Police: Charges No Longer Dogging Bite Victim
The dog-bite victim in the Aug. 20 anti-military recruitment protest in Oakland got her charge dismissed on Dec. 7 when the judge didn’t buy police explanation that it was her own fault — that, in Pittsburgh K-9 officer Christian Sciulli’s words, “She stepped too close to where the dog was.” Carole Wiedmann, of Ohio…
Voting: New Regulations May Tax Polls
If a state Senate version of House Bill 1318 passes and becomes law, not only will ex-offenders become ineligible to vote during their parole or probation period, but every registered voter would be required to produce a photo ID to enter the booth. This would make voting much more complicated for everyone, especially senior citizens…
Animal rights: PETA Memory Proves Longest
An erstwhile Pittsburgher has found himself on the wrong side of an ongoing lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. One of the numerous crusades undertaken by PETA in recent years has been opposing animals performing in the circus. Part of PETA’s protest has included infiltrating circuses and exposing what the group…
A Conversation with Brad Ryan
If you’ve ever noticed a lanky dude in a UPS truck cracking himself up at red lights around Green Tree, you may already know Brad Ryan. Ryan, 38, is a regular at the Funny Bone’s Tuesday and Wednesday amateur nights. He’s been cracking wise onstage for seven months after checking out a standup-comedy class at…
Special Needs
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy …” At least that’s what Camus asserted about the Greek hero, who was condemned forever to push a boulder up a mountainside in Hades. But then, old Albert wasn’t viewing the Steelers’ 2005 season from my seat on the North Side. As the Steelers contemplate the possibility of…
Star of India
Location: 412 S. Craig St., Oakland. 412-681-5700. Hours: Lunch Sun.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; dinner Sun.-Thu. 5-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5-10:30 p.m. Prices: Lunch buffet $8; starters $2-6; entrées $9-12 Fare: Northern Indian Atmosphere: Casual and collegial Liquor: Some beer; BYOB wine If all of Oakland were a term paper, it would be overly long and under-organized…
Vorpal
The electronica subgenre controversially referred to as IDM (intelligent dance music) has undergone a sea of change since the mid-’90s, when it was clearly dominated by big names such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Now there’s a glut of bedroom producers all desperately trying to make their mark in the realm of dizzyingly complex beats…
No Ballot Initiative
Since 1996, nine states — mostly in the South — have liberalized laws that disenfranchise felons. As a result, over half a million new voters have been added to the nation’s voting rolls. And then we have Pennsylvania, where legislators are seeking to achieve the exact opposite. Under the provisions of House Bill 1318, ex-convicts…
Dreadnots
Is it more useful to laze around, whining about the lack of respect given to Pittsburgh hip hop, or to actually do something about it? On their second full-length album, the Dreadnots chose the active role. A group of two producers and two emcees with a contact address in 15212, the Dreadnots create a dense,…
Christmas Spirits
As I write this, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a conservative Christian group, is working itself into the Christmas spirit. How? By showing up at U.S. Senator Arlen Specter’s offices to support Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Alito, the group asserts in a press release, has supported “religious freedoms” by, among other things,…
Mutamassik
The recent riots in France, suicide bombers in Iraq and Palestine, and the 9/11 aftermath are all harbingers of the Western nightmare wherein expansionist Islam threatens to turn Europe into the new Maghreb, which it failed to do a millennium ago. DJ Mutamassik, a longtime Brooklyn-based bringer of beats who now lives in Italy, musically…
Vanished Landmark
Most often we experience a loss in the built environment visually, with an immediate and palpable recognition that an appreciated structure is no longer there. Whether it is the destruction of the urbane and dynamic Jenkins Arcade in favor of the charmless and ill-formed Fifth Avenue Place, or the willful squandering of Pennsylvania…
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Great resources have been marshaled to adapt the first novel in C.S. Lewis’ seven-part series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which depicts an epic battle between good and evil in a magical parallel world. The source material is a mix of children’s story, myth, religious allegory and fantasy, and…
In 1974, a group called the Weather Underground bombed the Gulf Building. Can you shed any light on the reason?
It’s difficult to deduce a purpose behind such an act, especially since no one ever caught the bombers. For a time, police were seeking two cars that had been near the building before the attack with California and Oregon license plates. Nothing came of those leads, though if you meet anyone from these states, it’s…
Best German Restaurant: Penn Brewery
Germans have a reputation for hard work, efficiency and stoic dispositions. But get the average German to a Bierhall and you see an entirely different person: a loud, wise-cracking, beer maid-groping soccer fanatic who drinks enormous steins of hopsy brews. But bierhalls aren’t just about rowdy drunkenness. There’s also the greasy tradition of…
Screwball Comedy/Stories Going Steady
“I was the only nigger in the room,” starts “Project Blackface,” second chapter, first book (Screwball Comedy). Openings like this crash-land with the unmistakable sound of a dropped 40 bottle on a tile floor. Like: “When I found out that appleseeds were poisonous and had arsenic in them, I knew…
Best Indian: India Garden
My love affair with Indian food began innocently enough — as all great love stories do — back in the1980s. I was on a return flight from the United Kingdom when I noticed an unusual food-related aroma wafting from the front of the plane. As it turns out, the chicken dish aboard that Air India…
Long Shadows
Childhood peers who slash faces and catch bullets; a frigid-hearted father, damaged by hard labor and harder racism, wringing out his anger on his wife and kids; a brother who’s riddled with addictions of all sorts. These are the characters in Hip Hop Warrior (Main Street Rag), a new book of poetry by East…
Best Southeast Asian: Tram’s Kitchen
Tram’s Kitchen is a family restaurant in every sense: The Le family does everything from waiting tables to cooking mouthwatering, authentic Vietnamese dishes. And the customers seem to be at home; in fact, one diner is so comfortable that he starts softly singing along to a Bryan Adams song that’s playing in the background: “It…
Old Developments
Steel mills belching flame and smoke. Hill District kids in fedoras, waiting for a Saturday matinee. Billboard slogans so direct you can’t imagine them ever working. (“Ralph Kiner says EAT TOWN TALK for lots of hustle.”) Laundry out on the line, collecting soot even as it dries. What images could be more familiar than these,…
Best Place to Indulge Your Sweet Tooth: The Cheesecake Factory
“This place looks like Vegas!” exclaims my dining companion, as we struggle to open the Cheesecake Factory doors, which are easily twice our size. She isn’t too far off the mark. Designed to resemble a Tuscan villa — from the oversized marble façade pillars to the faux frescoed walls — the palatial interior of…
Blissfully Yours
Blissfully Yours tells a very large story disguised as a very small one. The Thai film, an undistributed 2002 gem screening Dec. 16 at The Andy Warhol Museum, uses deceptively simple means and material to suggest a world of overwhelming sadness and complexity. Filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has a dual fascination with the human body…
A TOUT DE SUITE
Benoît Jaquot’s drama about a bourgeois art student’s sojourn in the underworld has philosophical concerns — What is the true life? being one — but it’s such riveting cinema you might not immediately notice. The never-named young heroine (played by Isild le Besco) falls for a handsome crook, and after a deadly botched bank job…
Railroaded
After more than 23 years working for the Port Authority of Allegheny County, Bernard Jenks could see his reward on the horizon. In two years he’d be 59, deciding whether to keep his job or take the pension he’d been working hard to accrue. He’d earned it in a variety of positions, from driver…
