SAVED!
Mary’s going to be a senior at American Eagle Christian High School, where she’s atop the social ladder as a member of the Christian Jewels (“like a girl gang for Jesus”). When her boyfriend says he’s gay, she fervently offers the best Christian cure she knows. He gets sent away for “de-gayification” anyhow; Mary starts…
Deconstructing Deadbeat
There are some real bastards out there. We’re talking about the “men” who refuse to financially support the babies they’ve made, even though they have the income to do so. We call them “deadbeats.” But then there’s the 2.5 million noncustodial fathers who are missing payments not because they are deadbeat, but because they are…
THE TERMINAL
Eastern European Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), through some bureaucratic snafu, ends up stuck in JFK’s international terminal in this marginally sappy, light comedy from Steven Spielberg. Viktor befriends various airport workers, and makes a new life for himself at Gate 67. The best parts of the film unearth the alternate reality of the terminal’s work…
Penguins Coming Home to Roost
Ah, the rites of spring. In California, the swallows return to Capistrano. In Pittsburgh, the Penguins return to ask for more money, and a new arena. For this is the time of year that Penguins owner Mario Lemieux holds his annual charity golf tournament, when we watch the skies for jet-setting celebrities who will preen…
Deer Creek “Critters” Offered Paths Around Mall
If somebody signed a contract promising to give you $25 million, would you ask to renegotiate? Maybe, if after five years of court fights you hadn’t seen a dime. That’s what’s happened to Steve Coslik, chairman of Texas-based developer Woodmont Co. Coslik wants money Allegheny County, Harmar Township and the Allegheny Valley School District…
What I Canvassed on My Summer Vacation
The only time Bill Dingfelder took a week off work to help a political candidate was two years ago, when he went door-knocking and pamphlet-wielding in Tampa, Fla., on behalf of his brother John’s bid for county commissioner. John lost. But that hasn’t stopped Bill Dingfelder from pushing an idea whose time — your…
Bush League
“Under the Banner of the ‘War’ On Terror.” Time for a refresher course, courtesy of William Greider in The Nation (June 21): Terrorism is a strategy — a tool — not an enemy you can defeat. The White House has launched a perpetual war by playing on fear, a commodity of which it is adept…
A conversation with Mark Stroup
Why do signs on local businesses intrigue us? It’s a neglected part of our landscape. This is a lot more of what we’re seeing every day than the view from Mount Washington. These are aesthetic choices people made. Plus, they tell a story. Usually, people put [signs] up when they are beginning a business. They…
Why are universities and hospitals tax-exempt? It seems really screwy to me, and it’s part of the reason the city has such money trouble.
UPMC gobbles up competitors like it was run by the Rockefeller family, and if colleges were businesses, somebody would have complained about them to the Better Business Bureau. First, they target impressionable youth with campuses that look like hybrids between shopping-mall food courts and Bally’s gyms. Only when the hapless students start racking up student…
All the Wright Moves
Frank Lloyd Wright is in the news again! “Oh, you’re not going to dig up that old subject again, are you?” the less enthusiastic might bemoan. “He’s been dead since 1959.” Strangely enough, Wright himself was dug up — in 1986, at the passing of wife No. 3, Olgivanna. She was married to him…
Jon Langford
The iconic Mekon, drunken Waco Brother, historically grounded Pine Valley Cosmonaut and esteemed visual artist Jon Langford has one major problem. Behind all the smirking literate cynicism the Mekons are known for; behind the negating shield of stupor and the aloofness of the artistic veil; behind the ruddy Welshman’s oh-so-British piss-take and wind-up ways, there…
Jazzanova
Don’t you love living in the future? Remember when people in Berlin probably didn’t even know Philadelphia existed? Nowadays, in this tech-shrunken world, Berlin and Philadelphia are less than 14 miles apart — that’s only 22.5 kilometers, for our friends in wicked-East Philly. German future-jazz production squadron Jazzanova has long been known for its…
Stepford Wives
Ah, Stepford. That Connecticut town where all the wives are perfect. Perhaps you stopped by in 1975 when Bryan Forbes filmed Katherine Ross’ creepy troubles there. Maybe you trekked in while reading Ira Levin’s satirical thriller upon which that film was based. If you feel like a piece of pop culture indelibly linked to the…
Love Me If You Dare
Do you remember being there at the start of Spike Lee, John Sayles and the Coen brothers? I do — and as if it were just yesterday. I only wish I could have been there for the first blush of Breathless and The 400 Blows, but I couldn’t drive (or even walk) when those two…
Since Otar Left …
The elderly woman’s choice of cake is brought to the table she shares with a hard, middle-aged woman and a college-age girl. The old woman savors the cake, but stops in disbelief when the middle-aged woman helps herself. She catches the old woman’s stare and slams down her fork in pique. The younger girl shrugs…
Control Room
Al Jazeera, the satellite-TV news service for 40 million Arabic-language viewers, is headquartered in modest offices in the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. But in Control Room, you quickly realize that the room in question isn’t only Al Jazeera’s nerve center, with its wall of video monitors glowing with wartime images from Baghdad and…
THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK
In Pitch Black, the silver-eyed, night-visioned convict Riddick (Vin Diesel) was the anti-hero, the untrustworthy guy driven to good by interplanetary beasties. In The Chronicles of Riddick, director David Twohy again asks Riddick “to save or not to save”: The Necromongers are going planet to planet, mongering muchos necro, and nobody can stop ’em –…
