It's a busy week for those of us devoted to chronicling the intertwining worlds of '90s gangsta rap and late '00s local politics here in Pittsburgh.

Let's start with the surreal, then head for the truly puzzling. First off we have the story, broken locally by blogger Bob Mayo, of or Mayor partying in Tampa for the Super Bowl with Snoop Dogg. Was a great deal of gin & juice consumed? We're not sure, but we'll put a call into the mayor's office on that one. Also unclear is whether or not this has caused him to want to change his name officially to Luke Steelerstizzle.

With that shock under our belts, we move on to the next item: a film screening and symposium being held at Point Park University on Thursday entitled "From Martin to Tupac: Political Assassinations." A series of documentaries about the murders of several well-known black activists and artists from the late 20th century will be shown, and a panel discussion is to ensue -- one that includes, among others, police commander Maurita Bryant and councillor Bill Peduto.

The symposium -- details are available here -- is sure to be interesting, and seemingly won't actually be tying together the deaths of everyone from MLK and Fred Hampton to Biggie and Tupac into one big conspiracy, as the name sort of implies. It appears it's more about the way the different cases were handled and investigated. That having been said, if you'd told me even a short time ago that Bill Peduto was going to be part of a discussion of the political assassination of Tupac, I'd probably be eating my hat on Thursday.