Talk about “big in Japan” . . .
You may not have heard of Jero before — I didn’t until just yesterday — but he’s a rising singing sensation who grew up here in town. He just happens to be bigger in Japan than he is around here — but not in the way countless rock bands are, when they want to make…
Pray to St. Vincent, all ye sinners
Most performances I’ve seen in the Andy Warhol Museum’s small theater space have been of high quality, but mostly compelling in a chin-scratching kind of way. Like, say, Joanna Newsom, Matmos, Richard Hell reading his poetry, Girl Talk making a handful of CMU students studiously approximate dirty dancing — you get the idea. None of…
Unwelcome Bill
No one on council wants to speak out against city councilor Bill Peduto’s effort to limit campaign contributions, at least not yet. But no one is rushing to vote for it, either. Peduto’s bill, which would limit campaign contributions to local candidates, is discussed at length in this thrilling 3,000-word City Paper account. And it…
Last Restaurant Standing
To hold us over until Bravo’s Top Chef returns — March 12, in the City of Big Shoulders — armchair chefs and restaurateurs can follow along with BBC’s Last Restaurant Standing. It doesn’t have one-quarter of Top Chef’s inter-personal dramas and gasp-out-loud challenges, but it has its charms. Nine couples have each been given a…
Lost: The Oceanic Six and the Fairchild 16
Real-life plane crash better story than Lost
Survivor: Yau, That hurts
I’m not sure what the Las Vegas odds were for Survivor: Micronesia all-star Yau-Man to go to at least the final four, but I bet a lot of people thought the elder statesman had a pretty good shot to go pretty deep in the contest. He’s a hard worker, very likeable and unassuming — which…
Nagging Payne
Get out your handkerchiefs: Tonya Payne is really really really sorry about nearly botching the historic nomination of August Wilson’s childhood home. Not so sorry, though, that she couldn’t fault those who pointed out her failure While she apologized for dropping the ball on designating the Hill District home of the famous playwright last year,…
American Idol: The 12 Female Contestants
American Idol: The first 12 girls
Our Presidential Candidates Have Issues
If you search for the words “legislation,” “policy” and “substance” in the past year’s campaign coverage, what turns up is a pile of articles mostly lamenting their absence. (“Why, many Americans are asking, are the presidential candidates yammering about so many nonissues?” asks The Columbus Dispatch in a Jan. 16 editorial.) While the media has…
Letters to the Editor: Feb 20 – 27
Feedback from our readers: Payback time for Brenda Frazier.
Film: Toilet Training
Documentary studies the problem of gender-segregated bathrooms for people transitioning between genders.
Law: Equal Justice
Pitt law professor uses anecdotes and his own experiences to examine Everyday Law for Gays and Lesbians in new book.
Politics: Here we go pavers, here we go!
Guess who’s more likely to have his street paved in Pittsburgh: (A) a resident who lives on a stretch of road scheduled to be paved, or (B) a resident who lives on a section of street that isn’t scheduled to be paved, but who happens to be the head coach of the Steelers? The correct…
Going Through the Motions: Feb. 19, 2008
Councilor Bill Peduto says the decision to grant Lamar Advertising the right to construct a 12,000-square-foot electronic billboard Downtown didn’t go through proper channels, and now he wants to launch an investigation to find out why. Peduto says that until he read about it in the paper, council didn’t know anything about the decision to…
Sort Of Records gears up for sort-of two year anniversary
“I used to do everything in a real kinda crafty way, here at home.”
Step Up 2 the Streets
If you’re expecting Jon Chu’s sorta sequel to 2006’s Step Up to be a familiar story, sloppily edited and repackaged under the same title as its irrelevant predecessor, you’ll be mostly right. When little orphan Andie (Briana Evigan) is forced to hit the books at the Maryland School of the Arts instead of the streets,…
In Bruges
A dark comedy about honor among criminals seems very 1990s, but Martin McDonagh’s profane and bloody caper about two Irish hitmen cooling their heels in Bruges, Belgium, manages a decent crackle, even through its talky first half. The pair– a level-headed elder (Brendan Gleeson) and his jumpy, childish protégé (Colin Farrell) — sightsee in the…
Grace Is Gone
Amid all the hollering and partisanship that the Iraq war has generated in our culture is writer-director James Strouse’s quiet homefront drama. When Minnesota everyman Stanley Phillips (John Cusack) learns that his soldier wife has been killed in Iraq, he takes his two young daughters on a road trip rather than tell them. Strouse’s film…
Definitely, Maybe
The set-up made me cringe: Precocious child (Abigail Breslin) asks divorcing dad (Ryan Reynolds) to turn his past love affairs into a bed-time story so she can learn how he and mommy met. There’s more to like when the flashbacks begin in 1992 — cue those Clinton jokes — and dad’s in the dating pool,…
Charlie Bartlett
It’s also a nod to cinema’s greatest teen-nerd iconoclastic hero. Smart rich kid Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) has trouble fitting into his new high school. But he sticks to his strengths — brains, empathy and easy access to prescription drugs — and soon finds himself popular and sought-after, first as the school’s resident therapist, and…
A photo show about West African funeral rites — and with live music.
“People die at funerals, people make babies at funerals — it’s one of the main spiritual events.”
A pedestrian span in Shadyside bridges the gap between form and function.
The visual detritus of automobile infrastructure is reframed as graphic beauty and harnessed for a pedestrian-only structure.
Green Light
Buying one’s food locally grown has become perilously fashionable, but author and activist Michael Shuman says that getting sustenance from nearby fields should be just the start of efforts to rebuild our economy. Shuman holds that economics shouldn’t be only about profit — though he’s all for private wealth — but instead about the well-being…
A Flood of Controversy
Rebecca Hare’s dramatic Feb. 7 rescue from rising icy river water was a compelling story on its own: The homeless 27-year-old was at risk for hypothermia and drowning after the river began flooding into a locked tunnel beneath the David L. Lawrence Convention Center Downtown, which she’d snuck into to seek shelter. After an hours-long…
Abaté Italian & Seafood Restaurant
Abaté relocated from its original location at the Waterworks. It left behind its distinctive red-neon fish sign, but brought with it a menu with a strong emphasis on fresh pasta and seafood in a variety of styles.
Andy Friedman brings “art country” to Bridgewater
If you’re more familiar with his pen than his growl, you may want to get better acquainted.
St. Vincent visits the Warhol
A seamless blend of Astrud Gilberto’s loungy sophistication, Deerhoof’s quirkiness and Woody Allen’s satirical wit.
A Conversation with Dr. Aileen Ruiz
A New Orleans veterinarian who sought refuge in Pittsburgh after Hurricane Katrina might seem unusual enough — but a love of animals isn’t the only thing Dr. Aileen Ruiz brought to town. Ruiz also imported her goth/fetish party series, called Elise’s Playground, which combines local music and artists with fetish skits, DJs and occasional guests…
See her before she gets big
Quick heads-up on a semi-local musician you should know about if you don’t already: Nicole Reynolds is a Pittsburgh who splits her time between her hometown and that other big city on the other side of the state. I caught her last year opening for Madeline at the Earthstone Cafe (is that place still open?…
Songwriting collective Company borrows from Byrds, Buffalos and Voltron
“It was more about the community and seeing people and spending time and enjoying music together.”
Les Ballet’s de Monte-Carlo presents its spectacular (and subtly revisionist) Cinderella.
Without a lost slipper, Maillot’s Prince is left to travel the world apparently indulging a foot fetish, asking to inspect women’s feet for their shine.
Blithe Spirit
So credibly thuggish in dramatic roles, Rocco here blissfully morphs into the urbanely bored author dealing with an expected bout of bigamy, raising his eyebrow instead of his voice.
The Vertical Hour
And all too soon (or maybe “all too late”), Vertical Hour becomes a mess of dysfunctional familial revelations.
Café on Main
Hotcakes drizzled with Nutella, hot cakes stuffed with blueberries and pecans.
Delegating Responsibility
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superdelegate! There’s been a lot about of talk lately about superdelegates — the current and former elected office-holders and party officials who vote for a Democratic presidential nominee at the national convention. Unlike regular delegates, superdelegates can support whomever they want … and…
Slaves to History
“I think the collective denial of this part of our history is very powerful.”
This Just In: Feb 20 – 27
Highlights from the local TV news: The war on snow … blinded by the light … hot dog!
Savage Love
I am 20 years old and my boyfriend is 30. He’s been married three times and has six children from a variety of women. I know, I know, it sounds bad. But he’s one of those guys who wanted a family. Anyway, long story short, I feel insecure because he has had a MILLION experiences…
Be Kind Rewind
After a store’s videotapes are erased, two buddies (Jack Black and Mos Def) take to making their own versions of popular rentals such as Ghostbusters and Robocop – all to the wild embrace of the neighborhood, who start to pitch in with the productions. It’s Gondry’s cheerful thumb in the eye of all those mega-budget,…
Taxi to the Dark Side
Taxi, which focuses on prisoner abuse at U.S. military prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guatánamo Bay, Cuba, takes an enormous amount of fluid information and delivers a cogent, devastating case of how institutions we trust, and who act in our name, went wrong. While not excusing the actions of servicemen on scene, Taxi places most…
