Information Underload
Aisha White went to the all-female State Correctional Institution — Mucny to talk to inmates about books. As a doctoral candidate at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Science, White decided to investigate so-called information poverty in prisons for her dissertation. At the study’s crux, the question was whether inmates had suitable accessibility to…
Danny, Get Your Gun
First County Executive Dan Onorato axed some 500 positions through early retirements, attrition and layoffs. Now he’s got his sights set on the county’s guns. Onorato has submitted to county council a bill that would allow him to sell off surplus weapons from the county police academy armory in North Park. “There are weapons…
It’s The End of The World as We Knew It — Briefly
It’s that time of the month again, the time when Pittsburghers start wondering where they’ll go to see live rock and pop shows next month. Ahh, for the optimism and hope of the blissful pre-Act 47 days of April, 2004, when one local music journalist went so far as to say, “… Pittsburgh in general…
A conversation with Erin Connolly
How do you do your matchmaking? I have a database and an Excel spreadsheet. I get a little calendar for my events. And it’s always two red balloons on my car. See, I’m simple. Most events are casual, but the dinners are more structured? Yes, always even numbers of men and women. If you…
Volume Discount
In the new Posner Center at Carnegie Mellon University, three remarkable and rare scientific editions share one display case. A 16th-century printing of Ptolemy’s second-century work Magnae Constructionis, a first edition of Nicolaus Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium of 1543 and a first edition of Albert Einstein’s Die Gründlage der Allgemeinen Relativití¤tstheorie of 1916 are…
Erick Sermon
Hip hop is about 25 years old now. Erick Sermon’s been around for about 15 of them, and you can see them in three phases: the EPMD years, the Def Squad years and the post-Wig Split years. He’s probably most widely recognized for the first, as EPMD was hip hop’s first major duo, having influenced…
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Despite the pills and the West Virginian back seats, regardless of a thousand alt-country historical revisionists’ views of the big guy and his rebel honky-tonk soul, no matter what the Dead fan down the street tells you about the primacy of marijuana in American music (Willie aside), I think we can safely say that, “No,…
Before Sunset
Austin-based indie director Richard Linklater made an early splash with films that for all their goofy and slightly self-aware charms nonetheless proved to be insightful forays into the experiences of young adults. Slackers shed light on Austin’s perpetually moody Gen-Xers; the various strata of 1970s teens were affectionately depicted in Dazed and Confused; and in…
The Clearing
On a beautiful summer’s morning in Pittsburgh’s South Hills, two men begin their day. Arnold (Willem Dafoe) leaves his slightly shabby rowhouse, and executes a puzzling series of maneuvers with his car. In the more verdant hills, Wayne (Robert Redford) pads about his well-cushioned estate dressing for success, while his wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren), reminds…
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
San Diego, the mid-’70s, and Ron Burgundy is the star of Channel 4’s local news team. Burgundy (Will Ferrell) presides over hee-hawing sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner), dim-bulb weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) and sleazy field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd). It’s a boozy, brawling boy’s club that’s about to be seriously re-arranged when a…
Bush League
“The Rough Guide to Baghdad.” Inside Iraq’s U.S.-occupied Green Zone, the air conditioners hum and civilian contractors tranquilly tap away at laptops. But unplug from this Matrix, writes Christian Parenti in The Nation (July 19/26), and you’ll find yourself in the “urbanized plain of misery and squalor” that is Sadr City, where bombed-out streets flood…
One Last Look
When the young Stan Brakhage threw away his glasses, it was for aesthetic reasons, but not the ones Brakhage mythologists later claimed. Though he was just beginning a career as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker, Brakhage wasn’t trying to see more purely, unencumbered by corrective lenses. He just wanted to meet girls. But chucking his…
Bukowski:Born Into This
Poet and novelist Charles Bukowski was fortunate to have achieved recognition in his lifetime, though arguably this fame was intertwined with his mythic stature as a larger-than-life loser — the drinking, fornicating and brawling; the seedy bars and SROs; the menial jobs. In his documentary, John Dullaghan doesn’t scrimp on illuminating much of this legend…
No Girls Allowed
When Linda Babcock, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz School of Public Policy, learned how easily Pittsburgh women could be denied an opportunity, it wasn’t thanks to a sexist, knuckle-dragging male. And the victims weren’t shrinking violets; they were grad students, studying in the very school where Babcock was serving as dean.…
Coffee and Cigarettes
The worst thing about Coffee and Cigarettes is its intrinsic hipster pander — the assumption we’ll start chuckling three seconds into any given one of 11 Jim Jarmusch vignettes, shot over a 17-year period, depicting Jarmuschified versions of Tom Waits meeting Iggy Pop, Jack and Meg White admiring Jack’s Tesla coil, or Bill Murray deadpanning…
Chaya Japanese Cuisine
Location: 2104 Murray Ave., Squirrel Hill. 412-422-2082 Hours: Mon.-Sat. 5-9:45 p.m. Prices: Sushi dinner, $16-24; hot dinner, $13-18 Fare: Japanese Atmosphere: A neighborhood place that speaks Japanese Liquor: BYOB The dog days of summer are upon us, and we can’t take the heat, so we’ve been getting out of our un-air-conditioned kitchen. But even outdoor…
The Story of the Weeping Camel
In this semi-documentary shot in the Gobi Desert, filmmakers Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni spend a few days with an extended family of shepherds. When a camel rejects her newborn colt, the two young boys are dispatched to bring back a Buddhist monk to perform a musical ritual to reunite the camel and her offspring.…
When I was 10, my family moved back to Pittsburgh. I asked my mother if they still had those buildings with the different-colored lights on top. She was surprised I had remembered them, but I was happy to see them again. What are the names of those buildi
Name the Pittsburgh building with different-colored lights on top? That’s sort of like asking me to identify the artist who painted “Self-Portrait.” I’m not even sure what buildings were around when you were 10; naturally, as a gentleman and a reporter (aren’t they really the same thing?) I’m not going to ask how old you…
F#ck The Vote (www.fthevote.com)
Pittsburgh, PA — FtheVote.com encourages liberals to use their sex appeal to seduce and bed George W. Bush supporters in exchange for a vote against the incumbent in the November Presidential election. F#ck The Vote (FTV) launches its Web site www.FtheVote.com on July 4, 2004, which invites its visitors to trade sex with conservatives…
