Stars and Stripes Comic Book
The comic book Star and Stripes begins with soldiers marching into war. A battlefield blast segues into a flashback of a boy, action figures in hand, playing a game of war. Stars and Stripes, by writer Michael “Frick” Weber and illustrator Loran Skinkis, follows an American soldier’s frontline experiences during World War II, and adds…
More charged in prison scandal
Six corrections officers at SCI-Pittsburgh were arraigned this afternoon on charges including official oppression, criminal conspiracy and witness intimidation. The charges come in the wake of explosive sex-abuse charges against Harry S. Nicoletti, a CO charged in September after a lengthy grand jury investigation by the District Attorney’s office. As with Nicoletti’s indictment, the allegations…
MP3 Monday: WOVOKA
Howdy! This week’s MP3 comes from WOVOKA, the duo of Jack Wilson and Deric Norgren. Jack Wilson (aka DJ Brewer) lit out for warmer — er, nicer — er, different climes in Baltimore last year, while Norgren stayed behind in Pittsburgh. Today’s track is from sessions recorded while both were still here. Without further ado,…
Making the Grade: Pittsburgh schools improving, advocacy group says
Citing higher test scores for black students, a local education watchdog group announced today that the stubborn racial-achievement gap at the Pittsburgh Public Schools is narrowing. A+ Schools announced the good news during a press conference this morning, when the Hill District-based nonprofit unveiled its Seventh Annual Report to the Community on Public School Progress…
Short List: November 10 – 13
China’s Beijing Dance Company pays a visit to the Byham Theater on Nov. 15 with a program bringing China’s cultural past into the present. It’s part of a four-city American tour sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China that includes performances at New York’s Lincoln Center and Washington’s Kennedy Center.…
Food for Thought
I’m glad they’re around to be the stone in everyone’s shoe, that essential reminder to care about something. A few days before Occupy Pittsburgh’s Oct. 15 march and rally, one of the women in my office called the staff into the front room, and asked whether we were planning to attend. I work at…
Savage Love
I’m an evangelical Christian. My husband and I have been married five years. We have great sex several times a week despite having two kids. We get along so well that even a couple of my atheist friends have admitted they want what we have. What most of them don’t know is that we waited…
Distilled Waters Run Deep
In 1794, Western Pennsylvania spawned the Whiskey Rebellion, an uprising of farmers upset by a tax on whiskey — the distilling of which was a crucial source of cash. In an early test of authority for the fledgling U.S. government, the uprising was crushed … but a more refined rebellion is taking place here today.…
Dates and Bacon
One problem with the upcoming holiday season: You’re sometimes obliged to have “friends” and “loved ones” visit your home, where they will expect food. That’s a challenge in a household like mine. We accept each other’s cooking the way we do, say, spousal snoring — with forbearance and hard-won affection. But we try to avoid…
Palazzo 1837 Ristorante
It’s easy to forget that many of our named arteries — Freeport Road, Braddock Avenue — are holdovers from an era before street signs, when most roads were unnamed, and those that weren’t tended to be called, simply, by where they took you. Thus Route 19’s proper name, Washington Road, shouldn’t just make you think…
Soft-Pedaling Prevention
In October 1996, Lance Armstrong, then 25 and the world’s seventh-ranked professional bicyclist, learned he had testicular cancer. The cancer had spread to his lungs, brain and abdomen. He was given a 40 percent chance of survival. “I intend to beat this disease,” he told reporters. Armstrong survived, of course — the brain surgery, the…
Occupational Hazards: Occupy Pittsburgh has been making it easy for everyone … except the Occupiers themselves
On its Twitter account, the Occupy Pittsburgh movement half-jokingly refers to its encampment on Mellon Green as “AmericasMostLivableOccupation.” Walking through the camp — at least on one of the last balmy days Pittsburgh is likely to enjoy this year — it’s easy to see why. Since the Occupation began on Oct. 15, the number of…
Critics’ Picks: November 10 – 12
[INDIE ROCK] + THU., NOV. 10 Last year, Levi’s premiered the “Go Forth” ad campaign featuring Braddock as its American working-class tableau. In exchange for using the town as Rustbelt industrial-decay porn, Levi’s pledged to support local social programs; this weekend, indie-rock fans reap some of the rewards as Levi’s and Opus One Productions present…
SolSis works to “take the game back” for women in hip hop
The DJ transitioned into the apt Erykah Badu song “The Healer” right before hip-hop duo SolSis took the stage at the Shadow Lounge on a recent Friday night. Veterans of Shadow’s guild of mainstay movers and shakers, Ma’Ve Sami and YahLioness have been involved in the hip-hop and spoken-word scene for more than a decade,…
Local hardcore punks Heartless release full-length on Southern Lord
A band that inks a contract with a major independent record label usually does so as a direct result of its hard work and reputation. The hardcore-punk proponents in the local band Heartless possess these traits, but the band’s path to signing with heavyweight punk-and-metal label Southern Lord Records was initiated by a band from…
Boca Chica returns with a new full-length of sweet and sometimes ghostly folk
When Boca Chica frontwoman Hallie Pritts talks about the sound of the local indie darlings, she does so like any artist, with an indifference toward categories. “We’re more of an indie-country-rock band,” she says with a shrug in her tone. “If that’s a thing right now.” In the age of the “New Weird America,” Boca…
Dan Koshute creates glam-rock band Dazzletine
“The early ’70s is a magical time for me,” says Dan Koshute, though he’s too young to remember the era himself. “During the rest of the century, for good reasons in some decades, there was a loss of cool.” Koshute, the fiery singer, songwriter and leader of the larger-than-life local rock outfit Dazzletine, is talking…
Summer-Winter releases second album
Though he looks pretty normal, and his music isn’t self-consciously oddball in any way, Terry O’Hara is one of the city’s more unusual musical characters. The sole proprietor of Summer-Winter, O’Hara pops up every couple of years to drop a beautiful, understated alt-folk album, then disappears again. O’Hara is largely the opposite of the average…
Mace Ballard releases book-smart debut full-length
With the accolades that Mace Ballard has piled up over the past couple of years, it’s hard to believe the pop-punk band is just now preparing to release its first full-length. But The Next Time You See Sky, to be released this weekend, is indeed its debut long-player, anticipated since 2009’s The Time It Takes…
Tower Heist
A bunch of working stiffs who help run and maintain a glossy Manhattan apartment building lose their pensions. Seems the investment plan touted by their zillionaire boss (Alan Alda) was a Ponzi scheme. Incensed by the boss’ cavalier attitude, the building manager (Ben Stiller) organizes a crew of employees (Casey Affleck, Michael Pena), a former…
Fallingwater
Local filmmaker Ken Love is known for his documentaries on Pittsburgh history, such as one about photographer Teenie Harris. But he’s also made several films about famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Now, for the 75th anniversary of the construction of Wright’s landmark Fallingwater, Love has updated his own 1994 doc about the house built over…
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Sean Durkin’s feature-film debut is an exhilarating and disturbing psychological drama, performed by a cast of actors who get it.
Three Rivers Film Festival
The 30th annual Three Rivers Film Festival, presented by Pittsburgh Filmmakers, continues through Nov. 19. The program includes foreign-language works, American independents, documentaries, shorts, local works and experimental cinema. Review of selected films screening during the remainder of the festival: THE OTHER F WORD. Aging pop-punk stars including Fat Mike, Lars Fredericksen and Mark Hoppus…
Back from Paris, The Pillow Project tries out some new moves.
An anonymous donation allowed The Pillow Project to perform in Paris last month with jazz poet and Pittsburgh native Moe Seager. More luck on that trip introduced the dance troupe to noted free-jazz saxophonist Sabir Mateen, who took an instant liking to the company. And Seager’s trip to Pittsburgh this month presented the perfect opportunity…
Nuts
Exhibit A: Claudia, a wonky young woman accused of prostitution and manslaughter, suspected of paranoid schizophrenia. Exhibit B: Arthur Kirk, Claudia’s stepfather, who wears a bolo tie and talks with a thick New York accent. But can’t we guess the rest? Could we, average folks, write this story blindfolded? The moment Arthur swaggers into the…
Sweeney Todd
I’m torn. On one hand, I’m thrilled that, thanks to the University of Pittsburgh’s production of the Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical Sweeney Todd, a new group of students gets to experience a work that, I believe, might be the crowning achievement of Western Civilization. This glorious “dark operetta” about a murderous barber and his neighbor…
The Scarlet Letter
Ready for some literary time-traveling? In its new production of The Scarlet Letter, Prime Stage Theatre brings us a 21st-century view of a 19th-century best-selling portrayal of 17th-century New England. Think of it as two lenses: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s historical interpretation of what was even then (1850) a distant past, and a modern prism on those…
A show of manipulated photos explores the toll of domestic abuse.
In his soul-scraping project The Secret Ocean, Norwegian artist Reinhardt Søbye uses manipulated photographs to show the traumatic imprint left on his partner, Ida Hagen, from a 10-year marriage in which she says her then-husband continually raped and beat her. The pair did not hold back images that seemed too personal. They did just the…
Extraction
Suppose a group of people decided to “occupy” a patch of Downtown real estate. Each is concerned with a different social issue, but they band together. They build signs and structures, many of them clever, to broadcast their outrage. They interact freely with the public, and vice versa, and they encourage this interaction. Their message…
