Arts & Culture

Although The Explorer’s club in Merion Village is not a vegan restaurant, they have for the last two years honored the vegan community with a special vegan menu in November (wish I would have known this sooner both times!). This year, they are featuring: tempeh tots, caramelized pearl onions and mushroom au gratin, vegan pot roast, vegan cabbage rolls in addition to their usual vegan options on their menu of plantains with a mango habanero chutney, root vegetable pancake sandwich on fresh baked house bread and a hearty bowl of tempeh chili. I’m drooling over the prospects of their December menu as it is a “best of” compilation of the year’s menu that will also be featuring a vegan quinoa patty and chocolate peanut butter cup pie made with coconut milk cream (OMG!). I’m hoping they will add the sweet potato fritters with raspberry jam to that menu because I was in love with those last holiday season. They source locally for many of their menu items and organic items are a future goal of the restaurant. Explorer’s club has enough seating to support large groups when necessary. They are located at: 1586 S High St. Columbus. Open daily for lunch and dinner.

The small business movement is a valuable counter to the corporate landscapes of big-box stores and their accompanying lifeless parking lots that have taken over some parts of our city. There are dozens if not hundreds of shops throughout Columbus where you can buy everything from knit caps to vintage furniture from small and local businesspeople and keep your money in the community and out of the hands of labor-exploiting billionaires. Geek culture has been a welcome home to small businesses for decades, and while the internet makes it easy to order things that you may have never hoped to see for sale in person in the past, Columbus still has plenty of great stores to help you do your holiday shopping without crossing the picket lines at Walmart. If you know someone with graphic novels on their wish list, skip Amazon and Barnes & Noble and head for one of our many local, independently-owned comic shops.

I’ve written about O’Reilly’s before. My feelings about the pepper burger are well-known. And other than a pepper burger, a side of sweet potato fries and an interest in their daily specials I have never tried, I had little more to write about this favored dive bar. That is until I tried their wings. I am not sure how the wings escaped by roving eye. Well, actually, I know how they escaped. I don’t have much ardor for wings. I find them frequently disappointing. In our city, I can not think of many wings worth the effort. Roosters are pretty good. Barley’s Smokehouse brines, smokes and grills their wings, it is a lot of extra work but the end result is very good. I did have wings at the original Anchor Bar, I liked those, as much for the tradition as the taste. I can’t think of any other wings that have made an impression.\ If you know of a place that does serve really good wings, let me know. So a few words about the wings at O’Reilly’s. They are sold by the pound. They are large and meaty. They are deep-fried to a fine crispness. And they are densely breaded. The breading holds the sauce to the wings, so that it clings to the entirety of the surface.

I have had a while to peruse North Market Cookbook – Recipes and Stories from Columbus Ohio’s Historic Public Market. It is written by Michael Turback, a well-known food-focused writer. The forward is written by former Dispatch food editor, Robin Davis, the writer of the first North Market Cookbook. There are no surprises in this book – it provides a quick history of the market and recipes from many of the vendors, growers and personalities of the market. Local chefs and mixologists contribute to book as well. What I like the best about the book – it is constructed to survive a kitchen or getting crushed on the couch with a slick cover and fold outs front and back for marking pages. There are over 100 recipes to choose from in six major areas: soups, small plates, salads and sides, main dishes, desserts and ending with beverages and cocktails. The best way to use this book is to turn to the back and look for the names of your favorite purveyoI have had a while to peruse North Market Cookbook – Recipes and Stories from Columbus Ohio’s Historic Public Market. It is written by Michael Turback, a well-known food-focused writer.

I’ve been going to record stores my whole life. I am a weirdo so vocationally record stores have been there for me. I worked at Magnolia Thunderpussy Records from 2003-2011. I currently work at Roots Records. Today is Thanksgiving.

Fucking Christmas is coming and don't we all hate it? Well, I don't mean I hate it. I love actual Christmas itself. The trees, the kids, the myths and the magic and the food. But not the hideous modern goddam bullshit that comes with it anymore. Like my neighbor having her lights up BEFORE Halloween. Like the mega-commercial exploitation of the beautiful gesture of giving. Like seeing or reading about the mobs of crazed consumer-zombies trampling and fighting over X-boxes and the like. The ACLU public square manger lawsuits. Too much pressure! Disgusting! Pass me one of your grandma's Christmas cookies, will ya? Mmmm, now that helps (munch, munch, gulp). Let's not blame the Baby Jesus--little sumbitch is the most blameless one in this passion play of insanity, none of which in my book has anything to do with true Christianity. Jesus, I'm fairly certain, wouldn't be thrilled with stores open on Thanksgiving or the very concept of Black Friday.

My little brother has down syndrome. He loves music of all types. But his defaults are Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. Because he likes female pop singers, I played him Sky Ferreira a while back. My logic was that he could watch a burgeoning pop artist before she got big. He loved it. We went and saw the Venice Beach born/Brooklyn singer play with How to Dress Well at the end of March at the Basement. I visited him the next day and he was watching Sky’s video for “Everything is Embarrassing.” It was cute because he gave the computer a kiss. I noticed on line that she had been at “Party City” by the Carriage Place Cinemark Movies around the same time and I thought about posting a missed connection for my little brother. I did not because fan fiction is creepy even if it’s harmless. But when I found out that Sky Ferreira was playing the A & R Bar with the Smith Westerns Thursday, I got permission from his dad to take him out. His Bible study was out for Thanksgiving break so everything was kosher. I was happy to see Chicago indie-rock band Smith Westerns play before Sky.

Daniel Rako led the New Albany High School football team on to the field one last time on Nov. 22. Players pushed the sophomore’s wheelchair on to the artificial turf prior to a 35-28 loss to Zanesville in a Division II regional final at DeSales High School. Although he never played a down for the Eagles, Daniel says being a part of New Albany’s 11-2 season was a life-changing event. “I’d give anything to play,” Daniel says. “I know I can’t but it’s still fun to be out there and be a part of this team.” Daniel, who was born with Spina Bifida, joins freshman Sam Hill and sixth grader Matthew Thomas as managers for the Eagles. All three are part of the football team’s partnership with the Special Needs Program. Hill and Rako were both chosen as the team’s practice players of the week in the days before the Zanesville game. “Daniel is what our program is all about. It takes a lot of other people besides the starters to make up a football team,” New Albany defensive coordinator Matt “Bubba” Kidwell says. “Daniel will never make a tackle for this team. He’ll never score a touchdown, throw a block or catch or throw a pass.

Just about everyone seems to love Pope Francis. By presenting a face of humility and innate decency to the world, he’s done wonders for the Catholic Church’s tarnished image. But now we have Philomena on the silver screen to remind us of just how much the church has to atone for. Decades before abusive priests became an international scandal, Irish girls who became pregnant out of wedlock were forced to pay for their indiscretion by laboring in convents. That was the easy part of their penance. The hard part was that church officials demanded the right to give their babies up for adoption. Philomena, based on actual events, shows what happened when one of those girls refused to forget the son who’d been taken away from her. Judi Dench plays Philomena Lee, a devout Catholic who has borne her loss in silence for decades. But she’s never stopped wondering what became of the boy she named Anthony. Through a lucky set of circumstances, she’s introduced to Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a former journalist who’s just been kicked out of a position with the British government.

Through the late 70s and the entirety of the 80s, WBNS-TV here in Columbus was the home of Fritz the Nite Owl and his Nite Owl Theatre. Wearing big owl-winged glasses, Fritz Peerenboom bookended movies with clever segments that used simple green-screen effects to insert him into scenes where he could give commentary on the night’s feature. Fritz won 5 Emmy Awards for his show and was even inducted, in 2012, into the Horror Host Hall of Fame. Here in Columbus he became an icon. The Nite Owl Theatre’s TV run ended in 1991, but thanks to the work of some longtime Fritz fans it returns to Studio 35 once a month for a healthy dose of 80s nostalgia. And the new Night Owl Theatre is firmly planted in the 80s. When the new cinematic version of the show began at the Grandview Theatre in 2010 they were restricted to public domain movies, and while that meant they could show classics such as Night of the Living Dead and the House on Haunted Hill, it also limited them to older fare. With the move to Studio 35 they were able to screen nearly anything. November’s movie was Back to the Future, and Peerenboom arrived at Studio 35 in a vintage Delorean provided by the Free Press.