Bob Calhoun and Floyd Webb Bring Count Dante Night to Quimby’s In Chicago
FRIDAY SEPT. 5, 2008 at 7pm COUNT DANTE NIGHT with Documentary Filmmaker Floyd Webb and Dante imposter and author Bob Calhoun AT QUIMBY’S BOOKSTORE 1854 West North Ave. [map], Chicago IL 60622 www.quimbys.com
Bob Calhoun didn’t know what he was getting into when he decided to name his San Francisco rock band and punk wrestling alter ego after Chicago’s notorious kung-fu hairdresser, Count Dante. Over the years, Calhoun has received strange emails from Internet ninjas as well as death threats and cease and desist letters from disgruntled martial artists. All of this, as well as years of wrestling Sasquatches and Devil Chickens while audiences hurled tortillas at him, is detailed in tongue in cheek fashion in Calhoun’s new memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling (ECW Press).
Now Calhoun is coming to the home of the original Count Dante to read from his punk-wrestling tell-all with a special Count Dante Night at Quimby’s Bookstore on Friday, September 5th. Chicago filmmaker Floyd Webb, who is diligently producing a documentary on the original Count titled The Search for Count Dante, will introduce Calhoun and discuss the Dante phenomenon and Calhoun’s place in it. Webb is currently mired in an ongoing fair-use legal case with some of the same martial-artists who attempted to sue Calhoun almost ten years ago. Webb’s documentary and his bizarre and ongoing legal battles have been the subject of articles in the Chicago Reader and Time Out Chicago.
ABOUT BOB CALHOUN AND BEER, BLOOD AND CORNMEAL: Calhoun/Dante slugged it out with Sasquatches and wrestled men in lion suits, all while mobs of hipsters hurled corn tortillas at him. Under the stage name of Count Dante, Calhoun was a grappler and master of ceremonies with San Francisco’s punk rock/lucha libre phenomenon, Incredibly Strange Wrestling. ISW emerged from the back alleys and seedy clubs of the city’s South of Market District to headline the historic Fillmore and tour the U.S. and Europe. The shows combined the most subversive wrestling matches ever staged with the raucous rock and roll of NOFX, The Donnas and the Dickies. During the height of ISW’s popularity, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Metallica’s James Hetfield could be seen tossing tortillas (which the promoters supplied) at ringside with the rest of the fans.
In his new memoir, titled Beer, Blood & Cornmeal (ECW Press), Calhoun delves into ISW’s organized insanity with all of the dark humor that it deserves. It’s a story of urban misfits risking their necks for local celebrity in one of America’s most famous cities all told against the backdrop of the dot com boom and bust and an increasingly corporate entertainment industry.
Since its release, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal has charted on the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bestseller list and has been written up in the Chronicle, SF Weekly, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian. Roctober Magazine has called Calhoun/Dante “the dynamic wrestling, seminar conducting, kung fu fighting, rock and roll genius,” and Maximum RocknRoll raved: “This book was like candy—I could not stop eating it up… A great read.”
For review copies of Beer, Blood and Cornmeal or other press materials, please contact ECW press Publicity Director Simon Ware at simon@ecwpress.com.
www.beerbloodandcornmeal.com For more on Floyd Webb and The Search for Count Dante go to www.thesearchforcountdante.com