P-G Columnist Continues Assault on Climate Reality
Kelly is still misrepresenting climate science
Lynn Cullen Live 09/29/14
Video Archive Phone guest: Dennis Palumbo. 4th book, ‘Phantom Limb.’ Obituary: Sally Kalson. Study shows a person of a specific political ideology prefers the body odor smell of someone with the same ideology. Pennies cost 1.6 cents to make. House of Representatives will soon be more conservative due to the people next to take over…
Pittsburgh Fashion Week continues
Fashion Week events continue around town through Sunday. A dispatch from last night’s runway show by Danielle Fox is in Program Notes.
Pittsburgh Fashion Week attracts new designs, mother-daughter duo
Events continue through Sunday
Final weekend for Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival
If you’ve been craving an opportunity to wear a suit of armor, talk like Hamlet and eat giant turkey legs without fear of being judged by others, the final weekend of the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival may be what you’re looking for. The festival, which started August 23rd, ends Saturday and Sunday with its annual Oktoberfest…
What’s it like to be openly gay in the Pa. legislature?
Pennsylvania state Rep. Mike Fleck — one of just two openly gay Republican state legislators in the country — reflects on coming out and Jim Ferlo’s own announcement earlier this week.
Cloud Nothings tour to begin tonight in Pittsburgh
Photo Courtesy of Pooneh Ghana Cloud Nothings, Cleveland-based lo-fi pop group founded by Dylan Baldi, has announced a new and extensive tour covering most of the U.S. and parts of Europe and Australia. Their first stop is tonight (Fri., Sept. 26) at the William Pitt Union in Oakland. Originally a solo project, Cloud Nothings was…
Art Cars, Arts Fest Join Forces Saturday on Penn Avenue
Music and dance performances plus street-legal art cars all day
A.D.D. Fest Brings New Pittsburgh Sounds to The Mr. Roboto Project Saturday
This Saturday, Sept. 27, A.D.D. Fest returns to The Mr. Roboto Project. The night is jam-packed with ten excellent reps from Pittsburgh’s music scene, including: Margo Van Hoy, a graceful mood singer with soft sounds; Ouais (French for “yeah”), an indie punk group; and Roulette Waves, a grungy rock group with a tight sound. The…
Ennui returns with a new lineup, first record in years
ENNUI with YXU 10 p.m. Fri., Sept. 26. SPACE 812 Liberty Ave. Downtown. $5. All ages. 412-325-7723 or spacepittsburgh.org In the back room at Constellation Coffee, in Lawrenceville, before settling in to discuss his new album, Telepathic Beat, Jim Doutrich advocates the benefits of pour-over coffee. “This Chemex, it’s a longer drip, and it absorbs…
Tom Roberts keeps accompaniment alive at the Hollywood Theater
SILENTS, PLEASE! screening of The General 3 p.m. Sun., Sept. 28. Hollywood Theater 1449 Potomac Ave. Dormont. $6-8. All ages. 412-563-0368 or thehollywood dormont.org Tom Roberts can ramble about the sublime intricacies of Charlie Chaplin films, like he’s Quentin Tarantino taking an interviewer through a lengthy aside about Italian action movies or Kevin Smith presenting…
The expanded East Liberty state store might augur further improvements
East Liberty is now home to the largest Fine Wine and Good Spirits store in the state. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board refurbished and expanded its existing store to more than 35 percent of its previous size. At 17,674 square feet, the shop (off South Highland Avenue, in the Eastside development near Whole Foods) now…
Critics’ Picks: Sept. 25-Oct. 1
[HIP HOP] + THU., SEPT. 25 Dessa, a.k.a. Dessa Darling of Detroit’s Doomtree hip-hop collective, got her start as a spoken-word artist in the Minneapolis scene. She released her first solo album in 2005, and has since produced three more LPs, as well as four books of her written work. Dessa’s poetic sensibility transforms…
The new Downtown lunch spot Simple Ingredients is just that
Downtown lunch spot Sal’s City Deli is known for its burgers and Reubens. So you might be surprised by owner Mike Tarquinio’s new venture just around the corner: Simple Ingredients, a takeout lunch counter specializing in light, fresh and healthful fare like salads and wraps. In the tiny but brightly day-lit storefront, the six signature…
New Releases
The Van Allen Belt Heaven on a Branch (Nonstop Everything Records) In recent years, The Van Allen Belt’s local notoriety has just begun to approach proportionality to the band’s talent and work ethic. The prolific, hard-touring psych-pop outfit has a new full-length of characteristically deconstructed, spliced and reconstructed tunes, with clever melodies supporting Tamar Kamin’s…
Lynn Cullen Live 09/26/14
Video Archive Guest: Jeanne Marie Laskas, author of NFL and brain trauma.”Game Brain”, GQ 2009. Dr. Bennet Omalu, neuropathologist, broke ground with his research and naming of traumatic brain injuries seen in NFL players. CTE – Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is now thought to affect 1 in 3 NFL players. Does the future of football include…
Unregistered Voters: The federal government requires the state to ask social-service clients if they want to register to vote; so how come so many are left out in the cold?
Paul O’Hanlon calls it his “A-ha!” moment. It came around 2002, just as he was starting work as a voting-rights lawyer and learning about the National Voter Registration Act, a law designed to expand access to the ballot box by requiring places like DMVs, welfare offices and disability agencies to double as voter-registration centers. The…
Pittsburgh Glass Center pairs glass artists and non-glass artists to strong effect.
PITTSBURGH BIENNIAL AT PITTSBURGH GLASS CENTER continues through Oct. 26. 5472 Penn Ave. Friendship. 412-365-2145 or pittsburghglasscenter.org The Pittsburgh Biennial and the Pittsburgh Glass Center host 12 artists who collectively reveal that glass, despite its reputation as rigid and intimidating, is flexible with the right chemistry — and not just through the restructuring of molecules.…
Shot in the Arm: Jewish Healthcare Foundation raising HPV awareness
Since the vaccine for human papillomavirus was released in 2006, the main hurdle to getting more children inoculated has been clear: convincing parents to vaccinate their pre-teen children for a sexually transmitted disease. Rates of vaccination have not been as high as doctors had hoped, despite the fact that the HPV vaccine is one of…
Hannah Grace Clark paints Ancient Gods & Hidden Worlds
ANCIENT GODS & HIDDEN WORLDS continues through Oct. 25. The Gallery 4 206 S. Highland Ave. Shadyside 412-363-5050 or thegallery4.us Ancient Gods & Hidden Worlds: Allegorical Paintings by Hannah Grace Clark offers entrance into a land of magic and enchantment, an exploration of nature as the guardian of nature, rich with comfort and fierce with…
Clashing Over Carbon
In June, environmentalists cheered when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first national plan for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants. The Clean Power Plan would require each state to submit a plan for cutting emissions about 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. That would be a noteworthy down payment on reining…
Pittsburgh New Works Festival
PITTSBURGH NEW WORKS FESTIVAL continues through Sun., Sept. 28. Off the Wall Theater 25 W. Main St, Carnegie $12-15 412-944-2639 or pittsburgh newworks.org The Pittsburgh New Works Festival presents a series of evening-length programs of three world-premiere one-acts each, produced by local troupes. Following are reviews of the concluding pair of programs, C and D.…
Savage Love
I’m a 28-year-old pan-curious married guy from the Midwest about to move to San Francisco. I’ve been with my wife for 10 years (married four), and we’ve started to explore being monogamish. I am also re-exploring my bi attractions. I’ve been thinking a lot about the opportunities for reinvention that our cross-country move might provide.…
A new exhibit considers antique encyclopedias
RECONFIGURING DISCIPLINES: FRAGMENTS OF AN ENCYCLOPEDIA continues through Oct. 5. Frick Fine Arts Building 650 Schenley Drive Oakland 412-648-2423 or haa.pitt.edu Pitt’s Frick Fine Arts Building, a tasteful Florentine villa, is small compared to the hulking Carnegie Institute or the soaring Cathedral of Learning, both nearby. But don’t be fooled. Right now, everything in the…
If You Like Piña Coladas
Walking home from Tazza d’Oro the sky sliced, you point up and curse, the man behind us says, “this world is absurd and wonderful” and taunts his Pomeranian to a jog, the tiny thing nipping at his pant legs in this slicing heat. We laugh, you and I, opening the sky like a pantry shelf…
Texture Contemporary Ballet offers another packed showcase
TEXTURES CONTEMPORARY BALLET PERFORMS SYNERGY 8 p.m. Fri., Sept. 26; 8 p.m. Sat., Sept. 27; and 3 p.m. Sun., Sept. 28. Kelly-Strayhorn Theater 5941 Penn Ave. East Liberty $20-25 412-363-3000 or kelly-strayhorn.org You could say the title of Texture Contemporary Ballet’s latest program, Synergy, also names what has made the three-year-old troupe a success. The…
Swearing
I like to swear And swearing should be as natural as breathing. Normal as shaking a fist to heaven. Not like saying son of a bitch but more like spitting out Dusty old balls dragger Bell’s Palsy kisser Flamingo fornicator One eye monkey beater Paper bag full of Shinola Chrome dome stuck where the sun…
This Is Where I Leave You
This Is Where I Leave You Directed by: Shawn Levy Starring: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Corey Stoller, Jane Fonda This Is Where I Leave You opens by declaring itself “A Shawn Levy Film,” so let’s start there. What was it on the résumé of the director of Night at the Museum and the…
Short List: September 24 – October 2
SPOTLIGHT: Sat., Sept. 27 — Dance The seventh edition of the LightLab performance series takes place Sept. 27 at Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery. The series, co-curated by musician David Bernabo and dancer/choreographer Taylor Knight, fosters what Bernabo calls “more progressive dance, music, film and performance art pieces.” This 45-minute all-dance edition, part of the…
The Zero Theorem
If the choirs in Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem are ruined, they’re anything but bare. The church inhabited by Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz) in a dystopic, near-future London is crammed with books, debris, religious statuary and the computers on which Leth labors for a giant corporation on an elusive mathematical formula to prove that the…
Stuff We Like
Jam Sessions at CJ’s. Check out local talent at this Strip District club, at 29th and Penn. Every Thursday at 8 p.m. is a jam session with legendary drummer Roger Humphries, who hasn’t missed a set in a little more than a decade. www.cjsinthestrip.com Chameleon Cold-Brew Coffee Concentrate. Cold-brewed coffee is all the rage, but…
The Boxtrolls
The moral of this new stop-motion-animated film from Portland, Ore.-based studio Laika (Coraline, Paranorman) is pretty standard: Don’t judge a book by its cover. But the delivery of that message involves an engaging and quick-paced story featuring charming, relatable characters. The tale revolves around a human baby named Eggs, raised underground by a group of…
Cole Cafe
Cole Cafe 1718 Mount Royal Blvd. Glenshaw. 412-486-5513 Hours: Mon.-Sat. 6 a.m.-3 p.m.; Sun. 6:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Prices: $2-10 Liquor: None Ask Angelique’s father, a German who retired to his homeland after living for 30-some years abroad, what he misses most about the United States, and he’ll tell you: the diners. There is a sense…
Love Is Strange
Indie filmmaker Ira Sachs creates finely observed relationship dramas (Forty Shades of Blue, Keep the Lights On) in which life’s disruptions are characterized not by dramatic blow-outs but by small everyday scenes that slowly build to heartbreaking clarity. Here, a loss of a job leads to a drop in finances which forces Ben (John Lithgow)…
The Maze Runner
This latest installment in the trend of turning young-adult science-fiction books into movies follows Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), a teenage boy who wakes up in a metal box with no memory of how he got there or who he is. After emerging, he finds himself trapped in a glade surrounded on all sides by a towering…
The Skeleton Twins
A pair of long-estranged twins — Milo (Bill Hader) and Maggie (Kristen Wiig) — are reunited through just-missed tragedy in Craig Johnson’s indie dramedy. Maggie is contemplating suicide when she gets the call that Milo has been hospitalized in Los Angeles following his attempt. She invites him back to their small New York hometown to…
Code Orange solidifies its spot among hardcore royalty
CODE ORANGE RELEASE SHOW with TWITCHING TONGUES, ANGEL DUST, HOUNDS OF HATE and ETERNAL SLEEP. 6 p.m. Fri., Oct. 3. Cattivo 146 44th St. Lawrenceville $12. All ages. 412-687-2157 or druskyent.com For those who have followed Code Orange over the past few years, the most immediately noticeable thing about the band’s new record — I…
