Lynn Cullen Live 07/03/12
Video Archive Phone guest: Susan; more hot weather; Derecho — new term for hurricane-like storms w/ no warning; Anderson Cooper is gay…..DUH; growing stresses on relationships because of communication options; texting & emailing distances people; CLO’s twitter misspelling; Obit: Andy Griffith, 86; the corrupt regime of Equitorial Guinea; fireworks laws in PA; over-parenting; new movies:…
City Paper Streetbox Art Contest
Those black boxes that offer copies of CP to unsuspecting passersby seem to get the job done. But even we have to admit they’re pretty plain. (Maybe you need a better figure to pull off basic black.) So we’re holding a contest to dress ’em up. CP seeks 10 local artists to adorn a streetbox…
Lynn Cullen Live 07/02/12
Video Archive Hot weather temps all over the country; beaches as we know them may cease to exist; history of beaches; healthcare backlash from repubs; comeback of the sythe; Mexico’s new president; Starbucks CEO’s centerfold letter in national newspapers making a statement about the state of our nation; in 2012, America needs to win more…
Killer of Sheep 7-inch release shows this weekend
Killer of Sheep celebrates its 7-inch with two shows on back-to-back nights.
Most Bloomfield Bridge revelers found guilty of lesser charges
Seven of nine defendants ranging in age from 24 to 45 who were arrested May 4 after police interrupted a late-night party beneath the Bloomfield Bridge had most of the criminal charges against them dropped Thursday afternoon during a preliminary hearing. Dropped charges included felony offenses for rioting and misdemeanor offenses for failing to disperse.…
Lynn Cullen Live 06/29/12
Video Archive Affordable Care Act: Conservatives hate it & will get rid of it if Romney is elected; ACA media coverage; CNN reporters DID cover their asses a little during the reporting; the news outlets who got it right didn’t care about being first; “Impeach John Roberts” Facebook page; Roberts’ reasoning; Texas Repubs don’t want…
Lynn Cullen Live 06/28/12
Video Archive Guest: Tom Sokolowski; Affordable Care Act is upheld thanks to Roberts; opposing Supreme Court ruling reports; why we should still be wary; Ann Curry fired from Today Show; Bhutan happiness index; Morbid Curiosity exhibit in Chicago; Nora Ephron; face chewer not on bath salts after all?; increase in Americans going to Mexico for…
EDMC to employees: No layoffs, but no raises either
Employees who survived layoffs the past several months at for-profit educator Education Management Corporation got some mixed news this week: The Pittsburgh-based company hopes to avoid further layoffs … but is freezing wages in order to do so. Word of the wage freeze came down Tuesday, in an email sent on behalf of EDMC management.…
Where Do We Go Now?
Where Do We Go Now? In Arabic, with subtitles. Starts Fri., June 29. Regent Square. Nadine Labaki’s ensemble comedy is a fable that takes place in a small unnamed Lebanese village. The island-like town is isolated by uncleared landmines and can barely get TV reception. But there, the Muslims and the Christians live side by…
Tipping the Scales with Marinated Fish
If you’re like me, you cook well enough for yourself, and for loved ones you’ve given up trying to impress. But when guests are due, you’d like to seem more sophisticated than you actually are. Here’s the answer: an Asian-inflected fish recipe that tastes complicated, but requires only enough brainpower to start things a day…
Jonathan Toubin Brings the Soul Clap Back
JONATHAN TOUBIN’S SOUL CLAP AND DANCE-OFF with guests RAW BLOW. 10 p.m. Sat., June 30. Brillobox 4104 Penn Ave. Bloomfield. $5. 412-621-4900 or brillobox.net Jonathan Toubin is the host of numerous New York dance parties — most famously, his Soul Clap and Dance-Off series, which comes to Brillobox on Sat., June 30. Last December, the…
The Pittsburgh Public Market is slated to move up the street
With plans for the Buncher Company’s Riverfront Landing project moving forward in the Strip District, Tiffani Emig, the manager of the nearly two-year-old Pittsburgh Public Market, says she’s looking forward to the day the market moves up Smallman closer to 21st Street. Currently, the market is located in the portion of the historic Produce Terminal…
Dev79 brings bass-heavy reworkings of hip hop to LazerCrunk
LAZERCRUNK feat. DEV79 with .RAR KELLY, KEEB$. 10 p.m. Tue., July 3. Brillobox 4104 Penn Ave. Bloomfield. $6. 412-621-4900 or brillobox.net Lately, names like Kaskade and Swedish House Mafia have been dominating the pages of Rolling Stone, indicating an upswing in mainstream interest in electronic dance music. But Dev79 and Starkey (Gair Marking and PJ…
Ormsby Unplugged
222 ORMSBY ACOUSTIC FEST 2012. 2 p.m. Sat., June 30. Free from 2 p.m.-7 p.m.; $5 after 7 p.m. All ages. 222ormsby.tumblr.com If the term “acoustic show” evokes tame images of coffeeshop djembes or bonfire sing-alongs, then one might venture to 222 Ormsby on Sat., June 30, for a fresh perspective. That’s when the Mount…
CD Reviews
Silencio Silencio (Self-released) This group formed to play music from David Lynch’s TV and film oeuvre, largely composed by Angelo Badalamenti; the members have since written a good bit of their own material inspired by same. Complex compositions, from reverb-y old-time pop to jazz noir, with haunting vocals by Dessa Poljak. Beautiful and, yes, cinematic.…
Opera Theater of Pittsburgh reinvents itself as a 17-day summer festival
SUMMERFEST Fri., June 29-July 15. Hillman Center for Performing Arts Shady Side Academy, Fox Chapel. Main-stage shows: $20-75; Night Caps: $10; Fringe Fest is free. 412-326-9687 or otsummerfest.org Opera Theater of Pittsburgh occupies what might seem an unlikely headquarters: the third floor of Lawrenceville’s Stephen Foster Community Center, a hulking old brick building owned by…
Critics’ Picks: June 28 – July 3
[LO-FI] + THU., JUNE 28 Pittsburgh scenesters of a certain age are intimately acquainted with the work of Alan Lewandowski: The longtime Pittsburgh character performed as Anita Fix for years (sometimes in drag), and fronts The Working Poor, albeit now from his New York City digs. Tonight he returns with another band, Poison Dartz, characterized…
A local English professor looks at portrayals of medicine in Victorian lit — and how they inform thought today.
As 21st-century consumers, we like to believe we can distinguish between legitimate medicine and quackery. But as Robert Morris University English professor Sylvia Pamboukian reminds us, the boundaries are never as clear as we imagine. “A lot of people want to claim there’s a contrast between professionalism and quackery,” Pamboukian says. “But I’m more interested…
Delays in Store: Despite setbacks and funding gap, officials say Hill grocery store will open — eventually
Before turning the microphone at his church over to Rep. Jake Wheatley and officials from the Hill House Association earlier this month, Rev. Glenn Grayson cautioned the more than 100 people demanding an update on the Hill District’s grocery-store project that yelling wouldn’t get it done any faster. “We know we need a grocery store,”…
Next to Normal
NEXT TO NORMAL continues through Sun., July 1. Carrnivale Theatrics at the New Hazlett Theater 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side. newhazletttheater.org When I hear that a bunch of college types have formed a theater to produce one musical every summer, I think I can be excused a jaded reaction. Carrnivale Theatrics — founded in…
Process Questions: Battle to unionize at UPMC heating up
After being told for weeks that he couldn’t talk about efforts to bring a union to UPMC while on hospital property, Chaney Lewis wasn’t going to let this chance pass. Lewis, of Edgewood, has worked for the past eight years transporting patients at UPMC Presbyterian. On June 20, he was standing before the board of…
Lettice and Lovage
LETTICE AND LOVAGE continues through July 7. Terra Nova Theatre Group at Grey Box Theatre 3595 Butler St. Lawrenceville 412-394-3353 or terranovatheatregroup.org Peter Shaffer’s plays tend to be massive, dense and demanding, so it takes a certain amount of chutzpah for a small company to tackle one. The knighted playwright of Equus and Amadeus also…
Let Us Now Praise Famous Jagoffs
Forget, if you can, the fact that the city’s leading daily newspaper endorsed Tom Corbett for governor. Set aside your feelings about its knuckle-dragging columnist Jack Kelly. There are, for the record, no jagoffs at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Executive Editor David Shribman has banned them … at least by name. “The word ‘jagoff’ has no…
The Last Romance
THE LAST ROMANCE continues thru June 27. Apple Hill Playhouse 275 Manor Road, Delmont 724-468-5050 or applehillplayhouse.org The Last Romance, by Joe DiPietro, could have been written any time in the past 50 years. Aside from its odd reference to “rap music,” Romance is as timeless as its elderly lovers. The setting is the nondescript…
Gospel of Wealth
Saith the Good Book, “Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries … are entered into the ears of the Lord.” Saith Duquesne University unto its 130 liberal-arts adjunct instructors: “To hell with that.” Duquesne’s adjuncts, like adjuncts elsewhere,…
Silver Eye’s Fellowship 12 showcases two strong but decidedly divergent approaches to photography.
FELLOWSHIP 12 continues through July 17. Silver Eye Center for Photography 1015 E. Carson St. South Side. 412-431-1810 Selected from among almost 300 entrants, the two awardees in Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Fellowship 12 competition could hardly be more different while falling within the realm of art photography. Still, as selected by Julie Saul,…
Savage Love
My younger brother and I are close. He came out of the closet last year, although it wasn’t much of a surprise because everyone knew he was gay since forever. But for the last six to nine months, he’s been really depressed about not ever having had a boyfriend. He’s 21 and he’s always talking…
Moonrise Kingdom
Moonrise Kingdom Directed by: Wes Anderson Starring: Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman, Bruce Willis, Ed Norton AMC Loews, Manor Is eccentricity a cry for attention, or is it the spark of imagination that keeps civilization alive? I suppose that depends upon whether the eccentric imagines something useful. Wes Anderson has always been a useful eccentric, making…
Suddenly I want your leftovers
You left six bottles of Jägermeister in your fridge when you died. Three empty, save for a shot. Two full: one hidden by take-out containers, another in the produce bin. One more in your freezer, half-full. “What does this stuff even taste like?” I asked Debbie, tilting the emerald glass, watching thick liquid inch along…
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
p>Bloody limbs flying through the air! Abe Lincoln chasing a vampire atop a herd of galloping horses! Driving a train across a burning bridge! If only 19th-century American history had been taught like this — in action-packed 3-D, with lots of slow-motion ax attacks. Timur Bekmambetov’s actioner Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is adapted from Seth…
Short List: June 27 – July 3
Main Event It began with a simple commission for a painting about Negro League baseball. But then artist and illustrator Kadir Nelson was inspired by Negro Leagues legend Buck O’Neil’s narration in Ken Burns’ PBS series Baseball. Nelson embarked on seven years of research culminating in his 2008 children’s book We Are the Ship: The…
Brave
In this animated adventure-comedy from Disney-Pixar, a teen-age Scottish princess named Merida (voice of Kelly MacDonald) is a free-spirited outdoorsy sort, happily scaling rocky spires and honing her impressive archery skills. Understandably, she doesn’t want to marry any of the three losers her parents (Emma Thompson and Billy Connolly) have arranged as suitors. She reacts…
Eden
Eden 735 Copeland St., Shadyside. 412-802-7070 Hours:Mon., Wed.-Sat. dinner 5-10 p.m.; Sunday brunch 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Prices: Starters $5-7.50; entrees $9-14 Liquor: BYOB Back in the 1960s, Walnut Street in Shadyside was, though it seems hard to believe now, the address of Pittsburgh’s counterculture, somewhere between the bohemianism of Greenwich Village and the hippiedom of…
Let the Bullets Fly
Sure, some bullets fly, but I suspect most viewers will be taken aback by how fast words fly in Wen Jiang’s hybridized comic actioner. This period tale — set in lawless South China in the 1920s — draws inspiration from deconstructed spaghetti Westerns (a la Tarantino), while also hitting beats of farce, gangster pic and…
Lynn Cullen Live 06/27/12
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter; Nora Ephron; Chinese money; what American money used to look like; voter ID requirements; Montana’s no-corporations in campaigns law gets shut down by Supreme Court; PA has more children serving life sentences than any other state; tomorrow’s ruling on Obamacare; some people think Obama is Mormon; campaign ads breed cynicism,…
Lola Versus
Pretty, perky 29-year-old grad student Lola (Greta Gerwig) is dumped by her cutie fiancé (Joel Kinnaman) right before the wedding. Naturally, she embarks on a film-friendly meltdown, lolling about in sleep clothes, eating junk food and enduring bad nights out engineered by her BFF, Alice (Zoe Lister-Jones). She also seeks solace on the shoulders of…
Bar Symon’s new airport location may have you hoping for a flight delay
Bar Symon has an unusual ambiance. Food — from a menu designed by Food Network celebrity chef Michael Symon — is served on counters of wood reclaimed from old bowling alleys. The interior, meanwhile, decorated with photographs of a bygone Pittsburgh … and a TV monitor updated every 15 seconds with flight-departure times. The bar/restaurant…
