Trans Am
Electronic indie rock, I should make clear right from the start, has something of a dubious past. Most would agree that the trend — we used to call it “post-rock” — is traceable straight back to Tortoise’s decade-old debut, which was an almost scientific deconstruction of rock technique that somehow managed to remain head-boppingly jazz…
Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region
One question that’s always vexed me about Pittsburgh is this: Who planted the gingko trees around Schenley Park, and why couldn’t they find an ornamental tree that didn’t smell like crap? Thanks to Devastation and Renewal, a collection of 10 essays anthologized by Carnegie Mellon University professor Joel Tarr, I have an answer. As…
Revisiting the Rosenberg Executions
Robert Meeropol was 6 in 1953 when his parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, members of the American Communist Party, were executed after being found guilty of giving the secret of the atomic bomb to the USSR. Robert and his brother, Michael, who was 10 when his parents were executed, were adopted by Abel and Anne…
Even More Anti-War
“We want to bring attention to the fact that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq], that over 550 U.S. soldiers and about 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died,” says Pete Shell of the Thomas Merton Center’s Anti-War Committee. On March 20, one year after Gulf War II began, activists from Erie to West…
Oversight Board’s Budget Brief …
The City of Pittsburgh’s 2004 operating budget is more than 300 pages long. The budget of the five-man Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority assigned by the state to fix the city’s wobbly finances takes up just a quarter-page. But the board’s apparent parsimony regarding paper costs may be matched by its liberality on legal fees. The…
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Since last December, when nine union janitors at Centre City Tower lost their jobs after building management dumped them for a nonunion, low-wage contracting company, the Service Employees International Union Local 3 fears other building owners could make the same move. So the union has tried all sorts of high-minded protests to get the so-called…
Helping Haiti Closer to Home
The Haiti Support Project and the National Council of Negro Women kicked off a 30-day fundraising campaign Monday for Haitian families displaced since the coup that removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The “Lend a Helping Hand to Haiti Campaign” is supported by black organizations such as the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the Muslim American Freedom Foundation…
Bush League
“Former British Hostage Likens 5-Year Solitary Confinement in Lebanon To Guantanamo Bay.” One participant in the March 8 march on the White House by the U.K.-based Guantanamo Human Rights Commission had a curiously relevant resume. Democracy Now! (March 10) interviews Terry Waite, the British special envoy who was held hostage by Islamic militants from 1987…
Correction
The correct first name of the man cited in “Get on the Boat” (News Briefs, March 10) is Thomas Smith. City Paper regrets the error.
“How’d You Get Hurt?”
When your 12-year-old child is trying to jump out of the car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, there’s bound to be a struggle. And when that 12-year-old child — who has multiple disabilities — explains his bruises the next day in school by saying “My father hit me,” you may find yourself being investigated for child…
A Conversation with Jessica Lee
So how does a business consultant with a law degree end up singing torch songs in a Downtown Pittsburgh jazz club for high-tech types? Sometimes I tell people I’m like Carnegie Mellon University — geek on one side, artsy on the other. I started playing classical piano at the age of 5, and I did…
Go North, Old Man
Back when I was a boy, the winters were colder, the summers hotter, and old people were, well, older. Play by the rules, they used to tell us. Mind your manners. Respect authority. Nowadays, though, seniors just don’t give a damn. “If it feels good, do it,” seems to be their motto; next they’ll…
Getting Off on the Wrong Foot
Watching Coach Bill Cowher’s press conferences on television during Steelers season is both hysterical and aggravating. The guy can barely contain himself. He wants to punch anyone who dares ask a question he feels is impertinent — which would pretty much be anyone asking a question. This kind of imperious attitude has served jocks well…
The Best of Québec Cinema
As part of the three-month cultural exchange, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Québec Government House, in association with Pittsburgh Filmmakers, present a week-long program of recent and classic Québec cinema. The series opens on Fri., March 19, with a pair of satires, and concludes Thu., March 25, with two edgy romantic dramas. All films…
Hey, what’s the origin of the names of McKeesport and McKees Rocks? Who was this Mr. McKee?
Just think: Even William Pitt had to settle for having only one post-industrial Rust Belt community named after him. Hard to believe one man could be responsible for creating two such communities, isn’t it? And there’s a reason it’s hard to believe: One man wasn’t responsible for creating the thriving communities of McKeesport and…
Japanese Story
She’s a single, capable, slightly testy geologist with an Australian mining company. He’s a Japanese businessman visiting Australia to discuss a venture with her firm. She doesn’t much like the idea of showing him around for a few days. But her boss asks her to do it, so she really can’t say no. Of…
Gloomy Sunday
“Gloomy Sunday” is an apparently real Hungarian song whose melody was so affecting that it caused suicides among listeners in the early 20th century. Rolf Schübel’s Gloomy Sunday is a somewhat less real but nonetheless absorbing story of the song’s piano-playing composer, the Jewish owner of the restaurant where the pianist performs, and the woman…
The Statement
During World War II, the Vichy government of Nazi-occupied France executed roughly 77,000 Jews. These executioners were, of course, just following orders — except for those eager gendarmes who jumped the gun and immediately launched their pogroms. Some of these people met justice after the war, and some slipped back into French society, occasionally attaining…
The Secret Window
In his 1999 film, Stir of Echoes, director David Koepp used the simple set-up of a man who becomes increasingly unhinged when he believes his house has been the site of a murder to create a compact and fairly effective thriller. Koepp’s new film, Secret Window, covers similar turf: Writer Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp), stewing…
Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival
The 11th annual Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival wraps up this week with screenings Thu., March 18, through Sun., March 21, at the Loews Waterfront and Destinta Bridgeville theaters. Tickets are $10 for adults, $7 for seniors and $5 for students. Six-film passes for $40 are also available. For tickets and more information, see www.pjiff.net…
Trilogy: An Amazing Couple
Part deux of filmmaker Lucas Belvaux’s ambitious triptych is the comedy portion of the show; like part one, the thriller On the Run, and part three, the drama After Life, this not-quite-farce stands on its own, though it’s ultimately more intriguing as one of these three interlocking films. High school teacher Cecile (Ornella Muti) suspects…
Various Artists
It’s wonderful that we live in a musical universe where we can purchase re-issued recordings of, for instance, a Zimbabwean string band from the ’30s who sound not unlike a similar ensemble from Tennessee, or a Nigerian acid-rock power trio more influenced by Grand Funk than James Brown. But it begs questions too. How should…
