This post is written by Jeana Harrington, of Geben Communication, represents the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio. You can follow Jeana on Twitter @JeanaHarrington

Everyone here at The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio gets excited to organize our annual Keyholder event and fundraiser because we love to celebrate the women and girls who have made a difference in our lives. And this year’s headliner has been making that difference for years. She’s not just a comedian, actor, mother, humanitarian and talk show host – she’s Whoopi, and we couldn’t think of anyone more qualified to join us for this year’s Keyholder at Nationwide Arena! The event will feature an evening of storytelling, compelling grant partner stories, touching tributes, and, of course, an interview with our iconic guest.

Tickets are on sale now for $50 each and all proceeds will help provide grants to non-profits that promise social change for women and girls, grow women as philanthropists and increase awareness of the needs of women and girls in our community. Only 7% of national foundation dollars go to programs that specifically support women and girls and we want that to change.

If you’d like to join us for a fun, moving and inspirational evening (even better if you can bring your mother/daughter along!), you can purchase your tickets at Ticket Master. To learn more about the event or The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio, visit our website.

Want to win a pair of tickets to see Whoopi at Keyholder 2012? Leave a comment on this post telling us about your favorite Whoopi moment, memory or film. We’ll announce a winner on Friday, May 25!!

This post is written by Jeff Tyndall, public relations intern with Experience Columbus. You can follow Jeff on Twitter @Jeff _Tyndall .

Are you ready for Ohio’s newest professional sports team? The Ohio Machine is ramping up its inaugural season of Major League Lacrosse (MLL)!

The Machine is one of two expansion teams for the upcoming 2012 season, along with the Charlotte Hounds.

And although the team’s offices are located in Columbus, the Machine will play all of their home games in Delaware at Ohio Wesleyan’s Selby Field.

In addition to the Machine, the MLL currently consists of seven other teams including, Boston, Long Island, Chesapeake Bay, Rochester, Charlotte, Denver and Hamilton (Ontario, Canada).

The Machine, along with Experience Columbus, 200Columbus and the Greater Columbus Sports Commission will also host a “Lacrosse Launch Party ” on Wednesday, May 16 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m at the Columbus Commons to kick off the team’s inaugural season.

The event will include local food trucks, live music, and a chance to meet the players.

Bring your own lacrosse stick to join in an attempt to set the world record for the largest lacrosse game played with (we’re aiming for 200 total participants!) Those who preregister at the team’s website will also receive two complimentary tickets to the Ohio Machine’s home opener on Saturday, May 19.

If you’re hoping to catch the action can purchase tickets over the phone at (614) 754-1973, or online at the team’s website . Single game tickets start at $18, and also available are season tickets, starting at $100, and a three-game mini package starting at $45.

This post is written by Tim Simeone, Visitor Information Specialist for Experience Columbus. You can follow Tim on Twitter @TimSimeone .

It is always refreshing to see a theater company creating and adapting new works. Its what continues to make Columbus’ theater scene more diverse, exciting and bold. Among Available Light, CATCO, the Short North Stage, and more, Columbus offers visitors an eclectic and smart selection of theater.

Available Light Theatre has adapted science-fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. If you aren’t familiar with this novel, you can read it online before you go see the show. Doctorow, a writer and proponent of liberalizing copyright laws, published his novel for free online and with a quick Google search you can find it.

The story takes place in Disney World with century old male, Julius, his younger girlfriend, LiL, and his best friend Dan. The three of them are the caretakers of Magic Kingdom’s rides. In an altered world, where death is no longer permanent and money has been replaced by a reputation economy, Julius takes the audience through his own murder mystery and ideas of nostalgia, progress and the unintended effects of technology.

Available Light is no stranger to genre-fiction. Having already produced Skyscrapers of the Midwest and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Available Light is comfortable in the imaginative and futuristic worlds.

Catch this exciting world premiere at the Riffe Center, Studio 2 – April 26-May 12. For more information on this show and resident Columbus theater company, Available Light visit www.avltheatre.com.

This post is written by Nick Dekker, blogger at BreakfastWithNick.wordpress.com and a founder and board member at Wild Goose Creative. You can follow Nick on Twitter @BreakfastwNick

Columbus is good for a laugh. All over town, our comedy scene is booming, with open mic nights, improv competitions, and comedy festivals. Different companies, troupes, and solo performers have been working hard to raise the profile of Columbus’ comedy scene over the years, and the pay-off is a wide range of performers available for local audiences.

One central figure in Columbus comedy is Shadowbox Live, which recently moved from Easton to the Brewery District. Their new space allows them to create more of their signature rock-and-roll and sketch comedy blend. The building also includes the Backstage Bistro, where you can enjoy breakfast, lunch, or drinks. Shadowbox head writer Jimmy Mak recently teamed with local comedian Justin Golak to create a twice-monthly series called Stand-Up @ Shadowbox. On alternating Tuesdays, you can catch local and regional stand-up comedians for the cheap price of only $5.

Recent festivals have helped establish the collaborations between different types of comedians. Madlab Theatre’s annual Comedy’Splosion is a two-night event featuring a stellar line-up of comedians. The newly-founded Gateway Comedy Festival, hosted at various venues around the South Campus Gateway, included a mix of music, improv, and stand-up comedy in one, giant free night. The event was sponsored by the Gateway Film Center, the Small Business Beanstalk, and Organ Grinder Productions, which produces a number of comedy events around town.

Throughout any given month, you can find various comedy nights all across Columbus. On the first Monday of every month, ColumbusIsFunny.com hosts Monday Night Live, an evening at Wild Goose Creative of sketch, stand-up, video, and music. Circus Bar often hosts the Comedy Sideshow, featuring Golak and other performers. The regular event Comedy Under the Influence can often be found at Zeno’s or The Tree Bar. And the Funny Bone out at Easton lets local improv teams compete in Improv Wars on Tuesdays.

If you want a sampling of Columbus’ comedy scene, visit Wild Goose Creative this weekend for the Columbus Comedy Festival. Now in its third year, the Festival aims to give audiences a cross section of Columbus’ live and video sketch comedy groups, stand-up comedians, and improv teams. The event is co-produced by Wild Goose and by ColumbusIsFunny.com, a website dedicated to listing and advocating for comedy around Columbus. For more information on the festival, visit ColumbusComedyFestival.com.

Columbus Comedy Festival 3
Thursday, April 26 - Saturday, April 28 at 8 p.m. each night
$10 at the door
Wild Goose Creative
2491 Summit St.

This post is written by Katharine Moore, Executive Director of Dine Originals Columbus. You can win a pair of tickets ($200 value) to Taste of Dine Originals by telling us your favorite Dine Originals restaurant in a comment on this post, or by repinning this image on Pinterest. A winner will be drawn Friday, April 27.

Taste of Dine Originals is one of Ohio’s best food and wine events, featuring tastings and samplings from 50 regional restaurants, 30 vineyards,
three craft breweries, and a couple of micro distilleries. Whether you’re a seasoned foodie or an intrigued beginner, chefs, brew masters and winery representatives welcome you as they mix useful knowledge with samples of their signature dishes and out-of-the-ordinary beverages. The silent auction features cooking lessons, private dinners, special events, works of art and rare bottles of wine.

This year’s event, 6 - 9:30 p.m., May 10, will be held at Capital University’s Capital Center, at 2360 East Mound Street.

Tickets are $100 and proceeds from this event are shared by Dine Originals Columbus and The Buckeye Ranch, which offers mental health treatment and alcohol and drug services for children. In an effort to support that mission to provide hope and healing to children and families, Dine Originals has collaborated with the Ranch for the last 5 years.

A sample of menu items for this year’s soiree includes prosciutto wrapped figs, roasted chicken and sun dried tomato bruschetta from Mezzo Italian Kitchen and Wine in Dublin, scallop pomponnette and French country paté served with Szechuan peppercorn sauce from The Refectory, and Thai beef skewers with peanut noodle salad from the historic Shaw’s Restaurant and Inn.

Join us for a glass clinking, swishing, swirling, people watching, mouthwatering kind of fun! Tickets are available at www.buckeyeranch.org and at a number of member restaurants.

This post is written by Sandi Combs, Marketing Coordinator for Experience Columbus. You can follow her on Twitter @Sandi_ExpCols.

The food truck scene in Columbus has exploded over the last few years, with a plethora of diverse mobile food vendors popping up throughout the city. Fortunately for us foodies in Columbus, The Food Fort is helping to connect our culinary-savvy community with favorite and new food carts via Mobile Monday at St. James Tavern as well as Surf & Truck Tuesdays at The Hills Market.

Mobile Monday at St. James Tavern started earlier this year in order to inject some fun into the start of the work week. Monday of each week from around 6:30-9:30 p.m., you can head over to this favorite Columbus bar and enjoy a $1 Mystery Beer Can as well as fare from a food truck set up out front. The vendor is different every week. What started as an experiment has quickly become a popular event, with many stopping by to sample the week’s features.

Playing off the success of Mobile Mondays, The Food Fort is launching Surf & Truck Tuesdays at The Hills Market on May 1, 2012. Taking place on Tuesdays between 5:30-8 p.m. on the veranda of the city’s local specialty grocer, these weekly events will feature peel-and-eat shrimp, cheap brews and a variety of food trucks to provide dinner.

Can’t make it to these events? Why not have the food trucks come to you? The Food Fort offers a service where it will coordinate with mobile vendors to provide food at your next gathering or event. Find out more here.

To get the food truck schedule and other details for these events, connect with Food Fort Columbus on Facebook; or follow them on Twitter at: @FoodFortCMH

The Food Fort is an affiliate of the The Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI). Its mission, like ECDI, is to create jobs, start or expand food based businesses and collaborate with other businesses to provide opportunities for independent, sustainable and profitable food initiatives as well as small business owners. Click here to find out more.

This post is written by Nick Dekker, blogger at breakfastwithnick.wordpress.com You can follow him on Twitter @BreakfastWNick.

Did you know there’s such a thing as Columbus-style pizza? Everyone thinks that New York and Chicago have the corner on the pizza market, but Columbus has its own niche. Typically, “Columbus-style” pizza is a square pizza (or with pieces cut into squares) with a thin crust. National chain Donato’s – which got its start in town – is known for this style, as is local chain Massey’s Pizza.

But we don’t just eat our pizza Columbus-style here. Our city has a wide range of shapes, styles, and tastes when it comes to pizza. There’s funky and there’s traditional. There’s mobile and there’s sit-down.

You can start out with inexpensive spots like Adriatico’s or A Slice of New York, which offer slices of New York style close the Ohio State campus. These locations have been a favorite of students for years.

Mikey’s Late Night Slice has grown from a food truck and a tiny shack in Short North to five locations total, including spots inside Woodlands Tavern and the Newport Music Hall. Mikey’s is favored for their irreverent pizzas like the Spicy Ass Pepperoni or the Cheezus Crust, which makes a sandwich of two slices of pizza, with melted American cheese between. You can also top their pizzas with their famous Slut Sauce, a secret mix of all of their sauces.

Newer pizzerias like Harvest Pizzeria in German Village, Yellow Brick Pizza in Olde Towne East, and Element Pizza downtown have given pizza lovers new options to try on their pies. At Harvest, you can have everything from clams to chorizo to almond pesto. Yellow Brick offers gluten free options, plus a killer line-up of beers on tap, to go with pizzas like the Oak Street, which includes potatoes, mushrooms, onions, and garlic in a white sauce. Element tops their pizza with ingredients like house-cured bacon or homemade sausage, or granny smith apples and roasted onions.

You can also find pizza places on the cutting edge of fresh and creative ingredients. Clever Crow Pizza, with locations inside the North Market and Circus Bar, has drawn national attention for their cornbread crusts and ingredients like roasted Ohio corn, butternut squash, and hummus.

Is your mouth watering for a slice now? You can try all of these pizzas and more this Sunday evening, April 15, at Pizza Grand Prix VIII. The event starts at 6pm and is held at Wild Goose Creative, at 2491 Summit Street. Now in its eighth edition, Pizza Grand Prix was originally started by Columbus food blogger CMH Gourmand with ColumbusUnderground.com. The concept is simple: the price of admission is one medium pizza from your favorite spot in Columbus. Show up, share a pizza, sample others, and vote on what you think represents Columbus the best!

Think you make the best pizza? You can also enter the homemade pizza competition. Just e-mail nick@wildgoosecreative.com to enter!

Controversy 2: Pieces We Don’t Talk About is a thought provoking new exhibit at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, OH. The exhibit features five challenging objects from Ohio Historical Society collections that focus on the nature of stereotypes and the construction of personal identity.

Intentionally thought-provoking, the five objects for Controversy 2 include: a Nazi flag, a Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem written in dialect, a child’s toy bowling set with pins that feature ethnic caricatures, prints from the Currier & Ives “Darktown” series, and a 1946 Cleveland Indians jacket.

As with the first Controversy exhibit, the objects will have very little interpretation, with only a short label to describe them. More information will be available at the end of the exhibit, in a conversation space where visitors will have the opportunity to discuss the issues with each other and write personal reflections. The exhibit is on display through Dec. 30, 2012.

Asking questions about race and racial stereotyping from a historical perspective, the new Ohio History Center exhibit complements the exhibit RACE: Are We So Different?, on display at COSI Columbus through May 6, 2012.

Free With Ohio History Center Museum Admission
Controversy 2 is free with Ohio History Center museum admission: $10/adults, $9/seniors (60+); $5/youth (6-12); Free/Ohio Historical Society members or age 5 and under. Museum hours are Wednesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday noon-5 p.m.

This post is written by Tad Dritz, spokesman for Earth Day Columbus.

On this bicentennial year, Columbus has much to be proud of and the city is getting ready to notch another biggest/best honor – Columbus has the highest volunteer turnout for Earth Day in the NATION!

Since 2007, Columbus has been a trendsetter on the annual day recognizing the natural environment. That year, the nascent non-profit, Green Columbus began organizing Earth Day. The theme for the first year was A Year in a Day, the goal was to encourage 500 volunteers to put in four hours each (2000 hours = 1 person-year in one day) at community service projects across Central Ohio. More than 1,300 volunteers heard the call and put in 3,900 service hours! Through the years, the volunteer turnout has swelled to 3,300, outpacing the Earth Day volunteerism of any other metro area!

For 2012, the theme is Root Down, and the message is focused on connecting Central Ohioans with the local environment, both natural and man-made. Connections with nature will be fostered by participation in dozens of volunteer work-sites, during the weekend of April 14 & 15. The following Saturday (April 21) will feature a celebration at Columbus Commons, in the middle of downtown Columbus. The celebration will entertain and inform attendees about the benefits of shopping local and using alternative transportation (bike & bus), and much, much more. Whether you’re a local or a visitor, there’s a whole lot to get excited about.

To make, or strengthen, your connection to Central Ohio, come put your Root Down with The Nature Conservancy and thousands of others by registering at www.earthdaycolumbus.org.

If you liked Dragonfly Neo-V Cuisine, you’ll love Till Dynamic Fare , the new venture from Cristin Austen and two-time James Beard award nominee Magdiale Wolmark. Utilizing the same space as the former Dragonfly, Till features food sourced, produced and cooked in the biodynamic method. That means food is produced in a fashion that has even stricter standards than organic. Animals are allowed to remain in their natural state (for instance, cows are not de-horned,) and only natural, whole-state materials are permitted for fertilization and pest control. Till puts these principles into practice in the kitchen garden directly behind the restaurant - it’s a tiny space, but manages to produce all the restaurant’s greens, as well as apples, cherries, currants and mushrooms.

The menu is finely edited, and though the former Dragonfly was a vegan restaurant, Till incorporates biodynamic meat. There are plenty of options for vegans and vegetarians, of course, including housemade tempeh, tofu and seitan.

The drink menu is unlike any other in the city, and too, carries a biodynamic focus. There’s a full bar, with beer, liquor and wine selections, creative cocktails using ingredients from the kitchen garden, and several versions of a drink called the shrub. Shrubs are a sweet, diluted vinegar - which sounds off-putting at first, but is truly satisfying and a great foil for some of the richer dishes on the menu. The ginger-lemon shrub was a standout.

Other dishes on the menu right now include clam, bacon and manchego pizza, cod brandade, beet salad, an assortment of housemade charcuterie, and a truly decadent hamburger. Desserts aren’t to be missed, either. The banana split was amazing - paired with whipped cream, beignets, and vanilla and chai ice creams - so rich and creamy I didn’t even know it was a vegan dish!