Get out the welcome wagon and head on over to a new Babeland blog featuring the moms of Babeland! There are quite a few of them and they’ve spent a lot of time learning and thinking about sex, love, parenting, sex toys and so much more. If you’re a mom, or know a mom or want to some day be a mom, you should read this blog.
Here are some recent posts:
Are non-moms sexually happier?
Sex Questions: What do kids really need to know?
Calling all dance buffs, real estate obsessed, historic brownstone types and fans of site specific artworks.
I just heard from someone at the Tze Chun Dance Company’s about their site-specific series called Parlour Games. They’ve been performing all across Brooklyn, and will continue to present the free event in historic Brooklyn spaces again this weekend and in June.
They passed along a short video trailer of the piece, filmed in one of our 12 historic Brooklyn locations- 105 St. Marks Ave (currently listed for $2.5M with Corcoran).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMp7g_zlzV4
The Local (the NY Times’ Ft. Greene blog also made a video article about the series:
http://fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/tag/tze-chun-dance-company/
There will be a show this Saturday in Lefferts Gardens and Sunday in Stuyvesnt-Heights. We are also still looking for locations for our June 20th finale show. More information, videos, and photos can be found at www.TzeChunDance.com.
They’re hoping that OTBKB readers and other Brooklyn enthusiasts come out to these FREE shows.
Last weekend artist and illustrator Shepard Fairey (designer of that iconic Barack Obama poster) took over the upstairs bar area at the Music Hall and created a one of a kind permanent installation of two murals on adjoining walls.
As he worked he listened to a playlist that included Metallica, Fugazi, and Band of Horses. Fairey created a collage that he says addresses the US’s dysfunctional democracy and the need for campaign finance reform.
Apparently, Fairey is creating murals all over New York City to support his upcoming exhibition at Deitch Projects, and as part of the OBEY phenomenon aimed to enhance the urban landscape.
Photo credit: Gregg Greenwood
Films on Fifth joins local independent filmmakers with the Park Slope Community so they can share their powers of storytelling, facts and fiction on Fifth Avenue.
Here are some of the films that will screen:
Arusi Persian Wedding *** Half Nelson *** King Corn *** Lock, Load, Love *** Mardi Gras Made In China *** Misconceptions *** New World Order *** Darkon*** P Star Rising *** Reel Works ( Compilations of short films by student filmmakers) *** Sparrow *** Sugar (in Spanish) *** Sunday Dinner***When Broomsticks Were King***
Movies will show at the following restaurants: Apertivo, Aunt Susie’s, Balucchi, Belleville, Black Horse Taver, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Coco Roco, Gingers, Kappa Sake House, Melt, The Old Stone House, Pirimide South, South Paw and more. Short films will show at Le Chandelier, Lisa Lobue, Park Slope Eyeworks.
Screenings are free with a $10 minimum purchase.
More information at these sites: allaboutfifth.blogspot.com and parkslopefifthavenuebid.com
Some Scheduled Movies: Sunday May 2: Melt 440 Bergen St. Arusi Persian Wedding and at Belleville 332 5th Ave Alice Neel. Mon. May 3: Black Horse Tavern Lock-Load-Love and at Baluchi’s 310-5 Ave Darkon. Ginger’s Bar 363 5th Ave: Misconceptions; Old Stone House at Washington Park 3rd St & 5th Ave: P-Star Rising.
Saturday, May 1st, from 10 am to 1 PM, run for your neighborhood school with the Brooklyn PTA 5K Run/Walk for Public Schools in Prospect Park (Bartel Pritchard entrance, Prospect Park West & 16th Street). Pictured above is a group of runners from PS 139 in last year’s race.
BrooklynPTA.org and City Councilmember Brad Lander are co-sponsoring the third annual PTA 5K Run for the Schools. Budget cuts in Albany threaten not only after-school enrichment activities but the core programs our children so rely upon in their schools. While it is unfortunate that parents are forced into the role of trying to make up for these shortfalls, this fundraiser is a great way for us to all come together to take action in support of local schools—and it’s good for your health, too!
Participants pay a registration fee ($15/person, or $25/family) and can also raise money through sponsorships. The proceeds are split among the participating schools. You can run as part of a school team, or sign up as an individual and we will assign you to a group.
Last year there were more than 300 participants, with school teams from PS 10, 29, 39, 107, 146, 130, and 261. We hope to have even more this year. We’ll have awards by age group, and for the fastest teacher and principal!
More information & registration is available at http://brooklynpta.org/.
From the Brooklyn Paper:
The city is shuttering two much-needed after-school programs in Park Slope and a summer program in Fort Greene because the neighborhoods aren’t poor enough to justify their existence.
As a result, several hundred students who use the Out of School Time programs at PS 295 and PS 282 in Park Slope, along with the summer program at IS 113 in Fort Greene will be left to fend for themselves this summer and in the 2010-11 school year.
“Taking this program away is dangerous,” said Traci Tucker as she picked up her 6-year-old son, Ryan, from PS 282 on Sixth Avenue. “This is for single parents, or families where both parents work, like ours.”
But Park Slope and Fort Greene aren’t poor enough, according to Department of Youth and Development spokesman Ryan Dodge, who said that the programs can continue only in the most-needed neighborhoods due to budget cuts.
“[We} examined our entire portfolio and sought to preserve programs that serve the needs of working parents … in high-need areas,” he said.
As a result, the city will cut 33 after-school programs, with nine in Brooklyn getting the axe. Additionally, 31 summer programs will be cut citywide, including 11 in Brooklyn.
In all, the savings will be $7.5 million.
OTBKB is a proud sponsor of this weekend’s Spring Food & Craft Market at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Over the last few weeks I’ve been picking vendors of the week and that’s been fun. This weekend you get to meet the vendors in person. The cool Kentile floors t-shirt pictured above is from Live Poultry Industrial Clothing. They will be at the show this weekend.
On May 1 and 2, the Market will feature all manner of “Handmade” to mean both Crafts and Edibles, as well as fun workshops for all ages. There will be crafters from Maine to D.C., to ensure a fresh array of products, some represented in NYC for the first time.
The Market hopes to highlight the full expansive array of fantastic, artisanal goods available all throughout the Northeast, and get them into the homes, shops, mouths and consciousness of the thousands of discerning NYC patrons who will enter the Lyceum this Spring weekend, and exit with a healthy armload of gorgeous products they can feel good about. Clothing, clocks, art, gifts, jams, chocolates, cheeses, craft beer.
A burglar arrested: Ditmas Park Blog
Fixing a hole: NY Shitty
Fatal shooting on East 37th Street and Quentin Road: Gerritsen Road
The Magic Fountain is no more: Pardon Me for Asking
Pols rally – Saving firehouse means life or death: Bushwick BK
Bill Murray on L Train: Free Williamsburg
NYPD can now lock up all bikes locked to signposts: Free Williamsburg
Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their weather tower in Park Slope.
Everybody knows that it takes a village to raise a child. But does it take a village to prepare dinner?
In our house, dinner is often a collaborative affair. For years, my husband, Avo, bore the full responsibility of meal preparation — shopping, cooking, and cleaning (well, I’d occasionally chip in). But then when he landed a new job with later hours, I rose to the occasion and took over these household duties on weekdays while he ruled the kitchen on weekends. Now that I’m suddenly busy with work, he’s happy to chip in (what a mensch!).
On Friday night, we pieced together a meal — I roasted asparagus with olive oil and salt and pepper (always a safe, yummy bet) and he grilled buffalo burgers (the ones at Trader Joe’s are the cheapest and the best). It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was as satisfying as a gourmet meal at Chanterelle.
Friends have suggested that we form a dinner co-operative so we can all take turns preparing meals. The idea appeals to me, but the logistics overwhelm me. Just coordinating a play date seems tough enough these days since everybody is so overbooked.
In college, I lived in a co-operative where we all traded off on meal duties. Since I didn’t know how to cook, I made the same thing every week — falafel from a prepared mix. Now that I’m a bit more domesticated, I bet I could even try making falafel from scratch. And then Avo can make some tabbouleh to go with it. I’m ready for the kids to learn how to cook so they can pitch in too!
Rosalie Woodside, Director of the Rivendell School, and artist Juan Carlos Pinto standing in front of the mosaic he created on the rooftop of the school with students. They hold a frame created by the kids for Juan Carlos as a token of their appreciation for the mosaic and the fun they had with him.
The green area was intentionally left unfinished so the kids could draw on it with chalk. “I want kids to know that art is something you can touch and feel and play with, not just something to hang on walls behind glass,” Juan Carlos explained.
Across the street at the Crooked Tail Cafe on Third Avenue (near President) where more of Juan Carlos’ art was on display. The owner of the Cafe is looking for more artists who would like to show their work in a room specifically created for that purpose.
Sarah met pianist Hiroko Sasaki at Blue Ribbon Brooklyn, where the kitchen is open late and the staff is always as sweet as Sauternes. Hiroko will perform the gorgeous Debussy Preludes this Wednesday at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. Tickets are still available. Do your dreams a favor and come.
Sarah: It’s rare to play both books of the Debussy Preludes in the same concert. What motivated your choice?
Hiroko: I feel very strongly about the music of Debussy. I feel comfortable with his language, and I love his imagination. At first I wasn’t sure that having both books on the same concert would be easy to listen to, but I have played them together a few times now, and people seem to enjoy it very much. Although they were not written too far apart – Book I in 1910 and Book II in 1913 — they are different. I think it’s a nice opportunity for people to hear all of them at once.
Sarah: The preludes have very descriptive titles. How do these titles influence your performance?
Hiroko: Debussy put the most intricate and exquisite markings and titles in his scores. It is worth mentioning that he placed the titles at the end of each piece, in parentheses and preceded by three dots, as if to say, “If you want to hear it this way, go ahead, but only if you want to.” It’s beautiful that they’re presented as afterthoughts, but I have taken them in all the way. When I play the first few notes of the Footprints in the Snow, I am alone in a very, very cold and white landscape where everything is frozen and very lonely. When I play the Hills of Anacapri, it’s a southern island with wind blowing against my face and the Mediterranean blue sky in the background. To me, that’s just in the music.
Sarah: How old were you when you began playing the piano?
Hiroko: I was three. But it wasn’t until I left Japan to study in the UK, when I was 13, that I realized I truly enjoyed making music and that I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. I remember feeling, “Hey, I really love doing this, and I’m good at it!”
Sarah: What do you look for in a piano?
Hiroko: I look for a personal connection. I always have a very strong reaction to pianos. Generally, I like old pianos. They seem to have a more personal tone. I enjoy feeling that I can have conversations with the instrument I’m playing. Sometimes a piano will surprise me and give me a sound that I did not expect. Performance can become so much more alive when that happens. It is difficult to find that in newer pianos.
Sarah: You study with the wonderful Sophia Rosoff, the leading teacher of the Abby Whiteside method. Can you tell me what you’ve learned from her?
Hiroko: This is very difficult to put into words. Although I have been influenced by her for a long time now, it is only fairly recently that I have come to understand the anatomy of what she does. I had a typical conservatory training at Curtis and Peabody— a very good one, too—but sometimes the experience can seem to add up to people continually telling you what to do and how to do it. I went to Sophia feeling desperate, and I kept going back, even though I didn’t quite understand what she was doing to me. People used to ask me what she did and I just didn’t know how else to describe it except “love.” I still believe that’s a large part of what she does and who she is. I’ve learned so much from her technically, but I think her core lesson is that she never separates what’s physical from what’s internal and musical. I couldn’t do what I’m doing now without her help.
Sarah: What does classical music have to teach us in the 21st century?
Hiroko: You tell me! Actually, I think about this quite a bit. Sometimes it feels so silly to me, everyone playing the same old repertoire that has already been played by millions of people. It’s not like the old days, when recordings were not readily available, and people had to go to a concert to hear music, and the performers were closer, culturally, to the composers. Or the really old days, when the performers were the composers. Having said that, these are great works of art that have survived the test of time. We can always go back to them and be nourished. I often notice that my impressions of a certain historical time and place are quite vivid, though they are informed almost entirely by music. Classical music takes people to different places in space and in time.
FRENCH 75
Born about the same time as the Debussy Preludes and similarly enduring, this cocktail was a favorite of US soldiers stationed in France during WW1. Most educated drinkers agree that the French 75 is on the short list of Best Drinks Ever, although battles still occur over the proper base spirit. In tribute to its potency, it was named after the French 75-mm anti-tank gun. The Savoy Cocktail Book warns, “It hits with remarkable precision.”
1 ounce gin (sometimes made with Cognac)
1/2 ounce simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, heated to dissolve, then cooled)
1/2 ounce lemon juice
chilled brut champagne
Shake first three ingredients very well with ice, and strain into a chilled flute. Top with champagne. Twist a lemon rind over top to express oil, rub around rim, and discard. This is the perfect thing to drink in a sunken cathedral.
The Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibit, “American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection” opens on May 7th. The show will feature fashion by French, Italian and American designers, including Elisa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin, Arnold Scaasi and Christian Dior
The eighty-five masterworks are from the newly established Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of the designs have never been on public view; others have not been displayed in more than twenty years.
A simultaneous exhibition, American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, the first at The Metropolitan Museum to be drawn from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection, will be on view at the Met from May 5 through August 15, 2010.
James Maddock is certainly a favorite around here. He had a wonderful album out last year, Sunrise on Avenue C, and he is even better live. Tonight he plays The Rockwood Stage 2 for the first time and to mark the occasion he’s expanding his usual band. Full details and a video of a new song titled Old Song over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.
Don’t want to go out to hear music? Singer-songwriter Amy Speace wants to sing at your house on May 6th. More specifically Amy is looking for someone in the area who wishes to host a house concert that night. If this interests you, please email Amy asap at amy@amyspeace.com.
–Eliot Wagner
Statement by Daniel Goldstein about Atlantic Yards settlement: Develop Don’t Destroy
Parsing the NY Times misleading summary of AY settlement: Atlantic Yards Report
Why did Forest City Ratner settle with Daniel Goldstein?: Atlantic Yards Report
1500 protest plan to close 16 NYC day care centers: City Limits
Rents everywhere too high for low wage: City Limits
Swipe it, swipe it good: Wall Street Journal
Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their weather tower in Park Slope.
In an effort to snare some of the New York Times’ local advertising, the Wall Street Journal is adding a “Greater New York” section, a mix of local New York politics, real estate, crime, society and sports coverage, that will run six times a week and range from eight to 12 pages.
It remains to be seen what kind of borough coverage this new section will offer. Newscorp (owned by Rupert Murdoch), also owns the New York Post and has been buying up local NYC newspapers like the Brooklyn Paper. and Courier Life.
Today’s Greater New York sections leads with a story about rats on the Upper East Side, an article on the Brooklyn Ball and “watching the fashionable crowd tackle nine legs of beef, 16 turkeys, two whole pigs and 150 rabbits in the Brooklyn Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court” and a story about the high-security storage site designed to hold millions of dollars’ worth of art in Dumbo owned by a subsidiary of Christie’s
A new boxed set of Barbara Stanwyck DVDs is reviewed in the Times’ today. I for one am a big fan. How about you?
If Stanwyck resisted camp, it’s because she retained a core of authenticity as unshakable and unmistakable as the Brooklyn vowels that colored her speech. Born Ruby Stevens in that borough on July 16, 1907, she survived a Dickensian childhood. When she was 4, her mother died after a drunk shoved her from a moving trolley; her father, an alcoholic drifter, abandoned the family two weeks after the funeral. Stanwyck spent several years going from foster home to foster home, and by 16 was working as a Broadway chorus girl. She arrived in Hollywood in 1928 as the wife of Frank Fay, a Broadway comic whose promising film career crashed just as hers was taking off, providing one possible inspiration for “A Star Is Born.”
Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their weather tower in Park Slope.
So what is an edgy mom? Based on the reading I’d have to say it’s a mom who questions authority and group-think, and who tells the truth, even if it’s shocking. Also, judging from the night’s readers, edgy moms are funny!
– Louise Sloan, author of Knock Yourself Up, A Tell All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom
Brooklyn Reading Works presents the Fourth Annual Edgy Mother’s Day on May 20, 2010 at 8PM at The Old Stone House in Park Slope. It’s motherhood without sanctimony and an evening of maternal revelry, wisdom and irreverent fun.
This is not your mother’s Mother’s Day but a celebration of mommydom nonetheless that will shock, rock, and make you laugh ‘til your thongs snap!
Hear Brooklyn writers of non-fiction, fiction, memoir and poetry rant and rave about mothers and motherhood. They will shock, amuse, and entertain but won’t make you eat carrots before dessert.
Bring a friend. Or bring your mom.
Hosted by Louise Crawford and Sophia Romero, here’s the evening’s line-up:
–Marian Fontana, author of A Widow’s Walk
–Rosemary Moore, author of Side Street
–Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway
–Martha Southgate, author of Third Girl From the Left
–Wendy Ponte, author of Mothering Magazine’s Having a Baby Naturally
–Sophia Romero, blogger, The Shiksa from Manila and author of Always Hiding
–Yona McDonough, author of Breaking the Bank
–Michele Madigan Somerville, poet and author of WISEGAL and Black Irish
–Allison Pennell, journalist and blogger for F—ed in Park Slope
–Kathy Fine, educator
The Where and When
Date: May 20, 2010 at 8PM
Location: The Old Stone House
Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets
Phone: 718-768-3195
7:30 p.m.: Open bar/Wine donated by Shawn Liquors
8:00 p.m.: Reading
Suggested contribution: $5 to benefit Old Stone House
Reading is open to all – not just mothers – though please leave children at home
Last night walking past the now defunct Tempo Restaurant site on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope I saw activity! A striking new sign, a beautiful interior, three storefronts worth of space (one for take out, one for the bar and pizza and a large dining room).
Inside workers were hard at work renovating and getting the restaurant ready for its opening in a week or so (I apologize for the terrible iPhone photo).
Previously reported here the owners of Stone Park Cafe and a member of the Cucina family (Fifth Avenue royalty and owners of much of Fifth Avenue real estate at one time and a pioneering restaurant called Cucina) were going to team up to open a Asian style restaurant.
Well, that ain’t happening but something else is. Something BIG. Very BIG.
A little bird told me that someone connected to the Cucina family is part owner of Fornino, a new Fifth Avenue restaurant that will serve pizza, salads, small plates, and dinner entrees.
Fornino? Isn’t Fornino an ACCLAIMED pizza restaurant in Williamsburg (and elsewhere) owned by award winning chef Michael Ayoub? Here from a 2007 article about Ayoub and Fornino in the Brooklyn Paper
Pizza is the great common denominator among people,” Michael Ayoub told GO Brooklyn this week. The crazy thing is, he may be right.
Sitting at a table in his award-winning Williamsburg restaurant, Fornino, Ayoub was rightfully proud to be discussing his growing pizza empire. To call Fornino, or its newborn Manhattan sibling Cronkite, a “pizzeria” is a mighty understatement. What he offers — gourmet pies with homegrown and high-end ingredients, including homemade mozzarella and three types of specialty flour — is about as far from a plain old slice as you can get.
And that’s just the way he wants it.
“When I was a kid,” he said, “a slice of Sicilian at Pizza Wagon on 86th Street [was the best in town], but that was a different time and an uneducated palate. At this point, I’m a little bit of a pizza snob.”
Growing up in Bay Ridge, Ayoub began cooking at an early age. After teenage stints working in delis and restaurants, he opened his first eatery, Skaffles, at the age of 20. While the restaurant had to hold off on a liquor license until its owner was of age, Ayoub was intent on making it a success.
From what I can see it looks gorgeous in there. I was especially impressed with the bar which has a golden glow thanks to beautiful cone shaped light bulbs. The place looks atmospheric and fun, like somewhere I’d want to go for a glass of wine or dinner with friends.
It’s the space next door to the popular Bar Reis on Fifth Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets in Park Slope. For a while it was the Reis 100, a tasty sandwich shop. Now it’s Kitchen Reis.I found this on NY Metromix:
“Brooklyn small plates” is the concept at this next-door spin-off of Park Slope’s Bar Reis. General manager Jeremy Mustakas, a Gottino alum, can explain it better: “We’re showcasing the food that have been in pork stores and provision shops and Italian-American bakeries here in Brooklyn over the last hundred years.” There you go! That philosophy translates into dishes like pork tonnato sandwich (braised pork shoulder with a tuna-mayo-caper sauce), duck hash (confit’d duck leg with fried turnip cake and quail egg), and baccala mantecato (salt-dried cod with potato and pepperoncini). (They’re BYOB for now.) At least they’ve got the cred to back everything up: Chef Joseph Aponte (Jimmy’s No. 43) grew up in Williamsburg, Mustakas was from Bay Ridge, and owner Reis Goldberg has been a Park Slope local for about 15 years now
FILM
Kick Ass, Greenberg and The Ghost Writer at BAM, Alice in Wonderland in 3-D, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married, Too at the Pavilion
Screening of 59 videos, 59 seconds through May 15th, Wednesday through Sunday, noon until 6PM at the Spectre Gallery 287 Third Avenue between Carroll and President Street.
ART
Paintings, sculptures and drawings by Karen Gibbons at 440 Gallery in Park Slope
At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden works by Emilie Clark (pictured) inspired by the 19th-century natural scientist Mary Treat, an expert on carnivorous plants and the relationships between insects and plants.
THEATER
The Creditors at BAM. Directed by Alan Rickman, this fiercely modern battle of the sexes comes to BAM following a sold-out run at London’s Donmar Warehouse (RED, Jude Law’s Hamlet, Frost/Nixon). A darkly comic tale of vengeance, jealousy, and psychological warfare, Creditors unfolds as a young husband (Tom Burke, in his New York debut), anxiously awaiting the return of his new wife (Olivier Award-nominee Anna Chancellor), falls under the sway of a mysterious stranger (Tony Award-winner Owen Teale).
Asylum, a new monologue by the very funny and smart James Braly, directed by Seth Barrish, plays tonight and tomorrow, Friday & Saturday, @ 8pm at the amazing NEW Dixon Place. Braly calls it “a darkly humorous autobiographical adventure into territory you may have visited in your own life: the place you go to escape it all. In case of terrifying flashbacks, the sedative effects of the delightful NEW Dixon Place bar are right upstairs.” Tickets ONLY $10 INCLUDING FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO TIME OUT NY if you use this link: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/722815/prm/Spring
MUSIC
At St. Ann’s Warehouse through May 1: The legendary Young@Heart chorus, whose members range from 73 to 90, along with No Theater have toured the world, united in their passion for performing rock music. Recently featured in a self-titled documentary (Fox Searchlight, 2008), Young@Heart’s repertoire is a set list of rock’s greatest hits, capturing the sheer joy of singing and the rapturous power of music to transcend age.
Sunday at 7PM at Barbes: Twenty Five Cent Opera of San Francisco: Theater slash performance slash entertainment brought to you once monthly by the playwriting firm of shulman delaney gassman kosmas and copp.
Featuring new works for the tiny stage by landscape artist Erin Courtney, theater architect Yelena Gluzman, & word contstruction worker Kristen Kosmas.
Sunday at 9PM at Babres: STEPHANE WREMBEL presents THE DJANGO EXPERIMENT: 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
SHOPPING
Brooklyn Indie Market on Smith Street near Union. Stylish, fun, handmade artisan goods.
Brooklyn Flea 176 Lafayette Avenue on Saturday and One Hanson Place on Sunday.
Something new: On Sunday 12AM until 5PM : Kings County General Store at South Paw on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope.
If you’re a cable subscriber with the Fearnet VOD service you have until April 30 to see a the little-known Pinocchio’s Revenge, a killer doll movie from 1996. It’s a dumb title and a Chucky rip-off, but it is also, surprisingly, one of the best arguments against the death penalty in any narrative film.
It’s a balancing act to get you interested in this film without leading you to expect anything. There are recognized masters like Samuel Fuller, who may require viewers to see past certain inadequacies in order to see the brilliance of his work. Kevin S. Tenney, director of Pinocchio’s Revenge, certainly does not have that kind of pedigree. Tenney is (un)known for being a director of B-level straight-to-video titles. His best known pictures are Witchboard, starring Whitesnake video vixen Tawny Kitaen (and another film with great subtextual value as demonstrated in the indispensible Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover) and a film of minor cult notoriety, Night of the Demons, a remake of which is slated for release in September. But beyond the T&A, the plodding narrative and the plausibility holes is something unexpected in Pinocchio’s Revenge.
Rosalind Allen plays Jennifer Garrick, a defense attorney and single mother. She represents a murderer executed by the state. One of his possessions, a wooden doll winds up in the hands of Garrick’s daughter Zoe (Brittany Alyse Smith). Homicides and accidents pile up, all at the hands of the puppet, yet it appears that Zoe is likely pulling the strings. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s next client, another murderer facing execution, refutes an insanity defense because the voices in his head are so real, he believes them to be as such. Therein lies the film’s anti-death penalty stance. The film is quite subtle in drawing parallels between the murderer awaiting his sentence and the disturbed young girl, who we know is a troubled child, and how their psychological makeup is a factor in their actions and should be considered in the punishment. The film does not go to great lengths to make the acknowledged killers human or sympathetic. Yet, Zoe is very relatable as a daughter and the viewer must recognize the links. Also, the Pinocchio metaphor, again applied subtly, indicates these are human beings and should be treated as such
It’s a leap of faith to recommend a movie that is almost certain to be dismissed (a 3.9 user rating on IMDB if you need metrics), but Pinocchio’s Revenge is a unique work and its appearance on television is a rare event. It’s a film I’ve talked about for years and hope is finally understood.
When the entire staff of Gorilla Coffee on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope submitted a letter of resignation and walked out en masse two weeks ago, the world took notice. The staff vowed never to return and I’m assuming they never will.
Now the New York Times reports that the shop is reopening on Monday. Well, we never found out exactly why staffers were so angry although they did say that there was a problem with a co-owner and that the work environment was “hostile” and “malicious.”
So a new staff begins on Monday. Hope they have better luck than the last one.
Will local coffee drinkers, who adore the coffee there, return to their caffeinated haunt after all they know now about the management? Will the owners of Gorilla come forward with an explanation, an apology, a vow to do better next time?
Maybe they’re banking on their customer’s coffee addiction or those who are clueless. There are people who don’t read blogs and newspapers. Then again, this story had legs…
Gorilla Coffee, the juggernaut Park Slope java-and-lifestyle dispensary that has been closed since April 9 after the entire staff quit to protest a “perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment,” will reopen Monday. So said the smiling woman inside the half-rolled-up gate of the shop at Fifth Avenue and Park Place at 7 Friday evening.
Inside were buckets of paint and several workers scurrying around and making ready. The sign that’s been in the window since last week says that the staff will be all new (other blogs have noted this Gorilla-ish sounding want ad). It will be interesting to see how the neighborhood’s fiercely loyal fair-trade-sipping customers receive the reincarnated operation.
David Shenk, author of the new book “The Genuis In All Of Us , has an short essay in the Brooklyn Paper about why he loves Park Slope. Here’s an excerpt:
The Park Slope I live in is an exceedingly friendly and welcoming place where people work hard but also make time for family, where parents care deeply about the quality of their kids’ education, where most destination is walkable or bikeable, and where extreme wealth disparities are discreetly hidden from view.
Are there disappointments and annoyances? Sure. The parking sucks (“Park Nope”) and the food on Seventh Avenue is consistently mediocre. There isn’t a single authentic Chinese restaurant. Various city agencies prey on our relative wealth by ticketing us for the most ridiculous things — absurd garbage infractions and front door lights that may not be quite the correct wattage (this really happened). The Finance Department is virtually at war with co-ops, unfairly manipulating taxes whenever it can find an excuse.
But overall, this is a neighborhood that makes New York living startlingly desirable. The park is close and lovely — getting cleaner and better all the time. Subway access is fairly spectacular (less so on weekends). Many mom and pop businesses are still intact. There’s decent coffee, good produce, and community theater. On a sunny Saturday, the farmer’s market at Grand Army Plaza is as life-affirming as a place can be.
