One ticket to the Danya Kurtz (Danyakurtz.com) show at Union Hall goes to this fellow whose reason for wanting the ticket: He will attempt to drown his sorrows in music. How can I refuse?

To the winner, and you know who you are, do you want a ticket for the January 9th or January 10th show? Also did you want your name used on the blog. I thought probably not. But maybe you do…

Sorry you’re going through such a tough time but I think your taste in music is great. Do you know the song: “Heart Like a Wheel?”

“Some say the heart is just like a wheel when you bend it you can’t mend it and my love for you is like a sinking ship and my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean.” That’s by Kate McGarrigle, who I’m sure you like, too.

Here’s his email:

I appreciate your ticket offer, and am writing you to enter the giveaway.

Why should you give the tickets to me? Well, here is my  best reason: My wife and I are separated, which has broken my heart (never used that phrase before, but now I know what it means, how it feels, so it seems apt), and music is something (among many other things) that we have in common – Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, Odetta, The Decemberists, Nanci Griffith, Bach, Johnny Cash, Paolo Conte, John Prine, Nick Drake, to name but a few of our favorites – so music is one of the few solaces I have at the moment. I am still deeply in love with her, and would give anything to overcome and heal the hurts and resentments and stupid actions and behaviors that created the gulf separating us, but until, and if, I ever am fortunate enough to have that opportunity, I will attempt to drown my sorrow in music.

Another writer who’s not leaving Brooklyn. Actually, he doesn’t even live here but he once didn. Now he lives in Albany and he’s causing quite a buzz.

Adarro Minton, author of “Gay, Black, Crippled and Fat,” a collection of short fiction, will be reading at Brooklyn Reading Works on Thursday January 18, 2007 at 8 p.m.

You don’t want to miss that, do you?

David Yassky called the other day to thank me for including him on the Park Slope More Than 100. I was napping when he called. OSFO answered the phone. She walked into the back bedroom with the portable phone. “It’s for you. Some guy.”

I think I sounded like an idiot. I was just waking up and a little groggy. But I was very touched that he called.

Pretty classy, I thought. To actually call.

Still, I don’t think I said anything very interesting other than, “Thanks for calling.”

I ran into the the bloggiest couple in town, Park Slope writer and lawyer, Sara Bennett with her husband Joseph Holmes of Joe’s NYC (Joesnyc.com).

Sara, co-author, with Nancy Kalish, of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What To Do About It, is trying to drive more readers to her blog, Stop Homework (stophomework.com) and I told her about outside.in (outside.in) developed by Park Slope author and Internet pioneer, Steven Berlin Johnson. I think Outside.in will help a lot of local blogs become more visible. Outside.in is way cool.

Stop Homework provides up to the minute homework news and opinion articles. She’s got some really interesting stuff up there from readers about vacation homework

We inadvertantly missed Cool and Unusual’s set at Liberty Heights on Saturday — they switched spots with LEGS and went a half hour earlier. Dang. 

LEGS is an all girl group except for guitar ace, Lucian Buscemi. They’ve got a punky, Rollling Stones vibe and a really confident lead singer.

This was their first performance at Liberty Heights. Liberty Heights Owner Steve Deptula said that they had to keep cancelling because band membes kept quitting. Looks like they should stick together now. The crowd was pretty much ga ga for them.

There was a super young crowd hanging around outside as we got there – I suspect it was because tween band, Care Bears on Fire, was performing earlier in the afternoon. As was Fiasco. We missed it all because we were at an afternoon party at Superfine in Dumbo.

Everyone said that Cool and Unusual were really, really good. I am so so so sorry I missed them. 

Lucky for us we heard Dulaney Banks perform at the party, as well as Luca Balser, who is an exceptional pianist and singer (he sang an unbelievable "Jealous Guy" by John Lennon). Julia Harris of Dulaney Banks is a force of nature. Kane Balser is utterly bluesey and cool on guitar and Steve Balser, father of Luca and Kane plays a mean electric guitar.

A look book to January 2006 on OTBKB:

–I was writing about the planning of the 30th high school reunion of the progressive, upper west side high school that no longer exists.

–I’d just read Paul Auster’s “Brooklyn Follies” and enjoyed his story about cinnamon-Reagan bagels and Pumper-Nixons. Story was confirmed by bagel guys at La Bagel.

–I discovered that my friend Mary was pictured in a street scene on the cover of the book. She’s still glowing about that and is convinced that she’s the beautiful mom that Auster calls by some acronym that slips my mind this minute. “That’s why he put me on the cover,” Mary told me jokingly.

–I sold a down jacket on OTBKB. We took pictures of the buyer, a nice guy named Otto, with his pit bull. I bought the jacket for my dad at Brooklyn Industries but it didn’t fit. They wouldn’t let me exchange it for a bigger size because it was final sale. Grrrr. It still pisses me off and makes me angry every time I walk past Brooklyn Industries.

Richard Grayson, who read from his book, To Think He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street, at Brooklyn Reading Works last fall got a really nice review of the book in the Philadelphia Inquirer by reviewer Susan Balée. Here it is:

"Richard Grayson is a funny guy from Canarsie, Brooklyn, and he’s been writing short fiction for decades. He’s also a lawyer and a teacher, which doubtless does a better job of paying the bills. Which isn’t to say he’s not a wonderful fiction writer – he is – but his kind of metafiction, mixing his memories (numerous main characters are named Richie Grayson) with his inventions about pansexual borough dwellers dealing with minor and major crises, read like stand-up comedy routines. Only a few of the tales in this book (including the title story) are fully realized short stories in a traditional sense.

"At first I wished he’d pen more of the longer, less autobiographical stories, but when I got into the rhythm of his riffs, I changed my mind. Here’s his kind of shtick, from "In the Sixties": At the beginning of the Sixties women were girls and girls were chicks. By the end of the Sixties girls were women and chicks were poultry… . In the Sixties… I raised money for a black classmate indicted for murder. I raised money for a Chinese friend to have an abortion. I raised money for Chicano migrant workers I had never met, or expected to meet. Most of the money I raised originally belonged to other people’s parents. This is very funny stuff, but it’s a comic monologue rather than a story with the traditional elements of plot, characters, setting, and so forth.

"Grayson has hit upon a good formula, though, to generate a piece of writing: the annotated list. Hence, he has "Seven Sitcoms," "Branch Libraries of Southeastern Brooklyn," "The Lost Movie Theaters of Southeastern Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach," and so on. But like Grandma’s beef brisket, a little of this goes a long way. In these tales of places that mostly aren’t there anymore, the main feeling induced in the reader is nostalgia. Unfortunately, if you’re not from Brooklyn, much of it is nostalgia for something you never knew in the first place." READ MORE HERE…

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the newly designed, Brooklyn Paper:

Aside from the drunken woman who threw up (and just missed Smartmom) on the A train, Smartmom spent an exceedingly pleasant New Year’s Eve drinking champagne and sparkling cider with Hepcat, the Oh So Feisty One and a gaggle of college friends in the West Village.

Just before the midnight hour, her college friends’ kids were handed all variety of percussion instruments to make ear-shattering noises when the ball dropped.

It was quite a New Year’s moment, and Smartmom found herself quite moved by the enthusiastic and raucous celebration by her college friends’ children (not that Smartmom was feeling old, you know).

OSFO, who was dubious about attending the party in the first place, had to be dragged away from the festivities at 1:30 am. She bonded with a group of girls her age, who were reading the “Guinness Book of World Records” out loud.

The train ride home was mostly uneventful except for the aforementioned vomit near-miss, which incited every one on the train to bolt from the car.

“I don’t feel so good after seeing that,” OSFO told Smartmom. “It looked like Progresso Soup.” Think pretty thoughts Smartmom said.

Pretty thoughts. Pink roses. Your Build-a-Bear. Your little Nintendogz’s face.

Arriving in Brooklyn at 2:30 in the morning, Smartmom cellphoned Teen Spirit, who had attended a parent-supervised party in Park Slope.

“Should we pick you up?” she asked as they walked past Smiling Pizza and the new Zana cafe.

“No, that’s OK,” he said. “We’re playing with the Wii and we’re making me a Mii.”

Smartmom didn’t have a clue about what he meant but she said okay. Then she realized that her son had just told her that he wasn’t ready to come home at 2:30 in the morning. And she said okay.

What were things coming to? Had she lost her mind? Was she a flake? The worst parent in Park Slope?

Probably all of the above.

But it was New Year’s Eve, she thought. What’s the big deal?

The ghosts of New Years’ past all came rushing back to Smartmom: In 1969, she was 11 and tasted Champagne for the first time. In 1975, she was 17 and she and a friend went to an early showing of Truffaut’s “Day for Night,” a Rangers game at Madison Square Garden, and a midnight dinner on then-dicey Columbus Avenue.

In both cases, she — and the Republic — survived.

So once she got home, Smartmom promptly fell asleep. At 6 am, Hepcat woke her up to say that Teen Spirit had never made it back.

“But I spoke to him twice during the night,” she told Hepcat. Then she shot up in bed: “No I didn’t. I must have been dreaming.”

Frantically, she dialed Teen Spirit’s cellphone. First, she got his annoying message, the voice of a female friend saying, “Teen Spirit can’t come to the phone right now. He’s been kidnapped.”

Then the panic really set in. He’s dead, Smartmom thought. She imagined him bleeding on Ninth Street. He’d been robbed and killed. She just knew it. My poor baby.

And it’s all my fault, she thought. I should have gone and picked him up all those hours ago.

Then she tried him again on the cellphone. “Hello?” Teen Spirit said groggily.

Now Smartmom felt like killing him. In cold blood. It’s moments like these that make her want to keep Teen Spirit in lockdown.

“Why didn’t you call?!?!!” she screamed.

“I sent you an Instant Message. I didn’t want to wake you guys” he said. “Can I go back to sleep? It’s 6 in the morning.”

“I know it’s 6 in the morning, you little jerk. That’s why I’m calling you.”

Smartmom checked Hepcat’s cellphone and checked the text message in-box on his phone. There were none.

And he’s a liar, too, Smartmom thought.

When Teen Spirit got home on New Year’s Day, he swore up and down that he had text-messaged Hepcat. Hepcat rechecked his phone. Smartmom even checked her phone.

Nada.

Even if they did find the text message, Smartmom wasn’t sure if she’d ever let Teen Spirit out of the house again.

A few hours later, Hepcat got the text message on his cellphone. It had taken more than 12 hours to get there.

“I guess he did text-message me,” Hepcat said. Neither of them knew what to think. Teen Spirit had tried to be considerate by texting rather than calling.

But doesn’t he know that his parents don’t consider text-messaging a viable form of communication? Doesn’t he know — of course he knows! — that his parents are not of that IM generation.

They may be crazy flakes and the worst parents in Park Slope, but they don’t believe that text-messaging on New Year’s Eve is a way to communicate one’s whereabouts.

Got that?

Temperatures will soar to 70 degrees this weekend. Hmmmm. Very spring-y. Where’s winter?

So there WAS a discrepancy between Doug’s account and Barbara’s. Rushkoff of course. Doug said it was knifepoint. Barbara said gunpoint.

There you go. Thanks for clarifying that, I’m Seeing Green.

I believe Doug.

Never mind. I was wrong.

Another writer who isn’t leaving Brooklyn, Steven Berlin Johnson, author of "Everything Bad is Good for You" (one of the greatest titles) and "The Ghost Map," wrote this letter to his friends, Douglas and Barbara Rushkoff. Douglas was mugged on Christmas Eve and Barbara recently blogged on her Babble blog that they are thinking of leaving town. Here’s an excerpt from Johnson’s letter. Read more at his blog.

Doug (and Barbara)

I’ve said it before in private to Doug, but I’ll start by saying it
publicly: I’m so sorry you had to go through this ordeal, and you’ve
both done an amazing job trying to work through all these issues in
public. It’s precisely the kind of conversation that should be
happening in venues like this, because it’s all about the clash between
our public and private lives.

You guys sound like you’ve already made up your mind to leave, which
is completely understandable, and some of the towns you’re talking
about are wonderful places to live. But I wanted to make the case for
Brooklyn, if only because some of the reasons you cite for leaving are
central to why we’ve decided to raise our kids here. If we can’t
persuade you not to leave, maybe we can persuade you that Brooklyn is
not "a crock."

Found this on Gowanus Lounge. Executives from Whole Foods made a presentation to the Park Slope Civic Council and presented renderings. This one is reproduced from a photograph. GL is waiting to get a better picture from the architect.

"The 64,000 square foot store is tentatively slated to open in the summer of 2008. It will have parking for 420 cars
(120 on the roof and 290 in a garage). The main entrance will be on
Third Street, while truck loading will be on Third Avenue. There will
be a 40-foot "promenade" along a branch of the Gowanus behind the store." –Gowanus Lounge

Fish’s Eddy on Montague Street is closing. Their flagship store in the Flat Iron area will remain open and items can be purchased on their web site.

That company started years ago in a tiny shop on Hudson Street selling hotel and restaurant china, and interesting antiques. I bought Hamburg Heaven mugs there all those years ago in homage to all the lunches I had at Hamburg Heaven as a child.

The store grew and grew and opened branches around the city. The store on Montague Street has been open for a few years but it’s closing now.

They’re having a big close out sale. 75% off on all items while supplies last. The shop is located on  Montague Street near Henry Street. They still have great stuff though it’s not the authentic hotel and restaurant ware it used to be.

They have a great Brooklyn series of plates, platters, etc.

This from NY 1:

Mulchfest, the city’s annual Christmas tree recycling program, is coming to the different boroughs starting this weekend.

The city grinds up Christmas trees and wreaths into wood chips, which people can then use for their yards and gardens.

“At many of the locations there will be chippers where you can take some of the mulch back,” explained Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. “It is great for putting in window boxes and tree pits, your back yard, front yard and garden. So you can give and receive. That which you don’t take we will use in the parks.”

“This is not mulch ado about nothing,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mulchfest will take place this Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at 65 locations around the five boroughs.

To find the nearest site visit www.nyc.gov or just call 311.

And for New Yorkers can do without the mulch, sanitation workers will be picking up trees for recycling from this Friday until the 16th.

This Saturday January 6th: Check out Brooklyn’s teen bands at the epicenter of the teen and tween scene, Liberty Heights Tap Room. 34 Van Dyke at Dwight Street. 718-246-8050.

1:30-2:00 Dr. Robot For The Sci-Fi Future 2:10-2:40 Fiasco 2:50-3:20 Care Bears On Fire 3:30-4:00 L.E.G.S. 4:10-4:25 Sophia Bennett Holmes 4:35-5:05: Cool and Unusual Punishment.

CHECK OUT FEMALE MUSICIANS IN: Care Bears, LEGS, and Sophia Bennett Holmes. Some times these showcases are a little testosterone heavy. Nice to see the young women getting in on the act. WAY TO GO.

I haven’t read Steven Johnson Berlin’s book, The Ghost Map, but the Financial Times ran a review recently. Read more about SJB and his writings on his blog.

I wonder how Steven Johnson pitched this book to his agent. Maybe he
said something like this: "I want to describe how the cause of cholera
was discovered in London in 1854 and how it made possible the enormous
cities of today. I plan to write a lot about excrement, sewers and how
horrible it is to die as your body suddenly expels litres of water and
waste." Mmmm, nice. You need a strong digestion to get through the
resulting book, The Ghost Map. If your stomach is up to it, your brain
will benefit. The story of how John Snow, a London physician, proved
that cholera came from drinking infected water, not from breathing
noxious air, has been told repeatedly, but never with such intellectual
dexterity and, despite the topic, so engagingly.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has been making lots of news lately. First, there was that stinky plant. Then, a rose bloomed in November. Now this:

It’s January and a cherry tree is blooming!! The temperatures have been so unseasonably high: that tree doesn’t know what the heck to think. It has sprouted thousands of blossoms with spring months away — and winter just beginning.

While cherry trees are early bloomers, this is crazy early for those pretty pinkish white flowers to be taking their place on those Botanic Garden branches.

It’s worth a trip to the gardens. Anyone want to go?