If these guys lived in Brecksville, could they attend the prom?
On a recent sunny afternoon, C-Notes headed out to the real life Pleasantville that is Brecksville to find out if the rumors were true: Was Brecksville High really banning gay students from its prom?
According to our spies – well planted at a certain North Royalton beauty salon – the suburban school district has a longstanding rule that decrees students can only attend prom if they have a date of the opposite sex. The reasoning went that the school couldn’t actually ban just gay students, so it had to make an all encompassing rule that would readily exclude dateless wall flowers and mathaletes too. That way, no one could be accused of being a homophobe…
Unsightly accoutrements have long been a part of TV viewing. The satellite dish. The cable box. Rabbit ears. But as technology has progressed, the eyesores have only gotten bigger. Enter the fourth-generation of cable TV’s aesthetic nightmare: the AT&T U-Verse box.
“It’s like having an outhouse on your tree lawn,” says Lakewood City Councilman Kevin Butler of the refrigerator-sized hazards that are springing up in front of homes...
The coveted title of Creepiest Guy at the Cleveland Schools has long rested with Nick Jackson, the mayor’s brother and longtime patronage appointee. Two female employees -- one at City Hall and one at the school district — have accused him of sexual harassment. It got so bad that one woman, Helen Piffard, quit after the district’s investigation of him turned into a smear job about her.
But lately, Ron Kisner has been giving Jackson a run for his money…
At first, the pranks were silly, such as calling in fake pizza orders for their enemies. When that got tiresome, a chat line participant figured out a way to get people’s water and electricity shut off. Soon, people were going whole weekends without air or heat. But four years ago, the pranks grew dangerous…
During the post-game press conference after Cleveland’s 88-77 victory over the Celtics, coach Mike Brown was asked about LeBron’s poor shooting in the series so far. He responded by saying that King James is going to come out of his current funk, and that he told his superstar that if he’s open for a three-pointer 12 times, that he should shoot 12 times – just keep throwing the ball up there. He followed that by saying he kept telling James to remain aggressive and keep going to the hole.
These seem like two disparate ideas, one of which hypothetically and logically makes perfect sense, and the other, well, the other sounds like the scheme of a coach on the take with big money against his own team. Can you guess which is which? ...
Cliff Lee: the newest proof that selling your soul is totally worth it.
Part of the charm of a day game -- especially the first half of a doubleheader -- is that the stadium is so quite and empty that you can hear every heckle. You sit where you want, tear open a bag of peanuts, and enjoy the organ music while thinking of verbal barbs to hurl at the nearest opposing player.
The first half of yesterday’s old-school Tribe doubleheader began that way, but quickly ended. As is the case with Cavs playoff basketball, the plaza between the Prog and the Q was home to a fanfest of sorts – lots of games for kids, the Cavs cheerleaders, and loud music. Around the 4th or 5th inning, anyone sitting in the bleachers or the left field seats to watch baseball enjoyed not the crack of the bat nor the quiet of a park filled with roughly 37 people, but rather the pounding bass and loud music you would expect standing just outside the door of a club on West 6th on a Saturday night. It just didn’t mesh, and had I not been watching a day baseball game in the middle of a workday, it really would have pissed me off. ...
In 1996, structural engineers blamed the failure of some steel gusset plates for the buckling of the I-90 bridge over the Grand River, forcing it to shut down for five months. But nobody told Minnesota – or, in all likelihood, anyone else -- about the dangers of corroding steel gusset plates. Of course, a decade later, a Minneapolis bridge fell into the Mississippi, killing 13 people and injuring 145.
“It is unclear exactly what MnDOT officials knew about the Ohio incident,” the Star Tribune writes, although it seems pretty clear: not enough. ...
Friendly, familiar, and not too far, Chicago has long been a top dining-destination for Cleveland-area foodies, who have flocked to such bar-raising establishments as Charlie Trotter’s, Trio, and most recently, Alinea, where young uber-chef Grant Achatz has mastered the art of molecular gastronomy.
So when last year’s tale of Achatz’ Stage IV tongue cancer became public, plenty of Cleveland food fans took the news personally. ...
The Latest Sign of Impending Doom: The hapless Knicks have hired former Phoenix Suns head coach Mike D’Antoni to right the New York basketball ship. D’Antoni averaged more than 50 wins a season with the Suns, and ran one of the most athletic, entertaining, and successful teams of the past five years. He'll spend the next three years clearing cap space -- just in time for the next LeBron James Sweepstakes. ...
They sing about seraph snouts and cruciform limps.
The Mars Volta are full of shit. And I think they know it. But some of rock’s best bands were full of shit. Pink Floyd? Full of shit. Led Zeppelin? Full of shit. Radiohead? Full of shit most of the time. But that’s why I love the Mars Volta. Who else could write a 16-minute epic called “Tetragrammaton” and get away with it? Not Foo Fighters, that’s for sure.
Still, the band wants us to believe that its new album, The Bedlam in Goliath, was put together with the help of a Ouija Board-like toy called the Soothsayer (for a complete rundown, read my interview with singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala). That certainly would explain lines like “Primordial cymatics giving birth into reverse/Serrated mare ephemera/Undo her mother’s curse.” But I don’t buy it. The Mars Volta have always been a complicated group ...
Seventy-six new shows this week, from American Idols Live to Led Zep tribute Zoso. And apparently Sisqo -- the “Thong Song” dude with the platinum hair (and records) -- is still around. Who knew?
The jury believed that owner Jerry Forstner inflated the value of his poisoned alpacas.
In 2003, Magical Farms owner Jerry Forstner sued Purina Mills after the company delivered a contaminated shipment of feed to his alpaca farm, killing off over 100 of his 1,600 alpacas and permanently damaging the health of hundreds more.
Forstner, whose Litchfield farm is one of the biggest in North America, claims that Purina Mills owed him over $12 million in damages. He says that was just enough money to cover what he paid for all his dead and damaged animals – not lost profits or potential offspring.
The problem with the article: The story is completely false.
As Scene reported in March, the Italian cultural ministry is on a mission to retrieve hundreds of works it believes were stolen from Italy. For years, most American museums simply laughed at requests like these. But they were forced to rethink their stance a few years ago when evidence surfaced that Robert Hecht, one of America’s most prodigious art dealers, had been selling pieces looted from Italy…
In this Chinese Nike commercial, LeBron is forced to face his greatest fears: hype, temptation, haters, self-doubt, and tipping waiters. He smashes through all of them with confidence – except for the tipping part. But it’s not as easy as it looks, since everyone is talking Chinese.
With all the hullabaloo surrounding our soon-to-be former Attorney General Marc Dann, Case Western Law School officials decided that Dann might not be the best person to give the commencement address.
Last week, Dean Gary Simson sent out an e-mail to students telling them not to worry. He was in talks with other potential speakers, all of whom were equally fabulous. On Thursday, the school announced the new speaker: Case graduate Stephen C. Ellis.
