Victor Fiorillo’s Weekender: On Trannies, the Potential Though Unlikely Disintegration of Motown, and That Massive Arctic Blast
All I can say is brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I hate this freakin’ weather. Should you desire to brave the wretched elements, I offer some fine filler for your agenda.
The same thing happened to me on 13th and Locust … If you still haven’t seen Philadelphia Theatre Company’s (fairly) spectacular new home, the Suzanne Roberts Theater, a good excuse would be the opening of M. Butterfly, a Tony Award-winning play about some French dude who’s all hot for a pretty little Chinese opera singer who turns out to have one Y chromosome too many. And closing this weekend is New City Stage Company’s powerful Extremities at Mum Puppettheatre. All about victimization and revenge. Get a sitter.
Not so pretty pictures … They can build all the condos they want — Philadelphia will always have a gritty, shadowy underbelly, which I, personally, love and which is perfectly captured by local photographer Natalie Hope McDonald in Evidence, a three-(Philly)-woman show at William Way. (An example: the lovely Anya). Plus there are both disgusting and beautiful vein-popping bodybuilding photos by Ellen Rosenberg.
It’s the same old song … If aliens were to descend from the sky this weekend and use their Triple-Phased Helio-Proton Beams to annihilate the Jersey coast, we would have no more Four Tops, no Coasters, no Stylistics, no Platters and no Drifters — all of whom, in a very strange cosmic coincidence, are playing Atlantic City this weekend in three different shows at three different casinos. It’s also worth noting that we would have no more Bill Cosby, whose stand-up show at Caesars is sold out.
Let’s hope that Orson Welles is cryogenically preserved somewhere … Ugh. These new movies out pain me. We had a pretty good run there with Sweeney Todd, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, didn’t we, people? Now they’re treating us to 27 Dresses (nearly two hours on the “always the bridesmaid …” adage), Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream (my advice: rent Manhattan), and Cloverfield (aliens descend from the sky and use their Triple-Phased Helio-Proton Beams to kill us all). I’d put my money on Persepolis, a pen-and-ink-animated Iranian tale with the voice of Catherine Deneuve (who is now unfortunately past cougar status).
Because you have a whole lot to make up for … In case you forgot, the reason you have off on Monday — if you work at a bank, not a magazine — is that it’s Martin Luther King Day. Which means that it’s the 13th Annual Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service, the longest-titled event ever. Sign up to do something good. Or just be a loser and stay home and watch Judge Alex and eat Hot Pockets.
Oh, and congrats to Beth Lesko, who says that her boyfriend will skip watching the game to go see Ladysmith Black Mambazo with her at the Kimmel this Sunday. Good man. Beth won two tickets through a contest in our weekly Go-To Guide e-mail. Sign up for the Guide here.
