What happened to the blue Circle-W, Westinghouse lights that dominated the view from Mount Washington? I used to have their blinking sequence memorized.
Many Pittsburghers, no doubt, have fond memories of this sign: a series of nine giant blue “W” symbols inscribed in circles. All night long, the symbols would light up in seemingly random patterns, a blaze of blue neon shining on the North Side. It may be just as well those lights are gone now:…
ROBOTS
This slick, passably amusing computer animation is mostly in it for the nostalgia, wistful for the comforts of ideology and stuff. Set in a retro-futuro science-fiction world cobbled from a circa-1959 toy chest and chunks of your dad’s Plymouth Satellite, it’s an Horatio Alger story about a plucky young robot from a dead-end (but still…
Bitter Cocktail
She’s always wanted to be a “Brooke,” so that’s what we’ll call her. Not much has gone her way in the last decade, and she doesn’t think everyone at church needs to know the details of her misfortune. So let her be Brooke. Make that Brooke, R.N. In the late 1980s, after she was laid…
A conversation with Darryl Cann
Meet Darryl Cann, the clarineting cab driver, who’s slowly becoming a local celebrity. Last year, thanks to his association with PRO Cabbies — Pittsburgh Relies on Cabbies, a program that coached drivers to be ad hoc city ambassadors — Cann appeared in the Post-Gazette, the Associated Press, various TV news outlets and even on a…
M. Ward
Though March has yet to provide us with any real hints of spring, thoughts of budding tulips, warm sunshine and birds returning home from a long winter’s migration are not far from mind when listening to M. Ward’s latest. Transistor Radio is so breezy and nostalgic, it’s enough to get anybody through these last bitter,…
Various Artists
This gem is only one of six new releases from the increasingly wonderful Seattle-based label run by Sun City Girls bassist Alan Bishop. And like the rest of the catalogue, this collection is short on staid ethno-musicological musings and long on wonder. Molam (meaning “master singer”), a rural music featuring mouth organs, lutes, bowed fiddles…
Mac Martin and the Dixie Travelers
One listen to this disc, the Pittsburgh quintet’s first recording of new material in at least 15 years, and it’s clear that it shouldn’t take a 50th anniversary for something as monumental, albeit simple, as Venango to happen. This is bluegrass as it should be, with a focus on depth and feel instead of speed.…
Clash of the Tartans
On Feb. 17, two white, uniformed Carnegie Mellon University police officers made their way down the aisle of a CMU lecture hall toward two uniformed New Black Panther officers, one of whom was carrying a billy club. The Panthers were arguing with two white students armed only with camera, notebook and pen: Editor-in-Chief J. T.…
Candidate Closes Door Opened at Forum
The actions of one local judge candidate after a public forum last month show how hard it is for prominent Pittsburghers to be entirely out, say local gay activists. On Feb. 7, the liberal activist group MoveOn.org held a public forum for mayoral and judicial candidates. Only three of the more than two dozen…
Second Anniversary Brings March March
“We can end this war if everyone who opposes it joins us in the streets,” says Pete Shell, chair of the Anti-War Committee of the Thomas Merton Center. He’s expecting about 1,000 people to do just that on Sat., March 19 — dubbed a Global Day of Protest for the second anniversary of the Iraq…
Don’t Give Them Liver or Give Them Death
Standing outside upscale restaurants with graphic pictures of force-fed ducks and dead, vomit-choked geese, the anti-foie gras campaign of local animal-rights group Voices for Animals is influencing consumption of fattened fowl liver in Pittsburgh — in ways both intended and unintended. “It’s a luxury item and there’s certainly no necessity that could…
A Desire Named Streetcar
The shorthand on mayoral hopeful Bob O’Connor is that he’s the old fogies’ candidate. Vote for Bob, and you’ll be drinking Duquesne Beer at Forbes Field, under the dark and sheltering skies of industry. Last week, O’Connor confirmed and improved on this caricature. He called an official-looking press conference, with maps.…
Be Cool
Just because a film in its opening scene cops to the fact that most sequels are market-driven suck-fests doesn’t give the filmmaker carte blanche to deliver a market-driven suck-fest and pass it off as postmodern and cute. But that’s exactly what F. Gary Gray does here in Be Cool, the sequel to the…
Born into Brothels
In 1992, long before he made his dramatic right turn after 9/11, Christopher Hitchens called Mother Teresa the “ghoul of Calcutta.” He chided her for supporting dictators and for telling the poor, among whom she worked, to endure their misery and look forward to the promise of Heaven. That, Hitchens said, was unacceptable, especially from…
Bossa Nova
Location: 123 Seventh St., Downtown. 412-232-3030 Hours: Mon.-Fri. 4 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sat. 6 p.m.- 2 a.m. Prices: Small plates $5-15 Fare: Appetizers and tapas Atmosphere: Swank nightclub Liquor: Full bar If you have tickets to a concert at Heinz Hall or a show at the Benedum, Byham or O’Reilly theaters, your map of pre-performance dining…
Postmen in the Mountains
The tender, thoughtful, elegiac Chinese movie Postmen in the Mountains is based upon a story written more than a decade ago, and the people who made it — director Huo Jianqi, and his screenwriter/wife, Si Wu — filmed it in 1997. So their drama largely pre-dates the changes that have made rural life…
Irrational Security
Lately, I’ve really been envying Jack Kelly, the Post-Gazette’s “national-security writer.” Chicks dig that national-security mystique, and I’m sick of writing about Rick Santorum. I lack national-security credentials, but that’s not necessarily a problem. Judging from Kelly’s Sunday columns in the P-G, being a national-security writer doesn’t mean you have to write about national…
Phantom Noises
Lovers of vintage film, Gary Winokur and his wife, Jane Gillooly, jumped at the chance to purchase the best available 35 mm print of The Phantom of the Opera, the 1925 silent classic starring Lon Chaney, and restore its original glory, including extensive color tinting and a famous early Technicolor sequence. But another…
Keeping Current
Imagine having an idea so great that it actually becomes the universal symbol for the good idea. Ding! The light bulb! No self-respecting cartoon character can ever think of something good without one suddenly appearing. Yet, despite their potent symbolism, actual light bulbs are now pretty prosaic. Ironically enough, they now…
THE PACIFIER
When a military inventor is killed, Navy SEAL Vin Diesel takes charge of his brood of four kids in this frenetic family comedy from Adam Shankman. There’s some sketchy plot about ninja neighbors and a hidden thingamabob everybody needs to find, but it’s mostly standard operating procedure: Take a bad-ass tough guy, make him change…
