Op-ed: When politicians wrap themselves up in the Black and Gold
When fascism comes to western Pennsylvania, it will be wrapped in a Terrible Towel. Sinclair Lewis didn’t actually say that, though he probably could have. And as we wait for tonight’s primary-night festivities, I’ve been stewing over how elected officials dumb down our politics by bringing up football. Or, what may be worse, how they…
Mid-April Metal Shows at Mr. Smalls & Stage AE
Stylistic variety with a common thread of Satanism.
In state House district 20, Purcell drumbeat on Ravenstahl continues
With hours to go before tomorrow’s primary election, things are heating up in the race for the state House seat currently occupied by Adam Ravenstahl in District 20. One of Ravenstahl’s two opponents, Mark Purcell, sent out a mailer last week accusing the incumbent of blowing off community meetings … a charge Ravenstahl denies. The…
NYC invasion: Pittsburgh’s premiere hip-hop acts take over the birthplace of hip hop
Chevy Woods, Boaz, Mac Miller, The Come Up, Rhyme Calisthenics and Beedie all play New York City this week.
Born To Be Wild: IMAX Trailer – CP TV
Carnegie Science Center Website
Molchany campaign goes after Schmotzer on financial reports
In politics, the long knives often really start coming out in the days just before the election. And in a South Hills battle to represent state House District 22, Erin Molchany has launched a salvo at the endorsed Democrat, Marty Schmotzer. Team Molchany has accused Schmotzer of failing to file a campaign-finance report on time,…
Friday Pittsburgh music Internet round-up
Three quick items for your perusal on this game-five Friday: Photo courtesy of Kyle Dean Reinford “We’re sitting on this patio because we don’t have a van!” — 1,2,3 — We’ve written a few times in the past about locals 1,2,3, the indie-rock band on Frenchkiss. Well, their van is broken and they need a…
Online Voting Open in PSO Concert Competition
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has chosen eight semifinalists in its Online Concerto Competition. Voting is open to the public until April 30. Between Feb. 9 and March 22, the PSO received 104 video submissions for the competition, which will grant one winner the opportunity to perform next season with the orchestra in a concert led…
The Right Now Gets Over You
A review of the latest from The Right Now.
Two Wheels Earth Day Bike Parade
Get outdoors, recreate and celebrate Earth Day, all without fossil fuels, with this short, easy city ride culminating in a festival. The 4.6-mile group ride starts at 1 p.m. this Sunday at Chatham University’s Eastside Campus, at 6568 Penn Ave. (near the corner of Fifth Avenue, in East Liberty). It heads through Squirrel Hill and…
Extended Q&A: Jill Barber
“I started to realize that I could make that kind of music, as a girl with a guitar and a few friends.”
Third Eye Blind at Stage AE
Check out this review of Third Eye Blind’s performance at Stage AE!
Lynn Cullen Live 04/19/12
Video Archive Guest: Tom Sokolowski; fads in NYC; sitting in a chair all day is almost as bad as smoking heavily when it comes to health; nothing shameful in being a little medicated; Pakistani man kidnapped & de-moustached; Obits of the week: Dick Clark / Hilton Kramer, art critic / Mame McDowell, longtime county worker;…
Port Authority takes next step on service cuts
A Port Authority committee today advanced a plan for massive service reductions and fare increases across the transit system. The full board will vote on the measures next week. While officials tweaked some of the plans, the cuts still resemble much of what was proposed in January to deal with a $64 million budget deficit…
New Man Forever vid with Pittsburgh ties
Howdy! Just showing you the new Man Forever (aka Kid Millions from Oneida) video, because in the middle of all the trippy droney stuff, you’ll notice ex-Pittsburgh rocker/Dirty Faces keyboardist/percussionist Leah McManigle blowing up and popping balloons. That’s all! Happy Wednesday! Man Forever – Surface Patterns from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.
Lines Drawn in District 22 state Rep race
File this under “politics makes strange bedfellows”: It’s the front of a flyer being sent out by the campaign of state Rep. candidate Erin Molchany in District 22: The folks you see there are Molchany with two of her supporters: City Councilor Natalia Rudiak and a former rival, Tony Coghill. In fact, Coghill and Molchany…
The Raid: Redemption
Things go bad when a SWAT team tries to take out a crime lord’s empire inside a rundown Jakarta high rise. Now, the few remaining cops have to fight their way out. Fortunately, the cops are highly skilled marksmen and hand-to-hand fighters. Unfortunately, so are the thugs! Gareth Evans’ actioner is a non-stop parade of…
Sumi’s Cakery
Sumi’s Cakery 2119 Murray Ave. Squirrel Hill. 412-913-6881 Bakeries are naturally associated with sweetness — after all, sugar is one their main ingredients. But Sumi’s Cakery in Squirrel Hill proves that just a little bit of sweetness can go a long way toward making a satisfying baked treat. The Korean bakery opened last month and…
Think Like a Man
Tim Story’s ensemble comedy is another roundelay of relationship foibles all rooted in the overplayed tropes about how men and women approach dating and romance differently. This time out, all the answers come from Steve Harvey’s real-life advice book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, which, in the film, is endlessly displayed, quoted…
Triggers persevere through label troubles to release second full-length
TRIGGERS CD RELEASE with TEAMMATE, DELICIOUS PASTRIES. 10 p.m. Fri., April 20. Brillobox 4104 Penn Ave. Bloomfield. $5. 412-621-4900 or www.brillobox.net It’s an old story by now: Band is “discovered,” band inks deal with label, band is ignored by label and watches album go unreleased, band has to regroup and find a new strategy after…
Pieces of Pittsburgh
A big city is made up of lots of little parts, many of which are aesthetically pleasing but overlooked or hiding in plain sight. On its website, City Paper highlights these artful bits and pieces of the man-made urban environment, such as building components, abstract patterns and street art. This page offers a selection of…
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
RECORD STORE DAY Sat., April 21, various independent record stores. recordstoreday.com Record Store Day has, in its six years of existence, become as much a rite of spring for many of us as baseball’s opening day, or the first day of trout season. Always coming in mid-April, the event — designed to bolster support of…
The Bearden mural in the new T station is only the latest of Pittsburgh’s recently restored public art works.
When Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate,” affectionately nicknamed “The Bean,” was installed in Chicago’s Millennium Park, it quickly became an identifying feature of the city. All great cities use art to enliven their parks and public spaces, and iconic public artworks have a way of becoming synonymous with the cities that host them. Think Robert Indiana’s…
On the Record with Jill Barber
JILL BARBER with THEFIVE6 and MELINDA. 8 p.m. Sun., April 22. Hard Rock Café 230 W. Station Square Drive. $8-10. 412-481-7625 or hardrock.com Canadian chanteuse Jill Barber started out as a guitar-based singer-songwriter, but has since come around to writing and singing original material in a traditional jazz style. She’s currently on her first U.S.…
Short List: April 20 – 25
Fresh off its New York debut, Point Park University’s Conservatory Dance Company presents the ninth edition of its annual At the Byham program, April 19-21. Perhaps the finest lineup of dance works in the program’s history, the program will feature a reprise of CDC’s performance of Martha Graham’s groundbreaking 1929 modern-dance work “Heretic” last month…
Obvious makes bass-heavy music plain to hear
Obvious presents TRUTH and ANTISERUM. 9 p.m. Thu., April 19 Mexico City 409 Wood St. Downtown. 412-246-2042 All you really need is a big sound system: just four dual cabinets and a mean bass. Put that in any venue, no matter the size or the cleanliness of the bathrooms, and the party will pretty much…
A mortuary job inspires an artist.
THE DAY THAT DEATH STAYED HOME: NEW WORKS BY MIKE EGAN continues through April 28. Gallery on 43rd Street 187 43rd St. Lawrenceville.> 412-683-6488 or galleryon43rdstreet.com Artist Mike Egan admits he “isn’t really a people person.” So perhaps it’s no surprise that when he was seeking a side career in 2004, he enrolled at the…
Critics’ Picks: April 19 – 21
[INDIE FOLK] + THU., APRIL 19 After having backed up Anthony Green on stage and in the studio, the boys of Good Old War are well prepared to demonstrate their capabilities as their own musical entity. Philadelphia’s Keith Goodwin, Daniel Schwartz and Tim Arnold have released several full-lengths and EPs since 2008; the latest is…
Dark of the Moon
DARK OF THE MOON continues through Sun., April 22. Pittsburgh Playhouse 222 Craft Ave. Oakland. 412-621-4445 or pittsburghplayhouse.com It’s odd that a play written in 1943 could be so postmodern, but such is the Howard Richardson/William Berney semi-hit of yesteryear, Dark of the Moon, now at Point Park’s Conservatory Theatre. Here’s the deal: There’s an…
On the Home Front: Vets of Iraq and Afghanistan take on political battles at home
If you didn’t know better, you might have thought the U.S. military opened an outpost on Grant Street last fall. And not just because of the M*A*S*H-looking mess tent. Mellon Green was, in fact, the site of Occupy Pittsburgh, which denounced economic inequality and corporate corruption. But even radicals love a person in uniform. Occupiers…
Picnic
PICNIC continues through April 21. Peter Mills Auditorium Rockwell Hall 600 Forbes Ave. Duquesne University, Uptown. 412-396-6215 Duquesne University students are getting good experience performing an enduring, memorable American play. It’s William Inge’s Picnic, winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize. Evoking our culture of 60 years ago, Inge says so many timeless things so well…
Lynn Cullen Live 04/18/12
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter; new CP out today; transgendered couple & Pitt; Romney in town yesterday, dissed local bakery’s cookies; Romney’s tepid supporters; Kathy Kane supposed to be a Democrat, but gave money to Corbett campaign; Michelle Obama’s events in Pgh; more people coming around to global warming; CP cover story: Coming Home PA,…
The PCA’s 10 Solo Exhibitions are an impressive array
10 SOLO EXHIBITIONS continues through Sun., April 22. Pittsburgh Center for the Arts 6300 Fifth Ave. Shadyside. 412-361-0873 or pittsburgharts.org From a distance, you can tell it’s a tree, but just barely. Kenneth Batista’s landscape doesn’t look like a painting; it looks like a digital photograph with really bad resolution. You can see the blocky…
Military struggles with rise in sexual-assault complaints
The night before Joyce Wagner left Iraq to return stateside, she sat with a fellow Marine and discussed what life would be like when he came home. The pair had been talking outside of her tent, when the male soldier began trying to kiss and touch her. She resisted. But because Wagner had previously pursued…
Marley
Marley Directed by Kevin Macdonald In English, and Jamaican patois, French and German, with subtitles. Starts Fri., April 20. Regent Square If asked to name one reggae performer, most folks would say “Bob Marley,” and plenty couldn’t name a second. The dominance Marley had — and continues to hold — over that indigenous Jamaican music…
Savage Love
I’m gay and a junior in high school, and I’ve had a boyfriend for a year. We are out to our parents and everyone is supportive. But we are frustrated! We had sex education in our schools, but they didn’t cover gay sex. (Big surprise!) I tried to talk to my mom about gay sex,…
In Darkness
In Darkness In Polish, German, Ukrainian and Yiddish, with subtitles. Starts Fri., April 20. Manor There are 6 million stories in the Holocaust, and while many of them follow the same arc of tragedy, each happened to someone. In her Oscar-nominated film In Darkness, the great Polish director Agnieszka Holland tells the true story of…
Foam Alone
Recently, a City Paper reader called to complain about trash. Not the effluvia spilling from staffers’ desks — which barely breaches our cubicle walls anymore. Rather, he had discovered that it is not possible to recycle the foam peanuts a recent purchase of his came swaddled in. That’s a serious problem. Polystyrene (plastic No. 6…
Battle Royale
Sometime in the near screwed-up future, a class of Japanese ninth-graders is dumped on an isolated island, and given three days to kill each other, until there is one “winner.” Kinji Fukasaku’s 2000 film (a mash-up of dystopian horror, dark comedy and romance) never received an official U.S. theatrical release, but now you can see…
Blind Spot
Red azaleas flutter in the window box. The telephone receiver, a cold weight. His voice distant, as it traveled — They need to glue my eyes back. My retinas are drifting. That film inside his camera, that light-sensitive tissue. Later, she couldn’t help but wonder — how he saw her. Some shadow in a carnival…
The Forgiveness of Blood
A dispute between two neighbors in a small Albanian village prompts a blood feud, in Joshua Marston’s drama. Thus members of one family go into various states of hiding and confinement based on traditional Albanian “laws.” (The particulars of this “justice system” weren’t very well explained, and at times, this absence made the plot confusing.)…
Casa Rasta
Casa Rasta 2102 Broadway Ave. Beechview. 412-223-6106 Hours: Mon., Wed. and Thu. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun. noon-9 p.m. Prices: $2.50-7 Liquor: BYOB Tacos, jerk chicken … what’s not to like? When we got word of Casa Rasta, where these two great tastes taste great together, we set forth immediately for Beechview. …
The Lucky One
Zac Efron stars as the super-sensitive Iraq war vet who traces a photo he found in battle back to a sleepy Louisiana town and the winsome single mom (Taylor Schilling) it came from. Scott Hicks’ romance, adapted from Nicholas Sparks’ novel, contains no surprise you won’t see coming, and hits all the expected beats: gorgeous…
Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week celebrates city’s increasing sophistication
Starting this Friday, Pittsburgh will be awash in suds. Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week (April 20-28), sponsored by local brewers, bottle shops, bars and beer distributors, will be packed with over 300 tastings, beer dinners … even a formal-dress “Brewer’s Ball.” The Pittsburgh Craft Beer Alliance organized the week’s events — which will take place at…
