A conversation with Donna Greco
You’re concerned that astrology is misunderstood. How so? We take profound expressions and weave them into pop culture and minimize their greater meaning. The columns you see in the paper, a lot of people think that’s what astrology is. A large percentage of the population does know their sun sign [and] the sun is ……
Glum Alums
Downtown’s Westin Convention Center hotel has become the target of a boycott by black organizations — with national implications — after an organization of black fraternity alumni were forced to end a fundraising event after hotel management complained of noise. On Oct. 25, during the University of Pittsburgh’s homecoming weekend, the Omicron Alumni Association…
Budgetball, Game One…
Like the Steelers, the city government has adopted the punt as its main offensive weapon. On Nov. 10, Mayor Tom Murphy unveiled a proposed 2004 budget that would be more than $40 million in the red. Since the city charter requires the budget to “remain balanced at all times,” and for city council to…
…And the Rematch
“I am delighted to work with you to craft a balanced budget that will be painful,” Mayor Tom Murphy told City Council on Dec. 3, neatly summing up the bind that he has put both council and himself in. Murphy is, after all, deliberately driving the city off a fiscal cliff … all the while…
Patriot Blames
It was clear to Steffi Domike of Squirrel Hill that 2001’s USA PATRIOT Act, quickly passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, represented the erosion of American freedoms. “The more I learned about it the more frightened I became about the implication of the act,” says Domike, 51, a Chatham College…
Calling the Kettle White
You know, the holidays really are a time for miracles. Witness Mayor Tom Murphy’s epiphany last week at a meeting of the Urban Land Institute. The city yearned to merge some services with county government, he lamented, but suburbanites acted “as if people in the city of Pittsburgh have horns and so we’re going…
Bullet Points
Last weekend’s snowstorm had one near-casualty: the “Goods for Guns” weapon buyback program, which was held at five locations in Allegheny County. Still, says group President Lt. Philip Dacey, a Pittsburgh police officer, they garnered 150 guns and have high hopes for Dec. 13, the second and final drop-off day. The program, begun in…
The Event
When medical science finally finds a cure for everything, will movies about death still be as sad? Or will they merely be quaint guilty pleasures, like a Helen of Troy mini-series on cable? I’m afraid I won’t live to know the answer. So in the meantime, how else can we react to…
Follow That Story
Remember the partisan tension surrounding the Allegheny County budget? (News Briefs: “Republicans Fight Dems to Bitter End in County …”, Dec. 3) Well, one hour before County Council’s Dec. 2 meeting — and after City Paper’s deadline for the Dec. 3 issue — the tension melted away. Outgoing Republican County Executive Jim Roddey had objected…
Bobby Conn
Bobby Conn and the Glass Gypsies aren’t the first to sing about good old George Dubya, and they certainly won’t be the last. While the controversial PATRIOT Act hasn’t restricted the lambasting of the President or his foreign policy, that could change, especially when you include Conn on the ever-growing list of pissed-off liberal-minded indie-rock…
Out of Damned Spot
The Unseam’d Shakespeare Company’s announcement of its 2004 season featured a bit more drama than usual: Artistic Director Laura Smiley was to reveal not only what plays the company would stage, but where it would stage them. After playing seven of its ten seasons — including the past six — at City Theatre’s Lester Hamburg…
DJ Andy Smith
Andy Smith is lost in time and in space, he is nowhere and nowhen and of anomalous taste, a new highlight of postmodern eccentricity. Fortunately, he’s also a helluva good deejay, an incessant crate-digger, and a bullishly confident rhythmic collage-artist. So, after a five-year break, the second installment of Portishead deejay Smith’s The Document –…
Xanopticon
It’s funny, but with several compilation appearances, two 7-inch singles, two 12-inch EPs and two European tours under his belt, it doesn’t get any easier to describe the extreme electronic music of Xanopticon (a.k.a. Ryan Friedrich) to the average person. Especially in his home base of Pittsburgh, where certain lunkheads keep insisting on using the…
Dummy
With his nasal voice and slept-on hair, Steven (Adrien Brody) is a prototypical twentysomething shlemozzle: He lives with his parents, he can’t keep even a crummy office job, and his only pal in all of suburban New York is a clueless punk rocker who calls herself Fangora (Milla Jovovich). But at least Steven knows what…
Girls Will Be Girls
In Richard Day’s Girls Will Be Girls, a trio of actresses — all portrayed by men — negotiate the casting couches and the cruel rejections of a Hollywood career. But this is not your Bard’s Shakespeare: In the 400 years or so since Elizabethan England, when playwrights like Wm. had to cast men in the…
Amateur Night
Trying to learn how to do it all right, Lindsay Sampson rediscovered the joys of being an amateur. Sampson, of Buffalo, visits Pittsburgh Dec. 13 with “The Unprofessionals,” her unclassifiable combo platter of experimental video and goofy live performance. About a year and a half ago, as a recent graduate of upstate New York’s…
In the movie The Devil and Daniel Webster, the Devil introduced some individuals who had gone to Hell. One of those was Benedict Arnold, and the other was Simon Girty. From what I’ve heard, Girty was from the Pittsburgh area. What did he do to end up in H
History, they say, is written by the winners. And so is Hell’s phone book. After all, the Devil Himself was cast down after his revolt against God failed, and ever since then it’s been God — and everyone claiming to be on his side — who’s gotten to decide who goes to hell. Simon…
Predatory Bender: A Story of Subprime Finance
They say everything that can be written, has. But you don’t run into many novels in which the protagonist is a good-hearted loan shark with a comb-over and an addiction to Internet porn. Matthew Lee’s debut novel Predatory Bender: A Story of Subprime Finance may, in fact, be the first great American lending-malfeasance novel. Hopefully,…
Hippie-deep in Bush-league Rhetoric
I liked him better when he was an irrelevant drunken coked-out frat boy. Now that he’s a powerful pious unilateralist who is convinced God has chosen him to invade other countries, he’s a real pain in the ass. Desperate to win Pennsylvania in 2004, Dubya comes to Pittsburgh every five minutes to give a…
