After visiting Vauxhall City Farm (my friend Lauren and I wanted to have our own Morrissey "Vauxhall & I"* moments and I also wanted to check out other London city farms), we stumbled upon the Real Food Festival at the Southbank Centre in a near ravenous stupor. While waiting for our falafel wrap, I thought I caught the letters O-H-I-O from out of the corner of my eye but also thought it could be attributed to slight delirium from low blood sugar. Yet, I had to be certain that I wasn't losing my mind quite yet and walked over to the nearby stand to find old packing crates from Cincinnati and Napoleon, Ohio being used for cookie displays.
The appearance of Ohio in my life sometimes seems so prevalent that others believe that I must make some of it up but here is photographic proof of this particular instance.
* The album "Vauxhall & I" always fondly reminds me of Stephen Szolosi, who achieved a great coup by surprising me with the album as a birthday gift just 2 weeks after its release date in March of 1994.
While catching up on old episodes of Supernatural, I was surprised by a reference to Ohio, even though all states are mentioned in the show since the Winchester boys travel around America hunting monsters (and other supernatural entities). In the episode 'The Dark Side of the Moon', the brothers are on a mission to find Joshua, who is the gardener of Heaven and God's confidant. All souls that travel to the garden (a representation of Eden), according to Joshua, will see it differently. Sam and Dean view it as the Cleveland Botanical Garden that they visited on a grade school field trip.
While watching an interview with Fred Astaire on The Dick Cavett Show, I was struck by the number of Ohioans mentioned in the Gershwin tune 'They All Laughed', which Astaire performed upon request. Although the only state mentioned in the lyrics is Missouri, at least five of the nine influential people cited have some connection to Ohio. While I would love to count Fred Astaire as an Ohioan, he (like Dick Cavett) was born in Nebraska. (Yet, it's now known that Cavett has a closer connection to Ohio than his work with Jack Paar and that's because he's married to Ohioan Martha Rogers.) Now, back to the song, the following names dropped do all bear some connection to Ohio:
How often does Luke Perry come up in conversation?!?!? Not very. So after two mentions of the James Dean look-a-like came up (with reference to BtVS film and the original Beverly Hills, 90210 series) in discussions yesterday with my friend Lauren, I thought I should dedicate a few words to the Ohio native. This will be a bit telling of my age but the original cast of 90210 were supposed to be the same age as myself and their fictional class also graduated from high school and went off to college in 1993. The character Dylan McKay, a brooding and sensitive rich boy managed to hit the right note for me as I was going through a James Dean and Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff phase at the time (to be completely honest, perhaps it was just the beginning). Well, to get back to Perry, he was born in Mansfield, which is about 30 miles from my hometown, and grew up in Fredericktown. It's been stated in interviews that Perry likes to return to Fredericktown annually for their Tomato Show.
In the most recent 'The Guardian Weekend' (17 September 2011, pg. 93), the clue for 15 Down in the General Knowledge Crossword was: City of Ohio where agreement was reached in 1995 to end the war in Bosnia (6).
Although Ziggy may not be my favorite comic (and yes, it also has an important Ohio connection), I do have fond childhood memories of the sweet down-trodden guy, who is now know the world over. It is therefore very sad news to hear that the funny little everyman's creator passed away on Friday. Tom Wilson was born in West Virginia and raised in Pennsylvania but spent the majority of his adult life in Ohio with secondary homes in Hollywood and New York. His son, who graduated from my alma mater and now lives in Loveland (a northern Cincinnati suburb), has been drawing the comic strip since 1987.
Scooby-Doo has been popping up in my life quite a bit recently and although I sometimes find myself saying 'Ruh-roh', I was never a big fan of the canine capers. Yet, I do recall always preferring those episodes that starred legendary comedic geniuses like Jonathan Winters, Tim Conway and Phyllis Diller, all of whom as you may know or are capable of guessing, are Ohioans.
