Hey, all you fans of old Woody Allen movies, Tony Roberts, who was in Annie Hall, Play it Again Sam, Stardust Memories and other Allen masterpieces, will be reading short stories as part of a special Selected Shorts program designed for the Kingsborough Performing Arts Center (KPAC).

I listen to Selected Shorts on WNYC radio on Sunday afternoons but it should be fun to see it live.

On Saturday, October 16, at 8:00 p.m. at KPAC, the founder of Symphony Space, Isaiah Sheffer, will take the stage with a program created especially for KPAC.

According to the press release: “Selected Shorts: Funny Food Fictions will serve up a menu of hilarious short stories about food and love. Stories by award-winning authors T. Corraghessan Boyle, M.F.K. Fisher, and “Yinglish” comic book master Milt Gross will be read by Broadway, film, and television star (and frequent Woody Allen co-star) Tony Roberts, the Tony-nominated stage actress Maria Tucci, and Isaiah Sheffer.”

Anna Becker, KPAC’s brand new Executive Director had this to say about the show: “We are so delighted to have Symphony Space in residence with us this season for three unique programs, starting with the brilliantly entertaining Selected Shorts program…There has been great excitement and anticipation on the part of our audience members as we await a wonderful evening of masterful stories, artfully told.”

A longtime resident of Brooklyn, the acclaimed German actress, Barbara Sukowa, is currently starring in, Vision, a new film about the 12th century mystic and composer Hildegarde Von Binghen  playing at the Film Forum.

The film, the latest collaboration between Sukowa and German director, Margarethe von Trotta, explores the 12th century world of monastic religion. Stephen Holden in his review of Vision in the New York Times says of Sukowa that, “(she) makes Hildegard a likable and charismatic woman who risks a great deal to do good in an environment that leaves women little room for self-expression. Her intelligence and enthusiasm make her a proto-feminist force to be reckoned with.”

Together Sukowa and von Trotta have created a body of work about strong, female characters, including Rosa Luxemberg, the 1986 portrayal of the Polish born Marxist philosopher and activist, and Marianne and Julianne, the true story of a member of a 1970’s German militant group and her sister. 

Sukowa, who lives in Brooklyn with her husband, painter Robert Longo and their children, also starred in many films directed by Rainer Maria Fassbiner, including Berlin Alexanderplatz and Lola.

Friday morning the ribbon will be cut as Barney’s Co-Op opens on Atlantic Avenue (near Court Street), their first new location in five years and their only location in Brooklyn.

The pricey (they call it mid-range) fashionista paradise is obviously optimistic that despite the economic climate (and their parent company’s debt problems) Atlantic Avenue’s mix of middle-Eastern food specialty shops, Urban Outfitters and Trader Joe’s, is right and ready for high end clothing, shoes, accessories, jewelry and cosmetics from established and emerging designers like Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang, Zero and Cornejo, Thom Browne, Phillip Lim, Crockett and Jones, Rag and Bone, Wendy Reed and the Barney’s house brand, Barney’s NY.

Beer and Bread Fundraiser for The Old Stone House

Thursday, October 14 at 6:30 – 8:30 PM: The Old Stone House presents an evening of bread and beer created using traditional 18th century recipes. Taste a variety of delectable early American staples recreated by historic gastronomist Sarah Lohman and brewmasters Erik Olsen and Chris Prout of Brooklyn’s Brouwerij Lane. The tasting will include five courses of bread — representing recipes from the Colonial era including crisp, nutty waffles, savory rusks, citrusy cookies and spicy sweet breads. Each bread will be matched with a beer brewed by Olsen and Prout that is seasoned with flavors such as spruce, ginger, mustard and molasses.

Architecture and Design Film Festival in Tribeca

October 14-17 at the Tribeca Cinemas, the first US film festival celebrating the creative spirit of architecture and design featuring a wide selection of feature length films, documentaries and shorts. Also: discussions with filmmakers, architects and designers about the design process, architecture in film, and the brilliant designs we see and use every day.

Movies

Starts Friday at BAM: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger directed by Woody Allen.

Also at BAM: The Social Network, The Town and Wall Street Money Never Sleeps

Through October 26 at Film Forum: the stunning Barbara Sukowa stars in Vision, a new film about the 12th century mystic and composer Hildegarde Von Binghen directed by the great Margarethe von Trotta. 

Saturday, October 16 at 2, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm at BAMCinematek: Clean directed by Olivier Assayas (part of the Post-Punk Auteur: Olivier Assayas festival)”Clean is one of the few fiction films to evoke realistically the grubby texture of existence for second- and third-tier rock celebrities crumbling under a combination of fading renown and drug addiction.” —The New York Times

Art

Opening Thursday, October 14th, 8:00 PM at Proteus Gowanus (543 Union Street, Brooklyn): Paradiso Contrapasso. “In Dante’s Inferno, Paradiso Contrapasso distinguishes each sinner by making his or her punishment uniquely appropriate to the committed sin, so that every soul inhabits a Hell all its own. Observatory encouraged artists to consider divine comedic retribution in all of its possible representations. The emphasis is on “Divine” and “Comedy”, and on our superstitious fear of getting what we wish for!”

Saturday, October 16 7PM – 11PM at Triomph Fitness (540 President Street, Brooklyn) launch party and art show for Insights Magazine.

Literary

Friday, October 15 at 7PM until 10PM at St. Francis College, Callahan Center (182 Remsen Street) in Brooklyn Heights: Poets & Passion provides a forum for celebrated poets and novelists, emerging New York City writers, spoken-word artists, and the general public to share their creativity, experiences, and insights. The fifth season kicks off with National Book Award nominee Marlon James and Rona Jaffe Award winner Tiphanie Yanique. Suggested donation is $5.

On Saturday, October 16, at 8:00 PM at Kingsborough Performing Arts Center (KPAC) founder of Symphony Space, Isaiah Sheffer, will take the stage with a special Selected Shorts program designed for KPAC with Tony Roberts and Marcia Tucci.

Mad Men Finale Party

Sunday, October 17 at 9PM at The Bell House in Gowanus presents an event for Mad Men junkies: Dress up in your vintage wear and get drunk on whiskey while watching the final episode of Mad Men season four. If you dress up you’ll be automatically entered to win a prize. Important note: seated tickets are sold out – the reduced admission ticket link above is for STANDING ROOM ONLY.

Music

Thursday, October 14 at 8PM The Rock Shop on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope presents Circle of Buzzards, Tiny Animals, Basket Full of Kittens.

Thursday, October 14 at 8PM Sycamore on Cortelyou Road in Ditmas Park presents NoHow On and Madeline Adams. “As far as indie cred goes, it’s full of nods to Neutral Milk Hotel, from its curiosity-shop assortment of instruments (banjos, squeezeboxes, shakers, harmonicas, whistles) to its warm lo-fi imperfection, and it wears enough heartbreaking earnestness on its sleeve to recall the Mountain Goats. For just-plain-good-music cred, the trio, having now changed their name to a Samuel Beckett fragment, stands as a testament to the power of melody, something that seems to flow so effortlessly from them that it’s not even fair.” -Mike Conklin for The L Magazine

Saturday, October 16 at 9PM The Jewish Music Cafe on 9th Street in Park Slope presents Josef Karduner

Up and Coming October 24:

On October 24 Brooklyn Indie Market presents the third annual Steampunk Day at the Dumbo Loft (155 Water Street, Dumbo) from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Steampunk Shopping and Fashion Show at 4 p.m. $20 Victorian/Steampunk portrait sitting with vintage camera by Tsirkus Fotografika $5 entry. Take the F train to York Street Station and travel to a re-envisioned Victorian age that features retrofuturistic fashion, brass and copper clockwork, ray guns, jetpacks, bustles and inventions that go far beyond 19th century technology. Think steam-powered mechanical wonders, brass-fitted computers, dirigibles, goggles, airships, and clockwork inspired accoutrements.

Design directs everything: Architecture and Design Film Festival in Tribeca

Brooklyn brownstone bargains: Casacara

Milton Glaser podcast interview: Swissmiss

Welcome to the freakshow: Limestone Adventures

wedding portrait: My Coney

Inspiration from Ikea blog: Apartment Therapy

Wow wallpapers from house tours: Apartment Therapy

The tools you really need: NY Times

My good friend, Wendy Ponte, a certified life coach and founder of Clear Life Coaching, is running a short-term workshop called, Transform Your Divorce, to help you find positive ways to deal with the process of divorce and to come out the other side having done way more than just “survive.”

The workshop begins on October 27th and there’s still time to register for a spot. If you need more information shoot me an email or get in touch with Wendy at wendyponte(at)clearlifecoach(dot)com.

With Wendy you will:

* Learn exciting new techniques for coping with stress.
* Find out how some of the latest research on the brain can help you cope with divorce.
* Access dreams and ideas you may not have even known were there.
* Create an action plan that will get you through this transition and take you into your new life.

To get more details about this new workshop or one-on-one coaching with Wendy  go to Clear Life Coaching’s website.

On Thursday, October 14 at 7:30PM, Gal Beckerman will read from his new book When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone, a history of the Soviet Jewry movement at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope.

Beckerman, a reporter for The Forward, writes about what happened after World War II, when nearly three million Jews were trapped inside the Soviet Union. Unwanted by the Stalinist state, they were forbidden to leave. Beckerman’s book tells the story of their rescue.

The author was a longtime editor and staff writer at the Columbia Journalism Review and has also written for the New York Times Book Review, Jerusalem Post, and Utne Reader, among other publications. He was a Fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin and the recipient of a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. His first book, When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in September 2010.

As reported in the Science section of Tuesday’s New York Times, a filmmaker from Park Slope by the name of Luke Geissbuhler attached a video camera to a weather balloon and launched it in August from Newburgh, N.Y. for what would be a 90-minute journey. The seven-minute video went viral and the rest is history for the Park Slope resident.

SO what’s happening at Park Slope’s Community Bookstore, one of the mainstays of Brooklyn’s  independent bookstore scene?

Lots.

For one thing: Catherine Bohne, the owner has moved to Albania and is in the process of selling the store to a wonderful man named Ezra Goldstein.

I know Ezra from the Park Slope Civic Council, where he is an active member, editor and web master. He is an accomplished freelance writer and journalist, who was at one time senior editor at Long Island Jewish World. Educated at the University of Chicago with a masters in journalism from Ohio University, Ezra has conducted extensive interviews with Holocaust survivors and has had articles on a wide variety of topics published in the New York Times, the Village Voice, American Heritage, New American Drama, Kirkus Review and many other publications.

A longtime Park Slope resident, he’s a very smart guy with a real passion to be the owner of Park Slope’s beloved bookstore. In these times, owning an independent bookstore may not be the most economical thing to do so it takes someone with passion and vision to do it.

Continue reading So What’s Happening at Park Slope’s Community Bookstore? →

But they’ll be there at different times. See below:

Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season, will be be signing copies of her new book, The False Friend, at Park Slope’s Community Bookstore on Thursday at 4:30.

FYI: Myla has a very cool looking website where I learned that she  plays banjo and accordion and sings in the Brooklyn art-punk The Walking Hellos.

And later that evening: Stephen O’Connor of New Yorker and Electric Literature fame, will read from his collection of haunting and surreal short stories, Here Comes Another Lesson, on Thursday, October 15 at 7PM.

Here’s the blurbage on Here Comes Another Lesson:

O’Connor, whose stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Conjunctions, and many other places, fearlessly depicts a world that no longer quite makes sense. Ranging from the wildly inventive to the vividly realistic, these brilliant stories offer tender portraits of idealists who cannot live according to their own ideals and of lovers baffled by the realities of love.

The story lines are unforgettable: A son is followed home from work by his dead father. God instructs a professor of atheism to disseminate updated Commandments. The Minotaur is awakened to his own humanity by the computer-game-playing “new girl” who has been brought to him for supper. A recently returned veteran longs for the utterly ordinary life he led as a husband and father before being sent to Iraq. An ornithologist, forewarned by a cormorant of the exact minute of his death, struggles to remain alert to beauty and joy.

As playful as it is lyrical, Here Comes Another Lesson celebrates human hopefulness and laments a sane and gentle world that cannot exist.

The Madison Square Gardeners are a Brooklyn-based band you can find playing around NYC frequently.  They have a brand new song, Young and In Love, and you can get a download of that song for free.  You’ll find the details at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

The Amygdaloids are four scientists (Joseph LeDoux, Daniella Schiller, Tyler Volk, Gerald McCollam) who write song based upon their work. But not only are they a pretty good band, they travel in good company.  See a video of their song Brainstorm with  Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Band) and Steve Wynn (Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, The Baseball Project and The Dream Syndicate) joining in on the guitar shredding here at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

October 15-16: Jalopy, a vaudeville style music venue on Columbia Street, presents its third annual Djangology Festival honoring legendary swing guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Park Slope’s Franglais are on the bill, as well as Stephane Wrembel,who often plays at Barbes, Jack Soref, Hot Club Thing, Hot Club of Hell’s Kitchen, and Blue Plate Special, and more.

Gypsy jazz on violin, bass, and two guitars: Djangology Festival at Jalopy on Columbia St. between Hamilton Avenue and Woodhull Street in Red Hook, (718) 395-3214], Oct. 15-16 at 8 pm. Tickets $20 ($35 for the weekend).