East is East, and West is West
There’s an old saying that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in between. That may be giving Pittsburgh too much credit. Increasingly, Pennsylvania is Philadelphia on one side … and then everything else. So if you feel like everyone on your street has reverted to some political cro-magnon state,…
Doctor, doctor, gimme the news
For those ready to rock with Ted Leo + the Pharmacists at Diesel next week, some bad news: the Nov. 5 show has been postponed due to a family emergency. A new date is promised, and Nov. 5 tickets will be honored when that show comes around. We’ll holler when that new date is announced.…
The 10th Annual Black Sheep Puppet Festival
The festival’s acts over the years have often been political, and, pretty unsurprisingly, that politics is reliably left. While the approach is sometimes heavy-handed (especially when you’re preaching to the converted — I mean, we’re talking puppetry fans here), it’s cool that the fest gives artists free rein. This year’s most explicitly political act at…
Most beautiful
I caught Friday night’s installment of the Dean & Britta “13 Most Beautiful …” performance, which I previewed a couple weeks ago in the pages of this esteemed weekly; for those of you who missed the boat, it was a two-night stand in which Dean & Britta (they of Luna, he of Galaxie 500) performed…
Jo Strømgren Kompani’s The Department
This live stage show demonstrated how an artwork can be undeniably entertaining, probably more than the sum of its apparent influences, and yet still feel not quite essential. The show, which I saw at the New Hazlett on Oct. 23, was making its U.S. debut as part of the Cultural Trust’s Pittsburgh International Festival of…
An Apology to Our Readers
The cover of this week’s City Paper features an illustration that purports to depict the “mind of the McCain voter.” The graphic suggested that there was little inside the heads of GOP supporters except Hank William’s Jr. lyrics, the helicoper scene from Apocalypse Now, and — near the medulla oblongata — a nerve center that…
Congressional District 18
Are you sick of political attack ads on TV? Tired of endless debates made up of nothing but talking points? Then you might want to consider moving to Congressional District 18, where you may hardly even notice the campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Tim Murphy. Democrats have long hoped to unseat Murphy, a social conservative…
U.S. Congressional District 14
Judging from history alone, it’s hard to imagine that Green Party candidate Titus North will pose a threat to his opponent, Democrat Mike Doyle. Doyle has been representing the 14th Congressional District — which includes Pittsburgh and more than 50 other Allegheny County municipalities — for 14 years. And when the two men matched up…
US Congressional District 4
Elections are usually a referendum on the incumbent. But in Pennsylvania Congressional District 4, voters have two congressional track records to choose from. The race pits Jason Altmire, a first-term Democrat, against Melissa Hart, the former three-term Republican congresswoman he beat in 2006. Both must negotiate the difficult terrain of the district, which includes all…
Bad Signs
I’ve never been one for political yard signs. For one thing, there’s never been a major Presidential candidate I’ve been that excited about. And as a journalist, I prefer to spread my views by covering events that make Republicans look bad. Which has recently gotten much easier. (Click the following links to see City Paper’s…
Second Mourning
A poem by Shirley Snodey.
Detective novelist Robert Greer visits.
Greer’s best-selling gentleman detective CJ Floyd plays a supporting role.
Literary readings abound this week.
Locally based independent Six Gallery Press, publisher of adventuresome fiction and poetry, holds its fall preview.
Poets Jim Daniels and Elizabeth Kirschner read at Te Café.
“Then God took a knife / cut me into pure pain …”
Novelist Russell Banks reads at Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers.
The novelist co-founded Cities of Refuge North America, a nonprofit network of sanctuaries for writers facing persecution in their home countries.
In his first novel, local author Lawrence C. Connolly crossbreeds crime thriller and fantasy tale.
He calls his home turf “the ideal landscape for dark fantasy and horror.”
This Just In: October 23 – 30
Highlights from the local TV news: It’s a Burg(er) Thing.
Getting Warmer?
In the Oct. 7 presidential debate, a young woman named Ingrid Jackson asked the candidates what they’d do “within the first two years to make sure that Congress moves fast [on] environmental issues, like climate change and green jobs.” Sen. John McCain acknowledged “the danger that climate change [poses]”; Sen. Barack Obama said, “This is…
The Secret Life of Bees
In Gina Prince-Bythewood’s adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel set in 1964, a troubled 14-year-old named Lily (limpid-eyed Dakota Fanning) and her threatened African-American caretaker (Jennifer Hudson) find refuge among a slightly eccentric set of sisters in South Carolina, a bee-keeping trio (portrayed by Queen Latifah, Alicia Keyes and Sophie Okonedo). Good — and bad…
Rachel Getting Married
Fresh out of her latest rehab, needy, damaged Kym (Anne Hathaway) arrives at her sister’s wedding, and re-ignites long-simmering emotions in a family still recovering from an earlier tragedy. Jonathan Demme’s melodrama, based on a script by Jenny Lumet, has plenty of fireworks, but the high drama is tempered by the giddiness and camaraderie of…
Max Payne
A depressed New York City cop named Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg), still working on his wife’s unsolved murder, discovers a possible link between that cold case and a new series of grisly killings. Also in the mix: two Russian hottie sisters of dubious employment; an internal-affairs investigation; a dead partner; a Big Evil Pharmaceutical Company;…
The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The 23nd annual festival continues with entertaining and provocative feature films, documentaries and shorts highlighting the gay, lesbian and transgendered experience.
W.
We’ve come to expect much more incendiary films from Oliver Stone than W., his dramatization of the life of our current president, from his alcoholic young manhood to his destructive perpetual war in Iraq. The central figure of W. — beautifully portrayed by Josh Brolin — emerges early on as a plausible human being, if…
Peter Reder’s Guided Tour elicited giggles in the dark at the Carnegie.
Guests were startled by two glass cases, where a dead turtle was being skeletonized by writhing piles of pill-bugs.
With physical theater and invented language, Jo Strømgren Kompani explores bureaucracy in The Department.
Like bureaucracy itself, the composition manages to be at once both ominously disturbing and snortingly ludicrous.
Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre shakes things up with two Pittsburgh premieres, starting with the season-opening The Great Gatsby.
“Fitzgerald lived his life not playing it safe; I don’t play it safe in the ballet either.”
The Black Sheep Puppet Festival celebrates its 10th season.
The festival began as a small entry into the vast world of international puppetry festivals and, largely on the strength of volunteer labor, has grown to superhuman proportions.
The Best of the Theatre Festival in Black & White
Program A starts with the strongest production in the lineup, Wali Jamal’s “The Holding Cell,” about one night at the lockup and the mystery still bedeviling some of its temporary inmates.
The Clean House
Why all this antiseptic tomfoolery?
Toci’s Black Diamond Grill
A great neighborhood restaurant at the end of the 47L line.
Housing: Advocates how worry how landlord foreclosures will hurt tenants
The American economy sucks, but there is good news: Business Week magazine recently ranked Pittsburgh as one of the “best cities for riding out a recession.” That doesn’t mean, however, that things locally are perfect — especially for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Elaine Plunkett, a spokeswoman for the county’s Department of…
Politics: Some LGBT voters not sold on Obama
In the primary, LGBT voters went strongly for Hillary Clinton; can Barack Obama get them back in time to defeat John McCain?
Barr Brawl
Bob Barr, the former U.S. Congressman from Georgia, has the misfortune of being the Libertarian Party’s 2008 nominee for president in a year when third-party candidates have drawn scant attention. His campaign Web site boasts that, as president, he would “work tirelessly to cut taxes, reduce government spending and restore our civil liberties lost during…
Out of the Office
“You can’t fight city hall,” the old saying goes. But usually you can at least find it. In Verona, you often can’t — or at least not the guy who runs it. “Hey, Mark, do you know who the mayor is?” Jonette Caldwell yells to the back of Patsy’s Market, the Italian grocer she owns…
Vocalist extraordinaire Gene Stovall performs at Shadow Lounge, preps new album
“I was always the one trying to explain how all music is the same music.”
Canadian girl-group Vancougar plays Gooski’s
Vancougar touches on indie-rock and garage rock, while avoiding the three-chords-and-a-sneer approach of garage girls like the Donnas.
Local hip-hop band Formula412 releases its long-anticipated album, The Difference
“I’ve never been a very literal artist — I like people to learn about me through my energy and my spirit and how I interact with you.”
Mike and Doug Starn show how too much light can unnerve.
Moths, blind monks, swampy arbors, solar flares replicated by fiery electrical currents and metal bars — this is the stuff of nightmares, especially when displayed in a gutted Victorian factory.
Minerva Bakery
A delectable frosting tops the cakes at this McKeesport bakery
Halloween happenings in the local-music scene
It’s time again for what’s become a tradition on the local-music scene: the annual Production Procedures Productions Halloween compilation
Savage Love
Once again, Savage Love is given over to letters from readers who made the largest donations to the campaigns to preserve marriage equality in California, protect same-sex couples in Florida and defeat Stephen Harper in Canada.
Films of Bruce Conner
I started writing about film for CP in 1997, but it took me a while to warm to experimental work. For someone raised (like everyone else) on linear narrative and photographic realism, appreciating nonnarrative, conceptual and abstract stuff demanded study. But now I can dig films like those of Bruce Conner, who pioneered the use…
