Rachel Kushner: The Flamethrowers

A young woman comes of age on a motorcyle

1970s Art Scene in New York

     Italian Motorcycles, the downtown New York art scene of the 1970s, American youth revolts of the 1960s, Italian worker/consumer/student/kidnapper-you-name-it revolts of the 1970s, the Land Artists, May-August romances, artists whose persona/story reveals their art, a young woman of talent

Banana Leaf Modern Thai

Destination dining for us that appeared

to be a neighborhood gem for others

Banana Leaf Modern Thai

     I doubt there are many of us that can remember the streetcar and bustling hotel on Main Street in Mason.  They're gone, but the private residence across the street has stood there since 1877.  Currently, it's been elegantly revamped with

Miranda Lambert: Platinum

Yet again, Lambert delivers 

tough vulnerability with exquisite precision

     Miranda Lambert’s latest solo album Platinum was released five months ago, which was when I picked it up and I’ve played it about a dozen or so times since then.  It’s an easy collection to hear a number of times because it sums up the past of country and western music, while also placing Lambert in the forefront of where C & W may go next.  Along with Beck on Morning Phase (Alternative Rock/Rock) and Pharrell Williams on Girl (R&B/Pop), Lambert has taken stock of a musical genre and stated why it is and has been important to American culture.  For me, those are the three most significant albums released this year.

     Lambert wrote/co-wrote about half of the songs on this album and performed works by some other top C & W songwriters.  She comes across as Western because of the

Laverne Cox Shops at JCPenney

NKU establishes itself 

on the map for LGBTQ issues

Laverne Cox at NKU

     As one audience member said, it was a historical moment at NKU when Laverne Cox presented.  She's been an Emmy nominated member of the Orange is the New Black cast.  She's also been a spokesperson for the transgender

Meatball Kitchen

Simple Italian your way

The Simple Industrial Interior

     Dreary fall evenings call for comfort food so Eric and I dropped by Meatball Kitchen on Short Vine after a movie recently at the Esquire.  I'd been curious about this place since

PRIDE

A mess of vivid characters 

trying to save and change their world

     The economic downturn, which hasn’t exactly turned up yet, resulting in “the new normal,” may be the right context for Americans to connect with Pride.  Yes, it follows in a particular subgenre of working class (mainly) men losing their livelihood and being reawakened by something completely incongruous.  Because of this, there’s both pathos and hilarity.  The British movies The Full Monty (1997)

Longhorn Steakhouse at Rookwood Pavilion

Think of it as a warm club, 
professionally run, with quality, affordable food

The Featured Steaks

     We don’t go to steakhouses very much and we usually avoid chain restaurants, but the Longhorn Steakhouse at Rookwood Pavilion changed our minds.  It was one of the first

Rosanne Cash: The River & the Thread

Exploring the south and her roots – 

a lovely record, but magisterial in concert

Our Seats at Clowes Hall

     We were in Indianapolis last month and Neil happened to see that Rosanne Cash was going to perform at Butler University’s Clowes Memorial Hall.  Since we were able to get seats that guaranteed no one would be standing in front of us,

An Iliad at Ensemble

Unmissable

     For those that don’t have tickets yet for An Iliad, stop reading this review, and go online or call Ensemble Theatre immediately and purchase them.  For those that do, you have something to look forward to because this may prove to be the most memorable theatrical tour de force since Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001, 2003) and feature the best local performance since Dale Hodges starred in Wit (1999) or Bruce Cromer played Prior Walter in

A Separate Peace & Snow

Two classics and both surprising

     One of my colleagues decided to teach John Knowles’ A Separate Peace this summer and I thought I’d read it as well.  Even though copies lay on various high school and college shelves, I’d never been assigned it and I sort of avoided it.  I developed a prejudice towards it for no good reason, i.e. I hadn’t read it.

     I always thought it was a prep school book and I thought, so what?  (It’s the same reason that I wasn’t as thrilled about Harry Potter as many others were.  It seemed like Enid Blyton filtered through Roald Dahl, though very well written, and a little reactionary since Hermione was the smartest character, but Harry always competed and won).  A Separate Peace, like The Go-Between, actually re-examines the past and how those who