With the anniversary of the apocalypse only 34 and a half hours away, it's high time you finalized your 9/11 memorial plans. Like most Americans, you could just curl up on the couch under a star-spangled comforter and cry yourself into a coma while CNN reruns archive footage of the Twin Towers.
There are other options, though. For example, why not join Gainesville pastor Terry Jones and his merry band of Christian nutjobs for International Burn a Koran Day? As New Times staff writer Gus Garcia-Roberts notes in his "Zealotry for the Whole Family" report: "These are great times to be a bloated white man hopped up on scripture, bigotry, and Pepsi Max."
See the cut for more scary stuff, including fetish parties, cop fights, Anna Wintour's sunglasses and hair, murder in Miami, and vegan sadomasochists.
If, however, book-burning ain't your bag, you could always squeeze your fat, pale ass into a pair of latex pants and kink it up at, as Night & Day correspondent Sam Eifling writes, "a bacchanal of transgressive eroticism":
The networks will probably air footage of the towers falling repeatedly, which, not to get too Freudian, will be a real boner killer. Still, you'll have to find your inner strength to attend ... Fetish Apocalypse, the latest in the Fetish Factory's Alter Ego series of monthly goth-glam throwdowns.
Now, this week isn't all about Saturday. There are three awesome things going down tomorrow. First up, Hollywood Police officers will be getting their asses kicked:
We're too smart to actually assault an officer. Luckily, though, there's Heroes in Action, a cops-versus-firefighters boxing event benefiting the Hollywood Police Athletic League. At last year's showdown, the firefighters lost all but one bout. Here's hoping they've been training hard so they can beat them blue boys several shades of black.
Next, Anna Wintour and her haircut will be bringing Fashion's Night Out to Miami:
The original Prada-wearing devil, Anna Wintour, concocted the illustrious Fashion's Night Out last year to tempt consumers to shop and support the fashion industry during tough economic times ... And you know Miami wants a piece of that fashion pie too, with Vogue Latin America a key sponsor of the Design District's Fashion's Night Out, featuring stores such as Marni, Marimekko, and FriendsWithYou among the night's participants.
Wrapping up Friday's marathon of fun, Jeff Lindsay will be pimping out his new book, Dexter Is Delicious, at Books & Books:
After the second season, the TV show took a drastic turn away from Lindsay's vision. The biggest difference: In the show, Dexter's wife, Rita, played by the eternally wounded-looking Julie Benz, died last year in a cliffhanger ending while the couple's son lay in a pool of his mother's blood, mimicking Dexter's origins. In the book, Rita is alive and well as Dexter contends with a family life that includes a baby girl and two stepchildren who share his bloodthirsty inner voice, which he calls his "Dark Passenger."
To cap your weekend of oozing, schmoozing, and sobbing, go explore the dichotomy of the clown on Sunday when Cinéclub 24 screens 20-minute silent comedy classic "Butcher Boy." It basically proves the truism that "a clown has two faces: the smiling, cherry-cheeked joker and the dangerously depressed, homicidal boozer."
Fatty Arbuckle was a perfect case in point. The guy was so hilarious that he actually invented the whole pie-in-the-face gag. However, he also might or might not have raped and killed a wannabe actress named Virginia Rappe in 1921. (He was eventually acquitted after three manslaughter trials.) So forgive us if we find it kind of hard not to imagine the fat man lurking in the dark, armed with a Coca-Cola bottle and a cream pie.
Or spend a day tripping out on an art tip with New Times critic Carlos Suarez De Jesus as he rides cosmic waves from Dorsch to Spinnello to OHWOW. The big mind-blower of it all, though, is Carlos Cabeza's acid-shocked suite of "Rhythmic Paintings" at O. Ascanio Gallery:
Cabeza ... ratchets up the illusion by marinating his imagery of young women and surreal landscapes in kaleidoscopic fractal patterns executed with stylized lines and an extreme depth of detail. Cabeza's striking works bring to mind the cosmic art of the '60s by painters such as Peter Max, those psychedelic posters that adorned college dorm rooms, or the album covers of bands such as Cream.
Meanwhile, the movies get misanthropic with Todd Solondz's new masterpiece of not-quite-comedy, Life During Wartime. Reviewer J. Hoberman lists "garish assortment of hot buttons -- race, suicide, autism, sexual misery, self-hatred, Israel, and, his old favorite, pedophilia," writing:
Daring discomfited viewers to laugh at shame and suffering, and then wonder why we're laughing, Todd Solondz is back. Life During Wartime, which won Best Screenplay at Venice and had its local premiere at the New York Film Festival, shows [Solondz] as confounding and trigger-happy as ever.
What? With all this burning of books, crying therapy, cop punching, art browsing, and excessive fetishizing, you still haven't had your fill? Hmm ... Go gobble down some slave slop with Dan Savage and this possibly vegan sadomasochist:
My mistress wants to deny me the pleasure of regular food. We want to create a "slop" that I can eat four to five times daily that is highly nutritious but as bland-tasting as possible. Any ideas? Can you consult a nutritionist?--Seeking Slave Food
Are there any vegan restaurants in your area?
