Upper WET Side
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5/28: Did We Miss Anything?
May 28, 2012
Douglas Ferrari, curator of the Shore Institute of Contemporary Arts, welcomes one and all to the 2012 edition of SculpToure in Asbury Park and Long Branch — and whether you’re driving an obscenely expensive Italian sports car or taking the shuttle, you’ll not want to miss this annual installation of three-dimensional visions, on view now through September 16.
We are BACK on the blog — and look out, we’re armed with CARTOONS, which we decided we’ll be messing around with on a trial basis as a way of paying tribute to some of our fave people on the local arts scene.
That said, we were never really “away” from our beat; just busying ourself with other work and sitting out both the (which unspooled just about a block and a half from our front door in Asbury town) in particular and Memorial Day weekend in general. Without bothering to get a press pass to the FlimFlamFest — and definitely without any desire to pay hundreds of bucks to see a bunch of 80s/ 90s oldie acts supported by bands who regularly play Starland Ballroom for cheap — we spent the weekend strolling about town; trolling for stories and listening to the featured acts loud ‘n clear through our living room window.
Stories of course were actually few (and then again, too few to mention) during what turned out to be one ruthlessly efficient exercise in crowd containment, corporate branding and controlled “chaos.” Having lived in Red Bank through many of those tense, claustrophobic Fireworks extravaganzas and music fests, we’d never seen such a well orchestrated movement of people and resources — to the point where, as reported elsewhere, the city’s streets remained eerily quiet. with parking spots staying vacant during what should have been one of the busiest weekends of the year, and many downtown merchants throwing in the towel early all three nights of the fest.
We weren’t immune to irrational Bamboozle Paranoia ourselves — in fact, in our gig as theater critic we passed on attending a May 19 opening night at Two River Theater in Red Bank (reckoning we’d have a better shot at battling the traffic Sunday afternoon), only to discover afterward that we’d missed an opportunity to meet ‘n greet one of our heroes and personal saviors — Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies!
Ah well, live and learn — or just be doomed to repeat, as Hornswoggle Fest recurs in AP next May. Molly Mulshine of the new online news site Asbury Park Sun (who did an ace job monitoring the real-time outlook around town that weekend) summed it up best in a feature article that appears in the current issue of TriCity News; for us it’s Excelsior and onward, into a newly summerized week of amusement and diversion — a few highly anticipated items from which we share with the flip of a paperless page…
5/3: Blunt Force Troma; Gruen & Unusual
May 3, 2012
Hello, Lloyd: One of the biggest events of the Whole Kid Year returns to Asbury town this weekend, when madcap mogul Lloyd Kaufman brings the TROMADANCE Festival back to the center Lanes for TWO big nights, May 4 and 5!
The MayDay claxon’s already sounded; things are getting tensely tight around Asbury Parque (and by extension, the Upper Wet Side) in anticipation of the blizzardlike blitzkrieg that is the Bamboozle Fest — a wristband Woodstock that not only corrals “the kids” for three days and nights within a space where people actually sorta/kinda live, but THIS year invites their fiftysomething parents to stay and do something other than idle in queue at the designated pickup/dropoff areas. More on THAT as it happens midmonth — for now the pace picks up considerably in and around the place Where Music Lollygags, and if you dare to stray from the clearly demarcated Festival Area you’re SURE to find something weirdly wonderful…
FRIDAY and SATURDAY! 13th Annual TromaDance Festival at Asbury Lanes. You don’t have to be a conventioneering connoisseur of the Troma Films brand to have a blast at this yearly freewheeling filmfest, but it helps to enter into the bargain with some working knowledge of the MegaLoBudget sleaze cinema “studio” that gave the world The Toxic Avenger (plus associated kid cartoons, sequels and Off Broadway musicals) — a brand that continues to survive, maybe thrive, in a climate where the Drive Ins, the home video market, and even FILM as we know it have effectively joined the body count of motion picture arts and sciences.
Originally kickstarted in Park City, Utah as a freebie flip-off to the corporate-indie Sundance suckfest, TromaDance returns in its 13th annual edition to the atom-age Asbury Lanes this Friday and Saturday (May 4-5), with that most Fellini-esque of neighborhood rockbars playing host for the fourth(?) time to a no-charge, “No VIP” event in which “celebrities and fans are treated equally.” Lording over the affair once more is that Disney of Disturbia, that David O. Sleazenik, that Louis B. Mayhem mogul of madness — Troma chief, producer, director and sometime actor Lloyd Kaufman.
Some three dozen shorts from filmmakers all over the world (none of whom need to pay an entry fee) will be screening over the course of the weekend, with each night also spotlighting a new feature-length fracas. Friday’s full-lengther will be Manborg, a “cult-tastic throwback to 80s sci-fi action films like ROBOCOP and THE TERMINATOR” from Steven Kostanski and the Astron-6 Video collective — in which “a soldier, brought back to life as a cyborg, fights alongside a band of adventurers against demon hordes in a dystopian future.”
That latest from the director of Father’s Day will show at 8pm on May 4 (program starts at 7pm) — and at that same hour on Saturday, it’s a free screening of The FP, a grindhouse gangbang co-directed by the sibling tagteam of Jason and Brandon Trost, the amped-up cinematographers behind the likes of Crank: High Voltage and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Brother Jason stars in this story of “two gangs locked in a turf war in rural wasteland Frasier Park, in the deadly arena of competitive dance-fight video game” — a “fury of fierce footwork, triumphant montages and neon street wear” that features as narrator none other than James Remar of The Warriors (and, lately, Dexter). Take it here for Dorothy Creamer’s interview with Yale alumnus (and former GWB classmate) Kaufman, conducted for our old Red Bank oRBit site and archived for your enlightenment here on the upperWETside. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 7pm/ FREE!
That ain’t even the one-sixth of it; flip the record over for more…
2/4: Save the Roller Disco!
February 5, 2012
TRAGEDY returns to Asbury Lanes, as the ONLY metal Bee Gees tribute you’ll need see this weekend puts on their bowling shoes for a bit of Saturday Night Kegler — while lensman Mike McLaughlin is among the vibey visionaries represented in PINK NOISE, the 3rd Anniversary group show opening at Parlor Gallery.
All in all, it wasn’t the best week in which to be PINK.
Between the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s face-reddening “Pink-Gate” PR debacle, and the viral backlash against the infamous McNuggets “Pink Slime” photo, the once-proud color of Barbie and Elvis and Quisp was looking a beat-up and pulpy shade of purple by Friday. Which is why Pink Noise, the official Third Anniversary group show installation at Asbury Park’s pop-art paradise Parlor Gallery, could not have arrived with better timing to pull the PINK back from the BRINK.
A chance to feel “In the Pink” is especially needed here in a week with the news that Asbury Lanes — that Cold War-era tenpins taproom turned kitschy-cool alterna-arts odditorium — had been sold by its longtime owner to local developers Pat Fasano and Vince Gifford. It’s a bit of news that set off brain-alarms in anyone for whom the Lanes has served as everything from Fellini-esque corner bar, to a destination worth crossing several state lines to reach — and, justified or not, it was a potential tragedy that put many of us on a reflexive “Save the Roller Disco” alert straight out of 80s movies like Xanadu and Lunch Wagon.
Of course, the Lanes is no stranger to Tragedy, having hosted this hemisphere’s premier all-metal tribute to the music of the BeeGees many times over the years. Tonight, February 4, the 2012 edition of the continent-crossing metalizers (brothers Barry Glibb, Mo’Royce Peterson, and Robin Gibbens, with little brother Andy Gibbous Waning on bass and family patriarch The Lord Gibbeth, on drums) retakes the center Lanes in a late-skewed setsnack for which your award-winning DJ Jack the Ripper will serve as “amuse bouche.”
Before that, however, the windows of the Cookman Avenue arts bloc’s Parlor Gallery will be steaming up like an electric casserole dish, as First Saturday rages in downtown Asbury and some dozen music-minded artists (including DEVO poindexter Mark Mothersbaugh) team up for a de-waxing blast of Pink Noise.
