Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

ONWORD AND UPWARD WITH THE AHTS: Today I saw (or as our beloved GUVNOR would say, I seen) four musical bagmen, one with what sounded like an amplified violin, which led me to think, why not get them together into a band! THE STREET PEOPLE BAND! They could make great music together, and share the revenues -- plus as GUVNOR is always talking about how THE AHTS leads to increased prosperity that leads to more jobs for bellhops and maids and janitors and busboys and all sorts of COGS for a 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMY, he could sell it to the NEWS HACKS as part of the charm of our everlovin' CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE! (And no doubt the hacks would cooperate as they're always dreamin' Bill Douglas dreams in their hermetically-sealed luxury news suites and their gated suburban communities.) FRISCO has street people, we'd have street-people MUSICIANS. I say go for it!

PLUS I passed the end of a bus-and-truck production matinee of Mamma Mia! with the doors open and the crowd making its rock-concert cheers, and some ac-TOR nonentity making a condescending remark about our IGGLES (as a cast member no doubt does for the home team of every NFL city the show tours), and I somehow thought, I should like to have been there, paying my eighty bucks to see a group of nobodies attempt to sing and dance so I could talk about it for ten weeks, but then I thought, I once came across a thread in a cast-album BBS asking what the posters' least-favorite recording was, and Mamma Mia! unsurprisingly turned up a lot. I'll keep my eighty bucks in my pocket.

Here's a story, by the way, which shows what a business FOLLY the AHTS could be here in Philthydelphia, especially with CHEAP CHANNEL coming in. It would be sad to lose this fine space, the Boyd Theater, but we need a supermarket more.