I find myself on a quiet Connecticut beach sitting on a deck with a gorgeous view on a humid day. I am exceedingly happy. What can I say? There is a reason to vacation. It takes you away from daily life and its inherent stresses.

I once poo-pooed the idea of a relaxing vacation at the beach. Vacation meant adventure, culture, exercise, creative work, even exertion.

Not this week (though I have plans to write). I am understanding the concept of slowing down, relaxing, not thinking, not doing.

Being.

The photograph is not where I am. It is a Joel Meyrowitz from his great book Cape Light. 

For my first and only Lucinda Williams concert, a  friend took me to see her back when her acclaimed album Car Wheels on Gravel Road first came out.

I have been a fan ever since.

I love her latest CD, which is called Blessed and is filled with exceptional songs like Cophenhagen, Blessed, Born to Be Loved and Convince Me. 

This week she’s playing in Brooklyn and Manhattan and Now I’ve Heard Everything has the full schedule. So check out Eliot’s post. He says the shows are not sold out. Yet. She can be a superb performer when the stars are aligned.

What is it about Breaking Bad that attracts so many young, male Brooklynites? I mean, I happen to love the show (and I am female) , but it was mostly guys sitting at the bar and at the tables of The Gate, a neighborhood bar on Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn.

Indeed, the size of last night’s crowd surprised me. Maybe it was the rain that pulled people into the bar from the wet patio.

But I think it’s the mesmerizing world of Breaking Bad and its dark characters that attracts them.

Indeed, it wasn’t just that the bar was crowded, it was crowded with people who came specifically to see Breaking  Bad. Some had take-in dinner with them: burritos, Chinese, pizza from a nearby pizzeria.

Overall, it was a festive but focused atmosphere. All eyes were on the sets above the bar. When something shocking happened (Skyler in the pool, Skyler in conversation with Walt), the crowd gasped .Whenever anything involves Mike, the crowd gets excited and exclamations of “Mike” can be heard.

Last night’s episode focused on domestic issues. Walt continues his downward slide toward unlikability and pure evil while Skyler is getting to a “I’m  not sure I can take anymore of this” position. There was hardly any gun violence, almost no meth production, but still the episode was spooky as hell.

Clearly, the Gate is the place to be on Sunday night at 10PM if you are a big fan of Breaking Bad. Bring your dinner.

Will the rain keep people from coming out to watch Breaking Bad at the Gate? We shall see. I’m on my way. Soon. The show is at 10PM.

See you there…

It was one of those nights.

Y’know, one thing leading to another. I slipped into Freddy’s Bar on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope for the very first time, sat at the bar and happened to sit near a young woman I know from court reporting school. She was with a friend, who was there to hear an Albany band called The 7th Squeeze at midnight.  “They have a really amazing vocalist,” her friend said.

My interest was piqued.

The band entered the bar at 11PM. A spirited group, they’d just driven down from Albany with their manager and were pumped to play their first Brooklyn gig. Meanwhile at the front of the bar, a tiny performance space with an upright piano, a blue light and a microphone, an Elvis impersonator wowed the crowd with his Elvis circa 1970’s act, wearing a white bellbottom jumpsuit with tassels and huge sunglasses.

Over the roar of the crowd and Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel, I asked Jesse Sample, the 7th Squeeze guitarist, who was waiting on a beer, the meaning of the band’s name. He said it was a horse racing term. “But this is my seventh band, and this is the one. The one,” he was adamant.

The band’s manager, a serious woman with blonde hair, filled me in on the group’s sound (a little gospel, punk, heavy metal and alternative rock); where they’ve been playing (the Friar’s Club in Manhattan, the Apollo, where they’d placed first  in its talent night); and what’s coming up (hopefully a tour sponsored by Gallo Wine). I prepared myself for a potentially unsatisfying bar band experience. That turned out not to be the case.

Continue reading The 7th Squeeze: Late Saturday Night at Freddy’s →

Jewish or not, how could I not want to read a book by the erudite, learned and ecumenical Reverend Daniel Meeter of Old First Dutch Reformed Church of Park Slope, Brooklyn, whose example of loving kindness infuses that  neighborhood with a certain joy. His argument for Christianity includes debunking myths about the idea that non-Christians are destined to spend eternity in hell.

The book, Why Be A Christian(If No One Goes to Hell)? from Shock Foil Books, is warm and readable but also backed by a deep knowledge of the subject. The son of a Dutch reform minister, Meeter has a Ph.D and brings a strong liturgical background to everything he does.

I was delighted by the readability of the language and the humor. Chapter Two is called The Good News About Hell and sub-sections include But First, the Bad News and then, The Good News is the Bad News Isn’t True. His emphasis in the book (and in life) is on the peaceful and loving aspects of the Christian faith, without being judgmental of other religions. In fact, Meeter has a strong interest in other faiths and the ways in which they inform each other. “The God of the Hebrew Bible which the Christians called The Old Testament would be horrified at the thought of keeping somebody alive a long time in confinement just to torture him. When the prophets call down the fire of God upon their enemies, it’s to consume them not to roast them slowly,” he writes in the e-book.

This book is for Christians and non-Christians alike who are curious—So what is all this hell and damnation stuff all about anyway? Meeter argues, quite convincingly, that suffering in hell is not part of the original Biblical faith and belief in hell is not a prerequisite to being a Christian. Indeed, his love and deep understanding of the Bible is at the root of this book. He writes, “I love the Bible and I honor it. I take the Bible literally when it means to be literal. Some sections are intended to be as accurate as a newspaper, but other sections are as poetic and metaphorical as a Shakespeare sonnet.”

I only read through the second chapter, which you can read at the Amazon site (Look Inside, indeed) but plan to download to a Nook or Kindle (as soon as I get one which will be soon I hope).

Atikba Edwards was one of the movers and shakers behind the Brooklyn Blogfest and is one of the movers and shakers behind FOKUS, a multicultural arts organization, Insight (a magazine) and The Stoop Festival.

On Saturday, August 11 in Fort Greene Park, FOKUS presents the Stoop 2012, a free celebration of arts, music, and life featuring live performances, live art, DJs, arts workshops, games, activities, and prizes for all ages. And yes, the egg race will be held again!

For more information visit www.fokus.org

Music

Friday, August 3 at 7PM: Ted Leo, Mission of Burma, and Wild Flag at Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park.

Friday, August 3 at 8PM at Roulette, which is located on Atlantic Avenue at Third Avenue. John Cage’s Empty Words Varispeed commences Part I of their 12-hour arrangement of John Cage’s Empty Words, a landmark text-based work from the mid-70s that transforms speech into music and brings to light the beauty and power of the human voice. At 2AM there’s a sound walk on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Film

Friday, August 3 at 4:30 and 9:15: The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff at BAM.

On-going: Looking for Sugarman at the Angelika Film Center

Festivities

Saturday, August 4 starting at 5PM: Target First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum celebrates the Caribbean. Note there is no dance party on Saturday night. However, at 9PM, Brooklyn-based dance agency League of Unreal Dancing hosts freestyle dance battles and a performance featuring the Afro-Caribbean–inspired dance form “bruk up.”

Theater 

August 1-18 at 7PM: Overturn Theater with artistic director, Kristy Dodson, place Samuel Beckett’s 1953 Godot in an abandoned medical ward in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

I am buying my tickets to The Harder They Come on the BAM website. Now. There’s a 4:30 and 9:15  show on August 3rd.

This is the summer movie that reminds me of August 1976. I went to see this film at the Elgin the night before I left for college. And now, i want to see it again. Everyone went gaga for Jimmy Cliff at Celebrate Brooklyn this summer.

Time to see The Harder They Come. Again. Playing at 4:30 and 9:30 PM.

The Harder They Come tells the story of reggae in a microcosm: the country boy trying to make it in the big city of Kingston. Cliff’s title track, “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” the deeply spiritual “Rivers of Babylon,” DJ Scotty’s “Draw Your Brakes,” and Desmond Dekker’s “007,” plus Toots and the Maytals recording “Sweet and Dandy”—which is worth the price of admission alone!

Awesome.

A few weeks back I went to see Clybourne Park at the Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway at the behest of their public relations firm. The tickets were free. All views here are honest and my own.

That said, I wanted to see the play, which won the Tony Award for Best Play, because it deals with gentrification very explicitly and the tensions and transition of a Chicago neighborhood over a fifty year period.

The first act of Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize Winning play takes place in 1959 with a white family on the verge of moving out of a house in a segregated neighborhood they’ve just sold to an African-American family.

The second act takes place in 2009, when a white family is set to buy and extensively renovate and enlarge the same house in what is now a hot, gentrifying neighborhood.

The 2009 white couple, played by Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos, are clueless about the history and cultural life of a neighborhood they view as an urban ruin.

The play could easily be set in any of a number of Brooklyn neighborhoods, which have undergone massive gentrification in recent decades. The play is essentially a funny/sad, explosive, uncensored and shocking argument between not especially likable characters. But it pulls the audience in and shows just how little has changed when it comes to race and real estate in this country, despite the fact that Barack Obama is sitting in the White House.

The show closes September 1 and I think it’s worth a trip because it will really resonate with any Brooklynite who’s been paying attention to the tensions and transitions in this borough during the last decades related to race, real estate, getting priced out of your own community and other serious conundrums of urban life.

The play pays homage to Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun in numerous ways and is ultimately a pretty bleak (though quite funny) report on American race relations since that play’s opening in 1959.

It’s a community building exercise. It’s a challenge. It’s a crowd-sourced contest. Woo Hoo: I am so ready for my close-up, CB.

On My Block Films (OMB) invites New York City residents from all five boroughs to create and complete a one to five-minute length short narrative or documentary film on their block using only residents of the block as cast and crew in an effort to strengthen communities through the collaborative filmmaking process.

Beginning August 1, all eligible films will be posted and screened online from the time they are finished until November 1, 2012. The public will be able to vote on a film by liking it on Vimeo. The 30 films with the most Vimeo likes will move on to be judged by the Judging Panel the first week of November. The top-scoring 15 films will be screened at a physical outdoor festival in November. Awards will be presented to Best Narrative Film, Best Documentary Film and Best In Show.

When I think about the meaning of blogging, I think about blogs like Water Over Rocks, written by Rabbi Andy Bachman (of Congregation Beth Elohim) since 2005 or so.

Through his blog, Bachman gives his community, his congregation, his national and international readers access to his observations, his emotions and his spiritual life in a very thoughtful and profound way.

On July 22, Rabbi Bachman’s mother Barbara died and the rabbi wrote a beautiful tribute to her. Perhaps his words resonated with me, in part, because he presided over the funeral of my father in September 2008 and I feel for him as he goes through the loss of his mother and strives to articulate what he is experiencing.

Nourishing Mother: Says to a son eager to learn, “Follow your instinct with your reading–it’s the most fun.” Loves to quote David Letterman’s latest pranks. Wants to hear, ad nauseam/ad infinitum, my adventures from high school and college when skirting trouble was sport. My friends were like other sons to her. One visited her last week and made her smile by teasing her about her hair.

Nourishing Mother: Who taught me to pray in childhood’s bedtime mystery and darkness, instinctively offering the promise of a loving world beyond fear. Whose own struggles with Faith left her at the end of her life with more questions than answers, a comforting idea in today’s world of dangerous certainties. A woman of valor who “looks for wool and flax and sets her hand to them with a will…she gives generously to the poor, her hands are stretched out to the needy.”

Today on his blog he shares his thoughts about this most profound transition with a  meditation on gratitude that touches on the appreciation he feels for family and friends, psychoanalysis, D.W. Winnicott, Alison Bechdel and the rituals of Jewish life when dealing with loss.

There’s so much to say, so much to write. No one can really close out a person’s life so easily.

Yesterday afternoon, when it was clear that the seven days of Shiva were drawing to an end, I was watching guests talk to one another in my living room, my mind drifted away, and I had an image of myself floating down a river, its alluvial banks a deep, muddy comfort; its current steady and inexorable. This is Jewish Law, I said to myself. Submission to a structure beyond the Self.