Long-time Plain Dealer television critic Bill Hickey was 83 when he died of cancer Friday morning. Please pass this along to other old-time PD writers and editors on your social network list. The obit will be in the paper Saturday or Sunday. McGorray's Funeral Home on Center Ridge Rd. in Westlake from 2-8 on Monday. Funeral Mass Tuesday morning at 10:30 at St. Raphael Catholic Church, Dover Center Rd., Bay Village. Get there early. Huge crowd. Bill and wife Joan have nine children and 32 grandchildren. They'll all be there.

He won a National Headliner Award for his television writing in the 1970's which was the highest award ever for a Plain Dealer writer until Connie Schultz won her Pulitzer. (Editorial cartoonist Ed Kuekes won a Pulitzer in the 1940's.)

He also was the first editor of the PD Action Tab, forerunner to the Friday Magazine, where he created restaurant critic Forchette Escargot.

Tickets for first and second round games of the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, which will be played on March 18 & 20, 2011 at Quicken Loans Arena, will go on sale to the general public beginning on Monday, March 22.

All-session tickets for the games, which include access to all six games that are part of three sessions, are available for $237.00. Two sessions consisting of two games each will be played on Friday, March 18 with the final two-game session coming on Sunday, March 20.

All tickets for the event will be sold online.

Fans wishing to purchase tickets can do so by following the link on the NCAA Tournament information site at www.csuohio.edu/2011ncaabasketball. Easy links are also available on CSUVikings.com and on the events page of the Quicken Loans Arena site at www.theqarena.com.

Ticket applications will be accepted from March 22 until May 1, 2010. Ticket applications will be fulfilled in the order in which they were received unless demand warrants the need for a random selection process. If tickets remain available following the ticket application window, sales will resume on a first come, first-served basis.

Last night was the opening of the 34th Annual Cleveland International Film Festival. The festival kicked off with the film TiMER. To accommodate everyone in attendance the film was shown in several theaters at Tower City Cinemas.

Before the film started CIFF Staff Members, Mayor Frank Jackson, Dollar Bank Representatives, Jac Shaeffer the director of the film and Jennifer Glynn the producer of the film visited each theater and welcomed everyone. It's always exciting when the producer and director of the film are present. I enjoy seeing the people that are responsible for creating great films.

So, what if you could know the exact day when you would meet your soul mate? Would you want to know? That is the synopsis of TiMER. You can choose to have a device implanted in your wrist that will count down the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until you meet your true love.

Even though I would never want a TiMER I really enjoyed this film. The cast was amazing, I loved the music, laughed so many times and also got teary eyed. This film deserves a lot of recognition and I hope many more people get to see it . Learn more about TiMER at Timerthemovie.com

Kids in Ohio will take center stage in the fight against tobacco on March 24 as they join thousands of young people nationwide for the 15th annual Kick Butts Day. More than 1,000 events are planned in all 50 states and the District of Columbia (for a list of local events see below).

Sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Kick Butts Day is an annual celebration of youth leadership and activism in the fight against tobacco use. Kids are sending two powerful messages on Kick Butts Day: They want the tobacco companies to stop targeting them with marketing for cigarettes and other tobacco products, and they want elected leaders to do more to protect them from tobacco.

In Ohio, health advocates are calling on state leaders to increase the cigarette tax by $1 per pack in order to prevent kids from smoking and raise much-needed revenue to address the state's budget shortfall and fund critical programs such as health care and education. According to a recent report by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a $1 cigarette tax increase in Ohio would have the following benefits:

-- Prevent 109,000 kids from becoming smokers;
-- Spur 52,600 current adult smokers to quit;

Alex Chilton who wrote and recorded music most notably with The Box Tops and Big Star has died of what appears to be a heart attack. Chilton was 59 years old. Chilton blazed onto the music scene in at just 16 years old singing vocals on the 1967 with the number 1 hit The Letter. The band would never recapture the success and Chilton would form the band Big Star who would garner a huge cult following for their Beatles power pop and remain an influence to many alternative bands still today.

Here is Chilton singing the hit song "The Letter" in 1968.

You have to hand it to the Plain Dealer for incisive, penetrating attention to finding solutions to the city’s grave problems. I mean by giving special attention to someone who has the answers to those dire problems. Drew Carey.

Of course, I’m kidding.

Sometimes newspapers like to be “taken” by certain interests. That’s the only reason I can see for the PD paying any – any – attention to the self-promotion of a comic.

Thankfully, the alternative Cleveland Scene sees through the self-promotional nature of Carey.

C’mon, this a public relations trip that the PD has tagged along with for reasons that have nothing – nothing – to do with solving the city’s problems.

Shame on the Pee Dee.

The Scene, with an appropriate cartoon of Carey on its cover says, “Hey, Drew. Screw you.” Just the right tone. The piece by Editor Frank Lewis deals with the comedian’s pr and political nonsense in deservedly derisive attention.

This week’s Scene can be picked up in various locales and here on line:

http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/Home

There’s other good stuff in the Scene this week also.

Work hard, play smart, play tough, keep your mouth shut, and let things fall into place. There aren’t too many young athletes who heed this advice, but that’s exactly what Ohio State’s Junior leader Evan Turner did. Amazingly, Turner arrived at Ohio State somewhat under the radar.

In 2007-08 Evan Turner came onto the scene in Columbus as a freshman in the shadows of fellow freshman and highly touted recruits Greg Oden, Mike Conley Jr., and Dequan Cook. Those three highly touted recruits ended up leaving after one season at Ohio State to become first round draft picks in the NBA, with Oden being the first pick overall.
The talented but less hyped Turner became the leader of a fairly inexperienced Buckeyes team as a sophomore and has not only taken the wheel, but has floored the gas in that role ever since.