More Than Voter Complaints
More than six months after the presidential election, no one has yet figured out what made Allegheny County No. 1 in the nation for Election Day complaints. Common Cause, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on government accountability, got 6,089 calls from our county to its Nov. 2 hotline, besting No. 2 Broward County, Fla. (a…
Environment: Lead Load Lofty, Lead Laws Lax
Pittsburghers, more than any other Americans, should be mad at the Environmental Protection Agency, says Jeff Ruch. Ruch, executive director of the Washington, D.C. group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, says the EPA has scrapped plans requiring home-renovation workers to be certified in lead clean-up to renovate a house built before lead-based…
Near Hear
SodajerkSodajerk It shouldn’t come as too huge of a surprise that Sodajerk’s new self-titled release is packed with some of the most polished and well-produced alt-country you’re likely to stumble across in Western Pennsylvania, let alone this side of the Appalachians. True, the first half is a bit more spirited than the second,…
Millions
Ensconced in his cardboard shed by the railway tracks, 7-year-old Damian (Alex Etel) is mulling over the changes in his life: He’s moved with his recently widowed dad and his older brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) to a new home. His contemplations are disrupted when an enormous bag of cash crashes through the roof…
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Judy Irving’s documentary about the birdman of San Francisco opens like a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romantic comedy, with a sunny bird’s-eye view of an urban sprawl that settles in on a park filled with children, flora and lots of feathered fauna. It closes like one, too, but I’ll say no more about that.…
For Further Review
One of the ironies of the mayoral election is this: Some of the issues being discussed most are things the next mayor will control the least. And on issues where the mayor will have the final say, no one is saying much at all. Take, for example, the city’s public safety sector, a key issue…
Kung Fu Hustle
Trouble erupts in a circa-1940s Shanghai slum when the much-feared but nattily attired Axe Gang declares war on the denizens of Pig Sty Alley. Fists and laundry fly; brains and ass cracks are exposed; the dimensions of space and time are thwarted; and there’s an exhilarating dance number ripped straight from West Side…
Phipps Branches Out
Environmental architect and impresario William McDonough says that buildings should be more like trees. Trees turn sunlight into nourishment. They absorb carbon dioxide. They protect against extremes of temperature and absorb excess stormwater. And yet these great qualities all diminish markedly when a tree is cut into two-by-fours, the usual intermediate step before…
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR
The waterfront Dutch Colonial is a real bargain for George (Ryan Reynolds), his wife Kathy (Melissa George) and their young family. Too bad the heating vents emit howls, blood drips down the walls and light bulbs burn out with alarming regularity. But that’s to be expected in a house famed for a gruesome mass murder…
Last Call
Final RoundUp for BidsThe Mystery Sandwich Revealed! “They’re taking away my office,” groused Bud Ward, sitting in the dining area of Chiodo’s Tavern. “I was on the board of directors, and now I’m losing my headquarters. I’m pissed.” As Ward spoke, a giant winged horse passed in front of him, turning cartwheels on the floor.…
THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE
The idyllic off-the-map life enjoyed by Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his teen-age daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) is disrupted when Jack invites his townie gal pal Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two broody teen-age sons to share their primitive cabin. The outside world’s intrusion into the innocent hothouse of Rose’s life, coupled with the realization that…
A Conversation with Danielle Rampe
The siren song of nightly dollar-draft specials weaves a powerful spell over South Oakland’s denizens, drawing them to Hemingway’s Café on Forbes Avenue. Keeping the underage from getting in, and escorting the over-lubricated out, falls to Danielle Rampe, 29, of Oakland. She’s been checking ID and ushering the besotted and belligerent out the door for…
DON’T MOVE
It’s hard to care about the protagonists in Sergio Castellitto’s plodding melodrama. Castellitto portrays an urbane doctor, Timoteo, who makes a mistress of an ignorant country girl, Italia, after raping her. The film unfolds in a nonlinear fashion, as the middle-aged Timoteo reflects on his double life: early days with Italia, his relatively loveless marriage,…
Hot Hot Heat
2002 was a good year for Hot Hot Heat. After two breakthrough releases in a matter of half a year — full-length Make Up the Breakdown and the short but excellent EP Knock Knock Knock, not to mention an LP of previously released singles and 7-inches — the band was responsible for putting…
A LOT LIKE LOVE
Or a lot like half-a-dozen other romantic comedies you’ve already endured. Couple meets cute, spends whirlwind day together. They go their separate ways for the next seven years, only to coincidentally bump into each other and enjoy more sugary sweet and wacky dates (desert road trips, pancakes) that leave them secretly pining. The only reason…
The Soundtrack of Our Lives
Being Swedish must make it kind of hard to be bombastic; to swagger threateningly like some Mancunian street urchin. After all, even if you smack somebody, the state’s just gonna fix ’em up again. But as a mainstream focal point for the exploding Scandinavian psych-mod punk scene, The Soundtrack of Our Lives has…
The Blue Van
If Soundtrack is Scandinavia’s The Who, then The Blue Van is its Them and its Downliners Sect. In other words, The Blue Van is Nüggets. And just in time for spring, too. Named for the psych-ward transport in its native Denmark, The Blue Van is guilty of a few mental infirmities: vintage-instrument OCD, schizophrenia…
Borderline Paranoia
Not being a regular at Islamic conferences, Mahdi Abulaban was a tad annoyed by the proceedings on Dec. 25 and 26 in Toronto. Speakers at the Renewing the Islamic Spirit conference “were beating us upside the head, telling us to be good and live in tranquility and harmony,” says Abulaban, 37, a Brookline computer programmer.…
Mass Movement: Bus Stop and Go
All this talk about transit from the mayoral candidates is a welcome change for bus and T riders. They’ve been cooking up transit ideas as quickly as forum sponsors can set out cookie tables, from Bob O’Connor’s streetcar scheme to Michael Lamb’s and Bill Peduto’s support for the long-sought holy grail of Pittsburgh transit,…
Old School, Young Dems Meet in Middle
William Anderson, president of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Young Democrats, said he was “shocked” that so many politically and regionally diverse blacks came together for the Allegheny County African-American Political Conference on April 16. “They couldn’t even believe that they stuck together,” he said of the old guard, also in attendance at the convention-style…
Labor Unions: Drumming Up Janitor Support in Cleveland
Cleveland is about to experience a protest — Pittsburgh-style. Activists from Garfield’s Thomas Merton Center have for months been holding weekly demonstrations in front of Sky Bank branches, often the Centre City Tower branch Downtown, including an all-day protest on April 15. On April 20, more than two dozen protesters will take their signs, plastic…
