Blogs

In this weekly feature, C-Notes stretches your dollar at restaurants around the region, because, as it turns out, most bistros don’t accept Monopoly money. The picky bastards. This week …

Fire Food & Drink
13220 Shaker Square, Cleveland, (216) 921-3473, www.firefoodanddrink.com
For Scene’s full review, click here.

What $13 got us: Braised pork crepes with crème fraiche, Argentinean pepper relish and fried egg, and a cup of Columbian coffee.

What else $13 can get you: A variety of apps, from soups and salads to fruit and yogurt; a variety of sides, including house made breakfast sausage and applewood smoked bacon; most entrees, including a cured salmon plate with Bialy’s bagel, egg salad, shaved onion, and capers ($10); chicken salad with cherries, carrot bread, baby watercress, lemon and olive oil ($12); brioche French toast with roasted apples and Snake Hill Farm maple syrup ($10), house made pancetta, French brie, poached apricots, and baby arugula flatbread ($12); and lemon soufflé pancakes with blueberry compote ($11).

The Verdict: Completely worth crossing a (formerly) Burning River. ...

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Only in Jimmy Dimoraland could someone steal $864,000 over 13 years -- and keep getting promoted.

When last we left Juanita Myrick, the meticulous bureaucrat and longtime veteran of the Cuyahoga County Department of Employment and Family Services had been indicted for stealing $864,000 in welfare checks from the agency.

In a marathon scam that escaped the county’s notice for a whopping 13 years, Myrick would doctor the files of former welfare clients, switching their information on the computer so that she got the checks instead of them. She even invented clients—some of whom lived in Germany [“The Perfect Scam,” June 13]. All the while, she kept getting promoted up the agency’s food chain.

It was a clever scheme, and won Myrick a lengthy list of fraud and theft charges from the county prosecutor’s office. This week, she finally pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

We’re assuming the computers don’t work as well in the slam, so maybe this time Myrick won’t get promoted as fast. —Lisa Rab

The Beachland (15711 Waterloo Road) will host its annual adult prom night Saturday, May 17. The Helper T-Cells and Dreadful Yawns will provide the music to which you will cut your rug and, if your date lets you, slide your hands inconspicuously onto his or her ass until Miss Heinrich comes by with a ruler and tells you "hands to yourselves." The club hasn't released full details yet, but these things are always a blast: You dress up in your best duds. Or your best duds from 1998. Or someone else's polyester onetime best duds that they sold to an old thrift store. And you come to the Beachland Ballroom for a night of food, dining, keepsake photos, and dancing. Previous live entertainment has included bands such as Cobra Verde, regaling the crowd with prom anthems of yesteryear. Tickets are $3 with prom attire, $5 without. Party starts at 9 p.m. -- D.X. Ferris

Unless you recognize a comedian’s name as That Girl From that Movie or the Dude from That One HBO Special, it can be hard to tell whether a stand-up is worth seeing. Lucky you: C-Notes did the legwork, and the skinny on this week’s big comedy shows, video included, is just a click away. Read on for a full rundown. -- D.X. Ferris

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I used to look at Travis Hafner standing at the plate and see something like this. Now, all I see is this. That’s right Wahoos, that’s Paul Sorrento, the Indians’ first basemen and sometime DH from 1992 to 1995. And while the first image might be scarier for pitchers to glare down in the batter’s box, that monster is gone. The latter is even more frightening for Tribe fans, considering Hafner’s recent and continued implosion in the batter’s box. ...

Is it time to write the obituary for Pronk? ...

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The bar is stocked, the staff is trained, and the permits have all been signed: Luxe Kitchen and Lounge, Marlin Kaplan’s much anticipated Gordon Square restaurant, opens on Thursday.

The vibe is hip, the décor is funky, and prices are moderate – all aimed to attract the neighborhood’s growing number of young professionals. “It’s gonna be awesome,” says the veteran chef-restaurateur, whose other spot is downtown’s One Walnut. “You’re gonna walk in here, and you’re just gonna say, ‘Wow!’” ...

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The last time the B-52’s released an album, it was 16 years ago. Good Stuff was a brave but futile attempt at soldiering on without founding member Cindy Wilson. The new Funplex, in essence, sounds like the proper follow-up to the 1989 blockbuster, Cosmic Thing. Two days after celebrating her 60th birthday, Kate Pierson joined soul sister Wilson, resident space-cadet Fred Schneider, and guitarist Keith Strickland for a sold-out party at House of Blues that was positively cosmic ...

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The first Saturday of every month, Cedar Lee Theatre (2163 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, 440.564.2030) plays a different cult flick at 9:30 and midnight. It’s their “Cult Film Series”, and this week, they play one of the more F’ed-up love stories in Hollywood history.

Harold and Maude is a 1971 dark comedy about the carnal relationship between a morbid rich 19-year old kid who’s into faking his own suicides and a 79-year old woman at the end of her life. Not surprisingly, the film was a commercial flop—but has become a cult favorite as new generations of weirdos have discovered it.

19- and 79-year-olds with proof of age get free popcorn at Cedar Lee, a theatre always eager to pile on inventive promotions. And grandmothers will be spared the $5 admission fee if accompanied by a paying grandchild, which, considering the film’s plot, is pretty creepy. -- Gus Garcia-Roberts

Something to gnaw on when you hear your esteemed mayor, city council, and other leaders pinning this fine state's future on alternative energy, namely wind and solar energy, which they seem fond of doing: If it's going to happen, The New York Times' Thomas Friedman writes today, it's going to take some folks in Washington retracting their retractable claws -- they do it for cocktail parties, so why not alt-energy policy? -- and getting together to help the States catch up with the rest of the globe on solar and wind.

In the meantime, Friedman writes, the immobility in Washington is having a direct and pretty depressing effect on Ohio:

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

Feeling sadistic? Read the rest of Friedman's column here. -- Joe P. Tone

One of the high-points of covering last week’s story on Roast, Michael Symon’s Detroit restaurant slated to open in late October, was the chance to chat with the charming Chris Ferchill, VP of development for Cleveland’s Ferchill Group, which owns the historic Westin Book Cadillac Hotel where the restaurant will be located. ...

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The Bang and the Clatter Theater group has been getting reviews. But this week the Beacon Journal lit them up.

It’s been a while since The Akron Beacon Journal has had a reputation for thought provoking reviews of anything, let alone theater. Thanks to massive lay-offs, diminishing content, and a totally demoralized newsroom, we’ve come to expect little from the paper’s critics. It’s enough if they just get the name of the director and a principal character or two into the review.

However, this week writer Elaine Guregian throws readers a curve-ball by actually expressing a strong opinion about a play that wasn’t written by Shakespeare...

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Browns receiver Braylon Edwards will participate in the Bob Costas “State of the Sports Media” roundtable tonight in New York. The HBO special (it first airs at 10 p.m. tonight) includes Costas, Will Leitch of Deadspin, Detroit Free-Press’ Mitch Albom, ESPN and Washington Posts’s Michael Wilbon, the Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock, and the Chicago Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti, among others.

Braylon’s segment centers on the topic of “the internet and the impact of sports bloggers.” Now, I’m not exactly sure why Edwards was chosen to represent “the athlete” in this particular discussion, but I can only assume it’s because he’s a daily reader of C-Notes and has many good things to say about us. Either that, or he was already in New York and had nothing better to do.

Hopefully we’ll get a ton of interesting tidbits regarding Clevo media, although they’ll probably come in very couched and nonspecific terms. I generally think Braylon comes across as one of the good guys, and beyond that, a very well spoken and educated young man. So, if he’s got opinions on sports bloggers, I’d sure love to hear them. – Vince the Polack

In recession-wracked Lorain, blue-collar saloons and upscale discos have come and gone on the main drag of Broadway Avenue. But there’s a new oasis near the corner of 9th Street that patrons say has a fighting chance to survive this flagging economy because of its target market: Lorain’s burgeoning Latino community.

But you don’t have to be from south of the border to chill at the recently opened La Sala. ...

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Dick Feagler: This Soulja Boy kid belongs in a work camp

Today's topic: Dick disapproves of the hip-hop brouhaha involving the Cavs-Wizards series…

I was at the coffee shop, and the guys all agree: this Soulja Boy character looks like a prime candidate for electric-shock therapy. ...

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An update on that new Coldplay song we told you about yesterday : yawn. --Michael Gallucci