Setting Sights on Visibility
A group of local gay-rights activists who meet each month, officially dubbed Voices for A New Tomorrow, is trying to create the city’s unofficial gay agenda. “I’ve always heard we had one,” joked Betty Hill, executive director of Persad, the local gay counseling and AIDS center. “I just thought we ought…
No-Tax-and-Still-Spend for Mall Fans
By the end of the last week’s Allegheny County Council meeting, real-estate developer Stephen Coslik of Fort Worth, Texas, calmly waited to thank certain councilors for their votes, tapping a Palm Pilot and discretely whispering with his attorney. An hour earlier, 60-year-old secretary Evalyn Bodick had fought on his behalf for a big-box mall…
State Says Residents Better Chaste Than Chasing
Write your state legislator today to ask for a stylish medieval accessory — a chastity belt. This is the only logical response to Pennsylvania’s Chastity Awareness Week, about to be approved for the seventh year in a row, says NARAL Pro-Choice America. The state General Assembly’s annual chastity resolutions have been largely symbolic: They don’t…
BOOGEYMAN
Don’t go in the closet! Dude, whatever you do, don’t open the closet door! Stay away from the closet! And for good measure, don’t look under the bed! But most of all, don’t go in the closet! That pretty much sums up Stephen T. Kay’s thriller about a troubled young man (Barry Watson) who’s paralyzed…
THE CHORUS
It’s a gloomy time in post-war France when Clement Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot) arrives as the new instructor at a rural boarding school for troubled boys. Christophe Barratier’s film is another entry in the inspirational sub-genre wherein a tough-love teacher betters the lives of hard-case kids by involving them in a meaningful extracurricular activity, in this…
Great White Shark
Black History Month is upon us again, a time to reflect on the turbulent and triumphant history of African Americans. It’s a time to ponder the actions and words of preachers and emancipators, men and women who lived and even died for racial equality. You know, men like U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. …
A LOVE SONG FOR BOBBY LONG
Even as it counsels against romanticizing seedy living and bad behavior, Shainee Gabel’s film tumbles right into the same trap. A cluster of colorful New Orleans barflies led by disgraced professor Bobby Long (John Travolta) re-discover their footing when circumstance deposits a sort-of innocent waif named Purcy (Scarlett Johansson) in their midst. Travolta’s performance is…
Bad Education
In his new movie, Bad Education, Pedro Almodovar breaks camp and returns to a form that served him well earlier in his career, before he began making more flamboyant-cum-garish films about women and love — or “women” and “love,” since so much of what he does invites qualification. His absorbing gay-themed melodrama Law of…
THE WEDDING DATE
Clare Kilner (How to Deal) directs this romantic comedy in which Debra Messing hires a male escort (Dermot Mulroney) to be her date at her sister’s London wedding. Presumably today’s gorgeous take-charge woman can’t attend such functions alone or with a buddy — not if her ex-fiance will be present. So we get My Best…
The Frames
Dynamics are a lost musical art in the rock world. That’s dynamics with a capital “D” and that rhymes with “T” and that stands for “turbulence”: Mid-air shifts in direction and speed caused not by pilot whim but by pockets of air-tide and cloud-burst. And this, these pockets of emotional turbulence, this violent…
The Lord and the Ring
If God talks against pre-marital sex, says Jillian Farabee, “he has to have a reason.” Farabee, 17, is a junior at McGuffey High School in Claysville, Washington County. As a 15-year-old in the youth group of Covenant Life Fellowship Church near her home, she attended her first Silver Ring Thing event. Silver Ring Thing, founded…
A Conversation with Josh Loughrey
Who’s buying typewriters now? We still manage to sell at least one every week. Older people are buying typewriters, a lot of younger people — a lot of writers just prefer typewriters. Do you think there’s any sort of writerly nostalgia with people buying typewriters, or is it just a preference? I…
Up Against the Wall
“Architecture or revolution!” was LeCorbusier’s clarion call in the 1920s, and the words have echoed through the ensuing decades. Never mind that “Corb” was more like a fascist than a revolutionary: Nearly every architect, no matter how modest his or her kitchen additions or storefront renovations, has a bit of the world-changing firebrand…
Where did “Joe Hammer Square” in Oakland get its name, especially when the nearby streets are named after Shakespeare characters?
This one has long puzzled me as well, precisely because many of this South Oakland street’s neighbors do come from Shakespeare’s plays: Ophelia and Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet. Developers are fond of picking themes for the neighborhoods they build. Laying out streets with related names gives them a community feel, and it allows…
Edie Sedgwick
As one-third of the D.C.-based art-punk trio El Guapo, drummer Justin Moyer claimed to feel somewhat less than appreciated by his fans and band-mates after assuming his cross-dressing alter-ego, “Edie Sedgwick,” in concert and onstage. Moyer’s diplomatic solution? He transformed Sedgwick into a one-(wo)man electro-punk show, inked a deal with DeSoto Records, and…
A Gun Called Tension
Synth beats, chunky guitar, freestyling emcees. If not for its status as something of a super-group, the newly formed A Gun Called Tension could be written off as not much more than yet another post-punk/dub project, albeit a fairly brilliant one at that. But consider the collaborators: Dann Gallucci of Modest Mouse and Murder City…
Hitch
Dating’s rough, and the only place that it’s worse than real life is in the movies, where encounters not only go spectacularly wrong but the most unlikely coincidences throw even budding true love into disarray. Of course, in the movies, unlike life, if you and your intended can make it through the first calamity-plagued 85…
Through Polish Eyes
To herald the vibrant Polish film industry, the University of Pittsburgh Department of Slavic Languages and the Center for Russian and East European Studies present “Through Polish Eyes 2005,” a film festival spotlighting contemporary Polish cinema, that kicks off this Sun., Feb. 13, and continues over the next two weekends. Jan…
Passing the Hat
On Nov. 24, Pittsburgh developers and horse breeders Stanley and Ira Gumberg spent $976,185 buying a mare named Ebaraya at a British thoroughbred auction. On Dec. 9, they made a comparatively modest investment, contributing $25,000 each to apparent mayoral candidate Bob O’Connor. The Gumbergs’ wagers were the biggest contributions last year to any…
