GOD IS GREAT AND I’M NOT
What kind of a guy meets a girl, follows her to church, takes her home to make love, and then, when she attempts suicide in his kitchen, still wants to go out with her? Meet François (Edouard Baer), who says he’s “maybe” Jewish, and who teaches the girl to call it the Shoah, which means…
On the Front Lines
So Don Schwenneker’s on WTAE’s 6 o’clock news last week, predicting, “You shouldn’t have to shovel any of the snow that we see tonight.” And his colleague Scott Baker asks, “You promise?” “Yeah,” says Schwenneker, with a pained look. “You know what?” Sally Wiggin asks the audience. “If it falls, he’ll come and shovel it…
Gays Gathering Here in 2006 No Accident
Sen. Rick Santorum is recruiting gay people in Pennsylvania — even if it is indirectly. Steel City Stonewall Democrats, which organizes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, bid for the national Stonewall Democrats’ convention to be in Pittsburgh this summer, but on Feb. 28, the group’s new national leader, Eric Stern, announced…
A conversation with Angel Zang
Angel Zang, 37, of Wilkinsburg, is keeping her late husband V. Keith Zang’s dream alive by making accurate 1/6-scale M1 Army helmets for G.I. Joes, the 31-year-old military action figure from Hasbro. Along with her family and friends, Zang has made 1,000 helmets (used in World War II through Vietnam) and sold them…
Sixty Defendants in Search of a Plaintiff
Ray Giambattista of Rischitelli Brothers Trucking says he’ll be a party to a lawsuit that doesn’t yet exist. Several months ago, Giambattista agreed to enlist his Charleroi-based hauling business to help defend against a lawsuit that might be filed by environmental or other grassroots groups to stop the proposed Mon-Fayette Expressway. If it…
Review Board Won’t Try Strip-Tase
Pittsburgh’s Citizen Police Review Board began this year as it spent most of the previous two years: understaffed and unable to act, even on a recommendation not to act. The seven-member board, depleted since 2003 when four members left and the mayor and City Council failed to nominate replacements, was short of…
Exhaust’s Costs Not Exhausted
“Diesel exhaust may be the single most severe air-pollution threat to people’s health here in Pittsburgh,” says Rachel Filippini, executive director of the local Group Against Smog and Pollution. To validate her claim, Filippini points to a new report from the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based nonprofit, which estimates that particles in diesel…
Space: the Fine Interior
“The young workforce is pretty biased against the cube-farm environment,” says Kyra Straussman, president of the Cool Space Locator. “We want people to know they’re not doomed to be in an office park or a nondescript urban tower.” Cool Space Locator, based in an old corner grocery store in Lawrenceville, is a nonprofit that…
Various Artists
I believe in America. In being judged by the content of your character, your lyrics, your flow. But it’s time for truth and consequences: American hip hop’s in some lousy state. Sure, there are great tracks getting out there — from indie backpackers to budget-blowing crunkers and Grammy winners. But if hip hop’s…
Black 47
In the mostly homogenous ceili-rock pantheon — groups melding punk and traditional Irish sounds — Larry Kirwan’s NYC-based Black 47 can be a polarizing band. And not just because the group’s fiery politics don’t stop at the Derry border. It’s Kirwan himself who can split the pub: His Irish Springsteen-esque songs, and the…
Son Cubano NYC
Captured here, over the course of 12 often extended clave-driven tracks, is a last flowering of what came to be known as “salsa.” Thanks to the Salsoul and SAR labels, artists such as trumpeter Chocolate, tres master Charlie Rodriguez, Peruvian belter Lita Branda and others captured the essence of New York City Cubana and managed…
Zyng Asian Grill
Location: 1712 Murray Ave., Squirrel Hill. 877-888-9964 Hours: Sun.-Thu. 11 a.m-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Prices: Appetizers $2.95-5.95; entrees $6.50-9.95 Fare: Pan-Asian Atmosphere: Industrial Asian Liquor: Full Bar Oh, Canada! Even before the latest presidential election, we had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on our great white neighbor to the north. Sure, you…
My Terrorism Video Festival
Karen knows what terrorism is like. It’s like when her father exploded in anger for no good reason and grabbed her by the neck, and she didn’t fight back. Consequently, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, she feels that terrorists “want what we have,” and that “we can’t walk away like…
Casey at the Bat
The next Pennsylvania Democrat to run for U.S. Senate will, apparently, be anti-choice. That doesn’t mean the person challenging Rick Santorum next year will oppose abortion rights — although one possible candidate, State Treasurer Robert Casey, certainly does. It means political insiders are trying to prevent voters from choosing who that challenger is.…
The Sea Inside
After 26 years as a quadriplegic — living with his caretaker family, inventing devices that allow him to write and answer the phone, taking imaginary flights out his window and over the countryside to his beloved ocean — Ramón Sampedro finally decided he’d had enough of his life. And so he…
The Jacket
Do you actually have to understand a movie to really understand it? Last year’s best movie, Primer, told an impenetrable story about a time machine and the road not taken, but you didn’t have to get it to get it. That’s just as true of The Jacket, a supernatural thriller that will leave some people…
Over My Dead Body
These two bastards mean business. The feud between Coroner Cyril Wecht and District Attorney Steve Zappala will not end pretty, and it’s getting uglier by the day. No one can seem to tell me what was the absolute last straw that pissed off Steve, but there’s a burr in his butt the size…
Big Eye-deas
The artist, Stephen Moses, was gone, shot dead at 23 in a random killing. But his work lived on in a posthumous Mission District exhibit curated by his friends; some 18 years later it lives still in “Wrong Place, Wrong Time,” a short film by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson. In…
Writing Out Loud
Cincinnati CityBeat writer Kathy Y. Wilson is on the road with her book Your Negro Tour Guide: Truths in Black and White, named after her recently self-canceled column. The award-winning writer, also featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, writes loud, throwing hard elbows on the struggles of her race and her city. Most importantly she…
Sees the Moment
You might as well write about music as using slow-limbed words to capture the animated films of Robert Breer. But here goes. Breer films are quicksilver to watch. Just minutes long each, they are typically composed of a flurry of disparate images, from fluid animations hand-drawn in marker to live film footage and still…
Getting the Gist
You hesitate a little to write about the Gist Street Reading Series, or even to tell people about it: The monthly literary event, held as it is in the friendly confines of sculptor James Simon’s Uptown studio, is invariably sold out, listeners packed shoulder-to-shoulder clutching plates of food and chilled beverages. But this…
Karnov Redux
If the 1950s was the era of the Angry Young Man, this is the time of the Tired Old Man in cinema. Bill Murray, Clint Eastwood and Paul Giamatti lead the way, but even Kevin Bacon, Ethan Hawke and family fare including The Incredibles are reckoning with lives unfulfilled. Now local filmmaker Adam…
I’ve always been interested in the huge stone bridge that spans Washington Boulevard in the East End. It’s just below Westinghouse High School, and below it used to be the Silver Lake drive-in. What can you tell me about it?
The span you’re thinking of is the Lincoln Avenue viaduct. And it is to municipal bridge projects what critics say the Pittsburgh Fire Bureau is to public safety: a massive, seemingly ancient juggernaut that appears much larger than it needs to be. Built in 1905, the bridge’s dimensions are actually fairly…
Yes, Virginia, There is a Santorum Residence
If Benjamin Ragheb has his way, Sen. Rick Santorum will be ruled a Pennsylvania resident in name only. Ragheb, 24, of the South Side, is de facto head of the 1,300-strong local Democracy For America group, since he has organized their gatherings via meetup.com for two years. The group, which evolved from Howard Dean’s…
