Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt and Joe Francis, the man who single-handedly (sorry about that) revived Cinéma vérité with his series of Girls Gone Wild documentaries, have written to congressmen Henry Waxman and Barney Frank (who oversees the House’s Financial Services Committee) asking for a $5 billion bailout of the porn industry.
Apparently, according to industry insiders, XXX DVD sales are off by 22%
Rejected title: People No Longer As Intrested in Hummers
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 4:15 pm posted by ptah gabrie
Garrett County Press, 230 pp., $13.95
Fictional Mickey Hess has been a professor, comedian, haunted house character, cracker factory employee, ice cream man and Billy Graham Crusader.
Real-world Hess, assistant professor of English at Rider University, probably has never been so ridiculous, but brings much-needed levity to our ever-crumbling job market in his recently published novel Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory. He’ll be joined at Brickbat tonight by writer Tao Lin, whose novel Eeeee Eee Eeee, with its wanna-grab-it pink bear cover and hipster-luring title, should bring in plenty of meaninglessly employed Philadelphians who’d be pleased to make your acquaintance.
That talking head behind the lectern yammering on about quantitative
methods must be collecting mad buck and rolling in tenure, right? By
now, you understand that professors are often slumming it like the rest
of us — grasping at prestige and working side jobs to get by. In Mickey
Hess’ experience, that means being the neighborhood ice cream man while
shifting among three different colleges as a part-time professor. A
Rider University professor and Philadelphia resident, Hess may not have
had the smoothest teaching career, but at least he got an engaging
novel out of it.
If you’re lucky, he’ll read the part about the Billy Graham corndog. “It’s heaven on a stick.”
Mickey Hess and Tao Lin read tonight, 7 p.m., free, at Brickbat Books, 709 S. Fourth St., 215-592-1207, brickbatbooks.blogspot.com.
On Tuesday, I was contacted by Julia, who actually owns the residence in question. She happily shared the story behind the sign, as well as a few pictures of the festivities.
My sister, her husband and mine are all huge Trading Places fans. We often break into singing “Constance Fry” when we’re together. So we thought we should have a Trading Places party where people could come dressed up as a character and we could watch the movie. We had it on New Year’s (Merry New Year!) and are kind of hoping it grows into an annual thing. Who knows, it was really just a lot of drunk people at our house, but I have a hilarious video of my sister dancing to “Do You Want to Funk” (the song at Valentine’s party in Winthorpes house), we had a costume contest and trivia with beef jerky as the prize, whiskey (all you want) punch, etc.
Julia, you have inspired us all. What about a Coming to America-inspired St. Patrick’s Day celebration? Catering by McDowell’s?
The good people at Kelly Writers House have set up a new hotline. It’s exactly like 311 but you can only find out stuff about KWH (and there’s no VIP shortcut). When you dial 215-746-POEM you are met with four options:
1) what’s happening tonight or very soon at the Writers House
2) highlights of upcoming events
3) a featured poem read at the Writers House, from our archives
4) a featured recording of Writers House-affiliated students
I just called and heard Tom Devaney reading “Sonnet” at KWH in 2000. Awesome.
Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 2:00 pm posted by Matt Hotz
The Rotunda booked this bad boy at the last minute so we couldn’t fit it in this week’s Agenda section but we wanted to give you the skinny anyway.
On Wednesday, Bread and Puppet Theater presents Dirt Cheap Opera, a “free” re-creation Bertolt Brecht’s legendary Three Penny Opera (full synopsis), using puppets. It’s been proven scientifically that the addition of puppets makes anything better but Three Penny Opera doesn’t initially seem to lend itself to puppeteering. I mean, it’s a Marxist critique of capitalism. Add puppets, though, and the basic concept doesn’t seem so daunting.
Famed puppetry group Bread & Puppet freely retells Brecht’s 3-Penny
Opera with the help of brightly painted cardboard puppets and dummies
in the presence of all the appropriate cardboard gods who make sure
that the dramatic events are put into the right light and judged instantaneously and by the proper authorities.
The opera is one hour short and is dirt-cheap and not suited for
children or other innocent bystanders.
In addition, extra tunes will be provided by Sweet & Hots. Bread and Puppet is only asking for a suggested donation ($5-20) so they can get home.
To whet your appetite, watch Ella Fitzgerald kill on Three Penny’s most famous song, “Mack the Knife.”
Wed., Jan. 7, doors at 7:30 p.m., show at 8:00 p.m., Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., 215-573-3234, rotunda.org.
Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 4:07 pm posted by ptah gabrie
We don’t always shout-out theaters that, frankly, don’t need our help (read: the Kimmel Center and Walnut Street Theatre, with their billboarding and flier-ing and oodles of rich-folk subscribers and whatnot), but any show A.D. Amorosi once had a part in while on mescaline drops, we’re willing to check out. Even if its current incarnation is A.D.- and drug-free.
are those weed sweatbands?
mark garvin
A Tuna Christmas wraps up its run Saturday night, so if you’re into ridiculous cross-dressing theater, get thee to the Walnut’s Independence Studio 3 post-haste. Here’s what our very own prolific party-hopper had to say in last week’s CP about the show:
… There’re few better shows in which to drop any psilocybin
derivative than A Tuna Christmas. Greater Tuna, A Tuna Christmas, Red, White and Tuna and Tuna Does Vegas weren’t born just to make light of the mythical ville that is Tuna, Texas, and its dizzy alumni. The psychedelic Tuna
series is a sharply snarky version of a dream — think Ken Kesey meets
Kinky Friedman — emanating from the minds of Jaston Williams, Joe Sears
and Ed Howard. And with its two-man tag-team of actors playing each and
every of TC’s 24 characters, it’s a guaranteed trip. This take involves a ruinous production of A Christmas Carol. … Expect to see men as
(several) dogs, used-gun salesmen and racist disc jockeys at play under
the mistletoe. And if you need any tips, just ask me.
Through Jan. 4, $30, Walnut Street Theatre, Independence Studio on 3, 825 Walnut St., 215-574-3550, walnutstreettheatre.org.
So some dad and his son were at the Riverview and watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and talking, because they were at the Riverview, where talking during the movie is a tradition.
But then this other guy gets all pissed, like yelling “OMG Brad Pitt is youngifying and you are talking over it!” Then the guy starts throwing some popcorn at the son, which is also not unheard of at the Riverview. Then there was some discussion.
Then the dude shot the dad in the arm.
Then the dude sat back down to watch the movie, like “Okay now where were we, oh yes, Benjamin just keeps getting younger! This is indeed a curious case. Wonder when they’ll pay the Arcade Fire song.”
Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 12:35 pm posted by Matt Hotz
Former Inquirer columnist John Grogan got a book deal and subsequently made the big bucks bitching about his dog in the mega-selling Marley & Me, which was then made into a flick starring Owen Wilson (as Grogan) and Jennifer Aniston (as Lady Grogan). It’s gotten mixed reviews, one of which you can read straight from good ol’ CP. But reviews didn’t stop anyone from giving Marley & Me the record-breaking Christmas opening. It raked in in $15.9 million.
Here’s the deal, though: Throughout the movie, Grogan refers to Marley as “the worst dog in the world.” He eats a ton (including inedibles, like a fancy necklace and dry wall), is expelled from obedience school and flips his shit every time there’s a thunderstorm. While I’m sitting in the critics’ screening, with a lot of people who seem to be enjoying this movie way more than I am, I just kept thinking, “This is the worst dog in the world? Um, have they ever met Lucky?”
Lucky is my parents’ dog (terrible name, I know — the people we got him from on Craigslist bestowed it upon him), a half Lab, half bassett mix. Grogan thought eating dry wall was bad? Try wood, as in the paneling all over my parents’ house. There was the time he chewed through the bubble wrap and hard plastic casing to eat a CD I had to review. (”Oh hey PR person, can you send me another copy of such-and-such? My dog ate the copy you sent me,” was a conversation I never hoped to have.) Failed obedience school, Grogan? Ha, try graduated from obedience school but only does the basics (sit, stay, etc.) when he feels like it (i.e., not when you need him to). Marley couldn’t handle obedience school; Lucky simply outsmarted it.
Then there’s the fact that every time he wants something (food, walks, attention), he tells you by making this low, loud wailing noise that he won’t stop until you acquiesce (even if you need him to wait JUST FIVE FUCKIN’ MINUTES). Know that sound Chewbacca makes? Yeah, that would be the sound. He also likes to make that sound whenever anyone he likes comes through the front door (amplified 30x for my mom) or when all of the seats in our living room are taken and he is relegated to sitting on the floor, which would be OK IF HE WEREN’T A DOG. Plus, he figured out how to open door handles, like the raptors in Jurassic Park, which is just creepy.
Lucky the Dog. He put those shades on himself, I swear.
But then again, he’s a beautiful puppy. He’s totally hilarious, is excellent at getting his belly rubbed and is fabulous at playing fetch. Which is a feat, considering Bogart — our previous pet and the best dog in the world, except of the whole smelling terrible thing — didn’t really like to leave the house. Or move.
So, I get it: Grogan garnered fame and fortune by telling a story that a million dog owners can relate to. We love our pooches, even when they are little shits. So, give us your worst/best dog stories. Did your dog literally eat your homework? Did he urinate on a visiting dignitary? Did he do something worse? Let us know!
Staff Blog
The Unborn (PG-13)
