be announced.
I am not a big Kutcher fan and a late 2.5 Men watcher. Sheen was pretty much walking through his role. The supporting cast pretty much did the work. The writing for the kid, Angus something, had not evolved as the kid grew. The show really was getting kinda stale.
So 2 things. What to do with the Charlie Harper character and what to do with Kutcher? Whatever the changes are, hopefully they will include changes for the kid. I guess that's 2.5 things. ha ha
Being a sick bastard, killing Charlie Harper would tickle me pink. Perhaps passing out in his car as it rolled off a cliff? Viagra overdose? Simple heart attack? Rose hacking him to pieces with a carving knife?
The polite solution would be to have him disappear. That way, if things get patched up between Sheen and the producers, he could come back. oh, the hi jinx…..
What to do with Kutcher? Obviously a shlep who walks into good fortune will be the role with him taking in Alan, the kid & Berta. Alan's first wife's little brother would work. She would, of course hate him. It could require a new set which would be nice. IIRC, Kutcher's Kelso character in That 70's Show was supposed to have made it rich as a game developer. This scenario could work nicely with Alan & kid.
So, if Jim Belushi can get cast as a lawyer, why can't Conchata Ferrell?

The Crazies

Leslie Ghiz Jumps the Shark
Following a special City Council meeting, Councilwoman Ghiz phoned in to WLW and chided the "crazies" at the meeting.
Prosperity theology preaching, exorcist Charlie Winburn added channeling John Cranley to his repertoire as he peppered the city manager with dozens of trivial questions.
Councilman Wayne Lippert couldn't tell the difference between a surface rail system that travels through the city and an elevated rail system that travels around the city.
An obese man who clearly eats more than he needs lectured the mayor on needs.
Tom Luken wandered around spouting gibberish till security finally removed him. Luken, a mass transit opponent unwittingly wore a pro-streetcar button till his handlers noticed and removed it.

An ACLU guy made threatening gestures at a concerned OTR resident.
Chris Smitherman was picking fights, yelling at people & accusing people of being misconceived. He had to be restrained by security as well.

But are these the crazies of which Ghiz spoke? nope. She agrees with Smitherman. She pointed out that while she is angry now she has not been in the past. Maybe bitchy, whiney & catty…..
No, she cited residents, businessmen, investors, other educated professionals who support the streetcar investment for being "The Crazies". How much is the word of a woman who cites Karl Rove as a hero worth? Indeed, between Ghiz & Cunningham anything goes. Cunningham decried the streetcar loop length for being both long and short in the matter of minutes.
For a play by play of the meeting, check out 5chw4r7z' The Revolution Will Be Tweeted.
NOTE I could only get the WLW page o load correctly in Innernet Exploder. Lin - Mac, no go.
WLWT coverage here.