i1 I 2W The Michigan Daily We nd, etc. Magazine - Thur y, September 16, 1999 0 WEBSITE OF THE WEEK ThedormStore.com You've probably noticed advertisements for a slew of online college bookstores on the radio or television. These companies are all trying to provide your textbooks online. Another company is trying to do the same thing with furniture and dorm supplies. ThedormStore.com is the dorm supplies answer to sites like ecampus.com and bigwords.com. Everything - from hampers to microwaves - is available for purchase on this site, The site has a really cool feature that allows you to make a wish list of products and email it to someone else (parents,'rich uncle, personal shopper) to buy for you. Best of all, shipping is free. The Mchigan Dail'Weekend, etc. case they make it huge. The Detroit. (313) 535-3440. THEATER As Bees in Honey Drown See The Genius of Goethe HOSTI/ Ensemble commemorates Goe birthday with scenes from his The show also features work ft rary artists Dante and Italian Boito and Gounod. Mendelsso Michigan League. 763-8587. dents. ALTERNATIVES Gelek Rinpoche Brunch and grating spiritual practice intc sored by Students for a Free Michigan Union Pendleton Roo Open Mic Offers a chance to a cuss literature. Borders. 11 a. i Green reigns as king of teen humor By Paula Span The Washington Post NEW YORK - The idea, comic Tom Green explains as he and the MTV video crew head downtown in a van, is to show up on Wall Street as a trader - the Arctic Circle variety, steering a dog sled, offering pelts and pots in exchange for people's handbags or cameras - and then record the way passersby react. "Hopefully, we'll get in some trouble," Green says. "The goal is trouble." Naturally, he will swathe himself in a massive fur parka, which is currently stashed in the rear of the van. "Everyone on the show condones the slaughter of animals," Green notes. "Encourages it!" a production assis- tant chimes in from the back seat. It takes a while to set up the rather elaborate scenario - Green in mukluks; a wheeled "sled" laden with fur swatch- es, hunks of cheese and a plastic sala- mi; a mutt named Cosmo - and then Green's off down the street doing his hit-and-run comedy. And the most arresting thing about it, frankly, isn't how completely demented the scrawny guy looks in his Nanook ensemble. Or the way he hands a startled business- man a slab of Havarti in exchange for his suitcase, then ticks - off sidewalk vendors by grabbing their merchandise and leaving them dented cookware. Or even the encounter - the video clip that will probably wind up being used on the show - where Green charges into an office tower and encounters a security guard who sternly tells him, "You can't bring your dog sled in here." It's that after only five episodes of "The Tom Green Show" on MTV, star- ring an odd Canadian comedian whom virtually no one south of the border had heard of a month ago, a whole lot of people under 30 recognize the man in the mukluks. "Oh, it's Tom Green," someone mur- murs as the comedian tries to wrestle away a woman's scarf. "Tom Green, wassup, man?" "Funny (expletive), man." Which was not precisely the reaction that Green and his writers, always in. search of outrage, had in, mind. But it will do. You can't exactly call his half-hour show "alternative comedy," which is the overbroad label for non-punch-line fun- niness mixed with performance art. "It makes you think of someone in a black turtleneck, scrunching in a corner with candles, drinking pig's blood," Green objects. You could call it adolescent humor, given that it highlights such bodily- fluid encounters as Green sucking milk from a dairy cow's teat or delivering a stream-of-consciousness monologue while buying condoms. In fact, Canada's Comedy Network, which began airing a version of "The Tom Green Show" last year, proudly round- ed up various critics' pans - "sick, offensive" and "amateurish and infan- tile" and even "a circus of cruelty and mayhem" - and trumpeted them in a promotional spot. But its 27-year-old star sounds wounded. Fond as he is of fart and pee jokes, "I want the show to be labeled a smart comedy show, not a gross-out comedy show," Green says, gamely trying to have it both ways, all ways. So there is no convenient description for what happens Monday nights at 10:30 except that it's highly unpre- dictable, as likely to prompt gasps as laughs, and a hit for MTV Of the net- work's 'prime-time shows, it's No. 2 among MTV's core 18-to-24-year-old viewers (behind "Celebrity Deathmatch") and No. I among 12-to- 34-year-olds. I Green, a goateed beanpole who has suggested he belongs on the cover of Sickly Man magazine, looks bleary by the end of the day. After the trader bit, he spent all afternoon impersonating a consumer reporter, striding into 14th Street stores to demonstrate that the appliances he'd bought earlier were full of spaghetti and meatballs and demand- ing explanations. Like so many of the professionally outrageous, though, he's calmly articulate off-mike and off-cam- era. Eating eel rolls at the sushi place near the office, explaining and defend- ing himself, he's ... nice. hIfact, he's still reeling from the fact that just two days earlier, he made his first U.S. talk show appearance - with David Letterman, whom he'd only been watching and worshiping his entire life. Green showed the video of the time he had his parents' Honda secretly spray- painted with a lesbian love scene and See TOM GREEN, Page 58 Om Puri and Rachel Griffiths in Udayan Prasad's "My Son the Fanatic." Annie Hail (1977) One of Woody Allen's best about a couple that can't live together but . can't live apart. MLB 4. 7 & 10:20 p.m. $4, $5 dbl. My Son The Fanatic (1999) A middle-aged Pakistani taxi driver finds solace in a hooker he befriends. Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty St. 7 & 9 p.m. $5.50. What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) Woody Allen's first film is a Japanese spy film that he comi- cally dubbed into English. MLB 4. 8:40 p.m. $4, $5 dbl. MUS/C .Swingin' Utters Can you say 0i? The Utters sure as hell can. The Teen Idols open the show. The Shelter. 8:00. (313) 961-MELT. Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival Artists in this installment of the festival include Uncle Jesse White, Thornetta Davis, Jimmy Dillon, Steve Turre, and Pharoah Sanders. Gallup Park. Noon. $20 ($15 for students). Speedball Opening the show are Five Horse Johnson (no relation to Blazing Saddles, hon- est) and Disengage. Magic Stick. 9:00. (313) 833-9700. THEA TER Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead See Thursday. 11 p.m. As Bees in Honey Drown See Friday. 8 p.m. ALTERNATIVES Stand-Up Comedy See Thursday. 8 and 10:30 p.m. COURTESY OF MIRAMAX Sunday CAMPUS CINEMA Tarzan See Saturday. 5 p.m. The Lady Vanishes (1938) An early Hitchcock film about an elderly English governess who disappears from a transcontinental train. Angell Aud. A. 7 p.m. Free. . My Son The Fanatic See Saturday. 7 & 9 p.m. Strangers On A Train (1951) A Hitchcock film about a pro tennis player who finds himself stalked by the man who killed his estranged wife and wants him to kill his mother. Angell Aud. A. 9 p.m. Free. MUSIC Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival Final install- ment of the weekend-long event will be closed- out by Keb' Mo'. Not to be missed. Gallup Park. Noon. $20 ($15). Jackyl Remember the song they did with the chainsaw? Be afraid, be very afraid. And be pre- pared to rock. Very hard. I-ROCK Nightclub. (313) 881-ROCK. Monda CAMPUS CINEMA German Animation (1999) A fe German animation. Michigan T Liberty St. 7 p.m. $5.50. My Son The Fanatic See Satu MUSIC Bird of Paradise Orchestra Gu friends? Yep, they still play big still do it at the Bird. Bird of P 662-8310. Jazzhead Do you like acid? Do Do you like Acid Jazz? You the Jazzhead. Fifth Avenue, Royal 9922. ALTERNATIVES MFA Works-In-Progress Ex Thursday. Jazz in Leonardo's The univer Program showcases the Sat Group. 8-10 pm Pierpont Comi Tuesda CAMPUS CINEMA Howling Diablos Will they ever get a big time record deal? Doubtful. But go see them, just in My Son The Fanatic See Satur Kevin Costner stars in "For Love of the Game." #,. .. 4 .0$"*. * 1 rt e,*. k., ..... a APi 44' xN sa, a"