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Happy Chichester’s musical interest began with drumming, which took over around age seven when a friend of a friend sat down at his dad’s kit and played Batman. He claims drums and drumming are a lifelong obsession. From Batman, to Mad magazine, to Kurt Vonnegut books and the Kinks, Happy has “always appreciated stuff that could humorously satirize culture, though it seems to be getting harder to do.” Happy was part of the infamous local band Ray Fuller and the Bluesrockers and was bassist for one of the most successful bands to come out of Columbus in the ‘80s, the Royal Crescent Mob, which signed with Warner Bros. subsidiary Sire Records in ‘89. When the Mob broke up, Happy joined Howlin’ Maggie, which signed with Columbia Records. Happy is currently a solo artist and runs his own record label, Pop Fly, with his wife Laura. He is now a songwriter, arranger, keyboard and guitar player in addition to bass and drums.

Don't ask me why or even why now but allow me to say I feel like I'm obeying some unseen giant cosmic force that is haunting me with the following command: "Bring Bunny Wailer's two albums, 1977's magnificent "Protest" and the nearly equal "Blackheart Man" from 1976, to light for they have been too long ignored by the Marley-gorging reggae-loving public. Do it now, do it this week and don't blow your deadline, dummy." Not exactly 'God said to Abraham, kill me a son,' I know. But I also don't know why I have been returning to these two fine albums so much lately. I mean, I wouldn't be caught dead listening to Bob Marley because he was a peace-mongering pothead who eventually blew his mind out in a car-sized bong, partying til his brain turned to cancerous mush. Sad, really. Seriously, I haven't listened to a Bob album in years other than a deluxe copy of Exodus half-a-decade ago. I ponder. I know. I listen to Neville O'Riley Livingston, original member of the Wailers along with Peter Tosh and Marley, because these two albums are distinctly soul-reggae.

And now in at the end of 2013, Canadian Dan Boeckner is once again paling around our fair city. At least that was the aura of the unveiling of Operators, a new project Mr. Boeckner has with Sam Brown, the Columbus Minister of being a professional drummer and a musical Statesman as well. To create repeated anomaly context aside from saying the Divine Fits have spawned a project now that a new Spoon record calls Brit Daniels away; Dan Boeckner’s other projects include Wolf Parade, and the Handsome Furs. When I say Sam Brown, of course you must also think Gaunt, New Bomb Turks, V-3, the Sun, RJD2, and Anna Ranger. When I say Devojka you should say, “how do I pronounce that,” and ask “whom” and then will later say ‘oh the tall female keyboardist of Operators.’ I say all of that to say this: Double Happiness felt really intimate, and almost “house partyish” for the second performance of Operators.

DJ Rich NYCe, used two recent Hip Hop events, Elevator Music’s (614) Summer Jam and the Second Annual Polar Showcase as the framework to make a documentary about a couple of our city's Hip Hop scenes. “There are 11 stories of various lengths. I fused some live performance footage and a couple videos to make one major project.” DJ Rich NYCe is a Columbus Hip Hop veteran, so he has a vantage point. NYCe was born in Guyana and grew up in New York but he has lived in Columbus since the 90s. He is a founding member of Usual Suspects DJ Crew whose membership boasts DJ O-Sharp, J-Rawls, Krate Digga, King Sev and Brooklyn Butcher. Rich currently deejays at Republic on Fridays. You don’t have to be an OG DJ to be familiar with some of the film’s main subjects: King Vada, J. Rawls, Rashad and the 3rd, P. Blackk, Exec Gang, Cocky Club, Luxury League and Fabrashay A. But Rich also wants to introduce you to a few new faces such as Ceezer, Ella Star and Armond Wake Up. The project developed from the documentation that Rich’s online radio station, Pulse Radio, was doing as a media co-sponsor for both events. Rich is the station manager of Pulse Radio.

Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The site has been infiltrated by organized crime. There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the United States. But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison. Taro Yamamoto, a Japanese legislator, says the law “represents a coup d’etat” leading to “the recreation of a fascist state.” The powerful Asahi Shimbun newspaper compares it to “conspiracy” laws passed by totalitarian Japan in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, and warns it could end independent reporting on Fukushima. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been leading Japan in an increasingly militaristic direction. Tensions have increased with China. Massive demonstrations have been renounced with talk of “treason.” But it’s Fukushima that hangs most heavily over the nation and the world. Tokyo Electric Power has begun the bring-down of hot fuel rods suspended high in the air over the heavily damaged Unit Four. The first assemblies it removed may have contained unused rods.

With the utterance of one word on a voicemail, everything changed, even though he only “half” meant it. Up until the time Jonathan Martin released that recording, the going reaction to his allegations of harassment and abuse by Richie Incognito was that was just the way things were in the NFL, that the process of breaking a person down, of stripping away any semblance of dignity from a person except for the kind prescribed to him by the higher-ups was a natural, downright moral process. And yet, when it came out that this process took on a racist tone, suddenly it was unacceptable. But what did that word really change?

This past Thursday December 5, Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s greatest fighters for freedom, passed away after a life of struggle a the age of 95. Politicians from Raul Castro to Ted Cruz were quick to release statements offering their condolence and talking about how Mandela inspired them. President Barack Obama was no different saying that “his journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings and countries can change for the better” and he could not imagine his life without Mandela’s example. Yet today the United States continue to hold political prisoners, one of those prisoners is Oscar López Rivera. Oscar López Rivera is a Puerto Rican nationalist who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in 1981 for the crime of wanting to see a Puerto Rico free from United States colonialism. 32 years later he still remains imprisoned in Terre Haute, Indiana and has become one of the world’s longest serving political prisoners, serving 5 more years than Mandela did under apartheid.

On December 2, 2013, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a public meeting on “Waste Confidence” in Perrysburg, OH. The NRC has “confidence” that the high-level radioactive nuclear waste problem will be solved sometime in the future! In 1984, in an Orwellian act, they ruled that they can continue to hand out new licenses for nuclear power reactors and give 20-year license extensions to aging, brittle, accident prone nuclear reactors – without considering public concerns about the safety, storage and disposal of thousands of tons of radioactive waste. The NRC also maintained that high-level radioactive waste is a “generic” issue. So issues specific to particular sites – such as the amount of waste accumulating in overcrowded fuel pools or in aged, deteriorated casks, or in areas prone to flood or earthquake—cannot be raised. A year ago, after legal action by a group of organizations, including the Sierra Club, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC overturned the NRC waste confidence ruling. This forced the NRC to halt all licensing of reactors.

The universe has a uncanny knack for adding perspective whenever popularity gets confused with significance. The actor Paul Walker was popular. Nelson Mandela was significant. Fox News should not be counted in the ranks of admirers of the revolutionary lion turned honored statesman. Cynics say there’s little difference in cable news, but sometimes the differences are obvious and stark. While CNN and MSNBC honored Mandela by turning over their evening programming to covering his life and times, Fox News stayed on message by largely relegating Mandela’s passage to the news crawl and pounding away with their anti-Obamacare propaganda. The media gossip site, Mediaite went deep into CNN, MSNBC and Fox’s coverage (or lack of) of Mandela’s passage and the clear loser lagging behind the field was the “news” network led by hardcore right-wingers Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. Hardly a surprise considering everything Mandela stood for are the very things Fox News is against. I flipped the television from Rachel Maddow interviewing Ron Dellums to Megan Kelly chatting amiably with a medal-winning soldier.

Dear Editor We’re extremely disappointed that the Ohio House would gut an effective 10-year-old bipartisan law at the request of the debt settlement industry. It should raise eyebrows that during committee hearings, the industry trade group was the sole proponent of the bill, while numerous pro-consumer groups offered compelling arguments against the bill. HB 173 is a bad deal for consumers and Ohio doesn’t need it. We already have effective regulation for the debt settlement industry in the 2004 Ohio Debt Adjusters Act, which was put in place for a reason. While industry would have you believe HB 173 adds regulations to keep out “bad actors,” this is a smoke screen. HB 173 includes safeguards that are already in effect under the Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule of 2010.