Ike Taylor Key to Steelers Defense
Just how important is Ike Taylor? In case you haven’t been following this little mini-drama, Taylor may be gone to the lucrative winds of free agency if the Steelers don’t re-sign him soon. It’s been bandied about by many around here that Taylor is important, but not that vital to the Steelers’ success. To that…
Bob O’Connor: Schroedinger’s Mayor
How weird are things in Pittsburgh? The Cubans have a firmer grasp on who’s in charge than we do. When their leader gets sick they get to see a photo, at least. By contrast, almost no one has heard directly from Mayor Bob O’Connor since he was hospitalized with cancer in July. Doctors sound upbeat…
My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student
Bashing today’s college students is fashionable and fun. Those of us long graduated can justify the sport with news of grade inflation, undergraduate apathy and the lengthening of baccalaureate programs from the traditional four years to Whenever, Dude. But Rebekah Nathan’s My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a…
A Library and Its Cover
It’s too bad that Victor Hugo never met Louis Kahn, because the 19th-century romantic novelist and the 20th- century modern architect might have developed a perfect assessment of the newly renovated Carnegie Library in Woods Run, completed to designs by Loysen Kreuthmeier architects. The reinvigorated structure is elegant and welcoming, but perhaps unexpectedly so…
Hard Lessen
One Word: PlasticCheap ShotsGreetings, new and returning college students. The years ahead will be full of learning and exploration, an exciting journey of self-discovery, etc. etc. After you graduate, though, things are probably going to suck. When you enter the job market, you’ll likely be saddled with the kind of debt your parents would have…
A Conversation With Dave Russell
For Dave Russell, laughter is no laughing matter. The private-practice counselor from Swissvale says it can actually serve a therapeutic purpose, by helping to relieve stress. Russell is one of the few “certified laughter leaders” in the region, and in February started the Three Rivers Laughter Club. The club meets every other Thursday…
VotingCampaign to Lift Voting Bars
It’s not easy letting prison inmates know they’ll be eligible to vote if they get out by Election Day … and can find a way to register even earlier. “After a while, you start to get used to rejection,” says Clyde Ledbetter Jr., a summer intern with the League of Young Voters. Ledbetter spent…
Bringing Arts to Urban Youth: An Art Itself
Growing up in West Virginia, Gregory “Beef” Jones never saw Pittsburgh as a dynamic arts community. But Jones … now a promoter for Def Jam Records and the Russell Simmons Music Group … says he will help change that image on Fri., Aug. 25, at the Arts Alliance Conference being held at the David L.…
Uneven Money for Poor
In mid-August, Barbara Grayson received a 10-day notice from Equitable Gas warning that she would face a gas shut-off if she didn’t pay her bill. So Grayson looked for quick, easy cash the only way she knew how … through an advance loan from a check-casher in East Liberty. The $200 Grayson received must be…
The Whitest Boy Alive
When Norwegian duo Kings of Convenience reared its head at the dawn of the 21st century, lending a genre-defining classic to the Quiet is the New Loud sound, it might’ve been difficult to see geeky co-founder Erlend í˜ye as savior of electronic dance music. Now, after í˜ye’s brilliant solo electro album, Unrest; his…
Ratatat
Ratatat describes itself as “instrumental”; I’d probably guess these guys were some kind of electronic laptop-pop outfit. If I didn’t know any better. What I was surprised to find out is that many of these songs are performed live, using equal parts sampling and instrumentation. Known originally as Cherry, before its appropriately onomatopoeic…
Snakes on a Plane
Snakes on a Plane. Snakes. On a plane. With Samuel L. Jackson. And he’s pissed. Really, what more can be said about David Ellis’ intentionally silly, over-hyped joke-turned-viral sensation? The film is exactly as promised: Ahem, snakes on a plane. Most of it is stupid, cheesy or ripped wholesale from other…
Gabrielle
The ill-fated marriage, circa 1912 France, that comes to a simmer and then a boil in Patrice Chéreau’s Gabrielle began rather badly 10 years before we meet its protagonists. The man, Jean (Pascal Greggory), was already well into middle age, living a life of aristocratic contentment, and certain that he needn’t…
Invincible
In 1976, the gung-ho new coach of football’s hapless Philadelphia Eagles, Dick Vermeil, held open tryouts, and one player made the team: speedy Vince Papale, a down-and-out South Philly bartender and furloughed substitute school-teacher. Papale was 30 and hadn’t donned pads since high school. But he had heart — which, combined with an ability to…
THE GROOMSMEN
Ed Burns, Donal Logue, John Leguizamo, Matthew Lillard and Jay Mohr drink and squabble on the eve of a wedding in a charming Long Island town. Writer-director Burns’ dramedy is another iteration on the theme of man-boys forced to grow up, though the majority of this thirtysomething, comfortably middle-class gang are so myopic and feckless…
Café Richard
Location: 21st Street and Penn Avenue, Strip District. 412-281-4620 Hours: Mon.-Sat. 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Prices: Pastries $1-4, sandwiches $5-9 Fare: European deli and bakery Atmosphere: French patisserie/boulangerie Liquor: None Smoking: None permitted If food packaging, to you, means a potato peel, and prepared food means just-baked bread, if you swear by the freshness and quality…
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL
Join King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot on their fruitless but hilarious search for the Holy Grail in Monty Python’s 1974 cult hit, re-released in a new print. (Pythons Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones co-directed.) From the demented opening credits (in pidgin Swedish, and with an earnest indebtedness to a certain moose) through numerous…
Tourist Trap
From the day it was built, I’ve believed the “new” Allegheny County Jail was a mistake. It despoils a patch of prime waterfront property more or less at the end of Grant Street, our fair city’s grand boulevard. And it’s always seemed like it would impede the sort of upscale Downtown development that has long…
QUINCEANERA
Ironically, on the eve of her quinceañera … a frilly celebration held to welcome 15-year-old girls into womanhood … Magdalena (Emily Rios) is thrust rudely into adulthood. Pregnant and betrayed, she moves in to a tiny apartment with her oddball elderly uncle, Tomas, and her shiftless cousin Carlos. In Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s small…
