The thing about Sweet is that there’s a host (Seth Herzog) a revolving DJ friend, a bunch of guest comics and a mom. So it feels like you’re hanging out in someones living room and a bunch of guys are just taking turns telling stories.
That was especially true this Thursday at Sweet when the guests were Will Frankin, whose non-sensical ramblings only made sense to those who knew him, Jakob Lodwick, who brought a home movie of Mr God vs. Mr Gay, and Leo Allen, who was pretty much making things up off the top of his head.
This particular Thursday was special because it was also the host of the LVHRD Society’s ‘Dance Hard’ auditions. Judges Kristen Sloane of the NYC Ballet, John Viener of the Family Guy and actors Josh Charles, Sam Rockwell were brought in to decide among the seven contestants who would be eligible to move on the the real competition on September 12th. Unfortunately, it turned into a mass of ironic hipsterness. Only one girl (Sharon, in the video) could actually dance, and little did she know she would become the butt of several chauvinistic and racist jokes by Viener. After almost making another girl cry, the judges decided to send two contestants to the finals, Sharon and Drunky Brewster(pictured), who through her alcoholic haze was able to say English words, but not put them together in any kind of coherent sentence.
Any fan of comedy should stop by the Slipper Room on Thursday nights. It’s reminiscent of being in high school and somehow ending up at the house of someone you don’t know very well. Maybe you don’t get all the jokes, but over all you think it’s funny and have a good time. Sweet is the place where comics go to perform for each other.
Young and old, hipsters and UNCOOLKIDS all gathered in the basement of Union Hall on Wednesday September 6th for the first meeting of the Secret Science Club. Eugene Kaplan read from his book Sensuous Seas: Tales of a Marine Biologist about the mating habits of nurse sharks, Octopussy and her pets, and the use of stingray spines in the Mayan practice of penile bloodletting.
This was not your average science lecture.
Union Hall may be best known for it’s bocce ball court upstairs, but what often goes unmentioned is the unusual decor of the bar. Walking in feels like you’ve stumbled upon the library in an old mansion; dark wood paneling lines the entire place and behind the bar downstairs is a stuffed pheasant and monkey skull. Although it’s usually a music venue, it is the perfect location for a Science Club; you feel that Darwin and Huxley could possibly be behind the next corner discussing evolution.
The forty chairs downstairs filled up fast and the rest of the crowd was left standing around the walls, leaning in the catch a glimpse. I would definitely recommend going early to the next one, just to make sure you get a seat. It only lasted about an hour, although many of the attendees stuck around afterward to discuss what they had just learned. It wasn’t ‘funny’ or ‘ironic’ in any way. This was a collection of people who think science is awesome and wanted to learn more about it.
The Secret Science Club will meet on the first Wednesday of every month, and is always free. In October Lee Silver, author of Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family will be discussing Stem Cell research, and future events will have ’science-themed’ bands and even experiments.
Looks like I dropped the ball on this one. Deadline to sign up is TODAY! But I just sent in my info and you should too:
*****UPDATE******
The game has been postponed in order to get more people involved, so it’s not too late. You get a ‘target’ and you’ve got three weeks to find them and shoot them with a water gun - but in the meantime somebody is coming after you. Whoever shoots the most people in three weeks wins. AWESOME! I’ve already signed up.
Send your info in now. And maybe you’ll get a chance to shoot an UNCOOLKID!!!!!
Object Of The Game:
In this game everyone that joins will be given a target to kill(A.K.A contract)(this target will be another player of the game). As an assassin your job is to search the city with the provided information of your contract and kill him or her. When a clean kill is done your (now dead) target must give up his or her contract to you and now you must seek out and kill the your new target. The assassin with the most kills at the end of the game will be declared the winner.
How To Kill:
In the Real world assassins woudl use guns, however we dont want anyone really dead on our hands. so we will use water. which means any of the following may be used:
a)really fake water gun~~~> nothing that looks even remotely real… so we suggest using something along the line of a super soaker
b)water Ballons
c)Bucket of water
d)Water hoses
e)Bottle of water
…this does not include holding water in your mouth and spitting it at someone…be nice we dont want any problems.
once a target is wet he or she is now dead and must hand over their contract.A player may defend him or herself by spotting and wetting there assassin first. By doing this two things happen. 1) your assassin may not harm you for an hour which gives time to run. 2) You now Know who Your assassin is, so from now on be on the look out!
The lower east side may be the breeding ground of hipsters, but that wasn’t always the case. If you want to get to know the old Jewish side of the neighborhood, I recommend eating your way through.
You can start at Streit’s for matzo. Not only do they make it on the premises, but they’ll let you try it for free (nice and hot!). A whole box is only $1.50
Next move on to Shapiro’s Kosher Wines. The sign can still be seen from Essex (on Rivington) but the store isn’t there anymore (it’s now Sugar Sweet Sunshine, also worth a stop).
But if you go into the Essex market (between Stanton and Rivington) Mr. Shapiro is still there and will not only give you as many free samples as you want, but is willing to talk with you all day about his grandfather’s business. A bottle of wine is only $5.00.
These days, it’s pretty easy to get bored of the same old indie rock scene. That’s why I’m grateful for bands like Ansambl Mastika.
Put together by Greg Squared (Zagnut Orkestar, Hungry Marching Band), Ansambl Mastika is best listened to while watching belly dancers and smoking a hooka. Luckily, such a place exists, Maia Meyhane in the East Village. I won’t pretend to know anything about Balkan music; so I don’t really feel qualified to critique the CD. But I can tell you that the show was great. There was no pretention, anyone, even a complete outsider to the scene like me, could walk in and enjoy.
A dollar can’t buy a lot of things these days; a soda, a newspaper. But if 75,000 people all pitch in, those dollars can go to a completely useless yet hilarious cause: Get Hasselhoff to Number 1
“Sign up to our campaign to get the Hoff to number one in the UK download chart by first registering your e-mail address to show your support. When we have 75000 sign ups, The Hoff Alert will be sent, tipping you the wink that it’s time… Time to buy David Hasselhoff’s awesome masterpiece “Looking for Freedom” from iTunes. This will then shoot his single deep into the download charts, thus generating musical history.”
It sounds like an episode of Law and Order. Sweeney Todd’s young and beautiful wife catches the eye of a prominent judge, who in order to ‘have her’ has Todd exiled to Australia. The judge tricks Todd’s wife into sleeping with him and many of his wealthy friends. After her shame leads her to suicide, the judge takes custody of Sweeney Todd’s daughter.
And all this happens before the play even starts.
Sweeney Todd is a macabre tale of a barber who returns to extract revenge on the man that ruined his family, but along the way develops a little blood lust of his own. Think Soylent Green meets Oliver.
This particular production, at the Eugene O’Neil Theatre, stars Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone (who you may know from Life Goes On). Cerveris should win the Tony for his portrayal of the demon barber of Fleet Street. His bald shaved head and sunken eyes convey the intensity of a good man turned bad by the evil around him (plus he’s super creepy). The entire cast is impressive not only for their acting ability but also because the play their own instruments — and stay in character while doing so. As if it’s not hard enough for actors out there, now you can’t get a job unless you can play the cello or the accordion?
The staging is unique in that the set is very bare and simple; the actors are all on stage the entire time, the only colors are black and white (with the exception of the blood red of Sweeney Todd’s victims) and almost all the scenes are played to the front. So instead of talking directly to each other, the actors talk to each other out to the audience. It’s a direction that I hadn’t seen before, but I liked it because it really focuses the audience on the few non-musical scenes.
Tickets are expensive, but you might be able to get a student rush seat ($35, 2 hours before showtime with ID), or find a discount online (try checking BroadwayBox). Patti LuPone is only contracted until July 2nd, but I have a feeling it will be very popular after the Tonys on June 11th, so try to go before then.
The day before it’s release on Subpop records Eugene Mirman decided to stage a protest of En Garde Society. Why was he protesting? That’s a good question, considering En Garde Society is Mirman’s own comedy CD.
This protest was arranged because it seemed like the perfect way to promote Mirman’s absurdest comedy. The plan was to start in Union Square and march down 14th street to The Beauty Bar where there would be a screening of the DVD. However, the event was half-assed at best. I don’t think any of the organizers thought they would get away with it, so they were much more concerned with getting in and out quickly than letting the crowd know what was going on. The result was a lot of loyal fans standing around with signs not knowing what to do with themselves. I overheard more than one person say, “Should we chant or something?”
After handing out all of his anti-Eugene placards, Mirman stood in front of the crowd with a loudspeaker and started protesting himself. About two minutes in, he admitted to the crowd that he was surprised the cops hadn’t stopped him yet. After 5 minutes and a round of “Boo-gene, Fuck you-gene” he led the crowd to the bar, where everyone piled in and started drinking. The whole protest had only taken fifteen minutes.
I was at Pianos in Oct 2005 when this album was recorded [review], and really liked it. I even think the protest/publicity stunt could’ve been a lot of fun; but it wasn’t, it was kind-of ‘eh’. I hate to say it, but I don’t think Mirman had the balls to pull this off. He should have been much louder, stayed there much longer, and taken it much further. However, I do think you should buy the CD and go see him in a regular venue, cause he’s usually funny as hell.
“What ground-up herb does Tim love?” my teammates asked me as we stood outside the York St. station in DUMBO. We looked for a sign that would answer our question, we spoke with the guy in the MTA booth (are you Tim?), we even asked a cop standing nearby if he knew. Finally when we were ready to walk away, I saw the answer. “Thyme! Tim loves Thyme!” It had been written in the cement, in plain view of the doorway, but you could walk over it everyday and never notice it. At least, not unless you were taking place in Metro Metro’s annual scavenger hunt.
Started by three guys, Bo, Brady and Will, in 2002, Metro Metro has hosted trivia nights, spy games and fake office parties, but what they are best known for is their ability to encourage a bunch of well mannered New Yorkers to don matching t-shirts/masks/wigs and run around the city making fools of themselves. On Saturday, I was one such fool.
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This particular Thursday was special because it was also the host of the LVHRD Society’s ‘Dance Hard’ auditions. Judges Kristen Sloane of the NYC Ballet, John Viener of the Family Guy and actors Josh Charles, Sam Rockwell were brought in to decide among the seven contestants who would be eligible to move on the the real competition on September 12th. Unfortunately, it turned into a mass of ironic hipsterness. Only one girl (Sharon, in the video) could actually dance, and little did she know she would become the butt of several chauvinistic and racist jokes by Viener. After almost making another girl cry, the judges decided to send two contestants to the finals, Sharon and Drunky Brewster(pictured), who through her alcoholic haze was able to say English words, but not put them together in any kind of coherent sentence.
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Young and old, hipsters and UNCOOLKIDS all gathered in the basement of 
