Food Fights: Ongoing TV-chef wars
If they didn’t cast high-strung contestants in reality shows, what would we talk about? A lot of spoons clattered to the floor last week when Lisa made it to the Final Three on Top Chef. OK, so Antonia undercooked the beans (who hasn’t?), but Lisa’s been on the chopping block, it seems, every week. Moreover,…
Political Payback
In a move that notably failed to cause the pillars of power to tremble, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl vetoed a campaign-finance reform measure today. Ravenstahl’s move will likely kill the bill, which would have limited the amount contributors could donate to candidates for local office. But somehow, I can’t get too upset. It’s what we all…
Lawrenceville Thursdays are totally ’80s
I’ll admit, my interest in local ’80s Night events dropped to about zero after taking a bottle to the skull at one of the last dance extravaganzas at the now-defunct Upstage in Oakland. The impact must’ve jarred something loose in there — perhaps the something that makes people want to hear “Come On, Eileen” each…
Anita Shovel (and some hand sanitizer)
The other day when I was out for a run I came across a dead grackle in the middle of the sidewalk. Dead birds seem pretty ominous, so I wondered what it was foreboding. Turns out it was probably this: a band called Grackles, and a band called Dead Bird, playing together, at Gooski’s on…
She’s Got the Look: Mature Models?
So models should be 17 and 95 pounds? Well, most do, but there is some work out there for women who are otherwise mature and better padded. Aging boomers want to keep shopping and need relatable, but attractive people to pitch them osteoporosis drugs, retirement homes or stylish outdoor wear. But is there a market…
Driving in a New Direction
A few months ago, Linda Taggart sat down with a list of TV programs and began searching for a few shows that might attract viewers to her station. She looked into the new Mediterranean singing sensation, Pavlo, reviewed a recently unearthed Queen concert from 1981. She consulted with programmers in other markets to see how…
Land of Confusion
In March 2004, National Reservist Jeremy Zerechak was mobilized to Iraq, and naturally the Penn State film student packed his camera. This document of his unit’s year-long deployment was shot on the fly, but there’s some great stuff amid the film’s hang-loose feel. Zerechak has a keen eye for capturing the droll absurdity of the…
The Fall
In a Los Angeles hospital in the 1920s, an injured and depressed movie stuntman named Roy (Lee Pace) tells a fellow patient, a little immigrant girl (Catinca Untaru), a fantastical yarn about a group of idiosyncratic avenging bandits. Fiction and reality become easily intertwined — Roy is doped up, the child brightly imaginative — with…
Sex and the City
Michael Patrick King’s film catches up with the four fashionable best gal-pals, who are now variously married, settled and sort-of looking. The big news is: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) are getting hitched. At its best, Sex and the City is funny and touching, just like the TV series, and pleasingly…
Standard Operating Procedure
The film seeks to provide the context for understanding how this aberrant behavior could have occurred, while simultaneously querying the “truthfulness” of an image. To this end, Morris interviews those who were directly involved, including the soldiers who took and/or posed in the photos. SOP asks us to consider the elusive truth of photography, but…
The Arts Festival and barebones productions step to the plate with a stage drama about a baseball star who steps out of the closet.
Were it for real, the fictional Lemming’s coming-out as an active professional athlete wouldn’t be this production’s only first.
Duck Hunter Shoots Angel
Albom’s play is really just a boatload of laughs.
Bust
She has a wonderful way of summing up people with tiny gestures and slight changes of voice and posture.
Eastburn Avenue
They mix speech and song like ingredients in a cocktail, and the effect is intoxicating.
Letters to the Editor: June 4 – 11
Feedback from our readers: CP barks up the wrong tree on police dogs … a libertarian diagnoses our story on health care.
Love Street Treats
Delicious, sweet treats are also good for you.
Leonard’s Living Room
This South Hills venue features Italian-American old-favorites fare.
Film: Despite criticisms, 48-Hour Film contest coming back with few changes
Pittsburgh’s first-ever 48-Hour Film Project is back for a second year with a few minor changes.
County Council: Bill would strap guidelines on trade with foreign companies
A bill pending before Allegheny County Council would require the county executive — prior to making any deal that permits or requires international shipments to or through Allegheny County — to obtain assurances that none of the cargo has “been manufactured or is intended to assist in the violation of human rights of any individual.”
Pittsburgh n’@
The Madden crowd
This Just In: June 5 – 12
Highlights from the local TV news: Yet another “House of Filth.”
Godspeed! progeny Thee Silver Mt. Zion rocks to its own clock
There’s no disputing the musicianship melding tribal freak-folk intensity, rumbling rock drums and prog’s orchestral adventurism into evocative set pieces that maintain momentum despite their knotty nature.
Lizz Wright sings the blues at the Three Rivers Arts Festival
Most of the songs were co-written by Wright with singer-songwriter Toshi Reagon and rendered in stark acoustic atmospheres.
Local Abstract on Black label expands beyond Pittsburgh
A Pittsburgh label striving for recognition in the wide world is admirable, but what about a local connection?
Alt-country’s unlikely heroes the Waco Brothers play the Warhol
“We were a bunch of punk rockers who didn’t know how to play country, so we approximated things.”
Derek White and The Monophobics were born to boogie
I’d like it a bit better if the band found its own sounds to pet, but it’s a massively tuneful way to start the summer.
Modey Lemon offers stop-and-think moments on Season of Sweets
While it’s nearing the 10-year mark as a band, Modey Lemon manages to avoid falling into too comfortable a routine musically.
From cage-fighting photos to environmental sculpture, SPACE gets diverse with the seven artists in Pittsburgh Now.
Hosking’s contribution feels poetic, a narrative unfolding, about the everyday, everywhere, things we see, repeatedly, but usually fail to notice.
The Three Rivers Arts Festival tries something new: single-artist galleries in curbside shipping containers.
“Nobody wanted to be naked!”
Viewing China through Cao Fei’s “Whose Utopia” at the Carnegie International.
Even without a question mark, Cao’s title is inherently confrontational: It indicates that this is neither her idea of utopia, nor that of the workers who live under it.
Exhuming the Truth
Buried on a back page of the May 30 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was a 375-word death notice. Headlined “Settlement casts doubt on legality of ‘Bodies,'” the piece marked the loss not of a beloved local figure, but of a local institution’s credibility. And of the innocence — or at least the naiveté — of the people…
Savage Love
I’m a 23-year-old guy and I have been dating my 21-year-old girlfriend for about two years. We did the long-distance thing for a year, and after she graduated she moved from the East Coast to the Midwest to be with me while I finish my degree. Everything was great until she moved in with me.…
