Results tagged “chuckpalahniuk”

Kids Support Bronx Teacher Suspended For Masturbation Story

Following the suspension of a Bronx English teacher who assigned 11th graders a short story about tragic masturbation attempts, students have defended the instructor while adults have expressed skepticism over his decision. Louella Hatch, whose grandson attends the Bronx School of Law and Finance, is one of the adults who objects to teacher Greg Van Voorhis' assignment of "Guts" by "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk. "Well, I really don't go for that. Well, I'm old fashioned anyway, but I don't like things like that," she said. "If it is true, he can't still be around the school, you know?" she added.

A popular high school English teacher has been suspended after assigning his 11th-grade students a short story about masturbation by "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk. Greg Van Voorhis, 30, issued copies of "Guts" — which details three increasingly catastrophic masturbation attempts by teenagers with props including a carrot, a candle, and the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool — to about about 100 students gearing up for the English Regents exam. That didn't go over so well with school administrators at the Bronx School of Law and Finance in Marble Hill, where the seven-year veteran was quickly reassigned from his classroom duties while the Department of Education investigates.

Last night Radar Magazine hosted a screening of the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's satirical novel Choke, about a sex-addicted med-school drop-out (played by Sam Rockwell) who works as an Irish indentured servant in a Colonial-era theme park to keep his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother in an expensive private medical hospital. The movie's creepiness gets under your skin a little bit, but it also has a lot of heart, and it's very funny and full of twisted surprises we won't spoil here. Suffice it to say that the anal bead Choke bookmark (photo after the jump) that came with the gift bags speaks volumes about this "dirty-minded, satirical-psychotic comedy."

THEATER: The Ohio Theater is the site of two of summer's best play festivals, and the first, Clubbed Thumb's eleventh Summerworks, started yesterday with Anne Washburn's I Have Loved Strangers, "in which true prophets, false prophets, and non-prophets battle for the salvation of ancient New York." On the company's website http://www.clubbedthumb.org/ you can do some "research" before going, via various eyebrow-raising links; or you can just rely on the winning trifecta of excellent track records: of the Ohio, of Clubbed Thumb, and of Washburn herself, whose play Apparition recently showed to well-deserved acclaim. Over the next weeks, two other plays will be in the festival -- Erin Courtney's Alice the Magnet, and Rachel Hoeffel's Quail -- but each is showing for only a few days, so get under the thumb while you can. - Mallory Jensen

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