BAD GIRLS ON GOOD FRIDAY! Burlesque on Long Island brought to you by BellMojo and Sugar Shack! Featuring Musical Guests CRAVING STRANGE!
Feb 22, 2010 Cool Stuff
We are very happy and excited to announce that BellMojo Brings Burlesque To Long Island is going to be a monthly event! P. J. Finnegan’s in Levittown will be serving as our host for these events and we will once again be collaborating with the wonderful gals from Sugar Shack Burlesque. Our first event will be on Friday, April 2nd and will be called BAD GIRLS ON GOOD FRIDAY and our musical guest will be CRAVING STRANGE!
I have to mention that you can listen to Craving Strange being interviewed by the legendary DAVE RABBIT here. If you don’t know who Dave is, he was the man behind Radio First Termer, a Pirate Radio Station which broadcasted nightly, January 1, 1971 to January 21, 1971, from Saigon during the Vietnam War.
According to Dave’s site “Radio First Termer was hosted by on-air personality “Dave Rabbit,” an anonymous United States Air Force sergeant. The show was broadcast from a secret studio in a backroom of a Saigon brothel. The make-shift studio walls were lined with mattresses to deaden the sounds emanating from the brothel. “Dave Rabbit” later admitted in an interview, that he was forced to stop broadcasting because he was fearful that his friends, who were protecting him and the show, were in imminent danger of getting in trouble by his base commander, who hated his show and suspected that someone was protecting him. The purpose of Radio First Termer, according to “Dave Rabbit”, was to “bring rock and roll to the troops on the front lines.” The station played “hard acid rock” such as Steppenwolf, Bloodrock, Three Dog Night, Led Zeppelin, Sugarloaf, the James Gang, and Iron Butterfly, bands which were popular among the troops but largely ignored by the American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN). The music was mixed with antiwar commentary as well as skits poking fun at the U.S. Military, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, the Base Commander, just to name a few. Raunchy sex and drug oriented jokes were always a tremendous part of the nightly shows.”
Way cool, right kids?
Ass-Kicker of the Fantastic kicking ass fantastically at the Bellmore Billiards
Feb 22, 2010 Cool Stuff
This Friday night, starting around 9 PM at the Pool House Billiards Hall & Pub, BellMojo’s own Paul Ranieri and his Ass-Kickers of the Fantastic will be playing a night of rock and roll from Aerosmith to Zeppelin! This band features Jon Bivona, Sean Meagher and Sean Dolan, all Paul’s compadres from The Mark Wood Experience!
Back Behind The Bar
Feb 18, 2010 Cool Stuff
The Pub. A place long venerated in song and prose. For those of you that do not know me (and are actually not presumptuous enough to conclude this because of my last name) I’ve been in a few pubs. Both as a professional and a customer. From my time as a kid asking the bartender if I might play Space Invaders while my dad nursed an afternoon beer to my time asking a kid why her ID had a different name than her Facebook profile, it has almost always been an fascinating experience.
Tending bar or waiting tables or working the line can be said to be quite like being in military in that there are vast gulfs of boredom and monotony interspersed with moments of absolute insanity. You are also surrounded by social misfits and control freaks with anger-management issues. In the military this type of person is often called the Drill-Instructor, in the restaurant business they are usually referred to as Chef. There is also an element of danger working in a bar or even a high-end restaurant, particularly if those places are frequented by certain folks that have money, influence or bravado, combine these things with booze,drugs and sex (or the potential for sex) and things can get volatile.
Cooking is also dangerous, it’s like Bourdain says, “Food is Pain”. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have hurt myself or seen others hurt in the business from just stuff that happens in the kitchen. When you have intense heat (sometimes in a non-water soluble liquid suspension that likes to stick to things and is flammable), cramped quarters, unsure footing, sharp objects (both metallic and ceramic) and the pressure of expedience, eventually someone is bound to get hurt. Gods, the stuff I did to myself working a slicer in the deli business alone! You could also imagine what goes through your mind when you pick up a sizzle platter and realize you can’t put it down because it has become fused with the flesh on your fingertips or how ridiculous you might look after lighting the burner jet on a steam table after the underside has filled with gas. I assure you, Yosemite Sam would have been proud.
Benefits are almost unheard of in Mom & Pop stores, however there is certainly the upside. You usually eat and drink for free, often in restaurants at which you don’t work (we call this being in the “union”) and the money can be quite good. You work in an environment where people are willing to cover shifts and in which extra work is easily found. The people that are in the business are good time folk and the folk that come in are looking to have a good time.
In the restaurant business you will also make important contacts and learn valuable lessons. Like getting to know the person that will deliver a package 3:45 am or seeing that a Galliano bottle is an extremely effective close-quarters weapon. In this day, Galliano bottles are few and far between behind the bar, but those new Van Gogh flavored vodka bottles would do nicely. Although the business end of the Galliano is weighted and that Van Gogh stuff is really too delicious to waste in a melee.
And romance, you got that in spades, I tells you! If you’ve spent any real time in the biz you’ve had at least one trist in a public bathroom, and any man or woman that is a bartender worth their salt has bedded one object of their desire, quite often their future spouse, on the couch in the boss’ office. Like I said, no benefits but there are perks.
Big News! BellMojo Productions to Collaborate with RAW Studios!
Feb 8, 2010 Cool Stuff
Hey, it’s Pat Kennedy, folks. Some of you out there know that I am not good at keeping secrets. As a matter of fact I am terrible at keeping secrets, particularly big ones that involve old college friends, legendary comic-book illustrators and prominent actors, still I kept my damn mouth shut!
But, lo and behold, here I see an article on DREAD CENTRAL about CLOSED FOR THE SEASON, a supernatural-abandoned-amusement-park thriller directed by Jay Woefel that is screening at Monster-Mania 14 this coming March 12th-14th. The director, as well as stars Damian Maffei & Joe Unger will be in attendance! Wow, a chance to see a new feature horror film that also stars fan favorite Aimee Brooks! This is shaping up! Then I notice that the article mentions my pal Damian Maffei, a BellMojo Productions regular, is starring in something called “Thomas Jane presents SUCKERFISH”!
Well, if everybody must know, I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Jane recently and he gave to me a one-act play written by one W.T. Underwood which I have submitted to the Fringe Festival NYC. Should we be accepted to the festival Mr. Jane will co-produce along with Damian and me. Tim Bradstreet, Mr. Jane’s partner at RAW Studios, has volunteered his remarkable services as production designer. Damian will star, I will direct and Paul Ranieri, will provide original theme music for the show. Anna Camp of HBO’s TRUE BLOOD and EQUUS has said “So I read the play and I felt like I got punched in the stomach then twisted around a pole and before I knew it I was left hauntingly alone…“Suckerfish” is definitely a ride to take…you might get a bruised, in a good way. Very well written and fast paced.” Anyway, we at BellMojo Productions are waiting with baited breath for confirmation from the NYC Fringe and while we do so we are working to bring Thomas Jane’s directorial debut DARK COUNTRY, to a theater in the NYC area for a screening in Super-Terror 3D! If you want to get it in your neck of the woods, shoot me an email at pat@bellmojo.com.
If you’d like to check out Damian Maffei performing live you can come out Monday, February 8th for a FREE staged reading of “Miracle Day”, a new play written and directed by Tom Sime (Writer in Residence at Theatres at 45 Bleecker in New York) at the intimate downstairs theater at 45 Bleecker.
We’re really psyched that Tom has put his faith in us to take a work of such power by a playwright as interesting as Underwood and bring it to a New York City stage. It’s an honor and a privilege. Oh, and remember, DARK COUNTRY is available on DVD, and Tom can be seen on HBO’s new hit series HUNG.
Legs Malone in the New York Post!
Feb 8, 2010 Cool Stuff
Wow! I can’t tell you the last time I ran out to buy a copy of the New York Post but that’s just what I did when I found at that BellMojo Production’s oft-time collaborator, the Lovely Legs Malone: The Girl with the 34 and a Half Inch Inseam! So, Raus! Mach Schnell! Get out there and pick up today’s Post and remember that Legs will be one of the featured artists Friday, April 2nd for BAD GIRLS ON GOOD FRIDAY at P.J. Finnegan’s, 3275 Hempstead Tpke in Levittown, N.Y.!
Tags: Burlesque on Long Island, Legs Malone, New York Post, Sugar Shack Burlesque
A Love For Football!
Feb 7, 2010 Cool Stuff
Undoubtedly some folks that might be reading this are wrinkling their brows at what they might think is a love letter to the mega-corporation-military-industrial complex’ bread and circuses MKULTRA-esque mind control machine, so be it. Yes, sports are meaningless distractions that the powers that be use to veil us from the horrors that are the mundanities of life and I am one of those that lives vicariously these through genetically magnificent, drug enhanced, armored psychopaths let loose on a concrete field covered in industrial outdoor carpet that is called the Grid Iron. I think we need distractions as humans, and if you are a person that tunes into the horrors of such stuff as AMERICAN IDOL and doesn’t recognize it for the same hit of opiate for the masses, for shame! That being said, let’s talk about football. Around my house as a kid sports were pervasive and while the old man had respect and love for all sports (particularly America’s passtime, a sport of which my father had one of the most treasured pieces of memorabilia, a signed picture of the Bambino) we were a FOOTBALL house! My father was a long suffering Giants fan and I am still a Pittsburgh Steelers fan in some ways because of him. I bet him my weekly allowance, $10 (a truly princely sum to an 8 year old circa 1979) that the Steelers would defeat the HATED Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII! They did 35-31 and comics were only .35 cents back then and among the gargantuan stack of 4 color adventure was Avengers #181, a milestone in and of itself! I have since been fiercely loyal to the Steelers and while the next year they were to go on and defeat the Los Angeles Rams (that’s right kids, LA Rams) the ensuing 1980s were not so great. Still football was the sport to which I most gravitated and still enjoy the most to this day. I can still remember points of my life with dear friends, watching the kick that went wide right from my bended knees at Caroline Maher’s house or discovering I wanted John Elway to actually win when he dove for the first down against Green Bay. I was watching the game with Angry Al Puco, one of the few men on the planet that has had the privilege to play QB to my Center, and the maniacs that rented a mansion with him in Bay Crest! Boy, did the neighbors hate us! These are two that readily come to mind with Ralphie Parker-like nostalgia. If you are a non-fan that’s never witnessed those moments, YouTube ‘em and you won’t be disappointed! I also love watching old NFL Films simply for the voice-overs! The late Harry Kalas’ baritone still gives me goosebumps! And the level of play, let’s face it folks, there is no sport on the planet were more forethought and energy are put into every play than in the NFL! Period! The End! That’s why there is no way it can be played more than once a week! Those are some of the reasons I love football! Well, those reasons and wings! Have a Happy Super Bowl everyone!