Staying Lever-Headed
“The issues really aren’t conspiratorial, but basically mechanical,” says Carlos Brossard, an independent political consultant from Highland Park, about the health of Allegheny County’s voting machines. “Has the county kept records on the error rates of the machines? Records of maintenance or patterns of error? Has the reliability and validity of the machines been tested?…
The Green Mango
Location: 247 Edgewood Ave, Edgewood. 412-731-0740 Hours: Mon-Sat, 11-9 Prices: $4-9 Fare: Thai Atmosphere: Very tasteful take-out Liquor: None In the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of the local dining landscape, one pattern that stands out especially brightly is the recent profusion of Thai restaurants. Where just five years ago we were limited to a couple of staid…
Clip and Save … Democracy!
If you are under 18, have never registered to vote in Pennsylvania, or are currently serving time for a felony, you can’t vote. Otherwise, you can vote on Nov. 2, even if you recently moved and didn’t reregister, haven’t voted in years, don’t have a Certificate of Voter Registration and just got out of…
Register a Complaint
Sarah Dittoe is studying political science at the University of Pittsburgh, and in this year’s election, she says, “I’m learning a lot.” Like how easy it is to become a victim of voter fraud. When Dittoe registered to vote earlier this summer, she identified herself as a member of the Green Party. Weeks…
Rice Fried
As George W. Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, made a campaign speech justifying the Iraq War in the first floor auditorium of Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Fine Arts on Oct. 21, about a dozen people hung banners from the college roof’s skylights four stories above, reading “LIBERATION? 13,200+ IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS,” “HELLO…
What are the highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded in Pittsburgh? Are we being affected by global warming?
One of the things you can count on in Pittsburgh is that, no matter how hot or cold it gets, some oldster down the street is going to claim that it used to be much colder back in the winter of ought-six, or hotter in ’37. “You kids today, with your iPods and your roller…
Don’t Vote LaMarche — Yet
“This year, I didn’t want anyone [in the Green Party] to run for president because I thought we were wrongly blamed for what happened in 2000,” says Patricia LaMarche. Nonetheless, LaMarche is on the ballot in Pennsylvania and most states as the Greens’ vice-presidential contender, teamed with David Cobb. She’s just not campaigning like…
Ignorance Is No Excuse
“I’m not going to blame the young man who is president for the mess we’re in today,” said former Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Leroy Irvis, “because I don’t think he knows what he’s doing.” The line got a big laugh at the annual Allegheny Democratic Party Kennedy-Lawrence dinner Oct. 20, but Irvis didn’t…
No Child Leaving
A majority of Pittsburgh Public Schools parents are literally unmoved by one of the biggest provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The 2002 federal law is the first of its kind that allows any child attending a school where state test scores fall short of No Child goals for two years…
Left Talk Ahead
With the election looming, where does the left-leaning listener turn to get away from right-wing and centrist static? Your friendly neighborhood conservative talk-show host will tell you: public radio. In fact, the presumption that liberal listeners and public radio go together has become a kind of cliché in contemporary American culture, accepted as much by…
Bush League
“CIA Refuses to Release ‘Dynamite’ Report on 9/11.” An 11-person committee at the CIA spent almost two years studying whether agency employees should be held accountable for intelligence failures preceding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The report was completed months ago, but apparently it’s being suppressed by Bush-appointed CIA Director Porter Goss — perhaps until…
Editor’s Note:
The Oct. 20 column by Marty Levine, “I Know You Are, But What Am I?” profiling Allen Denmarck, was a satire about the undecided voter; Denmarck is fictional.
Birth
If there’s one place the dead never rest it’s on the big screen, and Birth is no exception. Jonathan Glazer’s brooding melodrama presents a discreetly made case for reincarnation, if only among the very best people. A man is jogging through a deserted Central Park in the winter. The music is ominous, and perhaps…
Vera Drake
About 30 minutes into Vera Drake, the gifted English writer/director Mike Leigh turns the corner of his drama with a scene that’s as serene and simple as all that came before it, and yet as compelling as anything you’re likely to see in a movie any time soon. Up to then, Leigh’s eponymous heroine…
The Grudge
“When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is left behind. It never forgets. It never forgives.” What it does get is a movie deal. Director Takashi Shimizu has made multiple versions — television, direct-to-video and theatrical — of his supernatural horror flick, Ju-On: The Grudge, in his native Japan.…
PRIMER
This time-travel mind-bender won the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature at Sundance this year, and in spite of its low, low production values it generates real buzz. Two 30-ish office guys toiling away in a garage on some ill-defined project inadvertently develop a machine that suspends time. They start messing around with it in…
SURVIVING CHRISTMAS
Determined to spend Christmas with a family — any family — the rich and crass Drew (Ben Affleck) crashes the holiday of the suburban Valco family in this comedy from Mike Mitchell. For $250,000 “Dad” (James Gandolfini) and “Mom” (Catherine O’Hara) agree to play along. This early-to-market holiday film won’t put anybody in the mood:…
A Conversation with Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including, most recently, The Fortress of Solitude. The novel is set in 1970s Brooklyn, and its protagonist, Dylan, shares with Lethem the circumstance of being among the only whites in that neighborhood’s first wave of gentrification. By turns tender and brutal, the book is huge (509 pages)…
The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq
In the year following the U.S. invasion, journalist Christian Parenti traveled three times to occupied Iraq, with the modest-enough goal of crafting a good description of what he saw. In The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, Parenti finds that while an intrepid American reporter — protectively camouflaged with a fake Canadian…
Mos Def
A message from Mos Def to black folks: We have met the new danger and, lo and behold, it is not us … well not entirely. The new danger is not the thugniggagangstahustlapimp that pervades American society. No, the new danger (as pointed out on “The Rape Over”) is the multinational, corporate, Jewish-underwritten, Seagram’s-soaked,…
