SXSW Day 3: Scots and Saints
One thing about music conferences that’s always a bit surprising to me is how few of the musicians playing them in hopes of being “discovered” bother going to the daytime panel discussions — panels led by the very people they hope will discover them. They’ll show up and play their evening showcase, but not avail…
Could campaign-finance reform happen here?
Believe it or not, it’s possible — maybe — for the city and county to pass a decent campaign-finance reform bill. I’ll explain why I think so at the bottom of this post, but I’ll admit you couldn’t see much sign of hope from yesterday’s city council hearing on the proposed reform. At the outset…
I Nipoti at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Co.
Mark Southers’ new play brought to mind a coupleof films I’d seen recently. Like Clint Eastwood’s GranTorino and Phillippe Faucon’s Dans La Vie, the playdescribed a culture clash. In Gran Torino, Eastwood plays aracist retired Detroit autoworker living next to a Hmong family.Dans La Vie, an excellent French film that screened at thePittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film…
MP3 Monday: Beware Fashionable Women
Beware Fashionable Women is the power-pop alias of Barak Shpiez, a Pittsburgh-based musician and audio engineer who has spent the last year working in Los Angeles. Sean Collier reviewed the debut album from BFD in December: “[T]wo of the album’s ten tracks are particularly memorable: the harmony soaked, Beach Boys-style “I’ll Be the DJ” and…
South By Southwest, Day 2: Commerce and Church
There’s the oft-quoted William Burroughs line that “Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levi’s to both sexes.” The marketing department at Levi’s has figured out that rock ‘n’ roll moves plenty of denim as well, hence the Levi’s Fader Fort. Located on the other side of the train tracks from the central SXSW…
Patrick Dowd: Now with reduced wonkiness!
Patrick Dowd opened the doors to his Downtown office last night, but perhaps more importantly, he’s seems to be closing the door on some fears people might have had about his campaign style. For one thing, he’s gotten a little less wonky. At his official campaign kick-off, Dowd had a tendency to wander into discursions…
The New Yinzer Presents
If you can drop by a reading series almost at random and hear something really good, chances are that series is doing something right. I’d heard that this monthly series, at Garfield’s ModernFormations Gallery, hosted good stuff: It’s three writers (mostly poetry and fiction), plus a short musical performance, plus a potluck option that waives…
South By Southwest, Day 1: Asleep at the Wheel
For many of us from Pittsburgh, including punk band Kim Phuc and poster artist Mike Budai, this year’s South By Southwest festival started off on a brutal note: A 5:30 a.m. boarding at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Most, like Kim Phuc bassist Corey Lyons, hadn’t slept at all — a rough start to nearly a…
Get your tax-protesting kink on this April 15 with the AFA
One of our missions at City Paper is to provide a comprehensive guide to goings-on about town. Some of those events are wholesome family fare for kids and parents to enjoy. (Be sure to check out Love City at Garfield Artworks on March 24, for example!) Others, though, are downright perverse. But we pass no…
Folk Medicine
Nueva Canción: Chile raises a new voice in Pittsburgh
Race to Witch Mountain
This remake of the 1970s Disney film about alien teens stranded on Earth has all the updates you’d expect: snarky kids; scads of digital effects; product placement; a headliner star; in-jokes for the adults; and lots of frenetic action in lieu of plot development. A Las Vegas cab driver (Dwayne Johnson) picks up the two…
I Love You, Man
No hints, no sub-texts, no sly winks: John Hamburg’s romantic comedy is officially and openly a bromance. Sure, after some very brief conflict, the guy gets the girl, but after even more life-altering highs and lows, the guy also gets the guy — and that’s what really matters. Peter (Paul Rudd) is more of a…
The Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival
The annual festival offers films from Israel and around the world representing Jewish experiences from the comic to the dramatic to the inspirational.
Che: The Argentine
Eschewing the easy romanticism that might drive such an epic biographical feature (screened in two parts, over two weeks), Soderbergh makes a concerted effort to downplay the myth of Che Guevara and the scope of his life. It’s an intriguing approach, but I’m not sure what to make of this film that provides no background…
Bayleaf Indian Cuisine
Together at last: northern and southern Indian cuisines share one restaurant
Creative Nonfiction‘s off-with-their-heads experiment asks where a story really begins.
“I felt duly chastised and grateful that an editorial staff had saved me from myself.”
The World Goes ‘Round
What’s on stage at the Public is a happy time.
I Nipoti
Kevin Brown, as Fields, is the perfect mixture of subtle and outrageous humor; this play is never more interesting than when Brown has a joke in his sights and is bearing down on it.
Past Lives
Some bothered by endorsed Dem judicial candidate’s time in GOP
Touchdown Steelerbaby
Artist backs down in fight against local designer
Sex Line
Will charging kids with sex crimes actually stop ‘sexting’
This Just In: March 19 – 26
Highlights from the local TV news: A banner week for thieves.
Dumpstaphunk brings the New Orleans and the Nevilles
Ivan has a long, illustrious history as a sideman and solo artist going back to the 1980s.
Rumble Club brings psychobilly swing to 31st Street
As musical evolution progresses beyond Generation X, it makes nearly perfect sense that a guitarist who played in punk bands in the ’80s and graced the goth scene in the ’90s would turn to rockabilly in the new millennium. And so it went with Jack Coray, the frontman and lead-guitar whiz for Kentucky psychobilly-meets-swing quartet…
Pittsburgh musicians pack their bags for Austin’s South By Southwest music festival
“I haven’t figured out if I’m packing a pillow or not.”
Savage Love
I met this girl on an “adult” Web site, and we are supposed to meet. We first exchanged a few e-mails on the service, and then we got each other’s screen names. Then we chatted over IM twice, just the basic small talk, before exchanging numbers. It was on the phone that she told me…
Me Lyng
Vietnamese comfort food: a big bowl of pho
Why Are Music experimental series continues on Saturdays in March
“Experimental music expects more of the audience and needs to be in a low-key place that’s not worried about draw.”
Why do so many Pittsburghers think that the city is their personal dump site?
Hey, it’s nothing a few $1,000 trash cans emblazoned with the mayor’s name can’t fix. And to be fair, a lot of that trash is likely being dumped not by residents, but by unscrupulous housing contractors and auto garages trying to avoid disposal fees. As CP reported in a November 2006 cover story, such business…
The Conservatory Dance Company’s annual Byham showcase mixes classics and contemporary work.
Set to music by Les Tambours du Bronx that sounds like a cross between the oil-barrel drumming of STOMP and Nine Inch Nails, Battle’s work drips with primal intensity and power.
Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre rolls out a new doo-wop tribute, plus older pieces inspired by Cole Porter and Bruce Springsteen.
“Step Touch,” a half-hour group work, is set to put a new spin on some old classics.
An exhibit explores Zippy the Pinhead’s relationship with Pittsburgh.
While these events could have been set anywhere, it’s Pittsburgh that Griffith casts as his bourgeois purgatory.
Spokes Models
To save money, conserve resources and stay fit, more city slickers are leaving their gas-guzzling machines parked in the driveway and commuting on two (or one!) wheels. These riders’ styles reflect tastes that go far beyond Spandex, mixing street clothes — vintage and new — with cycling gear. CREDITS: Photographer/Producer: Heather Mull Wardrobe styling:…
A Feeling in the Bones
Michael Hickey gives new life to discarded items
A Shade of Genius
A local entrepreneur devises an eye-opening invention
