A conversation with Vivian Girls’ Cassie Ramone
When we made contact with Vivian Girls, they were en route to play a couple of festivals in Scandinavia. Tough life. Cassie Ramone took some time to answer our interview questions via email, as phone contact was unlikely. Vivian Girls play the Warhol next Thursday, August 27. How/when did you meet/start playing music together? Katy…
Miss Diagnosis
So I’m back. Not much seems to have changed since I’ve been away — Pennsylvania still doesn’t have a state budget, for one thing. The birther nonsense has died down, but only to be replaced by a new laughable conspiracy theory — the notion that President Obama’s healthcare reform involves “death panels” of government bureaucrats…
MP3 Monday: Meeting of Important People
Last time we heard from Meeting of Important People, they were celebrating the release of their self-titled LP. Now they’re re-releasing it electronically via Authentik, an L.A. label, replete with bonus tracks. They’re also getting ready to release a video, and playing a show this Friday — check out this week’s Signal to Noise column…
Brew House Open House
Summer and fall are house-tour season, but I doubt there’s a more intriguing look at living spaces than the one arranged by this South Side artists’ co-op. The former Duquesne Brewery (whose big clock tower looms over the neigbhorhood) is some three decades into an experiment begun when a group of artists squatted in a…
The Moth at American Shorts
The American Shorts Reading Series has changed a lot in its seven seasons. In its original incarnation, it featured local writers and performers reading favorite works of short fiction in a different venue each month. (Six shows per season, I think.) One highlight was actor Chris Josephs’s delightfully chilling rendition of Poe’s “The Cask of…
Specter, Sestak appear at Netroots Nation
While they shared the same audience, Sen. Arlen Specter and U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak didn’t share the same stage at Friday’s Pennsylvania Leadership Forum held at the annual Netroots Nation convention at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The two men, who will face off next spring for Specter’s U.S. Senate seat, spoke to a…
Short List: Week of August 13 – 20
Our fair-yet-hilly city grows ever more bike-friendly, with bike lanes popping up on major thoroughfares and a city bike coordinator a year into the job. Accordingly, the fifth annual Bike Fest is bigger than ever. Bike Pittsburgh’s 10-day round of urban and regional races, tours and bike education kicks off Fri., Aug. 14, with a…
Green Roots
One story Pittsburgh tells is that it’s the Smoky City that quit smoking … and got green. The narrative even helped persuade the political progressives at Netroots Nation to hold their annual conference this week at the energy-conscious David L. Lawrence Convention Center. But at least one Netroots panel discussion will note that Pittsburgh’s economy…
Separation Anxiety
Netroots panel to discuss idea of unifying church and state
Netting the Big Names
Guess who’s coming to Pittsburgh?
Pulling Up Roots and Moving to Pittsburgh
Never mind the G-20: For progressives across the country, the data streams converge in Pittsburgh this week.
Tulpan
Fresh from two years in the Russian navy, young Askhat (Askhat Kuchencherekov) returns to his native land, the steppes of Kazakhstan. In this remote, desolate spot, he hopes to marry the only girl around, the titular Tulpan, and settle down to a life of sheep-herding. But, in documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoy’s dramedy, the courtship goes poorly,…
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
I attended this film ignorant of everything about G.I. Joe, though I recall that in his 10-inch form, he sometimes would accompany Barbie on dates when Ken was unavailable. So whether this nonstop action-o-rama bears any relation to Joe’s decades-long struggle to mete out global justice with the imprimatur of the military is lost to…
District 9
For 20 years, space aliens, of unknown purpose, have been held in Johannesburg neighborhood known as District 9, a fenced-off, overcrowded shanty town. Now, 1.8 million of them — nicknamed “prawns” — are to be moved to a new “alien relocation camp.” Things get even uglier in writer-director Neill Blomkamp’s geopolitical-ish sci-fi thriller when one…
Julie & Julia
One half of Nora Ephron’s bio-pic/light comedy hybrid is a sunny, thoroughly entertaining portrait of renown cook Julia Child and her embrace of French cuisine in Paris after the war. The other is a contemporary account of Julie Powell’s (Amy Adams) obsession with cooking all the recipes in Child’s influential cookbook and blogging about it.…
Wild Rosemary
The restaurant’s growing reputation and diminutive size mean that you should make your reservation well in advance, but it’s worth the wait.
Dissent Plans
G-20 activists release protest info
More Harm Than Good?
City plans to restrict protesters might have opposite effect
A Little More to the Left
Ferlo wishes Netroots gathering was more progressive
New York-based actor Evan Brenner performs his new one-man play about the life of the Buddha.
“He was an extremely practical person who wanted to be sure he was seen as no more than man.”
Unnecessary Farce
This is an hilarious, well written farce that promises side-splitting laughs.
The History Boys
There are few pleasures greater than listening as playwright Alan Bennett spins out pages and pages of terrifically clever, satisfyingly funny and, on occasion, insightful dialogue.
This Just In: August 13 – 20
Highlights from the local TV news: Jack-pots and Pans
Welcome to Ballhalla
Street hockey takes on a new attitude in VikingBall
Coloring a New Future
Local man gives up everything to help children
The Duke & The King mine mellow gold on Nothing Gold Can Stay
It’s deserving of notice by fans of bedroom Americana, and those who’ve rediscovered the pleasures of the soft-rock ballad.
Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers bring mournful Americana to South Park
Despite her youth, Crain sings and writes with a confidence that betrays maturity.
Father-and-son jazz saxophonists reunite for a free concert Tuesday
When the Aliquos play together, both admit that each expects a good deal from the other, performance-wise, and they push each other toward a higher level during solos.
A Conversation with Jessica Hopper
For girls who want to rock on their own terms, Hopper’s book The Girls’ Guide to Rocking offers a straightforward, encouraging roadmap.
Scott McClanahan’s deceptively simply Stories hooks you.
He’s a born raconteur with the disarming knack of sucking you into the narrative, the more offbeat the better.
Ahem, happy birthday LOCK AND KEY COLLECTIVE!
Howdy from the corrections/clarifications department. It was brought to our attention after yesterday’s blog post that in fact it is just the Lock and Key Collective, and not 222 Ormsby proper, that’s celebrating its 2nd birthday this Saturday. The two aren’t hopelessly intertwined but in fact are separate entities that happen to be in the…
Andy Warhol’s relationship with celebrity gets a fuller airing in Warhol Live.
The ad photo for the new exhibit at The Andy Warhol Museum, Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol’s Work, features Andy peering at the viewer through the hollow of a tambourine, his head wreathed in shining cymbals. The image is apt. Warhol is frequently characterized as having surrounded himself with glamor, hipness and…
Red, Ripe and Roasted
Phipps Conservatory’s annual celebration of tomatoes and garlic makes for a tasty afternoon.
Savage Love
Do you think post-op transgender people have any obligation to tell their lovers they were once the other sex? On The Fence Yes. I’m in my 40s and straight. My wife of nine years is no longer interested in sex. Period. She relents every few weeks, but it’s never enjoyable for either of…
Stoner rock has a local champion with record label Oppressive Sound System Releases
“Hearing the songs that people can write in that state of mind is really moving.”
