A Conversation with Tish Corbett
How are you preparing?I have to go through my life’s work and I’m a little surprised at what I find. It’s like reading a diary of my life. I was in the [Carnegie] museum one day and I remembered starting in the “Tam o’Shanter” class there when I was 11 years old — the grade…
Whatever It Takes
Earlier this year, the Pittsburgh police joined forces with local political punkers Anti-Flag to stage a show & well, the police didn’t really know they were helping organize. All they did was go out and arrest a bunch of anti-war protesters; the band responded with the show to raise loot for bail. Rumors abounded that…
Hearts and Mines
The concept of environmental clean-up through strip mining took another step from absurdity to reality Aug. 4, when Pittsburgh City Council approved plans to dig up 635 acres of wooded hills in the Hays neighborhood. Beaver County developer Charles Betters has argued that only by removing the leftover coal from old mines can he stop…
Iraqi Rollback
Robin Ponton’s voice was barely audible, despite the microphones in front of the Federal Building Downtown on July 30. “I want my dad home. Everyone in his family miss him. I want Bush to bring my dad home.” The 13-year-old Frick International Academy student’s father, Staff Sgt. Charles Pollard of the 307th Military Police, has…
It’s Not the Arrival, But…
When the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announced its “Films With The Pittsburgh Connection” summer movie series, you could hear head-scratching around town. Sure, there’s Chicago, directed by local-boy-made-good Rob Marshall; the famously shot-in-Pittsburgh Flashdance; and even favorite son Gene Kelly dancin’ and Singin’ in the Rain. But some of the connections seemed tenuous. A 1940s double-feature…
Pittsburgh City Paper 2003
This year, we didn’t make you take the bridge.Last year’s inaugural CP short-fiction contest required writers to incorporate the so-called Hot Metal Bridge into their submissions of 1,000 words or less. Some writers built whole stories around the South Side span, while others merely had characters drive across it. It was an interesting experiment, but…
Lucky Sevens
“Probably the image of rugby in years gone by was not the greatest,” allows Mark Connolly of Pittsburgh Harlequins Rugby Association. “People treated it [as] just the sport for people to get together and get drunk. And the coaching wasn’t that great. But that’s changed dramatically in the last 10 years. The players have determined…
Reading Allowed
When Tess Riesmeyer started reading to Jasmine, the first-grader didn’t like to read aloud. She was a little afraid. But now after three years of weekly sessions in the Read Together program, Jasmine is much less bashful: She reads to Riesmeyer. It’s one small success in Read Together, which began in 1987 to match kids…
TRAFFIC SIGNS FOR A NEW PITTSBURGH
When approaching certain newly constructed landmarks in the Steel City, this sign warns drivers and pedestrians that they are near a government-funded boondoggle that will cost them, their children, their children’s children, etc., untold millions. A common sign Downtown and on the North Shore.
Gigli
Welcome to Hollywood’s dog days of summer, and to the Great Dane of August: Gigli — a movie so misguided, so idiotic and so pretentious that you almost begin to feel sorry for it.What can you say about a romantic-dramedy where a distraught lesbian slits her wrists after a shrill tirade against her ex-lover, or…
Owning Mahowny
Belinda, a sweet-natured teller at a big Toronto bank, knows her boyfriend likes to play the ponies, and even to run off to Atlantic City once in a while. But when he asks her to join him on a getaway weekend in Vegas, she’s sure it can mean only one thing. It’s only after Dan…
In the days when slavery was legal in Pennsylvania, how many slaves were owned here?
Some readers may be surprised that there were any slaves in Pittsburgh. After all, even though one can seemingly find more Confederate flags on bumper stickers here than in any other city north of the Mason-Dixon line, Pittsburgh has a proud abolitionist tradition. It was a key stop on the “Underground Railroad” for fugitive slaves,…
The Clientele
Alasdair MacLean is the perfect name for a dandy, don’t you think? The given name akin to Sir Crowley, lord of thy darkest undergrounde, and by obsessive extension to Jimmy Page, paunchy guitar prince par excellence. MacLean is a Scottish surname worthy of Wilde, who would have loved The Clientele if he’d been a 21st-century…
Davu
Yo & yo & yo & yo, yo, yo, yo & I don’t really be checking for hip hop all like that anymore. I’m kinda sickened by its present gross state; every time I listen to it I feel like I’m watching a commercial for the latest cognac, or the newest Benz that ain’t even…
American Wedding
The last time a movie character ate — and do forgive me, gentle reader — dog poop, it was probably more than 30 years ago, in a film so far underground that it ( ahem) came out the other side and qualified for cinematic infamy. But now that that threshold has again been crossed, no…
