Press Release of the Week
Who’s A Rat (www.whosarat.com) is the first site to allow users around the country to post local, state and federal agents’ and informants’ names, pictures and related information. Legal? The founder of Who’s A Rat says yes — and has case law to prove it. Ethical? Regardless of your answer to that question, says the…
Onorato’s Crossing
As a rainy Friday morning drizzles toward noon, many of the 20 passengers on a county-owned minibus are griping about the weather, the nausea-inducing winding roads, or the air conditioning that alternately blows too hot or too cold. They’re mostly municipal officials from Bridgeville, Collier, Oakdale and South Fayette — the communities the bus is…
Bush League
Compiled by: “The Republican Democrat?” Because political repression breeds terrorism, mightn’t toppling Saddam have made the world safer anyway — even if Iraq and Al Qaeda had no real pre-war ties? Perhaps. But the Baghdad-bungling Bushies deserve zero points for consistency. Not when they’ve also opened relations with, or increased support for, despotic regimes in…
Kim’s Coffee Shop
Location: 5447 Penn Ave., Garfield. 412-362-7019 Hours: Tue.-Thu., 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11:30 a.m-10 p.m.; Sun., 4-9 p.m. Prices: $6-9 Fare: Vietnamese and Chinese Atmosphere: Danang diner Liquor: Beer and wine The framed, yellowing clippings on the walls of Kim’s Coffee Shop are a time capsule from the early 1980s, when “Vietnam” still connoted a…
Turban Outfitters
“It’s the equivalent of having a sign on the door, no Sikhs allowed,” says Jaswin Sawhney, a Sikh physician who tried to enter Sanctuary in the Strip District late on Aug. 14 but was stymied by the club’s no-sportswear policy — which includes all hats. Sawhney is a Baltimore native who moved to Downtown…
What building did Pittsburgh’s hockey team use before the Civic (Mellon) Arena was built?
If you’ve ever watched a Penguins game and thought, “These guys should be playing in a barn” — and really, who hasn’t? — the answer will gratify you. Up until 1956, the Penguins, or rather their predecessors, played in a converted trolley barn known as Duquesne Garden. The structure was located on Craig Street…
Remaining Silent
Lawyers for several Pittsburgh police officers have given the Bureau of Police and city Law Department until Sept. 3 to respond to a threatened federal suit over regulations the officers contend keep them from speaking publicly about everything from crime to internal police disciplinary procedures. Led by the American Civil Liberty Union’s Litigation Director,…
Not Too Swift
“They can’t all be Republican liars,” grumped elder statesman and Viagra pitchmanBob Dole on CNN about the absurdly titled “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” Now the grumpmeister is getting a big boner over helping President Dubya’s slimy surrogate attack dogs tear down the honorable war record of John Kerry — a guy who…
ANACONDAS
Dwight Little’s feature is all that I could hope for in a 90-minute film about immeasurably large snakes. Hilarious pseudo-scientific expedition spurred by capitalists — in this case, a team of pharmaceutical hoo-hahs in search of a life-extending orchid. A cluster of stereotypes — snippy chick of color, AV geek, gruff boat captain and a…
A conversation with Albert Song
Albert Song, 25, is an amateur photographer who paid for his photoblog to appear as an ad on Google when “Pittsburgh” is the search item — but he isn’t selling anything. Song, a Carnegie Mellon grad who lives in Oakland and works as a software engineer for Medrad, just wants to show off his own…
THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT
Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry’s documentary traces what they believe to be the decade-long coordinated persecution of President Bill Clinton — from Little Rock to Lewinsky. This is a cogent, if one-sided, case that links dozens of players (though conspiracy is still a matter of conjecture). Among the interviews, two are compelling: Whitewater’s Susan McDougal,…
Reggie Watkins
Internationally acclaimed jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson’s targeted poaching of talent from the Pittsburgh area has had a profound impact on the young jazz scene around town. Much the way that earlier big-name players and high-profile local clubs circulated musical blood in and out of Pittsburgh, Ferguson has taken musicians such as drummer Dave Throckmorton and…
VANITY FAIR
Sweeping from social comedy to historic melodrama, with a detour into epic romance, Mira Nair’s adaptation of Thackery’s 1848 novel covers much ground in two-and-a-half hours, and the shifts in tone can be jarring: One reel we’re parlour-lounging with aristos named Sheepshanks, the next we’re examining the corpses at Waterloo. But surely that’s Nair’s point,…
The Thrills
Among the pitfalls of modern pop music lie a litany of contradictions: popsters who shy away from commercial-sounding slickness; rockers whose love of spit and snarl deny them the right to a goosebump-inducing crescendo; Brian Wilson fans who understand the last part of “great pop experimenter” without the first two. The greatest songwriters of the…
The Fluoride Deception
If you learned that nuclear scientists and industrial polluters conspired to put poison into, say, jellybeans, you’d probably stop eating jellybeans — or at least cut back. But what if you found out that the titans of toxicity had been dumping an insidious byproduct into your water, for decades? Would you stop drinking…
She Hate Me
Spike Lee has always made movies like they’re going out of style. He packs them with bristling wit and moody drama, with nuanced ideas and ardent diatribes, with visual elegance and bombast. His films are as much essay as cinema, which is both his strength and his limitation. At his best –…
Suspect Zero
Suspect Zero opens in a rain-soaked, garbage-strewn drainage ditch, and given the serial-killer genre’s hoary conventions, we’re sure the camera will pull back to reveal the lifeless form of our first victim. Instead, the camera lifts up to reveal a rural diner where we join a salesman on his late-night coffee break, and the odd…
Intimate Strangers
The mysterious woman who walks into the office of a middle-aged psychiatrist one day, late for her first appointment, brings the faint air of femme fatale with her: the black gloves, the darting eyes, the easy tears, the way she smokes — and her faux phone number, which is actually the weather hotline.…
Sounding Off on Movies
In silent-film days, the noises that accompanied mute flickers didn’t emanate solely from derbied men plunking away at upright pianos. In some theaters, professional storytellers — in Japan, they were called benshi — interpreted the screen play for the audience. These days, the only unprerecorded sounds you’ll hear during a movie come from the…
Devotees
“The way the forms are coming in, it seems like everybody’s registering two or three times,” says Allegheny County elections Director Mark Wolosik. Being a county paper-pusher isn’t usually the most adrenaline-filled job around. But these days, employees at the county’s Department of Elections are busier than ever. Piles and piles of…
In the Motznik of Time
“We’re going to override the veto,” vowed Pittsburgh City Councilor Jim Motznik just prior to council’s Aug. 25 special meeting. For the next two hours, Motznik barely stood still, racing in and out of council chambers and buttonholing colleagues in an effort to preserve council’s dwindling powers that would, in the end, be in vain.…
Long Shot in the Arm
“If anyone can present me with a more important issue, I’ll be glad to talk about it,” says Steven Larchuk. Larchuk, running as the American Healthcare Party candidate for Melissa Hart’s 4th district House seat, is a one-issue candidate and proud of it. The need for reform of the country’s health-care system,…
