Richard Florida Watch!
As part of my ongoing effort to keep you informed of the doings of Richard Florida and his acolytes, I commend your attention to this story from today’s New York Times. The story is about research co-authored by one of Florida’s former CMU students, Elizabeth Currid. Along with fellow researcher Sarah Williams, Currid is studying…
Celebrity Apprentice: Booze Means You Lose
What the frak is goin’ on at the fake Trump boardroom? This current season of Celebrity Apprentice is just bizarre! I can’t decide if the producers are aiming for train-wreck — in which case, well done! — or whether they think all chaos this equals compelling entertainment. Part of the problem (or wonderfulness, depending on…
MP3 Monday: Triggers
So, when my two musically-inclined brothers decided to drive in from the wilds of Michigan to visit me last weekend, I was casting about for activities we would all enjoy. We ended up that Friday night at Howler’s Coyote Café in Bloomfield, where local bands Blindsider and Triggers were playing in the packed back room.…
Gun owners fear blowback from police shooting
This space joins with every other Pittsburgher — and every law-abiding person everywhere — in expressing sorrow for the tragic deaths of Pittsburgh police officers Stephen J. Mayhle, Eric Kelly, and Paul J. Sciullo II. We offer prayers to their families, for our city, and for the justice system which must weigh the fate of…
Dance Alloy Theater’s Exposed
The modern-dance company’s new evening of three works by three choreographers is exceptional. (There’s one performance remaining — tonight, Mon., April 6, at the New Hazlett Theater.) I’d already seen versions of all three of the pieces — two of them more than once — in the course of writing last week’s CP feature on…
Heads-ups on some upcoming shows
Sometimes we get late notice about shows and can’t get them into the paper, but still want to point them out to you, which is what I’m doing right now. Here are a few shows coming up in the next few days that didn’t make the paper: – International experimental pianist Eve Risser, currently a…
The Life of Reilly
Here’s what I can tell you about Patrick Reilly, candidate for city council District 4: At one point while we were talking outside, Reilly broke off the interview to help some children return an escaped dog to their dad’s car. “If some old lady shows up needing help to cross the street,” I told him,…
Prime Movers
In dance, few things are more fundamental than how you place your feet. But not all dances require feet placed in the same way. And so it is that in January, two weeks into rehearsal of her new work at the Dance Alloy Theater studios, acclaimed Zimbabwe-born choreographer Nora Chipaumire is asking her dancers for…
The Blue Note 7 offers a salute to a legendary jazz label’s 70th anniversary
Along with the music, the label’s album covers set standards in design that are imitated to this day.
Andrew Bird soars into the Carnegie Music Hall this week
Yet there’s something about Bird’s warblings — no matter how big his onstage band or his following get — that make his music still seem intimate and small.
Café des Amis
A Parisian-style café finds a home in Sewickley.
Don’t mind the singing on the bus — it’s just Bus Stop Opera.
“People are getting to know one another because they’re seeing something strange and extraordinary during their daily commute.”
Quantum Theatre tackles Federico Garcia Lorca’s earthy Yerma.
“I said, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to tell this woman’s story.'”
Sunshine Cleaning
“From the producers of Little Miss Sunshine,” the ad trumpets — and it’s a fair association. Christine Jeff’s comedy is indeed similar: It’s a wholly palatable indie-lite hybrid of quirky and heartwarming, set in the Southwest, with an offbeat plot, a pair of wonderfully engaging female leads and Alan Arkin as a cranky, kooky granddad.…
The Great Buck Howard
Under 40 and confused? Kreskin, who did a mentalist act, was a staple of television variety and talk shows in the 1970s. In this loosely based fictional account written and directed by Sean McGinley, it’s the Great Buck Howard (John Malkovich) who still wears the out-of-fashion tuxedos, gamely playing half-empty halls in small towns. When…
Adventureland
Writer-director Greg Mottola transformed his own youthful travails working at an amusement park into Adventureland, a coming-of-age comedy set amid the bumper cars, balloon races and barfing kids. It’s there, in 1987, that James (Jesse Eisenberg) works a game booth, falls for a cute indie-rock girl (Kristen Stewart) and whiles away the summer with the…
The Rocky Horror Show
My heart was breaking for the cast who had, obviously, spent weeks working on character, staging and timing only to have it obliterated in seconds by audience members who never bothered looking up from the scripts in their laps.
Pittsburgh n’@
Dispatches from the blogosphere: Why the Pirates will suck (again).
Gomorrah
Matteo Garrone’s neorealist film is adapted from Roberto Saviano’s meticulously detailed expose of the Neapolitan Camorra. Its five loosely connected threads that are less about the specifics of a singular gang than about an all-encompassing “normal” that is inextricably intertwined with criminality and corruption. This film will most certainly frustrate fans of traditional gangster movies…
Public Appeal
Couple continues to thrust quest for privacy into the public eye
Search This
County finally putting campaign-finance reports online — but finding the info you want still won’t be easy
Street Justice
Some worry how a controversial Lawrenceville advocate would handle magistrate’s seat, if elected
Gab Bonesso questions the Catholic Church in her comedy — which she’s bringing back to alma mater Duquesne.
“I definitely do a lot of material that a typical Catholic would find offensive.”
This Just In: April 2 – 9
Highlights from the local TV news: The last progressive politician in Pittsburgh turns out the lights.
Montreal’s Compagnie Marie Chouinard reinterprets classics to summon the spirit of Nijinsky at the Byham.
“I think it a similar type of passage for a female to dance the role of a man.”
What a Card
Times are tough all over, but Roy Pringle has bigger problems than many of us. After three years of working as a custodian for the Carnegie Science Center, the 24-year-old makes $7.85 an hour. Roy also has asthma, but no health insurance to pay for his inhalers. “We get paid horribly, and we need more…
Sonic shaman Daniel Higgs visits Morning Glory Coffeehouse
“Love shovels puppet-heads into the fires of love.”
Charlie Hunter brings his wide-ranging style and unique instrument to Club Café
Picking bass notes with his right thumb, guitar notes with the other fingers and fretting two different positions with his left hand, Hunter honed his style of play. Slowly.
Experimental narratives about power and identity fuel a retrospective of short video work by Andres Tapia-Urzua.
The lives of Tapia-Urzua’s characters are fueled by struggle, and might skitter to a halt without it.
Farm to Table
Learn how local food can translate to good living and better health at this weekend’s conference
Jordan Decay’s The Burnt Library recalls the glory days of goth-industrial zines
“I like the physicality of folding it, putting in your pocket and reading it when you have a chance, or posting it on your fridge.”
Savage Love
I hope you address the recent rough-play-gone-bad death of New York City radio newsman George Weber. According to reports, it appears Weber met a guy on Craigslist for “violent sex,” and the guy stabbed Weber to death. It’s a reminder that if you have these kinds of fantasies — Weber wanted to be bound and…
