Meet Layla Lowe Wilcox - Heiress, Modern Woman, Femme Fatale

Layla Lowe Wilcox is wealthy, fearlessly independent, and wildly misunderstood. A columnist for the LA Herald, she writes under a pen name, so no one is the wiser. Layla Lowe earns ger living, but most people believe she's never lifted a dainty, well-manicured finger in her life.  The truth is, between what her father and her ex-husband left Layla in their will, she's got enough cush (money) to fall back on for ten life times.

As a child, Layla Lowe got a taste of the gangtails (horseraces). She and her pals would put on their glad rags (fancy clothes) every Saturday and go to the gangtails (horseraces) and then to the casino on Sunday. You can still find Layla there every weekend. Around the tracks, she's known as “Lady Luck,” cause she never could bet on a losing horse.

Even when Layla was married to Herbert Wilcox, she enjoyed a certain independence. Herbert was a shyster (lawyer) worked long hours, never cared too much about her comings and goings. They got along swell. Until one night, not so long ago, Layla found him in his study with a shiv in his back. Police still haven’t figured out who killed him. They figure it was some droppers (hired killers) with a grudge, repaying her husband for a three spot (three years in jail) their boss was doing in the slammer.

Layla Lowe Wilcox at the "Gangtails"
with local jockey.

Two weeks later, the croaker (doctor) declared Layla's father dead after a couple of troubled boys (gangsters) robbed the rattler (train) he was on and put the screws on (questioned him) him about where he hiding his scratch (money) and ice (diamonds).  Cornelius Lowe was a proud, self-made man, a little too proud, if you ask just about anyone. He wouldn’t talk and it landed him in the back of the meat wagon (ambulance). Now Layla Lowe Wilcox is alone, and on the hunt for her next husband. She says she won’t be too quick to jump into anything though; she enjoys her freedom too much.

Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Meet Jane Doe, Intrepid, Unrelenting Girl Reporter

Newshawk Jane Doe 

Jane Doe is an intrepid, unrelenting REPORTER - a fact seeker, GUNNING for stories at all times. Everyone's business is HER business. She has been on the staff of the local newspaper The Town Tattler ever since a "major publishing house" failed to take notice of her debut literary fiction because, as they said, she was a GIRL.

It was a sweeping tale of intrigue, an opus of delight. A tad bitter over that rejection but emboldened enough to not care, Jane sought refuge in the FACTS, WORDS, the language of the TRUTH. Sure, by writing her novel she bared her weary soul, committing acts of literary grace with lyrical and haunting metaphors. But what did the editors of publishing houses really know of talent?

"A DAME wrote this?!" marvels local newsie Rusty Nail

She'll show them. Maybe with a PULITZER!

She lives alone with a Murphy Bed and two raggedy stuffed toys, from her childhood Muffin and Teddy. It was a solitary time growing up, the only child of a mother who was often institutionalized for various ills and, a father who went out for cigarettes one night and never came back. 

Bitter "Career Gal"

Miss Doe has never married but was engaged once for a very brief time. The groom to be was the son of the local newspaper editor-in-chief. Realizing she had dreams of success she threw the fiance over for a job offer from his father to be the paper's first female cub reporter. 

Ever since then she has flourished and is now... 
A REPORTER!

Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Meet Norah Diamond, Washed-Up Never-Was

Norah Diamond and "Associates" at Tym's Place

Norah Diamond was born Eunice Elvira Bloch  on March 27, 1899 in Newark, NJ. Her parents were Martha and Harry Bloch. Harry was an army private stationed at Fort Dix. When she was six, the Bloch family moved to Fort Lee, NJ. 

One day, as a very young child, Norah wandered on to the set of "Rescued from Eagles" starring DW Griffith. Looking predatory and starved, she was naturally cast as an extra, "chick #5." Pretty soon, due to very loose child labor laws, Norah dropped out of school and was under contract with Champion Film Company, making as many as nine films a day. In 1918, with many important bit roles under her belt (Urchin #3 in "The Perils of Pauline," the consumptive friend of the "Littlest Key Stone Cop," Pretty Pauper #2 in "Robin Hood"), she made her move to Hollywood. First though, the future Mrs. Diamond had a husband to get rid of. When she was 16, Norah Diamond met and married Marvin Diamante, a film cutter with the Edison Company. Horrified, Norah's parents had that marriage quietly annulled. The union produced one child, Tiffany Diamante, who was later "donated" to the Edison Company in a basket left outside the casting office.

"Rescued From Eagles" (1905)

Martha Bloch vowed to chaperone her daughter to her new Hollywood life. By this time, Martha was a widow, Harry having died of tetanus during WWI. (He stepped on a nail while getting off the boat in Calais.) Unfortunately, Mrs. Bloch never made it to Hollywood. Having never had a formal education, herself, she got on a boat that she thought was headed to California - she did not have a strong grasp of geography - and was never heard from again.

Miss Diamond, however, took the train cross country. While on the train, she met, married and divorced fellow would-be actor Walter Alehouse. He would be the second of her 7 1/2 husbands. The 1/2 was due to having accidentally married actress Norma Shearer in the Divorcee (1930) when she was a lighting stand-in for Robert Montgomery during a wedding scene that used an actual priest. The scene was eventually cut from the film.

While in Hollywood, Norah Diamond continued her torrid pace of constantly being cast in largely unsuccessful, overlooked or just cheap rip offs of more successful Hollywood films, including "The Pullman Broad" (1919), "The Shifty Beard" (1920), and "You Should Change your Husband's Pants" (1925). By the middle of the 1920s, Norah Diamond was the most averagely paid "lead actress" in films no one ever cared to see. In the 1930s when the sound revolution hit, no one wondered if she'd adapt.

Norah and "wife" Norma Shearer

Slowly, as the bit roles died out, Norah was left earning money as a stunt double (despite a clear lack of any formal training whatsoever) for Sonja Henie (she couldn't skate) and Norma Shearer (her former husband) - Very few people to this day remember that early Norma Shearer films featured lengthy and vicious fight sequences. (Irving Thalberg demanded it). However, many of these sequences were to be later left on the cutting room floor..

During the fall of 1942, in a fit of desperation, Norah Diamond got very drunk at a party she crashed at the Chateau Marmont and ended up married the next morning to Louis Costello, the half brother of mobster Frank Costello - not, as she had mistakenly thought, half of the comedy duo Abbot and Costello. The poor sap, however, was deeply in love with her and bought Norah her first car (the 1941 Cadillac Convertible she currently still drives) and a house in the Hills. Sadly, Louis committed suicide by shooting himself in the back nine times outside the Flamingo Resort in Las Vegas. With the money he left her (and the ties to certain associates), Norah Diamond bought in to Tym's Place, becoming a "not so silent" partner. 

Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Promotional Sponsorship Provided by Jay Michaels Arts & Entertainment

Innies vs Outies

The Great Introvert/Extrovert Debate

By Ima Shyone

Would I - a socially skeptical, self-proclaimed introvert - be willing to participate in a Game Show…are you crazy?

Really?  The prize is a fully funded year alone on a deserted island?  You have no idea how much I need that...if I don’t get space and solitude soon I may have an unobtrusive and quietly painful nervous breakdown...I’m desperate so -

Yes, I will do it!

Please note that I don’t throw around exclamation points every day – and this is completely out of my comfort zone - but in this case I’m all in.  For the record as an introvert, in my way, I’m often all in.  It’s just hard to tell.  It’s not really hostile.

Belly buttoned-up!

Even my bellybutton is an innie.  I wonder if all introverts are innies?  And are all extroverts outies?  Naval introspection aside, I need this year alone on a deserted island.

So I will be a contestant on the game show AVOIDANCE!  If the other introverts on the show can deal with the cruel torture of being exposed to loud buzzers and assorted extrovert exuberance and inappropriate lack of boundaries and general obnoxious in-your-face behavior, so can I. 

Out and proud!

Hold on…my enthusiastic extroverted cousin, Buddy Friendly, just texted me that he is in fact, an outie.  So maybe there is some science behind the bellybutton question…hmmm, a lot of extroverts wear clothes proudly displaying the navel so surveys for research on the subject could be easily available….I will pose it to the powers that be in the inner workings of the trivia world.

By the way, my cousin Buddy Friendly is delighted that I will be on a game show.  He and his 8 year old son Mikey want to attend.  Mikey is still young so he hasn’t completely  perfected the social dictates of congeniality and perhaps he will bloom into a careful and discerning introvert like his Aunt Ima.  One never knows how kids might turn out.  Apparently I was a love bug when I was 2 years old.  So odd.  Well, I will have a close look at Mikey’s bellybutton and see if it is prophetic.

Oh, speaking of 8 year old potential introverts Mikey has just asked his father to text me his thoughts on innes and outies.  (He is very bright – which is why, despite his vivaciousness, there is hope that he could use that energy to think inwardly instead of screaming).

Here is this clever 8 year old assessment of the whole Innie/Introvert vs Outie/Extrovert mystery:

Jokes by Mikey Friendly

How many extroverts does it take to change a lightbulb?

At least a dozen.  One to make the food to celebrate the cool burst of light, two to buy the drinks, and at least nine to make it a party.  Make that fifteen: someone has to actually change the bulb and two to hold the ladder. 

How many introverts does it take to change a lightbulb?

You already know the answer:  innies are electrified by doing things on their own.  So yes, one.  Well, maybe two.  One to actually change the bulb, and one to make sure no one is else is going to show up to turn one simple household task into a noisy, crowded, energy-sucking party.

Was Jackie Coogan an introvert?

Why did the extrovert cross the road?

Because there were tons more people and lots more stuff going on, on the other side, and I mean, it’s kind of yucky to just walk along by yourself.

Why did the introvert cross the road?

For sure, dude, trying to escape from the extroverts – they’re everywhere man.

Why did the introvert & the extrovert throw the alarm clock out the window?

I don’t know either. 

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Innie.

Innie who?

Innie body know where I can find a quiet little alcove with a lock on the door?

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Outie

Outie who?

‘Owdie you expect me to wait here alone for ten minutes?

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Orange.

Orange who?

Orange you glad I’m outie here?

Come meet all our introverted contestants at...
AVOIDANCE

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

May 19, 20, 26 & 27

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Experiment BIRTE - Good to Go!

SCI-FI-Q Gives Readers

An Inside Look at IRTE-TVs New Programming

New CEO at IRTE-TV Promises Bold New Programming

Jeremy Binderhull, Staff Writer for Sci-Fi-Q

Interviews IRTE-TV CEO Hollander Caul-de-Zak  

      

SFQ Staff file photo.

Science fiction fans respond to news from IRTE-TV with cautious anticipation.

He’s been an enigmatic presence in the regional television broadcasting industry ever since he breathed life back into dying but beloved local tv station, WXRV, thirteen short months ago, reconfiguring it as an analog/cyberspace crossover property for the digital age and renaming its flagship television brand, IRTE-TV.

Get ready to be surprised again, because Rochester’s own Rupert Murdoch is at it… again!

Hollander D. Caul-de-Zak, the brash and eccentric CEO of WXRV, and its most famous outlet, IRTE-TV, has taken a gamble with a bold new programming move. Sci-Fi Q’s award-winning blogger, Jeremy Binderhull, took a few moments the other day to sit down and stick a probe in old Hollander’s brain.

Here’s what we found out...

SFQ: (adjusting settings on recording device) Ah, let me just… Oh, we’re live - uh, we’re recording now, sir.

Caul-de-Zak: (coming at the blogger with a raised palm) I thought you told me you weren’t going to record this first part!

SFQ: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we already finished the - I’m sorry. Here, I can turn it off.

Caul-de-Zak: Oh well! Never mind!

SFQ: What?

Caul-de-Zak: I said Go Ahead! Are you deaf?! (muttering to himself) Or just an idiot!

SFQ: What? Oh. Ok. No, sir. Ok, fine.

Hollander Caul-de-Zak sits silent, stern and stolid, not saying a word.

SFQ: Shall we continue, then? Let’s continue. Ah, I mean, where shall we begin…?

Caul-de-Zak: (twiddling his fingers as if brushing crumbs off his robe) Go ahead…

SFQ: I’m sitting here with relatively new CEO and Chief of Programming at Rochester’s own, and much beloved, WXRV, and their “offspring”, as it were… (coughs slightly) the crown jewel of Lake Ontario South Shore television programming, IRTE-TV. (covering mic and speaking directly to Mr. Caul-de-Zak) Did I say that right? Rhymes with “birdy-teevee”? (whispering) Ok, good. Thank you... Sorry.

SFQ: (clears throat) The buzz on the airwaves is you’re about to shake things up with local original and/or “renewed-retro” programming, specifically in the 5 to 9 p.m. time-slots, Monday through Wednesday, for those customers with satellite dish service or piggybacking off a strong signal from the Canada side of the lake, most likely in the Prince Edward area of the lowest southeastern portion of Ontario. That tends to give the strongest signals to us Rochesterians who like to add variety to our viewing choices… Sorry. Uh, people in the know say this is a gamble that is likely to pay off?

Caul-de-Zak: Well, I’ll tell you what, young man. I’ve been in the industry a long time for around these parts. I’ve learned a thing or two, and I know you can’t win big if you’re not willing to pony up and throw a heaping pile of chips onto the table every once in awhile.

SFQ: Yes, well people in the know are saying -

Caul-de-Zak: I know what people in the know are saying! I am People in the Know! Now let me tell you what we’re up to over here at XIRT-V - that’s what I call it, son. You can’t call it that.

SFQ: Ok, Mr. Caul-de-Zak. Of course, sir.

Caul-de-Zak: Now where was I? (twiddling his fingers again) Oh, yes. About six or seven months ago I was sitting around with my business partners, if you know what I mean, and we were discussing possible next moves for the early evening to prime time slot in our early to mid week extended programming service. And one of the guys was talking about his niece writing a story for a science fiction contest, and - oh, hell! You don’t need to know how the sausage is made! I came up with this great idea for after-school and dinner-time tv watching for our local families and extended programming tv viewers!

SFQ: Great! I’m sure our readers would love to know all about it.

Caul-de-Zak: Alright, well, it’s gonna be great!

SFQ: Great! Sir. I wonder if, perhaps, you might be able - uh, willing to share a bit more detail for our - and your - fans, sir.

Caul-de-Zak: Well, I don’t want to give too much away, but let me just say that we’re giving science fiction fans a whole new reason to tune in on weekday evenings. A whole new reason!

SFQ: Great!

Caul-de-Zak: Let me finish, son. Yes, it IS great! Now I know that nowadays young folks like their entertainment fast and cutting edge - “EXTREME!” I think they call it. People want to feel that what they’re watching is beyond real. Hell, even at the national level the lines between reality and made-up facts is getting blurred. So we’ve gone ahead a retooled many classic science fiction favorites and injected them with new life, literally! (directly to Sci-Fi Q blogger) Now this is where you ask me, “well how are you doing that?” Go ahead, now.

SFQ: Oh, now. That’s now? Ok...So, tell me sir, because I’m sure our readers are dying to know, how are you going to do that?

Caul-de-Zak: I’m glad you asked. We’ve hired a good, sturdy stable of the finest actors in the area - Regional Actors - and we’ve got them performing LIVE in front of a studio audience some of the great science fiction thrillers in motion picture history, and a few as yet unseen. And let me tell you, we’re real excited about this whole deal.

  

Regional Actors in Caul-de-Zak’s WXRV’s IRTE-TV “Experiment”

SFQ: I’ll bet you are! Oh, boy!

Caul-de-Zak: Settle down, kid!

SFQ: Sorry.

Caul-de-Zak: Anyway, as I was saying - and this bears repeating because this is major stuff happening here! We are going to broadcast a LIVE taping of a performance in front of a LIVE audience a series of sci-fi thrillers! Do you understand what I’m saying here?

SFQ: Yes, of course I do, sir!

Caul-de-Zak: This is cutting edge! This is “EXTREME”! Now print that! Or post it, or whatever it is you people do these days.

SFQ: That’s why I’m here, sir.

Caul-de-Zak: That’s why I’M here.

IRTE-TV’s thrilling new sci-fi programming, appropriately entitled The Experiment, will begin with a two-weekend premiere celebration Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m., April 21, 22, 28, and 29.

Watch the creepy trailer here.

Return next week when SFQ Staff Writer, Jeremy Binderhull, brings readers an exclusive super secret look into the clandestine world of “Syracuse Soothsayers,” who claim to hold the missing link between the Star Wars and Star Trek universes.

THE EXPERIMENT

Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. 

April 21, 22, 28 and 29

The Producer’s Club

358 W 44th St, New York, NY

Tickets: $15

Happy Crappy Birthday!

By Jamie Maloney

This week, IRTE will be bringing its interactive birthday party show, Happy Birthday, Stupid Kid!, to the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival in North Carolina. The titular character persists in seeing his 12th Birthday in a relentlessly positive light (even as his family falls apart around him). For many of us in the cast, the show brought back some conflicted memories surrounding our childhood celebrations - the highs,the lows, the excitements, the disappointments.

Jamie Maloney elaborates...

I had birthday parties until I was eleven years old. I'll call them disappointing. The reasons were justifiable if I look at them from an adult's perspective, but at the time I was not happy. 

I lived in a neighborhood which was far from my school and relatively devoid of other kids. It also wasn't the safest area of New York City in the late 70's and early 80's. Add to this, a summer birthday, when people were away on vacation and it's easy to understand the low turnout for my parties. My parents did their best to give me happy celebrations but my social isolation left them and me ignorant of the trends and interests of kids at the time. Sitting in a circle and using teaspoons to pass a tennis ball around may have been fun in their day but the savvy kids of the 80's wanted more. And of course I was at a loss because being the weird kid in class whose living situation was a mystery and who compensated for his awkwardness by acting out didn't earn me many invites to other parties. 

One cool kid came to one party and apparently spread the word because after that my only attendees were children of my mother's friends, kids I had known since infancy and the one cousin I had who was my age until we had a falling out over a Star Wars toy when we were eight. I have old pictures of a line of shirtless boys in our backyard waiting to play another round of "catch the potato" wearing the expressions of a group of convicts before they set out for a day of hard labor, and quite a few more of me pouting in the corner.  

For my eleventh birthday (and final) childhood party, I caught on to the fact that all the kids were having their events at Laces, the local (to my school) rollerskating rink. I invited the entire class, terrified of the humiliation I was certain to endure when surely no one would show up. At the rink, with wheels on my feet and an escape route already planned, my guests started showing up. ALL of them! I was thrilled. They actually like me! I went over to some of the boys from my class to thank them for coming, but they ignored me. Some of the girls did talk to me and let me know that another boy in the class was having his birthday party at exactly the same time and that the girls and a few friendly boys were there for me and the rest were there for him. From anxious to vindicated to humiliated in the span of a minute. I parked myself in front of the Donkey Kong machine in the corner and had to be dragged physically into the back room where the cake and the presents were happening. I was done with birthday celebrations for the rest of my teen years. 

When I was 21, I decided to celebrate my birthday alone. You come into the world alone, so

why not appreciate that? I went to the movies. Alone. And why not? Why not go alone? I felt a bit conspicuous at first but I discovered my solitary viewing preference and in a roundabout way it lead me to understand and embrace my introverted nature. For my 39th I saw the original Planet of the Apes at Film Forum, followed by a showing of The Warriors in Tompkin's Square Park. In Planet of the Apes the date on the console of the ship that Charlton Heston is in at the beginning of the movie shows the date July 14, 1972, the very day I was born. I viewed it as

personal acknowledgement. And as for The Warriors, I arrived at the park about six hours early so I could get a good seat. While I was waiting I watched a little kid roller-skate in circles for about 20 minutes until he was so dizzy he couldn't stand up anymore. Now, as I look back on all those childhood parties I'm grateful for what ended up being the circular the path they put me on. But really mom and dad, potatoes?

​IRTE Presents: Happy Birthday, Stupid Kid! at the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival
THURSDAY, January 26, 2017 @ 7:00pm

SATURDAY, January 28, 2017 @7:00pm

The BeBe Theatre

20 Commerce Street

Asheville, NC 28801 

Tickets $13 

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