Local

Intermittent light rain followed about 40 counter-protestors throughout the morning of June 2 at the Statehouse as they waited for a planned neo-Nazi rally that never materialized. The activists, some black clad members and supporters of Anti-Racist Action and some supporters of the International Socialist Organization, were on hand to stop an attempt by various racist groups to disrupt the dedication of the new Holocaust memorial at the Ohio Statehouse.

The neo-Nazi groups had planned to bring supporters and protest the event, claiming the Holocaust never actually happened. A group headquartered in Illinois called the Creativity Movement planned on uniting several groups for the effort. It was confirmed that they did in fact make the journey, and some of their more local members were seen together with their members from out-of-state at several nearby parking lots.

The National Socialist Movement, which bills itself as “America's Nazi Party” also was on hand in their best 1920s stormtrooper chic. They remained cowering in a parking lot blocks away as well.

According to Seth MacFarlane’s new comedy, there are A Million Ways to Die in the West. Most are pointless (being shot over a jostle in a bar), many are gruesome (having your head bashed in by a giant block of ice), and some are the kinds of things that could only be thought up by an unusually immature first-grader (farting yourself to death).

Pointless, gruesome and immature: That pretty well sums up this latest effort from the maker of Ted and TV’s Family Guy.

The flick starts out promisingly, superimposing the opening credits over shots of Utah’s majestic Monument Valley while Joel McNeely’s equally majestic score plays in the background. Director/co-writer MacFarlane seems intent on capturing the look and feel of classic Westerns, many of which were shot in this same location.

Then, unfortunately, actor MacFarlane enters the scene as an Arizona sheep rancher named Albert, and cinematic nostalgia rides off into the sunset.

As any parent knows, finding music you and your child can agree on is a difficult – nay, impossible – task. Put another way, it’s hard to find children’s music that doesn’t make you want to stab yourself in the eye moments before plunging your Subaru into the fiery core of the sun. Decent children’s music exists, of course; Pete Seeger’s Children’s Concert is great, and Sing Along with Putumayo ain’t bad.  But pity the poor son of a bitch who gets something from “Songs for Wiggleworms” stuck in his head; it’s a death sentence for hope and intelligent driving decisions. 

I first saw the Shazzbots at Comfest 2012, when I heard there was a children’s band playing at the Offramp Stage.  My daughter ran up to the band as soon as the music started, jumping around in the balloons and bubbles.  I sat back on the lawn, sipping a Columbus Pale Ale and feeling like a high-quality parent.  Afterwards, I picked up a CD at the merch tent and it quickly became one of my daughter’s favorites. I myself found it tolerable even after serious repetition – if you aren’t a parent, understand that this is high, high praise.

Towards the end of Future’s show at the Newport, the Atlanta rapper thanked Columbus and all of Ohio for being up on his early mixtapes. I have to say that while I wasn’t super deep into the early tapes, I had a bunch of friends who were.

Future was here in support of his new album, Honest which is out on A1 Records.

Columbus does have a knack for being up on the new Atlanta stuff whether it be Gucci Mane, or Rocko before they had hit records on the radio.

It was cool to hear Future be in tune with that.

Before Future hit the stage the Atlanta rapper’s deejay asked the crowd if they were ready to “Turn Up” for Future.

As rhetorical as this question is, the crowd responded with the love that this formality demanded to get the party started correctly.

Future’s deejay was flanked by a series of large lights on both sides that provided a mixture of a leaned-out night club feel, and a retro 70’s rock aura when they would blink on and off.

A Neo-Nazi group called the Creativity Movement has made clandestine plans for a rally at the Ohio Statehouse on June 2 2014. The group is planning on drawing its supporters from around the midwest and bring allies to the event which is slated to begin at 9 am. According to posts on neo-nazi websites, the group will be offering rideshares after a secret meet up outside of Columbus.

The Creativity Movement is a surviving offshoot of the World Church of the Creator, whoose leader, Matt Hale is currently incarcerated for plotting the murder of a federal judge. During the 1990s the group held dozens of events around country and its supporters were known for violence.

Church Member Ben Smith went on a three day shooting rampage in 1999 across multiple states before killing himself in a standoff with police. The group later lost a trademark lawsuit and was forced to change its name to the Creativity Movement.

Intimacy can be the Holy Grail of relationships. I am going to ask a series of questions, to assist each of us on our quest. Our interpretations of intimacy are unique and varied.

What is intimacy? What role does it play in sex – regardless if partnered or single? Many single people, in their search for intimacy, hold off having sex. They prefer to wait until there is a someone they can invest in emotionally, to have a more profound and meaningful exchange. Married and partnered people also struggle with intimacy. Some have deep, connected relationships, but are not sexually intimate.

The definition of intimacy is a personal one, and unique to each person.

The Free Press previously reported on a standoff in Yellow Springs on July 31 of 2013 that lead to the death of a resident, Paul E. Schenck, at the hands of a police sniper. Attorney General Mike DeWine personally delivered a summary of the final report by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) that lead to no findings of wrongdoing on the part of the officers involved. Laborious comparison of the police records from the 17 responding agencies to the BCI report and raw investigative materials paints a picture of belligerence, sloth, criminality and incompetence. Since the release of the report, one of the officers involved has been indicted on firearms charges in federal court for partially unrelated conduct.

Dublin, OH – Wednesday, May 28th, at 9:00am, Columbus and Dublin-area clergy, students, and residents with Ohio Fair Food will join the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) — an award-winning organization of Florida farmworkers — for a demonstration outside the 2014 Wendy’s Annual Meeting of Stockholders at the company’s corporate headquarters located at 1 Dave Thomas Blvd, Dublin, OH 43017.

Together, they will call on the Dublin-based burger giant to join its fast food competitors in supporting the Fair Food Program; a groundbreaking collaboration that has won praise from the White House to the United Nations for its unique success in addressing decades-old farm labor abuses at the heart of the nation’s trillion-dollar food industry.

The Green Party is fighting for its political life in Ohio. The gerrymandered, Republican-controlled state legislature outlawed all minor parties in Ohio in 2013 while both the Libertarian and Green Parties were in the middle of the petition drives for their gubernatorial candidates. Neither the Libertarians nor the Greens achieved ballot status by submitting signatures. While the Libertarian Party sued to maintain ballot status and lost in federal court, the Green Party invoked a seldom used state law that allows a statewide candidate to gain ballot status by getting 500 write-in votes.

The initial canvas of precincts showed the Green Party with 766 write-in votes for their gubernatorial candidate. The number, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, has now dwindled to 628 votes. By state law, all county boards of elections must certify their vote total and forward it to the Secretary of State’s office by May 27. The Secretary of State must post the actual results 30 days after the May 6 election.

In 1769, a British naval officer brings his daughter to live at the palatial home of his uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson). The couple are concerned that the girl’s presence will compromise the family’s reputation, as not only is the girl illegitimate, but her mother was black.

Nevertheless, they agree to take the girl in and raise her alongside her white cousin.

Though England was then the center of the world slave trade, Belle’s opening suggests that its titular heroine—whose full name is Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)—will be sheltered from society’s racist attitudes and abuses. As the story skips forward to her emergence as a young woman, however, we learn that’s not the case.