Sunday, April 30, 2006

I Heart Stephen Colbert

The White House Correspondent Dinner heats up. Colbert Lampoons Bush courtsey of Editor and Publisher.

Construction Junction & Art All Night

Saturday turned out to be a very busy day.

Our first stop was Construction Junction. Construction Junction is a non-profit organization that sells used and surplus construction materials: drywall, tile, paint, cabinets, sinks, toilets, doors, windows, architectural salvage, shingles, vinyl siding, brick, slate... If it can be used to build a house, this organization probably has it, right down to doorknobs, hinges, nails and screws.
  • Want an old-fashioned cast iron clawfoot tub? There are four of varying sizes for sale.
  • Like those old sinks with the separate hot & cold spigots? Construction Junction has just the sink for you.
  • Need a new stone fireplace and mantel? There are two complete layouts for sale! Prefer wood instead of stone? Check out one of the salvaged pieces, some of them even with inlayed mirrors.
J and I have been hunting for a new bathroom sink, and found several that will suit our needs. We also got ideas for remodeling our evil kitchen, but the bathroom is first since A. He has ripped out most of the ugly wall tile and B. We hate it more.

And now we know where to take all the left-over materials.

In the evening hours we attended Art All Night, Lawrenceville's annual exhibition of local amateur and professional artists. Anyone is welcome to come and enter one piece into the exhibit. Videos, photographs, sculpture, paintings, collages, found objects and kid's pictures are all encouraged. A lot of the work is for sale.

Art all Night is not a juried art show but a celebration of the artist in all of us. The work runs from mundane to brilliant.

Each year the organizers find an unused warehouse to mount the exhibit. This year it was a three story loft space, with family-friendly exhibits on the first floor and adult material on the second and third floors.

We went early, around 9pm and the place was inundated with people. As always, the children's art was beyond cute. I fell in love with a little lithograph print. For a grand total of $9.00 I could have made the young artist's night. I wish I had purchased it but, as in prior years, I did not bring enough cash with me.

This is on purpose, as I see so much at this show every year that I want to take home and hang on the walls. The problem is that I have a ton of stuff that needs framed, so J has called a stop to my art purchases until I take care of what I have.

Specifically he wants me to frame my grandmother's cards. My grandmother, Kay Logan, was a watercolor artist. She started painting late in her life, after her six kids had grown and left the house.

When I was kid, she would paint cards for birthdays, Halloween and Valentine's Day. I still have most of the cards she made me, carefully wrapped in acid free plastic for the day when I have enough money to get them professionally framed.

She also made sure that I had a good education in the arts and encouraged my experiments in drawing and painting. She is the reason I got to see most of the major art museums in New York City. She is the reason I buy paintings when we travel. I will never reach her level of talent, but at least I got the chance to see the world through her eyes.

My grandmother died at the age of 83 on September 30, 2002. While cleaning out her house, by mother and her siblings found stacks of unframed paintings, watercolor sketches and framing materials. The framing materials went to the local art collective. The paintings and sketches were divided up into six piles. From that pile my mother allowed me to select one painting and some sketches, which hang in our dining room.

My mother said that my grandmother was a hard woman. Trapped by society's expectations of what a woman was supposed to do, she thought (as do I) that she was frustrated by the limitations imposed on her. Once her children were grown she was able to break out of those constraints, and became a much more loving and gentle person.

If you come across a painting at the local flea market, check out the signature in the lower right hand corner. Look for a delicate K. Logan. Let me know what you think of it, if you find one.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Shackles

A truly outstanding letter in the Post-Gazette today about shackling women prisoners during labor and delivery. By "outstanding" I mean so idiotic in its reasoning that the writer, Ann Hartman, should be forced to endure what she has the nerve to suggest.

A little background: Allegheny County's official policy is to shackle, with leg restraints, any prisoner admitted to a hospital or other medical facility. According to the procedural manual, there are no exceptions to the rule.

The consequence of this rule is that pregnant women are handcuffed by one wrist to the bed during labor and delivery. In an interesting observation, it seems that male deputies are more likely to shackle women in labor than female deputies. Once Allegheny County Sheriff Pete DeFazio was notified by the Post-Gazette, he ordered a halt to the practice.

Enter Ann Hartman.

To quote from her letter: "As a woman who has given birth, I do not think the shackles should restrict movement, but that can be accomplished by loosely chaining the wrist to the bedrail".

Really? Then I'm sure she'll be happy to have her wrist "loosely" chained to the bed during her next labor.

Why do women in childbirth deserve this?
Because: "These women have shown disrespect for the law and societal values".

Umm, Ann? You know for a fact that all of women have been tried and convicted of the crimes they are being held for? I know that this may be a foreign notion, but some people are unable to meet a condition called bail and have to remain in prison until their trial.

Oh, and there is an annoying little document known in more literate circles as the Constitution? You might want to go back and review the Eighth Amendment. Shackling a woman in labor to a bed rail strikes me as being a touch too cruel and unusual. I acknowledge that our current leadership does not set much store by the Constitution, since they are so busy creating their own realities. It is logical to think that if the current president believes it is ok to hold people in gulags indefinitely without trial, then shackling a woman in labor is a minor offense.

Wow. If that is not a textbook case example of punishing a child for the sins of the mother, I'm not sure what would be an adequate example.

I bet she identifies as a pro-life conservative. Something about the parting shot she took at the ACLU and Amnesty International for not protecting "those whose lives are potentially in jeopardy when handling prisoners" makes me wonder.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Today's Roundup

In which I tackle some of the thoughts that have been bouncing in my brain for the past week.

Bob Smizik Makes me Crazy

And not in a good, warm-fuzzy sort of way. He wrote two columns on Penguins fans last week that made me want to throw my computer across the room.

The first column was a condescending, let's pat the little fans of a sucky team on the head, slap in the face. He found the idea of fan loyalty to the Penguins mystifying, simply because we insist on attending games long after Pirates and Steelers fans would have taken their ball caps and terrible towels and headed for the exits.

Umm, if I recall, the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs are not traditionally banner teams. Yet I could not find two seats in Wrigley Field to save my life. You might want to rethink your logic.

The second column was a condescending, don't worry little fans, you'll get your multi-purpose arena lecture. So Bob, let us go over this one more time.
  • Ed Rendell accepts $150,000 in campaign contributions from Forest City Enterprises. Dan Onorato and Bob O'Connor accept a combined $45,000 in contributions from Forest City Enterprises.
  • Ed Rendell appoints three of the seven members to the Gaming Control Board.
  • Forest City Enterprises partners with Harrah's and applies for the only open slots license in Pittsburgh.
  • Ed Rendell puts together a Plan B for funding an arena if the Board decides not to choose the Isle of Capri plan. Plan B calls for a voluntary donation of $7.5 million a year towards a new arena from the organization awarded the license.
  • PITG Gaming LLC agrees to contribute $7.5 million a year if awarded the license
  • Forest City Enterprises refuses to agree to contribute until the Penguins agree to remain in Pittsburgh. The Penguins cannot agree, as that would be breaking the commitment they made to the Isle of Capri.
  • Dan Onorato goes before the Gaming Control Board and tells the board to not allow the need for a new multi-purpose arena to factor in their decision because “the issue has been resolved”. Which is news to 2/3 of the city of Pittsburgh.
Bob, hockey fans are not as stupid as you think we are.

At the Movies


Thank You for Smoking
I like Aaron Eckhart (he is easy on the eyes) so viewing this film over the weekend was not a hardship. It turned out to be a very funny satire on the lobbying industry. William H. Macy (another one of my favorite actors) was pitch perfect. My description can not do it justice. Go see it.

Pride and Prejudice
I watched this film over the weekend as well. Keira Knightley is excellent as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen is well suited as Darcy.

Unfortunately, the action and plot is compressed, which speeds up the movie to an almost frenetic pace and eliminates most of the Lydia/Wickham subplot. Rent the 1995 BBC version instead. It is a longer, more faithful adaptation. And the bonus is watching Colin Firth give off smoldering looks for five hours.

City Walks Decks

Chronicle Books LLC publishes decks of cards with an illustrated map on one side and info about the walk on the other. There are fifty cards in each deck. Walks are available for the following cities:
  • London
  • New York
  • Paris
  • Rome
  • San Francisco
  • Washington DC
Upcoming decks include:
  • Amsterdam
  • Boston
  • Chicago
I ordered the Paris deck and have been pouring over the little maps. Now I need to find a way to get back to Paris to try the maps.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Ah, But Cost is Relative

The New York Times has an article in Sunday's paper called “Affordable Europe”. Writers panned across Europe collecting tips to assist Americans in saving a few dollars when paying for a hotel, having a bite to eat or attending a cultural event.

Naturally I turned to the list on Paris. And found this puzzling statement: “Museums in Paris are expensive”.

Both J and I were a bit surprised by this statement. Granted, we did not go into too many museums, be we did not find the ones we frequented to be any higher than some of the places we visited in the United States.

In the interest of a fairness I collected the admission costs for some of the major museums, zoos and monuments of New York, Pittsburgh and Paris. Inclusion in the list was based on where I have been or wanted to go, so it is rather biased.

New York:
  • Bronx Zoo - $12.00
  • Brooklyn Museum of Art - $6.00
  • Central Park Zoo - $3.50
  • The Frick Collection - $10.00
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art - $10.00
  • Museum of Modern Art - $10.00
  • Three Words: Monet's Water Lilies
  • Pierpont Morgan Library - $8.00
    • My grandmother took me to the library as a high school student to see an exhibition of water color sketches. It was part of my birthday present in which she took me to all the major art museums in New York.
  • Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - $12.00
  • The Statue of Liberty – $11.50 (Ferry)
  • Whitney Museum of American Art - $10.00
    • I loved the circus diorama.
Pittsburgh:
  • Carnegie Museum of Art & Carnegie Museum of Natural History - $10.00
    • The Dinosaur Hall is currently undergoing renovations.
  • Carnegie Science Center - $14.00
  • Children's Museum of Pittsburgh - $8.00
  • Fallingwater - $16.00
    • Absolutely beautiful building and well worth the price. The grounds are amazing.
  • National Aviary - $8.00
  • Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium - $9.00
  • The Andy Warhol Museum - $10.00
    • My favorite Pittsburgh museum. I love the silver clouds and the curators mount all sorts of interesting and politically relevant exhibits. Highlights so far have been Without Sanctuary and an exhibit on banned Editorial Cartoons. The exhibition of clown paintings was terrifying.
Paris:
  • Arc de Triomphe - $10.00
    • We toured the monument during an exhibition of photographs taken in the days leading up to the Liberation of Paris and the return of Charles de Gaulle. It was fascinating to see the same scene taken at the same moment from the perspective of different photographers. The film footage of de Gaulle re-entering the city made me cry.
  • Catacombes de Paris - $6.00
    • Very, very cool.
  • Centre Georges Pompidu - $8.60
    • We never made it inside. We got distracted by the fountain, the church and all the people. But the outside was worth the walk.
  • Chateau de Versailles - $25.75
    • We went to Chartes instead. It was free.
  • Cite des Sciences et de L'Industrie – La Villette - $9.25
  • Museum National D'Histoire Naturelle – Menagerie du Jardin des Plantes (Paris Zoo) - $7.50
  • Musee Baccarat - $3.00
    • Our attempt to visit this museum was proof that an out-of-date guidebook can be hazardous. Between the time the book was published and our trip the museum moved to a new location, near a set of Middle Eastern embassies. We finally found the place, only to discover that it was closed that day.
  • Musee D'Orsay - $8.60
    • I was charged the student rate. Yay!
  • Musee du Louvre - $10.50
    • I actually managed to visit the Louvre without seeing the Mona Lisa. I feel no shame, either.
  • Tour Eiffel - $5.00 - $13.25
    • Never went up. The line was two hours long and I can think of ten better things to do in Paris on a sunny afternoon than wait in line.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Shirts Off Our Backs Night

Penguins 6, Islanders 1. Fantastic Game.

The boys line up for the National Anthem.

From Left to Right:
Ryan Malone
John LeClair
Rob Scuderi
Konstantin Koltsov
Josef Melichar


At the bench. Our seats were the second row back.



Michel Ouellet comes off the ice.


As in other years, 20 fans are selected from random and come down to the ice to recieve the shirts off the players back. What else can a fan ask for but a sweaty, smelly team jersey?

Sidney Crosby scored his 100th point.



The ultimate awwww moment.
Colby Armstrong gives his sweater to a young fan.


Tomas Surovy.


Marc - Andre Fleury.


Sebastian Caron

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess

I wanted to like this book. There should not be anything to dislike. Great food, an adventurous and intrepid heroine, a whirlwind tour through the crusine and culture of the past thirty years. It was so tempting.

I hated it. The last book I disliked with this much intensity was Thomas Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. I stopped reading Wolfe's book three pages from the end because I could not stand the characters.

I had the same visceral reaction to the people in this memoir. The only difference is that I made myself finish the book in the faint hope that it would get better. It did marginally improve in the last fifty pages, but not quite enough to make up for the rest of it.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Roundup

Some snippets I found highly entertaining over the past week.

Loretta Nall, candidate for Alabama governor, is my new hero.

Bill Nye the Science Guy seems to have upset those poor fundies.

Electric Football comes out with its latest Super Bowl edition. Did you know there was an Electric Football League in Pittsburgh?

Need some tips on surviving the Rapture?
  1. Suggestions from Valley Bible Fellowship of Bakersfield, CA via n00bl33t.com.
  2. Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon elaborates.
And this, pardon my language, just pissed me off. Read Bitter Pill, then try to convince me there is not a segment of the population who is actively trying to emulate the Taliban.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Michael Keaton

It is an open secret that many residents are coming to despise the ownership of the Pittsburgh Pirates. A common fantasy is that Major League Baseball will eventually step forward and force McClatchy to sell the team, a la Marge Schott. Until that time, we shake our collective heads in despair and watch fewer games.

Both J and I grew up as Pirates fans. J is actively rooting against the team this year. I have decided that it is just not worth it to attend any more games. I suspect we will go to Altoona Curve games this year instead. A pity, because PNC Park is a fantastic ball park. Nothing quite compares to Outfield Reserved on a sunny afternoon, as long as one has sunblock, a pair of sunglasses and a ball cap.

I was delighted to read Michael Keaton's remarks this afternoon in the Post Gazette. Before throwing out the first pitch, Keaton criticized McClatchy for his cavalier attitude towards Pirates fans.

In contrast to Keaton's remarks about McClatchy's penchant for screwing over the fans, is a second article about the opening of the Montecristo Club at PNC Park. For $4,500 (the cost of a season ticket – 81 games), a fan can access premium cigars, fine wines, top shelf liquors and a buffet of gourmet food. Single game access can be purchased for a mere $70.00 a person. But access is not guaranteed and some nights are already sold out. Naturally Kevin McClatchy attended the opening reception.

I am the last person to argue that a team must have a large payroll in order to be successful. The Penguins have one of the lowest payrolls in the NHL. Despite being dead last in the league, they averaged a 90% capacity this year at Mellon Arena and had one of the highest away team attendance rates. J and I come up with the money every year to buy into a share of season tickets and feel the cost is well worth it. Why? Because the ownership was upfront about the reasons why they gutted the payroll and the ability of their young players. Young and still developing essential skills, it is well worth the cost when they come onto the ice with that competitive spark, even if they lose at the end of the night.

McClatchy has robbed fans of the joy of competition. He has repeatedly traded away the few players who showed any passion, hung onto big contracts for players who never performed to expectations and robbed his current players of rightful profits, all in pursuit of an extra buck.

So bravo to Michael Keaton, for saying what so many, including myself, have been thinking.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Sick Day Part II

I'm starting to view The Flu as some alien entity that has invaded my body and is slowly taking over the pieces of my life. I woke at 11:30am this morning, and felt simultaneously like I had fallen through the rabbit hole and risen from the dead. This week I have entered a state that I call “sick sleep” in which I slumber hard for several hours, not moving, and wake still feeling like, well, crap.

My dreams have been intriguing. This morning's dream included a vampire, a bunch of teenagers (including a pair of indentical twins), magical robes, the bending of time and the ability to kill the vampire using balls of cornstarch. I wish I could write a script. I think it would make a fantastic horror movie, which I would never watch.

I have not been able to keep up with the news at all, and so many interesting things have been happening. Tom Delay resigns, Cynthia McKinney “assaults” a member of the Capital Police for manhandling her. Tonya Kach reappears as a grown adult after disappearing 10 years ago.

Commentary
  • Tom Delay resigns: About damn time. I'm looking forward to the news headline “Tom Delay convicted”.
  • Cynthia McKinney “assaults” a member of the Capital Police for manhandling her: She apologized, the police officer apologized. Apparently she gets stopped more often then other members of Congress. She did have the appropriate ID. And yes, if some man laid a hand on me, I would probably react violently also. And yes, I agree if it had been a white male, the police officer would have been painted as the aggressor.
  • Tonya Kach reappears as a grown adult after disappearing 10 years ago: Very strange, very sad story. Troubled teenage girl runs away, is held as an emotional hostage for ten years only a few miles from her home. From what I have read it appears that no one, her parents, the police or the media, really cared until years after her disappearance.
There is a great article in today's Post Gazette about the emergence of coffee houses in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Can a brave soul put one in my neighborhood, please.

I received a $300.00 travel voucher for my three-year work anniversary. I'm looking for ideas on where to go to spend the money.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Sick Day & Creperie Beaubourg

What is wrong with the following phrase?
“Twelfth Night tells the story of identical twins, Viola and Sebastian...”

Courtesy of a Product Description of Twelfth Night on Amazon.com. Someone needs to go back and review the basics of sex education AND reread the play.

Today it is my turn to miss work, due to the flu. I've spent the day investigating the secret life of our three felines (Lucy Snowe, Axel and Wigford) watching The Taming of the Shrew, (Taylor/Burton version) and paying bills.



My first taste of crepes was in San Fransisco in 1995, at Ti-Couz. My friend D took me there before my red-eye flight back to Pittsburgh. Thanks to a salmon / tomato savory crepe, a dessert crepe with lemon ice cream and chocolate sauce (trust me, it was divine) and some good white wine, it was a very peaceful flight. Although I highly recommend that you not schedule a three hour layover in Chicago O'Hare on an early Sunday morning. No shower, no open food kiosks and no nap thanks to the airport priest coming over the loudspeaker every 10 minutes to lure the faithful to mass.

Naturally, coming across Creperie Beaubourg next to the Stravinsky Fountain, I insisted on stopping to eat.

The inside of the restaurant was pub cozy, with old, old, old wooden benches, chairs and tables. We were led to a window seat next to the kitchen. Shortly after our arrival, a group consisting of two women and two small children entered. One of the children was highly displeased with J and me. Clothed in a heavy knit Tommy Hilfinger sweater (emblazoned with the American flag, of all things) he dashed up to our table and began scolding us in French. Embarrassed, the mother led the boy away to a nearby table, where he continued his tirade for the next twenty minutes, ignoring his mother's attempts to shush him and occasionally glaring at us.

Since our combined French is barely enough to decipher the menu, we could only guess why the little boy was so upset. Our best theory is that the father of the boy owned the restaurant and we were sitting at “his” table.

The food was excellent, the wine good. The memory is priceless.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Fabulous

Is the only way to describe LUPEC's installation in The Skinny Building of downtown Pittsburgh.

The exhibit, titled "Pittsburgh with an 'H,' Burlesk with a 'K'” can be seen by standing on the corner of Forbes and Wood and looking up at the enlarged, vintage photographs of women who graced local burlesque theaters from the 1930 through the 1950's.