Arts & Culture

Last weekend (January 24th through 26th) the Greater Columbus Convention Center was filled with magical girls, Power Rangers, heroes, monsters, elves, demons, and gray-skinned people with candy corn horns. Ohayocon 2014 brought together geeks from all over the Midwest in a celebration of not just anime but video games, tabletop gaming, video gaming, and everything else the kids are into these days. “Kids” is the operative word, too. Ohayocon is all about the youth culture of geek culture, the cutting edge of anime and all related forms of entertainment. Though anime has been imported to the US since Speed Racer debuted with a notoriously awkward translation in the late 60s, it’s picked up considerable steam as the generation that grew up with Pokémon aged and became a serious market for streaming video services like Netflix and the all-Japanese Crunchyroll. Instead of having to wait for months if not years for a show or movie to be translated and released in the US, fans can watch new episodes of popular shows like Naruto Shippuden and One Piece online at the same time that they’re airing in Japan.

There’s nothing like a little Full Frontal Nudity to put folks in the mood for Valentine’s Day. That’s the hope, anyway, as MadLab’s resident improv troupe gets ready to open its third annual production of Date Night. The show contains no actual nudity, of course, as the group’s name is a come-on. Instead, FFN’s players plan to engage in off-the-cuff storytelling based on what little they know about couples from the audience. Josh Kessler, an actor who’s been with the show since the beginning, explained how it works. “We try to get two or three couples out of the audience, one couple at a time, and we bring them up onstage,” he said. There, the lovebirds are given a seat on a couch, offered snacks and asked a series of questions about themselves: how they met, what they like about each other, what they do for a living and so forth. “Then,” said Kessler, “we go out and do our rendition of that.” “Rendition,” in this case, means an improvised story that may have little to do with the couple’s actual lives but still contains a kernel of truth about their relationship.

Jim began playing professionally in 1965, and has played with some of central Ohio’s most popular bands. He was a founding member and front man for such bands as: the original Gears, the Diplomats, the Lapse of Tyme, Tristram Shandy, the Alligators, the Dick Mackey Band, the Hipnotics and the Lynch Mob. In 1995 Jim founded the band, the JuJu Bees. As the bandleader, lead guitar player, lead singer — and the only member of the JuJu Bees to have performed at every show from the band’s inception to July 4, 2002 — he named the band for a humorous story in his past. Jim has also been an integral member of such bands as: the Dave Workman Blues Band, Tyler, Spittin’ Image and McGuffey Lane, among others.

While attending Sexapalooza 2014 as an entertainer and presenter, I met many people in the sex-positive community of Central Ohio.

I'd like to take this column space to list some of the organizations, groups, people and places and provide a list of resources and information. I enjoy creating community, bringing people together for more knowledge, awareness, respect and love - especially for a more sex-positive society.

Adventures In Sexuality (AIS). Kinky? Curious? Check out Central Ohio's fun, educational, and experiential avenue for Creative Sensual and Sexual Expression. Within the banner of AIS, there are many sub-groups where people can find their niche. We are comprised of diverse members of the Ohio and National Kink Community. We are focused on Education, Outreach, Safer Play, Fun and toward building greater Kink Awareness and Acceptance within the Central Ohio area. www.AdventuresInSexuality.org
Here are some events and offerings within AIS:

I first discovered the ZenCha Tea salon several years back as a participant of a local Philosophy meet-up group. I have been a tea lover for as long as I can remember and this peaceful, elegant sanctuary has a very clean, uncluttered, organized, and zen-like lighting and music atmosphere regardless of which of the three locations you choose. It is a place that is reminiscent of that Karate Kid 2 tea ceremony feeling. I will note that the menu is not the same in all locations, which is why I recently had a new revelation of delight at the Bexley location (I’m more prone to dinning at the High St. or Gay St. locations). I nearly leapt out of the booth with excitement with how delicious the yakisoba dish was with its “tangy yaki” sauce. The staff was very friendly and conscious of vegan requirements and other socially just concerns such as local economy produce (though not with the teas), non- GMO and organic sourcing.

It's 6:45 on a Friday evening, and the Honky Tonk Happy Hour is rolling at the Shrunken Head. Singer-Songwriter Chad Lee Williams has just finished up his set and has headed to the bar where a mixed crowd of band invitees and regulars are milling around. Most have finished the drinks they hoarded during the Head's "Happiest Hour" from 5-6 (75 cent drafts and shots!), and must now content themselves with a mere happy hour discount. Onstage the Hellroys have just launched into their unhinged brand of rockabilly and are starting to pick up steam. Host Matt Monta tracks down each new guest as they walk in the door and gives them a raffle ticket for the nightly prizes of band memorabilia and a home baked pie. Perhaps because it’s the beginning of a Friday night, the mood is laid back – even jovial. The Hellroys finish their first song, tell a couple of jokes, and smash back into their set. The Happy Hour was started in 2010 when singer/guitarist Jamie Lyn moved to Columbus from Brooklyn, NY.

Toshi and Pete Seeger defy description except through the sheer joy and honor it was to know them, however briefly. Their list of accomplishments will fill many printed pages, which all pale next to the simple core beauty of the lives they led. They showed us it’s possible to live lives that somehow balance political commitment with joy, humor, family, courage and grace. All of which seemed to come as second nature to them, even as it was wrapped in an astonishing shared talent that will never cease to inspire and entertain. Pete passed on Monday, at 94, joining Toshi, who left us last year, at 91. They’d been married nearly 70 years.Somehow the two of them managed to merge an unending optimism with a grounded, realistic sense of life in all its natural travails and glories. Others who knew them better than I will have something more specific to say, and it will be powerful and immense. But, if it’s ok with you, I’d like to thank them for two tangible things, and then for the intangible but ultimately most warming. First: In 1978, we of the Clamshell Alliance were fighting the nuclear reactors being built at Seabrook, NH. An amazing grassroots movement had sprung up.

Action Bronson stormed the A & R bar stage after his deejay Party Supplies had just unleashed Mad Lion’s 1994 ragga banger "Take It Easy." His confidence beamed a vigilante’s aura that fit perfectly with Mad Lion's barking "Too Many Sucka's/Not Enough Time.” The room was packed and it greeted The Q-Boro emcee with the full adulation that hip hop tradition thinks a man with upper-echelon rap patterns, zooted stream of consciousness abstract metonymies that consistently align skill and hip hop taste level with an imperative for fellatio as reciprocation for his presence deserves. As he plowed through everything from his “the Saab Stories” EP to both “Blue Chips” tapes, to his early “Dr. Lecter” material and guest spots; the crowd was going line for line with him. At one point during his set, Bronson called out, "Introducing Bronsolino." The crowd responded with the next part "With My Hair Slicked Back I Look Like Rick Pitino" without missing cadence from his cameo from Chance the Rapper's "NaNa.” This was the moment of Chance’s arrival as well as Bronson’s. The humorous part of this line is that Bronson does not look anything like the dapper GQ -esque basketball coach.

Remember back in the day when you used to take photos with cameras? The ones with film in them? Remember how you usually put those pics in frames or a photo album? Maybe you didn’t get around to doing that and you just kept them in the envelope and threw them in a box. And sometimes you didn’t get around to that and you had them lying around on a table or counter. Now do you remember how saddened and frustrated you got when one of those loose photos had water spilled on it and the picture was ruined with washes and discoloration? Artist Matthew Brandt goes toward those spills and damages amongst other photo destruction/creation processes in Columbus Museum of Art’s exhibition Sticky/Dusty/Wet. The exhibition shows an assortment of works representing the variety of experimental photo processes used by Brandt. In Lakes and Reservoirs, Brandt traveled throughout the country taking photographs of lakes and reservoirs in nearly a dozen different states. He would develop the beautiful landscapes on large scale color photo paper and then submerge them in the lake water they capture. The photos were submerged for days, weeks, or even months.

Ryan Jewell will be jazz drumming along with musicians Robert Heinz, Bret Burleson, and Eddie Bayard at Dick’s Den on Sunday, January 25th. In addition to being an in-demand jazz musician, Ryan has also played with revered noise artists such as Jandek and Mike Shiflet. He has also been a member of Complete Strangers, Terribly Empty Pockets, Pink Reason, and PHS. You can check his new murky psych-folkish group Mosses on Jan. 30 at punk house VVK. “My favorite music is either extreme outsider art that is inept in some ways. Or it’s highly virtuosic.” Jewell explained his various musical passions while sipping tea in a Clintonville home where he was pet-sitting a friend’s ferrets. While Jewell has an extensive and diverse body of work, perhaps his most unique recording was made while unconscious, and literally brokenhearted. In January of 2013, Jewell recorded his open heart surgery at OSU’s Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital. “It was like a birth defect thing.” Jewell said, speaking of the life-threatening misshapen heart valve that put him under the scalpel and bone saw. “It didn’t close up properly.