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Though he now teaches humanities at Columbus State, Bill Cook has spent time behind bars. He called on that experience while writing his latest play, State of Control, the story of a man who blunders his way into a prison cell.
Speaking about the play last week, Cook explained that his own prison experience was as an employee, not an inmate.
“I worked at the Franklin County jail back in the ’70s,” said Cook, 62. “I sold candies and so on to prisoners from the commissary. I would take it up on the various floors and pass it through the bars.”
While he was not serving a sentence, Cook remembers the sensation of being trapped after passing through two locked doors in order to do his work. “I got this odd feeling I was locked into my job.”
Directed by Matt Hermes and presented by Cook’s own troupe, A&B Theatricals, State of Control begins a two-week run on Friday. At the center of the tale is Stan (played by Ben Gorman), an accountant who becomes the fall guy for an embezzlement scheme and pays for it with a prison sentence.
In the playwright’s eyes, being imprisoned is the average American’s greatest fear, surpassing even cancer.

Imagine you’re in your final audition for a role you’ve always wanted to play. Standing fewer than 40 feet away judging your performance is the character you’re supposed to be playing.
That was the challenge facing Jason Kappus, who plays Bob Gaudio in the musical Jersey Boys. Kappus and company present the two-and-a-half hour musical Sept. 17-29 at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St).
 
 
Gaudio, who wrote most of the lyrics for the show based on the lives and times of the Four Seasons, played an active role in the casting of the show.
 
 
“That was a little bit nerve wracking having him look on while I was trying to be him,” Kappus says. “The best advice I got was right before my final audition. The associate director told me the role Bob cares the least about in the show is Bob Gaudio. It’s his wife Judy that you have to impress. Apparently that went well.”

Natural disasters and mass shootings, like the ones last Monday make me sad. Certainly the loss of life and reasonless destruction involved are always horrible, and I say my prayers/pour one out as best as any concerned citizen can. But there's another, less unsavory reason, that they give me a case of the feels. Upon first reaction, they tend to mess up all of my great perfect-in-theory anarchist ideas and the inherent oppressive nature of the police and military.
Police brutality is a problem. The militarization of the police is a problem. Our surveillance state is a problem. A country on a permanent war footing is a problem, and the problems are a direct result of what we understand the function of a state or of a government to be.

 This is as deep as Vampire Weekend got for me Monday night outdoors at the LC Pavilion, as I pondered how to describe the Brooklyn band's South African township-meets-new-wave music.
 A quirky swirl?
 A swirl of quirk?
 A swirly quirk?
 Or maybe a Spockian shock to Captain Kirk?
 Well, any old way, I didn't start out annoyed by them. Quite the contrary, photographing their first three songs, I was close enough to untie front man Ezra Koenig's sneakers so it wasn't hard to get caught up in their huge energy, their dynamic drummer's pounding, their bassist's below-the-waist knee-knocking contortions and Koenig's rather arresting onstage persona of Donny Osmond, Elvis and David Byrne. Then, by the fourth song, as I moved into the crowd the excitement wore off.
 I guess that's what drug users call a "rush", huh? Or so I have read.

If there is one thing Democrats and Republicans in Congress can agree upon, it’s ending the epidemic of rape against female soldiers now. Sadly and painfully, it took the rape and murder of female soldiers from Ohio to finally convince Congress to act. But whether the rapes – along with sexual harassment and mysterious deaths – of female soldiers actually end, is left to be seen.

In my last column, I panned the U.S. Justice Department’s memos that attempted to clarify its clarifications concerning marijuana enforcement in the states where the plant enjoys a legal framework. It seemed like business as usual. Arrest. Prosecution. Jail.

This column is a different matter. I laud Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama Administration for steering the country in the right direction when it comes to mandatory minimum sentencing and consequent drug policy in general.

On August 12, 2013, AG Holder delivered remarks at the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, sounding more like Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance than the top U.S. cop. The speech concerned mandatory minimum sentencing laws that require binding prison terms of defined lengths for individuals convicted of certain federal and state crimes.

ACTION ALERT:   
OCTOBER 15—CRITICAL “WASTE CONFIDENCE” MEETING IN TOLEDO AREA
 
 
If you want to do one thing to oppose nuclear power this year, this is it. In June of 2012, a critical win in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of groups including the Sierra Club and the DC Court of Appeals, overruled the “Waste Confidence” decision of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Since 1984, the NRC has maintained that it has “confidence” that a solution will be found for disposing of high-level radioactive waste -- defined as the used, irradiated fuel rods from nuclear power reactors. The NRC maintained that waste is a “generic” issue, so no entity could legally oppose a license or license extension based on the fact that waste could be a problem. Issues such as large amounts of waste accumulating on sites, or in overcrowded fuel pools, or in aged, deteriorated casks, or in areas prone to flood or earthquake -- could not be brought up.    
With the court ruling, the NRC has halted all license proceedings that rely on Waste Confidence.  This includes FirstEnergy’s application for a license extension at Davis-Besse.

We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
 
 
There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focused on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.
 
 
Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.
 
 
Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.
 
 
The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.
 
 
Why is this so serious?
 
 

The President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, spoke to Columbus’ Somali community on Sunday, September 22, at the Polaris Hilton hotel and addressed Ohio State students on Monday, September 23. He was greeted by both enthusiastic supporters and protesters in both places. Mohamud is the first official president of Somalia since civil war broke out in 1991. The Federal Republic of Somalia, which formed in 2012 from a series of transitional governments, was officially recognized by the United States in January this year. His visit to Columbus follows a visit to Washington DC to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry and a series of trips around Europe seeking international aid. His trip will culminate at a conference in Brussels as he tries to gather support for his “New Deal for Somalia” conference.
 

Dear Lady Monster,
I'm curious why my girlfriend will suddenly pee on me sometimes during sex. I'll either be going down on her or having sex or masturbating her and then all this pee comes out and everything gets wet. She's not that freaked out by it cause it happens to her all the time. She claims it's not pee. It doesn't smell like pee either. What is it?
 
 
Signed,
Oh My Gush!
 
 
 
 
Dear OMG,
 
It is not pee. It is female ejaculation.
 
The anatomy of a woman's vaginal canal is an extraordinary landscape, filled with nerves, ducts and spongy tissue. This phenomenal architectural network becomes engorged when aroused, like a penis becomes engorged with blood. Some of that network also fills with fluid from the Skene's glands. It is an anatomical feature in every woman.
 
The urethral sponge is where the G-Spot is located. It can be felt through the vaginal wall, as a harder texture. The location is considered mysterious because it is not stationary. It can shift positions, expand and contract.