dinner is foreplay for city folk
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Monday, June 8, 2009

The Black Keys / Three Rivers Arts Festival / June 5th

by Eriq F

In the interest of fairness to you, our reader, I will begin by saying that I am not a Black Keys fan. I couldn't tell you their names, and I don't feel like doing the research so I can learn them. I do know that I saw their concert the other night for free. One of them played the drums, and one of them played the guitar and sang. More on that later.

The Three Rivers Arts Festival is an annual tradition here in the Formerly Steel City. For the past 50 years, folks from all over western Pennsylvania have come to downtown to browse over-priced art that they will never buy, and funnel cakes and chicken on a stick that they will buy too much of. Again, I don't feel like doing research to give you dates, so I hope it will be enough for me to say that live music has been a part of the festival ever since I can remember. Despite a huge budget cut and a shorter planning period, this year's festival keeps alive the tradition of free concerts, although the roster of musicians does not boast big names like Sonic Youth or Wilco.

The Black Keys are moderately well known, but I have my doubts that they would have been able to draw an audience of thousands of people if the show were not free and surrounded by greasy food, sugary beverages and beer. Even so, the Black Keys turned in an inspired performance that conjured up ghosts of blues and rock bands past, a perfect fit for this aging and ever-nostalgic town.

While the playing was top-notch, the Keys' tended to get into a bit of a repetitive groove with their solos, at which point I was glad that I came to the show with a few friends. The crowd might not have been paying attention through the whole 75 minute set, but ultimately, that wasn't really a problem. Like the festival as a whole, the show seemed more about uniting a huge group of people in one place for a while. The music was essentially just a pretense for a few thousand people to bring a few friends, kids or dogs down to the remodeled Point State Park and enjoy a good summer evening. If you have the chance, I suggest you do the same.

The festival runs until June 14th.

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Do You Want Fries With That?

By Max Gold, Age 13

There’s a quiet little town, in a world, on about a 78 degrees angle from Venus, about 2389329 miles away from Venus, full of really, really, really fat people. These people loved to eat; they would eat everything, from liver to asparagus, from chocolate to Sticky Cheese, and from Jelly to Jam. Now these people were happy people and no one ever put them down.

Outside Earth, there’s this gigantic space ship. This space ship looks exactly like a hamburger, with seeds every few yards and all. Their salt and pepper guns were loaded, and ready to hit this planet full of fat people (although they the McDonaldians didn‘t know they were fat.) The King Grilled Chicken stood up on the ice cream cone pillar, ready to make a speech.

“Hello My fellow McDonaldians” The King Grilled Chicken said. “Today we march down to earth, and we fight to death!” he screamed.

This got much applause, especially from a Chicken nugget, named Crispy Gangsta. “Yeah let’s show dem homies we gunna pop a soda cap up their-” But he was cut off when the king threw a ketchup packet at him. “Shut it. Now unleash all flamin’ hot sauce!” The King screamed.

Down on Earth all the fat people were having a “we-ate-ten-thousand-pieces-of-chicken-day.” Now as we all know that’s a huge celebration, everyone who’s anyone goes there.

Then, out of nowhere, it started raining salt and pepper. Then the sound of hamburgers the size of pillows ringed in everyone ears. Then… a giant pillow sized hamburger flew down from the sky. It was Crispy Gangsta ready for action.

Unfortunately a boy named Chungy saw Crispy’s ship and got over excited. He ran at the hamburger full force, and swallowed Crispy Gangsta whole. Then he tore that hamburger down and ate the entire thing in five seconds, and wanted more. Then the rest of the space ships came down. In half an hour not one scrap of food was left. Except the mother ship which had landed.

“I come to you humans in peace and hope we can make a fair agreement, and-” but he got cut off when Chungy got a little too hungry. He swallowed the king in one gulp. The poor McDonaldians had no idea what was coming… But the voluptuous folk on the ground sure got a lot of fun out of eating the mother ship.

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