Quantum’s The End of the Affair
The last time I was inside Polish Hill’s old Emma Kaufmann Clinic, about two years ago, it was because some activists had turned the now-vacant building into a makeshift free clinic for G-20 protesters. The building has a much different feel hosting Quantum artistic director Karla Boos’ adaption of the Graham Greene novel. And most…
MP3 Monday: The Four Roses
The legendary(?) Pittsburgh country band The Four Roses is releasing a new album … and breaking up. Don’t worry; the break-up is built into the release: It’s titled Goodbye! We’re The Four Roses. Fortunately for us, out ahead of their last show on Saturday, the 29th, at Hambone’s, they’ve offered us the cranky and tongue-in-cheek…
Comedian W. Kamau Bell at Papa J’s Centro
After interviewing Bell for last week’s CP (http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A101939), I wanted to check out the San Francisco-based comic for myself, especially at this curious Downtown venue. The bar-restaurant in an historic Boulevard of the Allies building isn’t known as a performance spot. Indeed, when you walk through the front door, you’re simultaneously entering the bar and…
Good Program, Discount Tix at Pittsburgh Symphony
With two (really, three) notable guests, some gorgeous music and $20 tickets, the BNY Mellon Grand Classics “Rising Stars in Debut” show makes for as good a weekend as any to check out the PSO. I saw it last night. The rising stars include the award-winning, Mongolian-born young violinist Xiang Yu. Xiang, now studying in…
Note to Occupy Pittsburgh: Put on your Guy Fawkes mask before talking to the Trib
In all the coverage of Occupy Pittsburgh, you may have seen a handful of protesters wearing funny masks, or scarves over their faces. And you’ve probably wondered, “If they aren’t criminals, why do they hide their identity?” Well, I give you Exhibit A, courtesy of our own Tribune-Review. Where today we learned the following: One…
Levi’s presents Benefit Braddock
Remember how, a year or so ago, there were those weird Levi’s ads with Braddock in them? And it was slightly uncomfortable for all of us? Well, Levi’s is sort of making good on their promise to follow up and work to better Braddock. How are they doing so? By, um, bringing some huge indie…
Dance Alloy/Kelly-Strayhorn Merger Formally Announced
It’s pretty clear what Dance Alloy Theater gets from a merger with the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater: The venerable but financially struggling group will continue to exist, if no longer as an independent outfit. But what does the Kelly-Strayhorn get out of the deal? And, more importantly from the perspective of arts patrons, what does the merger…
Jasiri X gives the Occupy movement an anthem
Thanks to Pittsburgh’s own Jasiri X, the Occupy movement now has an anthem. On Tuesday, the local hip-hop artist released his latest video, “Occupy (We the 99),” a song whose lyrics warns Wall Street that if “you want class war, we’ll give you what you ask for.” The video, which was filmed at Occupy demonstrations…
Short List: October 20 – 23
Thu., Oct. 20 — Scares Terror Town, a new 30,000-square-foot haunted attraction in the Strip District, plays up reports of alleged paranormal activity emanating from its basement location; employees attest to strange occurrences in the former industrial building. Creators Sam and Bernie Firman and designer Michael magGot developed the cannibal underworld, populated with pallid schoolgirls…
Occupational Outlook
Click to view larger imagePhoto by Renee Rosensteel
Voters asked to increase property taxes for library funding
Browsing through children’s books at the Downtown branch of the Carnegie Library, Diana Fondren fondly remembers taking her daughter to the Oakland library when she was a young girl. “She would take out 30 books at a time,” recalls Fondren, 55, of Beltzhoover, whose daughter is now a 24-year-old English major at the University of…
Mud Slide: Raja, Fitzgerald have made race for county exec a messy one
But when Raja and Fitzgerald are in a room together, you don’t want to get too close to the action — especially if you’re wearing a nice shirt. The two have been throwing mud at each other in press conferences, political ads and personal appearances. Fitzgerald’s camp has depicted Raja as a heartless businessman.…
Sinobi
With their corporate chains and national brands, malls are all about meeting your expectations. So it was a surprise when we went to Pittsburgh Mills and were wowed by a wholly original venue for eating food from Japan. And Korea. Like many local Japanese dining venues, Sinobi is owned and run by Koreans. Unlike some…
A Conversation With Meredith Mileti
In Meredith Mileti’s novel Aftertaste (Kensington Books, $15), Mira, the chef and co-owner of an up-and-coming New York restaurant, finds her professional and personal life imploding. (The frequently funny novel opens at Mira’s court-ordered anger-management session.) So, Mira packs up her infant daughter and returns home to Pittsburgh, which — no surprise here — turns…
Seeking Out Heirloom Apples
The organic Gold Rush apples I bought last fall at the Mott Family Farm stand were so perfectly crisp, so explosively tasty, that I had all but dreamed of their return. Alas, this October, the stand, a favorite of mine at the Strip District’s Farmers@Firehouse Saturday market, had no apples at all. Jeff Mott, who…
Home Run
“I have mad respect for homebrewers,” said Beth McHenry at Brewing Up a Cure, the annual charity fundraiser held by Three Rivers Underground Brewers. “It’s a good way to see what people are doing and how they are being creative at home.” That creativity was apparent even in the names of the beer McHenry could…
Bank Statements
Say this for the Occupy Pittsburgh demonstrators currently living on Mellon Green: This is one group of dispossessed Americans that a big bank isn’t rushing to evict. That alone should tell you how powerful this grassroots movement has become — all in the four weeks since demonstrators began occupying Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park. This is…
EPA considering new air-quality rules for fracking sites
Janet McIntyre and her husband had lived for 15 years amid the farmland outside Evans City, in Butler County. In late 2009, the area’s first Marcellus Shale gas wellpad arrived; six more followed, all within six-tenths of a mile of her house. One day this past January, the well closest to them, about 1,500 feet…
Occupy Pittsburgh Protests BNY Mellon
Chanting “BNY Mellon, corporate felons,” roughly 100 Occupy Pittsburgh protesters picketed outside BNY Mellon late this morning. They then marched to the state attorney general’s office, demanding an investigation into Mellon’s handling of Pennsylvania’s pension funds. The demand was inspired by civil suits filed by the Department of Justice and the attorney general of New…
Savage Love
Some people love conflict and drama, and it’s for the best when two drama-seeking conflictophiles marry each other. I broke up with a girl who wasn’t hot enough for me. I tried my whole life to not be that kind of guy. I treated her carelessly because she wasn’t that important to me. I…
R. Weis makes music from everyday sounds
R. Weis is an unknown quantity in Pittsburgh. He doesn’t play live. His new album, Excitable Audible, is his first in years. Those in town who are familiar with him are art-scene folks; his sound art has made its way into installations at the Mattress Factory and Pittsburgh Filmmakers Galleries. Where much of what’s called…
Critics’ Picks: October 21 – 25
[JAZZ] + FRI., OCT. 21 The Bahia state of Brazil could be thought of as akin to New York or Los Angeles. It’s full of cultural fervor; writers, artists and musicians make the place one of constant creative flux. Tonight, the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater presents the flavorful melange of Bahian sounds at Viva Bahia!, an intimate…
CD Reviews
New releases from Big Hurry, Ali Spagnola, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Mud City Manglers and Plastered Bastards team up for a 7-inch
“Do you ever listen to Dead Moon?” Ted Tarka asks, pulling up the sleeve of his well-worn Stooges T-shirt to better reveal a tattoo of the band’s emblem, a crescent moon with a skull face. “That’s just fucking rock ‘n’ roll to us, and not in a cheesy way.” “Us,” in this case, is Tarka’s…
Synth-pop band Future Islands returns with a new song cycle
On the Water, the new full-length from Baltimore synth-pop trio Future Islands, is something of a departure from, or a progression past, the band’s acclaimed 2009 release, In Evening Air. For one thing, the record lacks the breakout-single potential that the earlier album had. “There’s no ‘Tin Man’ on this record,” says Samuel T. Herring,…
Toast
S.J. Clarkson’s adaptation of Nigel Slater’s coming-of-age tale is likely more compelling if you have any idea who Slater is. (He’s a well-known British food writer and TV personality.) Regardless, this dramedy, set in the late 1960s, has much universal charm, as the motherless young Nigel (Oscar Kennedy; as a teen, Freddie Highmore) spars with…
Restless
A pair of teen-age misfits meet and fall in love in Gus Van Sant’s dramedy. Enoch (Henry Hopper) is a brooder who likes to go to funerals, and has an imaginary friend who is a World War II Japanese kamikaze pilot. At a memorial service, he meets Annabel (Mia Wasikowska), a perky lover of seabirds,…
The Thing
Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s horror thriller is both a prequel to and a remake of John Carpenter’s 1982 film of the same name. Technically, the events in this film take place prior to the troubles depicted in Thing ’82, but they are pretty much the exact same events. An American biologist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) joins…
Love Crime
Alain Corneau’s absorbing Love Crime has all the trappings of a Hitchcockian thriller. Well, most of them anyway. Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a ruthless business executive in the Paris office who exploits Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier), her talented assistant, and takes credit for her ideas. Isabelle begins an affair with Philippe, Christine’s lover, who’s embezzled…
The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The 26th Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival continues through Sun., Oct. 23. Steve Williford’s drama The Green (4:30 p.m. Sat., Oct. 22) depicts the fractures that occur in a longtime gay relationship, when one of the men — a school teacher — is accused of an inappropriate relationship with a student. The film,…
Modern-dance icon Paul Taylor returns with a program of new and classic work.
Few choreographers have a movement language and a body of works as identifiable to audiences as does Paul Taylor. The brilliant and sometimes enigmatic choreographer’s 57-year-old modern-dance company returns to the Byham Theater on Oct. 22 to present three of his dance works courtesy of Pittsburgh Dance Council. For some younger dancers and audience members,…
Blackbird Pie
Why sit around waiting for a plum role when you can write your own? Mary Lipple has written and is performing a one-woman play called Blackberry Pie, presented by New Stage Theatre. She plays a young woman summing up her life via video recording, and we are eavesdropping on her confessional. Lipple is a subtle,…
The End of the Affair
If you’re interested in English adultery, here are a few relevant titles: Match Point, Betrayal, The Real Thing, Mouth to Mouth, Closer, House & Garden, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover, Notes on a Scandal, The English Patient, The Wings of the Dove, Private Lives, The Painted Veil and so on. If Americans are obsessed with…
Poets to read at Awesome Books
Garfield’s Awesome Books continues to assert itself as venue for literary readings. The next is this Friday, featuring poets who both happen to teach at Pittsburgh CAPA, the creative and performing-arts magnet school. Zachary Harris, a Pittsburgh native, recently published the chapbook There is another poem in which the news is erased and rewritten (New…
Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk visits with his new novel.
Chuck Palahniuk’s 14th novel, Damned (Doubleday), might be worthwhile for this line alone, from page one: “Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.” The fact that Damned is narrated by a 13-year-old girl who is (as far as we can tell) in hell sweetens the pot. And our…
W. Kamau Bell, the comedian who can end racism in “about an hour,” gets his first stand-up gig in Pittsburgh.
W. Kamau Bell’s comedy career is rising fast, and not just in comedy clubs. While he does stand-up — as he’ll do here Oct. 22, at his first-ever Pittsburgh gig — Bell is best known for his one-man multimedia show The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour. The show, which premiered…
Magazine offers tax proposal for Occupiers to rally behind
One of the frequent criticisms of the Occupy Pittsburgh movement, and similar protests taking place in cities around the nation, is that for all its complaints about economic inequality, it offers few solutions. That may change in the next few weeks. Adbusters — the countercultural magazine that launched the Occupy movement — has put out…
