Icepack

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

by A.D. Amorosi

Welcome to Lull No. 1. It's that first pocket of the year, the one after New Year's, Golden Globes and the Wing and Super bowls (Am I really putting the grotesque Wing Bowl up there? Sure) but before the Grammys, Valentine's Day and the Academy Awards. Here's where we contemplate the navel of a discontenting winter that won't end, a junked-up football team that blew it, the forgone conclusion of our Obama love affair gone sour and the dreaded nothingness that is our eternity. In this vacuum I only hope somebody else names their kid "Hitler" or that Vince Fumo cracks during trial, starts naming the guys behind the guys and gets a job singing at Victor Café. It's that lull-y out.

► We know y'all are busy buying Bruce Springsteen tickets for April's E Street Spectrum shows. Want to revive the spirit of Spectrum past? Six words: Grand. Funk. Railroad. Blowjobs. On. Dancefloor. I'm twice as excited Ars Nova Workshop added a show to their tête-à-tête duo series at I-House: April 26's gig with American minimalist maestro/violinist Tony Conrad. Tony! Now prooove it all night. Proove it awl night. Dundundundun. Plus there's a very-bloody-plausible rumor Leonard Cohen'll play the Academy of Music in May.

► "Over Here is my new collection of works written for farewell parties in the era of endings," says Frank Sherlock of poems culled from notebooks "kept during imaginary road trips across the late empire, serving as toasts to new futures." Buy that sweet man a drink and his book at L'Etage Feb. 8.

► Philadelphia Soundstages had its opening bash last Thursday for its filmmakers mega-facility on 1600 block of North Fifth. Which reminds me: This is the season for feuding film fests, if rumors continue that Terror Film Fest and the Big Bang are angry with each other perhaps to the point of court orders and subpoenas. (TFF 2009 submissions now at terrorfilmfestival.net.) While we were watching CineFest and Philly Film Fest griping we forgot to say howdy to TLA Releasing's new guy Derek Curl, head of production and development. In association with Curl's NYC-based Caveat Films, TLA has six gay flicks in the pipeline — YES I SAID THAT — including a doc about Zach Stark, who was kidnapped by his parents and sent to gay "rehabilitation" camp. Film-related: Go to booker/screener Rich Wexler's Found in Philadelphia blog at shermanarts.org/blog.html. "I'm collecting you folks' pics and vids that were found in Philly as part of an art project at Midwives Collective, Feb. 13, that I'm doing with Amanda Miller," says Wexler. I want to go there. All of this news is better than reading about M. Night Shyamalan hiring ugly ratty kids for his slippery awful Last Airbender. Hock pitewee.

► Last Friday, Tommy Up and Brendan Bring'Em hosted the reopening of one of my fave spaces, the now-boozy Arts Garage. Good.

► When Fishtown's Johnny Brenda's hosted a mightily sold-out Misstallica — Gina Randazzo's all-grrrl Metallica cover band — it was the other Fishtownies, the true toothless 'townies yelling for Coors unironically, that filled the joint. How scared were the owners, right?

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► Jim's Steaks of South Street just made Details list of Best Late-Night Eats in America — weird only because I hardly realized Details was still around. Bravo Details and meat.

► No, you don't try to sneak out of here, Mary Bichner. Box Five's 26-year-old princess of perfect pitch and Mozart-y chamber pop is leaving Philly for all parts Bostonian, "just for the next year or two, with the intent of building my own orchestra, so the Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music will all be subjected to my neon pink fliers searching for string sections and bassoon players," says Bichner. But not before Box Five does two gigs — a mega Feb. 12 show with strings, woodwinds and singers (L'Etage) and a more intimate National Mechanics' UN-LoveD pre-Valentine's bash Feb. 9 with delecto electro-mavens genCAB and an abbreviated theatrical and cinematic interpretation of Azuka Lounge's I Love You/I Hate You ripped from the grubby pages of City Paper. Got a video loathe-or-lust? Film it on DVD and bring it to N'Mechanics. Then see the entirety of Azuka's (melo)dramatic Love/Hate reading at 5 p.m. happy hour, Woody's, Feb. 10. azukatheatre.org.

► More theatah? When Pete Pryor isn't busy revving his 1812 Production's radio podcast for the Rosenbach's Lincoln tributes and directing its due-in-March comedy The Karma Cookie (with Anthony Lawton at da Adrienne), the fastidious Pryor is acting the sloppy Oscar half in this week's revival of The Odd Couple at the Kimmel starting Feb. 5. "I'd love to play Felix sometime, but unfortunately I'm much more like Oscar in real life," says Pryor who'll be Couple-ing next to Tony Braithwaite. "Tony asked me a while ago and I'm thrilled to get to do it with him. TB's one of the best comic actors in Philly."

► When Studio Nightclub at 9859 Bustleton (near CWV Post 162) pops its house-music top Feb. 7 with a Peek-A-Boo Revue debut, the remake/remodel (used to be Studio 98, an after-hour-y hip-hop jawn) comes courtesy John Tripodi. Tripodi just opened a new bar in South Philly too, the Pizza Pub. Busy guy.

► Talk about openings, steak-y neighbors Union Trust, (717 Chestnut) and Peruvian-Chinese cuisine chums Chifa (707 Chestnut) open, respectively, Feb. 9 and Feb. 10. That'll be the yummiest 48 hours in Philly since Kakes got Tasty.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)