Turkey Clubbing

[Music] Home for the holiday? You're done with the familial obligation; now it's you time. Here's your electro-pop, chick-rock, drag queen, punk-show-filled weekend.

Thursday 11.22
Trapp Door (615 W. 100 South)
Thanksgiving night's foremost party, "Dance Evolution" is packed wall to wall with the uni-sexiest mix of culture you didn't know we had. This is the place to escape and dance your trypto-fanny off. DJ/DC spins the hottest jams of urban electro-pop with hosts Jake and Justice commencing your unanticipated weekend. Door at 9 p.m., $5 cover. BUT, if you don "oldy-timey" costume for this Inuit v. Pilgrim party, your admission is free.

Friday 11.23
Monk's (19 E. 200 South)
Is live chick-rock your thing? Head to this bomb shelter-turned-venue for a sweet Salt Lake City treat. Ever-elusive regional beloved Andale! graces the stage with front siren Memorie Morrison’s melodic tales of anxiety and job resentment. Opener Blackhole is … how do you say in Utah? … AWESOME. Door at 10 p.m., $5 cover.

Mynt Lounge, (63 W. 100 South)
For you who crave a more extra-ordinary edge, Crush is the club. Native "Glamor Tycoon" Matthew Landis hosts this see-and-be-scene. Local legend D.J. Nick James will be announcing plans for the super exclusive speakeasy "Night at the Disco." No one throws down underground N.Y. retro-ultra-beats like Nick. My sources tell me there will be a super-secret international celeb-utante threatening a mid-night show. Door at 10 p.m., $5 cover.

Saturday 11.24
Burt's Tiki Lounge (726 S. State)
If PBR specials, hot girls and dirty boys are what you seek. Headlining an all-star slam fest week-ender, local punk sensation Negative Charge takes you to a jolting climax. Door at 10 p.m., $5 cover. (Princess Kennedy)

The Fed Ex Way

[Stopping Traffic] The place: Broadway (300 South) between Main Street and West Temple in downtown SLC.

The time: Lunch hour.

The scene: Fed Ex panel truck backs out of an alley after driver's partner makes a delivery. Truck turns west onto Broadway, and tries to move back into traffic flow. Oops! There, in the one-lane road (remember, angled parking along Broadway has removed a lane of traffic) sits a big-ass moving van, painted with the logo "Lucky Moving" and idling in front of the American Towers condominiums. Fed Ex guy jumps out of the truck's passenger seat, gestures wildly at the moving van blocking his way and hollers "What the hell does that guy think he's doing?!

No kidding. Don't you just hate it when some random truck driver blocks the road to others just to do his job? You'd think he was a Federal Express driver or something. (Holly Mullen)

SLAM!

[Local Music] While most of you are undoubtedly counting down the hours to Turkey/Tofurkey Day, I've got my mind set on January when City Weekly will put our revamped SLAMMYs plan into action.

In years past, we wrapped our local music issue around the South By Southwest music festival, sending down the winner of our battle of the bands competition to Austin where they performed in a showcase and (ideally) networked with "pretty big deals."

This year, festival organizers cut down our privileges, granting us fewer all-access music badges and one or two wristbands for the musicians. This came as no surprise to us as City Weekly was one of the last few alt-weeklies to hook up local groups with a show in Austin. Rather than throw a fit, we went back to the drawing board and instigated changes that should have been made long ago.

First, we decided to turn SLAMMYs into more of a showcase rather than a competitive forum. We also did away with applications, choosing instead to nominate bands that we feel best represent our local music scene. The nominating committee included myself, Bill Frost, several freelancers, record store owners and radio hosts whose tastes range from metal to country to blues and (nearly) everything in between.

Nominated acts will perform in one of three genre-appropriate showcases in January where audience members can vote for their favorites on-site or later online. There will no longer be a Band of the Year. We really want to emphasize the showcase aspect of this endeavor. We want to support local bands and expose readers to talented artists. When the lineups are announced, if you don't see your favorite band listed, go ahead and write them in! We encourage you to do so. We do not, however, encourage you to complain after the fact.

Be the change you want in the world, and all that. Here's to 2008! (Jamie Gadette)

Da Baum

[Comedy: Review] Wiseguys is the venue where accomplished veterans showcase their talent and young comedians try their hand. Before headliner Bruce Baum took the stage on Nov. 16, Wiseguys' line-up proved promising.

The moment MC Aaron Burrell appeared, he began charming the audience. His personal, although exaggerated, stories lead to some great self-deprecating humor. His jokes often seemed familiar, but the punch line always landed somewhere unexpected and hilarious.

Then came John Hilder, who alienated the audience almost immediately. His act was intolerable: jokes about blacks lacking financial responsibility; digs at Hispanics; slams of little people. The laughter died fast.

The third comedian, Blake Bard salvaged the evening with his Vince Vaughn looks and wealth of experience for the stage. Bard is well-traveled and it shows. He’s comfortable in his skin and in front of a crowd, blending perfect timing with a slightly dark edginess.

With audience confidence restored, Bruce Baum proved to be the seasoned veteran he is. From the moment he took the stage, he owned it. His enthusiasm and ease were immediately disarming. Suddenly, this was his house and he was there to show this audience a great time.

With his signature prop comedy, Baum entertained with the eagerness of a boy, minus some of the crude humor. His act felt spontaneous: jokes, poems and impressions flowed from him one right after the other.

But the best moments were his songs. The audience was favored first with a tune called "Cow-ifornication "in which Baum, dressed in a cow costume, sang his own version of "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers—or as he called them, "the Red Hot Chili Heifers." But it wasn’t the cow suit that got all the laughs. It was his clever rewrite of the song—although, the image of a grown man in a cow costume was amusing.

Baum then suggested that 20 years ago he recorded a song which was recently ripped off by the Pussycat Dolls. Sure, they changed a few words, he claimed, but Baum’s version is the real deal. As a music video of Baum played on the monitors, he sang out "Don't Cha Wish Your Boyfriend Was Bald Like Me?" It was a beyond-hilarious show-stopper.

Throughout his set, Baum kept his momentum. His writing was quick and witty, and you had to be fast to keep up. He performs like the guy determined to keep you laughing, the guy you’d like to have as a friend.

Take any chance to catch Burrell, Bard or Baum in the future. But plan a bathroom break around Hilder. (Tawnya Cazier)

Happy Landings

[Castner Update] Our analysis of the quick heave-ho KSL Nightside Project's Michael Castner got from uptight management is still generating a river of response. It seems a lot of people have managed to read the Kremlin Wall and are having none of KSL station management's explanation of budget cuts.

In my interview with Castner the day after he was fired, he lamented about what he'll do between "opportunities."

"I've been doing some kind of radio show my whole adult life," he said. "You wake up one morning and you have no audience. What do I do? Go out in the back yard and talk to the ducks?"

Well, it hasn't come to that ... yet. Tonight, Castner launches his own podcast. He's promising lively interviews and will include some of the old personalities from his Nightside broadcasts who no longer have an SLC forum, either. (Holly Mullen)

Vente Vexed

[Media] Cry us a river of Frappucino: Wisconsin alt-weekly Shepherd Express has been tossed out of Milwaukee Starbucks locations because of a deal struck between local daily newspaper Journal Sentinel and the coffee giant. Says the Express:

"After the deal with Starbucks was completed, one of the Journal Sentinel's free weeklies ran an ad claiming that they would now be the exclusive free weekly in the 48 Starbucks locations throughout metro-Milwaukee. This is simply another bullying, anti-competitive tactic by the Journal Sentinel."

So why can't I, as a fellow weekly-newspaper guy, muster up much sympathy for the Shepherd Express? Because City Weekly has never been allowed into Salt Lake City Starbucks; at least the Express had a foot in the door for a while. Now, just as SLC residents have for years, Milwaukee-ites will have to sip their overpriced Charbucks while reading an inferior knockoff of a weekly that has an exclusive, paid-for In. There are plenty of local coffee shops with better brew--patronize them, whether they have a stack of City Weeklies up front or not.

Remember: Friends don't let friends drink Starbucks. (Bill Frost)

Talking Turkey

[Community] The Utah Food Bank needs donations to help put turkeys on the tables of deserving Utah families this Thanksgiving.

The Man doesn't want deserving families to have turkeys; he wants them to have Soylent Green. Here's your chance to stick it to the man! Every $10 buys a turkey--and Siegfried & Jensen, whom you may recognize from the phone book or even from your own slip-and-fall negligence lawsuit, has agreed to match the first 1,000 turkeys donated online.

So, even though Siegfriend & Jensen, with their suits and ties and briefcases and haircuts, look like The Man, they're actually helping stick it to the man. Just goes to show you can't always judge a book by its cover.

Why not slip the Utah Food Bank a $20? Those mashed potatoes, fresh-baked rolls and apple pies taste better when you've got a warm feeling in your tummy from doing the right thing. (Brandon Burt)

Forgotten Letterhead

[Solicitation] It's time once again for the Utah State Hospital's Forgotten Patient Christmas Project. Hospital volunteers are soliciting gifts for the indigent mentally ill who often receive little or no attention during the holidays.

Food, clothing, hobby items and personal grooming items are all needed. Learn more by calling Shawna at 801-344-4254 or by going here.

And while we're at it, we might put in a pitch for new letterhead for the state hospital's office supply closet. The top of the Nov. 13, 2007 solicitation letter cites Olene Walker as governor (Jon Huntsman Jr. replaced her in 2004) and Robin Arnold-Williams as executive director of the state Department of Human Services. Oops again! Arnold-Williams was last seen at DHS about 3 1/2 years ago.

How about it Santa Huntsman? Considering we're poised for another year of whopping state budget surplus, couldja please deliver a new ream of stationery to the folks down in Provo? (Holly Mullen)

Amacher TV

[Illiteracy in Action] A Saturday post on local blog Voice of Utah (You can post on weekends? Hmm ...) highlighted a classified ad looking for investors for a Flip This House-style TV show. VU made astute points about Utah's housing market and the general unrealism of such "reality" shows, but was surprisingly merciful in not mentioning the wording of the ad:

Where to start? "Amachers"? "Fixing up housed"? "There journey"? Are these really the people you want handling your investment bucks? (Bill Frost)

Becker Metaphored to Death

[Dept. of Overwriting] It's been said that everything important in life can be summed up with a baseball metaphor. Even so, must The Salt Lake Tribune subject us to extra innings? (Holly Mullen)

Black Magic Woman

[Music: Review] Two arts merged to create a magical night of auditory hallucinations and visual fantasy at the Utah Symphony with illusionist Lyn Dillies (left). Wind, strings and percussion from the orchestra composed musical dreams that music inspires; lights, mirrors and three white doves fabricated child-like awe.

The night of tricks and treats began with Dillies conjuring Utah Symphony assistant conductor David Cho out of thin air. Dillies then disappeared backstage until the second half, allowing the audience to build up anticipation and excitement while listening to the spooky sounds of Gounod’s Funeral March of Marionette and John Williams’ suite from Harry Potter. The first act was properly concluded with a perfect pizzicato performance of Anderson’s Plink, Plank, Plunk. The precise plucks of the stringed instruments provoked passion in the audience. Pure magic.

The second half commenced with Dillies taking center stage and conducting her own magical movement, complete with "slicing and dicing" her male assistant Marc LeBlanc. An anomaly in the male-dominated magic kingdom, Dillies—superbly backed by the powerful music of Holst’s The Planets' "Mars, the Bringer of War"—vertically boxed in LeBlanc and in an Alien-esque moment proceeded to push herself, from behind, through his belly. However, humor was not lacking in the LynFlex trick, a Dillies invention to keep fit while on the road: to the accompaniment of Kabalevsky’s The Comedians, LeBlanc stretched and shrunk Dillies small frame to extremes.

Neither music nor magic dominated the performance; each accentuated and complemented the other, leaving symphony-goers chatting in the halls of fabulous musical moments and the wonderment of "How on earth did she do that?" (Kris Heitkamp)

What Would Jesus Bench?

[Spreadin' the Word] Apparently, Florida's Omega Force teaches kids about God by breaking baseball bats, bending steel rods and tearing phone books over and over again. But if you didn't read the mission statement, this video from GodTube.com (a new favorite here) looks more like two hulking bumblebees who scare the beJesus into children through sheer intimidation--which, really, is the more fun way to watch this POD-pumped clip ...



And if anyone can explain this ...




(Bill Frost)

Friday Letters Round-Up

• Even though the private-school-voucher bill was voted down, and I'm not sending my kids to private school, would I still get money for home-schooling them, if I were home-schooling them, which I'm not?

• We're shooting animals to save them.

• We're spinning donuts on Indian burial grounds to save them.

• When Mrs. Crabtree asks me to pound the erasers, I know what she really means.

• Privatization makes everything better. Just look at Blackwater.

• The next person who wishes me "Happy Holidays" gets it right in the mistletoe.

• (And by "lunatic," of course, I mean me.)

• I'm starting to think that, when conservatives use the word "liberal," they're saying it like it's a bad thing.

(Brandon Burt)

MittiWiki

[Politics, kinda] Go here for the latest addition to "Dickipedia, the Wiki for Dicks."

Question: What took them so long?

Hat tip to the public relations jokers at Huffington Post. (Holly Mullen)

Buy the Book

[Holiday Feel-Good] This is a great program:

The South Main Clinic in Salt Lake City (affiliated with the University of Utah health care system) takes part in a national not-for-profit children's literacy program, Reach Out and Read. ROR focuses on children ages 6 months to 5 years old, living at or near poverty level. Family practice doctors and pediatricians distribute carefully selected new, developmentally and culturally appropriate books, including bilingual books available in 12 languages. Each child who participates in Reach Out and Read starts kindergarten with a home library of up to 10 books and a parent who has heard at every well-child visit about the importance of books and reading with their kids.

According to the ROR Web site, "studies show that parents who get books and literacy counseling from their doctors and nurses are more likely to read to their young children, read to them more often, and provide more books in the home. Low-income children exposed to Reach Out and Read show improved language development, which is the single strongest predictor of school success. Children score four to eight points higher on vocabulary tests, giving 2-year-olds a six-month head start developmentally."

Using the existing health care system to deliver literacy advice and books to families, ROR doctors gave nearly 38,000 new books to almost 25,000 Utah infants, toddlers and preschoolers at 23 sites across the state last year.

The South Main Clinic has been participating in this program for several years. I wrote a story about the South Main program a long time ago for another newspaper. I loved the program then; I love it now. And I'm glad I got a news release today showing ROR is still alive and well. If you are wracking your brain for an inexpensive holiday charity idea that will make a big difference this season, try this:

Buy a new book, appropriate for children ages 6 months through 5 years. Bilingual books are encouraged. Board books are also recommended--they're practically indestructible. ROR does not accept books with politically and socially sensitive themes, such as divorce, death, abuse, sexuality (you get the drift). Any books of that nature will be discarded.

Take the book, unwrapped, to:

The South Main Clinic (weekdays, regular business hours)
3690 S Main Street
Salt Lake City, Utah

The rest of this assignment is easy. Sit back and feel good about building society's literacy power. (Holly Mullen)

Got Change for a Ron Paul?

[Funny Money] This week, the guv'ment raided and shut down a company that makes coins for Liberty Dollar, an "alternative currency" outfit servicing folks who prefer "private voluntary barter" when purchasing "aluminum foil hats." The Feds say it's akin to counterfeiting, while supporters of the Liberty Dollar barter system insist that Federal Reserve Notes are fake. So you can see how this is going to shake out.

"For approximately six hours they [FBI and Secret Service agents] took all the gold, all the silver, all the platinum, and almost two tons of Ron Paul Dollars that were just delivered last Friday. They also took all the files and computers and froze our bank accounts," said Bernard von NotHaus (hey, that name is as real as his money), the company's "monetary architect," in a press release. "We have no money. We have no products. We have no records to even know what was ordered or what you are owed. We have nothing but the will to push forward and overcome this massive assault on our liberty and our right to have real money as defined by the U.S. Constitution."

Liberty Dollar equates its "competition" with the Federal Reserve to the U.S. Postal Service's coexistence with FedEx and, at least according to them, Liberty Dollars are used by around 100,000 patrons and retailers. Just don't try tipping a dancer at Trails with a Chiropractic Dollar--learned this the hard way ... (Bill Frost)

Force Play

[Blockheads] It's just toys and a camera -- but didn't Steven Spielberg start out that way?

In a recent contest held by LEGO, amateur auteurs were invited to submit films starring their LEGO Star Wars figures. And in the 13-17 year old age group, the winner from a nationwide pool was a Lehi teenager identified only as "Eden." Check out his winning entry, which suggests both that he's been watching some Monty Python and the Holy Grail lately, and that I really need to be buying my son more LEGOS. (Scott Renshaw)

Going With the Faux

[Trends] All Utah males are now legally required to wear fauxhawks, but few think about what their hair is saying. In the immortal words of Timbuk3:

Hairstyles and attitudes: Are they connected?
Are the styles we embrace a matter of taste, or values rejected?
Hairstyles and attitudes: How do they relate?
How well do we use our freedom to choose the images we create?

'80s Mohawk--It would be easy to imagine that today's fauxhawk is simply a transformation of the 1980s glam-punk mohawk (which itself was a re-purposing of the 1940s-50s mohawk, supposedly based on a hairstyle sported by hunters of the Mohican nation.)

However, where the fauxhawk seems to signal a friendly devotion to modern values and sweaters, as well as the presence of a Y chromosome, the glamhawk--which was worn by both men and women--signaled its wearer's readiness to shoot heroin and engage in listless sex. Even though it could be difficult to tell '80s punks apart when they were aggregated in large groups, the glamhawk positioned itself as nonconformist, whereas the fauxhawk makes no apology for its own mainstream tendencies.

'40s & '50s Mohawk--A much closer analogy can be made with the mohawk of the '40s and '50s which, existing as it did during the lead-up to McCarthyism, was more reticent to declare itself countercultural. That kind of loose talk could easily get a hairstyle thrown in jail or blacklisted. (Eventually, of course, it transformed itself into the pompadour favored by greasers and so maintained its countercultural cred.)

In fact, today's fauxhawk is most closely allied to the hairstyle worn by one of America's most beloved icons: J.B.'s Big Boy. Resembling a dollop of brown Dream Whip, it symbolizes egalitarian values, passable food and friendly service. (Brandon Burt)

Word of the Day and Porn Spam Combined...Finally!

[Spamtastic] You know after months of receiving poorly written porn spams in my inbox advertsing "hott tenes" and "hrony slluttts" I'm finally receiving some that are trying to engage my mind as well as my libido.

This is what I decided after receiving one with the subject line reading "prurient prostitutes"

It was so unique I had to look up prurient, which as it turns out means "having or characterized by lustful or lascivious thoughts." So I learned a new word!

Fantastic! I've even seen two more drop in the box today: "grandiose ladies" and "sophisticated sluts" it's all so refreshing I wish other spammers would take a cue and start catering to a more intellectual niche in the porn consuming market. (Eric S. Peterson)

Numbs the Word

[Music] One of Utah's most enduring (read: they've been around a long damn time) hip-hop groups Numbs have landed tracks on videogames and TV shows in the past, but this week they've made what may be their biggest score yet: "Dedication," a great cut from their latest Nfinity, will show up somewhere in NBC's Friday Night Lights on, well, Friday night.

Says Numbs emcee Mark Dago, "Now if ONLY we could land a song on Lost ... feel me?"

Yeah, because while critics love Friday Night Lights, the high school/college football drama/soap hasn't yet caught on with TV viewers--believe it or not, more people actually watch CBS' boneheaded vampire drama Moonlight in the same timeslot! Numbs' "Art of the Strike" would be perfect for that show ... (Bill Frost)