Um, but aren’t they, like, undead?

By Ron Rollins | Tuesday, November 10, 2009, 01:21 PM

OK, I’ve gotten lots of goofy entertainment-related press releases and story pitches over the years, but this one from a PR company in NYC that will remain unnamed goes thusly:

Are Vampires Leading Young Girls to a Poor Body Image?

In a time when it is so easy for young girls to be persuaded by the media, are vampires the wrong image to achieve? I work with several clinical psychologists and behavioral health experts who can discuss the negative impact these shows have on body image. Some of the additional topics these experts can discuss are: Are these shows forcing girls into eating disorders? Forcing them to use diet pills? How can these girls embrace their body and have positive body image? How can parents help to combat these stereotypes that young girls are faced with?

All I can say is, now I’ve heard everything.

Hey, wait … you think Paris Hilton might be a vampire?

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The world could end!

By Ron Rollins | Monday, November 9, 2009, 11:17 PM

Funny!

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Mass murder as common culture…

By Ron Rollins | Saturday, November 7, 2009, 09:45 AM

You know, as I was reading the stories about Ft. Hood, I really hadn’t thought about the incident from the point of view this writer takes in a fascinating essay from The Daily Beast…

What do think? Does he have a point?

And if he does, what could be done?

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What’s the library really for?

By Ron Rollins | Friday, November 6, 2009, 01:47 PM

Since Wednesday, the Dayton Metro Library’s home page has sported a big, red-white-and-blue “Thank you” to voters for their support on Nov. 3 of the system’s tax levy — followed by, “We would hug you if we could. Really.”

That’d be about 80,000 hugs. The levy passed handily, throwing a $13.6-million-a-year lifeline to an institution that was foundering in the wake of heavy state budget cuts. The levy won’t make up for all that, but will help keep the doors open at the main library and its 21 branches.

Hugs and happiness aside, however, it seems worth considering what the victory says about us as a society — especially when you consider that according to the Associated Press, voters in Ohio approved levies for 30 library systems around the state last week.

Said the AP: “The Ohio Library Council had estimated that at least 15 percent of the state’s 251 systems had levies or a bond issue on Tuesday’s ballot and said only seven levies and one bond issue failed.” Those were by very slim margins.

Apparently, people still love their local library — even in our Wiki-Google-Yahoo age. With more information at our fingertips than we can possibly consume, why are people still so eager to pay for a big, expensive building full of books?

Tim Kambitsch, director of the Dayton Metro Library, has been musing on that very thing quite a lot this week.

He’s pretty sure there are two main groups who use the library and perceive it differently in this Internet era. One consists of people who want and need to be wired in but can’t afford it at home, and so use the library as their “only place to participate in the digital world.” That group, however, might not vote in great enough numbers to do the trick.

Then, he says, “there is that group of knowledge workers who are heavy Internet users, but may not be big library users for the things they used us for in the past — say, coming here to find that interesting piece of trivia you get so easily online now.

“But that group does see the intrinsic value of libraries; they know they’ve benefited from them in the past, and that other people do now, and they are supportive of that.”

That’s where this gets interesting — and a little abstract.

You may used the library for the audiobooks that make your commute a bit happier (I do), or a community group you belong to may meet there, or you may enjoy borrowing, rather than buying, picture books for your family’s young new reader. But after the practical, there’s something else, it seems.

The Internet, as it has broadened the web of information at our disposal, has also decentralized us — our interactions with each other are faster now, and less often face-to-face. We “meet” without actually going anywhere. We know more about each other, but seem to know each other less.

Do we still, possibly without realizing it, still crave a central place to go? Do we yearn for an emotional town square? And is the library the closest thing we’ve got?

“There is something to the idea of the library as that community gathering point,” Kambitsch said. “We found in our surveys that that informal interaction is one of the most important parts of what people think is important about libraries.

“There’s a writer who talks about ‘the third space’ people need, that isn’t work or home, but is somewhere else that you need to have, and I don’t think people get the same sort of intellectual satisfaction from having it be a lifestyle mall… But if you bump into somebody at the library, you almost feel proud of it — and you really aren’t celebrating the library itself, but the sense of community you both feel.

“It’s hard to nail down, but there is a sense of satisfaction, a sense of serendipity you get.”

Just think: If he’s right, a lot of people were willing to cast their votes, and put their money down, for something very intangibly, communally, cool. Either that, or the hugs.

They’re sort of the same thing, if you think about it.

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Love your e-mail? Hate your e-mail?

By Ron Rollins | Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 08:16 PM

Personally, I love mine.

But either way, there’s something in this interesting essay for you… Read all the way to the bottom, and see if you agree.

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Dang, what a month

By Ron Rollins | Monday, November 2, 2009, 06:16 PM

Well, now that we’re into November, voting happens tomorrow and the clocks are reset, it seems as though we’ve begun the slow slide into Thanksgiving and the holidays… A very nice time of year.

But dang, did anybody notice how much fun it was around here in October?

— DAYTON MUSIC FEST: The month started with a downtown bang when eight bars opened up to more than 30 local indie-rock bands for a great night full of music on Saturday, Oct. 3. The clubs were hopping as bands from the Smug Brothers to Yakuza Heart Attack to — hell, you name it, they were probably playing. My favorite of the night was catching up with the flat-out punk of Luxury Pushers, who rocked the ‘Weed and packed ‘em in. Seeya next year.

— YELLOW SPRINGS STREET FAIR: Where else do you get the mixture of people of all sorts and diverse varieties, than what you get at this event? Downtown YS bubbles over with folks, and this year the picture-perfect fall weather on Saturday, Oct. 10 made the event even more shoulder-to-shoulder. Whether you’re into belly dancing, petition-signing or munching a sloppy sandwich, this event gets better every year.

— MASQUERAGE: The best dress-up-and-dance-your-butt-off party in Dayton moved back to the round barn at the Fairgrounds this year, a great spot for the festivities. With an appropriate “freak show” theme, you got knife-throwers, bearded ladies and circus geeks galore to mix it up with the pole dancers and the barely-clad booty-shakers who kept it all interesting. Oct. 17 was the night, and yet again — the AIDS Resource Center sure-nuff knows how to throw a par-tay. Do not miss this one.

— CREATIVE SOUL OF DAYTON: This community art show of some 200 works from 130 artists was one of many cool outgrowths of the DaytonCREATE movement, and it filled the top floor of the Armory building with tons of great locallly made art. Closing reception and your chance to see it is this Friday, Nov. 6, from 5-10 PM on First Friday. Very good stuff on display, and from some artists you’ve not necessarily seen before. www.creativesouldayton.com for more. Oh yeah, it’s free.

— HARVEST TAVERN DINNERS: My wife and I had the chance, after years of association with Dayton History (full disclosure: I’m on the board) and Carillon Park, to attend one of the “Tavern Dinners” they throw there. You get to eat fare from recipes from the 1830s, right inside Dayton’s oldest building — Newcom Tavern. It’s a fun evening of learning and camaraderie with new friends. Roast bison cooked on an open fire? You want to try it.

OK, those were just a few of things that went on. You also had the Sauerkraut Festival and the Ohio Renaissance Festival, which I didn’t a chance to visit this year, alas. You had the opening of the new “Hello World!” show of attic treasure artworks at the Dayton Art Institute, a very fine show. You had the Garlic Festival at Cox Arboretum and tons of other festivals in the area…

And yep, you also had all that amazingly gorgeous autumnal color and wonderful weather, too.

October in SW Ohio? It’s my favorite month of the year; how about yours?

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Peek behind the curtain at the DAI

By Ron Rollins | Friday, October 30, 2009, 02:20 PM

As you wander through its clean, spacious galleries, the Dayton Art Institute surely seems a big enough place to show off whatever artworks it has to, well, show off.

Ain’t so.

The museum has more than 22,000 items in its collection, from massive metal sculptures to tiny Japanese teacups. Relatively few of them are on regular display, for a variety of reasons — no space on the walls, or because an artwork is too fragile to keep up all the time, or because in some cases, the artwork isn’t actually in the museum’s hands yet.

That’s the case with the two eye-popping paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock that open the DAI’s new exhibition, “Hello World!” with a colorfully impressive kick. A promised bequest to the museum by the late Dayton industrialist and philanthropist Jesse Philips, they’re being shown at the DAI for the first time in more than a decade.

And they’re marvelous. The 1963 “The Painter and his Model” is pure Picasso, all loose and playful colors. Pollock’s “Night Dancer (Green)” from 1944, was created before he began dripping and spilling his paint, and shows clearly where his mind was before that breakthrough. It’s energetic and amazi

They’re surrounded by dozens of other works that DAI chief curator Will South has brought out of hiding for what is billed as a show of “Rarely Seen Art from Our Collection,” the idea being to mark the museum’s 90th birthday with a peek into the storage vaults.

t’s pretty impressive, what they’ve got in there, and South has made the most of it. The exhibition is organized by topics such as “Textiles,” “Landscapes” and “Florals,” which seems simple until you notice the sly ways South used the artworks to blend the topics together and move you easily through the show.

Each area has some stunners: a huge Irish quilt from the 1820s that boasts bold colors and an intricate, modern-seeming design; a delicate Cezanne lithograph of bathers, from 1898, that shows a lighter touch than one sees in his oils; a bright Picasso print of a woman in a hat, from 1962, nicely contrasted with African and Egyptian masks that reveal his influences; a fascinating Persian begging bowl, made of silver; Sheila Metzner’s astonishing 1980 sepia print of the Pyramids, which looks a hundred years older; a lushly erotic photograph of a calla lilly from Robert Mapplethorpe that makes one wonder, When is a flower not a flower?

One thinks, too, at the bittersweetness of knowing that so many fine works of art are here in our midst, in our fair city, and yet are under wraps — even if for good reason. “Please make this a permanent exhibit,” one visitor wrote in the guestbook, an understandable sentiment.

South, who’s been at the DAI about a year, foresees changes emerging from the responses to “Hello World!” A lot of visitors have responded well to the Islamic art in the show, “and we don’t have an Islamic gallery.” The DAI’s very strong photography collection is a big part of the exhibition as well, and he’d like to see more of it shown.

So stay tuned. Meanwhile, keep in mind that “Hello World!” is up until Jan. 3, 2010. For information on times and tickets, visit www.daytonartinstitute.org.

Correction: Several alert readers let me know that I mistakenly flip-flopped the names of two Jane Austen scoundrels in a post last week about local author Carrie Bebris, who writes mysteries featuring Austen’s Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. Talia Kolker wrote: “Mr. Wickham is actually the charming and deceitful slug of an officer who first dallies with Elizabeth and then elopes with her younger sister Lydia. It later comes out that he had also seduced Darcy’s younger sister Georgianna…. It’s Mr. Collins who’s the ‘squirrelly, irritating parson who keeps after Elizabeth Bennet….’ HUGE difference.” True enough, and a humbling reminder that my readers are smarter than I am. Thanks!

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