Jobs advocates lament frustrated dreams in East Liberty
The Speak Out for Good Jobs Now tour slogan is “rebuild the American Dream.” And for two hours Monday night, congressional representatives heard from those whose dream, or that of someone they knew, had been shattered by lack of jobs. “In every job I’ve ever worked at, it’s been understaffed. It’s stressful going to work…
MP3 Monday: Mothershaker
Greetings! Welcome to another installment of MP3 Monday. Today we bring you a track from Mothershaker. The Southern-fried rock band (with members from Pittsburgh and Cleveland, including sound engineer and former Dropkick Murphys mandolin player Ryan Foltz) recently released the Buzzard Sessions EP. The EP is four songs, recording in late 2009, back when the…
Wheels turning on bike-sharing proposal
One month after local bicycling advocates, foundations and government officials began to discuss bringing a bike-sharing program to Pittsburgh, cycling advocates say they are teaming up with university researchers to figure out how a system might work here. “It’s exciting,” says Scott Bricker, executive director of BikePGH, a local bike-advocacy group. “Now we’re at step…
Independent county exec hopeful opposes gas drilling
Hoping to cast a vote against Marcellus Shale drilling this November … and disappointed that Dana Dolney is not the Democratic nominee in the county executive race? You have another option:Tom Kawczynski. Kawczynski, who is seeking to launch an independent run for Allegheny County Executive, might seem an unlikely drilling opponent. He’s a former Republican…
Notion
In the lexicon of food snobbery, “foodie” has displaced the older, stodgier “gourmand,” but the two aren’t really the same. If a gourmand dresses for dinner in a silk tie and cufflinks, a foodie shops for that dinner at the farmers’ market in jeans and an upcycled T-shirt. Foodies obsess over ingredients and origins, while…
Comedian and Daily Show co-creator visits to make you laugh … and defend Planned Parenthood.
From a very young age, Lizz Winstead used Planned Parenthood for its reproductive and women’s health-care services. “It helped me through a very hard time,” the comedian says. Now, the co-creator of and former head writer for The Daily Show wants to help the agency through its own hard time. Her comedy tour, Planned Parenthood:…
Love Changes Everything
Indulge me: Give a serious listen to the Andrew Lloyd Webber song “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina.” What is this song even about? The lyrics are odd, spidery and hardly make sense. If you’ve seen Evita, the words are confusing. If you haven’t seen Evita, they’re total gibberish. Why would Argentina weep for Eva Perón?…
Comic Potential
Britain’s very prolific Alan Ayckbourn — oops, pardon me, Sir Alan Ayckbourn — has written more than 75 plays. I often feel, erroneously, like I’ve sat through all of them. But most of what I have seen involves two things: (a) Sir Al manipulating stage time in such a way that real time seems weird…
Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project explore race and gender in Beautiful Struggle.
For all of humankind’s advances throughout history, race and gender remain hot-button issues. For interracial husband-and-wife team Esther M. Baker-Tarpaga and Olivier Tarpaga, co-directors of the Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project, those issues have particular relevance and are the subjects of their latest work, Beautiful Struggle. The transnational contemporary dance company’s work-in-progress has two informal…
![Dis[Locating] Culture: Contemporary Islamic Art in America samples its themes, but not coherently.](https://dnm7v7agbcytc.cloudfront.net/2011/07/art1color_28.webp-400x300.webp)
Dis[Locating] Culture: Contemporary Islamic Art in America samples its themes, but not coherently.
There is no doubt that most Americans are ill-informed about Islam. While many non-Muslim Americans were motivated to learn about the world’s second-largest religion after 9/11, today it seems imperative given the ongoing Arab Spring. Anything that enlightens is welcome. And that makes Dis[Locating] Culture: Contemporary Islamic Art in America, co-curated by Michael Berger and…
All Good Festival convenes jam bands south of Pittsburgh
It took 14 years, but Tim Walther finally got the nod of approval he’d been waiting for. It was July 10, 2010, around 12:45 a.m., and Walther was standing just offstage at All Good Festival, the annual music festival in West Virginia that he founded. The night’s headlining band was Furthur, featuring Phil Lesh and…
The Maxipads reunite for a friend
After playing the Saddle Ridge Battle of the Bands several years ago, The Maxipads’ drummer, Joe Melba, was confronted in the bathroom by another contestant, a Beavis & Butthead-esque member of a local Christian rock band, who said: “I liked your songs, but your lyrics suck.” Having just played a series of punk songs with…
Critics’ Picks: July 15 – 20
Ex-members of Sodajerk return with Young Antiques; Matisyahu takes Stage AE; Tech N9ne plays Diesel; 720 Records celebrates 7/20.
Short List: July 14 – 20
We can’t show you any art from Space Gallery’s Drawn in a Day, because the exhibit doesn’t exist yet. But you can watch it being made 1-9:30 p.m. Fri., July 15. That’s when 12 artists or artist teams will create large drawings directly on the big gallery’s walls, straight through the opening reception of this…
The caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink, finds a home in Pittsburgh
It seems like almost every country has a liquor in which the locals place their national pride. Italians have grappa. For the French, there’s marc. And for Brazilians, it’s cachaça: a white or gold spirit made from distilled sugar-cane juices, and which is the main ingredient for the country’s national cocktail, the “caipirinha.” Cachaça (pronounced…
Savage Love
I was recently back home for a family event while my younger brother, age 14, was away on a mission trip with his church. My iPad died and my mother told me to check my brother’s bedside table for a charger. I opened the drawer and found one. I also found a few pictures of…
Arsenal Cider House and Wine Cellar
Much new is on tap at Arsenal Cider — both literally and figuratively, both on and off the premises. In March, Bill Larkin quit his day job in accounting to join his wife, Michelle Larkin, full time in the Lawrenceville-based enterprise they opened in June 2010. The product line has burgeoned from two hard ciders…
Test of Wills
Pundits are predicting that when new Congressional districts are drawn to reflect population changes in the 2010 Census, Democrats Jason Altmire (4th District) and Mark Critz (12th District) will end up competing head-to-head for the same district. Earlier this month, in fact, the Washington Post ranked an Altmire/Critz match-up as #7 on its “top 10…
Director Named: Shiner takes the reins at Warhol Museum
The new director of The Andy Warhol Museum is a familiar face on the local arts scene: Eric C. Shiner, who became the museum’s Milton Fine Curator of Art in 2008. The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh named Shiner director on July 8. He had been acting director since January, just after longtime director Tom Sokolowski’s…
Review: Bill Callahan and Hidden Ritual
That Bill Callahan … what a gentleman. Two years ago the Drag City singer/songwriter adorned us Pittsburghers twice within a few months: first at a crammed Paul’s CDs (one attendee even fainted — due to the claustrophobic viewing conditions or Callahan’s soulful croon? We’ll never know) and second, well, the second show never happened. The…
Pet Project: New city-council mascot comes from an unlikely source
Yvonne F. Brown is chewing Bruce Kraus’s ear. Gnawing on it actually. Part of it is in her mouth. “Ahh! You’re a crazy kitty,” he says, swatting her away with a grin. “She’s going through the terrible twos.” Kraus is no stranger to being chewed out by Yvonne F. Brown. But usually it’s the other…
Costs of Deflation: Will proposed charter-school changes leave districts flat?
Between massive budget cuts and a push from the governor and some state legislators for school vouchers, it’s been a tough year for Pennsylvania’s public-school system. And it could get a whole lot tougher. Starting this fall, state legislators are expected to debate legislation that would essentially rewrite Pennsylvania’s 14-year-old charter-school law. Among the proposals…
Birdsound and Butoh Dance at the Mattress Factory
Genuine Butoh dance is rare as hen’s teeth in Pittsburgh. And we don’t get many sunrise shows, either. But both those things happened, together, this past Saturday in the Mattress Factory’s garden: an riveting improvised movement-and-music performance by internationally known Japanese performer Taketeru Kudo and acclaimed Connecticut-based experimental musician Michael Pestel. The 6 a.m. performance…
CD Reviews
New releases from Eric Himan, Connect and the Pittsburgh Symphony.
Zookeeper
In which the animals at a zoo break their code of silence to talk their beloved zookeeper (Kevin James) through a romantic crisis. Even if you like talking-animal movies, Frank Coreaci’s comedy flops around like a poolside fish choking for life: It’s bereft of plot, laughs, logic and characters. Oh, unless you can’t get enough…
Phase 7
In this Argentine horror thriller from Nicolas Goldbart, a man and his pregnant wife hole up in an apartment during a quarantine while some exotic virus is wiping people out world-wide. The pair settle in — they watch TV, play cards, bicker — but inevitably, what’s left of the world intrudes. In this case, that…
Horrible Bosses
Three buddies, each with miserable job situations: Nick (Jason Bateman) slaves in finance, and his boss (Kevin Spacey) is a passive-aggressive tool; dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day) is being sexually harassed by the dentist (Jennifer Aniston); and Kurt (David Sudeikis) is trapped working for an immature sleazoid (Colin Farrell). What if, the unhappy workers ponder…
Double Hour
Giuseppe Capotondi’s thriller starts with an unsettling scene in which a hotel guest commits suicide. Understandably, this rattles one of the maids, but Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport), a Slovenia immigrant, still makes it to her speed-dating event. There, she meets a worthy candidate, Guido (Filippo Timi), a former cop who now runs a security firm. But…
A Better Life
The path to citizenship for illegal immigrants won’t be won by capturing hearts and minds, because those who oppose it don’t have any. It will take statistics about how our economy would collapse if we tried to deport 12 million laborers (which would be impossible anyway). Director Chris Weitz doesn’t make that case in A…
Meek’s Cutoff
Kelly Reichardt begins her austere historical drama Meek’s Cutoff with what may be one of the most simple-cum-authentic portraits of pioneers making their way west: For seven minutes, we watch them — three wagons, assorted animals and some people — as they cross a river, do their chores and traverse a brown sun-baked landscape. We…
Who to look out for at All Good
On Fri., Aug. 5, festival-goers at this year’s Lollapalooza will have some hard choices: Coldplay, Ratatat, Muse and Girl Talk all play at the same time. Thankfully, All Good attendees don’t have such serious decisions to make — there are no overlapping sets the entire weekend, just one band after another on two stages. (Plus,…
Two Thursday night shows for you
Happy Wednesday! In preparation for your Thursday, I’m telling you here about two shows going on tomorrow night that you might care about, that I didn’t find out about until after this week’s deadlines had past. At ModernFormations tomorrow is Lindefelt, a cello-and-electronics artist from Sweden. He’s in the middle of a short North American…
Want to rep the 412? Anheuser-Busch may be getting there first
Courtesy of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, we learn that beermaking giant Anheuser-Busch is seeking to trademark Pittsburgh’s area code: [A] search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s online database shows that on May 20, Anheuser-Busch filed applications to trademark: “704” (Charlotte, N.C.), “216” (Cleveland), “214” (Dallas), “303” (Denver), “713” (Houston), “702” (Las Vegas), “305” (Miami),…
House at Pittsburgh Irish & Classical
This Alan Ayckbourn play has been noted largely for its novel staging: It was written to be performed simultaneously with Garden, an interlocking Ayckbourn play featuring most of the same characters. The action of both plays takes place on the grounds and inside the walls of a British country estate on a single day. So…
DJ Ripley at Dorkbot and Garden of Earthly Delights, Brillobox
There’s a convergence in DJ-land where rocking a party melds into cultural theory. On Saturday, July 2 at Brillobox, amid the chaotic partying of the holiday weekend, DJ Ripley (Larisa Mann) spoke at Dorkbot, a free-form lecture series featuring “people doing strange things with electricity,” and then proceeded to rock the Garden of Earthly Delights…
