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.
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).
This book sale is so good they charge admission to get there early!
This book sale is so good it made the Park Slope 100.
This book sale, the 18th annual book sale at Park Slope United Methodist Church, is this weekend (6th Avenue and 8th Street). The tables are ready and waiting and loaded with thousands of books (many brand new) in every category imaginable. Also hundreds of CDs, DVDs, videos & records and an entire room devoted to children’s books & videos.
Here are the schedule details:
Saturday, Feb. 26
8:00am – 9:00am $10 early admission new this year
9:00am – 4:30pm free
Sunday, Feb. 27 afternoon only
12:30pm – 4:30pm free
Note: Saturday morning tends to be very crowded. For a more relaxing experience, consider coming later in the day or on Sunday. They have such an overflow of books this year that they’ll be putting out fresh books (in every category) throughout the day and possibly still on Sunday.
Most books are $1 or $2. Videos and records are $1. CDs are $3. DVDs are $4. A small number of items will be specially priced.
On Pardon me for Asking today blogger Katya Kelly features a video by Mark Hayes that is a loving tribute to his mom.
Don’t you just love loving tributes to moms?
This one is oh so Carroll Gardens and it’s about cooking. What could be better? Here’s an excerpt from Katya’s intro but to see the video you’ll have to click over to her wonderful blog.
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.
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
The Pavilion’s reputation as a movie theater has been slipping all winter as rumors of bed bugs and reports of broken heaters and seats have swept local media.
Face it, folks. The place is run down and gross.
But the theater, which is on Prospect Park West and 15th Street, does show some of the movies we want to see and they’ve got good projectors in there. Dontcha think a renovation is in order?
Cinedign, the corporate owner of the theater, FINALLY agrees with me and their own management team led by Ross Brunetti, who wrote a much blogged APOLOGY to the neighborhood for the theater’s derelict condition.
Great news, folks. According to the Brooklyn Paper, a make-over is underway. Cinedigm, has approved a renovation and the first order of business is improved seating.
The place hasn’t been renovated since it opened in 1996. I’m taking a wait-and-see approach but am surely hoping they do a good job.
The neighborhood needs a nice movie theater.
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:
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
I just read that a recent episode of Fox’s Fringe, one of Hepcat’s and my favorite TV shows, was set in Park Slope. The setting: a local apartment building where party-goers were “expelled against their will out a seventh-story balcony,” writes Ken Tucker on his blog.
To even begin to try to explain Fringe episode to someone who hasn’t been following the science fiction series, which deals with parallel universes and scientific detective work, is just plain fruitless. Hepcat calls it “a mash-up of the Outer Limits, CSI, and Lost only weirder.” The show has been relegated to a rather lonely spot on Friday nights at 8PM on Fox.
Suffice it to say that Walter, the show’s brilliant paranormal detective played by John Noble, fears that there’s a vortex into which Park Slope might disappear.
President’s Day and Monday is a holiday for some (no banks, no mail). Some of us get to sleep late. Nice. Some people actually are on vacation in warm places (grrrr lucky people). But there’s stuff to do around here…
Continue reading OTBKB’s Weekend List: Presidents’ Day Edition
Video: The Jayhawks who either broke up or went on hiatus in 2004 have reformed, with both Gary Louris and Mark Olson back in the fold. They have recorded a new record which will be out later this year. When the band was in New York City recently, they visited WFUV and played some songs live in the studio there, including I’d Run Away, originally from Tomorrow the Green Grass. The professionally shot, great sounding video of that song is available to you at Now I’ve Heard Everything if you click here.
Photos: We were promised two sets by Li’l Mo and The Monicats Tuesday night. What we got was one very long set; it ran almost two hours. It was a bit past the 10pm time scheduled end time when Rosie Flores, Austin’s electric blues guitar wiz came into Banjo Jim’s and joined the band for three songs or so. To see some shots of that night, just click here.
–Eliot Wagner
Here we are at February Residency Wednesday again. Two are on the Lower East Side at 9pm, and one is in Williamsburg at 10pm. And despite what I said previously, Serena Jean swears that you can get from the Lower East Side to Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg by cab in 10 minutes. Tonight’s selections: Milton, Aaron Lee Tasjan and Serena Jean. Details about times, venues and public transportation can be found at Now I’ve Heard Everything by clicking here.
–Eliot Wagner
Fun for fans of memoir, Jamie Livingston’s Photo of the Day and Hugh Crawford’s No Words Daily Pix: Don’t miss the Memoirathon on Thursday at 8PM. The above photo of Keith Haring is from “Photo Address Book (1979-1984) by Hugh Crawford.
On February 17th at 8PM, Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House presents its 4th annual Memoirathon: Experience and Expression curated by Branka Ruzak with poet Howard Altmann, prose writers Mindy Greenstein, Chris Macleod, Sue Ribner, Andrea Rosenhaft, Elena Schwolsky, Beverly Willett and Annalee Wilson AND exhibition of works by photographers Jamie Livingston and Hugh Crawford and painter Kathleen Mackenzie.
The English noun memoir, comes from the French mémoire and the Latin memoria, meaning memory. In its very simplest form, one can look at memoir as a remembrance of something meaningful or significant in one’s life. Artists capture and explore personal memories in unique ways, dependent on how they choose to express themselves, whether it’s through painting, photography, poetry, essay, etc. This evening celebrates the expression of memoir in just a few of its many forms.
Click on read more to read about the prose writers, poets, photographers and painters, who will participate in this year’s Memoirathon.
To see more gorgeous pictures go to Stylefile NYC.
The former owner of the Park Slope’s Community Bookstore, Catherine Bohne, posted this wonderful letter on Online Journal from Albania. In it she describes the protests in Tirana, the capital, and also her new life in the Valbona Valley.
I found the writing so alive and so alluring. It’s positively novelistic in that magical way that Catherine has of describing her experiences. Do ya think she’s going to write a book about her exploits? Here’s an excerpts. You can read more here: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6858.shtml
Thanks for Ezra, the new owner of the Community Bookstore for sending this around to the Community Bookstore email list.
In the world I come from, I have made a seemingly quixotic and possibly overwroughtly romantic and impractical choice. I have given away my business, sold my apartment for break-even, and moved with a few suitcases of random possessions to Albania — specifically to Northern Albania, the District of Tropoja, to this point possibly one of the most backwards, impoverished and forgotten regions of Europe. To absolutely damn the impracticality of my decision, I should add that I have no income, no plans for any income and no clear thoughts about what my future looks like. Nor am I of an age which lends itself to such a cavalier attitude to the future. In my world, I should be planning sensibly for senescence, I suppose. Well, I’m not.
So my compulsion then is to explain the actual sense of my decision — to communicate why I’m absolutely certain this is the wisest and most practical choice of my life to date. What is it about Albania? What is there here that I perceive, that is not in other places I have been? Something real and tangible that is worth more than whatever I may have given up? And what is it that I see, that I see that others from my world do not see, so that they so often seem to be rushing to help Albania lose exactly what it is that I see that makes it so precious? Something worth speaking up for? Something that is exactly what my world might well stand to learn? Or relearn, as it seems so often to have been forgotten.
Images flash through my mind, but resist organization. Point and counterpoint. Somehow, though, I think they add up to an answer, of some sort at any rate…
…Here’s one last picture. Just before we leave Kamenica, I am sitting in the snow on the edge of the wall surrounding the entrance to the house. One of the daughters of the house crouches beside me. Together we gaze out at the snow-covered hills, absolutely silent and gloriously empty. An enormous mockingbird plays in a frozen fruit tree, knocking lumps of snow to the ground. You like Albania? she asks. Oh yes, I say. I love it. I turn and we look into each others eyes, smiling happily. You? I ask. I watch her as she returns watching the mountains. Oh yes, she says, still smiling. Yes.
Because I am of the school of thought that practically everything at St. Ann’s Warehouse is worth seeing, here’s what they’re presenting later this week:
The Pajama Men, aka Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez, are bringing their international hit show, The Last Stand to Reason, to St. Ann’s Warehouse. Hailed by the London Times as “one of the most dazzling displays of comedy theatre I’ve ever seen. It’s weird. And it’s wonderful”, these guys from Albuquerque, NM will be presented by AEG Live for 5 shows only, Wed Feb 16 – Fri Feb 18 at 8PM and Sat Feb 19 7PM & 9:30PM.
Here’s one of my stories from Park Slope Patch. I should have posted it days ago. Sorry.
Everyone has a good idea from time to time. But Park Slope designer Susanne Fox decided to do something about it.
“A lesbian friend of mine who works with a Broadway production company mentioned that the boys at work were upset about a lack of man-to-man Valentine’s Day cards,” Fox told me in a recent phone conversation.
Apparently that was all the inspiration Fox, who is heterosexual, needed to create a line of Valentine’s Day cards for same-sex couples that she is selling on her Etsy site.
“I brainstormed a few ideas with my friend and the rest was easy,”
Easy if you happen to be a talented illustrator and designer like Fox. The cards are black, white and red and are characterized by an elegant line drawing and message.
“This year you are my valentine,” read the words on the cover of one of her cards. Inside there’s a hand drawn illustration of two women in bras and the words: “because four boobs are better than two.”
Another card shows a man smoking a cigarette, which says: “When you asked to borrow a fag I told you, Come and Get Me. Glad to be your Valentine.”
On another, two women are pictured. One has her hand on the other woman’s breast. When you open the card: “You’ve really got a hold on me. Happy Valentine’s Day”
According to Fox, 22, a Philadelphia native, the images were inspired by photographs and drawn by hand but in conjunction with (actually on) the computer.
With a degree in Interior Design from Syracuse University, Fox moved to Park Slope two years ago. “It’s a great community,” she says. “Still a city but you can meet everyone and anyone here.”
Fox, who most recently worked for interior designer Cherie Zucker in Manhattan, says she likes to create nice things for nice people. Currently self-employed, she aims to create “an environment, product or system that will delight someone and make his or her life a little bit more enjoyable every day,” she told me.
Like many a designer, she has a tendency to obsess over scale and proportion, which is evident in these cards which combine craftsmanship with a bit of whimsy.
In addition to her work as a designer, she describes herself as a frequent dinner party host. “My favorite dish is citrus panko-crusted shrimp couscous with toasted sliced almonds, scallions, watercress and cilantro.”
Clearly she capable of creating quite a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner.
For her parties, like her cards, Fox thinks that presentation is key. “I always set the table nicely before guests arrive. A beautiful dessert is great eye candy for the entertainment space and something worth waiting for after dinner. It’s also fun to have interactive activities for before and after food.”
I asked Fox if she has a favorite Valentine’s Day: “My Dad is a woodworker and furniture maker by hobby. One year he carved a heart out of wood for me and wrote “Be My Valentine. Love, Dad” on it.
For Valentine’s Day 2011, Fox’s plans are still undetermined. “I hope it involves cupcakes with pink frosting.”
Then I popped the big question. What is your definition of love?
“Putting up with stubble is a good answer,” was her succinct reply.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
I just found this photo of me on Jamie Livingston’s Photo of the Day website from February 14, 1991.
Here I am pregnant, in a bed at Lenox Hill Hospital with pre-term labor. I had to stay there for a month so that my son, Henry, wouldn’t be born 4 months early.
His due date was June 12th.
I remember spending Valentine’s Day at the hospital. Hugh, who managed to stay strong throughout this ordeal, made me a beautiful valentine’s card that made me cry. And I guess he gave me a box of chocolates. Or someone did.
That was one of the most stressful times of my life. I thought Henry might not survive. I was under doctor’s orders to be calm and told not to laugh or cry. I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed, to stand. It was pretty awful. But staying calm was hardest of all.
CALM? How can you be calm in a situation like that?
I had so much love and support from Hugh, my family and friends. My parents, who divorced years before and were rarely in the same room together, were there day after day, side by side (able for the first time to overlook their own differences in the face of this emergency).
My sister, my cousins, my aunts, my friends, including one who figured out how to wash my hair while lying in bed, all rallied round. They brought food, books, magazines. Jamie gave me cassette tapes of his favorite ethnic music, another friend brought Creme Brulee from a French Bistro, still another gave me an adorable stuffed dog that sat on top of the hospital TV like a mascot.
My twin sister gave blood for me (just in case). At first she was told that she was too thin to give blood. While she was disappointed about not being able to give blood, she was THRILLED to be too thin. As I recall, they told her to go out and have a big meal and then come back.
She did end up giving blood for me and I was grateful.
The room was often full of people. It was actually kind of festive and fun. I got so many flowers from a Upper West Side flower shop called Surroundings, it was a lush garden on my windowsill, which had a diagonal view of Park Avenue.
I remember wanting to connect with the baby(I had just learned that he was a he) but I was afraid because I thought he might die.
A wise person told me: attach to the baby inside of you. If something does happen, you will deal with the loss then.
And so I did. I soared at the art of positive even magical thinking. And you know what? It worked!
Henry was born on his due date. The nurse screamed out “He’s cute.” Indeed, he was the most adorable– and beloved — baby in the world.
This is an old post from 2005 about Valentine’s Day:
Hepcat and I agree to differ about Valentine’s Day. He hates it and calls it a Hallmark holiday. Grudgingly, he will make or buy a card but his heart just isn’t in it. I don’t get hurt anymore but I do feel a twinge of regret that he’s not a flowers and chocolate kind of guy.
I happen to love Valentine’s Day: the cards, the silver-wrapped chocolates, the heart shaped gifts. It’s fun to browse the jewel-filled windows of The Clay Pot and Treasure Chest. Weeks ahead of time, they are harbingers of the big bright red spot in the middle of February.
As a girl, I enjoyed making valentines with white lace doilies or buying those tiny “Will You Be Mine” cards from Woolworths and giving them to each and every member of my elementary school class.
Even now, I shop for cards well in advance, carefully choosing the right card for friends and family. It is not lost on me that the stores are cashing in on these small gestures of love. I spent $39.99 at Possibilities, the newish card shop on Seventh Avenue (the closest thing we have to a Hallmark). That’s nearly forty dollars plus postage for this much maligned holiday.
Yeesh. The commercial nature of the day really is quite appalling. Shop after shop on Seventh Avenue has heart shaped decorations taped to their front windows — just another way to say: “Spend Money.” All the restaurants post signs announcing their Valentine’s Day dinners. It is said to be one of the two worst days of the year to eat out (the other is Mother’s Day).
But for all that it has going against it, Valentine’s Day does gently force us to acknowledge and say, “I love you” to the people we love in our lives. How bad can that be? It doesn’t need to cost a lot of money. But even when it does, it doesn’t hurt to spread a little love around.
Yours from Brooklyn,
OTBKB
Fans of memoir, fans of Jamie Livingston’s Photo-of-the-Day AND fans of Hugh Crawford and No Words Daily Pix work WILL NOT want to miss this year’s Memoirathon this Thursday at 8PM. The details are below:
On February 17th at 8PM, Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House presents its 4th annual Memoirathon: Experience and Expression curated by Branka Ruzak with poet Howard Altmann, prose writers Mindy Greenstein, Chris Macleod, Sue Ribner, Andrea Rosenhaft, Elena Schwolsky, Beverly Willett and Annalee Wilson AND exhibition of works by photographers Jamie Livingston and Hugh Crawford and painter Kathleen Mackenzie.
The English noun memoir, comes from the French mémoire and the Latin memoria, meaning memory. In its very simplest form, one can look at memoir as a remembrance of something meaningful or significant in one’s life. Artists capture and explore personal memories in unique ways, dependent on how they choose to express themselves, whether it’s through painting, photography, poetry, essay, etc. This evening celebrates the expression of memoir in just a few of its many forms.
Click on read more to read about the prose writers, poets, photographers and painters, who will participate in this year’s Memoirathon.
It’s Valentine’s Day, which means that it is time once again for Syd Straw‘s Heartwreck Show. If you have never been to one of these shows, it consists of rock vocalist extraordinaire Syd Straw leading a band of friends through any number of songs about the down side of love. This year the place the festivities will take place is Southpaw in the northwest corner of Park Slope. The full details are available to you at Now I’ve Heard Everything by clicking here.
–Eliot Wagner
Lots of cool stuff, including a LIVE screening of Nixon in China from the Metropolitan Opera at 1PM at BAM. The Diary of a Mad Man by Gogol with Geoffrey Rush at BAM AND Frost/Nixon at Height Players. Also: the new high school fair is Saturday and Sunday AND Biutiful with Javiar Bardem (swoon) shows at the Cobble Hill Cinema. Click on read more for more ideas and all the essential details.