Archive for February, 2007

On Tuesday night Boog City held a “40th Birthday Party” for Kurt Cobain at Cake Shop.

I’m going to wax nostalgic for a bit. I remember the teenage angst, skater sneakers, and borrowed cardigans. At my parochial school, it was pure bliss when some deejay blasted Nirvana at the school dance, an automatic allowance for moshing.  Forget slow dancing with the requisite space for the Holy Ghost between two pimply pubescents.

Kurt was the original UNCOOLKID: drawn out, dirtied, admittedly confused about his sexuality, embittered, and maybe just a little bit bored. He hated the public’s fascination with him (not like most celebrities today, who complain about the attention during sit-down interviews, then mug for the cameras as they make their ever-graceful exits). The more we loved him, the more he hated us. If he was alive, he would be disgusted with his own birthday party, and he probably would have showed up strung out, if he showed up at all.

Look, the guy was a mess. But the mess was his music, and the music was beautiful, no matter how ugly he tried to make it with his wretched voice.

In spite of all this, or maybe to spite it, it all came to a bullet in the head in April of 1994, but the intrigue lives on. Tortured souls have since tried to mimic, but it will never work the same way.

So on Tuesday my friend and I were really looking forward to hearing Nirvana tunes played in honor of Kurt’s would-be birthday. The girl working the door to the basement gave my friend’s suit the once-over as she took our money.  I noticed the sign behind her simply said “KURDT”.

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By Guest Reviewer: Eugene Slepov

Here’s one item to add to your list of things to do before you die: attend a concert of traditional Slavic music. Slavic Soul Party–a seven-man band with Shane Endsely and Ben Holmes on trumpet, Oscar Noriega on clarinet, Jacob Garchik and Brian Drye on trombone, Ron Caswell on tuba and Matt Moran on percussion–is the hottest thing this side of the Berlin Wall.

If you don’t object to going out on a workday, then take the F train to Barbès, a bar and performance space in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and pretend for two hours that you’re in Budapest, Hungary. Though the music here may not be your grandpa and grandma-style mazurka, you are guaranteed to find plenty of Old World sounds piping every Tuesday night in this diminutive performance space.

We rarely associate traditional Slavic music with hip-shaking sex appeal. Nevertheless, after consuming a few Red Stripes, I found myself swinging to the music in true bacchanalian abandon. Dancing like a drunk Slav is an interpretive performance for me; it involved waving around an imaginary gun, shooting it into the air occasionally, and goose-stepping in circles. Barbè s’s tiny stage and dance floor provides a very intimate space–twenty people here easily form a mosh pit.And why not? Slavic music, after all, is deeply influenced by the electric and carnivalesque sounds of Gypsy music. Though the melodies are generally staccato, the mood can be sultry, celebratory, or fast and raucous. Think Django

Reinhardt played on trumpets and clarinets. If that isn’t sexy, I don’t know what is–nevermind my dance skills.

Slavic Soul Party’s music is a blend of Eastern European and Mexican sounds with a touch of American soul and jazz. But, for the most part, we’re deep in the Balkans, Hungary and Romania. Yes, we’re in the land of beef goulash. I was actually reminded of that opening song from Pulp Fiction, a native Greek melody veiled as a surfer song. Highly danceable indeed. It’s unfortunate that the only song I was able to recall from that entire show was one that wasn’t even on the playlist.

The purity of their music is in itself impressive: purity of style and temperament. Yet Eastern Europe is hardly an ethnically homogenous area, hence the Balkan civil wars, nor is there really such a thing as a common Slavic culture. Since that entire part of the world was once occupied by the Ottoman Empire, there are still many lingering influences from Turkish and Central Asian cultures. You can’t miss the Middle Eastern-inspired melodies in virtually every song. You just can’t get this kind of an education in world history from watching CNN.

To sum up: your presence is kindly requested every Tuesday night at Barbès. Admissions is a “very strongly suggested” $10. You can even invite your grandmother if you feel like it.

I was super excited about BINGO at Mo Pitkin’s cause really; I love Mo Pitkin’s even though I know I complain about the prices sometimes. It’s so cute and they have good latkes and this one drink that tastes like a creamsicle. And BINGO!?!? Well who doesn’t love that?

It started at 9:30 and I was running late because of the oh so reliable NYC transit system. Lucky for me, I had a reservation because the dining room where the BINGO fun takes place was completely full. So if you don’t like being turned away at the door, I suggest you call ahead or get there early cause you do not want to miss this. It was the funnest time ever!!!

Murray Hill, the host, and Harry, his beautiful debutante of a sidekick, were a great team. It had a very old-timey feel and there were even a couple of old-timers in the audience, but mostly the room was full of east village 20-somethings and a couple of people celebrating their birthdays.

It was an evening of laughter and fabulous prizes. My roommate won the first game we played and took home a magazine called My Comrade and a book on CD about managing your email (cause you know how email can be completely overwhelming sometimes.) Other prizes offered were: a my little pony; a hello kitty notebook and a book about kitties (this prize also included a look at Harry’s kitty…if you know what I mean); a magic 8 ball and a couple of shower caps; drink tickets; a Mo Pitkin’s gift certificate and t-shirt; a Murray Hill t-shirt; tickets to Joan Rivers’ show; and the grand prize of the evening: $120!! Sadly, I won nothing.

There were a couple of people that yelled BINGO at the same time, so there were tiebreakers that consisted of a beer chugging contest and an arm wrestling match. I ever so highly recommend this. You can eat and drink and laugh and play BINGO all at the same time. Also, there’s no drink minimum and the wait staff was totally cool with me and my one jack and coke. So yeah, if you like fun, you should check this out.

You know that whole thing about single people hating Valentine’s Day? Well it’s pretty much true and yes, I’m single.

This year, however I chose to go out and laugh at other people’s heartbreak instead of staying home and wallowing in my own and I’m so glad I did. I have not consistently laughed like this in a long, long time. It was freakin awesome.

The UCB Theater was packed with a mix of singles and couples. And yes, the nice folks at UCB made us stand out in the freezing cold. (Ok, so it has something to do with a fire code, but still). It was SO worth it.

Some performers told the tales of their personal rejection while other people read the most cringe-worthiest material taken from their own high school journals and of course, there was poetry. I loved the montage sitcom-y theme song/credits put together by Jon Friedman to Queen’s “Somebody to Love.” I couldn’t think of a more perfect way to start a show about heartbreak on Valentine’s Day.

Some of my favorite moments of the show were: Sara Schaefer reading her high school love letters and singing “You Oughta Know”; Adrian Frost, who reminded me a bit of Janeane Garofalo, telling the tale of her 10 year relationship that just ended in divorce; Katina Corrao, reading an email from a hairy backed man who rejected her when she called him one too many times “just to see if he was okay”; and Adam Wade’s high school love poem for a hostess.

The amazing thing about this show was that ALL of the performers made me laugh out loud. This never happens. After the show, they had live music and karaoke and kegs. So yeah, you totally missed an amazing Valentine’s Day celebration. The next Rejection Show is March 14th at 8PM at UCB. The next Mortified will be on March 21 at 8:00 pm at Makor Theater. I so highly highly recommend these shows.

Nothing is more painfully hilarious than heartbreak, rejection, and the truth.

According to its organizers, the lovely ladies of Cudzoo, The Bad Art Party was created with the intention of celebrating

1.”human creativity in its most unacceptable and morally objectionable forms”

and

2. “the art we pour our hearts into, only to realize it sucks.”

In my opinion, they succeeded at the first but could have upped the gasp factor, and should be commended for making an attempt at the second. I came expecting odd-ball folk artists displaying the kind of art you’d maybe find for sale in a lonely strip-mall hallway kiosk somewhere in middle America. What I found was that most of the art on display was intentionally awful, and mostly hilarious.

Rather than celebrating creative fuck-ups, it felt more like a reclamation of the way we experience art by demystifying it through blatant irreverence, heavy drinking, and a warm embrace for all who came through the door. If you’re like me, you’d rather hold your loved one under the covers while farting than spend an excrutiating night holding in your discomfort in the name of decorum. In much the same way, it just feels healthier to boo an artist (encouraged at this event) for her mediocrity rather than hold your breath at a fancy exhibition of garbage (literally) for fear of your own stupidity (imagined or real) leaking out (like so much methane).

If you’re still with me after that simile, I salute you and encourage you to keep an eye out for future events sponsored by Cudzoo.

If said ladies are reading, however, what was with the pop music and TVs playing sports? Are there no bad video artists? I mean, are there any video artists that are not bad? Or, not not bad? Is there no awesomely bad music in the world? The competing media was confusing, and at one point I thought I overheard the bar regulars discussing mutiny.

In the general spirit of the evening, I give you my final summary: BOOO. Go back to art school you losers (I kid!).

By Guest Reviewer: Eugene Slepov

Richard Foreman is the Woody Allen of experimental theater. Matching the great filmmaker’s prolific output, Mr. Foreman’s new play — the irresistibly titled Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious Mind Is Dead! — is his 50th production in almost 40 years. Come to the Ontological-Hysteric Theater to see what the inside your mind looks like if your super-ego could dance with the id, and if your id could dance with the ego.

This is the third Foreman play I‘ve seen, and I feel confident saying that avant-garde theater doesn’t get much better than this. But what’s it all about? Sometimes it seems as if Mr. Foreman, like a good Dadaist, is mocking the idea of meaning itself. Sometimes the actors look like people on LSD playing charades. Relax, as Mr. Foreman writes in the playbill, and just enjoy the spectacle.

Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! is set on a claustrophobic stage, scattered with books, flower bouquets, and newspapers climbing up the walls. This is like something out of a Salvador Dali landscape or a Nine Inch Nails music video. Four actors dressed like Goth Catholic School students perform a kind of cosmic ballet. A fifth actor is dressed like a Charles Lindberg-era aviator. A toy replica of his plane is suspended from the ceiling, piloted by stuffed animals. The four Goth actors frolicking around the stage seem to be commemorating the aviator’s accomplishments. But are they really celebrating air travel or mourning its invention?

A sinister voice repeats “The invention of the airplane: a mortal blow to our unconscious.”

The message of Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! seems to be that modernity is destructive to psychic health. The invisible voice plaintively repeats things like “It could happen in my life time,” and “It’s broken and it can’t be fixed.” The performance becomes a re-enactment of the paradox–articulated long ago by Freud, whose name is also evoked– of how collective progress in the development of mankind requires psychic repression in the individual. But you probably knew that already. Just don’t forget to take your Xanax before the show starts.

Popular culture rarely gets more experimental than in the films of David Lynch. This is unfortunate because watching Mr. Foreman’s plays is the closest I ever came to having what some may call a religious experience. Even the simplest gestures are laced with transcendent significance. Mr. Foreman’s actors are always pointing to seemingly random things on stage: a book, a light bulb, moving images on the screen, a stuffed animal. A gesture as mundane as pointing, in this context, makes the actor seem like Moses on Mount Sinai accepting the Ten Commandments.

This is not everyone’s taste. A visit to the therapist is often less anxiety-inducing. While I enjoyed the play on the whole, I admit struggling to stay focused for the last half. Wake Up Mr. Sleepy is like a one-hour long Zen koan. If you’re not primed for a life of meditation, you may experience enlightenment sporadically at best. Still, Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! is bound to be the most beautiful nightmare you’ll ever have.

Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious Mind is Dead! runs every Tuesday and Thursday-Sunday at 8pm. Tickets are on sale thru April 1.

If William Shakespeare, John Woo, Mel Brooks and the RZA ever dropped acid and decided to do a play in my backyard with Spanky, Alfalfa and the kids from Our Gang, the result would be “The Jaded Assassin”.

This is a 70 minute giggle filled, transcendently violent Kung Fu masterpiece that makes the most inventive use of stage space I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience. The story itself is an old one I’m sure you’re all familiar with:

Young, half breed orphan raised to be the greatest warrior of her generation heads out to seek her fortune after a mysterious plague wipes out her entire tribe. She kicks much ass, struggles with some MAJOR anger issues, and deals with love lost.

Along the way she finds herself embroiled with a nation cursed to wage eternal civil war, confronts a jealous nemesis, hangs out with a water boy with serious Daddy issues and continues to kick much ass. In the end there’s a Hitchkockian plot twist from outta nowhere and yet even more of the twice aforementioned ass kicking.

The plot unfolds through the voice of a narrator punctuated by the beats of a wicked talented Taiko drummer. They flank opposite sides of the stage and immerse the audience in a cozy campfire story intimacy.

Like all great Kung Fu there is little dialogue. The actors portray their characters through hilarious pantomimes and a series of fight sequences that unfold with all the grandeur of a ballet.

The staging of the battles was nothing short of artistic genius and truly stretched the boundaries of stage combat to a level I never imagined possible. (without a million dollar budget) One of the coolest effects was having actors behind a screen shadow dancing a sequence of stabbings, dismemberments, and a beheading. One memorable fight piece combined classic karate moves with blistering break dancing moves.

There was one beautiful sequences where the actors’ sheer physical virtuosity coupled with strobe lighting created a cinema like scene of flight and slow motion brawling. This play also displayed the kookiest use of props since a little show called: Puppetry of the Penis.

The choreography wasn’t perfect, like you would see in a film. Nor should it have been. What “The Jaded Assassin” gives to the audience is the giddy joy of indulging in a guilty pleasure. The whole thing is pure camp, an intricately structured joke without irony or mean spiritedness shared wholeheartedly with the performers and audience alike. Just, you know, with a body count higher than “Saving Private Ryan”.

One for the Perverts:

(you know who you are!)

If you sit in the front on either the extreme left or right you’ll get some sweet extended side boob action in the first few minutes. Oh, and spend $5 to get the hot apple cider with a shot of Bacardi- it’s a good time.

SEE THIS SHOW BEFORE IT CLOSES!
YOU’LL THANK ME LATER

Boy, I gotta tell ya. It feels good to be the best dressed fella at a party.

Not so much when you’re in a 3-piece pin-stripe suit and everyone else was bedecked-out in bikinis and speedos. Sigh. I guess being the UNCOOLKID in any hip scene is my inescapable destiny. This past Wednesday was Valentine’s Day. The day in which we are to commemorate the Roman saint who married early Christians before being jailed and beheaded by Emperor Claudius II. He did, however get one last note out to a blind chick he had the hots for: The first ever Valentines card.

For those of us in relationships, it’s that merry time in which we are supposed to fret, and wonder and worry and SPEND in the hopes that we find the perfect blend of words and easily purchasable items that reflect the exact level of feelings we may or may not have for our special others. For those of us not currently betrothed, it’s a time to sit, sulk, dodge the inescapable the cupids and hearts and arrows and flowers and other that gives us all a case of the uncontrollable projectile vomits.

Or, we go out and try to get laid. And the girls at Gemini and Scorpio were at the East Village Russian Bath house on E.10th st to help us! (Not like THAT!)

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Science geeks of the world rejoice! We have a new, sexy leader to rally behind. He has the jivin’ -jiggly hips of James Brown, the pimped out pompadour of Prince and a trimmed up 80’s Daddy-O mustache not unlike a Nubian Cap’n Crunch.

His name is Neil DeGrasse Tyson and he’s the closest thing to a rock star astrophysicist the world has seen since Sir Iaasic Newton. Tyson is the director of the Rose Science Center (formerly the Hayden Planetarium, the old home of Laser Floyd).

He is a lively, wonderfully laid back, genuinely likeable genius. In the words of Ben Oppenheimer, the man who introduced him at a lecture the other night, Tyson is, “dynamic, but kind of a slacker”.

He was at the Museum of Natural History speaking about his new book “Death by Black Hole”. The book is a series of essays he wrote dating back to 1995 when he was a columnist for Natural History Magazine. Here’s what he had to say about the experience:

“Writing an essay every month is like giving birth. I can see the women in the audience are giving me a dirty look, but still…it was like my flesh was being hewn from my body each month. But it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

For over an hour Tyson wrapped us all around his pinky finger spinning anecdotes, history, astrophysics and cocktail party stories into a monologue worthy of Johnny Carson or P.T. Barnum. At one point he was explaining how as humans our five senses are completely inadequate for truly “making sense” of the universe around us, when out of nowhere he interrupted himself…

“Oh, if we have time later, remind me to tell you of the asteroid coming our way that will make the western part of the U.S. unlivable. But only if we have time.”

Spoiler alert: He never got around to it again, so I guess we’re pretty much fucked.

The man has done his math and is smart enough to know he knows nothing! He offers no answers but points out that the human condition brings with it constant discovery and accumulated knowledge over the generations and that there is salvation in knowing what we don’t know. “We are participants in the cosmos, vulnerable,” to its whims.

He implored us all to lose our intellectual egos. “We are not the top of anything!” Quite the opposite, we are merely a step in the evolutionary process of the cosmos. Consider this: The most common elements in the universe: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, are also the most common elements in the human body. With Yoda like wiseness he summed it up: “Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us.”

Lessons Learned:

• Genetically speaking chimpanzees are 99.99% identical to you
• Spacettification: verb- meaning- to die while going through a black hole
• Words O Wisdom: “Black holes, we really want to avoid them”
• Buy “Death by Black Hole”- it’s the best book by an astrophysicist with a Cap’n Crunch mustache that you will ever read!

Okay, so if you happen to like squishy orange Jello, some badass wrestling moves and girls in scantily-clad outfits, then you have GOT to check out the next showing of an amateur female jello wrestling competition that takes place monthly.

Don Hills Bar was just the lucky place to be on Sunday, 2/11. These Jello champions (the willing female participants) ranged in age from 20’s to 30’s and were from all across the board; some were students studying subjects from dentistry to theatre. Then you had the career women just looking for a great night of fun: a social worker, a live-in nanny, a marketing professional and even a professional flogger-maker (you know- those leather whip-like devices for pleasure/pain/punishment, etc).

So, first the ladies started with a wrestling lesson at 6:30 PM that included some safety tips and then practice, practice, practice of lots of crowd-pleasing fake and real wrestling moves like ‘the hairpull’, the ‘double leg toss’, the ‘hip throw’ and of course the ‘one legged boob pin’. Fun, hip event founder Dana Sterling and Mike the movement instructor stressed the importance of safety.

After the lesson, all the ladies trekked down to the chilly dressing room: BOOM: instantly taken back to the silly and sweet 2nd grade slumber parties of years gone by mixed with good ‘ol college sorority days- these women were amazing! Some dug through the community costume trunk while others brought their own specialty wardrobe from home. They created inventive wrestling names like ‘The Claw’, ‘Sweet Kahlua Spice’, ‘Tiger Lily’ and ‘Acid’ and they created personas with backstories.

So, hesitantly, I donned my snakeskin painted leggings and one red-feathered fishnet glove with matching red-feathered collar (of course) and I jumped into the ring.

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