This well-positioned and nicely shot video by mtarver captures a grand slam homer (the caption on the video page says a three-run homer, but it's definitely a grand) by the Indians against the Devil Rays in a spring training game. If you want more up-to-date (and major-league) footage, check out the YouTube submissions of someone who goes by the screen name of Andrea 1282. S/he has clips from the Indians' home opener, which featured a home-team grand slam.

A summer evening, the twilight city looming over the big Indians scoreboard ... this ain't minor league. Chris Metcalf, a student at Huntington University in Indiana, took a series of gorgeous photos at a Cleveland game. The Indians are muddling along this year, hovering around .500 while the White Sox run away with the early division lead.

This evocative image was created by Kenn Kiser. It's a bridge spanning the Ohio River and connecting Cincinnati with Newport, Kentucky. Great atmosphere in this shot.

This Zen experience of time-lapse clouds racing over a distant Cincinnati landscape is brought to you by EmoKid21Ohio, a 21-year-old guy who posted the clip to YouTube. It's nearly two minutes of stress release underscored by kaleidoscopic guitar meandering. So serene; so peaceful; sozzzzz ...

Are there any fresh Ohio jokes floating around? All I can find are the one-liner chestnuts. The potholes are better in Ohio because they're always filled with snow. Ohio has four seasons: Winter, Almost-winter, Just-after-winter, and Construction. Fine; gems all, if a bit rusty. Somebody please tell me a new one.

What's up with these weird laws? Most cities and states have old, obsolete, ridiculous laws on the books that aren't worth deleting. Are these for real? If so, I vote they remain in effect forever:

* You're not allowed to get a fish drunk. (Damn! They're much better company that way.)
* It is illegal to mistreat anything of importance. (So telemarketers are exempt. Mistreatment proceeding.)
* Owners of tigers must notify quthorities within an hour if the beast escapes. (That gives me time for a Starbucks trip. BRB.)
* In Cleveland, you can't catch mice without a hunting license. (Well, sure. Big game; endangered species. Regulations are needed.)
* In Columbus, stores are outlawed from selling Corn Flakes on Sundays. (Other religions might differ, but the Christian God doesn't eat sugared cereal.)

I couldn't help but notice Joel Rossol's photo sets on Flickr. He's got a set of shots from Berlin, one from Paris, and one from ... Toledo, OH. Who am I to say that Toledo doesn't rank with Berlin and Paris on the glamour scale? Joel's photos are free-licensed, so with thanks to him for the generosity, here is a sample (with a few more after the jump). Why not visit Joel's Toledo page on Flickr, and leave a comment under one of his photos? Flickr fiends heart the comments.

Recently posted on Google Video: Chicago band Kill Hannah playing at Skully's in Columbus. (Dude -- don't play this at work.) Chip Midnight of donewaiting.com calls Kill Hannah "a totally guilty pleasure." The band's MySpace page has more music. Check the Read link below for a more official song video from Kill Hannah, also on Google Video.

International film festivals are everywhere. Cleveland's got one. Hosting one of those babies bestows prestige, press coverage, and is good business for the city. More rare is the truly regional film festival that showcases independent films and videos made by local folks. That's what the Akron Independent Film and Video Festival is all about -- the work of Ohio-area amateurs. (Cleveland also has an indie festival.) Selected movies will be presented at the University of Akron Student Union theater on April 28-29. Tix are cheap: $5 for the weekend.

Check out the video trailer that invites submissions. Artistic standards don't appear too daunting. Sounds like fun. Here is the schedule.

Have you tried VirtualGlobetrotting.com? It be cool. The site prowls through Google maps and Microsoft's younger satelite imagery service, Live Local, anddelivers thumbnails of destinations. Click on a thumbnail to see the full-page rendering by Google or Microsoft. You can start with any landmark, and VirtualGlobetrotting will also provide links to nearby landmarks; this is a fun way to explore your city.

This morning I started with Cooper Stadium in Columbus, where the minor-league Columbus Clippers play their home games. On the result page, I also got links to the Ohio Expo Center & State Fair, O.S.U., the Ohio State House, and several other landmarks.

One of the revelations of this site is the beauty of Live Local images. Microsoft's service is immature compared to Google's robust and wildly useful Google Maps, but the satelite resolutions and picture quality are outstanding in some instances. The pic posted here is from Live Local, and is the Molecular Science Building at the University of Cincinnati -- which contains no right angles anywhere, even around the windows. You really should check out the full-size satelite image. Gorgeous.

A new upload by Robbie Burgess in Google Video purports to be a clip of a well-known "Mexican pirate bum" -- which seems pretty harsh to me. I prefer to think of such folks as street characters, since we know them primarily by their behavior on the street, and they are ... well ... characters. Anyway, this fellow, according to Burgess, is famous in Cincinnati for "getting drunk in public and then being awesome for the next five hours." I've pasted the clip here; I wouldn't call this behavior awesome exactly, though it is rather fun to watch and the guy seems likeable. Has anybody heard of him, or does anyone know him?

There's a kind of funny piece in the Cincinnati Post about the design of this year's spring display at Krohn Conservatory. The floral designer of the facility had just broken up with his girlfriend last year at the time when decisions about the spring show are made, and he found himself selecting many varieties of weeping flowers. I guess it wasn't too funny for him, come to think of it. Anyway, the flowers might be weeping, but the show is happily titled "Cascade of Blooms."

Don't live anywhere near Cincinnati? Check out some amateur photo sets on Flickr, taken in the conservatory at various times:

Maganda took a small set of unusual and well-chosen photos.
"Just Nora" has some beautiful closeups of inidividual flowers.
Firesign offers offers close shots of flowers and fountains, plus a gorgeous image of stained glass flowers.
Stigs is displaying what are possibly the most professional and ravishing flower stills.

I was poking around a royalty-free photo archive site tonight, and I searched on the keyword ohio. Plenty of flower pictures came up, but mixed heavily into them were an unusually large number of smokestack photos. Each conveyed the seemingly proud image of thick white smoke pouring into the blue Ohio sky. No other type of image dominated the search results as did smokestack images. I scratched my head over that.

Then, serendipitously, I saw this piece on greenhouse gas emissions in Ohio. Apparently the E.P.A. has determined that in 2005 Ohio raised its level of such emissions by 5.7 percent over 2004. That can't be good. Not to be locally alarming -- greenhouse gas emissions do not endanger nearby residents. The matter is a point of social responsibility on a global level, not to mention civic pride. All greenhouse gas emissions everywhere contribute to the rapidly (by epochal standards) rising temeratures on earth. I'm no environmental activist or expert, and I've just typed nearly everything I know about the subject. But let's hope that future image searches of Ohio don't result in nothing but smokestacks.

By the way (another coincidence) ... the Ohio E.P.A. site has just added new interactive features that make it easier to get information about your locale. The Permit Wizard is for small business, and the Answer Place is for everyone. Check out both in the left-hand sidebar of that site.

So, Google Calendar is out, and here's why it's cool. (Actually, it's cool in numerous ways and I recommend checking out every inch of it, but I'm focusing here on specific item of coolness.) You can load other people's calendars into your Google space, when those calendars are publicly viewable, and see them next to your calendar. Further, you can create an Ohio-related calendar of your own (as many as you want, actually), and shasre it with the world.

It's early days in the launch of this product -- I'm posting this about 12 hours after it went live -- so search results are slim. But already I'm getting results for searches of Ohio and various Ohio cities, and you can bet there will be floods of new material in the coming days and weeks. As of this moment I can tell you when the next Landscape Committee meeting is in Clyde. I can also put the Cleveland Indians schedule into my space for instant reference. (Hey, somebody do the Reds!)

A shared calendar can be as personal or official as you want -- as useful or capricious as you want. Just go to Google Calendar, set up a free account (which you've already got if you use Gmail), click Settings, then click Calendars. It's easy. To search for public calendars, look on the left side of the page and enter a keyword in "Search public calendars."

Oh, and by the way, if you like to examine screen shots before deciding on an online service, check out this quickly growing collection of Google Calendar screen shots on Flickr.

If you follow the non-profit scene and charity donations, you know who Tom Noe is. If rare coins are your hobby, you know who Tom Noe is. If you watch the Ohio state government like a hawk, you know who Tom Noe is. And if you enjoy ambiguous scandals, you're probably grooving on the so-called Coingate.

Tom Noe is a rare-coin expert who has been managing an investment fund dedicated to such rarities for the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation. Noe has been indicted for stealing from the fund. The complication? He has given lavishly to many charities, and now those dot-orgs fear that they'll have to give back the money. The U.S. Treasury Department is involved in the investigation. Five years of activity (2000-2005) are being scrutinized.

The Where Most Needed blog has as good backgrounder from the viewpoint of charities.

The Daily Pulse calls this episode another instance in "Taft's spectacularly embarrassing ride as Ohio's governor."

The Desert Beacon claims that Taft accepted kickbacks from Tom Noe ... in August, 2006. That is one forward-thinking publication!

Do you remember what it was like when the cool summer breeze would whip your hair around as the sun beat on your forehead?  And the smell of cotton candy filled the air along with the musical melodies from the carnival rides? Well, you should remember it, because those things happen every summer at the Ohio county fairs. Here are two pieces of info that'll get you started planning this summer's rides on the ferris wheel:

List of county fair dates -- from the Beacon Journal, it's an alphabetical list by county with fair dates.
Ohio county fair interactive map -- click on any colored county to pop up the Web page for that county's fair, with complete info in most cases.

By the way, the big one -- the Ohio State Fair -- is in Columbus from August 2-13. REO Speedwagon, Jimmy Dorsey, Kenny Rogers, livestock auction ... it's a broad, juicy slice of Americana.