SROP Storefront Calendar for 2018

It’s that time of year again: Holiday Hustle and Hard-Sell Time! Wait a moment... Who really cares about sales and money? No rodent I know. Instead of a sales pitch for the free books the rodents at Smashed-Rat-on-Press desperately want to give away to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the great October Revolution back in 1917, we’ll do something else.

We now present the first instance of what might become an annual ritual in November: the SROP monthly public event calendar for the upcoming year, 2018.

Very few non-locals even know that Smashed-Rat-on-Press has acquired a small store-front space at the bottom of Insectivore Boulevard on the outskirts of Santa Banana. The building still looks abandoned, but we assure you that’s by design, not accident. SROP has been holding small “speakeasy” style events there since 2014. Seating and standing-room are both extremely limited. In fact, the fire marshal has told us the venue capacity is 65 persons, including musicians, caterers, and bar staff.

Here is a list of the important main events we have lined up so far in 2018. This early notice should allow readers to plan their trips to the Bay Area in advance and avoid missing some spectacular entertainment events! (And yes, we’re aware that we probably don’t have enough diversity, but we’re working on it.)

Friday, January 5 - Join the furry-faced Head Rodent and all the rodentlings on Twelfth Night as they collectively welcome the local favorite band, Janis Epiphanette and Her Holy Harem in their first half-dead appearance of the new year. Copies of the questionably tasteful new album (on CD) will be available for purchase, and as raffle prizes. Admission $12 at the door for individuals or $6 per couple of any stripe or spot configuration, no matter how garish. Also, in the grand Xmasy tradition around these parts, no person or rodent will be turned way for lack of funds, and the homeless will be miraculously fed.

Thursday, February 15 - Join us for our first Susan B. Anthony birthday bash. Author Kajolium Broadwick will be on hand to sign copies of Three Maidens in the Dark. Musical entertainment beginning at 5:00 p.m. will include rarely-heard extra-terrestrial field recordings, with an introduction by Dr Rachel de Grenville. Author Mantissa Etherbright will perform a live reading from her first poetry collection, and also sign copies of her books while eating oily vegan hors d’oeuvres to assure lots of messy finger prints are left behind on the artifacts, for posterity. Admission is free, but come early for the best seating. Bring your own bread, and a corset or brassiere to burn, if you so desire.

Thursday, March 15 - Come and mourn the death of Julius Caesar, or celebrate it, depending on your viewpoint. Local comedy duo the Popping Pumpernickel Sisters will provide a slide-show with wildly inappropriate toasts and “humor” in Latin with English supertitles. Starting at 7:00 p.m. there will be a series of brief but mournful musical interludes by the local skiffle band, Dead Senatorial Interns, who will hand out sparklers and firecrackers for the grand sing-along finale. Free tequila and black ale will be provided throughout most of the evening by the new Mescaline Valley Brew Pub. (That is, while supplies last or until midnight, whichever comes first.) Admission is free, but donations of food and money will be accepted. Nobody under 21 will be admitted. Clothing optional, sunglasses advised. No bladed weapons are allowed.

Wednesday, April 18 - San Francisco Earthquake Day. Beginning at 4:00 p.m. there will be a short historical slide show with free lollipops and a huge wobbly gelatin tower for kids under the age of 87. Then, at 8:00 p.m. join musical guests Seismic Sisters in Cryme on the first stop of their fifteen-city North American tour. You have never heard Post-Gregorian Feminist Chant performed like this, or this loudly, by nuns. Earplugs advised for the faint of heart. Admission of $4 covers the whole evening. A few copies of Graduale Romanum will be available for the sing-along portion. Bring your own alcohol. There is a smoke ’em if you got ’em area in the alley for stoners, but tobacco products are discouraged.

Monday, April 23 - Bard of the Avon Lei Day. Join us for a group body-lotion spreading event at 2:00 p.m. (Blankets, many kinds of lotion, a profusion of plastic leis, and umpteen THC products will be provided by Sexton Weed, local marijuana growers.) After the post-grope hose-down in our back alley at 3:45 p.m., join M.C. Dagnabit Q. Joanz at 4:00 p.m. for the fourth annual backwards reading of all the Shakespeare Sonnets, including occasional lute accompaniment by Prof Adrienne Strudel, UC Santa Banana. Note: a sign up sheet for the open-mic readings will be available near the cash register beginning in early April, so don’t delay if you want to pit yourself against the local champions of previous years. Grand prize will be an autographed copy of The Last Minstrel from Chaos, with lesser prizes to be determined.

Saturday May 5 - Join the Head Rodent and the entire Rodential crew for the third annual Kitchen Sink de Mayo, an uninhibited celebration of surrealist poetry. Readings will be kicked off at 2:00 p.m. with excerpts from the work of Shenanigan Cheesefield. Yummy Slices of Substance will be provided by the local Pizzazamatazz Café on Fourth Street. Soft drinks will be served all day from a pair of hand-painted porcelain sinks by our local Leonora Carrington impersonator. Admission is $5 for the clothed, $1 for nudes, or Free if you come recognizably dressed as a female surrealist. A smörgåsbord of pre-recorded ten-channel cacophony will be provided by the local DJ team, the Concrete Crate Croon Party.

Friday, May 25 - Towel Day. You know you can’t resist an evening of alcohol-free “scotch whisky” (wink wink) with live readings from HHGTTG. Towely and terrycloth attire only, all others will be turned away at the door. Admission $15 per couple, $10 solo, $2 if you come dressed as Zaphod Beeblebrox, or $√-1 if you come with Schrödinger’s Cat.

Friday, June 1 - Join us for a rollicking celebration of the birthdays of Norma Jeane Mortenson and Christiane Vulpius. Dance to the immortal music of Elvis Presley while watching a bootleg 16mm print of Some Like it Hot with live readings in German from the works of Johann Goethe by “Professor Emerita” Tina von Trinket, formerly of UC Santa Banana. The $7 admission charge covers one generous strudel, two shots of Jägermeister, short-term rental of a blonde wig, and a packet of confetti.

Tuesday, July 24 - Amelia Earhart’s Birthday. Slap on your aviator glasses or smudgy goggles and your leather cap! Join us as we read passages from West With the Night (don’t ask) and drink communal champagne from a replica of Amelia’s leather shoe. At 8:00 p.m. there will be a screening of Wings (1927). Admission is $5 to cover drinks, or Free if you come dressed as Bessie Coleman.

Saturday, August 18 - Help the rodents celebrate Nineteenth Amendment Day with votes for women. One of three classic films will be screened, after a vote by women in the audience. (If you’re male, feel free to stay home and vacuum the floors; you’ve probably voted too many times already. But do come back on August 22 for our very loud Karlheinz Stockhausen birthday event, still in the planning stages; your vacuum cleaner will be welcome then.)

Tuesday, September 18 Celebrate Greta Lovisa Gustafsson’s birthday with a screening of Ninotchka (1939) followed by a screening of Silk Stockings (1957). Between the two films, we will also celebrate early the birthday of glamorous former presidential candidate Victoria Claflin Woodhull (born September 23, 1838), with a rainbow-frosted cake and “Free Love” pins. A compulsory donation of $19.17 secures an uncomfortable seat for both films plus two generous pours from one of the communal vodka bottles, a sanitary napkin, a cup of borscht, and a slice of rainbow cake in your palm. (Bring your own plate and utensils if you need them. Admission free if you come dressed as Dmitri Shostakovich or Galina Ulanov.)

Wednesday, October 31 - The enormous Sanguinity Hematode Birthday Bash. You will not want to miss this super-scary Halloween night extravaganza! At 9:57 p.m. precisely, by black-light, Sanguinity herself will emerge, wailing like a newborn, from a giant crêpe-paper vulva (we are not kidding) to begin pouring grog and commence with signing copies of her books. Don’t have one of her books? Too bad. You’ll need one in-hand to even get in the door of this once in a lifetime sure-to-be-sold-out event. Community pumpkin carving begins at 7:00 p.m. accompanied by spooky music. In a very rare public appearance, Pansy Schneider-Horst has agreed to be the official event photographer and Mantissa Etherbright will be in the audience, with carving tool in hand. Admission is $13.13, which covers bottomless drinks, a black mask, one handful of multi-colored candy condoms from the giant pumpkin, a slice of Sanguinity’s birthday cake, and all the damp pretzels you can endure.

Wednesday, November 14 - Begin the autumn season of thanks with a quiet evening of sublime, but rarely performed, musical works by Fanny Mendelssohn. Members of the First Lesbian Classical Septet, currently artists in residence at UC Santa Banana, will perform live in a veritable rainbow of sparkly ball gowns at 7:00 p.m. Autographed copies of their latest CD will also be on sale. Admission free, BYOB.

Thursday, November 22 - Thanksgiving Dinner, Rodent Style. Join us for our annual gratitude celebration featuring a whole roasted vegan capybara, which you probably didn’t even know existed unless you’ve been to one of these secret feasts before. Contrary to how it sounds, it is not a capybara that was raised on vegetables, it’s a special capybara-shaped blend of soy-protein, secret sauce, and exotic vegetable stuffing which has been perfected over the last decade by Marianne Morta, renowned head chef at the Vegan Vindaloo Diner on Blonde Street near the hills. Ritual lopping of the “head” will begin at 5:00 p.m. after appetizers and non-alcoholic grog at 4:00. No persons under the age of 21 will be admitted after 6:00 p.m. when the real booze comes out. Polygonal Dancing begins at 9:00 p.m., hosted by the Fuzzy Handcuff Chamber Society, a local erotic music club, with live “instruments”. Admission is $12.50, and an additional donation of $20 is suggested to assist the homeless. Price includes the full meal plus entertainment, and reservations are strongly advised because this will be a sell-out event. (Special discounts apply if you are homeless, come dressed as D. B. Cooper, or bring him with you.)

Tuesday, December 4 - Come and celebrate the banning of suttee in India (1829). Around the barbeque pit in the alley behind the venue a sumptuous smörgåsbord of Japanese-style grilled vegetables with pickles and rice will be available all evening beginning at 5:00 p.m. Paper dolls costumed as famously pompous male historical figures will be provided (five for a dollar). There will be a few self-service hand-held blow-torches lying about, and nobody will tell you what you can or cannot burn with them. A continuous loop of funeral music will be played throughout the evening, and at 8:00 p.m. Sati Regulation XVII of 1829 will be read aloud in its entirety. Admission is $5 for drinks without food, plus $10 for all the grilled organic vegetables you can stand. Please wear sensibly non-flammable clothing, or none at all.

Sunday, December 16 - This auspicious day marks the birthdays of Ludwig van Beethoven, Jane Austen, and Margaret Mead; as well as being the date of the famous Boston Tea Party. Come and hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony while computer-generated readings from all of Jane Austen’s novels are simultaneously broadcast over sixteen loudspeakers. Local nude mime troupe The Hairy Masked Picklers will provide dance moves and silent instruction from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., followed by a live anthropological analysis of the event dubbed over silent film footage of Margaret Mead. (Narrated by Dr Rachel de Grenville.) In addition to a smattering of cheese and olives with limp semi-flatbread, there will be German beer, Lady Grey tea, five brands of Scotch, and crumpets with marmalade for dessert. A donation of $16 per person is suggested to cover catering and entertainment costs. (Musicians will happily be admitted for free if they bring instruments of aural destruction for added din.)

Sunday, December 23 - Mourn with us the demise of Vincent van Gogh’s left ear. Craftspeople from Maid Marian’s Marvy Metalworks will be on hand with plenty of colorful and amusing materials, ready to assist party-goers in making unique do-it-yourself dangly earrings. A donation of $5 will cover materials and free sparkling water; add another $5 for beer. Bring your own snacks. Guard your own ears. Anything deposited in the “homeless box” will be donated to the Third Church of the Furry Vagrant, to be opened on Boxing Day at 11:00 a.m.

Monday, December 31 - The Grand Rodential New Year’s Eve Bash begins at 6:00 p.m. with the ritual immolation of the Bad Old Year. Other entertainment TBA, but we assure you it will be an affair to remember.