Martin Aurand Re-Views Pittsburgh
To understand Pittsburgh as a city, insists Martin Aurand, you must grasp the topography at a grand scale and understand that each vignette has the substance and import of a landscape painting.
Faces of Democracy
These 11 foreign films (along with short films and guest speakers) offer windows into various versions of democracy, from struggles for national identity, human rights and economic justice, to the costs of democracies imposed under threat.
The Year of the Boar
People talk. Leaves fall, they look at each other. They stay up late eat orange crackers in bed crumbs and smudges watch Grey’s Anatomy whisper a prayer. Wear mint green cardigans. People are walking, in at least twelve different directions. There are bones and ghosts everywhere. Putting out candles sliding windows open hiding in other…
The Nativity Story
Director Hardwicke faces several challenges — to make a familiar story interesting; to keep it respectful; and, to not gloss up the whole affair like a sentimental Christmas card.
Which Side Show Are You On?
As director of a new production of Side Show by Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama, Ramoon Maharaj wants to explore the critically favored show’s darker side.
Shut Up and Sing
It hardly matters whether you like the Dixie Chicks; Shut Up is an engaging but stinging indictment of our culture. (Capsule review.)
The Devil’s Miner
If we think of hell as a literal place, we likely conjure up a horrible domain underground: dark and ugly, marked by extreme temperatures and unpleasant air, unfathomably deep and forlorn. Those places really do exist, such as the half-abandoned silver mines of Cerro Rico, high in the Bolivian mountains, that are the setting for…
This City Is a Dump!
At first glance, you might almost be looking at the wreckage of a tornado-toppled home. Flattened cabinets. The remains of a wooden ladder. Rolls of worn-out carpeting. A cracked toilet, even. All of it lies scattered off Colombo Street in Garfield Heights. And all of it planted there not by nature, but by man. It’s…
Savage Love
I’m a smoker and my partner is a nonsmoker. He says his face goes numb when I give him head. His theory is that the penis is permeable and is absorbing the nicotine in my saliva. It’s a good theory, but it’s only his face that goes numb — his cheeks and lips, not his…
Has there ever been any serious desire to have southwestern Pennsylvania secede from the state?
Sure. In fact, during the early 1790s, Pittsburghers thought of seceding from the whole country. The reason? Pricier booze. The Whiskey Rebellion, as the uprising came to be called, wasn’t a matter of fighting for the right to party, or even opposing the state-store system — two causes that seem to fire the blood of…
Weak Suit
Don’t tell Kimberly Ellis that one person can’t make a difference. She may not be able to stop a slots casino from being built next to the Hill District, but hey — she’s already been threatened with a lawsuit. And as we know from the movies, you’re nobody in the gambling biz until you’ve seen…
Oaxaca on the Barricades
It was people defending themselves. And then things went to hell when the federal police returned and began shooting.
Daryl Fleming and The Public Domain release avant-folk album The Fable of the Bees
Fleming and The Public Domain set the ideas of 18th-century political philosophers and 19th-century iconoclasts to music — all with a sweet harmony and a whiskey-drinkin’ beat.
Neo-Goths Psyclon Nine keep up with the End Times
Even though Hot Topic darlings like Amy Lee are making the spooky vibe safe for suburban schools, a band like Psyclon Nine can still give soccer moms twitchy fits when blaring from a son’s upstairs bedroom.
Keny Marshall’s Apophenia brings invisible mechanisms to light
Marshall’s approach is a playful protest against our rarely questioned immersion in man-made environments we can’t attempt to understand.
EMS
The arrangements on the CD are loose and fluid: For this, EMS tapped both local and international talent.
An interview with comic-book artist and author Scott McCloud
“The desire to write this book came from my own deep dissatisfaction with my work as a comic artist.”
Brazilian Girls’ genre-bending international pop
More playful than seductive, more multilingual than multiculti, Brazilian Girls is built around tight international pop and lounge grooves and the five-language word stew of siren Sabina Sciubba.
Barrel Man, Part 1
This is the first installment in Dan Arp’s four-part short story, “Barrel Man.” A Texas native, Arp has been teaching fiction in the Pittsburgh school district for the past six years. Arp says he wrote “Barrel Man” because the story’s protagonist “kept telling me he was cold in Pittsburgh, and something else told me to…
This Just In: Nov. 29 – Dec. 6
Leftover Danger! Summary: Your Thanksgiving feast carryovers could be death in a Tupperware container! Station: WPXI Channel 11 Reporter: Darieth Chisolm When It Aired: Nov. 24 Running Time: 23 seconds Visuals: * Views from outside a HoneyBaked store. Highlights: * When anchor Darieth Chisolm touts this as one of the lead stories on the 11…
Casino Protestor Protests Innocence
Residents of a Missouri city near which casino company Isle of Capri had once studied putting a casino “had protested the casino since it was approved in July 2000 by the Missouri Gaming Commission,” says the St. Louis Business Journal.
Letters To The Editor: Nov. 29 – Dec. 6
Unfair “Case” Re: “Federal Case” by Violet Law [Nov.15]: The article strongly puts forward the view that the Federal Hill Project — which will be under construction soon to build up to 50 mixed-income houses in an extremely blighted portion of the Central North Side — is an effort by one group of people to…
The Shrinking Islands
There’s no reason why a song like “Swallowed in Grace” shouldn’t be played on WYEP before or after the obligatory Stipe rotation.
Bombay Grill
Location: 416 Semple St., Oakland. 412-578-9778 Hours: Sun.-Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight Prices: Starters $3-9, entrées $10-13 Fare: Northern Indian Atmosphere: Bollywood screening room Liquor: BYOB Smoking: None permitted Who can believe it’s almost 2007 already? We’re still caught up in the drama of 2006. It has been a topsy-turvy year — personally, professionally and politically. With…
The Sun Kings
The Sun Kings probably aren’t the most original thing you’ve ever heard, but it’s a polished, fully realized and fun sound.
LABCO dance company grows Ripe.
Ritchie’s “Soul Carrier” revolves around the cycle of life and the universal feelings of separation associated with birth and death.
Mike Tamburo’s International Label Roster
There’s a new record label in town — and it’s already released over a dozen CDs in only two years.
Pols Apart
Last Tuesday, convicts got a little early holiday gift when retired Allegheny County Sheriff Pete DeFazio pleaded guilty in federal court to macing. I am not bringing this up as a sneaky way of kicking the sheriff when he’s down, like the rest of the press does. For all I know, he might be the…
