MP3 Monday: Marcus Meston
Howdy! Welcome to another installment of MP3 Monday up in the FFW>> music blog. This week’s local MP3 comes from likely our youngest MP3 supplier yet, 16-year-old Marcus Meston. He recently released an EP, Fake, Fixed, Happy, fully of sunny pop tunes. He shows his chops on the track he’s offering here, “Waiting”. Enjoy! …
GOP Debate Bingo: I Need “One-Term President” for the Win
Sure, the Republican candidates for president may all seem like losers, but you can still be a winner. For the next debate — 8 p.m. Tue., Nov. 22, on CNN — download our Republican debate Bingo cards, and get ready to turn meaningless clichés and buzzwords into victory. There are six different Bingo cards, created…
Abraham.In.Motion at the Kelly-Strayhorn
Great world-premiere program last night by this company led by Pittsburgh native Kyle Abraham. Live! The Realest MC is the latest by the dancer and choreographer, who’s now based in New York City and getting plaudits from the national dance press, but who maintains close ties with his hometown, and especially the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. In…
Microscopic Opera’s Three Decembers
Chamber operas are basically small-scale, contemporary operas. Neither is the audience for them large; I hadn’t even heard the term much before Pittsburgh’s Microscopic Opera, dedicated to such works, appeared, in early 2010. But the field has its stars. One is surely composer Jake Heggie, best known his full-scale opera Dead Man Walking, which Pittsburgh…
Occupiers face off with cops, Halliburton
I spent the Tuesday evening live-Tweeting Occupy Pittsburgh protest at the Developing Unconventional Gas conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. But here are a couple quick observations from the event: *For one of the first times during the month-long occupation, tensions between protesters and police escalated as determined Occupiers crashed an opening-night reception…
Short List: November 17 – 21
Fans of Jon Rubin’s art — notably his interactive, retail-tweaking storefronts like the Waffle Shop diner/talk-show — might find his latest exhibit a departure. For one, Rubin’s Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Artist of the Year show is a gallery exhibit, rather than a repurposing of public space. For another, the three short videos that…
Power to the People
“Years ago, I read that true self-sufficiency is impossible,” says Ted Carns. “I took that as a challenge.” Carns, who lives on a mountain overlooking Laughlintown, must be as close to self-sufficient as anyone in Western Pennsylvania. Climb the long, winding gravel drive to his Stone Camp, and you’ll find a much-amended 1920s hunting cabin…
Savage Love
I’m 21 years old and in a monogamous relationship. I was drawn to BDSM even before I began having sex, and my boyfriend has been happily fulfilling my needs. However, he revealed that he also enjoys being submissive. I asked him to explain what he was looking for, but he said he’d rather show me.…
Kanok
A well-established dining district is one that can withstand the loss of a stalwart without missing a beat. Case in point: Highland Avenue near the increasingly blurry Shadyside-East Liberty border. Typhoon was not the first noteworthy restaurant on the avenue when it opened more than seven years ago. But its stylish interior and updated riff…
Cupcakes Runneth Over
Love the idea of mixing liquor with dessert, but tired of alcohol-laced milkshakes? Now you have an alternative: Dozen Bakeshop’s cocktail cupcakes. After a temporary hiatus, Dozen Bakeshop re-opened its Lawrenceville and Oakland storefronts in September, under the new ownership of Doreen Valentine. As Valentine began reworking the menu, she realized she had a hidden…
Cats and Dogs Coffeehouse
Naming your coffee shop after two animal species with a mythically fractious relationship would seem, at first, like a bad omen for a partnership. But when Nixi Chesnavich (a.k.a. “Mr. Cat”) and his romantic/business partner decided to open the Lawrenceville venue, it was only natural to name it after their longtime nicknames. But Cats and…
Hollowed Out
The sparrows are out in force this sunny afternoon; hawks circle, jays call. Mallards, honking along Nine Mile Run, fly through the black struts of a CSX rail spur and land gracefully on a restive eddy of the Monongahela River. I drive, slowly, across the one-lane, 50-foot metal bridge — with its puny 8-ton weight…
You’ve Gotta Believe: Duquesne refuses formation of student atheist group
Nick Shadowen didn’t necessarily think his proposed atheist club would be welcomed at Duquesne University with open arms. After all, with 10,000 enrolled students, Duquesne is the state’s largest private Catholic university. Still, the university senior thought the proposed Duquesne Secular Society would be approved nonetheless. It wasn’t. He now says nonreligious views at the…
Risk Assessment: Science has a hard time gauging the danger posed by carcinogens
In 1979, after undergoing surgery for bladder cancer, Sandra Steingraber began researching the disease. Steingraber, a college junior majoring in biology, learned that bladder cancer is “a quintessential environmental cancer,” strongly linked to exposure to toxic chemicals. But Steingraber, then 20, hadn’t worked in high-risk occupations like textile-dyeing. Nor did she smoke, another risk factor.…
The Suite Life: Free tickets among perks for sports authority board members
Tickets for Lady Gaga’s Sept. 5, 2010, performance at Consol Energy Center sold out in five minutes. But it wasn’t hard for Sean Logan or Anthony J. Ross to get tickets — they’re board members at the authority that manages the taxpayer-owned building. The Sports and Exhibition Authority also owns Heinz Field and PNC Park,…
Critics’ Picks: November 17 – 23
[PUNK] + THU., NOV. 17 It’s been 30 years since Shonen Knife was formed; since then, the all-lady Japanese three-piece has attained legend status in the garage-pop scene. Drawing from Ramones-style punk and J-pop, the band makes infectious tunes (including one that made it onto a Powerpuff Girls soundtrack album). Shonen Knife’s 30th-anniversary tour makes…
CD Reviews
Venus in FursRed(Self-released) Dark, aggressive synth-and-guitar rock from the longtime locals. The CD kicks off with a cover of the Velvet Underground song for which the band is named; if you can hang with an electro-industrial take on that classic, you might go for the whole album. The moodiness feels put-on at times, but that’s…
Jeff Boller enlists homemade marimbas and 3-D animation to help with The Simple Carnival
Jeff Boller is a model of artistic self-sufficiency. Under the moniker The Simple Carnival, the 38-year-old Delmont resident has self-released two albums recorded in his basement studio. He wrote all of the songs, sang most of the vocals, did his own mixing and mastering, and played all the instruments — guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, flute…
Buzz band Real Estate keeps it understated
When you’re a four-piece with standard rock instrumentation, it takes courage to make the fourth track of your album an instrumental. But New Jersey-via-Brooklyn rock outfit Real Estate has that kind of moxie; thus far, the band’s success has come from simply carving out its territory on the indie landscape and owning it. In 2009,…
New film looks at women’s role in DIY punk communities
Amy Oden is the filmmaker behind From the Back of the Room, a new documentary about women in DIY punk-rock communities. The film features interviews with musicians, zine writers, photographers and venue representatives. (Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, comic-book artist Cristy Road, Slug and Lettuce zinester Chris Boarts-Larson and Slade from Tribe 8 are among the…
Three Rivers Film Festival
The 30 th annual Three Rivers Film Festival, presented by Pittsburgh Filmmakers, continues through Sun., Nov. 19. Below are some films screening during the remainder of the festival: CORPO CELESTE. In this quiet but sharp coming-of-age dramedy from Alice Rohrwacher, 13-year-old Marta (an expressive Yle Vianello) is enrolled in a confirmation class at the…
Immortals
Sing to me, O Muse, of the man of twists and turns — and of how he totally kicks ass. That, I suppose, would be Homer’s prologue to Immortals, Tarsem Singh’s remix of Greek myth. Hero Theseus (Henry Cavill) and a comely oracle (Freida Pinto) challenge bloodthirsty tyrant Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) with a magic bow.…
J. Edgar
In the entertaining and orderly historical drama J. Edgar, director Clint Eastwood and his screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black (Milk), create a low-keyed caricature of the man who invented the FBI, crafting him with almost equal parts genius and tyranny. It’s not very nuanced, and its psychological insights are rather mundane, but for more than two…
Acclaimed, Pittsburgh-native choreographer and dancer Kyle Abraham world-premieres his latest work.
Sexuality, gender roles and African-American life are recurring themes in dancer/choreographer Kyle Abraham’s work. His latest is Live! The Realest MC, which he and his company, Abraham.in.Motion, will world-premiere this weekend at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. In it, the Pittsburgh native delves deeper into those themes, referencing his own past and questioning the current state of…
Point Park’s Contemporary Choreographers is a strong program
In dance, the word “contemporary” has several meanings. It can describe a style of dance or it can simply mean a dance that’s created today. In the case of the Point Park University Conservatory Dance Company program Contemporary Choreographers, different meanings applied to different works. The program began with Texture Contemporary Ballet artistic director Alan…
A Shayna Maidel
In time for Thanksgiving, Little Lake Theatre Co. is putting aside the froth and serving up a satisfyingly meaty play. Barbara Lebow’s A Shayna Maidel (1985) celebrates family in a modest format that makes small demands on production while tackling big ideas without sentimentality. The time is shortly after World War II and the liberation…
Illyria
In a way, it’s like a Magritte painting come to life. The real “stars” of Illyria, Peter Mills’ musical based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and making its local debut with Point Park Conservatory, are Gianni Downs’ set design and, especially, Michael Montgomery’s costumes. A mixture of surrealism and whimsy, the production is a treat to…
Novelist — and newly minted book retailer — Ann Patchett talks with CP
Novelist Ann Patchett is best known for 2001’s PEN/Faulkner Award-winning Bel Canto. Her fifth novel is State of Wonder (HarperCollins), about a pharmacologist sent to the Amazon to learn what happened to a colleague who died there. Patchett, 47, visits the Monday Night Lectures on Nov. 21. She spoke with CP in late October from…
Group photography show HomeFrontLine expands our sense of war’s toll.
War is a sensitive topic. Witness the decade past, in which calls for caution — or even fact-checking — have sometimes been derided as traitorous. So you’ve got to respect the curators of HomeFrontLine, Silver Eye Center Executive Director Ellen Fleurov and independent curator Leo Hsu. They’re willing to take on the effects of the…
Burgess, advocates seek to box out criminal-history questions on job applications
Citing a “humanitarian civil rights issue,” advocates want to amend the city’s hiring process, so that job applications for many government posts no longer inquire about an applicant’s criminal history. Currently, city job applications require candidates to check a “yes” or “no” box about whether they have been convicted “of any felony of the law.”…
