Icepack

Amorosi on the news, nightlife, gossip and bitchiness beats.

by A.D. Amorosi

By the time you read this, Philly Dems will have made their choice as to who they want heading the town-n-country. It won't have made a difference that Rob Reiner was stumping for Hillary at Supper or that a real elephant from Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey was at the WachSpectrum talking smack or that Will.i.am/Ed Kowalczyk went crooning for Obama. Though I did think of a keepsake for that last one: "I Went to that Damn Barack Rally at Independence Hall Expecting Springsteen, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson and All I Got was Daughtry, a Black Eyed Pea that isn't the Fergalicious One and This Fucking T-Shirt." None of this will have made a difference because there's bigger fish to fry — Rick's Cabaret's takeover of Crazy Horse Too on S. Columbus commences April 24. And it's a Howard Stern Official Strip Club choice with his producer Gary BaBaBooie and coming in for the festivities. So much for your politics.

► The jazzy Clef Club and its new director Shuna Miah throw their first big bash together, an April 27 fundraiser for the Jazz Bridge musician medical relief organization. Be there or blow that horn out your ass.

► Vango Monday hostess/Bump siren Cyoni Darling tells me that Charlie Poje (ex-Shampoo bartender) jez opened his Charlie Salon at 203 S. 12th St. with hair stylist Jason Joseph along for the ride. And was it just me or did you also hear DJ Ian St. Laurent is looking to Vango Thursdays? Ian leave Silk City? Couldn't. Be. Definitely a rumor but worth conjuring if not for all the Ballantine's Vango'll have to import if it's true.

► Pennsylvania Ballet's principal dancer James Ady will retire after the April 27 finale of Coppélia at Merriam. He's enrolling at Boise State U. to pursue journalism. Yo, I don't come to your job and demi-plié, do I?

► Michael Hans is an industrious chap. Take da foul-mouthed Dirty Diamond thing he does with DJ Sleazy E. But you got to expand the brand. So he'll start something we discussed years ago, Suicide Idol, April 28 at the Troc's Balcony. Almost start it — the actual contest commences June 2. But there're prelims and tryouts like the real American Idol, so.

► WHOWHATWHERE: CBS Radio got represented by its FM side and its AM side at Danny Ozark's Lickety Split open mic Sunday when Blake from Sales (WYSP-FM's Kidd Chris) and Joe Conklin (WIP-AM) showed and did jokes. Weird thing was Conklin used an alias. He Conklin hiding his face or the jokes? Eating 'n' drinking for the last time (sike) was Nicole Cashman & Associates' crew celebrating the soon-weddings of its ad-gals Carrie Nork and Jaclyn Vosko at Le Bec-Fin. Jaclyn gets hitched June 7, Carrie July 5. Chloë Sevigny hit Heart Works Night Visions event at Johnny Brenda's with curators Laris Kreslins, Will Pym and Gang Gang Dance standing by. Whattya get (other than trouble) when you put Clark DeLeon, Paul Grillo and Fergie (the latter in a clown outfit spouting off like Queequeg in Moby Dick?) together? Saturday's filming of The Museum at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Museum as lensed by the patriarch Joseph Tiberino. Plus Museum's clown-actors, the Carnivolution Circus Sideshow crew and their CEO, JellyBoy, had to move from their famed 48th and Chester house due to roof problems. Luckily they found a home on the Tiberino complex in time for May 2008's Second Friday Carnivolution.

► The answer to "what if Dorothy Parker and Bryan Ferry had a kid" — pianist/singer Wynne Alexander — hits what she calls "the most stylish musical salon in our area" Chez Jacqui (341 Homestead, Strafford, Pa.) April 26 with drum-bud Robert Lee and host Jacqui Cunliffe. E-mail: j1_cunliffe@yahoo.com.

► Mathew Izzo buyer/DJ Michael Andrerer and Socialite Scott host l'official B-52s after party at O.N.E. at Rittenhouse April 25 after the B's Electric Factory lobster rock.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

► Your week in Espers-ness: While Helena Espvall-Santoleri's mural-slathering hubbie Paul Santoleri has a new installation at Thomas Eakins House and Project Gallery's May 2 Subterranean/Basement show and Meg Baird and Greg Weeks prepare what Weeks calls a "new batch of songs for a projected recording session in June," Weeks' production kids in Fern Knight play with eerie-folk-godmother Linda Cohen at Tin Angel April 27. That gig'll follow Weeks pals Philly's ex-reverie/NYC's tallest band Heavy Hands who play PiLam's Psychedelic Brunch that day.

► We're sad to hear that Ryan Margolis' 707 at 707 Chestnut St. will probably close its doors at the end of April.

► When you see Pepi Ginsberg at her Park the Van CD release jamboree (April 24 for Red, the folky jazzy gem produced by Dr. Dog's Scott McMicken) at First Unitarian Church, ask new drummer Jon Guez about his producing an up-coming Norwalks CD, she's my very fave trilling Philly folkie who's currently in San Fran.

► I know Steve Lopez misses Philly attitude because he told me so in anticipation of his arrival at the Free Library April 26 to read 'n' sign The Soloist, his poignant but prickly story of L.A. street violinist Nathaniel Ayers. "He looked like he could be a column," says Lopez of Ayres — a man with a mental illness and an operatic life. "That's always first. A violin missing two strings. He's playing next to the Beethoven statue for inspiration and living out of a shopping cart. Even a donkey like Franny Rafferty could have gotten a column out of this guy."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)