Local
One in seven Ohioans has one – a life-long legal scar that has become the voodoo of our generation(s). According to the Ohio Department of Safety, more than 1.3 million licensed drivers in the state have at least one “DUI” conviction. This eye-opening number suggests far too many Ohioans are getting behind the wheel impaired.
But percolating through appeals courts across the state is a growing number of defendants who believe they limited their blood alcohol to a safe level. They’re challenging the state’s certified breathalyzer, the Intoxilyzer 8000, claiming it wrongly inflated their blood alcohol level or BAC.
Defense attorneys across the state say the Intoxilyzer 8000 is fundamentally flawed because its main function is based on bad science.
Several judges subsequently ruled in the defendants favor, calling the breathalyzer “unreliable,” which makes the line between illegally impaired and legally able to drive in Ohio (.08 of BAC) not so clear anymore.
Bedroom Dodgeball and Other Tales
Dear Lady Monster,
Some years ago I had a single sexual encounter with a woman who sought me out for a long time. We finally met, and some months later she took me home. She showed me a photo album full of pictures she had taken of me at a public event several years prior. Things turned sexual and then got strange. She had a large collection of homemade rubber masks. She had over 40 of them, each on their own manniquin head. They were all masks of zombie rats. She insisted we both wear them during sex. I was not comfortable, but I tried to perform anyway. I could not. There is nothing sexy for me about looking down and seeing a dead rat looking back at me during intercourse.
She also thought that randomly throwing deflated soccer balls at my buttocks from across the room, without warning, while screaming, "Suck on Satan's pecker" was foreplay.
On April 11, 2014 the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) published on its website a press release stating that “recent seismic events in Poland Township (Mahoning County) … show a probable connection to hydraulic fracturing.” This finding is of both scientific and political significance. People in cities like Youngstown are voting on ballot issues to permit fracking within their communities, with wells as close as 150 feet of their homes.
I’ve long admired street photographers, those expert snapshot takers whose images somehow combine transient beauty with eternal truth. At the same time, I’ve wondered what kind of personality you’d need to be one.
You’d have to be warm and sensitive enough to notice the human drama unfolding around you, but you’d also have to be callous enough to record that drama regardless of how it affects the people involved.
It sounds like a contradiction, and that’s the perfect description of the subject of Finding Vivian Maier, a film written and directed by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel.
Well, that’s one of two perfect descriptions. The other is “enigmatic.”
The documentary recounts Maloof’s effort to track down the secretive photographer whose work has drawn posthumous comparisons to Diane Arbus and other such luminaries. Maloof’s quest began after he purchased boxes of Maier’s negatives that were put up for auction following her death in 2009.
The Columbus Burlesque Collective is a community for local performers with respect for the art of burlesque, each other and no hierarchy. This is not a troupe. We each provide unique perspectives and talents to promote the art of burlesque.
The art form of burlesque, continues to surge through the counterculture and underground art movements, sometimes peeking it's head into mainstream with Dita Von Teese and misnomers like the recent film with Cher.
During the 40s, 50s and 60s, American cities were dotted with burlesque theaters, all receiving their share of performers – local and on the circuit. There were unions for the performers, contracts and promotions in the newspapers. The art of the tease – striptease – evolved from vaudeville. Hollywood made films about it (Lady of Burlesque with Barbara Stanwyck, and Gypsy with Natalie Wood) and Gypsy Rose Lee had a successful television talk show for a time too.
Shortly before the Columbus City Council election last November, The Free Press ran an article about the candidates’ positions on whether public access TV should be restored in Columbus. (The Free Press, Oct. 31 – Nov. 6) It’s now clear that when the article came out, the incumbent candidates were hiding more than just their positions on the issue. They and the rest of council were deceiving the public.
Independent candidate Nicholas Schneider made his support for public access TV a major issue in his 2013 campaign. Republican candidates Brian Bainbridge and Greg Lawson also expressed support for restoring it. But the Democratic incumbent candidates, Troy Miller, Eileen Paley and Priscilla Tyson, kept silent about the issue.
The three challengers used The Free Press article as an opportunity to further explain why they think public access TV is important for the community. The incumbent candidates didn’t respond to The Free Press’ requests for their positions.
It would have been hard to miss the reports of earthquakes, explosions, lack of clean air, nosebleeds and more attributed to fracking. These type of stories have been all over every form of media imaginable in recent years. But according to Energy In Depth (EID), a campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, those stories have apparently been drowning out the real story—that fracking is somehow responsible for the drop in carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, this group actually released a video on Earth Day thanking shale gas and fracking for decreasing emissions. You have to see it—and its out-of-context remarks and data—to believe it. The Natural Resources Defense Council also found the video to be off-base, tweeting as much Tuesday morning. That led to a back-and-forth between the organizations, in which EID revealed that it didn’t understand the concept of fracking sacrificing communities. The video in question includes commentary and data from the likes of President Barack Obama and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Jude Law pulls out all the stops as a profane, bipolar ex-con in Dom Hemingway. Scarlett Johansson leaves the stops pushed all the way in as an alien seductress in Under the Skin.
Though the films are polar opposites, they have two things in common: Both are based in the UK, and both match the personalities of their leading characters.
Dom Hemingway, written and directed by Richard Shepard (The Matador), is loud, abrasive and strangely inconsistent. Though it mostly mirrors the demeanor of the title character during his most reckless and over-the-top moments, it eventually gets bogged down in sentimentality. Moreover, the “plot” really consists of two tacked-together storylines that have little to do with each other.
It’s a shame, because Law’s hair-triggered, verbally explosive safecracker might be fun to watch if the film around him weren’t so incompetently made. The linguistic fireworks begin with the first scene, when the imprisoned Dom expounds on the attributes of his male member (“My cock should hang at the Louvre...”) while being serviced by a fellow inmate.