Glad you are up again on those legendary heels, Needles. Hope you are feeling better!

Oh Hattie...your concern is touching...sorry you were not here ...but then again I might have been contagious....but then we could have been surly patients together....like at the Lincoln Hospital Detox....was that you???
I have to admit....when I escaped from the hospital I was wearing slides....Kenneth Cole...but I am busy getting the next Hard Liquor ready for this friday....more to follow..

Hard Liquor Theater, Philadelphia's last outpost of subversive politically incorrect performance, is proud to be a part of the 2003 Philadelphia Fringe Festival... they have no idea what they're in for! On August 29 at 8pm we present "The Best Of Hard Liquor.....Of What We Can Remember" : a retrospective of our last season. Performance to be held at the 5 Spot, 5 South Bank Street.

We will be bringing you highlights from "High School Confidential", "Little Trailer House on the Prairie Ave.", "The Hard Liquor Angstgiving Show", "Cholly's Hooker Angels", and more! We promise to recreate the madness...the chaos ...the drunken frivolity that make us Philly's most unique performance salon!

Join hosts Needles Jones and Psydde Delicious, along with our Hard Liquor regulars: Sister Vulgara Mascara dispensing timely medical advice, Helen Back, Louise Carpino, Christa D'Agostino, Tshombe Jabari, Michael Smith, Mark Wiles, Alexia Clarke, LotSix, Ben Edwards, Enya Buttox, Melissa Bang-Bang, Carmen Martella III, and musical guests P.T. Lovecraft.

The Best of hard Liquor was a smash...and it could have easily been a Titanic....rescued by the truly amazing Hattie H....who at the last minute arrived and performed the parts of several performers who were missing in action...in several skits...truly amazing/funny/and tall...Hattie rules.

Hard Liquor Theater returns to the Tritone (what a shock) this Thursday Sept. 18th after the much talked about Fringe production of "The Best of Hard Liquor ...of what we can remember".

The new season will begin on the flip side as we unashamedly present.. "The Worst of Hard Liquor ....performances no one will let us forget." An evening recreating that which even the hardest of liquors can't erase from our collective memories. Your hosts Needles Jones and Psydde Delicious dredge up that which is painful and should have remained buried!

Other guilty performers responsible for the travesties which await you are Carmen Martella, Tshombe Jabari and Michael Smith, Mark Wiles and
Alexia Clarke, Tami and the Teacher, Enya Buttox, and the elusive Kim Hailey. Sister Vulgara Mascara will be in attendence offering spiritual and moral support.(as her work is divinely inspired there is no worst).

Possibly showing up will be Helen Back (who is suffering from being gainfully employed), Lot Six, Vince Mola and Nina Simone, and perhaps a
special appearance from Needles Jones' Irish cousin, Syringe O'Conner.

All this shamelessness will occur Sept 18th at 9pm ish, at the Tritone, 1508 South Street.

Hard Liquor Theater , Philadelphia's notoriously trashy performance salon will be working it at the Tritone this Thursday Oct. 16th with "SHOW and TELL...WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER" A night dedicated to tale of relapses , unemployment , abandonment, family vacations , war , depression and sweat. Hosted by Needles Jones, (Psydde will be somewheres near the Rocky Mountains getting spanked by a cowboy), this is sure to be a night filled with inappropriate whining and bitching. Surefire fun for the irreverent, such as yourselves.. Alexia Clarke with Kim Hailey promise to bring something new and angry to the table. Former HLT doormaven Robert Connor promises some new sketch comedy.. Michael Smith and Tshombe Jabari will show up with something tinged with to much Jim Beam, Carmen (formally Carmen Martella the third) is sure to do something besides emulating Cher and Madonna. Sister Vulgara Mascara will once again try to educate the uneducatable. Tami and the Teacher are sure to bring a new meaning to Higher Education. Mark Wiles is of course going to slur his way through some tragic summer escapade. LotSix has a song to sing, brilliant and bitter. Two Street Toni promises to be here this evening, after a long absence, her tale is bound to be hysterical, we are going to find out where she has been. Enya Buttox said she might make it, who knows ?? Helen Back might be to employed to attend, but she did promise to pop in and share her woes,. And our special quest, Kitty the famed exotic dancer will grace our stage with her presence before she moves onto bigger and more fieldgreener pastures..
This tell all evening promises to be filled with all the sordid details of a Hard Liquor night.
Thursday Oct 16th 9PMish
Tritone
1508 South St .
3 dollars with printout/flyer
5 dollars or more if you want to be generous to the performers
3 dollars for PBR and Jim Beam
the self degradation is free
Please bounce this shamelessly to your friends

For the past four years Needles Jones and Psydde Delicious' Hard Liquor Theater has been ushering in the Seasonal Affective Disorder season with the infamous and appropriately titled evening, "ANGSTGIVING...the holiday that keeps coming back". Hard Liquor offers up to you loud/ garrish/ challenging/ unseemly/ and decidedly not funny performances on the sordid stage at the Tritone, 1508 South Street. The evening promises to serve up an extra large helping of angst with this being our fourth anniversary, and because this has been a particularly bad year for many of us...the line-up of performers shamelessly exposing themselves is quite long... and very exciting!

The Thorazine Players return with two pieces of highbrow theater. The first will be in the time-honored tradition of the Grade School Pageant as we bring to you our rendition of "The Pilgrims and Indians First Thanksgiving". And if that wasn't enough, later in the night the Troupe du Thorazine returns with the original production "Mitch Rockwell's (Norman's gay nephew) First Thanksgiving Dinner."
Special Guests for the night include Greg Giovanni who will induce some angst with a very painfull Noh flute piece he learned in Japan. Dom about town Athena Lourdes with her subslut sidekick Becky Vomit will tittilate. Songster Alec Ounsworth will finally have his wet dreams fulfilled by sharing the stage with Needles Jones. Direct from the Springfield Mall the suburban "Tom Waites-esque" sounds of Rev. T-Bag and the T-Bagadelics. What could any event about Angst be without a glimmer of relief, so Mr. Dead Guy will grace our stage, thanks to Dave Deneen of the U of the A.

Of course many of the Hard Liquor regular's will be there. It is our 4th
anniversary! Uber-performer Scott Johnston,the drunk and irritated Mark Wiles, the educated gender bending stylings of Tami and the Teacher, rock diva Helen Back, the lunch money thugs known as Tshombe Jabari and Michael Smith, the strange enigma now known as Carmen (formally known as Carmen Martella lll), the overwhelming Enya Buttox, multi-media doyen LotSix, a bitter/angry sapphic moment with Alexia Clarke and Kim Hailey. And of course our lady of perpetual indulgences Sister Vulgara Mascara, who will not only shower us with talent but a timely public health message as well. It doesn't stop there, the long absent Chair of Woe returns to offer a chance for members of the audience to purge themselves in the 12 steps tradition of sharing.

We do this all despite the fact that Brecht might be rolling over in his grave. After all it is our pain. We share/We drink/ We heal. ...(can you say that in Latin!)

Needles Jones & Psydde Delicious' Hard Liquor Theater:
4 Year Anniversary of "Angstgiving... the holiday that keeps coming back."
Thursday Nov. 20, 9pm-ish.
Tritone, 1508 South Street.

Totally forgot to post last months show "It's a Wonderful Life...Goddammit!!" starring Johnny Cash..totally twisted and perfect for the holidays...Now for this month's offering
This past weekend the Philadelphia Inquirer presented their midyear education guide. We at Hard Liquor Theater were quite disturbed by the glaring omission of our own academic experiences. Once again our lives and accomplishments have been marginalized. There was no mention of the drunken sordid mid-week soirees, or the excessive designer drug use, or rampant sexual escapades that marked many of our years at institutions of higher learning. That's right... HIGHER learning..
Needles Jones and Psydde Delicious present this month's Hard Liquor Theater offering "HIGHER EDUCATION", another trashy performance salon!
The Thorazine Players will present their own version of "The Graduate"(and here to you Needles Robinson..) with Rev T-Bag and Anna Frangio, plus a revival of Hard Liquors classic rendition of "To Sir, With Love".
Special quest performer, direct from NYC, exchange student and tranny pop princess Lisa Jackson will grace the Hard Liquor stage. Lisa Jackson will be performing a special acoustic set. Her band performed at this past summers G-Room Film Fest party and was quite a hit!
The other scholastic achievers on board for the evening will be the scholarly Tami and the Teacher, the Baltimore cultural attaches Tshombe Jabari and Michael Smith, the academic Mr. Dead Guy, the Sapphic musings of Alexia Clarke, and our Germanic version of poet laureate Dylan Thomas, Mark Wiles.
We would be remiss not to include the classics; Mathematician LotSix, the Shakespearean Carmen the Third, and presenting the Greek classics as no one else could Enya Buttox.
Ever mindful of the needs of errant students, Sister Vulgara Mascara will be ministering and educating with a timely public health message.
Not to be seen as elitist Ivy Leaguers, we will be presenting direct from local community colleges Joey Martini and the Maybe Peek-a Boo.(if they can get off academic suspension) and Brown and Gardner.
Of course The Chair of Woe will be available for those needing to purge themselves of painful college memories.
HARD LIQUOR THEATER S HIGHER EDUCATION
THURSDAY JAN. 15TH 9pm-ish
TRITONE 1508 South St.
Jim Beam and a Pabst for 3 bucks
3 bucks w/printout or 5 bucks without: door goes to the performers, so pay up cheapskates!
"The only 12 steps we take are to the bathroom"

What an amazing performance...the crowd went wild..and promoters were crawling out of the woodwork to book her...Lisa Jackson thanks for the duet (Simon and Garfunkel would be rolling in their graves..if only they were dead)...it was documented and will be used in the future for some unseemly extortion effort. Needles Jones

MOTHER FLAWLESS SABRINA COMES HOME TO PHILADELPHIA!!!

(Press Release reposted from Needles Jones)

On Sunday, April 25th, at 8 PM, The Tritone (1508 South Street, Phila.) proudly presents "A Reading Of Beads", the acclaimed solo performance by drag pioneer, producer and actor, Mother Flawless Sabrina, in her only area appearance. Born in South Philly in 1940, Jack Doroshow, AKA Mother Flawless Sabrina began producing drag beauty pageants when Gay life was lived underground, the penalties for wearing the clothing of the "opposite" gender were stiff and severe, and drag pageants were the one of the few outlets available for such expression. Her first production at age 18, was in the "rented ballroom of a decrepit hotel" on North Broad Street in the late 1950s and led to many others in the greater Philadelphia area.

From there she worked her way up to The Ritz-Carlton in Boston (with generous help from some of the more famous members of the Kennedy clan,) and New York's prestigious Town Hall in 1967, captured on film in the documentary "The Queen", which is also available on video for sale or rental from TLA video.

"The Queen" captures the essence of this very lively subculture, almost twenty-five years before "Paris Is Burning", exploring the behind-the-scenes rivalry of the pageant hopefuls as well as their on-stage personae. It also stars Philadelphia's Harlow along with a very young International Chrysis, who would later go on to become Salavador Dali's transgendered muse.

Flawless Sabrina, a New York resident since the late 1960's, previously performed "The Reading of Beads" to a sold-out audience at New York's prestigious Passerby Gallery earlier this year.

Co-producers of the Philadelphia event include New York nightclub drag icon Hattie Hathaway (Pyramid Club, Jackie 60, WonderBar) and, very fittingly, Philadelphia's own Needles Jones, loser of the 2003 Miss Philadelphia Pageant and the Mistress of Hard Liquor Theater.

Tickets are $7.00 in advance / $10.00 at the door. Advanced tickets may be purchased at two TLA Video locations (1520 Locust Street and 517 South 4th Street). The TLA is a supporting sponsor of this very special event.

Autographed copies of "The Queen" will be on sale following the performance.

The Tritone will also be featuring their legendary menu of homestyle cuisine with a kick, as well as offering a special cocktail named after the Mother herself!

Hard Liquor Theatre gets some press-- finally!
Probably the best and funniest event going on in Philly nowadays, HLT was recently visited by a bunch of Temple U. journalism students:

view the article

What a great article -

IMHO Needles is a Superstar just waiting to happen. Would love to take a lil Mboards class trip to one of these!

It's easy...I did the class trip! NJ Transit to Trenton...grab that other train accross the platform ...make sure you getoff in PHILI!!!(I do mean getoff!)...Oh, make sure you go Hard Liquor Theatre (that's what you came for, unless your get distracted somewhere else)...then ask Needles to drive you to the bath house where you can sleep it off until the morning ...then repeat the same in reverse...then you will be back in NYC...I think??? I had a blast!

The other train is SEPTA and often leaves up ahead from the very same track.
And the Philly bath house does take credit cards as I am sure you discovered love.
We tried to watch to make sure you made it the half-block down Chancellor Street where we dropped you, but the traffic made us move. Glad you made it!