Assorted ramblings from the world of entertainment:

• Back in August, I wrote about Anthony LaMarca’s latest album, “Weapon,” and its unique distribution model, being available for download only through a QR code printed in the PETRA Int’l Herald, an 8-page newspaper he created.

At that time, LaMarca — who is a member of the Grammy-winning band The War on Drugs and releases his solo material as The Building — said he wanted to perform the “Weapon” songs live locally but hadn’t picked a date or a venue.

The date is Friday and the venue is a bit of a surprise — St. John’s Episcopal Church, 323 Wick Ave., Youngstown.

“It’s nice to have a little bit of an alternative venue,” LaMarca said. “I love Westside Bowl, obviously, but it’s nice to have a space like that. They’ve done a lot of instrumental music and stuff that just suits itself to a quieter listening environment.”

LaMarca is one of three solo performers who will be performing under band names.

Lee Boyle, who’s been making genre-spanning experimental music for a quarter century with his band Third Class, will perform solo along with Gutter Sparrow, which is a music project of John Mosloskie, a New Jersey native who now lives in Rome, Italy.

“We’ve known each other for a long time, since when I lived in New York City,” LaMarca said. “I forget how we first ended up meeting and playing together, but we just ended up becoming friends, playing shows together, and then at some point, he came out to Youngstown to record. He fell in love with Peppermint (Recording Studio) and fell in love with Youngstown. He always says that he’s married and his wife is Italian, so they live in Rome. But he’s like, ‘If I wasn’t married, I’d be living in Youngstown.'”

Mosloskie is back in town working with LaMarca at Peppermint, and that visit was the impetus that inspired LaMarca to put the show together.

This will be only his second time playing some of the material, and that PETRA newspaper serves as more than just a promotional tool. In concert he uses it as a percussion instrument.

“It’s kind of fun and performative in a way that I feel like I’m stepping out of my comfort zone,” he said. “But I think it works. I’ll play about half the songs off of that record, and then some soft stuff from (his previous album) ‘Aspiration.'”

The music starts at 8 p.m. Admission is $10 at the door.

• Folks didn’t run to theaters for the remake of “The Running Man.” It earned about $17.5 million on its opening weekend, not an impressive figure for a movie with a reported budget of $110 million.

It’s set in a near future of extreme economic disparity, and crass, extreme reality programs are used to distract the masses from the inherent unfairness of their world.

There’s nothing subtle about director/co-writer Edgar Wright’s handling of the material, but I liked it a bit more than I expected. And there are enough parallels between the film’s plot points and some of today’s headlines that “near future” feels like weeks away.

Those who have Paramount+ can stream the 1987 version of “The Running Man” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was set in 2025. The special effects and action sequences are a bit cheesy compared to contemporary films, but it doesn’t shy away from the sociopolitical elements in Stephen King’s source material (released under his pen name Richard Bachman). Richard Dawson is surprisingly good as the smarmy host of the deadly reality show.

The original “Running Man” also includes several Modern Props creations — including an exploding necklace — that are among the hundreds of items Warren native John Zabrucky donated to the Trumbull County Historical Society for its planned Museum of Science Fiction and Fantasy Arts.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com