The new Stooges rock as grapeheads

By Scott Beveridge


PITTSBURGH, Pa. – Movies always hypnotize me in my seat once the lights dim at big-screen theaters so heavily that I often don't know where I am by the time the credits begin to roll.


They take me to a place where I don't even notice rude theatergoers who talk, text or tip-toe in and out of their seats for popcorn refills.


But it was impossible Saturday to avoid breaking out of that spell to say, "Why I oughta...." while taking in the new "The Three Stooges" at SouthSide Works Cinema in Pittsburgh.


The many children in the audience pulled me back to life every time they collectively let out those wonderful, uncontrollable and spontaneous laughs that seem to originate in their toes.


It "soitenly" was a joy to my ears, loud laughter that I hadn't heard since I was a kid and in similar stitches decades ago at movie theaters watching the same antics performed by the original Stooges.


The new actors in the roles of Moe, Larry and Curly, respectively, Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes and Will Sasso, have delivered nothing short of a perfect recreation of the original act. Sasso is especially spot-on as that  knucklehead Curly, the lovable "victim of soicumstance."


This movie succeeds in every way, even when this trio of old-school vaudeville players time-travel into the 21st Century, where Moe upstages and slaps around Snooki and her "Jersey Shore" costars.


Oddly, though, the addendum to this flick includes a paranoia-inspired demonstration of the hammers Moe used to strike Curly to explain the tools were fake, made of rubber, and their blows had been amplified by sound effects. 


That dialogue also took me back to my childhood, reminding me of my post-Victorian-era grandmother's drama that played out while our television was tuned into The Three Stooges. She was convinced those shows would inspire my siblings and me to poke each others eyes out in copycat crimes.


The new movie reminded me that, before the age of five, I had already figured out Larry still had eyes after Moe had "poked them out" again and again and again.


Hellooooo


It's acting.


And it's also a blend of funny that this new movie from the Farrelly brothers proves has lasting power.


Don't make the mistake of walking out of the theater during the credits because you'll miss these wise guys in altogether new rolls.


These grapeheads rock at the tail end while accompanying Jennifer Hudson, who portrays a nun in the flick, in a delightful version of "It's a shame."


That little gem will leave you still smiling as the only intelligent imbecile left in the room with the staff sweeping up the popcorn on the floor. 

Tales told by Titanic survivors from Pennsylvania

The Titanic prior to its deadly voyage a century ago.


By Scott Beveridge


MONESSEN, Pa. – Survivors of the Titanic interviewed by local newspapers a century ago told stories every bit as dramatic as the Oscar-winning movie, which will be rereleased in 3D Friday

Mrs. John Panula of Coal Center, Pa., had a much more tragic story to tell than young Rose, a role in the movie played by Kate Winslet, who was passed over for best actress in the 1998 Oscars.

Mrs. Panula and her children had returned in 1910 to Finland to sell off family real estate to purchase a new home for her family in Coal Center. She survived the ship's sinking but her five children, who were between the ages of 1 and 17, were buried in the depths of the sea, The Reporter of Washington reported April 23, 1912.

She was among five Finlanders aboard the doomed Titanic who made it to Monessen, Westmoreland County, eight days after being rescued at sea.

The mother, who also was identified in the newspaper as Mrs. Peter Panula, had little to say in the article. About half of the $4,000 raised in the property sale went down with the Titanic, she told a reporter

"She could scarcely remember how she lost her five children...she was unconscious for a time but states she rallied in time to see the Titanic go down," the newspaper reported.

Another member of the party, Ellen Ajkarainer, said she saw men don women's clothing to secure places on lifeboats.

The five Finlanders were among a party of 45 from that country headed for the United States, but only 20 were listed among the Titanic's 711 survivors.

Another survivor from the group, Eino Lindquist, had the most thrilling story to relate, The Independent of Monessen reported.

Lindquist said waves washed him into the ocean just before the ship sank and he said good-bye to his companion, Mr. Hakkarainen.

"Being a fairly good swimmer, I exerted myself to the utmost and was able to reach the last lifeboat which was about 200 yards from where the ship went down and was taken on board," Lindquist, who was about 25 at the time, told the former Monessen newspaper.

Before the ship went under water, he said he watched the last lifeboat put off and "many men make a vain effort to find a place on it, but they were clubbed by sailors in charge and some fell to a watery grave before the ship took its final plunge." The band was not playing until the very end, as was reported at the time, he stated.

There were numerous false reports in local newspapers in the days after the ship sank about 2:20 a.m. April 15, 1912.

A day after the Titanic sank, the first report in The Reporter in Washington had all passengers surviving and the great ship being towed to Halifax, Canada.

"The Titanic is practically unsinkable...of such construction that she is virtually indestructible and would float indefinitely even with her bow smashed," P.A. Franklin, vice president of the company that owned the ship, was quoted as saying in the former newspaper's April 15, 1912, afternoon edition.

The headline on the front-page story published about 12 hours after the vessel sank and buried 1,513 people at sea read: "All of her passengers were taken off in lifeboats."

A day later, the newspaper wrongly reported that no men had survived the tragedy. The death toll also changed daily.

The means of communication at the time was primitive and it was common for news stories to change from minute to minute, said Alan Natali, an assistant professor of English at California University of Pennsylvania.

"There was a tendency at that time to fill column inches, even if that reporter had to make that information up," Natali said.

He said reporters had to wait for the survivors to make it home before learning more about what happened when the Titanic struck the iceberg just before midnight April 14, 1912, about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.

The other survivors who made it to Monessen were listed as Mrs. Mathew Hirvonen, her daughter, Hilda, and Eric Jussila.


(This story has been edited since it first appeared in 1998 in the Observer-Reporter.)

Pittsburgh - the arsenal of the Civil War

 

Workmen pose beside one of Thomas Jackson Rodman's innovative 20-inch cannons built at Fort Pitt Foundry in Pitttsburgh. (Sen. John Heinz History Center photo)
 
PITTSBURGH – While the 1863 fighting at Gettysburg, Pa., set a course for the Union Army to win the Civil War, those living in that state's battle-free western region became heavily engaged in the conflict from its start two years earlier.


“Although the battles that determined the fate of the Union were not fought in Western Pa., no life went untouched by the conflict as Pennsylvania played a critical role providing industrial might, agricultural bounty and natural resources for the war effort,” said Andy Masich, president of Pittsburgh's Sen. John Heinz History Center, which created the exhibit about to travel to 40 different destinations through 2014.


“More than 340,000 Pennsylvanians, including 8,600 African American troops, served in the Union army, a number second to only New York state,” Masich stated in a news release.


Pennsylvania as a whole not only gave the U.S. Army men and food, their foundries forged 80 percent of the iron used by the North to produce artillery, making the state the "Arsenal of the Union," a new traveling Civil War exhibit proclaims.


The artifacts in this new display, which fills a 500 square-foot mobile museum, are on display this week at the history center at 1212 Smallman Street before they make their first stop March 31 at Beaver Area Heritage Museum in Beaver, Pa. It's set to arrive at Chartiers-Houston Community Library in Houston, Washington County, Pa., June 17 and stay through July 15. 


The tiny museum is patterned after one known as Pennsylvania Civil War 150, which began last year to travel across the state to commemorate the conflict's 150 anniversary. At each location along their way, both museums leave open space for local historical groups to display their Civil War memorabilia.


The Heinz History Center's traveling exhibit features prominently artifacts of Canonsburg, Pa.'s Samuel B. McBride, a Union soldier who survived a gunshot wound to his head during the Battle of Chancellorsville, Va., and wore a dent in his forehead for the rest of his life to prove the battle scar.

Thomas Jackson Rodman

The exhibit also showcases an innovation of Salem, Ind., native Thomas Jackson Rodman, who perfected at Fort Pitt Foundry in Pittsburgh the world's first 20-inch monster cast-iron cannon of remarkable strength.


Forged at Fort Pitt Foundry and completed in the "Rodman Process" Feb. 11, 1864, the 117-000-pound cannon proved to have been too heavy for mobile battle use. It was given its extra might by having been cooled internally by running water through a hollow core rather than let it cool externally. The Fort Pitt Foundry between 1861 and 1864 created 2,000 pieces of artillery.

Rodman's 15' Lincoln Gun at Ft. Monroe, Hampton, Va. (not in exhibit)

The history center also features four life-like museum figures, plus a companion Dog Jack. The museum figures are:

·   Strong Vincent, a young attorney from Erie, Pa. who rallied Union troops in the fierce battle on Little Round Top with the phrase, “Don’t give an inch!”

·   Martin Delany, a Pittsburgh abolitionist who was one of the first African Americans admitted to Harvard Medical School and later, the highest ranking African American in the Civil War.

·   Kate McBride, a young worker from the Allegheny Arsenal, who represents the women and children who toiled on the home front to support the Union efforts.

·   Tillie Pierce, a 15-year old Gettysburg native who hauled buckets of water for thirsty soldiers, tore cloth into bandages to aid physicians, and comforted the wounded after Confederate troops overran her hometown.

You wonder how we ever survived.....

(Photo by Katie Roupe, Observer-Reporter)

By Scott Beveridge

One of our photographers at the Observer-Reporter last week was telling two writers, including myself, she had been criticized by a reader for taking a photo of two children riding bicycles without helmets on a residential sidewalk.

“You wonder how we ever survived,” responded a 50-something colleague, recalling how we never wore such head gear while riding bikes as children.

After thinking about it, though, we laughed and then agreed we likely have a bit of brain damage from suffering many bumps and bruises during childhood accidents.

We came from an era when many parents also smoked cigarettes around their kids without any concern about the health affects of second-hand smoke.

I took the conversation to a higher extreme by saying I grew up in the 1960s surrounded by steelworkers, most of whom could belt back boilermakers with the same ease it took them to down glasses of water.

Many of our parents never batted an eyelid while stuffing as many as 10 kids in the back of a station wagon before taking off for a two-hour drive with a stinking drunk dad behind the wheel.

Needless to say we began those road trips from the Monongahela River Valley, a southwestern Pennsylvania landscape peppered with blast furnaces spewing filthy smoke into the air.

We didn’t have smoke detectors in our houses or seat belts, let alone child safety or booster seats to protect young children in cars.


Hell. Frozen pizzas back then came on disposable asbestos cooking sheets. We kids used to stand around the stove and tear those pans apart, daring them to set aflame over the kitchen stove's gas burners.


We also went to learn in Fellsburg, Pa., at Lebanon Elementary School, whose floors were tarred with asbestos tiles and walls were layered with thick coats of pea-green World War II surplus lead paint. I swear my eyes still hurt from having spent endless hours staring at those ugly walls.


Speaking of school, my mother today might be in jail, facing Children and Youth Services for the way in which she sometimes sent us hitchhiking to school when we missed the bus during junior and senior high.


Yet she never permitted my brothers or me out the front door in the morning on school days without our repeating the phrase, "Please God watch over me." If one of us forgot, to the door she ran shouting, "Get your $@*! ass back up her and say it." As a working mom in an era when that wasn't cool, I think it was a crutch she held onto while feeling helpless to protect us at her office.

Certainly I’m not advocating the return to those dangerous carefree ways of the past, even though I still refuse to wear a helmet while riding my bicycle on the trail.

I confess to worrying at times about the affects of cell phone radiation levels and forgetting that it’s illegal now in this state to text while driving.

Like a good citizen I buckle up before putting my Ford sedan in gear and also remember to change the battery once a year in the smoke detector outside my bedroom door at home.

If there are two things that two decades of chasing spot news for this newspaper have taught me are those devices almost always save lives.

But come on. Those cute kids in the photo, above, are riding with training wheels.

The bacon that bonds us

A tasty sandwich we affectionally named the South Franklin bacon and gorgonzola burger. (Scott Beveridge photo)


Call us good friends who have been bonding this winter over bacon.


The cheaper and greasier the bacon on the plates the better for this group of six I have been joining regularly for dinner at the tables  that have switched weekly among our homes.


"Let's have bacon-wrapped shrimp next," one guest said last Sunday, deciding the next menu without argument. "Yes, let's do it."


Our parties began at my house over a cheesy bacon and potato soup.


We also decided in advance that these dinners must also include an activity, and mine featured a rather complicated playing cards game that died on delivery.


Next up it was bowling after dinner of lasagna and a most-excellent spinach salad with warm bacon dressing.


It should have been bowling first and then dinner because all that food, including our devouring an entire large loaf of garlic bread, sat like a lead balloon in my stomach while I bowled gutter ball after gutter ball. Two games were enough to burn us out.


Sunday we regrouped at a different house for bacon burgers with gorgonzola cheese and fresh-cut baked potatoes.


"They were tasty," one friend said.


I couldn't tell because, without realizing it at first, I was coming down with a cold that had begun to numb my taste buds. So I cannot attest to the quality of that last meal, even though it gets props for the effort it received.


But I'm still laughing at the silly cook who prepared the bacon on his stove while wearing a deer head mask.


Then it should come as no surprise that the activity of that day involved watching NASCAR.

The semi-anonymous cook frying bacon for the burgers. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Brownsville revival kick-started