CLUB REALITY: Friday was not the best night to visit Club Fantasy — the strip club lost its entertainment license right around happy hour. But it did offer drinks and a great view of the abandoned dance floor. Not much else to look at, except disappointed guys slumped over their beers. Women with gravitationally impossible breasts in the day-glo wall art. And two wriggling, bikini-clad waitresses — ours informed us her body “just wanted to dance.” Last call came long before midnight. One sodden client lamented, “I wish the girls were here.” The next best thing was a clothed preview of coming attractions: Once off duty, the two waitresses scampered on stage in blue- jeans, latched onto the requisite poles and announced, “Now we’ll show you tricks you would have seen tonight.” Perhaps — if the sin-free city prevails on this one — they can find work with the South Burlington Fire Department.
COMEDY OF ERRORS: The free ticket promised “two hours of fun and surprises.” Not to mention a bounty of free food. But hard hats would have come in handy at the million-dollar renovation tour at the Flynn Theatre last week. Local comic Woody Keppel designed a series of vaudevillean vignettes to showcase theatrical improvements completed last summer. In the process, which advanced from the projection booth to backstage, he dropped the new dimmer switch off the balcony and surprised a showering diva. Great gags. Everything went smoothly until the group went out to behold the backstage wall, from which physical comedian Murph — known for his masochistic antics — rappelled onto an elderly donor. “It kind of ruined her night, I think,” says Keppel, whose week went downhill from there. The next day he and his girlfriend were robbed in Charlotte. Along with computers, jewelry and video equipment, the burglars scored a screenplay, songs and half-completed novel. Back-up discs? “They got ’em,” Keppel laments. Nothing funny about that.
IN BRIEF: It’s not easy living up to a band name like Envy, but the Burlington band did a pretty good job — while it lasted, Rumors of record deals have been circulating for months, but the alt rockers are not signing up, they’re breaking up. “We love Burlington and everything about the music scene, but we feel we have exhausted the possibilities here,” says guitarist-vocalist Matt Hutton. By the end of the month he and guitarist Sean Toohey plan to be making music in Boston — without their female rhythm section. “We may change our name, ” Hutton says, “but the songs will go on.” And on and on… O.J. had his year in court. Paul Teetor expects to be out in three weeks. The former Burlington Free Press reporter was canned two years ago for “distorted” and “inaccurate” coverage of a local racism forum. Teetor turned around and sued his former employer for wrongful termination and defamation. The trial, originally scheduled for May, is supposed to start on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Fifty-five shopping days ’til more courtroom drama.
GOOD CONDUCT: Forget about the white-haired, baton-wielding archetype of the symphony conductor. The new director of the Vermont Youth Orchestra is scarcely older than his senior musicians. Twenty-six-year-old Troy Peters left a job in Philadelphia to accept the part-time job directing the statewide student symphony. A product of a youth ensemble himself, he says, “I feel strongly that a music director should be in the community.” Peters, a composer and violist, has already picked up extra gigs in the area: He teaches music in and after school in Burlington and at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Shelburne. Move over, Michael Tilson Thomas.
This article appears in October 4 • 1995.
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