No Words Daily Pix: Photograph by Hugh Crawford
Life In A Marital Institution
Producer Anna Becker says that Life in a Marital Institution "is a feel good date night for married people because they’ll feel better about their marriage after hearing about James Braly’s." You can catch this fun show at the SoHo Playhouse.
James Braly spent over twenty years researching life in a marital institution. He’s performed his autobiographical stories on Marketplace, NPR, and at The Whitney Museum, Long Wharf Theatre, and The Moth, where he is the only two-time winner of the GrandSLAM and a featured performer on The Moth/TNT National Story Tour. His monologue, Life in a Marital Institution was featured at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, opened this February in New York City at 59 East 59th Street Theaters, and will transfer to SOHO Playhouse starting on June 26, 2008.
He lives on the Upper West Side, I think. But the director of the show, Hal Brooks, lives in Brooklyn. Here’s what he thinks of our fair borough:
I moved to Brooklyn reluctantly after nine years in a tiny 10′x15′
studio on Prince Street.Needless to say, I’ve much more space.
Initially I moved to a beautiful 1 bedroom in beloved Brooklyn heights—but have recently relocated to the newly-built State Renaissance on Schermerhorn.
I love it. Its five minutes from all the essentials: across the street
from the A/C train, a five minute walk to Smith Street and a stone’s
throw (or a quick bike ride) to BAM, the park and the promenade.It’s really more downtown Brooklyn than it is Boerum Hill – but that’s changing rapidly as more and more development occurs.
Favorite nearby spot, especially now: blue marble ice cream. Whoa.
Brownstoner Says: There’s Activity at Trader Joe’s Site
Every time I go over there to shop at Urban Outfitters, I check on the status of the upcoming Trader Joe’s at Atlantic and Court. Not yet, not yet. But today, the last day of June, Brownstoner says otherwise. Check his site for pictures…
The crew working on the Trader Joe’s space on Atlantic and Court has
boarded up the building’s windows, and the only view inside is through
a couple cracks in the plywood. A reader sent us an email on Thursday
saying work has picked up over the past week, with new equipment like
fridges and freezers arriving daily. This was how a small section of
the future grocery looked yesterday afternoon.
Kung Fu Panda
If it’s very, very hot and everything else you want to see at the Pavilion is sold out, go with Kung Fu Panda. I saw it last night with Diaper Diva, Ducky and OSFO and we loved it. Even if we had to sit in the front row of the tiny theater on the top that has a bunch of messed up chairs no one can sit on.
Jack Black is the voice of Po, the Panda. Dustin Hoffman is the voice of the Master Shifu. Even Manhola Dargis at the New York Times’ enjoyed the film not expecting to.
Visually, this animated film from Dreamworks is actually quite gorgeous. Here’s Dargis in her New York Times review:
That outsider is even more irresistible when nestled amid so much lovingly created animation, both computer generated and hand drawn. The main story, executed via 3-D animation (all done on computers) and directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, fluidly integrates gorgeous, impressionistic flourishes with the kind of hyper-real details one has come to expect from computer-generated imagery: photorealistically textured stone steps, for instance, and fur so invitingly tactile you want to run your fingers through it. One of the pleasures of “Kung Fu Panda” is that instead of trying to mimic the entirety of the world as it exists, it uses the touch of the real. The character designs may be anatomically correct, but they’re cartoons from whisker to tail
Nikki Giovanni, Capathia, and Louis at the Community Bookstore
I continue to be excited about this fun event at the Community Bookstore next week:
Nikki Giovanni, world-renowned poet, will join Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen for a party for One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs at the Community Bookstore on July 8th at 7 p.m.
Giovanni will read poems, Louis and Capathia will perform and they’ll all discuss the process of making an album of songs with words drawn from Nikki’s poetry.
Of course, they’ll also be glad to sign copies of their CDs and books for all who attend.
Here are the ‘tails:
Community Bookstore on Seventh Avenue between Garfield and Carroll
July 8th at 7 p.m.
They will be at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble on July 9th at 7 p.m.
A Year in the Park: The Dead Quakers Will See You Now
Crazy headline from A Year in the Park; but she’s not kidding. The tour of the Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park drew a really big crowd!
It figures. I cycle over in the sticky heat to one of the rare tours of Prospect Park’s Quaker Cemetery, and by the time I get there, there’s a 40-minute estimated wait on line. At the 10-acre cemetery, which predates the park and contains some 2,000 Friends’ graves, living Quakers were offering re-enactments of some of the interred residents, but I couldn’t tarry that long with dinner guests on the way.
Maryland Crab Fest at Rosewater
Just got this enthusiastic note from the folks at Rosewater about a Crab Fest on July 10th at 7 p.m.
In the Spring of 2007 we announced our first-ever Crab Feast. Our Maryland-born Chef then promptly decided to decamp to greener Connecticut pastures and suddenly the Boil was reduced to a slow simmer on the back burner. It’s a year later and, happily, another talented Maryland boy is manning the stove at RW – Chef Marcellus Coleman is champing at the bit to boil us up some Maryland Crab!
We’re gonna cover the tables with tabloid newsprint, cover the upholstery, bust out the wooden mallets and dump some Old Bay Blues right there on the table – Chesapeake family style. Add pink wine, cold beer, cole slaw, fries and corn (if it’s good enough). You get the idea. Hard-shell Heaven. We’re expecting this to be so much fun that it will become an annual event!
$68, all inclusive of tax and service. 718 783 3800. Tickets will likely go fast, so reserve asap.
The Oh So Prolific One: Leon Freilich, Verse Responder
NEVER KNOW
He found an apartment on craigslist
Along with a leather sofa
Together with a cool tuxedo
Being sold by a TV gofer.
But the biggest surprise of them all
(On the dating page that Craig carried)
Was finding Janel and her swimsuit snap–
He thought they were happily married.
Carmen’s Exclusives For Children
I walked by with my mother and told her that Carmen’s, the new Seventh Avenue children’s stores, has handmade dresses with smocking. I used to wear hand made dresses with smocking when I was a girl.
At this shop, which is in the dripping cyclops/octopus building owned by Mark Ravitz Art and Design, you can buy seersucker shorts for a young boy in this store and all manner of formal looking clothing your grandmother would have loved. I know my grandmother bought me underwear at Best and Co. on Fifth Avenue
It’s the storefront that used to be Seventh Avenue Books (or was it Park Slope Books).
If variety is the spice of life: this kind of shop is a refreshing antidote to Lolli and Area if you like the sort of styles they feature.
Carmen’s Exclusives for Children on Seventh Avenue between 2nd and 3rd Streets, has clothing for children birth to five years old. Go this week while they still have cookies and beverages.
No Words Daily Pix: Photograph by Hugh Crawford
Poet Nikki Giovanni Coming to Brooklyn for Release of Louis and Capathia’s One Ounce of Truth
Nikki Giovanni, world-renowned poet, will join Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen for a party for One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs at the Community Bookstore on July 8th at 7 p.m.
Giovanni will read poems, Louis and Capathia will perform and they’ll all discuss the process of making an album of songs with words drawn from Nikki’s poetry.
Of course, they’ll also be glad to sign copies of their CDs and books for all who attend.
Here are the ‘tails:
Community Bookstore on Seventh Avenue between Garfield and Carroll
July 8th at 7 p.m.
They will be at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble on July 9th at 7 p.m.
Red Hot II: The Usual Red Hot on Prozac
The Blog that Must Not Be Named weighs in on Red Hot II
I was full from a huge lunch, told my wife I’d probably just have a bowl of cereal, and so she passive-aggressively says she needs Red Hot, when she damn well knows that I can’t fully participate. She doesn’t even LOVE it like I do… wtf? Does anyone have any marital adv-
Oh, right the review:
We order by phone and then go pick up – that’s our jam to save 4$ on delivery. We call up, people on phone different (yeah I can tell, all asians don’t sound the same to me you RACISTS – jk, they sound exactly the same, not sure if they were the same people or not)
Anyway, they were nice, they got the order easily, BUT to be fair, we weren’t ordering the sesame tofu, which always seemed to throw the old guard off their guard, since they needed to figure out how to combine sesame sauce with bean curd on those little computers.
Anyway, food was ready in about 15 mins.
Went to pick it up and in the little foyer there were a couple of teenagers waiting – funny moment when some confused Jewish chick outside was like "I thought they cloooosed?" and the teenagers said "they OPENED" and some crazy white dude walking in goes "Yeah what the FUCK – don’t you read the BLOGOSPHERE?!?!"
I asked the woman behind the counter what the deal was – she said NEW OWNER, SAME CHEF.
Jesus, it was packed, they really have to be retarded not to be able to carry this into a successful business, no matter what their rent is.
Anyway, food was much HOTTER than usual, which is a good sign. It was clear that it’s the same Chef, same look and feel, tasted much fresher than usual like a the usual red hot on Prozac. However, I wouldn’t deduce from this that it will stay this way forever – I mean, this was opening night – lets taste it Thursday night when that same Beef is still kickin around.
Anyway, so far so good – for all intents and purposes, Red Hot is back.
Last Night at Celebrate Brooklyn by Richard Grayson
Richard Grayson, author of Who Will Kiss the Pig: Sex Stories for Teens, I Brake for Delmore Schwartz, and With Hitler in New York, is back in town and he went to Celebrate Brooklyn Presents The Crooklyn Dodgers Reunion last night and filed this report, which is also on his blog.
It was raining very hard at 6 p.m. last evening, and things didn’t look good as we finished our Boca burger and batata coreano, intending to leave Dumbo HQ in Williamsburg for the next hour’s starting time at the Prospect Park Bandshell for Celebrate Brooklyn’s presentation of The Crooklyn Dodgers Reunion.
By 6:30 p.m., things had brightened up a bit and we made our way to the park to represent BK’s old white people at what sounded like it was going to be a history-making night in the annals of Brooklyn hip-hop with the return of the classic super-group.
As Wikipedia notes,
They appeared in three separate incarnations since 1994. The first two incarnations recorded for the soundtracks for Spike Lee films, Crooklyn and Clockers, respectively. The theme connecting The Crooklyn Dodgers songs, aside from the Spike Lee films which they were made for, is the topic matter, which tends to comment on the state of affairs in and around urban New York, as well as other issues affecting everyday life; as Jeru spouses “Chips that power nuclear bombs power my Sega.”Probably due to the heavy rain, the crowd wasn’t big at the start of the night, but it really grew. We managed to find a close seat, thanks to the tiny blonde 7-year-old girl who took it upon herself to sponge off the water from all the folding chairs in our area.
It was an incredible show, hosted by Buckhshot and Special Ed, who showed off some of their own freestyling skills. The evening was a collage-montage of Brooklyn hip-hop, with continual shout-outs to the neighborhoods: “Flatbush!” “Crown Heights!” “Canarsie!” (When the incredibly talented Chip Fu yelled out “East 56th Street between Church & Snyder!” we shouted back, since we spent our first 28 years on East 54th between Snyder & Tilden and East 56th between O & Fillmore.)
The classic original veteran Masta Ace came on with his group EMC featuring amazing talent – Wordsworth, Punchline & Stricklin, and Chip Fu – with their rollicking signature opening. It just got better from there. As the crowds grew, arms waved, fists pumped, everyone swayed, and to us, the event seemed both Dionysian and intimate, as when Wordsworth jumped off the stage and began rapping in the crowd.
It was like being at a greatest Brooklyn house party ever. O.C., after doing some amazing stuff, sat down at the edge of the stage and began to talk to the borough’s young rappers just coming up about the perils of artistic compromise and hypocrisy. “The last of my kind,” O.C. didn’t name names, but said “some people ain’t doin’ what they supposed to.” Around me, audience members did name the names of some stars he was referring to.
The whole evening was curated by Danny Castro and Anthony Marshall, creators of the pioneering they-said-it-couldn’t-be-done open-mic night Lyricist Lounge, who deserve much credit for putting together this defining event. And props to their majesties DJ Premier and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, whose historic work with A Tribe Called Quest brightened our days back in the day (and made early morning workouts bearable).
The night featured great freestyling and amazing rapping, some of it BK-centric. “Why do we gotta live in this environment?/Your grandpa done drank up his retirement” reminded us that we were really, really tired and maybe the second-oldest human we spotted in the by-now humongous (we’re bad at estimates, everyone who took our 30,000 at the Met Opera seriously!) peaced-out crowd.
Blaming our fatigue on not old age but severe jet lag (we were campaigning in Arizona all week), we left a bit after 9 p.m. for the return trip home (the F was running funny, taking over the G route to Queens, causing confusion but making this a one-train trip back to the Burg), so we missed most of the show after intermission: Chubb Rock, the incredible Jeru the Damaja, etc. But we’ve got Kevin’s report:
One highlight of this evening was going out with a post-party crew of stoners (Jon Good, Jesse, other Jesse, and Daniela) to dew-damp Prospect Park to catch the tail end of a fucking huge (and completely free) hip-hop concert, featuring the reunion of a moderately successful ’90s rap group called the Crooklyn Dodgers.I usually go to small underground shows, so this enormous outdoor bandshell venue, with thousands of screaming fans, backup dancers, stage lighting, the whole shebang. And the artists, though icons of the hip-hop underground, were more professional than anyone else I’ve ever heard. That’s the great thing about Brooklyn–a local concert, with local artists celebrating the history and culture of the neighborhood, is going to have world-class talent. Some of the lyrics were a little blingy and whut-whut for my tastes, but for the most part the rhymes were tight, the beats were solid, and the Scene was Real.
And their lyrical talent was astounding. The distinction between rap and poetry is usually pretty controversial but there is no questioning that what I saw and heard tonight was poetry. These guys know their neighborhood, they know their culture, and they know life in Crown Heights, and they managed to tap that zeitgeist like a keg of ass.
Isn’t life wonderful!
Smartmom; The End of the PS 321 Line
Here’s the latest Smartmom from the award winning Brooklyn Paper:
Smartmom’s days are numbered at PS 321. After 11 years as a very involved parent at this illustrious school, she’s is about to say adieu.
Sure, 11 years is a long time to be in elementary school and Smartmom is good and ready to graduate.
Sort of.
But it’s a big deal, a major transition and, truth be told, Smartmom is feeling very shaky about the whole thing.
Transitions. They are an essential part of the big shebang, integral to the process of growth and moving on. You can’t live with ’em or live without ’em.
Smartmom can still remember the transition from Teen Spirit’s private kindergarten to first grade at PS 321. This was back in 1997, the olden days before Elizabeth Phillips was principal
On the first day of school, Hepcat, Teen Spirit and Smartmom — with 6-month-old OSFO in the Baby Bjorn — walked nervously to that first-grade classroom carrying a huge shopping bag full of paper towels, hand soap, Kleenex and crayons (as requested by the school).
Smartmom worried that Teen Spirit might feel overwhelmed by the raucous public school atmosphere. But it was Smartmom who felt overwhelmed.
Walking out on Seventh Avenue, Smartmom felt pangs of anxiety. What would Teen Spirit make of this new school? Hadn’t he grown used to the precious, child-centered pedagogy and specialized wooden toys of a local Montessori school?
His transition wasn’t seamless. Transitions never are. But by Halloween, Teen Spirit had settled into life as a public school first-grader. And Smartmom adjusted, too.
Soon she realized how lucky they were to live around the corner from such a warm and well-run school, where learning is focused and fun and parents and administration work closely together to make the school even better.
When OSFO started kindergarten at PS 321 in 2002, she was well adjusted by the time she went trick-or-treating on Seventh Avenue dressed as a Disney Princess. She liked her cubby, choice time, read-alouds, and playtime with friends in the playground.
It was Smartmom who missed Beth Elohim and the mommy friends she had made over there. Fortunately, some were also sending their children to PS 321. But others she didn’t see as much anymore.
New friends. New routines. Change is fun — but also scary and sad because it means that Smartmom is aging and her children growing more independent. Despite all the grief outsiders give today’s Park Slope stroller moms, Smartmom is sadder and sadder that she’s not one anymore.
The same year that OSFO started kindergarten at PS 321, Teen Spirit started middle school at MS 51. Now that was a big change: 1,300 kids in three grades; a different teacher for every subject. That first day, Teen Spirit even walked to school by himself.
But Hepcat and Smartmom were dying of curiosity. They walked over to Fifth Avenue to spy on their son at lunchtime.
“Who is that woman in the camouflage pants that he’s walking with?” Smartmom asked Hepcat.
They maneuvered themselves to get a better look from across the street. “That woman” turned out to be a friend of Teen Spirit’s from fifth grade who had grown tall over the summer and had reinvented herself as a grunge-goth-punk rock-grrrl-girl.
Once again, it took a while for the family to get used to Teen Spirit’s new school. They never really figured out their way around the building or got to know many of the other parents.
But they adjusted. Eventually.
A few years later, it was transition time again. Teen Spirit went to a high school in Bay Ridge, which was too far away for lunchtime spying. And after two years, he switched to an even better high school in Manhattan.
Both parents knew to keep their distance, but Smartmom’s affinity for the school motivated her to volunteer as an advisory parent, which is something like a class parent (a term that would surely mortify any high school kid).
Smartmom kept her affiliation on the down low (she’s not sure if Teen Spirit ever found out). Secretly, she attended PTA meetings and got to know the school and a few other parents on her own. Naturally, Teen Spirit avoided her when he saw her in the hallway. And she acted like a perfect stranger.
So, it’s transition time again. OSFO finally found out that she will attend New Voices middle school on 18th Street near Seventh Avenue. She will take the Seventh Avenue bus to school and get to know a new group of teachers and friends (and parents; Smartmom hopes she likes the parents).
OSFO hasn’t lost any sleep over it. She’s excited about going to middle school and doesn’t seem nervous about riding the B67 or navigating a brand new social scene.
Naturally, it’s Smartmom who’s having the hard time. Will OSFO feel comfortable up there? Will she make new friends? Will she like her teachers? Will everything work out?
It’s Smartmom, who is afraid to leave her wonderful school around the corner, a one-of-a-kind place with a special community of friends and neighbors. It’s been the heartbeat of her life for so many years now.
But now, it’s time to let go.
The Oh So Prolific One: Leon Freilich, Verse Responder
UNTIMELY
The folks who disdain watches can be counted on
In every clime
To pester you and me throughout the day with their nagging
“Got the time?”
