Pittsburgh Rock Music Awards results
List of winners from Sunday night’s Pittsburgh Rock Music Awards.
Lynn Cullen Live 01/17/12
Video Archive Video Archive no longer available Phone guest: Susan; tornado hit St. Louis last night; scientific name of a new horsefly named after Beyonce: scaptia plinthima beyonceae; overturned ship in Italy – – the captain trying to blame head waiter for accident; Susan is coming to visit in March!; do prisoners have the constitutional…
After slow start, can bus rapid transit get rolling?
Discussions of bus rapid transit have been in the works since at least 2010 and community groups are ready to take the next step. Last Thursday, Get There PGH, a coalition of more than 30 community groups, began the public input process to get feedback on a proposed bus rapid transit plan for Pittsburgh. Bus…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/16/12
Video Archive Video Archive no longer available An equipment malfunction caused the first few minutes of the show to be missing in this video archive. Green Bay Packers are out, Miss Wisconsin is in; the safest & most trustworthy criminals are crime of passion murderers; cruise ship crash on the coast of Italy; MLK day…
Weekend extras
Hey friends! Just a few quick alerts regarding upcoming shows that didn’t get a peep in the paper; if you’re looking for something to get up to this weekend, this might help. Tonight (Friday): — Local faves Triggers and Satin Gum play with the appropriately named The Winter Sounds at Brillobox.— New outfit Torn Apart…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/13/12
Video Archive Video Archive no longer available Guest: Chris Potter; it’s Friday the 13th!; Occupy Pgh hearing, Rick Rolling, & cuddle puddles; making sense of the housing assessment madness; who would’ve thought there was a possibility of Fitzgerald going to jail before the Occupiers?; Rick Perry calls Romney a “vulture capitalist;” Hunstman: capitalism without failsure…
Miles protest stymied at Zappala’s door
Marking the two-year anniversary of the high-profile arrest and beating of Jordan Miles at the hands of three undercover police officers, more than a dozen Occupiers and police-accountability activists returned to the office of District Attorney Stephen Zappala this afternoon to demand that charges be filed against the officers. Their demonstration, however, lasted only a…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/12/12
Video Archive Video Archive no longer available Guest: Tom Sokolowski; tainted OJ from Brazil; searching for parking spaces; tangerine is the new “it” color; pros & cons of the Strip District; fun fact: Truman Capote grew up next door to Harper Lee; American South produces great writers; social x-rays & lemon tarts; word of the…
Temporary Residence streams track from Majeure/Steve Moore Split
Morning, friends! Just dropping a quick line to let you know that Temporary Residence, the Brooklyn-based label that reps Majeure and Steve Moore, the two members of the Pittsburgh-born duo Zombi, is currently streaming the Majeure side of the upcoming split the two did. The LP is called Brainstorm, and the Majeure track, posted below…
Battle for Brookyln
Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley’s documentary recounts the seven-year struggle of residents to save their property and community from a developer’s plan to build a multi-block sports-arena complex at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards. It’s a bitter David-vs.-Goliath struggle that pits business and political heavyweights against ordinary citizens, while exposing tensions along lines of race and class.…
Saigon 88
Saigon 88 1778 N. Highland Road, Mount Lebanon. 412-831-8828 Hours: Mon.-Sat. 11a.m.-10 p.m. Prices: Soups, salads, and appetizers $3-15entrees $13-23 Liquor: Beer and wine Saigon 88, a new Vietnamese restaurant near South Hills Village, is kin to Pho Kim 88, a pleasant little restaurant on Route 88 in Castle Shannon. While Pho Kim 88 has…
Carnage
It’s simple enough on the surface: Two well-to-do, educated couples meet to discuss a playground fight between their respective 11-year-old sons. But the discourse quickly escalates from accommodating and passively aggressive to sneering and outright vicious. Roman Polanski’s dark comedy is an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play The God of Carnage, and it’s a painful…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/11/12
Video Archive Video Archive no longer available No Potter today, he’s “Occupied;” cities re-writing crowd control legislature; New Hampshire primary outcome – Ron Paul finished second to Romney; why the young kids love Ron Paul; primary elections not set up in an ideal way; food stamp situation in PA – implementing asset tests in an…
The Devil Inside
The opening shot, simply of words on the screen, is meant to tantalize: “The Vatican did not endorse this film nor aid in its completion.” For once, I couldn’t agree more with the Pope and his robed brethren; I, too, cannot endorse this jumbled mess of an exorcism thriller that — spoiler alert — has…
Short List: January 13 – 19
Daniel Beaty was 3 years old when his father was arrested for heroin possession. “A large part of my journey has been based on having my father there for me in the beginning, only to see him in and out of jail, due to his addiction,” says Beaty by phone from his home in New…
The Mill and the Cross
This is an art film, in every sense of the word: It’s about a well-known painting; beautifully framed and shot; and there’s no dialogue and only a whisper of a borrowed plot. Thus, it is likely to appeal to only a select few, but those viewers so inclined might find Lech Majewski’s film an absorbing…
Big-time Hospitality
When Amber Papini was a teen-ager, she taught herself to sing by emulating Richard Butler, specifically on the Psychedelic Furs record Talk Talk Talk. “I was listening to some tapes of some songs I wrote when I was 18, and my voice is so low,” Papini says, laughing. “It’s funny. I just didn’t have my…
Jeffrey Foucault makes his first trip to Pittsburgh
Jeffrey Foucault is a man born into the wrong era. An age when iPods and Pandora stations queue up hundreds of songs to flick through rewards impatience. Foucault’s music doesn’t. His songs are slow and subdued, and invest heavily in lyrics, with much hanging on each word eked out in his Midwestern garble. “If your…
CD Reviews
Miracle Worker Copacetic Blues (Self-released) Full-length from a new outfit featuring some known names (Steve Jarrett of Orgone and Gregg Weber of Drugdealer and Assembly). Let’s get it out of the way: This record will garner Radiohead comparisons. But while so many bands that try to be Radiohead fall short and just sound like Coldplay,…
Tom Moran of The Five returns with oud in hand
Tom Moran was almost done building his first oud — the stringed instrument used primarily in Arabic and Turkish music — when something occurred to him: “I better learn how to play this.” “So,” he explains, “I started investigating Arabic music using a fretless banjo, because there’s a certain commonality between some banjo tunings and…
Critics’ Picks: January 13 – 18
[LO-FI] + FRI., JAN. 13 What more fitting day than Friday the 13th for one of the most mysterious figures in contemporary music to drop by Garfield Artworks? In the mid-2000s, Jandek, previously known as a complete recluse who had issued tape after tape via his Corwood label since the late ’70s, began to occasionally…
Out of Rubble
Nearly 3,800 days have passed since the war in Afghanistan officially began on Oct. 7, 2001, making it the longest war in U.S. history. Since its inception, thousands have died and billions of dollars been lost amidst the mounting wreckage. Out of Rubble, an exhibition at SPACE Gallery, addresses this reality and the toll taken…
Differing Opinions: Experts paint different pictures about what happened the night teen was beaten
It’s been two years since Jordan Miles confronted three undercover Pittsburgh police officers on a cold winter night in Homewood. But what happened during the former CAPA student’s high-profile beating arrest on Jan. 12, 2010, is still a mystery. Did the three officers — Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak — properly identify themselves…
Emerging Artist of the Year John Peña documented every day for two years with pictures and words.
This is the month of resolutions, and people pick all kinds — like exercising more, tidying up or quitting booze. But John Peña tried something more ambitious: He decided to document every single day with a pencil drawing and accompanying paragraph, for two full years. Peña is no stranger to daily discipline: This is the…
Card Games: Fake holiday donation mailer lampoons UPMC
Humans grapple with many a mystery during the holidays: the meaning of giving, man’s purpose on earth or the specific ingredients of fruit cake. This year saw the addition of another question: Who sent a fake Christmas card soliciting donations on behalf of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation while simultaneously making fun of UPMC? The…
A new history of the Carnegie museums and library is more broad than deep.
You can barely throw a beer bottle in this town without hitting a slab marked with the name of some dead industrialist. (Believe me, I’ve tried.) And no name dominates the landscape more than Andrew Carnegie’s. Over the past century, the Oakland-based juggernaut bearing his name has encompassed four museums and a library system. Entire…
Occupy the Reassessment!
On Jan. 10, two high-profile legal battles were set to take place on the eighth floor of the City-County Building. Members of Occupy Pittsburgh — the grungy foes of corporate privilege who’ve seized the Mellon Green parklet — were due for a hearing on Bank of New York Mellon’s attempt to evict them. Just down…
Hot playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis gets his first Pittsburgh production.
Following critical acclaim and Broadway-hit status for his 2011 comedy The Motherfucker With the Hat, few American playwrights are hotter than Stephen Adly Guirgis. Yet 12 years after his breakthrough, no Pittsburgh stage has yet hosted a Guirgis play. That changes Jan. 12, when barebones productions opens Jesus Hopped the A Train. Artistic director Patrick…
Off-Season Acquisitions
Let’s face it: The Steelers’ Jan. 8 wild-card loss to the Denver Broncos was a tough blow. How could an 8-8 team with a freaky-for-Jesus quarterback deny us our playoff destiny — watching the Steelers get picked apart by the Patriots’ Tom Brady next week? So what’s a Pittsburgher to do? What we’ve always done…
The Artist
The Artist is the kind of movie that movie-lovers love: It’s a silent movie about silent movies, shot in black and white, with lots of references to classic cinema, and it’s French — not that language mattered before talking pictures. This all makes it a novelty, much like Mel Brooks’ 1976 comedy Silent Movie, a…
Savage Love
If it weren’t for my readers, an otherwise distressing news cycle would not have been leavened by headlines like “Santorum Surges from Behind.
Joyful Noise
Imagine if a Lifetime movie and American Idol had a baby. That pretty much sums up Joyful Noise, Todd Graff’s feel-good comedy-melodrama-musical about a small-town Georgia gospel choir trying to get its act together for a national competition. The choir has two feuding leaders – the struggling, down-to-earth mom (Queen Latifah) and the flamboyant grandma…
Brew on Broadway
Brew on Broadway in Beechview is as much as about the neighborhood as it is about coffee. It’s a hub for events, like tamale-making classes from a local Mexican grocer, meetings with local electeds and a monthly BYOB trivia night. The venue is the first from Project Coffeehouse, a new local venture which opens coffee…
The Iron Lady
Regardless of her politics, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was always a great character in a fascinating story. She was the shopkeeper’s daughter who rose to the world political stage. In public, she was unflappable, facing down muttering lords and screaming lads alike; in the corridors of power, she was said to be even steelier.…
At Brix, the wine menu rewards exploration
The wine menu at Brix, a North Side restaurant named for the measurement of sugar in grapes, is designed to encourage exploration. “Ever tried a Lebanese wine?” it asks. “Here’s your chance.” You won’t find the traditional 6-ounce glass of wine at Brix. Instead, the establishment serves wine in 2-ounce, 4-ounce and 8-ounce pours. “The…
