If you were WONDERING what they finally named the baboons at the Prospect Park Zoo, here’s the latest. If, like me, you didn’t know that there was even a contest to name those baboons, here’s the story. And the names.

After three weeks of online polling and more than a thousand name submissions, the wo Hamadryas baboon babies are officially named. And the names are – Jabari and Azizi.

After giving careful consideration to all of the names submitted online, the staff of WCS’s Prospect Park Zoo chose a pair of Egyptian names to represent the area from which the Hamadryas baboons are found in the wild.  Jabari means brave in Egyptian, and Azizi means precious.  Besides Egypt , Hamadryas baboons are found in Eritrea , Ethiopia , Somalia , and on the Arabian Peninsula .

If you’d like to meet the baboons, their next big event is the annual Boo at the Zoo celebration Saturday October 30 and Sunday, October 31.  The troop will receive pumpkins in the spirit of the holiday – surely a sight to see.

The Hamadryas baboon exhibit is located in the zoo’s Animal Lifestyles Building along with tamarin monkeys, piranhas, and Pallas cats.  Jabari and Azizi are on exhibit with their family from 10am-2pm daily until November 1^st when their exhibit time will change.  Hours will be posted at www.prospectparkzoo.com.

My friends The Baseball Project have teamed up with Minnesota ex-pat and Brooklyn resident  Craig Finn, the lead singer of The Hold Steady, to come up with a song about The Minnesota Twins.  Craig does the lead vocals and wrote the lyrics, the music is by Steve Wynn.  It will be on the next Baseball Project album, which is due out sometime in 2011.  But it’s already being played at Target Field and on Minneapolis/St. Paul radio.  But if you’d like to hear it now (and you should because it’s flat out great), go to Now I’ve Heard Everything and get the details.

With two street fairs, a benefit and some inspired booking by The Rockwood Music Hall, it seems like every band in the world is playing on Sunday.  Of course there’s The Atlantic Antic with 10 stages; The Dumbo Arts Festival also has many bands playing.  If you’d like to stay closer to home, The first The Tinderbox Music Festival is at Southpaw.  And if none of that appeals to you, you can make the jaunt into Manhattan and check out Jon Graboff, Poundcake, Sasha Dobson and Kristin Diable all at Rockwood Music Hall.  You find the details here at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

Street Fair:

Sunday, Sept. 26: the 36th annual Atlantic Antic on the stretch between Hicks Street and Fourth Avenue, featuring more than 600 food, art and shopping vendors, 14 performance stages and even kid-friendly activities like pony-rides and a magician showcase.

Movies:

Wall Street Money: Never Sleeps, The Town at BAM

Friday, Sept 14: Life Lessons, a program of shorts at BAM explores the often difficult process of growing up is explored in this shorts program that chronicles the hard-won lessons learned by children and young adults of color inside and outside the classroom. A Departure From a Love  (2009, 8min) Directed by Ishmael Islam: A young man takes a walk through his beloved Brooklyn while reciting his spoken word poetry to an unknown lover. His journey takes us on a visual “lovefest” throughout the borough, connecting the people, places, and emotions that inspire his poetry. Sticks and Stones (2006, 9min) Directed by Rehema Imani Trimiew The Lesson Plan (2009, 30min) Directed by Eddy Dura, Premature (2008, 14min) Directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green.

Film Festivals:

There are two count ’em two film festivals this weekend:

Coney Island Film Festival and the Bushwick Film Festival grace the screens of Brooklyn this weekend.

Theater/Performance:

This weekend Laurie Anderson opens the Next Wave Festival at BAM with Delusion, “a phantasmagoric world made up of short plays, her latest work is activated by brooding, deeply affecting music redolent with Tibetan temple horns and Arabic strings, performed by Anderson on electronically enhanced violin with supporting virtuoso musicians. A simultaneously contemplative and whimsical epic about longing, identity, and memory, Delusion invokes both humor and terror, conjuring up elves, mysteries, ghost ships, and dead relatives to spin poetic stories and imagery into gold.”

Art:

The DUMBO Arts Festival will take over the waterfront community of DUMBO – its galleries, storefronts, performance venues, studios, and parks.  More exciting names are expected to be announced over coming weeks.

Saturday, September 25, at the Morgan Fine Arts Building in Greenpoint,  40 Brooklyn artists open their studios to the public.   From 5 to 10 P.M., 40 separate studios on five floors of the building will be open to the public, displaying fine art in every medium – painting, sculpture, silk screening, New Yorker cartooning, abstract photography.

BWAC’s Fall Group Art Show, Lineage, is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1-6pm, September 25 to October 31. 300 artists will be exhibiting 1200 works in all media, including those of Featured Artist, Anujan Ezhikode.

Muriel Guepin Gallery 47 Bergen Street Brooklyn, NY 11201
Group Show “Return us to Ourselves” Featuring the Artwork of Everett Aison, Matthew Conradt, and Jeanne Verdoux. On view from September 25, 2010 until November 7, 2010. Opening Reception Saturday September 25, 2010 from 6:30 – 9 pm.

Through Dec 12, Brooklyn Utopias Farm City at the Old Stone House curated by Katherine Gressel and Derek Denckla, curators featuring artwork by: Andrew Casner, Hernani Dias, Kate Glicksberg, Katherine Gressel, Hugh Hayden, Kim Holleman, Christina Kelly, Jess Levey, Mary Mattingly, Eve Mosher, Scott Nyerges, ORPH, Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy , Dan Sagarin, Eric Sanderson, Tattfoo Tan, Work.AC

Music:

On Friday, Sept 24 at 8PM at Issue Project Room: A celebration of Laurie Spiegel’s 65th Birthday ISSUE Project Room is pleased to host a reception and piano concert of her work.  The evening will begin with a 45-minute informal gallery show featuring slideshows of photographic documentation of Spiegel’s computer-generated art created at Bell Labs, personal photographs, hand made art and other selected visuals while we hear selected music from the greatly expanded double-cd re-release of her seminal 1980 LP “The Expanding Universe” forthcoming on Unseen Worlds Records. Following the exhibition, Spiegel will give a brief comments on her work and the evening will conclude with a rare performance of some of Spiegel’s rarely-heard very personal solo piano pieces performed by Joseph Kubera.

Saturday Sept 25 at 8PM Barbes presents Laura Cantrell, the WFMU DJ and country singer. She has been called “the most vital new country voice in decades” by The Independent. She has just released her first album in three years, “Trains and Boats and Planes”, a digital download with songs about travel and the heartache of separation and loss. Laura’s fans include the late BBC DJ John Peel, who described her album “Not the Tremblin’ Kind” as “my favorite record of the last ten years and possibly my life,” and Elvis Costello who claimed that “If Kitty Wells made Rubber Soul, it would sound like Laura Cantrell”.

At the Rock Shop, Park Slope’s newest rock venue: The Dig on Friday, Sept 24 and on Saturday, Sept 24: Hurricane Bells.

Sunday, Sept 26 at 9PM Barbes presents Stephane Wrembel presents The Django Experiment: French virtuoso Guitarist Stephane Wrembel seems to have channeled both the technique and the fire of Django Reinhardt. He studied for years with the manouche (the French Gypsies) but has also gotten deep into American vernacular musical styles. His weekly sets will mix up the traditional Django repertoire along gypsy swing re-interpretations of standards.

Cooking Demonstrations:

On Sunday, Sept. 26th from 2-2:30 PM at the Park Slope Farmers Market on 5th Avenue between 3rd and 5th Streets in Brooklyn.Farmers Market, Fumiko Akiyama, owner of Park Slope’s Kappa Sake House, will demonstrate how to make two different kinds of miso soup using local produce and seafood at  The event marks the first in a series of weekly cooking demos given by local chefs at the Farmers Market. Each demonstration will be held from 2 to 3:30pm and will feature local, farm-fresh ingredients.

Brooklyn super art weekend: Art in Brooklyn

Birthday smoke: Brooklymometry

Healing Songs: Music For Masabumi Kikuchi: Do the Math

My life with Robert Bolano: Truth and Rocket Science

Going Away Party by Marshall Chapman: Self-Absorbed Boomer

Set list of Pavement’s 4th NYC reunion show: Bklyn Vegan

Build/Inhabit: Water Over Rocks

The ordeal of the sermon by Daniel Meeter:  A Journal of Reformed Thought

Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk: Greenlight Bookstore

Now through December 12, 2010, a new art exhibition at the Old Stone House in Park Slope poses the question: what is the role of artists in shaping an ideal Brooklyn?

At Brooklyn Utopias: Farm City, curated by Katherine Gressel and Derek Denckla, artists respond to the idea of urban agriculture, and the practice of farming in or around a city, as a “utopian” solution for Brooklyn.

Multi-media artist, Andrew Casner, Hernani Dias, Kate Glicksberg, Katherine Gressel, Hugh Hayden, Kim Holleman, Christina Kelly, Jess Levey, Mary Mattingly, Eve Mosher, Scott Nyerges, ORPH, Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy , Dan Sagarin, Eric Sanderson, Tattfoo Tan, Work.AC have created works that explore Brooklyn’s existing urban farming attempts and explore what additional innovations and collaborations are possible.

Walking through the show one ponders the borough’s rich agrarian past and wonders if it can inform a greener future. Issues of scale, universal access, diversity and feasibility for urban farming are also in the mix.

Finally, how can the past, present and future of Brooklyn farming inform future “farm cities?”

The last time I saw Brooklyn: CasaCara

Andrew & Kathleen’s Inspired Home: Apartment Therapy

Reclaimed space: Reclaimed Home

Linen pinboard: Brooklyn Limestone

This year I will try not to: Swiss Miss

Remaking teachers’ Lounges: NY Times

On September 23rd at 7PM, Brooklyn Reading Works presents the second annual Young Writers Night, fiction, poetry and song by New York City teenagers. “In planning this event, I looked for artists with fresh insight, candor and guts.” writes curator Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway and Kiss Out. Young Writers should be an exciting night and a preview into the next generation of published writers.

Did I tell you it starts at 7PM?

Young Writers is an all ages event at the Old Stone House. Third Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Suggested donation of $5 includes refreshments.

Did I mention that it starts at 7PM?

Readers include Hananh Frishberg, Maria Robins-Somerville, Noah Miller, Julia Banks Harris Lily Konigsberg, Gussie Roc, Luca Balser, Charlie Dore-Young and MORE.

It’s at 7PM everyone!

Kidverse: Is This Your Teacher?

The most abominable creature

Must be the woman who’s a screecher.

My ears would love to banish her.

It’d make the world much quieter.

The screecher can’t imagine what

The devil of an effect she’s got.

As far as she knows, the sounds she makes

Are tastier than banana cakes,

More treasured than the platinum

That makes a miser worry some,

More tuneful than the sweetest song,

Though actually resembling a gong.

Each word that drops from the mouth of the screecher

Reminds me of a monster feature,

A movie with a heroine

Who’s out of touch and quite all-in;

She likes to think of herself as a funster,

When others view her as a munster.

Not a cheese and not a treat,

Nothing anyone would eat.

And yet she certainly means no harm.

She can’t help sounding like an alarm.

Poor woman!  Let’s give her an award:

A piece of chalk to scrape on the board.

Compared to the men who kinda bellow.

So Marty Markowitz announced yesterday that Coney Island’s Luna Park will stay open through October. Since it opened in June of 2010, 400,000 visitors have enjoyed the revamped amusement park, which is part of the city’s revitalization plan.

The original Luna Park, which was festooned with literally hundreds of thousands of lights, opened in 1903 and burned down in 1944.

Watching the new HBO show, Boardwalk Empire, and especially the great set created in Brooklyn, one gets a sense of what the original Luna Park might have been like.

Tonight The Montauk Club presents Book Jackets Required, the first event in their new literary reading series with Judy Baumel, Martha Cooley and Giles Harvey.

This event is produced in partnership with AGNI and is co-curated by Beth Romano.

The reading will take place at 8 PM, Wednesday, September 22, 2010, in the historic 120 year-old Ballroom at the Montauk Club, 25 Eighth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn (adjacent to Grand Army Plaza).  Authors will read from recent work, followed by a brief panel discussion with a cocktail hour and tour of the club’s landmark building afterward.

The ticket price is free to club members and $5 for non-members; drink tickets for cocktails, wine, beer and non-alcoholic drinks can be purchased.  Visit our website at www.montaukclub.com for details on trains/transportation; RSVP to manager@montaukclub.com.

Click on Read more for information about the authors:

Continue reading Book Jackets Required: Reading Series at Park Slope’s Montauk Club →

It’s not just an exhibition, it’s a festival celebrating Brooklyn’s large and eclectic community of children’s book illustrators.

Says the Library: “Brooklyn is home to the LARGEST concentration of children’s book professionals on the planet.” At the Brooklyn Library’s main branch at Grand Army Plaza, this interesting fact is put on brilliant display by the work of the illustrators featured in this exhibition.

I always had the sense that there were a lot of children’s book pros around here but this just proves it. This festival, which runs through January 23rd, 2011 has many facets.

Drawn In Brooklyn Exhibitions
September 21, 2010 – January 23, 2011
Central Library, Grand Army Plaza

Illustration by Sophie Blackall

Kristin Diable is a singer-songwriter I discovered a few years back when she was regularly playing The Living Room and The Rockwood Music Hall.  Her music is a combination of rock, folk and blues all held together with an amazing voice made even more astonishing with a Louisiana drawl.  Back then, Kristin was living in New York City.  But about 18 months ago she decided she had enough of living in a third-story apartment in Greenpoint and moved back to Louisiana.   All the details about Kristin’s show tonight are here at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

How many Brooklyn film festivals does it take to screw in a light bulb? I don’t know but there are so many Brooklyn fests,  including two this weekend (Bushwick and Coney Island) that I’ve lost count.

The Bushwick Film Festival returns for its fourth year on September 24th for an exciting three day event at Brooklyn Fire Proof in Bushwick, Brooklyn. From September 24th-26th the festival will screen 5 feature films by notable directors Steven Garbas, Giorgio Arcelli, Dan Keezer, Andrew Shirley, and Shaun Jefford.  Also, the program for shorts will showcase documentaries and comedies by 20 filmmakers, including works by Brooklyn based collective The Film Shop and Untucked Films, who recently screened a retrospective of their work at Anthology Archive.

Continue reading Sept 24-26: Bushwick Film Festival →

On September 23rd at 7PM, Brooklyn Reading Works presents the second annual Young Writers Night, fiction, poetry and song by New York City teenagers. “In planning this event, I looked for artists with fresh insight, candor and guts.” writes curator Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway and Kiss Out. Young Writers should be an exciting night and a preview into the next generation of published writers.

Did I mention that the reading starts at 7PM???

Young Writers is an all ages event at the Old Stone House. Third Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Suggested donation of $5 includes refreshments.

Readers include Hananh Frishberg, Maria Robins-Somerville, Noah Miller, Banks Harris Lily Konigsberg, Gussie Rock, Charie Dore-Young and Luca Balser.

The show starts at 7PM!!!

Last week the Brooklyn Public Library cut branch hours at 26 locations (which is nearly half of all branches) and will be closed for both weekend days.

That truly sucks.

It was a choice between laying off employees or cutting Saturday service. The decision is a win for the employees (and a relief) but a big loss for those who use the library on weekends.