Lewis Lapham at Point Park University
Lapham, the social critic and editor emeritus of Harper’s Magazine, spoke Oct. 16 at Point Park University. It was a wide-ranging talk about politics, the media and the financial crisis, but the most interesting thing he said was in response to a question about the presidential race. Someone in the crowd of a couple hundred…
Live this week: Alejandro Escovedo and Jonathan Richman
I’m not sure what it says about an artist that they’ll play three shows in one day … or that he’ll play a better show for an audience that paid nothing than those who cough up $25 for the privilege. But whatever it means, I kinda like it — and especially when we’re talking about…
A venue in need: Local rockers throw together benefit for the BBT
After we heard that there’d been a fire at the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern — and after we were sure no one was hurt — our first concern, as well as that of many, was: What’s Joe Melba going to do? That guy must play like three shows a week there! Fortunately, Melba (née Pagano) himself…
Paul Muldoon at the International Poetry Forum
Poetry predates written language. If that’s a fact — verified by the revenant oral epic-poetry tradition in places like India — it’s one honored in the breach. Even poetry aficionados read much more poetry than they hear. But the musical pleasures of poetry aloud are easy to find in Pittsburgh, and the city’s oldest reading…
Kassys Performs Liga
Liga, performed thrice by the Dutch theater troupe Kassys at the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts last week, is a show whose layers of meaning at first seem to unfold slowly. But then you realize that you’re grasping its undercurrents almost in real time. The first “act” of this intermissionless and disarmingly comic work engages:…
Squonk Opera’s Astro-Rama
Writing about Squonk Opera is like writing about a Roman candle, one that happens to come with a rhythm section. The troupe, now some 16 years old, is sui generis: Pittsburgh’s only hybridizer of art rock and performance, and expert at blending surrealism, high camp and careful craft for the masses. Squonk’s new free outdoor…
Plumbing New Depths
Immediately after last night’s final presidential debate, the conventional wisdom was that the winner was … Joe the Undecided Plumber. (And why not? A day later, there’s already a fashion line dedicated to him.) But the pundits might want to take a second look before giving Joe Wurzelbacher any more laurels. By his own admission,…
Comedian Artie Lange might be off drugs, but he’s still on.
“Getting a triple-word score on the word “zipper,” while an amazing experience for a guy into Scrabble, doesn’t compare to crack.”
Practicing What He Preaches
It’s a Sunday at the Nazarene Baptist Church in Homewood, and the Rev. Ricky Burgess is ready to preach. Sitting in his wooden chair behind the altar, he begins clapping with the choir, his blue robe flowing with the rhythm of his hands. Soon, he stands and swings his arm in unison. As the music…
Indian Spices
Poor service hampers this cozy, Northern Indian eatery.
A Man Named Pearl
As a hobby, Pearl Fryar, an African-American factory worker in a small fading town, took up gardening, specifically creating fantastic and fantastical topiary. With no training, Fryar spent decades sculpting discarded hedges and trees into abstract art. Now, his three-acre front yard — long an off-beat tourist attraction drawing both horticulturists and fans of outsider…
I.O.U.S.A.
It’s admittedly tough to get audiences to go see feel-bad films, particularly when the message is: The United States is headed off a financial cliff very soon, and with all of us on board. But in a lucky break for director Patrick Creadon (Wordplay) and the alarm-bearers in his film — among them former U.S.…
City of Ember
Give today’s perilous economic and geo-political climate, I applaud dystopian features aimed at tweens. It’s high time they get used to no resources, broken infrastructure, isolated fearful communities run by ineffectual adults and, potentially, no future at all. That said, Gil Kenan’s fantastical family adventure, adapted from Jeanne Duprau’s novel, does manage to literally find…
Body of Lies
Ridley Scott’s latest actioner, about a CIA operative (Leonardo DiCaprio) working to uncover a major terrorist in Jordan, unfolds like a better-than-average beach thriller; in fact, it’s based on a novel by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. But if you’ve ever read a black-and-silver covered paperback seaside, you’ll see most the plot coming, including the…
Trouble the Water
The grim and maddening story of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward is familiar. But among the many reasons to see this new documentary from filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal is Kim Rivers Roberts, whose story, family and home-video footage are the film’s core. Trouble builds from Roberts’ rawly candid and charismatically…
The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The 23nd annual festival returns with entertaining and provocative feature films, documentaries and shorts highlighting the gay, lesbian and transgendered experience.
Technology: Verizon would be good for customers, but not city coffers
With Verizon expected to move into Pittsburgh’s cable-TV market, customers can expect competition to drive down prices charged by Comcast, the city’s existing cable provider. But some city officials wonder what the ensuing face-off could mean for the city’s bank account. “Having [Verizon] and Comcast would be great for the consumer,” says Pittsburgh City Council…
Neighborhoods: Shop’s compassion good for Bloomfield, bad for business
For the past half-dozen years, the Bloomfield Sandwich Shop has operated under a simple philosophy: “Everybody eats.” “My mother was always the one who said, ‘We can throw an extra potato in the pot,'” says owner Ros Dukes, while cracking a few eggs behind the counter. But good karma doesn’t pay the electric bills. The…
Letters to the Editor: October 15 – 22
Feedback from our readers: Another look at The Other Shore.
This Just In: October 16 – 23
Highlights from the local TV news: Searching for the plane truth about the mystery B-25 bomber.
Teatro de los Sentidos promises viewers one-of-a-kind experiences.
“When we do scripts, we do a script for body sensation, we do a script for touch, a script for the smells.”
Fearless Dutch troupe Kassys visits the Festival of Firsts.
But the audience is not only a witness, it is a conspirator.
The Pillow Project’s Twenty Eighty-Four dazzles.
The atmospheric setting befitted what turned out to be one of the most captivating and unexpectedly brilliant productions of this young dance season.
Kimberly Akimbo
In the wrong hands, Kimberly Akimbo could be just another Jersey drama, but director Michael E. Moats has chiseled every detail, and each actor excels.
Can-Can
Yes, it’s that over-the-top: eye candy that’s at once sweet, salty and a bit (un)savory.
Radio Golf
There’s no slight intended to Wilson to say that Radio Golf is one of his lesser works.
Tossed Off
In its heyday, Liberty Avenue was the place to go for dirty movies and magazines. But now, after more than 30 years, the monkey business has come to a close.
Former Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham discusses the media, Obama and Wall Street.
Lewis Lapham is a curious survival: a staunch leftist whose knowledge of the classics would have awed William F. Buckley; a writer whose elegant syntax demands careful attention in a soundbite-driven culture. Lapham is the founder of Lapham’s Quarterly and spent nearly three decades editing Harper’s Magazine, where he created innovative features like the “Harper’s…
Pittsburgh n’@
Dispatches from the blogosphere. Poetry on the cheap — showing up Palin.
The Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour swings through Brillobox
The Elephant 6 collective produced some of the most eccentrically brilliant underground music of the 20th century’s final years.
Punk vets NOFX play for the kiddies at Club Zoo
It’s pop-punk with the speed and frenetic energy of hardcore — both intense and listenable, often with surprisingly intricate and creative songwriting.
Locals Mariage Blanc release cinematic debut EP, Broken Record
Out of Mariage Blanc’s seven songs, more than half would make a perfect closing-credits song for a quirky indie dramedy.
16 Horsepower frontman performs as Wovenhand at Club Café
“I use a lot of minor chords which give it a melancholy feel right off the bat … which is just aesthetically what I like.”
Dean & Britta perform with Warhol’s famed screen tests for the Festival of Firsts
“If you know that Freddie Herko jumped out a window not long after his piece was filmed, that might change the way you look at it.”
August Occasion
With a black senator contending for the presidency, this might seem like the perfect time for the Pittsburgh Public Theater to present Radio Golf, August Wilson’s play about a black businessman who wants to become mayor of Pittsburgh. But the local production, whose run ends just before the Nov. 4 election, is either a decade…
Savage Love
In this very special episode of Savage Love, I answer letters from readers who made the largest donations to the campaigns to preserve marriage equality in California (www.noonprop8.com), protect same-sex couples in Florida (www.sayno2.com), and defeat Stephen Harper in Canada. I’m a 31-year-old heterosexual woman, and my boyfriend and I are starting to experiment…
Apple Time
It’s a bounty of fall fruit at area orchards and farms.
Bon voyage to ambient electronic artist My Boyfriend The Pilot
“I put on a cocktail dress and stopped trying to appeal to the same audience as the guys in black T-shirts.”
Suburbia’s possibilities, along with its flaws, are explored in a new show at the Carnegie.
Like 18th-century chroniclers of Roman ruins, some of these practitioners see new sources of esthetic exploration even in the overwhelming qualities of suburbia.
Prajna Paramita Parasher inspires at moxie DaDA with ancient language and 21st-century techniques.
The works of Prajna Paramita Parasher, on exhibit at Moxie DaDA gallery as A Beholding, bring together polar opposites. Ancient language merges with 21st-century techniques, light is joined with darkness, and East is united with West in a collection of digital prints inspired by loss that gives way to reward. The show, curated by Kari…
