Another one bites the dust. “Chef,” voiced by Isaac Hayes through 2006 on TV’s South Park, was found dead Sunday. All these people dying, getting in car accidents… What happened to immortality?

Isaac Hayes — a legendary soul singer, songwriter, musician and producer whose career spanned four decades and who achieved unexpected fame later in life as the voice of “South Park” character Chef — died Sunday afternoon (August 10), a spokesperson for the Shelby County, Tennesee, sheriff’s department told WMC-TV in Memphis.

Isaac Hayes Dead At 65 - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News

New city solicitor, John Curp

That “guy to defend itself” is typically referred to as the city solicitor, a citified version of a county prosecutor. And just moments ago, City Manager Milton Dohoney announced who the guy is… so, without further adieu…drum roll… a portion of a press release from Meg Olberding, city spokeswoman:

“John P. Curp, Esq. as the new City Solicitor, the highest ranking lawyer for the City of Cincinnati. Curp currently is a partner with the law firm Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Columbus in the Business and Finance Department. His practice areas have provided him with experience including business incentives, land use, property tax issues, construction and public works projects, and employment law. Curp will begin working for the city on September 2.

“John’s extensive business and financing background will be a great boon to our efforts to attract and retain companies and jobs in the city,” said Dohoney. “He is well versed in public law and his integrity and leadership will serve the city organization and the people of Cincinnati well.”

This is the guy you want to talk to next time you want to sue the city of Cincinnati, or if you, say, get sued by the city of Cincinnati. Or get a traffic ticket from a city cop or get arrested in the city. He can throw the book at you. Or, say, you’re a City Council member and want to know, say, if it’s OK legally to build a fence around Over-the-Rhine. He will tell the city’s elected and non-elected employees what they can get away with legally - and hopefully not get sued. It’s nothing personal. Just his job.

This week’s CityBeat column tackles an old, but still somewhat existent (though I’m just so tired from all the corruption), concern of mine, WAIF-FM.

I quite literally fell in love with the place in 2005, when a friend asked me if I wanted to apply for a summer program. The Brian and Joe Radio Show, full of local talk and news, aired for 10 glorious weeks. It won an award for best summer show and confirmed a dream I’d had since childhood to host my own radio show. It was a blast.

City Beat: Wessels: Keeping the Dream Burning: Wessels: Columns.

I tried my darndest with the place, but got nowhere fast.

In this week’s CityBeat column, I break news about Over-the-Rhine’s Kaldi’s Coffeehouse being asked to vacate the premises for six weeks so an elevator can be installed through their kitchen.

When finished, it would make preparing food in the tiny kitchen a real challenge, but a nice addition for delivering large quanities of food quickly and efficiently to the building’s upper floors. Some chefs dream of a dumbwaiter like this, I’m told. They just want it when and where they want it, if you catch my drift. In the meantime, owner Jeremy Thompson wants to know where all the groovies are going to get their drink on.

Read it about it here.

In my column in this week’s CityBeat, I comment on an issue that has been buggin’ the heck out of me (and quite a few others) for some time. That’s the lack of alternate transportation options - bike, scooter or just ease of walking (especially when you live in the urban center) - available to folks living in this region.

To learn more, check out the column.

Below is a recording of an uncut phone interview recorded around 6:45 a.m. today (4/18/2008) with University of Cincinnati Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Bahram Shahrooz, PhD. Shahrooz is an expert on earthquake building design and earthquakes. I caught him at home about an hour after the earthquake that was felt in Cincinnati.

I apologize, but the audio is not perfect. I recorded it with my handheld digital recorder, which is mono and has fairly low quality.

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I got this map here.

That means we felt the earthquake pretty much (or within one minute) of it actually happening. That puts us pretty close and probably felt pretty close to a 5.4 magnitude here, just a little less.

At 5:396 a.m. this morning the USGS is reporting an earthquake was epicentered in Illinois… Back in 2000 I wrote a piece for The Cincinnati Enquirer about earthquakes hitting in Cincinnati. But basically, the New Madrid seismic zone was responsible for an earthquake so big that it rung church bells in Boston, Mass Charleston, S.C.

Why? Unlike the earthquakes in California (where I lived for the better part of three years and never felt one earthquake ever and was told they happen - small ones - everyday), the plates here are very, very large and cover thousands of miles. So, when the earth’s crust slips in Illinois we feel it here - or in Boston.

This morning’s trembler came in two waves. The first one woke me up and I looked around to see the exposed ventilation swinging from the ceiling. I could hear pots clinging together. Then it stopped. About 30 seconds later , a smaller, less intense quake shook everything again.

It was a little unsettling. From my West Coast friends I have heard about how scary they can be - and now I can agree, from experience. I live in a building that is more than 150 years old and the first thing I thought was it might coming tumbling down.

We just had an earthquake in Cincinnati. It was centered on the New Madrid faultline along the Ohio River near Evansville, Ind., according to the real-time United States Geological Survey Web site.

CityBeat has the scoop. Some firefighters are pretty upset with their command staff over having them clean up a new firehouse before they can start using it. I’d say that would not be in their job description, but, hey, that’s just me.