The weekend is HERE. I’ve been slaving over a hot stenography machine all week and I’m ready for something fun. Don’t forget the Oscars*2011 are on Sunday night. The biggest and best book sale is at the Park Slope United Methodist Church and there’s a Johnny Cash 79th birthday party at The Bell House. Good stuff at Zora Space for KIDS! Interested?

Click on read more for all the essential details.

Continue reading The OTBKB Weekend List: Feb 26-27 →

According to a post on NY Convergence, Park Slope’s Congregation Beth Elohim is embracing the computer age. The synagogue recently received a $5,000 grant from the Union of Reform Judaism to put their services, classes and events online.

Next fall they will be live streaming their Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. In other words you’ll be able to “attend” the Kol Nidre on your iPhone.

You’ve heard of distance learning, right? And church services have been on Sunday morning television for years. Why not virtual reform Judaism right here in Park Slope.

It’s certainly a way to reach people who won’t go to shul because they can’t (elderly, incapacitated) or don’t want to (nervous, inhibited, don’t like crowds).

You will love “Braciole,” a wonderful little video by Brooklyn filmmaker Mark Hayes. It is a tribute to his funny, feisty, young-at-heart Sicilian grandmother Marie DeSantis, who talks about family history and her Staten Island childhood while preparing Braciole, a traditional Sicilian recipe, in her cozy little kitchen.

It is just lovely. Thanks for sharing it, Mark. And please pass my greetings along to Nonna Marie.

Nonna, would you please share more recipes?

Ready for the weekend. I know I am. I’ve been slaving over a hot stenography machine all week and I’m ready for something fun. You too? Well sit tight. In a few hours (fingers crossed) I will have the full weekend list. But for starters, here are the local movies and don’t forget the Oscars*2011 are on Sunday night. Wonder if Pops Corn wants to live blog the Oscars again? Also a link to Now I’ve Heard Everything…

Click on read more for all the essential details.

Continue reading OTBKB’s Weekend List: Feb 25-27 →

What could be more timely than an Arthur Miller play about the Great Depression now that we’re in this not so great depression/recession/tough economic period of our history?

Brooklyn’s acclaimed Brave New World Repertory Theater is presenting a must-see production of Arthur Miller’s The American Clock at the Brooklyn Lyceum (227 4th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn) from March 3-13.

Last year I enjoyed the company’s sold-out site-specific run of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at The Old Stone House and I’m hoping to catch their new production and urge you to do so, too.

Set  mostly in Brooklyn, The American Clock moves through the United States as it portrays a dramatic mosaic of songs and stories based on Studs Terkel’s epic oral history of that time.

Mood Indigo, Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries and On The Sunny Side of the Street are just some of the songs in the show, which includes 53 characters played by 20 actors. A middle-class Brooklyn family, train-riding hobos and Wall Street brokers brought and more tell the story  America’s iconic economic crisis.

The show, which runs March 3-13 (Thursdays-Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 3 and 8PM and Sundays at 7PM), is directed by Brave New World Associate Artistic Director Cynthia Babak. The huge cast is led by BNW Producing Artistic Director Claire Beckman and fellow founding member Stuart Zagnit as Rose and Moe Baum, based on Miller’s own parents. Company member Joe Salgo plays Miller’s autobiographical role of Lee Baum.

The day after we brought “Roscoe” home, many names were bandied about. Cute names, funny names, doggy names, intellectual names, names of artists, show-offy names, aren’t we clever names.

Names, names and more names.

I was a fan of the name Jasper. Jaz, Jazzy, Jasper. It seemed like a nice, playful name. But no one else liked it. Hepcat liked Zebulon and Kubrick. OSFO kept changing her mind.

I thought Milo sounded cute. There’s a list somewhere of ALL the names. I wish I could find it. There must have been 60 names on the list.

I would read the names and we’d vote on each one. If a name got three votes it was still in the running. Very few names met this criteria. We were stumped. I thought we’d NEVER name our dog.

I kept calling him Jasper. He needed a name in the interim. Finally the name Stanley came up. It sounded like an elderly person. An old Jewish man. The first name of the director of The Shining, Clockwork Orange, Dr. Stranglove…

Stanley. It wasn’t too bad. Did it suit our adorable white terrier? Did we like saying the name over and over?

Stanley?

Here we are at the final February Residency Wednesday. Two are on the Lower East Side, one at 8pm (Milton) and one at 9pm (Aaron Lee Tasjan), and one is in Williamsburg at 10pm (Serena Jean).  Details about all three shows are available to you at Now I’ve Heard Everything by clicking here.

In addition, you can see Aaron Lee Tasjan leading the straight ahead rock band, The Madison Square Gardeners, right here in Park Slope at The Rock Shop tomorrow night at 10:30 for $7.

–Eliot Wagner

And so continues the tale of our adoption of a dog originally named Roscoe and later renamed Stanley. We took him home from the Sean Casey Animal Rescue pet adoption truck in front of Animal Kind on Seventh Avenue. Charlie, who runs Sean Casey told us to give Roscoe a new name.

“A new home, a new name,” he said. And we believed him.

It was the evening of December 16. I remember the date because I had to run off to a Brooklyn Reading Works event while Hepcat and OSFO finished up in the truck.

“We just adopted a dog,” I nervously told my friend Kim, director of the Old Stone House. She smiled.

“I want a dog very badly,” she told me. “But my husband is allergic.”

I felt shaky and afraid for a number of reasons. I knew that dogs were not allowed in our building. I also knew that much of the daily responsibility would fall to me. Plus, I’d never in my entire life lived with a dog. I had no idea what to expect.

But my heart also pulsed in excitement. Our new dog was so cute with his white fur and his dark searching eyes. I was beginning to fall in love with him.

After the BRW event I raced home to see our new dog. When I walked through the front door he barked at me, frightened, unsure of the stranger in his midst. I hadn’t even thought about barking. So much for the incognito dog we would sneak in and out of our house for walks.

Thankfully OSFO quieted him down and he went back to lounging on the rug.

It was so strange to see a dog in our living room. Hepcat and OSFO seemed very relaxed with the dog. I walked into the kitchen and saw that a bowl for his water and dry food were already on the floor. There were even some doggy biscuits on the counter.

I went back into the living room and began to cuddle with Roscoe. I rubbed his back and his stomach and rolled around with him on the rug. I found reservoirs of playfulness within myself that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

It was cozy and fun. He was lovable. We were, it seemed, already becoming dog people.

Read the whole series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Read my article about Paola Corso, a Park Slope author, on today’s Park Slope Patch. Here’s an excerpt:

With long black hair and big expressive eyes, Park Slope author Paola Corso met me Saturday evening at the Community Bookstore on Seventh Avenue. Wearing a white down jacket and a fur cap, she led me to the children’s section in the back walking past a red velvet couch, a bed for two sleeping cats.

Sitting at a small table covered in books, she handed me a copy of her latest, Catina’s Haircut, which hit shelves in the fall.

“It’s a novel in stories,” she told me of the follow-up to her award winning Giovanna and the 86 Circles And Other Stories, also from University of Wisconsin Press.

The new book chronicles four generations of an Italian family from a town in southern Italy to Pittsburgh. The interlocking short stories are rooted in a family secret. Corso was always told that her great-grandparents were killed in a train wreck just after the World War I.

Years later on a trip to Italy, she was told by Italian cousins that her great grandparents were actually killed during a peasant uprising.

When she discovered this secret she wondered if she should investigate further to find out the true facts behind her great-grandparent’s death.

Instead, she decided to use her gift for fiction and tell the emotional truth of their lives through short stories.

SXSW is a festival in Austin, Texas next month in which 2000 bands will play over four nights.  792 of those bands have made mp3s available to the public on the SXSW website.  Information on how you can hear all those tracks is now available to you on Now I’ve Heard Everything by clicking here.

Kelly Willis lives down in Austin and I first got to see her in person at SXSW 2007.  I’m constantly amazed by her voice.  Her song, I Have Not Forgotten You, was originally released on Kelly’s album, What I Deserve, about a dozen years ago.  The song deals with a relationship that did not end in acrimony; and her performance of it from 2000 is still great and available for you to view by clicking here.

–Eliot Wagner