This Just In
November is the time to pay homage not only to the literal turkey, but to figurative ones as well. Like their real-life counterparts, figurative turkeys on local TV news are plentiful during the “sweeps” month of November … and they come complete with all the stuffing. So here’s your chance to test your TV-turkey knowledge:…
Fowl Play
It’s an annual tradition: Just prior to Thanksgiving, the President of the United States is presented with a turkey during a Rose Garden ceremony. After the requisite jokes, the president “pardons” the bird. The spin has already begun. The turkey has committed no crime. What it has received, in fact, is a presidentially ordained career…
Color Jane Callister’s Magic Landscape intensely sensual.
Jane Callister makes paintings that are about the act of painting, the consequences of the action and the movement of paint itself. For the past several years, she has been absorbed in the materiality of paint: The work is made by pouring paint of differing viscosities and fantastical hues onto the canvas, and by manipulating…
A Conversation with Preslav Lefterov of Machine Age studios
“Analog equipment in general could be a lot more of a problem, but it could be a lot more reliable depending on the situation. It’s not a computer — it’s just a machine. If it works, it works properly.”
A Conversation with Beth Fife
When Beth Fife finished studying to be a state Wildlife Conservation Officer, she stayed close to home by choosing eastern Allegheny County as her territory. “My classmates said, ‘You’ll never see any wildlife,'” Fife recalls. Wrong: “I have more wildlife than they’ll ever see because of how wildlife has adapted.” From her office in South…
How is it that Bayer has an enormous neon sign on Mount Washington, perhaps the most coveted of Pittsburgh advertising settings? Are others barred from erecting advertising there?
We Pittsburghers carry around little maps inside us, maps that don’t describe a place so much as a time. They chart the things used to be here, the signs that used to guide us. Your sign is a case in point. The massive (30 feet tall, 226 feet wide) neon billboard predates Bayer, and even…
Punk rock legend Cheetah Chrome
Gene O’Connor leads a double life: He’s also Cheetah Chrome, the punk-rock legend with a legacy built on stints in Rocket From the Tombs and The Dead Boys.
Local Hunting Outfitter Explores Call of the Wild (Turkey)
With names such as the Lucky Clucker, Ol’ Raspy Hen and Little Seducer, Penn’s Woods turkey calls have been luring Thanksgiving dinner from local woods since the 1920s.
Who’s passing the buck with Pennsylvania’s deer problem?
In a culture where people consider rain a nuisance, it’s no surprise we are drowning in deer. Divorced from the land, we see in thunderstorms not a life-sustaining force but soaked cuffs and spoiled picnics. Likewise, we regard Pennsylvania’s white-tail deer less as part of an ecosystem than as a symbol of our desires about…
Why The Caged Bird Clings
The North American wild turkeys at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium have names. What those names actually are isn’t something Henry Kacprzyk can remember right at the moment. But the birds do have them. In the zoo’s Kids Kingdom, where Kacprzyk is curator, they aren’t referred to as numbers or symbols or “Yo, Turkey.”…
“A Part of This World and a Part of Another”
The following is the last of four “lost chapters” excised from the published version of Honeymooners, Chuck Kinder’s 2002 novel based on his friendship with writer Raymond Carver. Pared down from an original 3,000 pages, Honeymooners depicts the literary exploits of Jim and Ralph — fictional stand-ins for Kinder and Carver, respectively — and their…
Taking Congressional Fight to Extremes
Campaign staff of U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy may have spent part of the 2006 election season doing opposition research on people who wrote letters to the Post-Gazette.
Death By Gobble
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond explores how centuries of European animal husbandry facilitated the development of new human ailments from diseases carried by animals. Carried to the New World by the first explorers, these diseases (along with the guns and the steel, of…
Access Undeniable at Most County Polling Places
“I’m really happy that they have such a serious reduction in the number of inaccessible polling places. But they don’t consider everyone’s inaccessibility issues.”
The Secret Letters of Jackie and Marilyn
Since this play is about the “secret” correspondence between Jackie and Marilyn, we get their funny, bitchy take on lots of celebrities.
Damien Voxx
Whether it’s the wide-open music or Voxx’s oft-professed faith in Christ, there’s a light shining through the gritty landscape.
A Picasso
Welcome to Nazi-Rama! Two weeks ago on the local stage it was a play set in Auschwitz. Last week, a script about Holocaust survivors. And this week, it’s City Theatre’s production of A Picasso, by Jeffrey Hatcher, in which the artist is interrogated by — show of hands please — a Nazi! Can Sound of…
Skinks
These are solid roots-pop songs for indie rockers, but also nothing so unusual that WYEP listeners can’t sink their teeth into ’em.
American Buffalo
When he started out, David Mamet was considered an extravagantly unfettered writer whose works were eruptions of furious emotion. But here at the other side of his career, and with his plays of the past few years as a guide, we can see now that Mamet is and always was a mannerist. The Playhouse Rep…
Conelrad
Sluts & Slobs Oh No Vertigo! Steely Dan’s Web site contains Walter Becker’s New Year’s resolutions. No. 1? “Don’t fuck anybody, ever. It’s not worth it.” Which was what immediately came to mind upon listening to Sluts & Slobs, the new 7-inch by local underground supergroup Conelrad. The self-proclaimed “worst men available,” Conelrad is guitarist…
Signal To Noise
Admit it: A Monday night in Pittsburgh is pretty meat-and-potatoes if you’re Kasabian. The UK buzz band demonstrated a certain wry contempt — and the transforming power of a great light show — while playing a half-full Mr. Small’s last week. Drawing material from the new Empire and some self-described “classics,” the band’s unruly mix…
Minister’s Case Puts All Marriages on Trial
The hearing for a Presbyterian minister, charged with performing a same-sex marriage, was packed with people who felt a similarly close connection to the decision, however removed they were from its official reach.
How Steelers Fans Avoid Sudden Death Situations
Despite the stereotype of Steelers fans as fat slobs, being a sports fan can be good for you.
DJ Dan Dabber brings the roots-reggae message.
“The spiritually uplifting vibe of roots reggae helped me through that and made me wanna share it with others.” — DJ Dan Dabber
The Murtha of All Political Battles
Down goes Murtha! Down goes Murtha! And just when Jumpin’ Jack Murtha, the veteran Democratic congressman from Johnstown, was starting to think he was all that and a bag of chips. I admire Murtha, because while every other wimpy lawmaker was hemming and hawing about getting the hell out of Iraq, Murtha took a bold…
Bobby
It doesn’t take an expert to see that Emilio Estevez’s hagiography-cum-gimmicked drama is an inadequate venture, however well intentioned and larded with respectable actors.
American Hardcore
Catch up with members of such influential acts as the Bad Brains, Black Flag, Flipper and Minor Threat. (capsule review)
For Your Consideration
Christopher Guest confuses plaintive with pathetic, and asks us to laugh at his banal cinematic vaudeville.
Déjà Vu
Though fueled more by egg-headed pseudo-science than bullets, Déjà Vu is fast-paced and surprisingly engaging. (capsule review)
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
Steven Shainberg’s new film is a serious effort to interpret Arbus’ emerging fascination with real life, as opposed to the mendacious sophistication of fashion photography.
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
This gentle drama is spared from becoming maudlin by Zhang Yimou’s understated direction and by actors who play their emotions close.(capsule review)
Sukhothai
Location: 410 First Ave., Downtown. 412-261-4166 Hours: Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m-3 p.m., 5-9 p.m. Prices: Lunch $7, starters $3-6, entrées $9-12 Fare: Thai Atmosphere: Budget Asian Liquor: BYOB Smoking: None permitted Without moving an inch, a small storefront in downtown Pittsburgh has toured Southeast Asia. For years, it bore the banner of Phnom Penh, whose Cambodian…
Tenacious D: The Pick Of Destiny
f there had been never been a Spinal Tap, this musical comedy and fake-band bio might have seemed fresh and funny. (Capsule review.)
Letters To The Editor: Nov. 22-29
Whose side are we on? Re “Federal Case,” by Violet Law [Nov. 15]: The article doesn’t seem to serve neighborhoods, in that it offers no solutions to the problems of vacant land, vacant housing, loss of population, deterioration of business districts and providing quality affordable housing. Central Northside Neighborhood Council, as a neighborhood group in existence…
Talking Turkey
Other Main Feature stories: Fowl Play A Conversation with Beth Fife Local Hunting Outfitter Explores Call of the Wild (Turkey) Why The Caged Bird Clings Death By Gobble Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Brian O’Neill is no war correspondent: He usually doesn’t write about anything scarier than the ERA of the Pirates pitching staff. But he still…
