Breast-Case Scenario
Courtney Love’s breasts changed my life. It’s not as if I sought out her boobage. It was thrust upon me, a cruel twist of fate. I had driven six-and-a-half hours from Pittsburgh to New York City for a little R-and-R. My significant other and I were walking down Sixth Avenue, minding our own business,…
What is the oldest building in Pittsburgh?
Appropriately enough, the oldest building in Pittsburgh was built as a place where you could go hide while blasting away at other people with impunity. As such, every Steelers fan, Pirates fan and alternative-weekly columnist should feel a special bond to it. The two-story, five-sided blockhouse in Point State Park was constructed in 1764…
Conelrad
Nobody writes songs that are really about sex. I don’t mean romantic “oooh, baby baby” smooth Cassanova swooning, or milkshakes-and-freakin’ euphemisms, or even dark industrial fetish soundtracks. I’m talking about hungover, morning-after bus rides, and awkward conversations based around eye-contact avoidance. And it happens for the same reasons nobody really writes songs about politics: It’s…
Cee-Lo Green
“Do we need to start promoting special concerts like PBS does for soulsters and rockers of yesteryear for our pioneers and rap artists that speak to our issues? Will there be a cultural civil war within the hip-hop community? Has it already begun?” These are questions asked in a recent article by writer Fahiyme…
Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits
Skipping to the end of a book is usually considered cheating. In the case of Earl L. Grinols’ just-released Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits, cheating may be warranted. Because if the book’s findings and the latest rumblings from Harrisburg are both accurate, by the time you plow through Grinols’ equations there may be a…
The Ladykillers
After King Lear, how could Kurosawa make Ran? After Austen and Emma, what do we do with Clueless? And yet, Joel and Ethan Coen® have re-imagined The Ladykillers, the cherished 1955 Ealing comedy based on William Rose’s London stage play, in which Alec Guinness — beset with a crooked smile, a risible overbite and…
I Vitelloni
The young cartoonist Federico Fellini got his start in movies writing scripts for some of the great neorealist directors of Italy’s postwar period, in films including Rome, Open City. But soon he’d be directing on his own, and in 1953’s I Vitelloni, just his second solo feature, it’s easy to see why. At age 33,…
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Dedicated scientist Dr. Paul Armstrong (Larry Blamire) packs his wife, Betty (Fay Masterson), into his Ford Thunderbird and heads deep into the California hills for a vacation. Dr. Armstrong is thrilled when a meteor lands near their secluded cabin. He’s been hoping to secure some useful outer-space rock called “atmospherium.” Meanwhile, an equally dedicated, but…
Tour of Duty: A Vietnam War Film Festival
The war that America can’t quite resolve is the focus of this four-day film festival presented by Carnegie Mellon’s history department. The schedule of more than a dozen films comprises a mix of documentary and feature films, from Hollywood blockbusters to lesser-known documentaries, including the Frontline program Bloods — which examines the struggles black soldiers…
Ich bin ein Pittsburgher! — Duane Michals
Self-proclaimed “hometown boy makes bad,” Duane Michals was born in 1932 in McKeesport to a Slovak immigrant family. Determined not to follow his father into the steel mill, he left home at age 17 on scholarship to the University of Denver and, after two years in the Army, took up residence in New York City,…
Amnesty International Film Festival
The Amnesty International Film Festival wraps up its program of films focusing on human rights struggles across the globe. The screenings on Wed., March 31, and Thu., April 1, are at the Melwood Screening Room in Oakland; tickets are $6. Two free screenings are scheduled for Fri., April 2, at the University of Pittsburgh, and…
Neighborhoods Bully
Maybe Mayor Tom Murphy isn’t running for re-election after all. Speculation about his intentions began a few weeks ago, when Murphy began touring city neighborhoods, buffing up his image while explaining the city’s dire financial plight. But halfway into his tour, Murphy announced that the city is putting a hold on some $13 million…
The Prince and Me
Director Martha Coolidge, who has made some better-than-average films about young women, including 1983’s Valley Girl and 1991’s Rambling Rose, now tackles one of the most beloved girl-fantasies of all time, and nearly makes something fresh out of it. No-nonsense farm girl Paige (Julia Stiles) meets the jerky but erudite Eddie (Luke Mably) at the…
Raiding Spaces
Meet 96-year-old Albert Blank, and the first thing he does is point to his eyes. “I’m blind,” he says. Actually, one eye can still make out shapes. Four years ago, when agents of contractor Paul Grattan Construction Inc. came knocking on the door of his white, frame house in Clairton, Blank’s vision was probably better.…
The Reckoning
Set in 14th-century England, The Reckoning bites off a lot — the rigid alliance of England’s ruling class and the Catholic Church, the culpability of the church in sexual matters, the rise of secular entertainment, a murder mystery and a courtroom drama, episodes of public and personal redemption — and in less than two hours,…
Bidder Homes and Gardens
Sheriff’s sales are usually grim affairs in which speculators, lenders and municipalities bid on the properties of those who’ve failed to pay their mortgages or taxes. But the April 5 sale, set for the County Courthouse Gold Room, could get interesting, because of a bid by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to…
Brown Results: Not Black and White
“We figured if we managed to outlaw [segregation] then equality would occur,” said 87-year-old U.S. District Court Judge Robert Carter. “We were naïve at the time of course.” Carter, one of the lawyers who argued successfully for the end of so-called “separate but equal” schools in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education 1954…
Throw-up Throw-down
“It’s like a car wreck,” said University of Pittsburgh Engineering Student Council President Nate Phillips as he lined up for the “Mystery Eats” gorge-fest — perhaps the most colorful of the annual interdepartmental School of Engineering contests. The 50-year-old E-Week event, which concluded March 26, included a soapbox derby, a poker tournament, all-night float-building…
Bush League
“Executive Privilege.” Launched in March, Harper’s Magazine’s Briefings section on important election-year issues is already indispensable. In the April edition, read about CEO COM LINK, the exclusive phone hotline the corporate titans of something called the Business Roundtable have created to patch them in to the Department of Homeland Security in the event of a…
