New Opportunities for Artists at Arts Fest
Local artists sought for three initiatives
Sex, Drag and Rock and Roll fundraiser for GLCC this Friday
Cattivo and Mr. Cattivo 2012, Johnny Valiant, will host a fundraiser this weekend to benefit the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Pittsburgh. The “Sex, Drag & Rock and Roll” drag queen contest will feature a slew of entertainers. The event takes place Fri., Jan. 8. Doors at 6, show starts at 7 p.m, at…
New video from Paul Luc: “Today & Last Night”
New video from Paul Luc, with Brillobox content.
Scholar Cites An All-Gay Military
OK, I’m paraphrashing. But a brief exchange with an audience member during the question-and-answer session was a highlight of last night’s Jared Diamond lecture at Carnegie Music Hall. Diamond, Pulitzer-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, spoke to a full house about what we can learn from traditional societies, which is the theme of his…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/15/13
Video Archive Phone guest: Susan; Repubs in NY voting for gun control; NRA preventing gun education, knowledge; one month since Sandy Hook; Australia got 40% of guns off the street w/ buy back program; Rick Scott adopts dog to win election, gets rid of it afterwards; Clarence Thomas speaks in court; Django is a funny…
Is your social network making you fat? Broke? Stupid? Maybe!
Social network users may have a reason to “dislike” their favorite sites: researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia Business School say that websites like Facebook boost a user’s self-esteem, but could also lead to reduced self control, especially when it comes to eating after browsing. In a paper entitled “Are Close Friends the…
Event Preview: Red Bull Thre3Style DJ Contest
A few questions and answers with competitors in this Wednesday’s Red Bull Thre3style event.
Inaugural Poet’s Pittsburgh Ties
As the New York Times points out, Richard Blanco has quite a challenge before him. Inaugural poets aren’t allowed to just pick one of the poems that made the president (or president-elect) like them in the first place. Instead, they’ve got to come up with an “occasional poem,” one written for a particular auspicious moment.…
Ravenstahl proposes tax cut
Mayor Ravenstahl’s proposal would cut the tax millage by 30 percent, from 10.8 to 7.56 mills.
How many Pittsburgh people and places can you name in this Public Enemy video?
We’ll start you off: The first lip-syncer is Shadow Lounge/AVA owner Justin Strong. Who/where else do you see in the brand-new video from the Public Enemy song “Everything”? Related Stories
Heads Up: Morning headlings for Jan. 14
Public urination, drunkenness, belligerent behavior … the South Side’s weekend scene has it all. And now it comes complete with a high-speed police chase and shooting! A police pursuit ended after off-duty city police opened fire on a car speeding down Carson Street late Saturday night, injuring the driver and his mom (?). Details –…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/14/13
Video Archive Golden Globes recap; English actors have the best acceptance speeches; Lena Dunham can’t walk in heels; technical aspect of the show looked like public access TV; Jodie Foster’s speech: coming out, retiring?; Argo won at the Globes, snubbed by Academy; don’t go to law school; income inequality; manager / worker relationship; minimum wage…
Marble coasters, douchey bro sunglasses and more!
Some items available from local vendors on Etsy RIGHT NOW!
Friends, supporters hold vigil — and call for action — for Ka’Sandra Wade tomorrow
Friends of murder victim planning vigil, call to action on police 9-1-1 policies
Maddie Georgi release show tonight at the Rex
Maddie Georgi releases her second album, at age 20.
Heads Up: Morning headlines for Jan. 11
Your NRA mindset at work, ladies and gentlemen: The Washington Post visits a Butler County school district that can barely afford teachers, but has plenty of money for more security. “Butler County had cut 75 teaching and administrative positions in the past five years because of a shrinking budget, but now the district … couldn’t…
George Benson crowd-funds a tribute to Nat King Cole
The Grammy winner is offering up a signed guitar to a big donor.
Quay Meanz, Chevy Woods on the docket for South by Southwest
Several Pittsburgh musicians and web-types will rep at SXSW this March.
Heads Up: Morning headlines for Jan. 10
A cloud is hanging over the county’s new air regulations — the first since 1988. The county’s health panel last night voted to weaken regulations it had almost unanimously approved just a couple months ago. And apparently, it changed its mind after board members met with county executive Rich Fitzgerald. The effect of the change…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/10/13
Video Archive Guest: Charlie Deitch, CP writer; Corbett wants to privatize the lottery, add keno to gambling in Pgh; keno will be available in your local bar, no need to go to the casino as it’s a lottery game; talk of online instant games; PA lottery is the largest in the country; more on Stubenville;…
Slow Food Pittsburgh announces weekend events
Slow Food Pittsburgh has two events on tap this weekend. Both will be held at Marty’s Market, 2301 Smallman St., Strip District. A coffee tasting and brewing demo will be held from 2-3 p.m. on Sat., Jan. 12. The $10 fee gets participants a chance to do a sensory evaluation of aroma, body and taste…
Heads Up: Morning headlines for Jan. 9
As one tax subsidy dies, another is born … The good folks at the Buncher Company, whose plan to remake a riverfront parcel alongside the Strip District has been controversial, are now dropping their request for a $50 million tax subsidy. City councilor Patrick Dowd, who had been holding up the request because of concerns…
War Without a Winter Coat
Iran shot at a US drone Which was flying over neutral water. Some say it’s an act of war, I don’t know. Jake came to the gym last night And worked hard Footwork and more footwork And hit the pads And I told him he has to study hard And learn to count Because he…
Guns, Germs and Steel author Jared Diamond returns to contend we have much to learn from traditional societies.
JARED DIAMOND at the Monday Night Lectures. 7:30 p.m. Mon., Jan. 14. Carnegie Music Hall 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. $15-25. 412-622-8866 or pittsburghlectures.org For nearly all of our estimated 200,000 years on Earth, human beings were nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. We lived off the land, used stone tools and spent most days in the company…
Unsportsmanlike Conduct
For Penn State fans, it wasn’t horrifying enough to learn that a serial child-abuser, Jerry Sandusky, had spent years preying on children in the shadows of Penn State’s vaunted football program. It wasn’t mortifying enough to have the NCAA respond by levying $60 million in fines, stripping coach Joe Paterno of 111 of his career…
Poet Paola Corso explores work — and the conditionality of breathing.
Each of Paola Corso’s two latest works of poetry explores, from different angles, the inevitability of work and the conditionality of the air we breathe. The latter warning is a literal one, fraught with mortality. In the collection The Laundress Catches Her Breath (CavanKerry Press), Corso empathetically but unsentimentally depicts the life of a woman…
Savage Love
I’m a straight male. I love women, I’ve always loved women. However, here and there I’ve jerked off to transsexual porn. One night, after drinking and smoking some hash, I arranged a date with a trans sex worker. She was totally womanly, nothing manly about her, except for, you know. She licked my butt, gave…
Pittsburgh Public Theater’s The Chief
THE CHIEF continues through Sat., Jan. 12. Pittsburgh Public Theater 621 Penn Ave. Downtown. $15.75-65. 412-316-1600 or ppt.org While it’s true I’m not what you’d call much of a sports fan, it’s pierced even my consciousness that the Steelers didn’t perform up to expectations this year. (I follow the team’s success by the amount of…
Short List: January 9 – 15
Spotlight: Fri., Jan. 11 — Comedy “I think there’s too many rules in standup,” says veteran comic Matt Wohlfarth. You know: Comedian writes jokes, comedian performs jokes, audience sits there and laughs (or not). In recent years, at venues like The Pittsburgh Improv, Wohlfarth has field-tested a format designed to explode that model. In his…
The artists of Keystone West make a strong showing at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.
SMALL STEP GIANT LEAP continues through Jan. 20. Pittsburgh Center for the Arts 6300 Fifth Ave. Shadyside. 412-361-0873 or pittsburgharts.org Keystone West is a small, informal group of diverse yet somewhat like-minded artists based in, or maintaining a strong tie to, Pittsburgh. Sharing an awareness and ambition that transcends the regional, they meet sporadically to…
On Being Asked for a Poem that Embodies
As a kid, I had a rock collection and didn’t learn anything from it. Not the scientific names. Not the way they formed so long before us. Or the way they’ll continue eons after. I should, you say, have held them to my ear hour after hour, and listened to their silence, to the pure…
Zero Dark Thirty
Zero Dark Thirty Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow Starring: Jessica Chastian Starts: Fri., Jan. 11. When director Kathryn Bigelow and her screenwriting partner Mark Boal set out to make the film once known as “The Untitled Osama Bin Laden Project,” the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks was still at large. The story was about the…
Janice’s Sweet Harmony Café and Catering
Janice’s Sweet Harmony Café and Catering 2820 Duss Ave. Ambridge. 724-266-8099 Hours: Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sun. 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Prices: $4-8 Liquor: None Despite there being no shortage of all-American diners in Western Pennsylvania, we’re always driven to seek out more. Our restless search for the perfect diner — the one with flawlessly executed…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/09/13
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter; Corbett is naked on the CP cover again!; women like Corbett even less than Santorum; the stigma on Penn State may not just be because of the sanctions; new poll shows cockroaches & Nickleback are more popular than Congress; how Americans feel about Tea Partiers & socialism; Senator Toomey on…
Heading South: Strip taco vender opens South Hills Mexican eatery
Edgar Alvarez is back in the restaurant business. A longtime fixture in the Strip District at Reyna’s Taco Shack, the cheery 53-year-old Mexico City native has opened a new place in the South Hills formerly occupied by the short-lived California Taco Shop on Route 51. Now named Edgar’s Authentic Mexican Cuisine, there have been few…
Any Day Now
Occasionally, a film comes along that I want to like, but I just can’t separate the work’s goodness from the dross it’s wrapped in. Any Day Now, a period melodrama (with musical numbers) about two gay men trying to adopt a teen-age boy with Down syndrome, is such a film. Travis Fine’s film takes place…
A few simple cocktails help you stay warm while staying at home
Sometimes during the winter, you’ll find yourself craving a cocktail, but it’ll be too cold and snowy to trudge to the nearest watering hole. Don’t fret: If you have even a modestly stocked liquor cabinet, the solution is nearby. “The whole idea of hot cocktails this time of year is have something to warm you…
Not Fade Away
It’s no secret that David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, harbors plenty of affection for the bygone days of working-class New Jersey and rock ‘n’ roll, or how interested he is in mining the uneasy relationships between fathers and sons. So little surprise that Chase makes his big-screen directorial debut with this period dramedy,…
Another solution for green tomatoes, besides frying and discarding
With a bigger garden this year, come October my wife and I faced a bigger harvest of unripe tomatoes. We knew of three options. One, put the tomatoes in a brown paper bag to ripen. This works, but a memo: Check inside the bag once in a while. Otherwise, the tomatoes shoot past red all…
Feels like the right time for a Freakwater tour
FREAKWATER with PAIRDOWN. 7 p.m. Thu., Jan. 17. Club Café 56 S. 12th St. South Side. $1. 412-431-4950 or clubcafelive.com Catherine Irwin is, along with Janet Bean, one of the singers and songwriters of the critically acclaimed, somewhat elusive alt-country band Freakwater. While the band hasn’t released new material since 2005 — Irwin and Bean…
Mysterious Mr. Mangum returns to Pittsburgh
JEFF MANGUM with TALL FIRS, BRIARS OF NORTH AMERICA 8 p.m. Thu., Jan. 10. Carnegie Music Hall 4400 Forbes Ave. Oakland. $25-30. All ages. 412-237-8300 or warhol.org Before Superchunk hit the stage of Graffiti Showcase in February 1998, a rag-tag group of musicians came and went from the stage, all based around a guy strumming…
WuLords combine hip hop and The Art of War
“It’s a hard thing coming out from the hood that we’re from,” says Z1, the eldest member of WuLords. “We ain’t got no pool. They took our school from us. There’s an ice-skating rink in Hazelwood right now and nobody got skates.” It’s from that environment that the group of brothers — Z1 (age 18),…
New Releases
Western Pennsylvania Born Again Blues (Self-released) The cover of Born Again Blues — two shadowy, blurry figures, one in a cowboy hat, the other in a white shirt and tie — gives a sense of how this strange little record sounds: mysterious, dream-like and anonymous … though anonymity doesn’t seem to be a goal of…
Critics’ Picks: January 9 – 15
[HIP HOP] + SAT., JAN. 12 Time was when Grand Buffet was the largest purveyor of earworms in Pittsburgh: Who didn’t spend most of 2005 with that “Oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh my god you’re weird!” hook stuck in his or her head? In recent years, the duo has been largely working separately, Grape-a-Don performing under the…
Numbers Game: Tom Corbett wants to bet on keno; are your wallet and well-being worth the risk?
The rules of traditional keno are simple: A player picks 20 numbers out of a possible 80. The more numbers you hit, the more money you win. And if Gov. Tom Corbett’s plan to privatize the state’s lottery system goes through, finding a place to play will be easy as well. You’ll be able to…
On the Record with Rustbelt Radio reporter Don Carpenter
It’s a story that’s captured national headlines: two high school football stars accused of raping a 16-year-old, who was too incapacitated to resist, at an August party, in Steubenville, Ohio. Since then, their friends discussed it — and at times posted photos from the ordeal on social media. It reached national attention courtesy of a…
