To Tool and Die For

The Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co. (fortuitously abbreviated Sit & Die Co.) is an old-timey combo that plays, as their handout puts it, “Ballads, Boogies & Blues that meet or exceed Government Standards.” In matching white double-breasted jackets and black ribbon ties, they were properly pepped and perky last night in the back room of Otto’s Shrunken Head, where rockabilly is a bit of an odd match for the woody tiki heads and the rattan-and-shredded-leatherette furnishings. But the mood is good, there’s a photo-booth machine, and tell the truth: you wouldn’t trade this for some kind of Hawaiian luau music, would you?

Frontman Michael McMahon cracks wise as he sets up and knocks through a set of classics spiced with the occasion original composition.

Michael: This next song is inspired by what rules most of our lives.
The Bass Player: Danger?
Michael: No, television.

Sit & Die Co. is a pocket band, perfect for stuff-strutting and making an evening more fun than it might have been otherwise. Got cockles? Warm them here. Upcoming shows: May 17th at Union Pool in Williamsburg, May 27th back at Otto’s on East 14th Street (minus bass but plus drums). Cover? Nah.

I love Cafe 111 in Brooklyn Heights; not only is it booking a deep dip of the usual favorites, and not only does it have an adorable and cool staff, it’s also about two minutes from Pepper Central, so it’s a great place to go home from. Sometimes a guy needs one of those. The Bitter Poet is on stage, minus his backing band The Sound of Angst but plus my favorite hula-hooping burlesque dancer, Miss Saturn (in whose January company I ushered in the New Year by publicly demonstrating my inability to keep a hula hoop airborne at the Slipper Room).

Bitter gets on the wrong side of an unclued patron somewhere during, oh, the first number or so (“Sex … I used to like sex …”), and later, when Miss Saturn does a nimble strip down to sunglasses, bikini bottoms and pasties - while spinning her hoops, of course - there’s a bit of commotion from the back. “You sexist PIG!” is the gist of it. We gape.

Linus’s Favorite Light Bulb Joke

Q: How many radical lesbian feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: That’s not funny.