An Albatross
According to local myth, Pittsburgh band The 1985 was recording at Plus/Minus Studios when they discovered the legendary brown sound: a bass riff so powerfully low and loud that it causes all within earshot to immediately touch cotton, if you know what I mean. An Albatross takes that a step further. The band’s mutant midget-punk…
Johnny English
Scare bleu and blimey! Some smelly French guy has stolen the British Crown Jewels. There’s only one man for the job — Austin Powers! No wait, call Inspector Clouseau. Notify “our man in Havana.” Pencil in this year’s James Bond. What — there’s a bumbling secret agent already on the case? Johnny English? Before you…
Down and Out With the Dolls
Three-chord rock bands form and dissolve faster than you can reload your CD-changer, so Kurt Voss’ unprepossessing comedy Down and Out With the Dolls is largely an exercise in blink-or-you’ll-miss-it narrative: Chronicle the short, mercurial life of an all-girl quartet as they raise a ruckus in Portland, Oregon. The girls, all in their 20s, are…
Jet Lag
The middle-aged man and woman who meet cute at Charles de Gaulle airport and fall in love overnight in Jet Lag speak French with native accents. But they have “Hollywood” written all over them. Before we even get a look at Rose (Juliette Binoche) — a hairdresser fleeing a 12-year relationship with a macho jerk…
Palomino
* take your dog ** take your friends *** take your date **** take your time — you won’t want this meal to end JASON: This place caused quite a sensation when it opened a couple years back. This style of upscale dining — classy but casual — is pretty rare anywhere in Pittsburgh, but…
A Conversation with Glenn Anderson
Of all the characters in your strip, which do you most closely identify with?Flatlite. He’s a dog who’s evolved to a level of a very polished human degree. He has all the social graces of Martha Stewart and he can wipe his own ass. He hangs at posh places, has money and chases the finest…
Street Food
Lucy Sheet’s Vietnamese Hoagies2120 Penn Ave., Strip District (Outside My Ngoc Restaurant) Writer: ANDY NEWMANPhotographer: HEATHER MULL WHAT’S COOKING: Vietnamese hoagies with pork or chicken, chicken on a stickSEASON: May-OctoberHOURS: 8 a.m.-2:30 p.m.PRICE: $3-5, depending on size It is one of the best things to eat in Pittsburgh, period, and you wouldn’t know it was…
PATRIOTic Fervor Spawns Fear
There was a whiff of paranoia in the air July 17, when about 100 people gathered at the University of Pittsburgh’s Lawrence Hall auditorium to plot an assault on the USA PATRIOT Act. “Just coming to join with this group of people can get you on any number of lists,” said Barb Feige, director of…
Meeting of Minds
“We need to actually contribute to this unity that everyone talks about — not just talk about it,” says Point Park College senior Chad Skaggs. “We need to bring everyone together in the same place — that’s what democracy is supposed to be.” “Everyone,” in this case, includes at least 59 local activist groups setting…
Correction
In last week’s story about new layoffs at the Carnegie Science Center (“Off Center,” July 16), former employee Bob Hertrick’s name was misspelled.
Put Up or Shut Up
Talk is cheap. Richard Mellon Scaife is not. At least not when it comes to attacking liberals. Scaife is the titular head of the vast right-wing conspiracy, heir to the Mellon bank fortune and publisher of the notoriously right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. And the head tit lets the mother’s milk of politics (money, in other words,…
The House Always Wins
Mayor Tom Murphy placed a million-dollar bet last year. He pushed a budget through City Council that included $60 million in tax revenue that didn’t exist, in the hopes that the state would approve new levies that would help the city. He was, in other words, gambling that the state could solve the city’s chronic…
Before Allegheny Cemetery was organized, where did Pittsburgh bury its dead? Were there cemeteries that got moved or paved over?
Where has Pittsburgh buried its dead? Take your pick: the Pirates bullpen, the Post-Gazette editorial board, the new Lord & Taylor Downtown… The truth is that early burial places were scattered around the whole region. For example, Story of Old Allegheny City notes that one hillside “served the first settlers as a common burying ground…
The Sick Lipstick
As a kid, home alone one night watching the weekend horror-movie-thons that permeated late-’70s life, I first saw Devil Doll — a ridiculous 1964 flick about some evil ventriloquist or another, and his possessed dummy. It’s stupid, poorly done, pretty funny, and scared the living shit out of me. Since then, the entire doll-comes-alive-and-kills-people genre…
