Icepack

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

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Mar 23, 2010

Question about flash mobs: If these things can be so quickly organized by tweet and text to enact all levels of messiness and destruction with no ground zero and no easy point of origin, couldn't the same power be used to do good? Like specifically for me? Could they make runs to Paesano's for pork sandwiches, redo my deck or collectively chip in for that Jam suit with the two-button front I love? Sayin'.

► Peek through the brown-paper-wrapped windows of Midtown IV (that's the dive diner at 2013 Chestnut with the backroom taproom that served dollar vodka drinks) and you'll see Stephen Starr planting roots for that new Mexican restaurant o' his I told you about eons ago — El Rey. Booths are being torn out as we speak to make room for SoCal/Baja knickknackies. Look for an April/May opening with ex-Xochitl chef Dionicio Jimenez in on the spice.

► Speaking of: When L&I isn't busy dogging poor local bars, they're shuttering valued longtime Italian Market entrepreneurs such as The Spice Corner for what the signage claims is not having quite the necessary licenses to mix spices. Mixing spices apparently means you're a restaurant, which clearly the lovely Spice Corner is not and never pretended to be. Diabolical. Visions of Dune pop in my head. Indeed, the closing has been in effect since January and what we thought was temporary has gone on too long. I'll talk to the Spice Corner owners in the online Icepack.

► Miss Rose, Lil' Steph and Black Landlord/sometime Technophobe keyboardist Louise LaTease have been cobbling together the sweet 'n' sexy burlesque troupe Bravissimo of late to get the hipster boys 'n' girls all hot 'n' bothered. Bravissimo go honking wild — now with couture garters and pasties from new Philly company Late Bloomers that the girlie crew sells at gigs — with two shows at WineO March 27.

► Yeah, Bradley Cooper and Renée Zellweger hit Fifth Street's Philadelphia Soundstages (he's readying for the Philly-filming Dark Fields with Robert DeNiro and Abbie Cornish) and Andy Samberg was up in girlfriend Joanna Newsom's grill at her First Unitarian Church meetings. Yet it was cooler for me to spy the Balcony screening of Blood Into Wine, the hilarious Maynard Keenan-from-Tool doc where the singer becomes a vintner. Philly's Tim & Eric appear, as does a G-Mart shirt worn by the bald Tool vocalist. Remember, G-Mart's honcho Steve Grasse shot vids for Maynard's A Perfect Circle.

► I told you cowpokes that Philly producer/actor/directors Norm Macera and David Von Roehm had partnered with Willie James Nelson for a cinematic enterprise, Luck Films, awhile ago. Now Variety says the trio's readying to shoot Nelson-soundtracked films like The Dry Gulch Kid starring Willie in Philly. That's almost as good as having DeNiro here.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

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