O’Connor Credo: Better Redd Than Dead
Ask mayoral spokesman Dick Skrinjar whether Bob O’Connor has met public expectations, and he’ll say, “It’s hard to fall when you’re already on the floor.” Like the Pirates’ starting rotation, O’Connor started out with the bar set low. Unlike the Pirates’ starting rotation, he’s managed to clear it. He has, after all, failed to run…
THE WILD
Led by the lion Sampson, a pack of wisecracking animals from a New York City zoo go on the lam in a hijacked tugboat when Sampson’s son, Ryan, is inadvertently shipped to Africa. Naturally, the city critters find life in the real jungle to be tricky, especially dealing with a domineering wildebeest who organizes dance…
Computing With Architecture
If you want a real education in architecture, go to Carnegie Mellon, and not simply for the School of Architecture (where, yes, I am an adjunct faculty member). The university has just unveiled a new design for the Gates Center for Computer Science, an $88 million, 209,000-square-foot building (really two adjoining ones) funded in part by…
Police: Suit Bites Back for Activist Arrests
The city will be sued in federal court next month over police use of stun guns, pepper spray and dogs at an Aug. 20 anti-military recruitment demonstration in Oakland, says lawyer Mike Healey. Healey, who represents some of the six people arrested and cited during last summer’s protest in front of the Forbes Avenue…
An interview with Carolyn DeForest
The Homeless Cat Management Team is a volunteer force that traps feral felines, sterilizes and vaccinates them and makes sure they have food and winter shelter … back in the wild of your neighborhood. Trapping and killing ferals doesn’t work, says Carolyn DeForest, outreach director for the eight-year-old group, because more cats take…
New Law May Echo Over Many Protests
So, a tree-hugger chained to a bulldozer and Osama bin Laden walk into a bar … Thanks to the state’s new ecoterrorism bill, they could have a lot to talk about … they may both be labeled terrorists. The new law, passed overwhelmingly in both the House and Senate and signed on April 14 by…
Section Closed
This past winter, Deborah Jackson shivered in the cold of her Hill District house: There is also a hole in her roof, and on her fixed income she couldn’t afford to mend the drafty windows. The home that her late husband bought in 1994 has been crumbling, and Jackson is finding it more…
Hill Ups Ante For Casino Bid
A Hill District community group wants a bigger ante from the company hoping to plant a slots parlor in its midst: at least $28 million more, to be exact. In recent months, two of the three potential developers seeking Pittsburgh’s lone slots license have offered various incentives to drum up local support. Besides building…
Ray of Hope
Raymond Smith is on the run. In the cavernous sanctuary of the Wal-Mart-sized Mt. Ararat Baptist church, he races down from the choir loft, his Twizzler hair locks streaming behind his head. He jukes and weaves among the worshippers, who spill into the aisles to shout praises, wave their arms and dance. He darts between…
Fair Chance At Staying Healthy
For the 900,000 Pennsylvanians without health insurance, everyday events can be fraught with peril … a chance slip could mean a broken bone, huge ER bills and a never-ending payment plan. But there are insurance alternatives, and on Thurs., April 27, a health-care fair and zine-release party at the Quiet Storm in Garfield will bring…
A Castaway’s Journey
In his early poem “Prelude,” West Indies-born Derek Walcott describes himself looking out from “my prone island” while “the steamers which divide horizons prove / Us lost; / Found only / in tourist booklets, behind ardent binoculars” and “in the blue reflections of eyes / That have known cities and think us here…
Darfur: Think Globally, Act Federally
On April 30, Ben Long is set to get on a bus to Washington, D.C., with more than 100 Pittsburghers to do something a bit different: “What we really want to do is show the Bush Administration we support them.” Long, 25, of the South Side, is program director for Global Solutions, a small…
Soiler
Soiler is on a mission to shit out the laziest, vilest … and funniest … drunk-punk rawk in the ‘Burgh. By the time the 18 originals on its CD have scourged your stereo, you’ll find yourself pleasantly awash in your most cartoonish misogynistic thoughts and rock-star fantasies. Whether it’s “Betwixt the Legs…
Watery Vengeance is Theirs
Bill Moore encourages his friends to shoot each other in their sleep … with a squirt gun. “It’s very much an experiment in fear,” he says of the city-wide squirt-gun assassination tournament he organizes. “People have said they had no idea how paranoid or fearful they could be.” “I started taking my gun to the…
Ariel Pink
Part shut-in, part showoff, Ariel Pink toils away on his 8-track cassette recorder to construct the musical meta-narrative known as “Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti,” experimenting with the pop format like a kid tinkering with a chemistry set. The resulting alchemy of afternoon rock, psych-folk and new-wave cabaret is catchier than it is crazy…
The Starlight Mints
The five-piece indie-pop outfit from Oklahoma known as The Starlight Mints delivers a grab-bag of musical goodies with its latest release, drowaton: vocals reminiscent of Frank Black (provided by frontman/guitarist Allan Vest), swelling instrumentals and a few samplings of random noises. Drummer Andy Nunez, keyboardist Marian Nunez and bassist Javier Gonzales join Vest…
Bill Madden
Stylistically, Bill Madden’s musical approach may wear on those not strictly inspired by the singer/songwriter motif (think Gavin DeGraw, Tom Petty, Lenny Kravitz, John Mayer and, to an extent, Toad the Wet Sprocket). But let’s not dismiss Madden completely. His music is refreshingly straightforward, and with Gone, he discusses political issues without sounding irrelevant or…
The Best of Youth
The dreamer and the realist; the hardboiled cop and the leftist student; the loner and the earnest family man: The two Carati brothers, Matteo and Nicola, are perennial counterparts across four decades of contemporary Italian history, even as their blood continues to bind them. Marco Tullio Giordana’s sweeping saga The Best of Youth…
Duck Season
Left alone in a high-rise apartment for a Sunday afternoon, 14-year-old best buds Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño) kick it: They load up on junk food, and plop down in front of the Xbox to play Halo under their noms de guerre … Bin Laden and Bush. It’s just another lazy,…
Tamara
Horror films with teen-age female villains often adopt a sympathetic view, suggesting that the girl is as much a victim as the people she’s mutilating. Her actions are a lashing out at the cruel world she’s forced to come of age in … a world of sneering cliques, neglectful parents and a cursed…
Drew’s Family Restaurant
Location: 2060 Ardmore Blvd., Forest Hills. 412-271-1556 Hours: Seven days, 6 a.m.-midnight Prices: Breakfast $3-12; lunch, $4-8; dinner, $8-13 Fare: American diner, complete with Greek specials Atmosphere: Casual family dining in a Burton Morris gallery Liquor: None Smoking: Separate sections As a family, we have mixed views on family restaurants. On the one hand, they…
Friends With Money
Nicole Holofcener’s films (Lovely and Amazing, Walking & Talking) are like therapy sessions for people whose therapist doesn’t really want to cure them. They all have issues, and they’re the first (or else the last) to admit it. Naturally, these issues make them interesting, and so does Holofcener’s way of presenting them. She writes and…
Big Dogs in the Big House
Cop shows are popular in prison like they are out here in the real world, but a lot of guys inside don’t watch the ending. Guys who have been through the criminal justice gristmill root for underdogs—or the “bad guys,” as some people refer to them. We are solidly behind the likes of Tony Soprano…
I AM A SEX ADDICT
On the eve of his third marriage, independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi offers his confession: He’s messed up his life with an obsession with prostitutes. Zahedi’s serio-comic autobiographical film journeys from his heady days as a philosophy major and devotee of Sarte through his failed attempts to become a “famous filmmaker,” while leaving a wake of…
Penguins’ Hopes Put On Ice
Despite the fact that I hate losing to the Flyers, I was strangely buoyed after the Pens did so April 11. They followed that game by beating the Rangers (which is always satisfying, no matter what the circumstances). They were led by Sid Crosby, who had his third four-point game of the year in his…
SCARY MOVIE 4
A half-dozen recent films and pop-culture events, such as Tom Cruise’s romantic meltdowns, are skewered in the latest Scary Movie outing, this one directed by parody vet David Zucker (Airplane). This comedic mish-mash pairs the girl from The Grudge and the dad from War of the Worlds, with a detour into The Village and a…
