I always get a bit nervous when the subject turns to wine. I wouldn’t know a good wine if it crawled up my pant leg and bit me on the ass. Unless it did so in a gentle, loving way, and even then only maybe. I know I like dry red with my sauce, I love a good chianti. (No, not with fava beans. I hate fava beans.) Beyond that, I’m a bit at sea when it comes to wine.
But I’m hoping to learn a bit about it this Thursday while enjoying some great local art, as that’s when Jay Verno studios on the South Side will be hosting a combination wine-tasting/art show that also serves as a fund raiser for WYEP. It’s called “The Tasting” and it’s billed as “an event designed to support local artists and their work in the South Side Flats community of Pittsburgh, Pa.” Some of the artists whose work will be shown include collagist Chuck Schneider, photographer Kimberly Reed, sculptor Ian F. Thomas, and painter Scott M. Yoss. You’ll also get a free cd by local Pittsburgh band soulharmonic and can even take home your tasting glass. All that for only ten bucks.
A reminder: Thursday is the new Friday. So go.
“Drinking For A Cause” makes a strong comeback this week at Prive Ultralounge. For some reason, “Ultra” and “Lounge” don’t seem to go together in my mind, but ok, I understand how you need to market to the young people today. It’s not like when I was a kid, when all you had to do to succesfully market something was have a cartoon on Saturday mornings that had your product fighting Skeletor. Now that I think about it, I’d love to see a cartoon about a bar. I’d love to be in a cartoon about a bar. I’d love to be in a bar. But I digress… The Martini Party is a benefit for the 
I never got into the show for whatever reason, but ok, I know a lot of people love it, and I know enough about it to know that winner of the Alyson Hannigan look-a-like contest that’ll be held at the event should email me at gitaht@gmail.com with a schedule of availability for drinks on me, maybe dinner if things go well. They’ll be handing out “goodie bags” that will contain vampire teeth, (all right, I get that), kazoos (Not really sure, but it is a musical thing…), and mustard (I have no idea, but again, I never watched the show so I plead ignorance. This is probably very important.) Tickets are 12 bucks at the door, 10 in advance. I’d call ahead if I were you.
Friendship development Associates sort of sounds like a shell company for the CIA, but apparently it isn’t. It’s actually a group of people really into the Friendship area, who have decided (a long time ago) to show off the really incredible homes that are up there in that area. One of them was featured on HGTV, so the quality speaks for itself there, I think. Actually, I dunno, because I don’t get to see HGTV much, as the nurses won’t allow anything more exciting than PCN coverage of Pennsylvania State House Proceedings. If we try to change it to something else, she takes away our cigarettes, which we need for the poker games with McMurphy. Hit me, Chief, I got the moves!
If someone comes up to you and tries to make a joke along the lines of “This is the wurst thing you can do this weekend”, you have my permission to dope-slap them upside the head. Don’t worry about the consequences, no jury of like-minded citizens would ever convict you. As a matter of fact, they’d probably take an opportunity to dope-slap them themselves. All that aside, the 
Wegman’s the guy that takes all the pictures of Weimaraners. This exhibition features 28 polaroids of dogs doing things like roller-skating, playing dress-up, and exercising on a bike.
The Tony Award winning musical opens this weekend at the Benedum Center. I tried to tell them to go away, that we already got one, but they persisted, so I proceeded to say that their mother was a hamster and their father smelt of elderberries. But even after all of that, they still wanted to stage it this weekend, so the production will apparently go off as scheduled.
Side one features “The Year Series” by Kate Temple, an artist known for prints that possess a “quiet, contemplative quality”. It’s a large-scale print/installation project made by leaving zinc plates outside for a year, each one buried in a location significant to it’s theme – the sky/constellation plate was created from a plate set up on a hill facing the sky, the spring/flow plate was buried near a spring, the earth/pool was a plate set face down in a vernal pool. Prints were then made from these plates, their patterns etched by time and nature. Each series is then displayed according to it’s nature – the earth/pool series, for instance, will be installed low on a flat platform, and is meant to be viewed from above.
Side Two is a reunion of sorts, as “Pittsburgh Alumni: Twenty Artists from Beyond the Rivers” opens with work from artists who have made their home here in the past and then moved on. Curator John Morris(
