Icepack

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

by A.D. Amorosi

Don't be scared Oct. 9 if Philly's club scene goes silent. Quirk Books' Melissa Monachello and Pink Skull DJ JG (Justin Geller) are getting married that night, and every spinner in town will be at the ceremony. Somebody raise a toast to two books on the New York Times best-seller list (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at No. 11, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters at No. 19). This has been a wedding/public service announcement. Continue.

► Say nice words about South Street (as I did in last week's Food section) and the blocks will blossom like a stack of Rib-It blooming onions. Sure, Stephen Starr confirmed he's looking up the hippie street to see where he can slide some treats. But the funnest thing I heard from more than a few area chappies was how Starr was considering erecting a deeeluxe bun-n-run gourmet joint at ye old McDonald's spot on Sixth and South. Considering Starr once held the keys to the old Ripley Music Hall nearby (which became Tower Records, now Walgreen's), that'd be a sweet homecoming. His SquareBurger stand on Franklin Square should be ceasing for the season in the cold snap of November. If there's a downside to the possibility of sipping a Butterscotch Krimpet Cake Shake on South, it's that Bill Curry's moveable feast, Arts on South — free gallery spaces set up in unused storefronts — is losing vacancies. "It's a mixed blessing," says Curry, who mentions how one of his program's highlights — Saint March, the AoS gallery in the former City Shoes — is relocating to Isaiah Zagar's Philadelphia's Magic Gardens. Then there's the reopening J.C. Dobbs (Third and South), which happens to be promoting live Sunday jazz nights and a job fair for bar-n-food-bizzers Oct 12. G'stuff.

Schoolly D (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

► Oct. 12 is a good day. It's the beginning of the week when the 18 PhilaFilmFest takes flight. It's the night where original-gangster-MC-turned-movie/soundtrack-star Schoolly D starts his own flick-n-music fest. To begin, Schoolly'll show clips of the films he starred in (Snipes), made music for (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, pal Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel) as well as debut his first new album (International Super Sport) in eons with a live gig-n-chat at National Mechanics Oct. 12. Then D's Filmtech buds at McKean and Juniper host a Schoolly salon Oct. 25, where he'll talk about working the Webs like a muh-fuh.

► Marnie Old is having a Wine Secretsbook-release jam atop the Continental Mid-town Oct. 13 celebrating her new vexing vintner's guide. So what's the "shhh" to be found within fabulash Ms. Old's masterwork? "The secret's not so secret, but qualifies because no one likes to say it out loud," she claims. "The truth is that most wine books and magazines are deadly dull. They miss the forest for the trees. Treating each vintage of each wine like its own beautiful snowflake may be well-intentioned but has disastrous results in trying to communicate with the average wine drinker." Old's no snowflake, and luckily her book is the exception that proves the rule. "It's the Sesame Street of wine education — smart, lively, concise and a lot of fun." Yippee.

► More on the wine-drunk tip, there's Alto Vino Wine Bar opening at the Tropicana Casino this weekend with a three-day-long bender featuring Italian hors d'oeuvres. Not too much food. I got a nice buzz going.

► Once upon a time there was an after-hours bar on Race Street — Black Banana. What's become of its cast? Bartender-turned-art-prof Terri Saulin just got engaged — congrats on that. And I'm hearing rumors that BB's owner, Kirk Beckman, is opening a bar at 13th and Locust, date and idear unknown.

► David R. Brigham, the Edna S. Tuttleman Museum Director at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, will succeed PAFA Prez/CEO Edward T. Lewis, effective January 2010. At least Lewis'll be in on the Malcolm McLaren tomfoolery afoot between Oct. 23, when the Sex Pistols manager debuts his Shallow film series, and Nov. 5, when he hosts a lecture and DJs a danz-party at PAFA.

► So Joe Melchiorre’s glam-pop Persona have a song “Let’s Go Again” that is currently all over an NHL Hockey commercial for Versus, seen on Comedy Central, Fox Sports, late-night TV (Letterman, Kimmel, Conan, Saturday Night Live), NFL games and NASCAR races over the weekend. I shoulda known Persona was secretly all up in that NASCAR tip.

➤ It’s a girls’ thing when the Dani Mari Situation, the gals of Jill Rabbits, Leda and the Swans and several other chickies hit Patou for some live rawk and French food Oct. 9.

➤ Really? Has it been but only five years of Mad River Bar & Grille? Come Oct. 8, they celebrate those five years of torture and hateful men in striped shirts and women in short denim skirts. I spit.

➤ Yet, 11 years at 11th and Federal was too much for Kristian Leuzzi’s Kristian’s Italian restaurant. Parting. Pastafazool. Sweet sorrow. The family still has Stogie Joe’s Tavern and will probably do something with the old Kristian’s spot before 2010. But still.

➤ WHOWHATWHERE: When I bumped into Erich Weiss at the Art in the Age Poe art exhibition on First Friday, he didn’t bother to remind me that his first feature film, Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry, would be released to DVD Oct. 13 and to blah-blah-blah-buy it. He talked up his pal Paul Romano’s first solo art show opening Oct. 10 at the Piazza’s Toothless Cat Art Gallery. Paul’s done awesome artwork for bands like Mastodon, Godflesh, etc. and there’ll be covers of Mastodon’s Leviathan, Hate Eternal’s I, Monarch and Chiodos’s Bone Palace Ballet on hand in pain and sketch form. Erich Weiss = a humble dude. Christian Siriano did a signing of his Fierce Style book at Saks in Bala Cynwyd and air kisses flew like bats on Halloween. Though I couldn’t make the annual Greater Philadelphia Film Office bash at Union Trust — the one where Sharon Pinkenson turned a fun bash into a worthy plea to preserve film-tax credits and therefore mucho area employment — my question is still this: If GPFO’s old pal Ed Rendell is fucking the state’s film revenues so badly, can he still be a friend to the local film agency?

➤ TLA Entertainment and TLAgay.com just launched a TLA Sexology Institute to better connect its adult toy customers with what’s good and bad in the novelty/lube dept.

➤ Schoolly D called me with a last-minute quote about his rash of film-n-music stuff coming up this month. “Philly is the best city to write music for film, television or records,” he said en route to NYC. “I find myself not being affected by external influences that I might find elsewhere. I can still reflect on the rawness of how I started 27 years ago.”

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)