U of L’s Jazz Week is a sweet deal
There’s no real good explanation as to why there was so little on the consistently-fine UofL Jazz Week in this week’s print version of LEO. Maybe if we had more pages…. Alas, we don’t, which is really why you’re (hopefully) reading about it here. Getting to it, UofL’s Jazz Week — which runs Wednesday through…
Erosia
LEO welcomes letters that are brief (250 words max) and thoughtful. Ad hominem attacks will be ignored, and we need your name and a daytime phone number. Send snail mail to EROSIA, 640 S. Fourth St., Louisville, Ky. 40202. Fax to 895-9779 or e-mail to leo@leoweekly.com. We may edit for length, grammar and clarity. Besten…
Faith comes in many variations
Some local clergy have charisma coming out of every pore. They tell of a heaven with golf courses and many other enjoyable things. Another alleged truth they convey is that your deceased loved ones are waiting for you to join them in this place of supreme happiness. They tell those who don’t have everything figured…
Bluegrass Report: Fletcher’s post-pardon blues
As Gov. Ernie Fletcher sails into his third tumultuous year in office — after having arrived as the heroic new captain of the USS Kentucky Republican Party — the rough seas are only getting rougher for him, and there appears no sign of smooth sailing anytime soon. Last week was certainly one of the worst…
Message to the People: God bless Black Jack  and damn the war
Like many people who grew up in mega-city ghettoes, I have a very small circle of friends. As my oldest friend Kerry Norwood says, “Choosing a bad friend in our neighborhood could get you killed.†Very true. Thankfully, I met a good friend in 1992 when I moved to Lexington from Atlanta — Keith Jackson…
Your Weekly Reeder: Clock’s running on the arena  but there will be other games
The arena debate is wearing us all out. It’s like it used to be with basketball teams coached by Rick Pitino. They would press and press and press until the other team cracked. Now, fearing another debacle with no end game, like the Ohio River bridges, we have reached the point where some are saying…
Rumblings From the World of Sports
The truth. This year’s U of L Cardinals are simply a very mediocre basketball team. Whether it’s injuries (hey, a lot of teams are hurting), youth (hmmm, Kansas starts all first- and second-year guys), chemistry (this team couldn’t distinguish H20 from CO2), hoops savvy (quotient: nada) or recruiting (paging Chris Lofton), these Cards just don’t…
What a Week
Unmitigated gall Gov. Fletcher briefly transferred his powers to Lt. Gov. Pence so the governor could have his gall bladder removed. The gall bladder — the body’s metaphorical repository for repressed anger — had been shot full of lead by vice president Dick Cheney. (In Cheney’s defense, it’s hard to draw a bead on Fletcher…
Cruel and unusual?
It’s hard to say who in their right mind would actually want to read every column LEO founder John Yarmuth has written since 1990, but the LEO office has recently had at least one potentially sadomasochistic visitor asking for them. A little background: Yarmuth, who is running in the 3rd Congressional District Democratic primary against…
Live and help live
A bill in the general assembly would allow for the creation of a localized Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Here’s why that’s essential. Trish Seitz loves frogs. She can’t tell you why; she just does. Toy frogs are everywhere in her apartment — at the foot of the mantel, on the mantel; the entire bathroom is…
For an anything goes form of fighting, Mixed Martial Arts does seem to have a lot of rules.
Here is what’s not allowed: 1. Butting with the head.2. Eye gouging of any kind.3. Biting.4. Hair pulling.5. Fish hooking.6. Groin attacks of any kind.7. Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent.8. Small joint manipulation.9. Striking to the spine or the back of the head.10. Striking downward…
These guys are cagey: Mixed Martial Arts fights its way toward the mainstream
Thumping heavy music blares over loudspeakers. The crowd in the small gymnasium grows louder. At the rear, a grim-faced man with a shaved head and tattoos emerges from the locker room. By all appearances, he has a bad attitude. He shadowboxes. He hops around a bit, then gets patted down before entering a black chain-link…
Comedy/Karaoke
WED FEB 22 316 Ormsby Open Mic — Comedy Akiko’s Karaoke Brewskees Karaoke w/ Tricia Brickyard Sports Bar Open Mic/DJ Terry Comedy Caravan Henry Cho Creeker’s Bar & Grill Karaoke w/ Dirty Dan Gaslite Tavern Karaoke w/ Larinso Good Times Pub Karaoke Jim Porter’s Karaoke J.T.’s Variety Club Karaoke, The Summit Bros. Main Menu Karaoke…
Plugged in
WED FEB 22 Air Devil’s Inn: Serpent Wisdom Bluegrass Brewing Co.: Open Americana Jam Brickyard Sports Bar: Open mic/DJ Terry Bulldog Café: Open Jam — Country Cactus Jack’s: Mike Owens Café Lou Lou: Larry Abrams jazz trio Diamond Pub & Billiards: Big Rock Show Dutch’s Tavern: Kimmet & Doug Highlands Tap Room: Open Stage w/…
Five Important Questions With Johnny Berry & the Outliers
Oh, sweet honky tonk … of bar fights and late nights, of pedal steel guitars and 12-bars, of scratchy throats and quarter notes, of love lost and cookies tossed, of depression and regression, of ass-shakin’ and love-makin’, of dirty boots and country music roots, from Nashville to Kentucky, the Carolinas to the Plains, on the…
Love, for better or worse, is in the air: Edith Frost sings of it; Pine Club/Reading break up over it
Edith Frost collects novelty records. Some of them are weird, like her set of music that’s badly sung, purposefully or not. She keeps playlists of songs that contain an extraordinary amount of laughing. She also has one for tunes purportedly sung by ventriloquist dummies. The Texas native and current Chicago denizen also has a beefy…
Video Tapeworm: Releases through Feb. 28
APARTMENT 12 1995; DVD $24.95, R Mark Ruffalo, current darling of the crossover art-film crowd, made this a decade ago and it’s been quietly fermenting ever since. Aka: “Life/Drawing†(circa 1999) and “Low Rent,†it’s an ensemble piece with Mark as a down-on-his-luck artist trying to break up with a girl who winds up living…
Aftertastes
Quality of Meal: 3 = Good; 4 = Very good; 5 = Extraordinary. Price Range: $ = $10 or less; $$ = $20 or less; $$$ = $30 or less; $$$$ = more than $30. (Per person for a meal without tip or tax.) HA = Wheelchair accessible. Descriptions are summaries of previously published dining…
Nibbles
Mardi Gras celebrationsThe Old Stone Inn in Simpsonville, Ky., will host a Mardi Gras Feast on Tuesday, Feb. 28, from 5-10 p.m. Expect a buffet featuring seafood chowder, chicken gumbo, chicken and sausage jambalaya, blackened fish and chicken, and a low country boil of corn on the cob, red bliss potatoes, shrimp and crawfish tails.…
Mid City Mall’s #1 Asian Buffet means ‘trouble’ for food fans
Comedian John Pinette, the big guy Jerry and the gang made fun of for his size in the series finale of “Seinfeld,” used to have a bit in his stand-up routine dedicated to his love/hate relationship with Chinese buffets. He loved them; they hated him. He would mimic the staff’s directives to him. “You here…
Arts & Entertainment
Special Events Portland Museum presents Michael W. Farmer’s “Inside Out” exhibit, Feb. 23-April 28, opening reception Feb. 23, 5:30pm, 2308 Portland Ave., 776-7678.••African American Heritage Foundation presents “One More River to Cross,” silent auction and benefit, Feb. 24, 5:30-7pm, $25, Kentucky Center, 200 S. Fifth St., 583-4100.Mardi Gras Louisville fund-raising benefit parade and parties, Feb.…
Community Listings
Special Events ••Frazier Museum presents Noah Andre Trudeau, a chronicle of brave, colored troops in Civil War, Feb. 22, 7:30pm, $10 members, $12 adults, $5 students, 753-5663.Project ChildSafe promotes gun safety by distributing free gun locks, Feb. 22-24, 12-6pm, Dick’s Sporting Goods, 7900 Shelbyville Rd.; Feb. 25-26, 12-6pm, Kmart, 4025 Poplar Level Rd., www.projectchildsafe.org.Deer Park…
Theater Review – Sweet Bird of Youth
Luck has run out for Chance in “Sweet Bird of Youth,” the Tennessee Williams play currently in production at the Ogle Center at Indiana University Southeast. Chance Wayne’s youthful indiscretions catch up with him when he returns to his hometown of St. Cloud, a Gulf Coast city where the 1950s personalities are as stifling as…
Theater Review – Beyond Therapy
The Wayward Actors Company seems to be an ambitious group. They have myriad sponsors, a mission statement that appears to include everything from Shakespeare to Beckett and an all-inclusive Web site. You can even buy a Wayward Actors wall clock if the spirit moves you. And as a former theater producer, I would like to…
Jewish Film Fest reflects a wide range of Jewish issues
One of the great challenges for Jewish artists seems to be that they must remind people that there is no single Jewish perspective. Christians can’t find consensus on issues like birth control and gay rights, and Muslims struggle with the role of secular institutions, so why should Jews be of one mind? Unsurprisingly, the Jewish…
Staff Picks
Friday, Feb. 24Mardi Gras Louisville Fat Friday is looking a little different this month. For the nearly 200 New Orleans families living in Louisville due to Hurricane Katrina, this one’s for you: We’re putting on our own version of a Mardi Gras party and parade with floats, costumes, street musicians and … beads, we hope. Granted,…
A better mousetrap: ‘Whose Line’ stars bring improv to the Palace
Colin Mochrie first appeared in the British version of the hit improvisation show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” in 1991. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship between himself, his fellow actors and audiences worldwide, in part because of the show’s syndication on Comedy Central. Working regularly on stage with Ryan Stiles, Josie Lawrence,…
