Icepack

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

by A.D. Amorosi

After a relaxing weekend of ball punching, puck dropping and yelling about Israel busting up Turkish relief ships, it's back to the grind. This week = everything Roots. I need not add more about Saturday's Roots Picnic on Penn's Landing. Go. But if you don't feel like getting Vampire Weekend mixed in with your jam (can't blame you), further opportunities to see ?uestlove and John Legend are legion, with appearances at the June 3-5 NON-COMM radio convention at World Café Live co-starring Cyndi Lauper and McDonald's hater Chrissie Hynde. Plus ?uest and 215 Mag CEO Tayyib Smith host painter Rah Crawford and pals at the new gallery digs at 307 Market. This is how you get over.

► Nina's Trattoria: That's the supposed name of Philly lawyer Nick Nastasi's spot where the famed Bonuomo market stood — the thing he bought right before the Italian Market Fest. Now that it got a coat of stucco, Nastasi might want to talk to his back-alleyway neighbors. The grease rumored to be accumulating there has other neighborhood sellers miffed.

► Back in 2007, Jesse Eisenberg — he of Zombieland/Solitary Man fame — made a flick with comic Jim Gaffigan called The Living Wake. That nearly lost black comedy is now in limited release courtesy ex-TLA film guy Richard Wolff's newish NoLibs-based company, Breaking Glass Pictures.

► In anticipation of his book The Awful Possibilities, Philly author Christian TeBordo wrote a short story called "Bridesmaid," recorded the song that's talked about in the tale ("The Angel Behind the Rainbow") and presents both in exhibition at B2 on June 5. To make matters massive, he paired with painter Kevin Kernan to design the book cover and interior for that night's reading/installation. "Everything's hand-drawn and screen-printed to look like a zine," says Kernan. "I printed the covers so each is the color of the rainbow, and becomes a sculptural piece when shown together." Buy the set.

►There's a song, "Come Back to Sorrento," that celebrates the joys of the motherland and returning home. It's a yearning for the hills of South Philly that returned Sandro Frusone to Gnocchi. He'd previously sold the East Passyunk restaurant to go live in the old country. Now he's back cooking at the G-spot 24-7.

► Then there's the story I broke awhile ago — the one where Stephen Starr bought Broad Street Diner, considered doing Mexican food for So-Wash hipsters, then sold the place over moldy environmental issues. My breaking story went the way of Mussolini. Now he (Stephen, not Benito), too, has come back south to the BSD, and is looking at late 2010 to open something new. Starr: Go Francophile. Think about it.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

►The New York Post reports that which we could only have hoped for (and guessed at) all along: that Jeff Zucker will leave NBC a couple months after Kabletown/Comcast takes control in 2011. He’ll be $30 million-plus richer. Hey, I’d throw in another $20 if he left sooner. Even if Comcast is the type of place to put a Tastykake Stanley Cup in its corporate lobby, Zucker doesn’t seem like he’d fit in.

➤ I’m not sure how quiet an opening is when it’s on a Saturday and mobbed, but there I was leaving a stellar Gil Scott Heron show at Tin Angel last Saturday night when BOOM it’s Mac’s Tavern and not Skinnner’s that was a raging bar-scene machine. Mac’s is the Market Street saloon in Old City owned by Rob McElhenney and wife Kaitlin Olson from the FX comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that’s currently in reruns on Comedy Central. When I walked by the same bar at the end of MemDay Monday, it was closed. That said, open opera doors and all, it’s not so different from Skinner’s so far. But maybe there’ll be more in store after the rumored June 23 grand opening with the Sunny cast in tow. Michael Suminski from Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus is in the kitchen.

➤ Scott Swiderski is leaving the executive chef position at Buddakan — the one he’s held since it opened in 1998 — on June 12, and Philly foodies mourn. While we’ll welcome new Budda Mark Hellyar, we will miss Swiderski’s savvy. Look for a few words with Scott in next week’s Ice.

➤ Legendary Philly jazz drummer and all-around gentleman Edgar Bateman Jr. died two weeks ago at the age of 81. Famously he played on albums from the god-like Eric Dolphy, Walt Dickerson and John Handy, as well as works from passionate local jazz-bos Bobby Zankel, Khan Jamal and Orrin Evans. Moonstone/Lucky Old Soul master Matthew Feldman has been playing Bateman Jr. moments and can be heard continuously on G-town Radio (gtownradio.com). Zankel and his Wonderful Warriors of Sound will celebrate the life of the great Bateman June 3 at Tritone.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)