Ode to our Cellar Dwellers

September 9th, 2011 by Mau Lanese

Orange and brown, awash in autumn
dogbone hair clips, Jordasche bottom
They gather in Muni and eat foods that are farty
all in the quest for the trophy Lombardi

Leaves in the gutters, clams on the steamer
the overpaid losers roll up in their Beamers
Head to their lockers and strap on the pads
while we order more beers for our hard working dads

Number nineteen jerseys clothe our backs
the line just gave up three more sacks
The running back stabbed by his live in lady
our choice has come down to Derek or Brady?

The fumble, the drive, red right eighty eight and
Kevin Mack crack, don’t drop the ball, Peyton
Art took them to Baltimore, they won a title
our whole city became suicidal

The Cardiac Kids our ever in our hearts
take that old stadium and tear it apart
Steelers fans are pitiful wannabes
our most successful Brownie is still Barnaby

Category: Miscellaneous
Location: Comment

I’m Ready for my Closeup, General Moses: Movies shot in Cleveland

August 18th, 2011 by Mau Lanese

The Marvel studios blockbuster of next year is currently filming here in our little burg. The Avengers combines all the characters from their other box office smashes(Hulk pun fully intended): Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and mercifully, not Punisher. People are excited and there is a buzz downtown. but is this the first time a movie has been filmed here? Of course not. Am I the first person to take this angle? Certainly not. But since I can’t read the PD and all the other blogs in town, I’ll just list past movie moments from my own perspective(so as not to step on any celluloid northcoast toes).

Deerhunter, the Vietnam War/ coalmining town epic from the 70′s starring Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken, had parts shot in Tremont. I believe they are the wedding scenes before the lads ship off to sunny Saigon.

Everyone and their ugly Christmas sweater wearing mother knows A Christmas Story was also filmed in Tremont. As well as Higbee’s(Halle’s for old people, Dillard’s for younger folk) downtown.

I just today rewatched American Splendor. It’s the film about recently deceased underground comics legend Harvey Pekar. He spent his whole life here. I recognized some parts of Lakewood I live by that pass for Cleveland Heights in the film. I guess the Heights was too good to be in a lowly art film(with art film mainstay, Paul Giamatti).

The Oh in Ohio starred Parker Posey, Danny Devito, and Mischa Barton. It featured footage of Coventry. Nobody saw this movie, so I’ll just stop here.

The Battle of Shaker Heights was the second movie financed by Project Greenlight(the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck venture to help aspiring film auteurs). It starred Shia LeBeouf and looked alot like Shaker Heights.

Welcome to Collinwood starred George Clooney. This caper flick(which I have put off seeing several times) takes place in the run down northeast neighborhood. This was long before it became a hipster haven. Or before the recent film fest fave Kill the Irishman, about local mob slob Danny Green, brought the neighborhood to national prominence. Oddly enough, none of Irishman was filmed in Cleveland. It was shot in Detroit. Like most things are in Detroit.

And let’s not forget Light of Day. The Michael J. Fox rock band vehicle featured our own local legend, Trent Reznor performing in Cleveland based scenes.

Howard the Duck was supposed to take place here, but I don’t believe any of it was shot here. Don’t bother watching that snoozefest. Even Leah Thompson couldn’t save it.

Veering from movies into tv, our only real standouts were the Drew Carye Show and Hot In Cleveland. Those weren’t shot locally, but featured footage of local houses in transitional scenes. There are currently two other movies shooting in town. One right down the block from my house. Will C-Town become the next hot city to make a mark in pop culture(ala Portland,Vegas or Austin)? According to traitor LeBron, no. But maybe moviemakers with immense imagination, work ethic and a basic education know a little bit more than an illiterate, pampered, self centered supervillain… Hey wait, get his agent on the phone. We’ve got a part for him!

Category: Miscellaneous
Location: Comment

The Cannoli Doesn’t Fall Far from the Saucepan

August 11th, 2011 by Mau Lanese

This weekend is the Feast of the Assumption in Little Italy. I am going down Saturday to attend a swinging shindig my friend is having at her house located right in the thick of the action. With that, the new season of Jersey Shore(set in Italy) in full swing and my recent culinary ventures in the kitchen(a lot of chicken piccata and breaded eggplant with pesto), I am really feeling my spaghetti bender roots. I thought maybe I’d share some Italian experiences that stand out in my life growing up in Cleveland(or as my older relatives pronounced it, Klev-eh-land).

During the summer months, my family and extended circle of Italian family friends would have giant picnics in the Mayfield Heights area. Lots of homemade pizza served cold, pastries galore, and bocce ball. Lots and lots of bocce ball. I think I learned bocce ball about twenty years before I ever went bowling. The air was thick with several different dialects of the native language, broken English and children speaking English. Quite a model UN of trash talking. Mayfield road is pretty much the Appian Way of Ohio. From Little Italy all the way down to route 91, every neighborhood north or south of this drag is where you can find imported food stores, pizzerias and restaurants that are the closest to authentic one can find in Cuyahoga county. I recently looked up local radio “personality” Mike Trivisonno on the county property taxes website(out of simple curiosity) and discovered there to be about five hundred Trivisonnos in the county. That tells you all you need to know about how Italian Cleveland is.

Sundays in the winter  always meant foggy windows. Spaghetti boiling, sauce simmering, veal braising. The picture windows in Grandma’s house became a giant chalkboard for me to doodle on. “Stop it! It’s going to leave fingerprints!”, I would constantly hear as I conjured my own personal Sistine chapels on the dining room pane. Sundays also involved killing time reading the comics and sales sections(I am a born shopaholic) of the Plain Dealer while waiting for all the vittles to be done. And Walt Disney presents on ABC. Remember that?

Italian weddings always involved polka for some reason. Sure, you got your standard Dean Martin, Sinatra and nowadays, Andrea Bocceli. But I guess in Cleveland, polka becomes the default Electric Slide for old people. I heard my first polka at a family wedding way before I met any actual Polish people or tasted my first cabbage roll. Oh, and even though indoor soccer was a bastardization of real soccer, the Cleveland Force was a huge draw for the fam back in the day. And for even more deeper entrenched Clevelanders, the outdoor Cleveland Cobras! I need one of their jerseys bad.

In this modern adult phase of my life, I try to keep some traditions alive. Pasta on a Sunday, sangria during summer months and a hefty party schedule on Columbus Day are how I do it. Most people overlook Columbus Day(deeming it not politically correct-”he was lost!”). But I try to do it up. Explorer food, Italian psychedelic tunes, and maybe some limoncello this year. I haven’t actually taken in the August feast all that much, but this year promises to be pretty lively. As does Jersey Shore. Mama mia, that was a spicy article!

Category: Miscellaneous
Location: Comment

What I Did on my Summer Staycation: Part 1

July 25th, 2011 by Mau Lanese

So it’s nearing the end of July. According to the calendar, we are only one third of the way through the summer. However, with the blistering heat and outdoor activities that got started back in early June, it feels like we are halfway or further.  Despite all the tornadoes,high profile criminal trials, government protests, flooding, sports rioting and labor disputes, Carmageddons and gas hikes….the living in Cleveland has been sublime.  I attended cookouts, free concerts(Fitz and the Tantrums), pay concerts(Neon Indian), softball games, street fairs, gotten lots of car friendly fast food(White Castle, Sonic, Swenson’s) and sipped many beers on streetside patios(Tremont Taphouse, Mars Bar, B Side). Some highlights:

The first hot days of June saw my dog and I walking several miles up and down the Towpath trail from Rockside up to who knows where. We saw turtles and frogs swimming along the canal with Olympic fervor. The sun baked us into crackly, stumbling adobe clay statues, eventually collapsing and crumbling beneath the Valley View Bridge where our car was parked. We doused ourselves with a gallon of water to keep from dying. This was a harbinger of the hot days to come a month later. To balance out that day, I spent a refreshing evening on the patio of the B Side Lounge in Coventry before the Neon Indian show at the Grog Shop. After the sweaty dance session, I hung out on Euclid Heights boulevard waiting for my ride as rain started to fall. This was before the big “flash mob” phenomenon swept through the neighborhood in the following weeks. Now there is allegedly a six oclock curfew for teenagers in Cleveland Heights. Real fun summer times for the kids. Another toasty day found me sipping beer with the henna queen of Cleveland on her porch just off of Mayfield road in Little Italy during rush hour.

I took a couple stabs at eating ice cream(which I don’t really like) just to get into the summer more. The first time the wife and I met up with the Good Times Tracker at Malley’s in Lakewood. We sat on a streetside bench on Madison avenue taking in the early evening. Then I got a fun summertime surprise! Some miscreants drove by and splashed water in my face from a car. Isn’t that great? Even lower functioning, UFC watching Xbox addicts can have fun in a quirky town like Lakewood by harassing the residents. Anyhow, another attempt at ice cream resulted in Dairy Queen on the steps of the abandoned St.James church on Detroit. Drive in food was also on the unhealthy menu these last few weeks. Sonic in Parma has a fun vibe, decent food, and great limeade shakes. Swenson’s at Broadview and Pleasant Valley has an even more “hang out-y” vibe, great food and enthusiastic servers. On a different note, we sampled the South American fare at Barroco Grill in Birdtown, Lakewood. Very hip little place filled with low brow art and island tunes. I had a succulent Cuban sandwich, while my fellow diners had the house specialty, arrepas(a Venezualan pseudo empanada/wrap). This was followed by beer outside the Mars Bar mere feet from the splashing incident. I did not hear a car backfire and plunge headlong into a Vietnam style flashback as everyone feared I would.

The fourth of July weekend started with a drive out to Lake county the night before, as fireworks peppered the sky above I-90 all the way out there. We had a backyard bonfire and listened to Johnny Depp read the Keith Richards autobiography. How American. A Frenchman reading a British book. The actual day of the fourth I mostly slept on the couch. The next week was the Fitz and the Tantrums free show at the Rock Hall. This was by far the hottest day up to that point. I had to use the Rock hall bathroom to cool off about three times. It was probably dumb to wear a gingham shirt and vest with corduroys, but I suffer for fashion. As did the band. They managed to shake out some soul stompers while also dressed like urban dandies. That night and the following two Wednesdays were spent at the Tremont Taphouse with the mighty Yelp softball team. I am their entire rooting section. They play at Clark fields if anyone wants to come down on Wednesdays at 6:30.

July also witnessed the birth of my new pride and joy, Mistake on the Mlake. This is a podcast featuring my wife and myself, and recorded on the front steps of our house in south central Lakewood. We discuss hot topics filtered through the perspective of a childless and  jaded, young married couple from Ohio. http://soundcloud.com/romansalami/sets Check it out if you want to hear some talk radio with actual substance. Or you can keep listening to Triv and Rover and devolve into a slimy half human slug monster.

Lastly, I would like to invite other Crave staff writers to share what they have done so far this summer. I know all of you, and I know you have all done tons of cool stuff. Get typing! Hopefully my part two will be just as engaging.

Category: Miscellaneous
Location: Comment

Summertime Blues

May 29th, 2011 by Mau Lanese

I used to not be a fan of summer. Decades spent in a childhood home with no air conditioning, and a basement(the only refuge) full of creepy crawlies always made me kind of a summer hater. Since I hit adulthood, it got a little better. A little. A seven year career driving the elderly around in vans that consistently had faulty a/c didn’t help. But the first summer at my first apartment was bliss. It had a window unit(miracle machine!). I would spend afternoons working on our giant stained glass picture window, in a/c, sipping summer beverages. Our second pad was also aired out to the max. I would take the bus(some days lacking a/c) to my work to hop in the not air conditioned work van(double horrible). The rare moments I spent inside air conditioned destinations(hospitals, stores, group homes) was a compact paradise. The third pad had air, too. But this was a house. And I was expected to mow the lawn. Something I hadn’t done since living at my folks’ house. Plus the upstairs of a bungalow(no matter how much you crank the air) is always a sweaty inferno. My poor sis in law had been assigned that room. She spent the whole summer on the couch in the living room. Now I live in my own house, where….wait for it…I have AC capabilities, but it’s busted. And I don’t have the money to fix it. Oy. At least the basement has less creepy crawlies. So, you can see, I am not a big fan of summer. With good reason.

Since getting my own house, though, I have come to embrace the brief respite from winter. I sit on the front stoop at night with my dog, hang in my in law’s backyard boozing or just cruise in my 99 Chrysler(also with busted air). But it’s okay, because my dog likes to have her head out the window the whole time. I could bore you with the cliched Cleveland summertime hotspots(Edgewater, Headlands, bar patios, etc). Instead I will provide you with a summer playlist.

Blue Cheer- Summertime Blues
Mungo Jerry- in The Summertime(with the totally wrong lyric, “have a drink, have a drive…”
Queens of the Stone Age- Feel Good Hit of the Summer
Blue Oyster Cult- This Ain’t the Summer of Love
Big Brother with Janis Joplin- Summertime
Sly and the Family Stone-Hot Fun in the Summertime
The Sunrays(a Beach Boys spinoff)- We All Live for the Sun
Main Source(featuring Nas)- Live at the BBQ

Have a happy memorial day everyone!

Category: Miscellaneous
Location: Comment