How to See for Yourself; Detroit Hardcore Pioneer John Brannon Brings Easy Action to Brownies; Ex-TV Head-er Kevin Maher Wonders If People Are Ready to Laugh; Real Pulp Fiction at the Collectable Paperback and Pulp Fiction Expo
"You should definitely definitely definitely get yourself down there," one of these adventurers told me in a calm but insistent phone message. "And I'll tell you?for the last two nights in a row [our plan] is to just simply go down at like 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the morning. Bring ID of course, and just tell them you've been working for food service the last couple nights and they want you to come back; do it with sincerity and authority and conviction and you should be able to blast through all the different checkpoints you get to."
And once you're there?
"It's just simply amazing. For historic sake, for your own?uh?whatever sake, you really should really just simply see the site. I'm going tonight."
This message was left on Thursday, when the gorgeous, mocking weather finally broke and thunderstorms opened up at 1 a.m. I didn't venture out, and luckily the guy who called me didn't slip and die under a collapsed building somewhere. Going to the Anti-Twin Towers is not recommended, but it is happening; you have a week to try before it gets sanitized enough not to remind you of Hiroshima.
?One unforeseen consequence of 9/11 is the sudden appearance of rock music on MTV/VH1. Guess "Peaches and Cream" doesn't capture the mood of the nation anymore?instead we get Fuel's "Innocent" (a little heavy-handed), U2's "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" (quite telling) and this band Five for Fighting, who look like Matchbox Twenty fronted by Gilbert Gottfried, spewing their readymade survival anthem "Superman."
Who knows? Maybe this'll be the bottom for our economy and the bottom for soulless, excess-espousing canned music. To that end, Easy Action rolls into town on Friday.
Easy Action is fronted by John Brannon, one of those cultural icons (like Wesley Willis, who played Brownies on Tuesday) whom our culture has inexplicably ignored. John headed up Detroit's hardcore scene with Negative Approach in the early 80s, 20 years before the place got critically hot (must?not?mention? White Stripes); then, with the ability to scream like Kurt Cobain and croon like Eddie Veddah, he formed the blues-based Laughing Hyenas in 1984. For a decade, the Hyenas were Midwest staples of the same kind of indie rock that the public lapped up in 1991, but they never got lapped, and now John has a new act playing garage, blues and hardcore. Definitely worth checking out; Easy Action comes to Brownies (169 Ave A., betw. 10th & 11th Sts., 420-8392) at midnight with a cover of $8.
?Comedy comes cheap in this city?it's the only form of entertainment that has emissaries out on the street asking you point-blank, "Hey, do you like comedy?" But that's necessary, because most of it sucks.
Until recently, for comedy that didn't suck you had to turn to the sketch group TV Head who, in addition to having the best name since the Kids in the Hall, were made up of a trio of guys from Vassar. You know what that means, right? Vassar is about 90 percent female and 100 percent drugs; these fellows had a unique viewpoint. Their sketches poked fun at a homo Cary Grant and sent Roseanne's daughter on a real-life date with a puppet. Unfortunately, the troupe broke up recently when two-thirds of its members moved to LA.
That leaves ex-TV Head-er Kevin Maher, sometimes known as Pigboy due to a certain role he played in old skits, to bring a one-man show to Surf Reality. Kevin's central character?also the name of the show?is the "Lone Drifter," a man inexplicably wanted for manslaughter; Kevin also does a disturbed Sam Goody employee and robotic John Wayne. His show is nice and short, 50 minutes to be exact; plus it's $5 cheap. That goes down this Friday and next at midnight at Surf Reality (172 Allen St., betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts., 673-4182). Hey, do you like comedy?
?All you rich people who enjoy decorating your houses with pulp books and posters, rejoice! Unaffected by 9/11, the 13th Annual Collectable Paperback and Pulp Fiction Expo comes to the Holiday Inn Midtown this Sunday. Now, long before Pulp Fiction was a movie starring Omar Epps and Todd Rundgren?no, wait?it was this genre of seedy magazines and paperbacks about crime, romance and sci-fi sold cheaply to depraved 50s and 60s youth. Then, when the youth grew up and got houses, they needed to decorate their walls with something, so they started these expositions.
Seriously, the 13th Pulp Fiction Expo has some literary stars lined up, and they have pen names: crime and Western author Bruce Cassidy (aka Carson Bingham, Max Day), crime writer Morris Hershman (aka Arnold English) and I-Spy author Walter Wager (aka John Tiger).
The Pulp Expo starts at 8 a.m., and here's how you can tell that it's a serious undertaking: the tickets that let you in at 9 a.m. cost $5, but the tickets that let you in at 8 a.m. cost $10. That $5 premium is simply what you must pay for a crucial extra hour of browsing time before the pulp dilettantes get in. The collectors' extravaganza (they buy stuff, too, if you're in a fall-cleaning type of mode) takes place this Sunday at the Holiday Inn Midtown (400 W. 57th St., betw. 9th & 10th Aves., 581-8100). Admission after 3 p.m. is free.
...Mini-Blurbs from two Sundays ago on Park Avenue: You can bet your ass a rocking party went down to open Rocky Aoki's new Haru restaurant (280 Park Ave. at 48th St., 490-9680). Aoki is from the old school of Japanese minimalist hospitality; his event was complete with no celebrities (except for Robyn Byrd?I shook her hand and told her she's doing the 13-year-olds of the world a great service), no door checks, no money at the bar and an elegant barrel of sake. But the real highlight was the food: tuna teriyaki that tasted like it had mayonnaise baked in, endless plates of rainbow rolls and salmon. At some point in the night they tried to raffle off art, but people were so drunk and happy that no one remembered what number was on his raffle ticket. So I took the roll of tickets and started looking for the winning number as it was called.