Debbie Gibson: Thanks for Putting Our Pride First!

Debbie Gibson Performing at the 2013 Cincinnati Pride Festival

     Debbie (Deborah, as she was referred to in the ‘90s) Gibson headlined the main stage at the Cincinnati Pride Festival and gave a spirited hour-long set.  She began ten minutes earlier than scheduled with “Proud Mary.”  This was an excellent selection because her voice is powerful, but it also possesses a pinched, nasal quality that provides her the

Before Midnight

Darkness falls, but it was always present

     Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, the third in his series with his collaborators Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, cuts uncomfortably close.  For those viewers who haven’t seen Before Sunrise (1995) or Before Sunset (2004), this movie may seem both slight and less of a romantic comedy or laugh riot than they’d expected.  All of the movies take place in Europe, though

When Music Makes or Breaks the Movies

Looking at some movies 
and their music before synthesizers

    

     For decades, movie music was sort of faux symphonic (Max Steiner, especially) and then sort of brassy/jazzy (Elmer Bernstein) or eerie/jazzy (Bernard Herrmann).  Yes, I know I’m horribly oversimplifying since there were great popular songs that came out of the classic studio period of around 1928 – 1960.  Most of those songs came out of Disney.  Most of the

Eternal Summer: The Art of Edward Henry Potthast at the CIncinnati Art Museum

      Pottast grew up in Cincinnati, becoming a charter student at the McMicken School of Design (now the Art Academy of Cincinnati) at age twelve.  This exhibition covers some of his 

A Magazine Cover Illustration

early works when he worked as a commercial lithographer, magazine illustrator, and landscape and portrait painter.  

Sewing Girl

Fifty West Brewing Company Heading to Innovation

The Canopied Entrance

      Fifty West Brewing Company had a couple of strikes against it from the start.  First of all, it's in the structure that originally housed one of CIncinnati's finest bygone restaurants, The Heritage.  It was a sad day at our house when it closed.  Not that we could afford to dine there often, but it did provide a lot of flavor memories and one-of-a-kind experiences.  Secondly, we're all about the food so while we

A Cosmic Community

      We've been reading the accounts online regarding the shooting at Cosmic Pizza early Saturday evening.  The owner, Richard Evans, was shot multiple times during an attempted robbery and died shortly after in his neighbor's yard.  It's the nightmare that none of us want to hear about one of our entrepreneurs that was trying to make our city a finer place for all of us to live.  We never had the opportunity to visit Cosmic Pizza, but from all accounts it was a welcoming environment meant for families to enjoy and much of that was because of Rich's personality.  

      He leaves a wife (who is Thai and speaks very little English) and 3 young children.  Our hearts go out to them.  We wish Dexter could rub up against them and work his magic to make them feel better.  That always helps everything! 

      Fortunately, a friend has started an online fund to help with expenses at http://www.gofundme.com/3ac52k.  Please consider a donation and share this site with all of you friends.

Frank Langella & Stephen Fry – Takes on the Celebrity Memoir

The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography

Stephen Fry in Jeeves & Wooster

     Stephen Fry is probably best known to PBS audiences for his performance as Jeeves with Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves & Wooster and rarefied roles in various movies like Peter’s Friends and V for Vendetta and as Oscar Wilde in Wilde.  He’s also

DICK

Even in 1999, Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams were going to be acting stars

     It’s been forty years since the Watergate hearings and there’s currently a self-congratulatory documentary by Robert Redford about All The President’s Men then and now to commemorate that anniversary, but Dick (1999) starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams says more perhaps about ‘the long national nightmare’ than the more serious works.  Dunst and Williams play teenagers who accidentally involve themselves in the Watergate break-in, while trying to mail a letter

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

A tightly coiled comic allegory about Pro Football, Hollywood maneuvering, and the Iraq War

Dexter Checks Out Ben Fountain's Books*

     Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award – the prize that spotlights excellent writers on the cusp of prominence, and was nominated for the National Book Award.  Such accolades don’t

Blue Gibbon Chinese

Traditional Cincinnati Chinese 
that's mostly full of familiar dishes

Blue Gibbon Dining Room

      When we were joining Ann and Woody for dinner we decided on the Blue Gibbon, all of us commenting that we had not been there for a few years. The restaurant dates back to 1983 in Paddock Hills, but the family business began years