Tupac: Resurrections
It’s been seven years since he’s been murdered, yet Tupac Amaru Shakur — one of America’s worst nightmares come to life — still continues to haunt and offend. His numerous posthumous works, whether on CD or film, keep popping up remixed and re-mastered to the point of redundancy. In the MTV Diary-style documentary Tupac:…
Stage Fright
“Hi, John.” Actor John Imro, imposingly tall, tromps in from the chill of an early November night through the sidestreet door of the cavernous, warehouse-like Strip District building that houses Open Stage Theatre. He’s greeted by Open Stage co-founder and artistic director Ruth Willis, who’s awaiting the dress rehearsal of the one-man play Barrymore, in…
Executive Summery
Edward Abbey, the prickly environmentalist and western Pennsylvania native, once said there was only one difference between capitalism and communism. In communism, the government tells an industry how to behave, he wrote, whereas in capitalism it works the other way around. So it was at Oakland’s Carnegie Music Hall for the Nov. 12 annual…
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
It’s 1805. The English and French are fighting, again. Not content to limit the battle to the literal ground at hand, the countries are skirmishing wherever the opportunity arises. It is thus that we find the British naval frigate HMS Surprise — halfway around the world off the coast of Brazil — suddenly under…
A conversation with Vanessa German
What was your inspiration for all the blues featured in this chair? I think about how blue women get, especially black women, and I think of the origins of the blues and how black people had to cross an expanse of blue to come to America. I’ve really been thinking about maybe I have inherited…
They Might Be Giants
On the whole, like most media aimed at kids, children’s music sucks. Media producers and marketers think of children as a homogeneous, unthinking mass of protoplasm that will sit like drooling idiots and listen to or watch whatever swill is sent their way. As a result, children’s music in particular is a vast wasteland made…
Stephen Merritt
If only the rocky seas of love were as smooth as Stephin Merritt’s voice on the Pieces Of April soundtrack, the world would be a much happier place. Merritt, who mainly performs with The Magnetic Fields, gained a reputation for being one of the most prolific and talented songwriters ever after the 1999 release…
The Three Rivers Film Festival
The 22nd annual Three Rivers Film Festival, presented by Pittsburgh Filmmakers, continues through Nov. 23. Tickets for most films are $6 each; exceptions are tickets for the closing night event with filmmaker Stephanie Beroes ($10); Text of Light, with live music ($15); and the Shorts Programs, which are $4 each. Films screen at the Harris…
The Station Agent
How many of you remember the Bee Girl from the Blind Melon video for the song “No Rain”? She was that lonely little girl who wore the bumblebee outfit, and everyone teased her, until she found a grassy field sprinkled with joyful dancing bumblebee people just like herself. I’ve argued with a friend about…
We have many roads named after military men and local forts, and a former federal arsenal. But who was the highest-ranking military person from this area?
Though he wasn’t born here, probably the best answer to your question is Matthew B. Ridgway, who parachuted into France in 1944 and turned around the American war effort in North Korea. As if that wasn’t enough experience with restive locals, he moved to Pittsburgh in 1955. Ridgway was a native of Virginia –…
After the Lunch Rush
Chef Dan Robinson takes a breather and takes in the sights of Carson Street before dinner guests start arriving at Café du Jour. Robinson — an Edinboro native who now resides on the South Side — has run this cozy bistro for almost two years with partner Paul Krawiec, and the two cook side-by-side in…
Upon Further Review
The city’s Citizen Police Review Board finally has five members — enough to review complaints of alleged police misconduct brought before it. But its newest member, retired Pittsburgh police commander Ronald Freeman — one of two ex-law enforcement officials required for the board — arrives just a few years after local critics of police conduct…
Dr. Thompson Goes to Washington
“I think the White House is trying to curtail some of the criticism to show it’s more good than bad,” said Pittsburgh city schools Superintendent John Thompson about last week’s request by President George W. Bush’s Department of Education that he join an advisory group of 15 superintendents to critique the federal No Child Left…
Predatory Lending Victims Win … $1 Million!!!
Predatory lenders are masters at making new borrowers feel as if they’ve just won the lottery, and later foreclosing on their homes. On Nov. 13, the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group unveiled a program that might really be a bonanza for screwed borrowers — if they fit a certain credit profile, and if the price is…
The Cross-Oakland Charge
It’d be convenient to say that, in moving his popular children’s radio show The Saturday Light Brigade down the dial from WYEP-FM to Carnegie Mellon University’s student-run WRCT-FM, Larry Berger was returning to his radio roots. But, although Berger is a CMU alum, the longtime Pittsburgh Saturday morning fixture got his start before college even…
Out of the Closet and into the Basement
“We’re in effect out of business,” says William McCarthy, chair of the Erie County Human Relations Commission, which hears complaints about local discrimination in jobs, housing and public accommodations. The HRC is now just a name stenciled on a locked, dark door in the basement of the Erie County Courthouse, McCarthy reports — a spot…
