According to Seth MacFarlane’s new comedy, there are A Million Ways to Die in the West. Most are pointless (being shot over a jostle in a bar), many are gruesome (having your head bashed in by a giant block of ice), and some are the kinds of things that could only be thought up by an unusually immature first-grader (farting yourself to death).

Pointless, gruesome and immature: That pretty well sums up this latest effort from the maker of Ted and TV’s Family Guy.

The flick starts out promisingly, superimposing the opening credits over shots of Utah’s majestic Monument Valley while Joel McNeely’s equally majestic score plays in the background. Director/co-writer MacFarlane seems intent on capturing the look and feel of classic Westerns, many of which were shot in this same location.

Then, unfortunately, actor MacFarlane enters the scene as an Arizona sheep rancher named Albert, and cinematic nostalgia rides off into the sunset.

As any parent knows, finding music you and your child can agree on is a difficult – nay, impossible – task. Put another way, it’s hard to find children’s music that doesn’t make you want to stab yourself in the eye moments before plunging your Subaru into the fiery core of the sun. Decent children’s music exists, of course; Pete Seeger’s Children’s Concert is great, and Sing Along with Putumayo ain’t bad.  But pity the poor son of a bitch who gets something from “Songs for Wiggleworms” stuck in his head; it’s a death sentence for hope and intelligent driving decisions. 

I first saw the Shazzbots at Comfest 2012, when I heard there was a children’s band playing at the Offramp Stage.  My daughter ran up to the band as soon as the music started, jumping around in the balloons and bubbles.  I sat back on the lawn, sipping a Columbus Pale Ale and feeling like a high-quality parent.  Afterwards, I picked up a CD at the merch tent and it quickly became one of my daughter’s favorites. I myself found it tolerable even after serious repetition – if you aren’t a parent, understand that this is high, high praise.

A Neo-Nazi group called the Creativity Movement has made clandestine plans for a rally at the Ohio Statehouse on June 2 2014. The group is planning on drawing its supporters from around the midwest and bring allies to the event which is slated to begin at 9 am. According to posts on neo-nazi websites, the group will be offering rideshares after a secret meet up outside of Columbus.

The Creativity Movement is a surviving offshoot of the World Church of the Creator, whoose leader, Matt Hale is currently incarcerated for plotting the murder of a federal judge. During the 1990s the group held dozens of events around country and its supporters were known for violence.

Church Member Ben Smith went on a three day shooting rampage in 1999 across multiple states before killing himself in a standoff with police. The group later lost a trademark lawsuit and was forced to change its name to the Creativity Movement.

Violent neo-nazis are still hateful and dangerous. It is speculated that this rally, called from Illinois but planned for Columbus, is the kick off of a campaign to revitalize both the Creativity Movement and the Neo-Nazi movement as a whole.

The Free Press previously reported on a standoff in Yellow Springs on July 31 of 2013 that lead to the death of a resident, Paul E. Schenck, at the hands of a police sniper. Attorney General Mike DeWine personally delivered a summary of the final report by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) that lead to no findings of wrongdoing on the part of the officers involved. Laborious comparison of the police records from the 17 responding agencies to the BCI report and raw investigative materials paints a picture of belligerence, sloth, criminality and incompetence. Since the release of the report, one of the officers involved has been indicted on firearms charges in federal court for partially unrelated conduct.