As you know, the Trocadero is closing. The vaunted music hall holds special memories for tens of thousands of people in the area from the ages of 3-103, myself included. I saw an incredible Public Enemy show there, I saw the Great Nippleini have a ghastly accident there, I emceed a Neil Diamond cover band show there. But for me and Chip Chantry, some of our career highlights and lowlights took place in that building over the 2+ years we hosted Movie Mondays, from 2004-2006. They had initially hired me to host a quiz there for the movies, and if I had done that, the run probably would have been more successful. But I knew about the Troc’s vaudeville history, and I wanted to be a small part of it. So each week, Chip and I would come up with games for a ridiculous game show called the Wheel of Terrific. The games would have some sort of tie in to the movie playing…so for instance for Office Space we had a game called “Die Muthafucka Die” which was little more than a contestant smashing an old printer to pieces with a golf club. Some weeks the crowd roared in approval. Other weeks, Philly hipsters stared at us with dull, vacant looks. And after a two year run, the gig was up.
But I ran into long time Troc owner Joanna Pang at her new venture, Chatayee Thai at 1227 Walnut (great food!) a couple of weeks ago. She talked about how painful it had been to close a Philadelphia institution, and how much the music game has changed in recent years. Then we started talking about the old Movie Mondays and how much fun it was. She told me that she was still playing out the string there with a few more Movie Mondays. I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if Chip and I did our show one last time?” and she said, “Sure, go for it. What movie would you want to do?” There was only one correct answer to that question…those of you who know me know I’m a huge Pee Wee Herman fan. So I reached out to Chip to see if he was down. He was. And so, on Monday June 3rd, we’ll meet at the Troc one last time, we’ll do a ridiculous vaudeville show , and then we’ll watch one of the funniest movies ever produced…which also happens to be the very first movie we ever did for Movie Monday. If you’re a fan of the Troc, and want to enjoy one last show there, we hope you’ll join us. Info can be found here.