Cover Story
Valentine’s Day: A Supreme (Court) celebration of equality
[photos by Nerissa Sparkman] It’s a weird time to celebrate love. Racial and homophobic attacks are on the rise, and the stated platform of the ruling political party includes rolling back marriage equality, kicking out immigrants and a whole host of other things that screech xenophobia, isolation and bigotry. A white-nationalist movie producer, bigoted propaganda…
A series of illusions: Stage combat classes keep local actors from injury
There’s a big guy standing in front of me. Fists up, ready for action. He’s maybe 6 feet 2 inches and at least 250 pounds. He’s eying me with an intense, menacing stare. His fist flashes towards my face, my head snaps to the side and a syllable of pain and surprise bursts from my…
10 things to do under $5 this week in Louisville (2/13)
MONDAY Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Santa Sangre” Seidenfaden’s Free | 9:30 p.m. Mondo Video Night (the weekly “high brow, low brow, cult, doc and music” video series) is hosting a screening of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Santa Sangre.” It is a Mexican-Italian surrealist horror film (aka bat-shit crazy) that is filled with plenty of WTF moments that need to…
UofL Foundation Reverses Course, Won’t Independently Review Oklahoma Real Estate Deal
This article was produced by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit newsroom from Louisville Public Media. Read more at kycir.org. This story is a follow-up to an article by the same author, who reported in October of 2016 that The University of Louisville Foundation bought an empty Factory in Oklahoma to help out a donor. University…
5 Things To Do This Weekend in Louisville (2/10)
FRIDAY Galentine’s Day Celebration Block Party Handmade Boutique Donation (A box of tampons or pads) | 6 p.m. Galentine’s Day (first introduced by Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope in “Parks and Recreation”) is a holiday dedicated to “ladies celebrating ladies.” There will be live music by Twenty First Century Fox and The Feedback, beer from West…
LEO Presents: Phourist and the Photons live in studio
Here’s the latest installment of our new video series, where we ask local musicians to come to our studio to perform three songs, acoustically (although our version of acoustic is a little loose, basically meaning no electric guitars). This time, it’s Phourist and the Photons, whose usually keys-heavy, dynamic, experimental rock is stripped down here…
Dark coffee: LEO’s expulsion from Sunergos, the facts and why you should care
This is one of those reasons LEO was started in 1990. On Monday, Sunergos Coffee called LEO to ask that the paper no longer be distributed at its shops. The business has since cited the “family-friendly” environment of its shops and “the increasingly sexually explicit content and advertising.” The call was made before we published…
Here is how Mitch McConnell is deceitful and soulless — and just plain sucks
My dad, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, has known U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell for four decades, for so long that he and a more-reasonable McConnell were even political allies early on. But his view changed during McConnell’s three decades in the Senate, as he told fellow Democrats at a 2013 dinner: “I can be really brief…
Download your free, collectible illustration of Sen. Warren by a former Louisville artist
Former Louisville illustrator Chris Nolen, a self-described “socialist that grew up on punk,” was so outraged by the scurrilous treatment by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Sen. Elizabeth Warren that he memorialized the event on paper. You can download a free, 18×24 copy of this illustration for printing, but Nolen asked only that you donate…
LEO Podcast #45: Recently Released, with music from James Lindsey, Anwar Sadat and Christian Johns
Three LEO contributors talk about — and listen to — recently-released local songs from James Lindsey, Anwar Sadat and Christian Johns.
GOP kills KY stream protections, works to erase Obama legacy
The decimation of President Obama’s legacy continued last week as Congress used an obscure law to reverse recently-approved rules, including an environmental regulation that is crucial to Kentucky. Using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), lawmakers and President Trump repealed the Stream Protection Rule, an Interior Department directive that stopped coal companies from mining within 100…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst & Best
Lest ye cast the first stone… | Rose Leave it to Gov. Matt “Holier than Thou” Bevin to make a great decision, and then pollute it with his reasoning. He ordered that criminal-history boxes be removed from initial applications for state jobs. Great! But then, Bevin ruined the glow by saying he was following the…
Local musicians breakdown their songs on the 2017 Louisville Is For Lovers compilation
This year’s Louisville Is For Lovers compilation features 27 original songs from local musicians, covering all of the different directions love can take us. This year’s version is available on CD (300 copies) and through the Louisville is for Lovers Bandcamp page. And there are two shows surrounding the release: CD Release show Feb. 10…
A Q&A with River Whyless about their new record and public radio
Last year brought us the big breakout of Americana quartet River Whyless. And the Asheville-based band already has an impressive itinerary outlined for 2017: Bonnaroo, SXSW, Savannah Stopover, Mountain Jam, Hogs For The Cause, Old Settler’s and Green River are all part of the plan. But their exciting run actually begins here in Louisville. We…
Album Review: Wicked Garden — Demo
There is a fine line between straightforward hardcore and noisy indie, but Wicked Garden walk that tightrope ably. The breakdowns are big and heavy, as should be expected, but there is a subtle undercurrent of early-Weezer, or something like that, albeit as filtered through Bleach-era Nirvana soaked grunge, and Suicidal Tendencies-style thrash. It’s the right…
Album Review: Kaleidico — Afro·brain
The broken, distorted audio of Jeffrey Dahmer talking about being stuck in his own head and spinning out of control in the intro certainly sets the dark path that Kaleidico’s Afro·brain embarks on. But, the record is not about serial killers or demented crimes — it’s about how you consume your thoughts. More electronic, but…
Album Review: James Lindsey — Same Sky
In a variety of ways, Same Sky represents the newest evolution for James Lindsey. It’s hard to put a finger exactly on that change, but the record feels simultaneously mature and focused by comparison — an artist realizing their fullest potential. There aren’t a lot of tracks here, but that’s okay: what Lindsey lacks in…
Album Review: Anwar Sadat — Ersatz Living
Merciless and severe, Ersatz Living is the latest document of a band unflinching in the face of change. Anwar Sadat has refined their punk fury, with songs that are informed equally by German industrial and no-wave noise. Gone is the hook-laden angular indie of their earliest work, replaced by a mechanical precision that serves as…
Alley Theater’s ‘Waiting for Godot,’ a darkly-wonderful buddy story
Whether by coincidence, or by design, it was fine timing that The Alley Theater’s new production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” opened on Groundhog Day. Over the years, lots of folks have noted that Beckett’s play and Bill Murray’s film feature folks who are caught on a hamster wheel of thwarted hope. Of course,…
Not your great-grandfather’s ‘Mikado,’ operetta reimagined for modern audiences
With characters cast with such ridiculous names as Pooh-bah, Pish-tush, Yum Yum and Pitti-Sing, it is difficult to imagine the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “The Mikado” being played for anything but laughs. The rapid-fire singing and ding-dong dialog keeps the thing humming along at a dizzying pace, with an appropriately nonsensical plot. Which is just…
DJ Dangler: ‘other people suck, too’
All that it took to launch DJ Dangler on his stand-up comedy career was a friend’s assurances that he couldn’t suck more than the ones he had seen. That was good enough for Dangler to decide to move to New York City, where he moved from joke writer to performer. And when Dangler’s nerves tried…
Mayan Cafe conquers boundaries with good flavor
It has been 30 years since Bruce Ucán came to Louisville from the Yucatan region of Southern Mexico, home of the ancient Mayan culture. For just about all of that time, Ucán has been cooking for us, to our great delight. It started with a big, blue taco truck cruising suburban construction sites, only to…
Golden age or Bust?: The future of Louisville’s restaurant scene
On the very last day of what seemed like the Voldemort of years, 2016, I read a Thrillist article about the restaurant industry nationally, titled, “There’s a massive restaurant industry bubble, and it’s about to burst,” by Kevin Alexander. I read it, mulled over it for a bit and allowed its vast implications to seep…
Falls City Neighborhood Series, and goodbye BBC St. Matt
Falls City Brewing Co. made headlines recently when it announced a move to a new space, with a new brewhouse. Falls City had been brewing draft beers here in Louisville but the bottled products have been contract brewed in Nashville. When the new brewery, at 1301 W. Main St., becomes operational later this year, all…
Ask Minda Honey: ‘Hey, Don’t I Know You?’ Edition
This week, I’m answering questions from folks I-Know-Who-Would-Rather-Not-Be-Known-By-You. In a relationship jam? Lemme unstuck your life: askmindahoney@leoweekly.com. Q: I just moved to Louisville and am craving a social life. I’ve got kids and a job and not a lot of money. Where can I tap into engaging conversation with interesting people? —Because Only Rich Extroverts…
News of the Weird
Work of a Researcher “Field work is always challenging,” explained Courtney Marneweck of South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal in a recent journal article, but studying the sociology of a white rhino’s dung meant developing a “pattern-recognition algorithm” to figure out “smell profiles” of 150 animals’ feces — after tracking them individually to observe them in…
Savage Love: Wilbur & Rensselaer
Last week, I spoke at the Wilbur Theater in Boston and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Audience members submitted their questions on tiny cards before the show, allowing them to remain anonymous while forcing them to be succinct. Here are some of the questions I didn’t have time to get to at…
Milo Yiannopoulos won
“My words can’t be held against me I’m not caught up in your law” — Ol’ Dirty Bastard Make no mistake, Milo Yiannopoulos being prevented from pontificating a blue streak of bullshit — duct-taped together with smeary data and then pepper sprayed with hyper-convoluted visions of a roaming doom that has already laid waste to…
What unifies white, black, brown
There are many things on my mind as we change administrations. I’ve been trying to understand what happened, just like most of America. Some folks have called it a “black-lash,” but I don’t see this as the whole story. Certainly, there is an amplified voice given to inane racist rhetoric, and, for that, I fault…
Resistance vs. Obstruction
After eight years of complaining about the Mitch McConnell-led Republican obstructionism, many Democrats, including me, face a crisis of conscience: Do we become what we deplored and decried by doing all we can to make Donald Trump’s presidency one term, obstructing every policy and action, while keeping government impotent for four years? Or do we…
Your Voice
on that pussy hat, though Thank you! — Mary Brown Feiock Amen. — Jennifer Hagan I don’t disagree with what she says about black voters being disenfranchised, black children being killed, etc. However, the pussy hats were not made for white women alone. In fact, one of the two women who started the pussy hat…
