Laurie Anderson, PIFF-Blessed/Chosen-Grateful

In Joan Rivers new documentary, despite the over-arching theme of her heroic battle to maintain eroding celebrity, she talks a lot about being chosen. Yes, this works in contrast with the theme, because although as audience members we are asked to feel sorry for her because she is  aging, and has been  somewhat cast aside, the images that we are shown are of her affluence, her heightened privilege. She especially kills her bid for sympathy  when she on several occasions, publicly declares that she is “so chosen.” I think this is a reference to the Jewish concept of being the chosen ones, a concept that does not evade supremacist ideology and one of which, I am not a fan.

I had trouble with this  sentiment and i did not feel sorry for Joan, still I found her to be funny in an off way and I enjoyed the film. It was one of the few that I caught this year at the Provincetown International Film Festival. Kevin Smith was being honored as Director on the edge, so he was in attendance along with Tilda Swinton and the directing team behind the Celluloid Closet and several other queer history greats including Word is Out.

It was fun hearing Smith talk as I have long been a fan of his New Jersey cult classics. He produced a film, that also screened at the festival called Bear Nation. A film about the bear community among Gay men.  A great topic, but the film, however, was not a cinematic masterpiece.

Anyway, the thing which brought me to remember Joan Rivers comments on being chosen, were my thoughts at the beginning of this post and at the end of these two weeks about being blessed. Blesssed I’m afraid is as problematic a word as chosen in this context. I feel lucky at this moment, I’d say I feel blessed but that takes on a very similar religious tone to chosen and I’d rather leave all of that out of this.

What I mean to say is, I feel honored to have sat crouched down on the floor in the penthouse balcony of a very tall hotel next to Lou Reed and AM Holmes, Anthony (from he and the Johnsons) and  the esteemed photographer who took the below picture, at the foot of Laurie Anderson while she played us a song off her new album Homeland. Using her voice disguiser, she performed in the character of her drag alter ego. The whole scene was brilliant and I just sat there, in awed silence, not quite sure if i belonged. Belong or not, I was invited in.

Rather than walking out feeling chosen or blessed, I felt grateful and went home to Brooklyn.

Portrait (c) Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

helooo- Word of the day-Work Comma

Aggggghhhhrrhhhhgggg!

I’m sorry. I’ve been in work comma. It’s kind of like food comma. It comes when you consume too much work, what it leaves in it’s path is the ability to work more, or lay down and hold your ears and/or stomach, and probably put on headphones, maybe earplugs, preferably watch something, like a bad movie or life as you once knew it continuing to go on outside of your window. Maybe you’ll listen to music, the one click kind, like Pandorra, or itunes.

Don’t be alarmed, you have the itis! That’s right, it’s just work comma and there is a cure.

Now the cure isn’t easy or free if you intend to keep working, but in this case, no problems, because you now have the money, and can afford to treat yourself.

These are the top 10 miracle cures, now pay very close attention: acupuncture, protein in the morning, massage(preferably hot stone), all day brunches with yo friends, movies, great books, yo friends, cultural nourishment(ie art shows, dance, theater, the better the better),  music (as often as pos), and blogging! I swear it helps, go viral, pretend you’re a pirate radio station in Arizona and no ones listening! That’s what I do.

x TBS

Brooklyn Snapshots of Silverlake

Hey folks, I know I’ve been an errant blogger. Bad girl! ha ha, i mean bad Woman, I mean, good effort, nice try, better luck next time. I mean…. here are some photos of my recent trip to Silver Lake aka a fun neighborhood in L A. There are some photos of Venice and Santa Monica too. I really enjoyed hanging out at Intelligentsia cafe on Sunset and checking out the local take on Hipster fashion, going to the West Hollywood Farmer’s Market, where I had amazing lavender honey ice cream and dipping into the hot springs in Ohai. Here are the pics:

Pupuseria

Cubanito Market Coffee

Scaters of all ages

Much needed sun

DJ Spooky and…I moved

Well, friends I’ve been a little busy. I moved to Ft Greene, so it looks like the Brooklyn Socialite just got a little bit more central (and high-class). The transition was crazy, it involved movers and me breaking my little back, oh(!) it was exhausting, it’s taken a while to recover, but I think I’m getting there. I have still been voraciously consuming culture, that has not changed and there is much to be discussed. I really can’t imagine where to begin.

Hmmm, just before my blogging blackout, I saw DJ Spooky’s Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica at BAM (my new neighbor). Ah, it was so good, just my speed, with text and film projections, symphony live mixed-by Mr.Spooky and an interrogation of borders, neutrality and environmental preservation, the event was twisted good. He straight-up went to Antarctica and recorded the sounds of ice in preparation for this event.  I also learned that DJ Spooky aka That subliminal kid Paul D. Miller is a pretty legit working artist, am I the last to know?  I knew I was impressed when I saw him at Southpaw in like 2006 with Don Letts (that’s reggae god to you), he had some crazy projections going and a well-tailored set, but that was nothing compared with the BAM show. Here is a teaser of Spooky’s Antarctica project.

I have so much more to say but one thing at a time…

Jack Dorsey, J.VIEWZ, Jennifer Muller…

On the cultural front, life has been unfolding quite beautifully, on the work/ housing front, I must emit a resounding, “Don’t Ask.” So lets accentuate the positive, starting with last Monday night. I went to my favorite niche Museum, yes, The Rubin. After some Indian Dahl soup in their cafe, I ventured downstairs to hear a very creative approach to the old fashioned interview. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter was being essentially analyzed by the Jungian analyst, Harry Fogerty. Some pretty astounding things emerged from the exercise.

While, I live tweeted along, I found out that the young Dorsey, has quite an artistic/poetic brain. He spoke of his love for maps and pockets, as could be expected, but did so through the lens of Virginia Wolff, his favorite author, and by offering anecdotes about his mother (one of the first Twitter users) and his walking habit. Apparently, he makes a ritual of zigzagging across the city from one end to the other, so if your out walking after midnight under the starlight you might literally run into him. He also spoke a lot about the potential dangers of internet addiction, the crackberry and Twitter fiends. He recommends technology as a tool, to be used for good, and in moderation.

The invitations kept coming in and Wednesday after a day of shots from my newly acquired doctor (!) I caught a performance of Jennifer Muller and the Works’ piece Bench. Based on the issues captured in Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, the performance is lyrical and symbolic. Thanks to a choreography-explained session by the formidable Ms. Muller, I now know that the 7 deadly sins are danced in stages throughout the performance, with 7 couples representing the possible roads to folly. The event took place in the Chelsea Museum above the Hudson River skyline. I almost felt far from Brooklyn.

On Friday night, I checked out J.VIEWZ. I don’t know what that stands for but, they are: an Israeli Jazz band, fused with Reggae, equipped with a record scratching, hip-hop stylz DJ and an amazing vocalist. We enjoyed the way they turned the Blue Note into a cross between an international beer hall and a Joanna Newsom concert. It was all very Barcelona. Check out their cover of  MJ’s Smooth Criminal below, and email some juicy and fascinating tidbit about something if you want to win a free download or old school hard copy of the album…

Afropunk-Halloween-D’est, Freedom Train

Ok, I have been looking for inspiration all week and I must say that I intensely just found it. Right here at home, thanks to the New York Public Library and James Spooner, who have collaboratively brought the film Afropunk into my life. I didn’t realize during all those hours spent moshing in friends basements back in junior high that I was part of a sub-culture. Oh, but I was, I was Afropunk and proud, and now I know it. That’s why I gripped my punk mixtapes, smuggled out of Brooklyn through summer camp channels into my sweaty suburban palms. It explains my yellow sweater and my later interest in Saul Williams. I thought I was alternative or grunge, in fact I was part of an isolated sub-culture of people who didnt then know each other, but who now, I hope, do, thanks in large part to this film, BAM’s Afropunk festival (which I have attended as a unitiated), a cool website and I imagine a lot more.

Did you know that Bad Brains were rastas and members of the Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies are black? Where have I been? Anyway the point is, I love this film and I can relate to so much of what the interview subjects are talking about, and those punk squatter kids with their black and white patches, who I used to encounter in the east village should take a page out of this film is all I’m saying.

Which brings me to Halloween. Lost in a sea of decision, to dress up or not to dress up, to go out or avoid the madness, a moment of inspiration I found during an audience participation workshop moment at Freedom Train (the black queer theatre that I much love) last week…I was to write around memory, family, ritual – and I came to the ritual of dressing up for Halloween, which for me was a ritual, because I only ever wanted to be one thing. A punk rocker. From the age of about 2-12 this was my stock costume. It involved 80s leg warmers, purple hair, I dressed up as what I was, in fact, without knowing it yet. This year on cabbage night, the inspiration has returned to me, minding my business, watching library dvds, what should I discover-but myself! So this year, tomorrow, I will dress up as the most proud version of my alien finds voice culture. Bring it on. And if you see me, say hi.

Also deserving of a mention in this week’s culture quest in review are Rachael Rakes’ new travelling doc series, Docktruck’s screening of Chantal Akerman’s D’est. Oh, we love Chantal. The film was what you could call silent, or you could call it: in Russian without subtitles + diegetic music, I say potato, you say patato anyway, it was long, in duration, shots on various public and private scenes throughout the eastern bloc shortly after the fall. Read about it in Art Forum and tell them I want to write for them and buy me a zine at Printed Matter and show me your Halloween costume, or maybe you could just see me at Unnameable books, where I also was earlier this week to take in the also much loved by me reading series, Uncalled for Readings, organized by the awesome Ari and friends. I especially enjoyed the second poet, Donna Masini. I purchased her book so more to come on that. A big book review post is one its way, cause as usual I am multi-tasking when it comes to books.

In closing, on the book vein, here is a quote from Eileen Myles’ Not Me:

“The Best Revolutionaries

like to give up

on hot nights in fall.”

Afropunks don’t though.

Still Socialiting- with Legends

Wow, like a lost child I continue to stray from the Brooklyn Socialite path, but never too far my friends. Never too far. All the while as my keyboard fingers have gone limp, my little legs have still run from one cultural event to the next. Indeed, I have much to report.

In adventures in the surreal I have recently found myself in 2 interesting settings. One, a friendly neighborhood book group, with a selection of my peers. We had gathered to discuss A Mercy, by the legendary Toni Morrison. Halfway through some questions arose about characters and the author’s intention, when one of the group said, “Well, I’ll just call her and ask her, hold on a sec.”  “Excuse me?” I stuttered out. “What does she mean she’ll just call her?” “Well Toni Morrison is her grandmother.” Another member offered. Oh, I saw. Morrison was called and I sat dumbfounded. There was so much I wanted to ask her.

To continue on the theme of six degrees of separation, the next day, out of Brooklyn and all the way uptown at the 92 Street Y, I was picking up my ticket to Chinua Achebe from the press representative and he mentioned in passing that all 900 seats of the auditorium were packed. “I haven’t seen the Y this full since Toni Morrison was here.” He said. Of course, Morrison again.

My second brush with legend this past week or so, was a screening that I had the occasion to attend on the rooftop of the Chelsea Hotel. Yes, after seeing Chelsea on the Rocks, Abel Ferrara’s docudrama (it had re-enactments, many) next door at the Chelsea Cinema, I moved considerably closer to that old ghost, new art temple of legend, yes the Hotel in question. I got past the reception who didn’t seem to want to let any of us up to Sam Bassett‘s penthouse apt. We did make it though, the very small crew of myself, 5-6 other journalists, Sam, his girlfriend Erin Featherstone (I was having fashion week flashbacks, I had been to her show, but in person, she was more real life-like and very nice. Bryant Park makes one grand I suppose.) and Stanley Bard himself, with his support team of family and friends. There we sat, with an amazing view of the city, in Basset’s studio/home and watched the work unfold. His documentary, Stanley Bard, was decidedly different from Chelsea on the Rocks, although they were made at similar times, with similar subject matter. The comparison is a whole article in itself, but for now let’s leave it at more, on the gentle, kind and very talented Bassett, to come.

Next stop: Another screening in the series put on by the Royal Flush Festival. This art/music/film festival is a smallish local affair, still they have managed to pack their theaters and involve some amazing contributors. One such element of amazement, was Justin Strawhand’s film, War Against the Weak. Based on the seminal, critical history of  U.S. eugenics by Edwin Black, this film really mines our history in a way that many are not yet ready to own. It tracks how the Rockefeller foundation, along with several other rich American families funded eugenics research in the U.S and Germany from the beginning of the 20th century, all the way up through the Second World War. The startling tenet of the film is that Nazism was directly inspired and to some degree funded by racist American science, and what’s more, many other institutions and policies that remain in place here, to this day, were motivated by eugenics. A sinister origin is revealed for the SAT, the IQ test, and much of the  documentation, which has been kept by government agencies like jails and schools throughout the past century. Again much more can be said on the subject, and in order to verse myself more fully, I purchased, yes with my own limited funds, the last copy of Edwin Black’s book in the Union Square Barnes and Noble. Here once more, I accidentally approached legend, this book happened to be a hardcover, signed by the author.

But let’s take a step back, dedicated readers of this blog may remember that I first met Justin back in the spring at Full Frame. We got into a long discussion about Eugenics outside of a festival party. De ja vu, a couple of weekends back, when I was at the Hamptons Film Festival, lying low as Industry (that means I was on the screening committee, not that I am now an industry bigshot of any kind) who should I find myself hanging out with outside a party again. Yes, of course Justin and here it comes out that I still haven’t seen his film and the plan is made to be at his Royal Flush screening. Wait, what else happened in the Hamptons?

Well, I saw a lot of films and I took a little morning trip to Montauk, my favorite part of that area, where I went to Joni’s my favorite brunch spot in New York state. Oh, it’s charming, has amazing organic food, lots of  which is homemade. I also made a point to go the water everyday and watch the fishermen and walk and relax. Ahh the Brooklyn Socialite will survive Brooklyn only with regular exposure to nature. Yeah, I’m making a rule to get out as much as I can.

OK, but what were the filmic highlights? Let’s see, Shadow Billionaire, was intriguing, The Paper Man was great because of the fact that lots of stuffy audience members walked out in the middle including, one former Mayor Giuliani. Yes, this was my brush with not legend, but ignominy. Oh the shame. I wanted to give him an earful, but I was too polite to interrupt the film, unlike some people. Mira Nair’s collection of shorts was intense, also earned several walkouts, but as Guy Maddin (yes legend is the theme today) once shared with me the fact of the very high walk out rates in his films, I don’t think it is necessarily a bad sign.

To conclude with legends, and to reference my less than clever pun (Still Socialiting) yes I’m not just a boob, this is a reference to the film Still Bill. I saw it this week at Stranger than Fiction. The film is about, yes the legend, Bill Whithers, who after all these years is still Bill. He’s kept his roots and remained down to earth, a family man, who hasn’t released a record in 30 years, after such epic songs as Lean on Me, Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone and Grandma’s Hands. The film is candid and touching and made me really want to find the last autographed copy of the Bill Whiters CD at Barnes and Noble on 14th street.  Maybe my luck will hold.

Toronto International Film Festival, Blackout Film Fest +

Thom and Raphaela of Stranger than Fiction wonderfulness were kind enough to welcome me to their fair city last weekend with a curated selection of documentary films. They put me on a roster of purely political, thought-provoking, grade-A cinema. This was the line up: How To Fold An American Flag, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, (which was really a great film), Collapse (For all you Peak Oil Cassandras and simple living adherents),  Soderberg’s latest starring Matt Damon, The Informant, Colony (about the beekeeping industry), Cleanfix (about Mormons who edit the “obscenities” out of already released Hollywood Films and The Topp Twins (some soulful dyke yodellers out of New Zealand that have been creating AbFab rivaling entertainment, activism and song for over 20 years.

As you can see that is a lot of film to talk about, and by the time I had greyhounded it back to Brooklyn on Monday morning I was pretty much talked out. But not, I admit socialited out. I spent a few days hanging out with a good mate who was in town form Oz and somewhere along the line I managed to check out Fashion Week. The Isaac Mizrahi show was amazing. I know, loving high fashion may seem dorky to some, but the truth is that I do. The looks were pretty page boy meets Victorian lace meets hot. We’re talking rain, steps, quite the affair. Don’t ask me how I got in, apparently the phrase “Brooklyn Socialite” gets you through the door.

I also got to check out the Kandinsky exhibition at the Guggenheim. Ahh, brilliant, colorful Kandinsky, no one can do it better. I have a soft spot for that old Russian, one of his prints used to hang on my simple blue childhood wall. That was the day after an Australian imported exhibition by Papunya Tula artists that I had the chance to see at NYU’s gallery on Washington Sq East.

This artful week was topped off with another reading by Eileen Myles, this time at my friend Ari’s reading series and with Joan Larkin. It was quite the perfect late summer night, under fairy lights. Surrounded by silence and an audience filled with poets, these authors shared their inspiring craft yet again.

Finally on Saturday, I hit the Blackout Film Festival, this event inspired festival centered around the theme, The Great Depression 2009. It was a collection of short film about job loss, wall street pillow fights, love affairs with piggie banks and an interesting new website called ODD JOB Nation. Check it out for fun webisodes and an actual job board, maybe you can join me in the pursuit of Odd Jobs, at last!

And here is the Topp Twins trailer:

We Live In Public opening @ IFC Center

Last night I saw this completely tripped out documentary called We Live In Public, check out the site, but do it during off hours ’cause it looks like their sever is crashing (ironically). Too many hits! That could be the subtitle of this Orwellian film about a time in the late 90′s, yes back when I was living in NYC as a 18-year old activist kid, in fact going to some of these parties, but having no idea what it was all about, this Internet mogul, dot-comer, Josh Harris was throwing crazy art projects parties and doing psychological and social experiments on people by way of Internet reality tv.

One might even venture to say that he created reality TV, but did it on the internet, before The Real World NYC, before Big Brother and before it morphed into the present day manifestation of completely scripted, un-real, reality TV shows like The Bachelor and The Real Housewives of NYC.

This guy actually did an experiment called “Quiet” in 1999, in which he housed 150 people for 30 days in an underground bunker, pimped out as a “Pod Hotel.” He dressed them in orange jail-chic jumpsuits and required them to sign their commitment to being filmed 24 hours a day, in every possible position, including showering, having sex, going to the bathroom, eating, fighting, and obliterating themselves with drugs and alcohol if they should chose to do so.

Everything was provided free of charge, free food, booze, what have you, but they would have no rights to the video that was taken of them and they wouldn’t be allowed to leave, once they committed to the project.  Where this begins to get even more grotesque, is that the underground, lower Manhattan, created-world, was complete with a shooting range, large collection of guns and an interrogation chamber. This M.O.D. style interview room, was where people would go to confess all of their psychological and historical messes. Think the “confession room” on The Real World crossed with Guantanomo Bay. This was sick shit. But the most fascinating part is that the people involved were all volunteers, many of whom were artists, friends, part of a larger social scene. It was meant to be fun.

In a way I suspect it was fun, the simulation of freedom, followed by a realization of the fundamental trap. Something like the philosophy of re-living pain in a safer-feeling environment, in order to exorcise the trauma. It reminds me of RENT crossed with Lord of the Flies. This was an experiment with human guinea pigs and it had an aim. The film, and the Quiet project itself records this fascistic, capitalist, gold-rush project of exploitation, an attempt to rush down the slope into internet addiction, and total lack of privacy.

As a prediction it proves to be quite true, our lives have changed enormously as a result of the Internet. In 1999, I didn’t own a phone didn’t really know how to use the computer and everything operated on this slower delivery system called word-of-mouth. I remember the New York of that time being a really vibrant place, but I  have doubted whether that’s true. It could just be me glorifying a left past. This film seems to corroborate my memory though. Perhaps since facebook, and myspace, blogs and online-newspapers have taken over our lives, we know about infinitely more things, yet there is less passionate and exciting fun to be had out there. New York does feel flat.

Beyond asking some very frightening moral questions, this film lovingly reminds us our city past.

MIA and Eileen Myles Reading @ Bluestockings

As you may have noticed I have been missing in action over the summer. It started out with Swine Flu, alright alright, it was bronchitis, but whatever. The point is that illness gave way to quietude and multiple trips to the beach, park and ice cream store and now I’m back ready to make comments again! And, what makes this return to the old arrangement even better is that from now on I will expand upon the grime behind the glitter, that’s right it’s time you all know what keeps the Brooklyn Socialite in business, yes the nitty gritty, jobs of all variety that I have to do to get by.

I’m working on a novel, and being a writer is never easy, in fact artistry of all kinds requires a very steel-faced resolve.  And, for me specifically this creative venture is paired with my desire to be about town, drinking in culture and then offering my 2 cents on just about everything.

In other words, if I was more computer-savvy, I would change the small print under the BROOKLYN SOCIALITE line from the green text that you can’t currently read without squinting, to the following words:

I DO ODD JOBS

I’m kind of proud of it, I mostly like it this way, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t prefer to have health insurance when swine flu comes knocking on my door, or the luxury to ever stay in a hotel on vacation (it hasn’t happened yet… I love couchsurfing but there is a time and a place girl.) or you know take a date out to dinner (yes, I would do that if I could.)

So prepare to get a fine selection of ODD JOB posts, peppered in with your Brooklyn Socialite posts, cause we are now going to be real with each other. So continue to bring on the invitations to events, but if you should offer me an odd job, I will most likely not catch pride and take offense.

The truth is that in the dark hours of making this all work I have been known to dogsit, housesit, bake brownies and sell them at parties, assist artists, write grants, write articles, sew bridesmaids dresses from scratch, move boxes, organize offices, care for children, be an extra in art films, be a back up dancer/art in the Whitney Biennial, do research, paint bathrooms, install light fixtures, operate a mail order business, be a remote administrator, fashion blog…yes you can only imagine the odd jobs I do and have done.

Whew! Well now a quick word about Eileen Myles reading last night at Bluestockings, appropriate that this should be my welcome back Brooklyn Socialite post because I was reading her book Chelsea Girls during my bout with Cancer, ok Bronchitis, the point is it was bad and I was bed-ridden.

Any way… these are my notes from last night.

Someone asks for a spare tampon over the loudspeaker and we know this has to be bluestockings. Where else does that sweetly feral brand of feminism rule. The ladies mull around meeting each other, finding their spots on blue plastic chairs and the literary boys pepper the crowd as Myles herself sits in the back row watching it all unfold.

The room is about 95 degrees and packed even in standing room when Myles takes the stage. She is reading from her new book The Importance of Being Iceland, which is a compilation of mainly previously published works. The first piece she reads is one I have already read, which originally appeared in the anthology Live Through This. It’s about flossing and how it’s a metaphor for the self-harming that comes with youth eventually being replaced by self-care. Funny and charming, although subtly so.  The thing I notice most during this piece is her accent, so older Boston. It is so much like the voices you can hear in old films, which I so rarely hear in real life these days. It’s strong and distinct.

She,  then also refers to this growing homogeneity of language in reference to Iceland, sagas and the way that T.V. deafens regional accents. The next piece is about a $25 therapist who she, or the “Eileen Character” as she refers to the protagonists of her fiction (not memoir), saw for a few years during her thirties. This was the 80s, she qualifies, and one day the guy suggested to her that it may be that she is a man, in other words transgendered. Somehow the story renders this a breakthrough, yet not a definite commitment to identity, something just to consider.

The last piece seems to be much more strictly non-fiction, a travel essay, on Iceland. Having spent some time one August hitchhiking around Iceland, I have a pretty loving connection to the place and was listening along from this angle. The essay was academic and experiential, and it seemed to be less rigid, in terms of point of view than some of her other work.

Alright, that’s it for now. Stay tuned for more thoughts and rants.

Robyn

Commentary- Dialogue. Human Rights

I have been questioning the sanctity of commentary a bit as of late. Thanks to fevers and homebody time and, of course, multiple other factors. This morning, however, I got a welcome reminder of what the point of it all is. That’s right friends, Dialogue. It’s all about the discussion, debate, free share, book club style, writing workshop, round table chat. Sometimes we find engaged minds in non-cyber life that want to dig into our topics with us, while other times we find these passionate opinionated folks online. After I posted my recent interview with Pamela Yates, the director of The Reckoning on the Huffington Post, as promised, this lively multi-voiced dialogue ensued. In progress, and quoted full text, here are our comments.

godlessliberal I’m a

Great interview. It’s sad, a story about Sarah Palin can garner up to a thousand comments but a film about the International Criminal Court has one lonely comment, it speaks volumes about our priorities as a collective people. I, for one, am looking forward to watching this film to get a better understanding of the kinks that still need to be worked out within the court and why our government refuses to sign on as a member state.

Posted 10:27 PM on 07/14/2009

– + Robyn Hillman-Harrigan – Huffpost Blogger I’m a Fan of Robyn Hillman-Harrigan I’m a fan of this user permalink

See Robyn Hillman-Harrigan’s Profile

Thanks, I’m glad the post has sparked your interest in the ICC. It is such significant work, quietly being hacked away at in the Hague and I agree that more of us should know about the court and our countries opposition to it.

Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 01:45 AM on 07/15/2009

– + FindingTruth I’m

As a member of one of the communities that has dealt with the aftermath of ICC indictments — the ICC has a long way to go in terms of implementation. Especially in Uganda, we’ve witnessed a lot of double standards. The Ugandan President and Moreno-Ocampo attended a press conference together to announce the arrest warrants.

After seeing that, it was clear there would be no accountability or justice for crimes the Ugandan government had committed either in Congo or Uganda. Justice is a two-way street. This is one are the ICC must work on in order to garner popular support.

A couple of interesting articles:

Waiting for Bashir: http://ugandagenocide.info/?p=1527

The ICC is a Western Tool But Can Be Improved: http://www.blackstarnews.com/news/122/ARTICLE/5828/2009-07-01.html

Posted 07:05 PM on 07/14/2009

– + Robyn Hillman-Harrigan – Huffpost Blogger I’m a Fan of Robyn Hillman-Harrigan I’m a fan of this user permalink

See Robyn Hillman-Harrigan’s Profile

Hi, thank you for your comment. Yours is an important perspective, could you tell us more about how the ICC is experienced on the ground in Uganda? The film definitely delves into the criticisms the court has received from African member states and their citizens. What do you see as the way forward?

Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 01:49 AM on 07/15/2009

– + FindingTruth I’m

Thanks for the questions.

For many, the experience of the ICC in Uganda has been tinged with a lot of contradictions and confusion. People can see the government using the ICC when it is convenient, to garner international support, but the law has not been applied to the government itself.

(Right now, Uganda is presiding over the UN Security Council, and ICC prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo is in Uganda to convince Ugandan officials to arrest Sudan”s Al-Bashir, who will be visiting later in the month� in 2010 the ICC review conference will be in Uganda ” these facts alone bring up many contradictions.)

There is a national Amnesty Act for former rebels — this adds to the confusion of whether ICC law or Amnesty will be applied. A war crimes court is another confusing option.

Direct communication with the ICC has been difficult. Victims have written the court to raise issues of systematic government abuse but have received little response from the court. Meanwhile, the Court is spending money to “sensitize” victim communities about their rights.

Posted 10:29 AM on 07/15/2009

– + FindingTruth I’m a fan of th

(Continued Thoughts)

Many people see the court as a walking contradiction. I have a relative who is a member of the Ugandan army – he said the investigators were only interested in interviewing child soldiers. He raised the question of how truthful the child soldiers might have been, due to army presence.

Most people are afraid to speak too loudly about the history of serious human rights violations by the government. (It was stunning to see the people in the film speaking out.)

From a survivor perspective, the crimes of the government are worse than those of the LRA, yet it is only the LRA”s crimes that are being addressed. This is where the ICC’s lack of effectiveness is most apparent.

Amnesty International Report: http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2005/09/19/uprooted-and-forgotten

Many politicians and civil society groups who have raised issues of justice around the LRA issue have been targeted for intimidation by the government ” the conversation in Uganda around the ICC/LRA/Justice is far from free.

The way forward in Uganda: interpret the ICC Statute as it is written and aid the Chief Prosecutor in neutrally applying the law to both sides. The Court also must recognize that governments do not have the ability to try themselves!

The other issue is execution of the warrants. Perhaps the warrants need not be made public? The court’s current system of relying on member countries for arrests hasn’t been successful.

The dialogue is still in progress. To read the actual interview with Pamela Yates click here.

Recovery

Well, in time I recovered. I still have a slightly wicked cough, which I can use to scare off leering men, but other than that my Bronchitis is on the decline. That’s right, it turns out that it was Bronchitis, not Swine Flu or The Flu or anything related.  2 weeks of abject illness then slight fogginess have brought me to now, so I have good reason for my lack of blog activity, but still, I’m sorry. For the 4th of July I took a break from the ghetto, which I affectionately refer to my neighborhood as, and went to Fire Island.  F I was clearly fabulous and I was overwhelmed with nostalgia for Australia. Ah, I miss that place. I miss living somewhere clean and beautiful. Near the ocean. Thus Fire Island was kinda like going home. Pictures to come x

Searching for what’s good

My yesterday got off to a bit of a bad start, it all began with the search for a good brunch spot in the LES. This type of quest can be depressing when you are surrounded by herds of hand holding co-habitues, and blocked on the path by strollers and up-gazing tourists. Harrowing as it was, I managed to settle on a new French place called Regate, where I attempted to swallow my dread under the stream of a very weak latte. (I failed). The search for Lunch in Soho was no easier, after a few false starts, I finally landed at L’ulvio, then journeyed up the west village, towards meatpacking on the look out for a good desert joint. I settled on the Birdbath Bakery, which I’ve always respected for its combination of organic practices and really good cookies. Unfortunately, this time I noticed their excessive use of disposable paper and plastic products and lack off espresso machine- but nobody’s perfect ( least of all me-many snob points were earned today! )

What’s the moral of this story? 1. Another day of leisure spent in vain. 2 Eating all day is weird. or 3. It’s really hard to find good eateries among the cacophony of choices in Manhattan south.

3. That’s right 3 OK, maybe all of the above, but what I mean to say is that after all this search chagrin got in the way of my relaxation, I came to the conclusion that it was high time to draft a guide to what’s good. I needed a voice that I could trust, to help me sift through all the mediocrity, than I realised I could be that Voice. (he he) None of the food spots I visited yesterday quite deserve inclusion in the guide so hold steady, Food picks will come. In the meantime lets talk about Culture: see the next post for how my inspiring evening contrasted with a sadly mundane day.

Visions

Lately, I’ve been having visions of myself on the treadmill at my local YMCA gym, jamming to books on tape, while running in place. These visions are strange, but not dissimilar to my vision of starting my own cultural curation website, with a focus on Brooklyn. So I bought a domain name, and tried to get all fancy, but that web design mumbo jumble got me down, instead in the wee hours of night, with you dear fledgling readers, I have decided to Start Simple. Please try to ignore the less than flash photos, and not so awesome formating, all that will one day come. I promise, because somewhere amidst the visions of fashion labels, gourmet stews, crazy pitch idea and all my other visions, The B S has a lot of potential and she will rise!

Definitions:

Brooklyn Socialite

Brook·lyn \ˈbru̇-klən\

Function:geographical name borough of New York City at SW end of Long Island population 2,465,326

so·cial·ite \ˈsō-shə-ˌlīt\ Function:noun a socially prominent person

PaperBagMan-by me Another Vision

NYC Adult Spelling Bee recap at Choice

“If you’re looking for an opportunity to hit the spelling bee circuit, look no further. Since staring down 8 year-olds at the Scribbs National Spelling Bee, seems you know, kinda unfair, or just plain creepy, The New York City Spelling Bee is strictly for adults.” read more

I am really not above quoting myself, so that was an excerpt from my flavorpill preview of the NYC Spelling Bee at Housing Works. Now for the review…from the vantage point of Brooklyn

Continuing the conversation of the challenging hunt for goodness in Manhattan, I began to ponder what makes Brooklyn So God-dammed Good. The answer was clear- At least in my neighborhood, the lovely Bed Stuy (which some friends are truly afraid to visit ), there is not a plethora of choice. There is however, Choice bakery. This flaky croissant home to the excellent Mocha, fresh squeezed-one gulp grapefruit hot gourmet to take away-mecca of Goodness exists at the intersection of Grand and Lafayette, in Petit Panam. That is, half a block of stoop sale, Parisian, french African anomaly, contrasted against the hundreds of blocks lined with residences, laundromats and Pentecostal Churches.

I love Choice! As I sat there 5 separate people I knew, came past to grab their Sunday vitals, while I told the Philosopher about my Sat night Spelling Bee. “It was so much more fun than you can imagine,” I said. “It’s a hipster librarian’s ultimate contest, you win book vouchers and feel validated at last!” He just nodded, as philosophers do.

Ballast and The General of the Dead Army

The General of the Dead Army rightfully earned Ismail Kadare the Booker Prize. It is a stark investigation into loss and lingering sanity, which takes the form of an anti-hero’s quest, while borrowing heavily from the dystopia genre. The protagonist is an Italian General who wanders the emotionally barren landscape of Albania in search of the bodies of fallen Italian soldiers from World War II. His journey into darkness, whether intentionally or coincidentally, references such magnificently tragic journey’s as those that comprised 1884, the Time Machine, C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy and naturally, Heart of Darkness.

After a significant amount of procrastination, I managed to write my review of A General of the Dead Army for Bookslut. That is the first paragraph and the rest will soon be available on their sight. As a B S exclusive though, I wanted to talk about this book and the film Ballast together. I interviewed the film’s director, Lance Hammer, last week and that will soon see the light of print, I promise. Meanwhile- let’s talk Tragedy.

Hammer used non actors, who were local to the two towns in the Mississippi Delta where he shot the film. After 10 years of research, he decided to make a film that as he told me, “wasn’t so much about race, but about universal human suffering.” He chose African Americans to play the main roles, and encouraged them to use their own distinct vernacular. Rather than hand them a script, he gave them a situation and encouraged them to improvise language around that particular scenario. What remains of this method, in the edited movie is a steely, classical, cinematic gem. Like The General of the Dead Army, Ballast is a tragic play of emotions, which seems to take place in real time. It is similarly stark, subtle and quietly passionate.

At the Edge of the World Q&A w/Dan Stone

I used to live in Melbourne, Australia, not Florida. One day the Sea Shepherd docked on our shores and I got to meet some of the people on board, including former Greenpeace activist, Captain Paul Watson. People in Melb were so inspired by the Direct Action Whale Rescue that the Sea Shepherd crew engaged in. A benefit party was organized, t-shirts were bought and one of my friends even decided to join them on their next mission.

Roll forward to last night in NYC, I saw Dan Stone’s film about one of their Antarctic missions, At the Edge of The World as part of IFC‘s Stranger Than Fiction documentary series. I was struck during the Q&A by the apparently contentious relationship that Stone has with Watson and the Sea Shepherd crew. He told us that many of them did not like the final cut. This is a curiosity that I will have to explore further; I intend to interview him and will update this tangent later.

As for last night, I can say that the film was rocky and oceanic, after the dubious Q&A, I ran into an old old NYC activist friend and cracked into some Belgian Beer and lively debate at Vol de Nuit (def on the GOOD list). Obama and Pallin, Stone and Watson, Preservation and Indigenous hunting ceremony, Old gays vs. New Queers, all the relevant rivalries were discussed!

Tre, Bembe, Metropolitan, Catherine Opie preview and opening, Corner shop, Carmen Valle

Committed readers, welcome back! I am determined to blog every day, which sometimes means 2 am the next day- true Brooklyn Socialites are immune to exhaustion. I wish I could say that were true. It is the end of the month, which means that rent has to be paid, the GO deadline met ( I’m working towards Monday), and that all my visions are starting to pile up. They get cleared out on the 1st- kind of like how I’m not tired now.

Let’s work backwards. I rolled home tonight around 10 after Carmen Valle’s reading from Haiku de NuevaYork at McNally Jackson (both are additions to the GOOD List, GL). My once awesome Spanish comprehension skills (yes folks, I was a Spanish/History major in College) had abandoned me in a hungover fog of Lavender tea, beautiful chicken soup (Thanks Corner Shop Cafe, GL), and an all day jittery, shot of afternoon espresso (from my Bedstuy local Tiny Cup), which brings me to last night and why I am not at my freshest.

The reason is, because my cutely awkward streak emerged among the Lit Icons and Art Stars who were in attendance at last nights Catherine Opie: American Photographer, Guggenheim opening (GL). This drove me to free shwag wine and after party mojitos. The best conversation I had during the night was with Hans and Johan pictured below.(Checkout the October Go for more photos). We talked about hitchhiking, Situationists, Hans’ films, Johan’s design collective-The House of Very Much, my latent fiction, polyamory and then in the end we just danced! Justin Bond, T Cooper, Felicia Luna Lemus, Thelma Goldin, Eileen Myles, Debbie Harry, John Waters, Opie and countless others equally, failed to resist the dance floor as JD Sampson dropped fly beats.

Hans is the subject of some of Catherine’s photos, which are on display at the museum. I enjoyed my chance to preview the exhibition yesterday morning and promise to post a link to my review and interview with the artist as soon as it is out! That is all I’ll say about that right now, except to explain that yesterday morning in heels at the museum was mitigated by my too recent memory of Wed night, my best mate in town, exorcising demons in the dive splendor of Metropolitan (GL). This after a false start at Bembe (apparently it was groove night or something, who knows what that music genre is called? Tuesday nights are great though! GL) and a bottle of Sangiovese at Tre (GL). Authentic Italian’s serving wines from Italy’s regions only- a little pricey but the staff are cute.

From back to front that’s where I’ve been.

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

Wow, its 3am this time and exhaustion is setting in, but I can’t sleep without getting a first draft of this statement out. I will revise, but it starts like this:

Allen Ginsberg was famous for the inspiration he found in Visions. William Blake appeared to him, as did Aurthur Russell, in the flesh. Ginsberg found him dressed in urban monks attire and ever after referred to him and his music as Pop Buddhist. They later lived for many years in a building stuffed with artists flats. Whether they were ever lovers, I’m not sure, but Russell lived out his life there with his faithful beloved partner, who was at the IFC center tonight to answer questions about Matt Wolf’s new film Wild Combination (GL).

Continuing with this week’s sea fascination: At the edge of The World, Cathie Opie’s depiction of surfers and Trouble the Water, Wild Combination emphasized Russell’s love of water. Fish tanks, the Staten Island Ferry, oceanic jaunts through midtown- wherever the water came from, he synthesized it into his work. Mastering cello, keys, guitar, vocals-this musician was a Brooklyn Socialite indeed- he could compose like his friend Philip Glass, create disco for raves at the Loft, and croon electro-cello-poetry. Arthur Russell rocks.

Peaches and No. 7 Greene

“Do not fear the blogger,” I wanted to whisper into the ear of both Peaches owner, pictured below (with his daughter behind the cashier) and GM/owner of No. 7, not pictured. I wasn’t really trying to be ingognito, maybe the big camera and little notebook completely gave me away. As a paying customer, I felt free to dine as I pleased. For their part though, they seemed a little unsettled by my presence.

I will try to step outside the situation nevertheless and focus instead on squash. At Peaches, I had butternut squash soup with honey and cinnamon for brunch, which reminded me of the way I like to eat oatmeal. Savory sweet, oats with maple syrup and cinnamon, sweet breakie soup, yellow squash puree under a tender little mountain of just raw seared hangar steak, with Chinese broccoli and kimchi perogies- that is what I had at No. 7. Again squash, savory battles sweet again.

Beyond yellow gourds, the two restaurants have precious little in common. No 7 boasts charming wait staff, a competitive wine list, art-deco-blanc interior design and lush food pairings. Peaches remembers it’s in Brooklyn, totally unpretentious, with definite potential, but I’d like to see espresso, alcohol, and a microwave-free promise join their menu.

Day Off- Live Through This

So even socialites eventually need a rest, and maybe even a moment away from Brooklyn. Family called and I have found myself in Connecticut, by a lake being pulled into Bridge games and getting email flack from NY which I’d prefer to ignore. The lake is beautiful, I need to rest my head.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to briefly discuss a book I’ve recently read called Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-destruction Yes, even the very act of reading has become work. Books are assigned to me for review or I solicit them for potential review. Live Though This kind of falls into that second category. My relationship with it remains unclear… but…

Content is all that really matters right? So lets get into it. This book in an anthology of women writers who have experienced abuse, mental illness, self-injuring, basically some form of pain that could have stopped them from creating and maybe instead catalysed them to start or continue to make art. Nicole Blackman, Fly, Bell Hooks, Cristy C. Roads, Daphne Gotlieb, Eileen Myles, Nan Goldin, Patricia Smith, countless women seem to swell the ranks of survival literature, poetry of the oppressed, struggle till it gets better penmanship. To be honest, I don’t know quite what to make of it. I like many of the contributors, and spoke for a bit with the editor, still I guess I feel this crumbling sensation that perhaps past suffering is not what brings these writers together- what it is I reckon is talent, consistent vision and just general ability to kick ass.

Besides my qualms with the premise, I definitely dug some of the submissions, especially Fly and some of the other names I’ve mentioned above.

The Bad List- I thought it was only fair

Still outside of the city and just about ready to return. God I miss Brooklyn! I thought this would be a good time to express my egalitarian instincts and create a Bad list- indeed it is only fair. For everything there is that is Good, there are probably 25 things, which are bad, so don’t worry I won’t list them all. However, there are some things which suck so goddammed much that I will have no choice but to rail against them. Why not build them a home, place them where they belong on the bad list. Feel free to leave additions to the list as comments bellow, whatever deserves a place on this mantle, will indeed be given one!

THE BAD LIST

People

people who feel the need to create dialogue for dogs, “He’s saying, ‘pet me, love me, I’m here too, don’t forget I’m here too.’”

Christian Fundamentalists

bad tenants

Harry Shearer and band performing songs of the Bushmen

Things

Photoshop downloads

Blade Runner, Bad tenants, Blue Man Group

I finally broke down and saw Bladerunner and I have to say, in light of my love for dystopias, it was a really great dvd. Based on the Philip K Dick book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it imagined the future in a beautiful post-apocalyptic china town for the senses. I loved it, loved younger Harrison ford, the male on male kiss of death, and most of all the following quote.

“It’s hard to live your whole life in fear, isn’t it? This is what it means to be a slave.” Go Philip! Go Ridley Scott, applause all around.

Which brings me to Bad Tenants (bad list BL) all I can say is avoid them at all costs, they will suck your blood to the very core!

Then Blue Man Group, I don’t know what its about, other than a mild dig against Internet obsession and modern life, something of a plea for a reconnection with the primal, interactive theater loving self. It is mostly just fun and slapstick, and grotesque-dirty. Thoughtful at best, I remember being really inspired by it at 18, this time it felt more like a colorful circus, sadly lacking the bearded lady.

This was my today, now see you tomorrow!

Frontrunners, Gomorrah, Matteo-Garrone Q&A, I’m famous

So I’m famous, according to one of my friends, who was standing with me on the cold street corner when I pulled a copy of New York Press out of the dispenser and found my article on Tegan and Sara in it. I almost started to believe him this morning when i bought a copy of The Progressive and my article on Sgt. Marshall Thompson was in there too. Fame! The illusion started to disentegrate fairly quickly when I remembered that I still don’t know how I am going to pay my already late rent, this month.

Oh well, as we Brooklyn Socialite’s do, at least I was able to spend the rest of the afternoon schmoozing among people who are gainfully employed in the business of being writers and filmmakers. That’s right, the pass wearing journalati who frequent the New York Film Festival. I was on a guest pass at it were, but was let in long enough to see Matteo Garrone’s new Cannes darling, Gomorrah. This is a mafia film, set in Naples, which is made to look almost like a documentary. In fact, the scenes are meticulously constructed and brought to life by local Napoletano theater actors, many of whom are teenagers. In the Q & A Garrone explained that Roberto Saviano, the author of the book on the Camorra, which Gomorrah is based on, had to go under protection, after threats were made on his life. Yet, Garrone has not had to do so becuase, ” People there love the cinema so much, that having a film made about them is something they are happy about, which allows them to forget about everything else.”

I also saw Caroline Suh’s Frontrunners it was fun and simple, very much in the spelling bee, and child dance competition genre. Sort of like the crossword puzzle movie too. It made being an overachiever look cool, in a weird kind of reverse way, and it reminded me that we have our Eton, and the class system in America is certainly not dead.

Kalup Linzy and Dynasty Handbag, Humboldt County, Stonewall

Since Stonewall, artstars and novices alike have been free to express themselves multi-genrely. Tonight was no exception. I ended my revelry at Stonewall amidst the ladies of Stonewall69 and the men who had wandered upstairs. It was a house music explosion and I have the headache to prove it. Yet, as my roommate pointed out, it was kinda awesome how a bunch of fugly people  were there dancing badly. We were happy watch mini-dramas unfold for an hour or so.

Before that we were caught in the passion of high school imbalances remastered. Suddenly the cool guy in school, is a looser adult, and the dorks are king of the art hill. Oh to be a boy in New York, oh to be a girl. I always find it necessary to right some of these wrongs, by berating the former popular kids and building communion with the once smarty pants nerds. I too was once a smarty pants nerd, yesterday. Today, I can’t even talk about today.

Moving on, that funfest high school mash-up occurred at a wonderful reception, where I got to see my lovely friends Darren and Danny, the directors behind the film, Humboldt County, which was released last week. I interviewed them for the Northcoast Journal, but haven’t gotten to see them for awhile as they live in LA- a nice reunion!

Before that, my roomie and I saw Kalup Linzy and Dynasty Handbag (GL) at the New Museum, both of whom were insanely hysterical. See pictures below. I haven’t had that much fun at a performance in I don’t know how long. This means a lot coming from someone who has seen a lot of performances lately. Do not miss their next gigs!

Gilbert and George

Gilbert and George at the Brooklyn Museum. Are they racist? wonderful purveyors of self-portraiture? or secret germ warfare agents…there is a terrorist in our midst…. more on this in the morning x

OK, I’m back. The large scale pencil drawings which greet the visitor upon entering the exhibition are inviting, lackadaisical, and highly evocative of this sense of a golden summer, for self-reflective intellectuals.

However, as one further traverses the museum landscape, huge imposing brightly colored, cartoon, Ali G style works threaten racial, and religious semi-slurs from every wall. This inquiry, finally descends into toilet humor, with monochromatic representations of shit and dicks.

“Is there a God?” They ask. God save us all.

The Women Generals of the Yang Family and Introducing BS Agent Angie

Just to get it out of the way first, I saw a great Peking Opera today. If you’ve never been, give it a try the next time that chance comes your way, which may not be for awhile. These folks came direct to NYU from China and it may be a once a year type gig. When I previewed it on Flavorpill, I predicted great costumes and cool backdrops, that was def. the case. There were also crazy drum beats, shrill high notes and awesome back flips, which bolstered the extremely feminist plot. Basically a hundred year old grandma, leads an army of women and they kick the imperialist enemies out. Go Bubby!

Now, with great pleasure I must announce Agent Angie, as promised, I will be rolling out other writers as I go and now its time for Angie to take the stage. No, she doesn’t wear high-tech kimonos and do triple flips, but she does have a keen eye for culture and from now on will be a valued agent of Brooklyn Socialite reportage.

Get Ready! Here’s her first post.

Agent Angie at the Atlantic Antic

I woke up chilly Sunday morning– the prospect of sleeping in and hanging out in my pjs with a steaming pot of tea was quite palatable even though I’d already decided to check out the Atlantic Antic Festival in Brooklyn Heights. Luckily, I decided to suck it up, and umbrella in hand braved what was forecasted to be a soggy day, but what turned out to be sunny and delightful, perfect weather for an outdoor event. Atlantic Avenue was the perfect setting for a festival as vast as this one. The beautiful brick storefronts and historic townhouses lining the wide street were the perfect backdrop to the endless line of booths pedaling wares ranging from handmade jewelry to culinary and fried delights of all kinds. Funnel cakes and corndogs abounded .

Atlantic was bustling. We had to take a break from the unyielding pedestrian traffic if sanity was ever going to stay with us. We stepped into Tazza (GL), a cafe with a few outdoor tables right off Atlantic on quiet Henry Street for a break from the crowd. It provided a lovely atmosphere and a nice perk-me-up latte. The staff was friendly and efficient, the décor of dark wood cozy, and the copper bar top—a nice complement to the feel of the historic neighborhood. It was a nice people watching spot—we laughed as a ballsy old lady muscled her way into an outdoor seat that was already claimed.

On our way back to the subway, we passed performers from local churches, including a pastor preaching to intent and curious crowds, and perhaps most mystifying, a woman wearing a Swiss-lederhosen-inspired outfit (back-up dancers in tow) performing raucous versions of various golden oldies. Between the occasional rear-endings from impatient stroller-pedaling mommies and daddies and stagnant traffic jams, we stepped off to the sidewalk and sidled through the pricey antique, furniture, and clothing boutiques. The participation of local businesses (all of which had sales for the occasion) set the festival apart from others of its kind.

-Angie Venezia

A place at the Table-Aly Fourney Benefit-Chelsea Museum-Sandra Bernhard

The Chelsea Museum is definitely on my GL, I love that space. Whenever I go there it’s fun, and watching gays bid over hot auction items tonight was obviously, and not suprisingly, amazing. It was so exciting. I had to hold my hands down with some force in order to resist bidding on 3000 dollar tequila parties and trips to P-town. I managed to control the urge, the threat of poverty is very sobering you know!

Then, the joy of seeing Sandra Bernhard was pretty much unparalleled. After watching her as Jenny’s writing teacher on the L-word (yesterday ’cause I own the DVD) and of course Unzipped and Roseanne- it was high time I experienced her comedic revelry in the flesh. My favorite lines were, “I hate Blogs” and “I adore Barak Obama.” then when she said she was praying for the republicans on Rosh Hashana, I felt that my misfired holiday had finally been avenged.

The Seagull on Broadway with Kristin Scott Thomas

Broadway is a little far from Brooklyn, but I labored all the way up there for a fun night of flying. Well watching flying, alright they didn’t actually fly on stage, but phlegm from the coughing man behind me did fly into my head and the man to my right did dominate the armrest with his flailing flying gestures. The seagull did not fly, but Chekhov’s poetics flew into my mind.

All soaring aside, I thought it was a great play (GL), and I will have to go back and read it. Yes the production was a bit dry. It was Broadway after all, most of the audience had gray hair and I-phone w/earphones. Still, Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgard displayed their theatrical merit, not to mention good performances by Mackenzie Crook and Art Malik.

The themes also resonated: struggling writers, happy with neither failure nor success, narcissistic mothers, unrequited love, country dreams aside a lake- all in a day’s fun!

Guess What? There will be a giveaway tomorrow afternoon so remember to tune in x

The Same Man-George Orwell & Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revsited

Well Folks, I have been busy (!) riding the subway from Beautiful Brooklyn to Hot Mess Midtown, and during all of that time, I have been reading. My latest conquest is The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh by David Lebedoff. Again, despite the fact that the premise is damn near preposterous, (hello? What do these two writers really have in common?), it’s a pretty decent read.

Yes Lebedoff, they were born in the same year, of the upper middle class, Orwell went to Eton and Waugh went to Oxford, but come on! Orwell was an ingenious political visionary and fab writer, who lived barely above the poverty line for most of his adult life. He volunteered as a foreign soldier among the Anarchist-Syndicalists during the Spanish Civil War. Waugh was a self-made aristocrat, Catholic, heavy drinking womanizer, who once dined with Mussolini- a talented writer nonetheless.

Anyway, this brings me to the GIVEAWAY!! I have stated these opinions boldly and will no doubt reiterate some in my review of this book for Bookslut (be on the lookout), yet to be really fair, I have read almost every book that Orwell ever published and can not say the same for Waugh. In order to judge him fairly, I invite you my reader to read his classic novel Brideshead Revisited alongside of me and then to comment widely about your impressions. In fact I have 2 copies to give away to the 2 readers who correctly answer my trivia question. Then after you read it, I will happily post your reactions on the BS!

The question is: What is Goeorge Orwell’s real name? What did he do for 5 years after finishing high School and what incident involving a cane, did he learn something important from?

Tip: a key to finding the answer is included in this post!

Email answers and your mailing address to: carpetbaggerk@gmail.com

Giveaway, Spin, Barmarche

Hello! The giveaway is still open, we have had one winner so far, but there are two copies of the book to give away, so remember to email your answers in by tomorrow at midnight for a chance to win! carpetbaggerk@gmail.com. The correct answers will be announced on Saturday!

Tonight I went to see Spin presented by the Stage Farm at the Cherry Lane Theater. It was a collection of five short plays by a range of directors including Adam Rapp and Gina Gionfriddo. Her play was a game show o’ misery, which pitted Britney Spears against a US soldier who had died in Iraq. The contest was to see whose life was more tragic, according to the textbook definition. Britney won, after a grandstanding speech about how she had survived child labor in the Mickey Mouse Club and a monolougue by the contest’s judge, which as I recall peaked at, “When I was a brillo-haired little girl, I had a straight-haired Malibu Barbie who I worshiped, and you Britney, were that Barbie come to life!”

The highlight for me was Judith Thompson’s Nail Biter. Framed as a rebuttal against a damning youtube video, a Canadian soldier defends, albeit nervously, his complicity in torture at Guantanamo Bay. Jesse Hooker convincingly embodies this character and the way the confession wraps in a reel-like circle is quite effective.

Go check them out, they were good!

Don’t however run on down to Barmache afterwards, as I did. The American, references Mexican food is overpriced and over-fried. Yes, the decor is shiny, charmingish, and of course referencing the white tile trend as much as possible,  but I’d rather eat my grilled chicken and mash at Whole Foods for $6 B S style. The company was great though, thanks guys!

More on Orwell- I Heart Brooklyn Girls Party

Since I’m on this Orwell tip lately, I thought I’d share an excerpt from and link to his essay on writing called, “Why I Write”

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books. more

Books online are amazing! More to come tonight I promise….and for all the Queers in the house, check out the I heart Calendar Girls Party tonight at southpaw….the whole neighborhood will be there. Here’s a snippet of my Go write-up about it:

I Heart Brooklyn Girls and GO Magazine have teamed up for the exciting launch of the Brooklyn Girls 2009 Women at Work calendar. Famous for depicting real-bodied voluptuous queer femmes who call Brooklyn home, this year’s calendar effectively realizes its reference to 1940s and ‘50s Bettie Page style pin-up girls. It focuses on campy professions; all the ladies are dressed in carefully selected vintage attire and are shot in an ironic work environment. There is the “Baking Beauty,” the “Stitching Sweetie” and “Chemist Queenie” about to measure her beakers, but my favorite is obviously the “Literary Lady.” It’s about time that writers were hailed as sex icons! more

I’ll be sure to review it afterwards x

I Heart Brooklyn Girls recap

Okay party people, expect another post from me tonight, but meanwhile I have to give you a little bit of talkback on yesterday’s party.

It sucked!!!…..shhh, don’t tell. The doorman was rude, really Southpaw, its a big city, surely you can find someone who is not a shit-talking homophobe…no? The floor was not quite-lovingly encased in very sticky beer, the entrance price was 15 bucks and although the djs were good, it was too packed to dance until the end. Next year a bigger venue- I suggest anywhere other than Southpaw!

I did go to my favorite South Indian restaurant earlier that night, Dosas and a good chai will cheer a girl up-even when she gets dissed. (ooh!) not saying anything else, I will reveal the location though: corner of Lexington and 26th. Put it on your list girl(boy), it’s on mine. GL

Loulou’s, Winners, Gowanus Harvest Fest

Wow, I meant to post last night, but staying up until 5am at and after the I heart Brooklyn Girls party, translated to falling asleep at 8pm last night, while watching the Making of the Spice Girls DVD. Yes, people who are under the misconception that I’m pretentious will be pleased to know that I am not too cool to get a few kicks off watching Posh back when she was a chubby Spice in training. That was one of the fun prizes that came in my Aly Fourney benefit gift bag. But…

The point is that now I have a lot to say. First of all the answers to the Trivia question and winners of Brideshead Revisited are Shannon and Angie- yes it was a sad showing of competitors so Ang you are now officially eligible. The correct answers are:

George Orwell’s real name is Eric Blair, he was an imperial policeman in Burma for 5 years after finishing High School at Eton. When he struck a Burmese child with his cane, for some small slight, and was taunted for this by other children, he realized fully the ills of imperialism and resolved to commit to socialism and writing. Congratulations winners!

I have a new recommendation for the GL, Loulou’s in Ft Greene on Dekalb, is a great little brunch spot (especially if you have fun company like i did). In typical petit panam style, they have pretty decent crepes and all the other necessary ingredients like Mimosas, lattes and cake. The best feature is the garden. Have a long convo out back, suggested topics are education, misfired relationships, intresting court cases and Ashland vs Portland vs Brooklyn (Booklyn wins!)

After my much edited preview on Flavorpill, I won’t bother to link to it cause it won’t even sound like me—the review is that, unless your a city hippy with ten kids, you should probably skip it next year. The yard is a great space though, as I suspected (GL). Go there and bliss out in the sun, while looking at a 5 mile/hour bridge over the Gowanus canal

Bedstuy, Clinton Hill, FT Greene Cafe Contest- BS rundown

I have been long been meaning to do a little size-up comparison of the cafes in this hood. As the Brooklyn Socialite and a writer, let me assure you that I spend many a daytime hour in cafes so I should know a bit about them by now.

We have already talked about Choice- which is where I am now PS- definitely the best option in terms of food, coffee, deserts. In terms of hang out spot though, they get a lower score. Yes wifi, but no, the feeling that its cool to hang out all day on your laptop- it’s a bustling place, people are constantly online to get bread and savorys to take home or eat quickly on one of the outside benches. Another minus is no alcohol, sometimes an afternoon beer helps you get by, what can I say?

Then there is Tiny Cup this was my favorite for a long time until it became clear that the always fresh batch of new staff members would just never stop messing up orders. The amount of times I found jam on my bagel instead of butter, yogurt on my fruit bowl and coconut after I asked for without, or got someone else’s order all together is too many to count. What’s Worse, I have more than once been given food that wasn’t quite fresh enough. Beyond these major faux pas the good things are, the owner Lisa is really sweet and i like her. The crowd that hangs there is often cool, friendly and comfortable. This is def a laptop friendly spot, frequented by work-from-homers. Wifi yes and reasonable prices too.

Which brings me to Outpost. The best things about outpost are 1. spacious outdoor, smoker friendly garden seating and 2. They serve alcohol, beer, wine, even rum and they do really nice fruit juices to boot. Other perks are that they have young gay owners, host cool events like DJ and open mic poetry nights, have wifi and lots of laptop plugs, and similar to Tiny Cup a daytime mostly independent worker crowd. That said, the drawbacks are not very good food, some of it is pretty shocking, coffee that could be better and sometimes the feeling that it is too crowded. Maybe they could  spread the tables out a little more?

Then there is Breadstuy which hardly deserves a mention. The main pluses are WiFi, friendly staff and cool clientèle, but the coffee and food are so universally bad that it’s hard to go there for any significant period of time.

The last of the best,( bear in mind that all of the aforementioned cafes represent the best options in  daytime hood cafe chilling/working) is Smooch. A bit of a haul from where I live, but they have coffee, good smoothies, and alcohol! Plus some cruisy outdoor seating. The staff alternate between being awesome and surly, but try your luck. When I was last in the WiFi situation was indefinite so will have to check back and gauge whether or not this can really be a work spot. It’s good for a coffee date though.

If you know a place in the hood that you reckon deserves a spot on this list, please let me know!

Literary Death Match- Deadlines

Hello Friends,

Although hanging out in cafe’s is joyful, deadlines are not. I am down to the wire on another one and feeling the burn. I also put my back out- what the? So in honor of Spa Week, I am taking my broke self on down to the Brand Nu Day Spa, I will be sure to report back on it’s level of goodness.

After I stop procrastinating and manifest some genius, (what what!) I will get my back back in gear, I hope, than journey on over to the Kitchen for A Literary Death Match/ Release of Opium Magazine (secret blog fans, stalk me I’m yours!)

This is how I previewed it in Flavorpill:

Competitive-reading series Literary Death Match requires authors to step out from behind their writing desks and show some performance chops. The contestants this time around are Katherine Taylor from the Vermin on the Mount reading series, Thomas Hopkins from L magazine’s Annual Literary Upstart, Dennis DiClaudio of Guerilla Lit, and Thaddeus Rutkowski from Poetry vs. Comedy. Celebrity guests (Ben Greenman from The New Yorker is on hand) judge the participants on literary merit, performance, and various intangibles. more

I will let you know afterwards how it really was. I will also have a report back on the ITTY BITTY TITTY COMMITTEE DVD launch party which I previewed in GO. Again, stalkers are welcome x See you soon.

Lit Death Match Recap- to start

OK friends I have so many things that I want to recap right now, but my popcorn just beeped in the microwave and the DVD player is waiting. I rented Itty Bitty Titty Committee so that I could find out what all the fuss last night was about. Got to go watch and get back to you.

On to the Literary Death Match, presented by Opium magazine. Well I was going to write a little summary, but when I went back to review my notes, just seconds ago, I realized that they may be better in all their unabridged glory. Courtesy of my new iphone (we’ll talk about that soon) Here they are:

Lincoln Michel
Spit talked and was boring.
Ben Greenman said that be confuses animals and people.He likes airplane catalogs and “long bills”. Kurt says, “tuck in your shirt!”, no eye contact, spoke too fast, this guy Kurt Bodden is funny
Jodi bullock says, “don’t make word definition mistakes.”

Katherine Taylor
Not so funny and yet published in the Times, blonde, I don’t like the way she reads ‘dumb woman style’
“How you know you are a cliché”
Lit merit: greenman says style is hard to pull off but she kinda pulled it off and felt like jokes on Brooklyn writers. “There will be no bad sandwich in your memory”. Kurt; second person imperative voice. Spoonerism… Jodi says Chablis pronunciation, good story. Fear of umbrellas.

Lit matches in Europe
Baby voice

Dennis Diclaudio
Tic tac up the butt story w/therapist
Story is better than reading style
Lots of whiny bratty writer shit
Tic tac is cover for whiny shit.

Thaddeous Rutkowski
Great, funny. Good performer. Vonnegut said respect your audience. He has it memorized and wins. “ceremonial head dress” he says he wants one.

Wow, raw observations are scathing, “I apologize, in advance.” Meanness sucks, really.

The next post will cover Cookshop, and Itty Titty the night and film. Oh and the NU YU spa which by the way rocks!

Itty Bitty review and Cookshop, NU YU day spa.

I have been experiencing anxiety all day, caused in part by the meanness of my last post, and yet Allen Ginsberg said “First Thought, Best Thought” and there is a man I must honor. So no deletions.

Let’s talk about Itty Bitty. This film was fun. I wrote about 1,000 notes but I will spare you another reprint. In short: Daniela Sea is really hot, the soundtrack was great, I do love Le Tigre. You could tell that this film was very indy, it looked low-budget, nowhere near as polished as Jamie Babbit’s acclaimed feature, But I’m a Cheerleader. However the fact that it was produced by Power-Up and actually depicted culture jamming and Direct Action, despite the fact that the premise was a bit “fanciful,” pretty much makes it a winner in my book. Melonie Diaz is a really fresh young actor, big up to her, and thank you Itty for the mostly positive portrayal of a trans person. Check out the trailer.

As for the party, it looked like a snatch of fun. I can’t really say, because I couldn’t stay long. Before the party, I ate at Cookshop. It was overpriced and not amazing, yet super packed. Things that make you go hmmm. The bread sticks were good?

The exciting place, which does make the GL is NU YU day spa. If you ever really need a massage, in the Clinton Hill area, hit up Courtney, Jules or one of the other lovely staff members. Especially now, as it’s Spa Week and they along with many others across the country, are offering discounts.

Jane Lynch Interview

Yay! The interview that I did with Jane Lynch back at Providence International Film Festival is finally available online. Here’s an excerpt!

JANE LYNCH studied acting at Cornell University and then went on to act in comedy theater, TV, and film. Her role in The Fugitive introduced her to a wider audience, which led to appearances in major movies and TV sitcoms. However, Jane has remained committed to independent films and to playing lesbian roles whenever possible. She underscores this dedication through her work with Power-Up, a professional organization that “promotes the. visibility and integration of gay women in entertainment.” It was at a Power-Up conference that she first met L Word creator Ilene Chaiken, who asked her to join the cast.

Jane is known for the intelligence that shines through her comedy roles and has recently been honored with the Faith Hubley Memorial Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival. This award is a testament to her talent and versatility. Hilarious yet subtle, Jane is an accomplished actress with many films to her credit, including The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) and the recently released Tru Loved (2008).

I caught up with her at the Ptown Film Festival in June, where I sat with Jane at a screening of Best in Show, a 2000 movie in which she played lesbian dog trainer Christy Cummings. After the movie we talked about her status as an out actress and her work as an actress on the big and small screens.

Robyn Hillman-Harrigan: It was great to watch Best is Show with you in the audience. It was cool to see that it is still funny for you, even though I am sure you have seen it many times before.

Jane Lynch: I have, but I haven’t seen it in about four years, and we all look so young. There is such a difference in how all of us look eight years later. It was fun to watch it, because it holds up so well. I was really struck by some of the performances. Every time I see a Christopher Guest movie, someone’s performance stands out to me. This time it was Parker Posey who cracked me up.

RHH: I understand that it was made in a very non-traditional way, that you were given strong character descriptions, but no lines.

JL: That’s right. We improvised all the dialogue. We shot a lot of film. The art of this comes not only from our performances, I don’t mean to reduce our significance, but it’s in the editing. Christopher Guest creates these movies in the editing room.

RHH: I love your work on The L Word. What’s it like working with everyone on the cast–with Cybill Shepherd, for example?

JL: Cybill Shepherd is great. She’s usually who I work with. Cybill or Laurel Holloman. sometimes Jennifer Beals. I usually work with just one person. I love doing the show. They write really well, I just come in and do my piece, and then I leave. When I see the episode, it is brand new to me.

RHH: In both Best in Show and on The L Word you play a lesbian character. You are highly respected as an actor within the lesbian community; you have many lesbian fans. Is being well regarded by queer women important to you?

JL: Yes, absolutely. Acting is about human nature, so it is all of human nature that I’m curious about, and I know that historically we have been kind of a silent group and we haven’t garnered much respect or acceptance. This is changing now and I think it is really great that people like Melissa [Etheridge], and Ellen [De Generes] and Rosie O’Donnell stood up and were courageous enough to say, “I’m Gay.” Now the rest of us have had a much easier path. So kudos to them, and if someone looks up to me because I’m open and okay about it and they take strength from that, I think it’s great. Read More

Still to come, my review of Nights and Weekends, which I saw yesterday and Angent Angie’s post on the Jorie Graham reading that we attended last night. xx

Nights and Weekends, Mixx, Secret Faggot

“I don’t respond to sarcastic fun!.” was my favorite line in Nights and Weekends, it captured the eerie gray area that relationships enter after a certain amount of time. In this is a zone, 2 people know each other well, but not well enough to avoid trampling over each others sensitivities. Perfectly capturing that awkward intimacy, Nights and Weekends somehow delivers. True, it appears low budget, the camera work is simple and the scenes are shot almost exclusively in the same 2-3 apartments. Still, it feels like one long conversation, the kind which I have had with my best friends. It addresses the conflict over having babies, being in relationship, being alone fiercely, being lonely, and ultimately falling in love with someone, and feeling kind of out of control about it. This film is a useful meditation on autonomy and what it means to give that up. Check the trailer.

Now a brief shot out to the Mix 21 Queer Experimental Film Festival. I went last night and especially enjoyed a film called In Formation by Za Martohardjono. If you missed it last night Za will have more films screening tonight, so go see for yourself. There are several other good programs being offered, including a cool video art installation. More info here

Finally I ended the night at Glasslands for the Secret Faggot party. Wow, I had no idea that that space was so vaudeville. It did feel squat homey though, and the makeshift bar was even endearing. I guess I was just waiting for the DJ section to begin, and it didn’t until 1:30, by then I was longing for my pillow. Beauty sleep right?

Agent Angie gets round Robin

The Baltimore Avant-Garde at (le) Poisson Rouge

I suppose the bands I saw Friday night in the Baltimore Round Robin at (le) Poisson Rouge didn’t overtly define themselves as avant-garde, but they were certainly esoteric enough to be described that way. Furthermore, their pride in their irreverence, marked in many cases by aloofness, to the extent of failing to tell the audience their name (as if they’re so above the current music scene to care if we know who they are), made me think that many of them have quite lofty perceptions of themselves.

Despite my initial aversion to the elaborately esoteric nature of some of these performances, very quickly I began to hear the rhythm and beauty in even the most bizarre of noise bands there that night. Even the Lexie Mountain Boys, a group of women who did all manner of screeching, moaning, and yelping to convince me that I was either at a ritualistic ceremony or a violent orgy, captivated me.

The round robin concept, in which the audience forms in the middle and is surrounded by all of eleven bands, who alternate playing one song after another, was the perfect way in which to experience this music. I couldn’t imagine staying through concerts of most of these bands independent of each other, with the exception of Beach House, Jana Hunter, and possibly Teeth Mountain. The avant-garde elements were accessible because of the alternating and spontaneous form. The round robin is broken up into two nights. Friday was “Eyes Night” and Saturday, “Feet Night,” a night of dance music rather than the more visual music of Friday’s show. (le) Poisson Rouge on Bleeker and Thompson provided the perfect space for this unusual event, getting it on the GL of NY music venues.

I haven’t come close to succeeding in describing this show adequately for you. The bizarre, fantastic, and insane knew no bounds. These elements were all too numerous to describe here, so let me briefly list the highlights:

Beach House: My favorite band of the evening, and the one I was most anxious to see. Read this wonderful reviewof their latest album on Pitchfork.

Lexi Mountain Boys: As I mentioned previously, somehow the orgasmic grunts and howls of this group of women (wearing headdresses of baby doll heads and black perforated veils), became increasingly rhythmic and melodic to me as the night wore on. The blast they were having, that was apparent from their infectious, genuine smiles, took any pretention out of their inexplicable music.

The female drummer from Teeth Mountain: This woman’s sexy, tribal style of drumming and the captivating music it made, blew me away. I could have listened and watched her play all night.

Santa Dads: This band consisted of three people: one man beat-boxing in a cotton, handmade tiger suit, another, wearing a red dress with a Peter Pan collar playing an electric ukelaili, and a back up dancer undulating frantically with a stuffed leopard print octopus. Enough said.

Wish I could have gone to “Feet Night” as well, to get the full Baltimore music experience, but the 92Y Tribeca opening was that night. I wouldn’t have missed if you paid me. Expect a post soon.

Agent Angie reads to us

This has been quite a week of readings, providing events so diverse, from Opium Magazine’s unorthodox literary death match to 92nd Street Y‘s uptown and kinda uptight Jorie Graham and Yusuf Komunyakaa reading.

And in the middle, Wednesday saw the 85th anniversary reading of Weird Tales Magazine at KGB Bar. The magazine brought three of their favorite authors, Micaela Morrisette, Jeffrey Ford, and Karen Heuler. Morisette started things off with the weirdest of the night, a story about ritualized cannibalism. Her reading of it was disturbing; she described her characters devouring their meals with such a plethora of adjectives and in such a soft and captivated voice, fetishizing the concept. I felt like I was listening to a harlequin romance about craving human beings for dinner. Unsettling? Yes. Not exactly my cup of tea but compelling nonetheless.

My favorite part of the night was when Stephen H. Segal, the editorial and creative director of the magazine, did a reading of Weird Tales’ readers’ submissions of 500 word stories inspired by a spam subject line they found in their inbox. He read three of the honorable mentions throughout the night. They were awesome.

Those were the highlights of the evening. KGB Bar is so far my favorite readings venue. It is surely the most intimate, being so tiny that there were people overflowing into the hallway. Predictably, everything is red, with busts and portraits of Lenin galore. The disappointing beer selection, offering only the usual suspects was a downer for me, but its atmosphere, authenticity, and tininess get it on the GL of NY bars and reading venues.

The next night came 92nd Street Y’s Jorie Graham and Yusuf Komunyakaa reading. Sometimes I wish the Y could loosen itself up a bit. I’ve been to one other reading there, and both times I nodded off at some point during the event. It’s not intimate by any stretch of the imagination (I’ve found that intimacy is best for readings so that one can absorb and thus more easily follow what the writer is reading), the seats are not too comfy, and it’s not a place where I feel relaxed.

Graham read first, and sadly, it was tedious. Her voice was very abrupt and breathy when she read. It was very “poet-like;” the stereotype that inserts pauses in odd places for effect, and pauses at the end of every line. I hate when people read poetry that way. It makes poetry sound foreign, validating the preconceived notions some have about the inaccessibility of poetry. She read solely from Sea Change which didn’t thrill me. I had trouble associating any of the words she was saying together. I felt like I needed to have the book in front of me and follow along to grasp the meaning behind her words.

Yusuf Komunyakaa on the other hand had a beautiful reading voice. It was very soft and deep. He recited Rs with a unique flair and had a bluesy lilt to his voice. My favorite poem of his was called “Requiem,” about New Orleans after Katrina.

Party Like it’s 1992 at Santos Party House

Well last night my friend lured me out of my warm sewing cove and convinced me to come to the Shitty. On a Sunday night no less! It was kind of worth it though to see all the b-boy colorfabulous fashions that were on display at Santos Party House. If you weren’t wearing hyper color high tops you may as well have been a leaper. The only way to make up for such a grave slight was to rock glitzy vintage rainbow bright party dresses or collage popping hoodies. I didn’t quite make the grade, but i still managed to get myself caught on the dance floor amidst spontaneous vogueing, cap wearing, boot stomping b-boys and heel high glamazons. The drinks were slightly overpriced but the sounds of 1992 were refreshing. I had to call back to the fore several of my retired dance moves but I just about managed to bust a move. Upon departure, I was rewarded with a 1992 t-shirt by local designer Brooklyn Basement.

Trouble The Water Article Interview Tia Lessin and Carl Deal

Hello! My Trouble The Water article which features an interview that I did with the film’s directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal is now available on line here.

If you have yet to see the movie, please do. It is a very inspiring narrative documentary about a heroic, yet humanistic couple who survived Hurricane Katrina, while aiding their neighbors in the lower 9th ward. This in an excerpt…read more!

“So many people lost everything, their homes and families.” Lessin said. “It is not exactly the time that you expect people to rise above it all, but the truth is that Kim and Scott lived in a community that had failed them all of their lives. They were used to having to be the first response for problems that were occurring in their community. The government had long since abandoned the lower ninth ward. At least a quarter century of right wing attacks on social services set the groundwork for the poverty in their community. So many of the basic things that our country is supposed to look out for, safety, health, environmental and market regulations, civil rights, had all fallen by the wayside. This was the trajectory of their lives.”

Indeed, the scenes that show Kim riding through the neighborhood, pre-storm, affirm her status as caring community member. She knows the names and stories of each neighbor, shop owner, and even homeless junkie. Memorably, she warns one such man to take shelter. Later the film viewer finds out that he was one of the many who died after being unable to leave the city. However, Kim herself, also speaks about the hardships she has endured at various times in life, which have led her to take desperate measures, including selling drugs. Aiding their neighbors and emerging as true leaders, seems to have catalyzed a process of continued change for the Roberts.

According to Deal, “This film was about perspective as much as anything, by stepping outside of their everyday world, Kim and Scott were able to look back in and see themselves in an enhanced manner. They could understand the better parts of themselves and by seeing things in this affirmative light, multiply the positives in their lives. They were the same people they had always been, except more self-assured and hopeful.”

Agent Angie Sings to us

92Y Tribeca Opening

If you read my review of 92nd Street Y’s Jorie Graham and Yusuf Komunyakaa reading last week you know of my hope that the good ole’ Y could become a little more hip. They book the best literary events around, yet manage to put their audience to sleep. Well, it seems my wish has been granted. 92nd Street Y opened their Tribeca location, on Hudson and Canal, last Saturday. I’ve heard that 92Y Tribeca won’t be hosting many readings in the near future, leaving that to their uptown patriarch. Hopefully that changes, because 92Y Tribeca’s space could potentially excel in providing the intimacy that literary readings need to be as satisfying and exciting as possible (yes, readings can be exciting!).

92Y Tribeca has a fabulous line-up of music events scheduled. Check out their site. John Vanderslice kicked off their series, 18 Nights of Inspiration on Saturday, while also celebrating the opening of the Tribeca location. Michael Showalter opened for and introduced Vanderslice with a stand-up routine. He was a little unprepared but otherwise hilarious as usual (remember Wet Hot American Summer?). Most of his routine recapped the current events surrounding the election.

Vanderslice’s performance was what I was excited about. He put on a great show, visibly elated to be performing at 92Y Tribeca and to be introduced by Showalter, whom he’s performed with before. The San Francisco-based singer/songwriter has intrigued me ever since I heard that he produced Spoon’s Gimme Fiction and two recent Mountain Goats’ albums, The Sunset Tree (2005) and Heretic Pride (2007), which also happen to be two of my favorites. One of the most prolific, yet under-the-radar musicians of his generation, Vanderslice was slated to intrigue, delight, and of course, entertain.

Vanderslice’s lyrics remind me a bit of anecdotal, folkloric/nursery rhymes, in particular “Dear Sarah Shu,” which he dedicated to John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats at the show:

“Dear Sarah Shu,
I leave for you
All i knew about this job
On microcassette for further review

What it meant to me
How you’ll make it dear, hopefully
It’s dangerous here
Yes it’s dangerous here

Peer round corners with dental mirrors,
Heed the threats, taking cautionary measures,
In the end, it is love
You’ll have to learn to survive …”

and “Angela”

“Angela
Don’t be mad
There’s something i’ve got to tell you dear
Before you come back here

I lost, i lost your bunny
I let him out of the cage
He was eating spring mix on the carpet
He jumped through a window into the haze

And hopped down magnolia boulevard
No way he’ll survive
Maybe those last days of freedom
Were the best of his life …”

92Y Tribeca picked a great inaugural act! I had a blast.

The space was very well orchestrated. There are gallery spaces displaying the exhibit “Goddess, Mouse, and Man” featuring the etchings of Lauren Weinstein, Tom Hart, and Matthew Thurber. I went to a reading of Weinstein’s fantasy graphic novel Goddess of War (the etchings of which are currently displayed in this show) at the Strand a couple months ago. She is definitely worth checking out.

Expect some exciting things to come from the Y in the coming months. I’m interested to see what happens.

by Angie Venezia

George Stoney Q & A

Last night documentary filmmaker George Stoney made a special appearance at Thom Powers’( programmer for the Toronto Film Festival) film series, Stranger Than Fiction. Stoney is 92 years old and has been making films for two thirds of his lifetime. It was a great pleasure to watch him, climb up and down off the stage( poor thing) and discuss his cinematic legacy with total clarity and insight. He informed us that his early films were made almost exclusively for a commissioned purpose. The first video that screened last night, “All my Babies,” was made for the Georgia Health Department as an instructional video. It depicts a real African American “granny midwife,” as they were called, delivering a baby for a woman in her home. Many black women in the early 50′s, when this film was made, did not have their children in hospitals. Stoney explained that this film helped to educate white doctors about the respectable practices of the midwives, and the somewhat desperate position of the mothers. This knowledge encouraged many of those doctors to make visits to pregnant black women before and during births, in order to ensure safety and bring women, who were likely to have complicated births, to the hospital.

This film like all of the others screened was thoughtful and admirable. Throughout his career Stoney tackled issues such as workers rights, prison drama societies, Native American rights, and rural to urban immigration. Do Netflix him or audit one of his classes at NYU (that’s what I’m thinking of doing!) Yes, you heard me right, at 92 he is still teaching and still making films. He should def hang with my 98 year old Bubby. They would have good chats.

Here is a revisiting of the original film with commentary. Loads slow but is pretty interesting!

Murakami contentious review!

Here it is:

Is a Ph.D. in fine art a pre-requisite for the production of sexually offensive, hyper-color, infantile comic book styled corporate clutter? If your name is Takashi Murakami than the answer is, “yes”. The self-proclaimed creator of a new art movement entitled Superflat, which refers to what Murakami has defined as the lack of distinction in Japan between high and low art, as the flat space in between. A trend he points to in traditional as well as contemporary Japanese art. According to the artist, “Japanese don’t like serious art. But if I can transform cute characters into serious art, they will love my piece.”

Murakami maintains that his goal is to question the Japanese obsession with western art and immature consumerism, by blurring the lines between art and commerce. However, rather than critiquing this shift, his work further intensifies the magnetism. Murakami describes postwar Japanese impotence as a void, popularly obscured by Hello Kitty dolls that the artist has stepped in to fill with ultra commercial merchandise as art. A man who can sell paintings for 1.3 million and toy figures for 50 bucks a pop has demonstrated his capabilities as a marketing genius. Perhaps his designation as the new Andy Warhol and best contemporary Japanese pop artist is just another example of his promotional mastery.

Born in Tokyo in 1962 from working class parents, Murakami earned a BA, MFA, and Ph.D. in traditional Nihonga painting from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Growing up, he was a member of the Otaku geek subculture, which centers around anime (cartoons) and manga (comic books) that often depict the explosion of the atomic bomb and gritty realities in post-war Japan. They also sometimes serve as outlets for repressed sexual fantasies. Otaku are mainly young Japanese men, who like American trekies or renaissance fair enthusiasts, collect figurines, and go to trade shows, except in this case the figures are often sparsely glad young girls called, bishojo.

As otaku relates to Murakami’s art it is a borrowing from cartoons and animations with the sexual or grotesque element almost made palatable by containing a somewhat child-friendly veneer. The latter is the imposition of an element called kawaii, or cuteness. This presence is found increasingly in his more recent work. Paintings such as Tan Tan Bo capture a combination of otaku and kawaii, which culminate in the figure of a bloodthirsty, yet colorful, cheery caricature. It is this very reference to morbid isolationism, augmented with hyper-color joy, which has rocketed Murakami into the mainstream. Millions of dollars later, he is still known to sleep many nights alone in a sleeping bag in a small building attached to his Japanese factory.   Read More!pleasexx

Tan tan Bo- Murakami

Thanks for listening and loving art like I do (except when you take objection to it!) Speaking of art, tomorrow you can expect a full review of the new AnySpaceWhatever exhibition at the Guggenheim. Until then! your faithful Brooklyn Socialite.

TheAnySpaceWhatever initial Review

Ok folks this post is going to be a little computer challenged as I am forced to iPhone send it. My initial reaction to the anyspacewhatever exhibition which opened yesterday at the Guggenheim is: I loved the wall text and the hanging plaques that redirect the typical flow of museum traffic. They say things like various admissions above the ticket booth and cookoo sanctuary above the coat check. Then the walls whisper, for example: “every time you think of me you die a little”. A message to your ex or a cross affirmation? I wonder. One patron upon exit said that tourists would be disappointed after paying 18$ to enter. Oh, the tourist, but what about the art critic? So far i can tell you that the bid towards experiential art and the rejection of the basic concept of asthetic display is compelling, but I’ll get back to you after further consideration!

Pics to come.

Inkblot Kelly, NY2022, Obama/Baldwin, Bitch, Edgar Keret

I want to talk about the futuristic performance art piece that accompanies the AnySpaceWhatver exhibition.

The performance, entitled NY2022 combines Balenciaga dresses, with the Staten Island , Richmond County Orchestra, 82 year old singing actresses and a shower, a bicycle and a hot plate. Based on the 1973 Sci-fi film Soylent Green, the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster creates an image of New York in the future. Apparently it is a place where people lovingly pour water over each other in lieu of actual showers, and where music and clothing, although beautiful (Balenciaga dresses) and lackadaisical, are gradually dissipating.

On the Subway downtown, I was wedged between the Russian members of the Staten Island Orchestra, although this environment was decidedly less glamorous then the Guggenheim, I felt a kindred connection with my fellow Brooklyn Socialites. Yes they live in Staten Island, but the point is that they are subway riding, comfortable shoe wearing, down to earth recessionistas like me.

When I arrived downtown, I was just in time to see Bitch and Feron at Joe’s Pub, which was a little folksy slice of the west coast from Daniela Sea’s lovely female folk singer girl-friend. The show was quite sweet, it made me feel like camping, and watching lakes. At one point, Ferron commented that new Yorkers view trees as concepts, that they are not in fact real to us. It was a joke, but I want to shout “Hey, I resemble that!” (which is a play on ‘I resent that’ For other fun pun’s in the sun dig this little gem of a site

And, it’s about time that I rail off about a few books and publications that I have been perusing these past few days. First of all did anyone else read the epic comparison of Barak Obama with James Baldwin in the NY Review of Books? What the? This brings to mind other “well matched” personages such as Orwell and Waugh. Until Barak comes out and publishes something with a little more literary merit than his “touching” autobiography provided, I will have to maintain my gasp. I love our next president, but don’t mess with Baldwin.

Speaking of writers, I caught Edgar Keret at Housing Works. He read from his latest book, A Girl on the Fridge. I really can’t speak volumes about his work, although it is very popular and often recommended to me. Its conspicuous lack of political choices, for a collection of stories set in conflict rich Israel/Palestine is a bit off putting. The style and subject matter is also v. male and seems to neutralize violence. However, the lady poets, who read before him, presented well crafted verse. Housing works still rocks!

I am also proud to share my new clothing website, Yay! The BS is also a Designer x www.InkblotKelly.com That lovely model is sporting IK gear below x

Supper, Channeling

Just finished editing the busy events of Friday night, and happy to realize that Saturday was by far a quieter evening. I just have to recap the cool film screening and after party that I attended and the great dinner at Supper which preceded it.

I keep being drawn back to that restaurant, It reminds me of Tiamo, this great Italian spot in the Italian district of Melbourne, which I used to frequent. Going there offers me a little taste of my home away from home, tied up between piping hot homemade pasta, gorgonzola polenta, and decadent procioutto mellons. Sorry vegans. Which brings me to the next event of the evening.

I had to try to pull off vegan chic among talented experimental filmmakers, artists, DJs and friends. The screening at ABC No Rio, (moved from Le Petit Versailles), was charming, subtle, at times hysterical, at others confusing, but overall thought provoking and bold. It is always good to see queer stories, which ponder identity, earthliness and disco. Check out the work of Elliot Montague and Michael Robinson on youtube maybe or in your local radical lending library.

The afterparty was a refreshing amount of fun. After most of the crowd at Heather’s cleared, what remained was a friendly crew, Aurthur Russell and other disco/hip hop/pop and house beer guzzling queertabulousness.

The Economic Downturn & Depression Entertainment

Let me tell you, writing for a living (and making clothes) is not all that lucrative for some people that i won’t mention, ok me. Still I look around and notice that the signs of the times are quite prominent nearly everywhere. Friends are loosing jobs, moving cities, desperately promoting themselves, or sliding into negative state of mind funks. For me, not all that much has changed ‘cuase I actually didn’t have that far to fall. (ha ha) Any way, this brings me to consider the rise of Broadway musicals during The Great Depression, which is this week mirrored by the success of High School Musical 3. It looks like American’s on average would like to be entertained by ultra-positive, unrealistic singsong in times of Crisis.

I fear that I tend to go in quite the opposite direction for my ressionista kicks. I watch a lot of documentaries, which not everyone considers to be a good time. Like tomorrow, for instance I am really excited about the Stranger than Fiction, screeing of Making do the Right Thing, to quote myself,

“St Clair Bourne captured the conflict-rich environment of Bed-Stuy in the early ’80s and the ways in which the community responded to seeing its streets turned into a live set.” Read More

Angela Davis

This will be a great night because not only is a film about my neighborhood screening, but Danny Glover and many others will be in the house to pay tribute to St Clair Bourne, who I had the honor of befriending before he died last year. Later in the week, more of what I call good cheap fun, Angela Davis will be speaking about Abolition Democracy at Cooper Union for free. More info

The other fun, affordable and cheery things that I am, and suggest doing in today’s economy are playing with dogs and reading! Yay, so Brideshead revisited reading group, get busy! I also love making soup in these times, it’s cheap and it lasts all week. Any one who has a good soup recipe, please comment post it or email it to me at Brooklynsocialite@yahoo.com. I will share one soon too, maybe even giveaway a soup dinner to one lucky reader… x

Coco Rosie at Heather’s

Last night I saw Bianca, aka Mad Vicky, one of the members of Cocorosie, DJ at Heather’s. Known for wearing crazy wigs and lots of beautiful, built-up costumes, Bianca was rocking a realistic, white girl dread wig. I’m assuming that wasn’t her actual hair, but not sure. Her clothes were slightly more downplayed but still somehow imposing. My friend commented that he loved her rainbow aesthetic, which is ironic considering the truth that Cocorosie have often referred to themselves as Rainbow Warriors. It kind of did feel like a tribe had come home to chill, with Bianca, joined by equally snazzy mix-mistress Black cracker and her band and life- mate Bunny Rabbit. Members of OMG Michelle were also in the blender, plus designers Leif and Tooya.

DJ Mad Vicky

If you haven’t heard Cocorosie’s sounds, check them out. Popular in Barcelona and Paris, where they live part time, and of course on the west coast, their music is a rhythmic cross pollination. Fisher price toys compete for dominance with operatic vocals, disguised voices and good old fashioned (ha ha) beats. Danceable, at times queer-centric, melodic, lyrical, their music is so many things. Black Cracker and Bunny are pretty ace too, especially when you see them in Athens! The DJing was of course different from the band, but our verdict: fun and thought provoking, definitely going on the GL. The slide show that accompanied it was positively wacked out. Yay, more experimental film cures, in these depressionista times.

Unappreciated?

Do you ever get the feeling that people are wildly underestimating you? They say things like, “Well, if you really wanted it, you would…” or “Well, you’re young, you have have plenty of time to make money, you don’t need it now.” This is when the incredulity sets in, “Do you have any idea who I am?” you want to scream, ” Do you have even half a notion of what I’ve done to get to this place in my life?” Officially you have more heart, more chutzpah, and more integrity then some people carry attached to their keyrings, “but I digress“(To quote one blogger who is in the habit of quoting me)… By now you have mentally jumped upon a table top and started demanding, back taxes, lost invoices, belated birthday presents and every other manner of substance that you now realize you are rightfully owed. In appearance, your body may be still quite contained behind your just slightly rolling eyes and your calm, controlled voice- in truth, you are raging. The diatribe is getting juicier, ex-partners are invoked, broken dishes that your roommates never claimed responsibility for, that diet that sabotaged you, the exercise that you no longer have time for. You are starting a movement here, look around and notice that others are also standing on their tables and chairs. Not visible to the untrained eye, but I see them. I am glad that I found my kin group, and we are beginning the departure…follow me! shhhh, don’t stop to think, just follow, or lead, whatever, just come.

Send me your best undervalued rant: Brooklynsocialite@yahoo.com

Possible topics include: 1.Who wants to be Paris Hilton anyway. 2. Why I’m a superstar (to myself) 3. A funny thing happened on the way to today and 4. Why canceled vaycay’s suck on top of everything else.

And now for a quick recap of Making Do the Right Thing. After seeing it for the second time, I noticed that Spike Lee was super fashionable in the late 80′s. Where can I get me a pair of yellow and green leggings, with green mini-shorts on top. Men were really comfortable with taking fashion forward back then. Pretty hot. I also loved the part where Melvin Van Peebles tells the crowd that refuses to quiet down and give him his propers, ” I didn’t get to where i am by being a choir boy, now shut up.” He’s on that table with us. He’s coming!

Melvin Van Peebles

Sorry Tree -Eileen Myles

Time to hit you with a book review. Sorry Tree is a recent book of poetry by Eilleen Myles. By way of description of Myles, for the uninitiated, I don’t know whether to say, ‘Still hot at almost 60,’ ‘In the genre of Ginsberg and Patti Smith,’ ‘Lesbian for president, Poet for all,’ or just, ‘someone who owes me a coffee/chat.’ I will content myself with saying instead, a voice that will influence you, Myles has mastered her craft.

Now on to the book. This is a poem from one of my favorite series of poems in Sorry Tree, “Dear Andrea”

Myles writes:

“Dear Andrea

You are the candy melting

in my mouth.

Is that a euphemism

For what? Witnessing your love.

That’s pretty good.

Oh I thought you said

Hear the candy

melting in my mouth.

All the people like me

are thanking all the people

like you. Can we call

it bird house?

I wouldn’t take that

away from you. You’re

like an orangutan.

You’re like a little brother

I just allowed in the bed.

Did you have coffee with

your dinner. No

I’m excited. We

bought a bird house

today. We didn’t

get it yet. No

but we should

call it that. I.M.

sweet”

I missed my stop on the subway, while reading this, I was transported and, perhaps fortunately, not to my intended destination. Instead I visited the spaces that the poet inhabits, which her voice so viscerally describes. I was on a ferry and in a bedroom, within a warm house deep in thought, capturing each minuscule feeling that visited me. For the other “Dear Andrea’s” buy the book

See you at  Angela Davis’s talk tonight!

Angela Davis Recap, AnySpacewhatever Pictures, Halloween

The crowd at Angela Davis’ talk last night was pretty spectacular, v. Dyke March NYC meets Critical Resistance, Oakland plus a large helping of Eugene Lang Students and free Mumia activists. The vibe was very serious though, not to many accidental lover pick-ups or new friendships made, the main focus was on the star of the show: Angela Davis. (Definitely on the Good List)

She spoke about another iconic figure who is regarded in a sometimes similar light, our next president, Barak Obama. As a socialist, Davis was not so much advocating for Obama on the merits of his democratic policy proposals or his moderate-left record in office. Instead, she spoke of his power as a real milestone of progress and a symbol of it. The election of the first Black President has a collective significance on our society, which actually overpowers his personal significance as an individual, she asserted.

My favorite moment in this discourse was when she offered her analysis of McCain’s run in with the woman from Minnesota who said, “I can’t trust Obama, he’s an Arab.” Mccain responded, “No mam he is not an Arab. He is a decent family man and a U.S. citizen. This is the very exceptionism which so perfectly defines modern racism. It is as if to say, ‘Well Obama may be black, but he went to Harvard, he’s one of us.’ Or, ‘I am fine with gay people, as long as they don’t try anything on me, I have plenty of gay friends.’ McCain did not address that there was a problem with her anti-Arab racism. The way he attempted to clear Obama’s name was by justifying that he is “decent” and ‘one of us’ because he is a “family man.” Thereby not being Arab, being heterosexual, and being committed to “family values” acquits Obama, and anoints him as a good, normal American.

That was the highlight for me, but she touched on so many good points, essentially, 1. racism is not over, we must know our history, celebrate the milestones, but focus on how much further there is to go. 2. prisons must be abolished and they are systemically racist- dating all the way back to slavery, she also talked a lot about the role that surveillance plays in coloring the prison population. 3 Davis, kind of mocked the internet a bit, hey I resemble that! Other than the quips that implied that google and youtube were sort of un-cool, I have to say Angela Davis has earned the attention of her supporters. I bought her book afterwards, so look forward to a review!

Now for a couple of overdue AnySpaceWhatever pictures.

Liam Gillick

a Robyn's eys view

Are We Evil

And finally, happy Halloween. I am hiding out at home with a bag of candy, prepared for trick or treaters, so if you know where I live, ring my bell!

Tonight, Harry Shearer, Party

I don’t have any Oct 31 events to report back on as I decided to hibernate with all the ghosts and ghouls in my head! But tonight should be a little more active. Even your very own Brooklyn Socialite (me), who has feverishly resisted election hoopla, is starting to feel and hope that these may be the last days of a dark and twisted era. I hope that Tuesday will be enormous and deeply relieving. In order to help roast Bush in his final days, I will be Joining Harry Shearer at the 92 St Y Tribeca. In an effort to quote myself often:

“Grammy-nominated actor, Huffington Post blogger, and the voice behind many of The Simpsons characters, Harry Shearer performs tonight with his band the High Volume Detainees. Beyond his involvement with Spinal Tap, Shearer has been consistently political: the tunes off his album Songs of the Bushmen focus on President Bush’s Oedipal complex and other infamous imperfections, while members of his administration are also taken to task. In celebration of the end of Bush’s term, Shearer unloads his impressions of Palin and praise for Obama.” Read More

I will hit you with a recap tomorrow.

And, In an effort to be queerly fabulous in these hard times, I may face the outdoor ghosts and ghouls at:

FLAUNT AND HAUNT @ KALLI LOUNGE

“The extraordinarily party savvy, Gaysha, presents a special Halloween version of Choice Cu*ts.  She has always taken theme parties to the extreme with bifocal, leg-warmer-clad, bisexuals or Olympic obsessed nutters for Nastia, but Whoreween will blow the lid off all those past concepts.” Read more

Yes I am ashamed to say that I did write that for pay, but don’t hate, it was heavily edited. See you tonight!

Harry Shearer Recap, Whoreoween

I hope you are all pulling up as well as I am on this fine, sunny, post-mayhem Sunday morning. The scariest Halloween costume that I saw this season was the guy with the Harry Shearer mask on. No wait, that was really him. As much as I want to jock the 92st Y Tribeca, I have to say that I was far from impressed with my first event there. I’m hoping that was an anomalous experience and will reserve judgment.

Harry Shearer on the other hand, prepare to be roasted! The roast master himself seems to have not quite realized that the very act of mocking our misbegotten president and his team of political pariahs, does not give one carte blanche to use every racial and sexual slur in the Book. I was offended by his likening of Colin Powell to Smooth Jazz, his bashing Alberto Gonzalez with a Mexican ole song, and his repeated references to Condoleeza Rice’s perm. Seriously? Worsened by his descent into toilet humor, and the essentially boring old-timer band that backed him, Harry Shearer’s Songs of the Bushman (rock/jazz/weird Al Yankovic style?) concert blew, to put it mildly. Definitely on the BL

Luckily for me I did meet some nice folks during the ordeal and we commiserated together. Afterwards I checked out Whoreoween as promised, with a quick stop at Metro on the way. I still love that place, go Metropolitan, go community! Well the party was actually pretty fun, the DJ (who doubles as my GO co-worker) was pretty darn fab. Anyone who plays Arthur Russell, next to The Gossip, and on top of old school hip hop is alright in my Book.

Speaking so highly, as I always do, of books and words, I’ll part with a word of the day:

Trustafarian: Someone with a trust fund. This trust fun dictates one’s choice of social activities. Not a Brooklyn Socialite.

Podunck Tea House- Another Gem Discovered

Hidden amongst the rank and file of 5th St boutiquey joints, this wonderful gem quietly lurks. Podunk: An American Tea Room, is cozy quaint, yummy and just good fun. A cross between a South of France Salon du The and an English High Tea and scones house, this American interpretation of calming, healthy, leisure time is pretty ace. You can share a pot of tea and a themed meal, “ladies luncheon,” “Savory Brunch,” and “Sweet and Cheese,” are some of the options. The meals come on perfect little doily clad trays, and always represent more than one course, savory with sweet, including a choice of homemade cakes or cookies and fruit. Every different kind of tea is on offer, from organic lavender and mango chamomile to spicy authentic chais. Podunk reminds me of a gem I once frequented in Ales and the Arab Bath’s Tea Room in Sevilla, although it’s not quite Europe I will make a point to keep taking mini-Sunday -brunch-vacations to 231 E 5th St. Stop in and say hi to Elsbeth, the charming owner, who runs the place almost single-handedly. GL

Stumble It!

Vote, Shirley Chisholm, Party

Well Kids, this is the big day. Pretend you live in a swing state, that there is no such thing as the electoral college and that our past elections haven’t been so corrupt that congresswomen had to request the intervention of UN observers and just ROCK that VOTE. No, cynicism aside, I’m excited and nervous all at the same time. What will happen? Will I need to flee the country, again? No, yeah I have a lease, I’m sticking come hell or high water. Brooklyn 4EVA!

So how will we bring in this heaven or hailstorm? There are a few particular plans that I have my eye set on. I will definitely be at Stranger than Fiction, my Tuesday night local, to watch Chisholm72 and celebrate Shirley Chisholm, Black Brooklyn Congresswoman’s, 1972 bid for the presidency. Obama’s fore-mother deserves her propers.

After the film, I think I will hit up the Activate election party at Tom and Jerrry’s. It will be a good chance to share drinks with my Flavorpill peops and other new media intelligentsia, ok drunken post-academics (Free Dewars from 6-8), call them what you will. The main idea is that, I reckon it will be nice to bring in the sea change ( I hope), or cry over the same old sh*t in the presence of a leftist, brawl-ready- socialite crew. See you there!

Obama, Obama, Obama! Chisholm72, Santos Party House, Madiba

Every morning I hypothetically kiss the ground of this wonderful piece of Earth called Brooklyn. Clearly, I love it a lot, but yesterday it literally kissed me back! Although Obama has long since been declared president of Bed Stuy, last night it became official, and I couldn’t have been happier. My friends were crying, fireworks went off in the park, strangers hugged me enthusiastically and Brooklyn kissed me back!

Wait, I started too soon, let’s go back to the voting booth. There I was standing for too long, when the old woman at the registration table shouted, “Pull the lever!”. Right, I knew that, pull it twice and in between exercise Agency. Or as Obama would say, “Yes We Can.” I floated out of the booth feeling like something of a rock star, and washed into the Activate party at Tom and Jerry’s. The charm of post-academics quickly wore thin, and after an hour I was ready for Stranger than Fiction.

Chisholm72 was truly an inspiring film. I would love to talk more about it soon. I told the director Shola Lynch that she was on my good list and better get ready for an interview, seems like she was amenable, so more on her and the film later. For now, I will just say that Shirley was deeply inspiring, especially in these times when we are re-investing in Heros. The first black congresswoman, and from Brooklyn, who presided over Bed Stuy (really!), Chilsholm was also the first woman to seriously run for president. A great speaker and a true believer in paving the way for systemic change. She stood up for the Black Panthers, Native Americans, feminists, poor people and Black Americans. In sticking with our recent themes, Shola’s next film will be about Angela Davis.

After the film, I arrived back in Brooklyn in time to chill over a drink and a television set at Bonita’s, the swanky cool Mexican fusion joint on Dekalb which is closely affiliated with No 7. The verdict came in so early and by that insane landslide, you know what happened next (Brooklyn kissed me back). The street revelry spilled back into a bar, this time Madiba. We had to watch the acceptance speech. Champagne was popped, whiskey was inhaled, the restaurant owner sincerely thanked us all for sharing this historic moment with him and as the confetti started to settle, we knew that the party must not stop.

We hit Santos Party House. Oh my God, it was hot! Q-tip was DJing, as if that weren’t enough, Busta Rhymes was suddenly spinning and talking to us. Was this for real? We had a black president, Busta Rhymes was in the flesh spitting the word, a person I went to High School with identified me (somehow in my state of drunken revelry) and everything was fine. Yes I said, I believe.

A.M. Holmes, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This, Ben Greenman

Yesterday evening, after pulling up with difficulty and enjoying a coffee and croissant at Choice, I managed to get a lot of actual work done, including the business of editing and writing. By 6:30, still somehow awake, I stumbled uptown to the Guggenheim to catch a reading by A.M. Holmes.

Who is A.M. Holmes you ask? Let’s start with our meeting. It was in the basement of the Guggenheim. After the reading inside one of the Catherine Opie galleries, which was very intimate and populated primarily by curators and other museum staff. Holmes read from her ‘fiction to accompany art’. This is a genre of her writing, which in this case was related to Catherine Opie, and which in the past has been applied to Ghada Amer, Cecily Brown, Rachel Whiteread and several other artists. After she read from the Opie story, there was a quick shy Q& A. My favorite quote from her was: “Contemporary life to me is kind of surreal, reality seems less and less applicable to me lately.” Next, we few remaining members of the public were ushered down to the basement for a wine and cheese reception. Out of the maybe 10 people who were now huddled in the basement, A.M. was surrounded by 4 of the head curators, in other words not easily accessible. Brazen with exhaustion, I decided to approach her for a quick Hi anyway. She shook my hand and thanked me for coming, “No, thank you I responded.” The conversation was quite simply, over… (!)

Ah well, now that she is on my radar, when next we speak, perhaps the discussion can extend to matters such as, her stint as an L-word writer, the several acclaimed novels she has written and her most recent work, a memoir entitled, The Mistresses Daughter. I might ask her about her rumored bisexuality (leave Brittney alone! I mean Lindsay), or how she makes the transition back and forth between writing fiction and art and literary criticism. I’d ask her for some advice probably.

One liners aren’t that terrible though, or so says Stop Me If You’ve Heard This. My review of that book recently came out in Boldtype. Here is a snippet:

“Stop Me If You’ve Heard This reads like a tall tale. In fact, it’s what Jim Holt might call a “long joke,” which, unlike a one-liner, could take an hour to tell. Holt strings the reader along, extending incredulity and curiosity, as he offers unlikely tidbits about the history and philosophy of jokes through detail-rich, well-delivered narration. No matter how preposterous some of it may seem, it is safe to assume this veteran reporter of both the BBC and the New Yorker is faithful to the facts. Holt discusses joke collectors and humor philosophers including such characters as G. Legman, the man who invented the vibrating dildo and coined the Phrase “Make Love, Not War.”" More

Finally, again on the lit tip, today I went to the launch of Ben Greenman’s new book at the Tenement Museum (GL). Decidedly more approachable, Greenman remembered me from the last time we met. I also got to see Fly, who was fascinating as always, and spoke to a few new and interesting writer/editor/publisher types. I would love to delve into the content of Greenman’s new book, oh and I will, but now I must sleep. Suffice it to say that it is a Luddite limited edition letter writing book project…more to come.

Hateration, TV, Roseanne Cash, 2x

I was in an apt with a TV in it today. Being as I don’t own one this was a bit of a departure for me, but I will admit that when I do watch, I get sucked in. Hours passed by as The Tyra Banks Show, faded into The View, followed by Desperate Housewives and finally Boys on the Side. By the time I left at 4pm, I felt more than slightly ashamed about my “wasted day,” but here’s what I learned:

The word of the day is Hateration: A combination of admiration and hate, as in hating, as in ‘Don’t hate.’ (I had heard this word used before in songs, but honestly didn’t know what it meant until Tyra provided the proper definition) When you admire someone and most likely envy them, you hate on them as an expression of your insecurity.

Hateration: Don’t do it.

I also learned that Woopi Goldberg, co-host of The View claims not to be gay, nevertheless fiercely defends the rights of gay people, including that of marriage. This is the same Woopi, who ‘played gay for pay’ in Boys on the Side. Interesting. Oh god, I forgot that I also watched Zoolander. No wonder my brain resembles soft candy ahora… Alright looks like I didn’t learn that much from TV after all.

Hopefully the night will redeem me, I am going to go see Acoustic Cash, a sort of live talk show format, that centers around Roseanne Cash. She will interview Joe Henry, and I reckon they will also play songs together.  We’ll see.

Plus, the Brooklyn Socialite is so committed to being a full-on Arbiter of Taste, that I will now commit to posting 2 times every day and am going to start rolling out more new writers, so head’s up! yay x

Acousitic Cash, Impermanence, The Rubin Museum, San Fransisco-Michelle Tea

Acoustic Cash last night was quite beautiful. It was held in this warm small theater inside the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art. Roseanne was classy and sardonic, saying things like, “I liked the Rubin better when it was a Barneys.” Tongue in cheek of course, because the Rubin really is a cool space, forever in reference to Buddhist thought, the floors spiral upwards towards a stunning glass dome.The theme of Roseanne Cash’s musical interview with Joe Henry was Impermanence. They played songs which related to the Buddhist concept that nothing is permanent except for the self. Clinging to that which is fleeting, (almost everything) is what causes human suffering. Roseanne played some of her father’s songs and Joe managed to charm the audience with his twinkly smile, constant tuning, and that confidence that comes with knowing you are really good at something. Most of the people there were middle aged straight women, with husbands in tow. He sang a song called Flag and talked about how Americans resist letting go of dead ideas, such as bankrupt nationalism. Quickly, he added something about how in the new Obama-America maybe some of those beliefs can be rekindled.

America sees itself as a constant-a self, so to speak. Can it be permanent?

The night ended with a Tupelo Honey/ People Get Ready duet and then, yes, a sing-along to The Times They are a Changing! (ha ha)

Just a quick note about Michelle Tea and San Fransisco: I am reading Valencia and although it takes place in the 90s, I can’t help but wonder if San Fran is really that cool? What do you think, how does it stand up against Brooklyn (ok NYC)?

I’m off to see Dr Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera, will report back later today.

Dr Atomic, GetOutOfMyFacebook

I saw Dr Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera this afternoon. The Opera was written in 2005 about Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who invented the Atomic Bomb. He is painted as a modern day Faust. A heroic villain, distinctly human, but made mad by the zealousness of discovery and dominance. Oppenheimer is pictured referring to the bomb, pre-test, as a great “luminescence.” He focuses on its momentary beauty, not the destruction that it will yield, or the fact that as the Germans have already surrendered, its use is no longer necessary or potentially justifiable. Serving as a valuable history lesson, Dr Atomic informs the audience of the semi-mutiny at Los Alamos. Apparently many of the other scientists on Oppenheimer’s team did not want to use the weapon against Japan, without warning, at such a late stage of the war. Additionally, we learn that paradoxically, Oppenheimer, warmonger that he was, was also a highly literate lover of the arts. He spoke several languages, adored poetry, often read the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit and Baudelaire in French. He composed sonnets in his spare time! The poems that he so loved are incorporated into the opera. Ultimately he is faulted for masterminding such immense destruction, but there are a few too many warm and fuzzys given to the father of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Opera is really fun, for those who haven’t given it a go, I recommend trying. The met has a lot of discount options, like student rush, standing room and HD projections at movie theaters.

The word of the day is Getoutofmyfacebook: A new web 2.0 application currently being developed by haters.

J. Bob Alotta and Toshi Reagon benefit/birthday Party

It was a strange night… I arrived at this event super early, cause I was in the neighborhood, planned to go to the Y and found it closed, so just dazed my way into Sputnik around 9pm. It was me reading Valencia at the bar, and Toshi Reagon chillin with friends a few stools down. A typical Saturday night, then life got even more normal when my friend showed up and discovered her wallet had been lost/stollen. I switched into serious iphone/google/police report mode and 2 hours later things were pretty much settled. We canceled the cards, felt shitty and went back to Sputnik for a dance. The music was House, not my favorite, but the crowd was fun and the cuase excellent.

“j. bob alotta is a media activist, story teller,

worker, preacher, rabbi, builder of community.

whether its on the screen or at the dinner table,

s/he believes in gathering the tribe.”

The birthday celebration for Bob was also a fundraiser for

“4REELTHO: the narrative arm of our project.

our goal: to tell stories borne from the world in which we actually live.

TRUTH2POWER is the documentary/educational arm of our project.

our goal: to create the world we believe this could be.

which is to say, our work / our stories are unapologetically multi-racial, gender

variant, urban, sexy, strong, resistant & uppity.”

www.4reeltho.com

Sounds amazing. I threw down some of my meager earnings, and Betty even showed up for a quick second. Along with some older Frenchies who bumbed a flame off of us. I had to speak French a couple of times that night. The skills you almost forget you have, until you need to remember. We ate cake and rolled out onto the street around 3. A night well spent.

Introducing Mr. Slate Honey, Trans Entities Review

As promised I have held true to my mission to offer multi-voiced meditations on this fabulous city from Brooklyn Socialites. It’s about time we got more variant translations up in here, so with that, I give you: Mr. Slate Honey…

Mr Honey will blow up your spot, so don’t get too comfortable!

Trans Entities: The Nasty Love between Papi and Wil + A Review

Way back in September, Robyn and I went to a Queer Black Cinema screening of Trans Entities at the LGBT Center in Manhattan. A small audience sipped wine in a room dotted with red candles as QBC hosts talked about their safe sex and HIV/STI prevention campaign. Two fiery erotic spoken word performances paired with an association game among audience members initiated by the enthusiastic MC to set the mood. Finally, the lights were turned down and the room quieted as Trans Entities began.

Trans Entities is a daring “docu-porn” that does not hold back. Its two main characters, Papi and Wil, are poly-partners open to exploring everything and anything they desire… and can handle. For the two, opening their bedroom door also means talking frankly about all aspects of their relationship. Between fast-cut scenes of Papi, Wil and their third partner fucking, slapping, punching and teasing one another, documentary footage shows snippets of their daily lives and interviews where they discuss gender-identity, queerness, homophobia, desire and love. In one scene, the three discuss the experiences of one hearing-impaired partner and open up powerful dialogue on body politics. Lifting the expected barrier between porn characters’ on-screen lives and their personal lives, Trans Entities gets truly intimate in a fresh way.

In a Q&A after the screening, the film’s two main stars compared Trans Entities to previous porn films they had acted in. Diverging from a staged porn production, transgender director Morty Diamond filmed the actors in their own home and used a documentary approach to capture a true-to-life portrait of the couple’s sexual relationship. The actors also discussed negotiated BDSM, revealing that some of the most hardcore play caught on film was a new experience for them.

Trans Entities is a unique video that balances provocative play with refreshingly thought-provoking conversation. And in Trans Entities, real conversation does not take the fun out of sex. Instead, Papi and Wil take role-playing, hard-core love and erotica to the ultimate level of pleasure and comfort. Check out http://mortydiamond.com to find out more about Trans Entities.

-by Mr Slate Honey

Ballast Article

Here is the full text of the article I wrote about Ballast, it includes quotes from the interview that I did with director Lance Hammer.

After 10 years of research, Lance Hammer shot a film in the Mississippi Delta, starring local African American non-actors. “Ballast is not so much about race, but about universal human suffering,” said Hammer. He encouraged the participants to use their own distinct vernacular and rather than hand them a script, he provided situations and encouraged them to improvise dialogue. This method has yielded a steely, classical, cinematic gem. Ballast is a starkly tragic play of emotions, which seems to take place in real time.

Few recent films have portrayed African American protagonists with as much complexity and integrity as Hammer’s first feature, Ballast. Set against the backdrop of the Delta’s desolate beauty, it tells the story of Marlee, a single mother, who struggles to support her 12 year old son James. He is lost in the chasm between childish devotion to his mother and manhood expressed through experimentation with crack, guns, and older boys. “Left to his own devices, there is a lot of pressure on James to grow up really quickly, and to have emotional maturity,” Hammer said. “It isn’t actually fair to expect this from a kid. James makes some innocent choices, a few of them turn out to be bad ones, but he’s just trying to make his way in this world.”

James’ already delicate balance is derailed by the suicide of his estranged father. He begins to know his dad posthumously through association with Lawrence, his father’s twin brother. The complications of inheritance catapult James, Marlee and Lawrence into a shared working and living situation. Forced intimacy requires the threesome to either mutually rebuild their fragmented lives or further destroy each other. Individually, they also continue to grapple with private sensations of loss and depression. “I chose extreme tragedy as the one window into the human experience that I would explore in this film,” Hammer said. “I wasn’t trying to imply that the Delta is a depressed place. On the contrary, the full chromatic spectrum exists in that region. There is so much joy there. You can think of it like the seasons, in the summer it is verdant and full of life, in the winter it is the opposite.”

Hammer decided to focus his lens on tragedy as a means of working through the depression that he was personally experiencing at the time. This process helped him to heal he said, “I will always make work that deals with mortality. That looming specter of death is very important to me, because only with an intimate understanding of mortality and suffering can we truly appreciate what joy is.” He continued, “I identify very strongly with Marlee. We share that rage and frustration at being powerless, as well as the persistence and strength of character to simply refuse to give up.”

The decision to build his tragic window around the narrative structure of a twin’s suicide was also a very personal one for Hammer. “Because my mother is an identical twin,” he said, “I understand that the kind of grief that one would feel over the death of their sibling is intense. My girlfriend told me a true story about an identical twin, who came home and discovered that his brother had committed suicide, without any prior indication of a desire to leave the world. That story really shook me.”

This scene is expressed in the film when Lawrence, distraught upon discovering his dead twin, shoots himself, leaving a blood stain on the wall. He does not die, and weeks pass before he can bring himself to remove the stain. The repetitive image of Lawrence’s bloodstained wall is characteristic of Ballast’s haunting, visceral cinematography. Another poignant scene depicts James overhearing a conversation about himself. The people speaking appear blurred in the background, while the focus is on James, half-listening. “This scene is a good example of my artistic vision,” Hammer said. “James is the subject of that conversation, and the fact that he is tuning it out is significant. I think it was Goddard who expressed that it is best to put the camera on the listener when you really want to show what’s happening in a scene.”

Ballast has been honored by multiple film festivals and Hammer is still surprised and delighted to have received such support for his ‘Delta project.’ “I haven’t gotten over the fact that Sundance even took it into their festival,” he said. “We are all very fortunate. The cast poured their emotional souls into this and it worked. Their commitment has earned them much deserved recognition, a kind of wealth that fills the void left by the very small financial reward that independent films like ours can provide.” Despite the lack of profit, Hammer has succeeded in distributing this gentle humanistic composition. Ballast typifies avant-garde cinema; it is daring and full of integrity.

by Robyn Hillman-Harrigan Brooklyn Socialite (!)

Valencia, Cafe Lafayette

I just finished reading Michele Tea’s Valencia, this is the second book that I’ve read by her, not including Baby Remember My Name an anthology that she edited. The first was Rent Girl, which I found to be really interesting and would require a whole other post to discuss properly. About Valencia, what I can say is this: Tea is something of a hero in the world of lesbian lit, one of the more successful writers in this heavily marginalized genre. Like watering a dry garden, her words effectively begin to fill the void of queer stories. It is good to hear something relatable, depictions of characters that I can recognize and landscapes that I have at least partially inhabited. However, it all feels like one long spit session, perhaps thus originated the tittle of her Sister Spit literary tour. The chapters all inhabit one novel/memoir/autobiography, but they don’t seem to flow together and it feels like she hasn’t completed any of her stories. It reminds me of commentary, would make for excellent blog posts, but I don’t think it functions as well as a consecutive, ideally complete book. Tea talks a lot about drinking, smoking, drugs and sex, a little bit about prostitution and love and self-loathing, but a sense of emptiness is transferred more than anything else. It’s strange to talk about love, yet express vacancy more than depth. I did enjoy it though, it had that addictive quality and really made me consider moving to San Franscisco. In a way I like Tea’s voice, but kept wishing she might write slower and consider craft over expressive explosion. But what do I know? I ‘m not the Queen of queer lit, not yet anyway! I know crossing Michelle Tea could be like crossing Oprah, but the Brooklyn Socialite is nothing if not honest.

A quick mention goes out to Cafe Lafayette. If your in Ft Greene, check out the amazing Lafayette burger, French bistro style, chill with the Mexican waiter, drink Corona’s after closing, or come on the weekend for yum crepes and good coffee. I love this place (G L)

Prop 8, The Gay Disclaimer, slippers and a robe, Lit Death Match

When I find my shoes and reacquaint myself with outdoor clothing, I will head over to Housing Works for the next installment of The Literary Death match. I’ll report back later. For now let’s talk about Gay disclaimers. In the wake of proposition 8, it seems that everyone feels the need to make one. Woopi said, “I’m not Gay, but I still believe that gay people deserve rights.” I love the rest of what she said, but why the disclaimer? Last night over dinner at Epistrophy (sweet little Sicilian spot with very reasonable prices for Soho), the two women sitting next to us (both married to men) were talking animatedly about Lesbians On The Prowl. This myth is almost as messed up, and similarly formed as the “I’m not Gay” disclaimer. It goes something like “Gay people are fine, as long as they don’t try anything with me.” They were talking about some friend of a friend who, (so they believe) was coming on to both of them, because obviously Queer people are predators. Predators that go after married straight people. Smart. Thus the need to justify impartiality and decency with the “I’m not gay, but…” speech. As much as this usually sucks, I have to share an otherwise amazing “Special Comment” by MSNBC’s Keith Olberman. Despite the disclaimer (which he extends all the way out to include his entire extended family) his outrage is kinda awesome.

he even invoked Impermanence!

Lit Death Match, Don’t Despair Poetry Conquers all

I went to the Literary Death Match at Housing works this evening, and I’m pleased to report that all of the readers were quite good. The event was bizarrely being televised and it ended with some money throwing shenanigans, but apart from that it was fun. I was feeling alarmingly anti-social ( I know, quite taboo, coming from the Brooklyn Socialite, but cold weather is a strong and scary force), so I don’t think I spoke to anyone, except for a quick exchange with Ben Greenman on my way to the door. I was hungry, and eating pretzels ( my hungry food) wasn’t quite cutting it. They did manage to tide me over long enough to observe the following: the first round was a stand off between Tao Lin and Alex Rose. Alex was unremarkable, but Tao on the other hand was hysterical and shy, which I always find to be a great combination. He was sarcastic and dead pan and read a poem from the perspective of a salmon killing, yet lovable bear. The second round was for the ladies, Amy Sohn went up against Mishna Wolff. Mishna read pre-teen diary excerpts about a longstanding Jim Morrison obsession, while Amy created this sappy chick-flick character who gives a guy a blow job and then gets not so subtly dissed. They were both funny, and engaging, but please tell me why women have to sexually or psychologically demean themselves in public, in order to be approved of by the boys club of Literati. I’m noticing a trend that sexualized-self mocking in women, makes others feel comfortable somehow. It makes me uncomfortable, but I’m just going to respond to that with my own poem!

I have resuscitated my old literary blog, so read the rest of this piece there!

Permission

to request

attention

Smack down

for tall poppies

Christmas with your family

drunk Englishmen

in summer

wildly good-mannered

still, kind.

Or a twisted

Broadway musical

scene

with my family

an obligation

served by proximity

Read more!

Synecdoche New York

Sadness and Whiskey are a bad combination, I apologize for not posting yesterday. It won’t happen again. Throw a Charlie Kaufman film and lunch at Conde Nast in and there you have a recipe for a very strange day. It was a good day though, except for the portion of it I spent at Wholefoods using their non-existent wireless and chomping on stale over-priced food. The harrowed whole halls just didn’t compare with the Conde cafeteria, designed by Frank Gehry. Let’s talk about Kaufman though and his star Philip Seymour Hoffman. Here’s the trailer.

The writer behind Being John Malkovich, Adaption and Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind has offered up another intense psychological study. Kaufman creates a magical realist landscape dictated by the fading mind of an aging playwright. It is peopled by an over-published, wizard-like shrink, a no longer committed artist wife, and a 4 year old, daughter who eventually morphs into a thirty something German body artist. Other characters which represent unrequited love and familial loyalty weave in and out of the storyline. Essentially the film is about a lifetime performance, literally a play that is being rehearsed for 25 years, inside a bio-dome style NYC warehouse. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that it is bleak and peaceful.

Post Synecdoche, and my whole foods stint. I hit up Heathers and that champion of dive bars, Nowhere bar. It was chill and gross. If you don’t lean against the walls you just might have fun there!

Slate Honey weighs in on Prop 8 and “Transvestite” Media Bating

I give you Mr Honey… This is not me, Robyn, I am not a gender-queer Junkie-Ha ha, that’s my most earnest sarcastic disclaimer…now for slate:

A response to gay disclaimers:

I should make a disclaimer myself. I’m a gender-queer junkie. All things related to the gender-queer and trans community immediately grab my ears and eyes. It’s a rainy Thursday, I am grant-writing for my current film project (a film about Transy House—a house that’s been home to a self-made gender-queer family and has been open to homeless trans women for fifteen years). All of a sudden, I hear an ad for the Leonard Lopate show on WYNC, something akin to “One thing you may not know about celebrity chef Jaime Oliver… he likes transvestites.” The web page relating to the Leonard Lopate show has some questions asked of Oliver, the last of which is:

WNYC:What’s one thing you’re a fan of that people might not expect?
J.O.:I love art and graffiti, jazz music, and transvestites.

So, I go to the on-demand podcast to listen. Disappointing! The interview itself is twenty minutes of Lopate and Oliver discussing meats, vegetables and home gardening. Among the chatter about poisonous rhubarb and raising chickens, there is no sign that anyone is about to talk about anything transgender. So, why use as the draw in (on the radio ad and on the webpage) this question that was not asked in the radio interview? Is anyone going to explain what exactly that means, to be a fan of transvestites?If I were Leonard Lopate interviewing myself, Slate Honey, it would go like this:

L.L.: What’s more difficult to grapple? Hetero disclaimers that precede pro-gay rights advocacy, or using a random line about transvestites (that’s left totally unexplained) as a way to draw a listener in to an interview about poultry?
S.H.: Well, Leonard, I don’t believe it’s a contest. What isn’t problematic on the queer and trans civil rights frontier? These both reinforce an already solid conclusion I have: We better self-represent and stick up for ourselves in this world!

On that note, November 20th is Trans Remembrance Day. Something to keep in mind and heart and maybe to counter some tokenizing advertising.

-Slate Honey

And now for an extra note from me-Robyn- Gawker and The View also seem unable to stay away from this subject. Without giving too much credence to the finger pointing dehumanizing antics implicated here: A link

Be Like Others, Q & A w/ Tanaz Eshagian

In the lead up to Trans Rememberance Day, whether intentionally or coincidentally there are several trans stories in NYC events this week. As your faithful socialite, I dragged myself uptown to see Be Like Others at Lincoln Center. Eshagian, the Iranian-American filmmaker returns to her home country and films a group of Transwomen who are pre and post sex change operation. Most of the footage is shot in the clinic where there operations take place, with extensive focus put on the doctor who performs the procedure. He is part of a group of men in the government of The Islamic Republic of Iran who have either decided, agreed with or implemented the concept, put in place by Ayatollah Khomieni (the father of the Iranian Islamic Revolution), that sex-changes are permissible under Islam. Khomeini passed a Fatwa to this effect, officially declaring them legal. In a country where homosexuality is highly illegal and punishable by a stoning death penalty, it is surprising that being transsexual is so legal that people are given a new legal name and passport post-op. Take a look at the trailer, only available on her website and a brief interview with her below.

Much of what’s contained in this interview was seconded by the vibe I got off her last night. She didn’t really seem to want to take sides, so to speak. I wasn’t sure if this was just another case of the gay disclaimer, or if she was really a distant outsider, looking in at this story from the perspective of novelty. The film sheds light on an interesting subject that not many people know about. In that sense its investigative journalism, but in terms of its humanity at moments I wondered if Eshagian herself was transphobic, or if she was just somehow hiding behind a lens of impartiality. Questions for the interview, I guess. If you read this, talk back! Maybe she will be at transhistorian, Susan Styker’s lecture at the CUNY Grad center tonight at 6:30? See you there.

Arthur Russell- Love is Overtaking Me

After I saw the recent Arthur Russell film by Tom Wolff, I resolved to give the new album a listen. It is made up of all sorts of tunes that lived  alongside of him in the mix tapes that lined his apartment, and ultimately survived him. His partner, aided by Phillip Glass, eventually archived the tapes and the remastered versions appear on the recently released Love is Overtaking Me. My favorite song on the album would have to be “Nobody Wants a Lonely Heart.” Its refrain is “Don’t expect nothing, ’cause nobody wants a lonely heart.” Similarly clever and dire songs include the hysterical “What it’s like.” The song is about a married man, who tells his wife that he’s,” been touched by the lord.” and can’t be with her anymore. Then she responds that she only was with him oringinaly to, “see what is was like.” A mutual breakup, the best kind. The album is a progression from slow, guitar-based, folksy songs to more pop-infused disco beats. The two songs I mentioned are my favorite folk selections, while on the dico spectrum “the letter” is nicely suggestive and the title track, “Love is Overtaking Me” is pretty great as well.

Susan Stryker lecture, La Zarza

Yesterday evening I attended a lecture that Susan Stryker gave at the the CUNY Grad center. It was a nice moment for different cool folks in the trans and queer community to gather, talk back and primarily to listen. I really respect the history gathering, voice planting work that Stryker does, she is a leading force in the movement for trans civil rights. This was evidenced during the introductions she received from Paisley Currah and Joanne Meyerowitz, two other academics who work in the field of trans studies. In terms of the lecture itself, I have to say she lost me at times. The part about Foucault and Hobbes, a lot of theoretical words that can’t yet be found in the dictionary, and several ‘this is not cultural appropriation’ disclaimers had me at the point of putting my pen down. The trouble was I really came to the lecture prepared to learn and left feeling befuddled and not quite there yet. The parts which I did find to be insightful, centered around the concept of a trans person sensing a need to transform outside appearance in order to fully realize an inner potential. I could really relate to this concept, even when applied to writing. When I am unable or unwilling to create something that really resonates for me, I walk around feeling un-realized, incomplete. This is a very spiritual concept, the idea of reaching self-realization. Thus the larger premise of the lecture, which was something like, “Ghost Dance: transperson as spiritual leader” sort of followed along the same avenue, implying that the trans person, innately experiencing transformation towards self-realization, is naturally qualified to be a spiritual leader. Interesting. Have I got it all wrong? Or was that the argument? Afterwards I spoke with Stryker, her partner, and a lot of other good folks about the beauty of dialogue, so comment away!

Just a quick note on La Zarza … This loungue space underneath a sort of swanky Nouvau Italian place, is a sweet spot, when the Grey-Goose promotions are flooding and you are somehow on the doorlist. It is still free if you get there early, but otherwise $100 bills may get thrown around. Last night there was a good pop-hip-hop dj and lots of guys in suits and girls in drag. No wait, that wasn’t drag, straight girls really dress like that!

Agent Angie on Relationship Therapy, Courtesy of Evelyn Waugh

Faitful to her book club duties, Agent Angie provides astute observations on Brideshead Revisited.

The relationship in Brideshead Revisited, between the narrator Charles Ryder and the Flyte family is of interest to me. I’m about halfway through, and after reading how the Flytes romance Ryder and take him in, before setting out to use him for their own selfish purposes, I find myself disturbed by the level of dysfunction that exists, and greatly respect Evelyn Waugh for his talent at portraying the destruction of codependancy on relationships.

Lady Marchmain’s destructive, Catholic guilt tripping has a profound effect on the text. She holds Charles responsible for her son Sebastian’s well-being. At first Charles submits to the weight the Flytes place on his shoulders, allowing himself to be pulled in two directions by Lady Marchmain’s pressure to keep Sebastian out of trouble and Sebastion’s fear of begin eclipsed by his family. It would be impossible for Charles to fulfill both roles of informant to Lady Marchmain and true friend to Sebastian. After Sebastian begs for Charles’s money for liquor, and Lady Marchmain’s discovery of Charles’s betrayal, she says:

I don’t understand it. [...] I simply don’t understand how anyone could be so callously wicked [...]. I’m not going to reproach you. [...] God knows it’s not for me to reproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure. But [...] I don’t understand how you can have been so nice in so many ways, and then do something so wantonly cruel.

I doubt I need to pick apart the method to Lady Marchmain’s guilt-ridden madness and her efforts to exercise them upon Charles for you all. What is interesting to me is the moment in which Charles’s response to her shifts from compliance to rebellion and complete lack of concern. Charles can only participate in this emotional abuse for so long before he attempts to extricate himself from the relationship:

I was unmoved; there was no part of me remotely touched by her distress. [...] But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, [...] ‘I shall never go back,’ I said to myself.

Charles’s knowledge that he’s left some part of himself behind is a foreshadowing of the corruption of his concern for others. The impossible position that Lady Marchmain forces him into motivates him to turn aside the part of him that cared about Sebastian and the rest of the Flyte family. In order to survive the guilt that was being put on his shoulders he had to care more for himself and stop caring for them.

A few pages on is Charles’s dinner with Rex Mottram in Paris, which validates the perception of foreshadowing. Charles feels so inconvenienced and frustrated at the prospect of dinner with Rex and the inevitable conversation about the Flytes, that he proceeds to use Rex for his money, thus making the situation more palatable to himself:

If I had to spend an evening with [Rex], it should, at any rate, be in my own way. I remember the dinner well–soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in a white wine sauce, a caneton a la presse, a lemon souffle. At the last minute, fearing that the whole things was too simple for Rex, I added caviare aux blinis. And for wine I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet, then at its prime, and, with the duck, a Clos de Bere of 1904.

Charles’s description of the extravagant meal, purchased on Rex’s pocketbook, and his sense of entitlement to the meal, is indicative of his retreat to the self with less concern for the Flytes. Throughout the conversation between Rex and Charles, Waugh interrupts dialogue with Charles’s further descriptions of the meal and his and Rex’s appreciation of it. This narrative technique cements Charles’s new-found selfishness and propensity to use others.

Waugh’s explication of this type of relationship elevates Brideshead Revisited to a novel not merely of manners and post-WWI British society and snobbery, but to a psychological one; embroiled in thoughtful and constructive studies of non-familial relationships that, I imagine, most can relate to. The novel inspires me to be more aware of not expecting too much of others, and not allowing others to expect unfair things of me. As Waugh points out, these kinds of expectations ruin relationships.

-Angie Venezia

That´s My Jam, Black Iris, Kellogs Diner, Mixphobic

Last night I had dinner at Black Iris on Dekalb in Ft Greene.  It´s this very reasonably priced Middle eastern place, byo. The food was really simple and standard, nice lamb pizzas and the waiters are super friendly and cool. Nice on a wintry day-comfort food. Afterwards, I finally managed to check out That´s My Jam. TMJ is a queer party in Clinton Hill, it claims to be in Bed Stuy, but those of us who actually live in bedstuy know better. It was mega packed and I ran into everyone and his brother. The music started out kinda amateurish, but picked up in speed and efficiency around 2 as DJ Tikka commandeered the tables and the crowd started to thin out. At 3, I wondered what I was still doing there and braved the windy walk home(to the real bed stuy). This morning I woke up on a Latte mission and had to accept cappuccino because the people at Kellogs diner have never heard of Lattes. Really. I know it sounds strange, but they are only familiar with certain functionalities when it comes to espresso machines. The food at Kellogs was not much worth a mention, but it’s a really chill unassuming spot to spend Sunday morning dishing with friends.

The word of the day is Mixphobic: A fear experienced by DJ’s who do not know how to mix. Bartenders, who do not know how to mix have also been known to experience this anxious condition. Wallflowers in Brooklyn may also sometimes experience said phobia.

Quick Note

Wow, so its 2:30 am and I’m exhausetd again. I’ll tell you why exactly this is, tomorrow. For now all I can note quikly is that I spent the better half of the day organizing my bookcase. This was a truly healing expierience and I recommend it highly. There is something quasi-spiritual about communing with books. I’m thinking of starting a lending library, so holler if your looking for something to read. Goodnight and speak soon!

Queer is Normal, Shannon Mustipher reflects on Saturday`s Prop 8 rally

I am pleased to introduce a new writer, Shannon Mustipher. This is her very personal and intesting reflection on the recent Prop 8 debate and rally.

Fight H8 at NYC City Hall, November 15, 2008.
The Kids Are Alright
By Shannon Mustipher

Saturday November 15th was a remarkable day that was personally significant for a number of reasons. First, the whether was strangely beautiful, unseasonably warm: I barely needed the jacket that I had on, and I even saw a few folks in shorts and flip flops.  There was a kind of drama in the air, due to the threat of intermittent, heavy downpours. You knew that at any moment, you might have to dash for cover or get soaked.  So even though it was nice, the streets were fairly empty and that, along with the thick blanket of grey overhead, gave the day a moody romantic quality more befitting London than New York.

Second, (bear with me as I jump forward in time,) the bar I worked at later that night was teeming with queer boys and girls…it seriously looked like a gay night.  One of my friends got invited on a date (I am proud to say that I get the assist on that), and I made a few new acquaintances as well.  Not that our bar doesn’t have a number of queer regulars…it’s just that most are couples, who come in together and chat among themselves.  My job is not historically a good place for us to make a love connection,  but that was turned on its head Saturday night!  I like to think that Fight H8 had a hand in this, but we will have to come back to that later.

Finally, and most importantly, Saturday the 15th was the day that I became truly proud to be who I am.  Don’t get me wrong:  I’ve been out from day one:  I told my family the same week I realized, (I was 15 at the time). Soon after, I started sporting a rainbow patch on the backpack.  Mind you this all took place in Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the 90′s. The KKK national headquarters was five minutes away from my house at the time.  There was no Queer as Folk, no L Word. It was not cute to be a lesbian there.  A few people even threatened to jump me.  My younger sister, bless her heart, slugged a guy she overheard saying something to that effect. (Thanks, Tamika!)

Later, I was out to my church, where there was no legitimate way for me to express my sexuality within its theological framework.  I really wanted to learn about G-d, and to be part of a faith community, and the price I paid for that was being single. I was ok with that, for a certain amount of time.  A few people did talk to me about seeking reparative therapy (I didn’t), but most of them did not.  And if you’re guessing, I left.  I don’t know for certain what the Bible says about homosexuality.  I know how the text has been traditionally interpreted….and my church’s interpretation of the text could not support my being romantically involved with another woman. Most of my friends from church are married, some have families.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted that per se, but I begin to feel that I was missing out on something that might prove to be very good for me, so I left. All that, is to say I have always known the importance of being out, especially in places historically hostile to us. My silence would have made me a co-conspirator in shame and hate.

I wear a number of “identity hats”: Daughter, Sister, Woman of Color, American, Artist/Creative, Believer. Queer, Southerner, Liberal.  I care about the world, believe me, and I’ve chosen a very specific area in which to make my contribution to the greater good:  I am a visual artist. Still, I might also point out that I never felt like I had much personally at stake in the debates about queer rights and what we need to be able to fully function in this society, as I have felt, up until now, that the social climate is ‘open enough’ for many of us to live our lives as we wish, and certainly an improvement over how things were even twenty years ago in some places:  I’m not afraid to kiss, or hold hands with a girl on the street.  If I’m speaking to someone and it becomes clear that they might think I am straight, I don’t take the easy out and ‘pass’, I’ll find a way to come out, mentioning my preference for women as casually as I would my preference for anything else.  I live in NYC, after all, and it’s not easy to live this way everywhere.  Still, I haven’t done much to involve myself in a larger queer culture and the dialogue about our issues. I haven’t felt called to actively participate in the work for change. I chalked this indifference up to temperament and my thinking that, “well, I’m queer, but that’s not the only thing I am, I have other things I want to focus on.”

A darker, less flattering read of my lack of participation could be that conservatives have succeeded on some level in their desire to repress me: maybe I’ve sublimated my need to engage my identity politically into nerdy philosophizing, art making, and the pursuit of success.  The more I think about it, the more it seems like conservatives don’t just want us in the closet, they actually want us to be gone.  We have to show them that they cannot banish us from existence with laws, as if being queer is a debatable issue, not a fact of life. Some of you may feel sorrow (or anger, depending on your temperament) as you read this.  Might I be the queer equivalent of an Uncle Tom? Could my approach to being out be less about self-acceptance and more about political correctness?  Let’s face it, being in the closet is not only viewed as cowardly these days, but for the most part unnecessary, if not just silly.  I might be a lot of things, but I try to keep my silliness to a minimum.  If my being out was just about being P.C, those days are done.  What I like to think is more true is that I’ve always figured that we are basically free to live as we please anyway, so who cares what the laws actually say about marriage?  You live in a place hostile to queers?  Leave, move to a big city.  You love someone?  Commit to them and make a life together.  You’re family has a problem with your sexuality, or the fact that you’re dating so and so?  Well, don’t talk to them, leave them alone.  Fine.  Easy.  Wrong

Wrong, because by leaving, and ghettoizing ourselves, we make it easy for hate to be justified.  By settling for domestic partnership status, we agree that there is something fundamentally different about us.  By making all the concessions and accommodations, we make it ok for the people who think that they have a problem with us to stay that way.   If you don’t like me, why should I leave?  Why should I need to change, while you get to stay the same?  Forget that.  The Fight H8 rally was the first time in my life where I could stand there and feel like being gay was normal.  Can you believe it?  15 years of loving women and I feel this way for the first time?  The crowd was great, and the vibe of the rally was positive, passionate, and life-affirming.  Not a hint of anger and hostility in the proceedings…it was about focusing on enacting change in our society, to make it more livable for all of us.  Anthony D Wiener (D, NY) gave a rousing speech at the start of the rally, his booming voice and familiar accent beckoning me from three blocks away and affirming my pride in my Brooklyn zip code:  “We are not going to rest at night until every citizen in every state in this country can say, ‘This is the person I love,’ and take their hand in marriage!”.  Kim Stoltz from MTV News declared, “I am done with being a 2nd class citizen,” while Daniella Sea admitted to us that she’d never considered that she might want to be married someday…until now. Former Ms. America Kate Shindle, who made a point to identify herself as conservative and Catholic, emphatically declared that she has always said yes, two people who love one another, regardless of gender, should be allowed to marry.  One speaker gave us the phone number of a state politician from the Bronx who is moving to enact legislation that will ban same sex marriage in New York.  His name is Senator Rubin Diaz Sr, and the number is 718 991 3161 Call him right now to let him know how you feel!

Over and over, the speakers exhorted the crowd to just talk to people.  Talk to your family, talk to the religious and conservative people that you know, let them see you for who you are: lesbian, gay, genderqueer, trans, but most importantly, human, and a person who can fall in love, and who might want to consummate that love in the same way that straight people have been able to for years, by getting married. The people voting for Proposition 8 probably didn’t have any people who were out to them in their personal lives.  I don’t know how you could see your friend, sibling, son, or daughter in a loving, healthy relationship with someone and not want them to stay there and to be supported in it.

The crux of the message I heard at the rally: it’s time for us to do everything we can to contribute to making this country a good place for all of us to be.  We don’t need to blame, or to hate those who hate us. We need to be out in a fuller sense of the word, and in so doing, we will make a compelling collective case to put an end to the toxic fear, hate, and ignorance gripping our society. I feel so proud, and lucky, to have been there, and I have only begun to think about it’s implications for my own life, and some changes I need to make for myself.  That afternoon, I started texting all my friends, looking for someone to share the experience with.  Unfortunately, everyone was at work, or at school, or otherwise engaged, and so unable to join me. I could also only stay for a brief time, as I still needed to pick up my mac, feed the cat, and later on open the bar.

But no matter, I got my chance to celebrate later, by holding court over a queer night that felt ‘normal’ in a typically straight bar, because, guess what?  Queer is normal.  I was born into a culture that has gone to great lengths to tell me otherwise, but after Saturday, there is no room inside of me to harbor those attitudes any longer. Maybe the folks walking past my work that night could sense this from the street, and they knew that my bar was a good place to be.  I don’t know….maybe I never will. What I do know is that I’d like to thank all the organizers, speakers, and supporters of Fight H8, for providing us with some new models on which to base our pursuit of a fuller, more meaningful equality.  I am excited to see the changes taking place in our country and those that lie ahead.

SM

For more information on how to join in the creation of positive change go to www.jointheimpact.com

Normal, Better, Drunker

Sorry I´ve been a little bit out of commission lately. There is a price to pay for being a purveyor of nightlife. Especially when best mates come to town and pour vodka down your throat. It is not that you (me) are saying no at the time, but when you are crawling towards lattes in the morning, the regret does really set in. I can admit that much! In my defense, the work has continued. The joy of The Brooklyn Socialite is not just writing, but also curating, and I have enjoyed the chance to put forth some other perspectives lately. Shannon tells us that Queer is normal, Susan Strkyker alludes to the concept that Queer people may be supra-normal, in fact special spiritual leaders, equipped with extra fabulousity.

Monday night, I attended the GO magazine Nightlife Awards, which suggested that perhaps queers are drunker. Susan Westenhoeffer hosted the affair, a comedian, who actually managed to be quite funny. DJ Stacy was on decks and they hysterically kept giving self-shout outs. “DJ Stacy in the house!!” That was the highlight. The most fun moment came when we went to find food after the party ended. It was in hot mess midtown at a place called Touch (pretty fancy club by the way). We wondered down 8th ave and eventually found a Kashmiri restaurant/deli. It was dirt cheap and we got a selection of quite tasty buffet items, then settled down to eat them at the shop´s single table. We shared the little eating spot, with a  bearded man dressed in traditional Muslim attire. He told us that he was European American, but had long ago converted to Islam. He recommended Briyani and agreed that the food was very spicy, but one gets used to it. I left with my mouth on fire and we wondered down to HK lounge for the Awards After Party. It was a really intense go-go dancer scene and we didn´t stay long!

Last night feels like it was a continuation of Monday night, because my cultural consumption was somehow limited. Not completely though, as I am given to having Existential conversations while under the influence. This is what I love about certain friends of mine. Race, class, gender, identity, art…everything is invoked on the bar stool and when I look around and listen, I notice that other people are doing it too. Last night ended at 4am, me dragging my friend away from a pretty great chat at Mug about Obama and race in America. The Jamaican man told us, he is not African-American, someone said that I wasn´t, my friend insisted that I am, another biracial guy on a  bar stool, said that he considers himself to be black and white and then this white guy said, “I am totally white, I`m Ukrainian!” Wow, I don´t know what was going on. Time for that latte I guess!

Bad Art Auction, Tablediving

I never did have my latte this morning and I began to feel the burn- of coffee not through my blood-halfway through the Bad Art Auction at Le Poisson Rouge. The premise of the evening was this: Judah Friedlander aka Champion of the World (one of the 30 Rock (which I’ve never seen) writers ) auctioned off bad art, as a benefit for New York Cares. The night was sponsored by New York Magazine and attendees received a free year-long subscription to the rag. The spectacle was amazing, (that’s sarcasm). People were paying one or 2 hundred dollars for xerox copies of 80s faux-art ephemera, macrame owls and racially offensive Christian paintings. It was hipster heaven, I feared that Williamsburg had been momentarily misplaced and supplanted within the walls of Le Poisson Rouge. I was so inspired by my new and trendy crew that I decided to table dive.

Decidedly sober, I resisted the open Vodka bar after last nights excess. Instead I focused my sights on food, other people’s food that is! There was some kind of staff meeting and several appetizer plates had been ordered, many of which were untouched. At one point everyone at the table just up and left, what was a hungry lady to do? That’s right, I dove. Tablediving rules! It is the word for the day.

Tablediving: The art/science of spotting un-eaten food on stranger’s restaurant tables, then grabbing and eating it in the space of time after the strangers leave the table and before the waitstaff clears the food.

Brooklyn Socialite Italian Comfort Food

For anyone out there who is planning to woo me, things you should know to win me over are…

My favorite food is Gnocci and the best place in the city to score the uncooked variety of it is Murray’s Cheese on Bleeker B 6th and 7th.

After you take it home and cook it, it will look something like this.

Another one of my winter comfort foods is potato pizza and I reckon the best place to get it in this city in Grandaisy Bakery.

It goes well with lattes!

For amzing homeade gellati and cheese plates(really good), excellent wine, check out Otto on 8th and 5th ave. And, for a really authentic Italian coffee spot, Fortunato Brothers cafe in Greenpoint is my recomendation.

What are your foody picks? Do you want to cook for me? Answer these questions and more in the comment section below!!

Dust by Hartmut Bitomsky, learning German

I feel like I am learning German now, perhaps telepathically. All my housemates are German (yes all, implies more than 2) and one of them has been kind enough to lend me her laptop, while I wait for my new macbook to arrive. The keyboard and the interface are all in German. Whenever an error notice or any kind of other notice pops up, I basically guess at its meaning and then choose one of the options at random, which I translate to mean: yes or no, send or don’t send, save or cancel…I don’t know, I guess there are a lot of options, but the point is that suddenly I am knee deep in language immersion.

My experiential German course was taken one step further this morning when I attended a press screening of Dust. The documentary made by Hartmut Bitomosky, is not only in German, but also about dust. There were subtitles, but when you are a night owl, and then you wake up in the am for a screening, the likelihood is that if the film is a documentary about dust, you may fall asleep. I tried hard to fight the enveloping slumber, but sometimes it won. The parts that I did catch were pretty cool though. Apparently there are a lot of Germans from all walks of life who devote themselves to the subject of dust. Be it scientist, artists, cleaning persons, vacum cleaner manufacturers, devoted homemakers, they all love dust!. No, seriously the film was entirely more existential then that, but since I cull my deep thoughts from bar stools chats and not small particles, I may have not have been fully qualified to understand the crux of it. All I know is that the bit about depleted Uranium was fascinating, and I am positive that the part regarding 9/11 dust would have been great if I had been awake for it. That was what I was most interested in learning about. The visuals were good though, the color fields were stark and monochromatic, and the odd quirkiness of many off the interview subjects charming. As I am still in the process of reading Transgender History, I’ve found that many of the early sex researchers were Austrian and German. Then tonight, I went to the Powerhouse Arena, which is run by another German. Is this a sign that I should seriously consider pretending to be German. No, I don’t think so.

Anyway here’s the trailer in German!

Quicknote2- Things to do this Weekend

I sat by the window all day today, waiting for my mac to come, but alas, it did not. So I am only able to use my old about to crash laptop for a quick sec (my German roommate took hers to work today). I have to make a few shout outs. If your in the shitty come down to Mc Nally Jackson, there should be a great poetry reading in progress, or if you are closer to 13th st, mosey on into the Quad for a screening of the new film I Can’t Think Straight its about Lesbians, yay! There will be a Q & A afterwards, or go to the Kinsey’s Women exhibition or the Cindy Sherman show, then catch the midnight screening at the Tribeca 92 St Y… or…or, I can’t even leave the house because I’m paralyzed by all the choices! Promise to find a better computer option soon, and write more then. x

Cave Canem Workshop, Stains Movie,Wild Ginger

My fingers have been itching all day, lets face it I’m an internet junkie, the iphone isn’t enough and I’ve been fiending. In an attempt to deal with my separation anxiety, I did what most junkies do, I cleaned my room. After yesterday’s dust film, I figured it was time. I stole a few moments with my broken old laptop and then I did what all good Socialites do, I went out. The first event of the evening was a truly lovely affair. I was overwhelmed, in a good way, by all the beautiful black people in the room. I felt like I was at Aaron Davis hall or in the old BAM. Beyond just staring at beautiful people, which I’m told I have the habit of doing, I heard some really good poetry. The highlights for me were Devonne Heyward, who offered up a shy avalanche of liquid meaning, Erica Mapp, who cautioned us not to pursue those who don’t give freely(amen!), and Amanda Morgan, whose queer suburban tales resonated for me. Pretty much everyone was great though, and Cave Canem seems to be a cool organization. They offer writing workshops for people of color and organize talented writers on a national scale.

Afterwards I got to check out Wild Ginger, a vegan joint on Broome. Prior to entering, I was feeling a little sceptical of its ability to be veganfabulous, but it was indeed. Nice scallion pancakes, mango salad, excellent steamed dumplings, green tea ice cream…all good. The waitstaff are also really cute and human. It’s not pretentious at all and reasonably priced too!

Then I did manage to make it to the Midnight screening at 92 St Y Tribeca of Ladies and Gentlemen the Stains. The leading role in this film is played by Diane Lane and it was made the same year that I was born. Like Times Square, The Stains has a girl power, feminist, vaguely lesbo theme. It’s cool, really funny somehow. Some of the characters include a spoofy, takes itself seriously British band, and a Bob Marley quoting Jamaican band promoter, called lawnboy. He gives a pretty crazy soliloquy at one point. The basic premise it that Diane, her kid sister and her blonde cousin, want to be loved, be fierce, make money and become famous. They realize that the way to achieve all of these goals is to appear on tv and wear incredibly bright eye shadow and no pants. Maybe they’re on to something.

In Bed, Eat Cafe, Superfine, Rhong Tiam

I’m in bed with my new baby. I’m referring to my laptop, it finally arrived and now my life can return to some semblance of normality. More posts, less German. I’m excited about the great writing I’m going to do on Franny (mac prompted me to name her, so franny it is) and I’m also very excited about the lit salon I’m having at my house tomorrow night. I promise an in depth report back on Monday morning.

As for today,  I started off at Eat Cafe/record store in Greenpoint for Lattes and French toast with stewed apples. Good coffee, and sweet neighborhoody vibe. It reminded me a lot of Melbourne, which is just the thing I”m always looking for in cafes. The menu changes daily, which seems to be the new theme for hip little joints, Superfine also works that way. I went there on Wed night but it somehow hasn’t made it into posts until now. Maybe because the food was fine, but not super and after all the good things I had heard about it was expecting more. The waitress was friendly and the space super cute but the food combos were a bit off-putting, I’d rather not have chicken liver on my polenta.

Rhong Tiam on the other hand is kinda worth the hype. It blends chic decor, a jazz and blues soundtrack, a fashion savvy host and pretty authentic Thai food. The New York Times says its one of the best Thai restaurants in Manhattan, but they admit, and I agree that the best in the city require a trip to Queens. The desert is decadent, enough for an army and they have a few creative fried rice options, like green curry and coconut. Plus good wine.

ok gotta crash now!

Communal Literary High

Very little compares to a literary high, the only thing better, is that high experienced communally. It wasn’t the red wine, though we 20 souls went through several bottles of it. Not the soup or the thick hot chocolate, although that alone would’ve been enough to make for a sweet evening. It was the temple of past experience, future dreams, present tensions, colliding under the umbrella of openness, community, literature. Last night’s lit-salon was a a truly sacred experience, and I felt blessed to have presided over it in my Ella Fitzgerald party dress.

People shared their own pieces about unrequited love, then that thought was capped by an Austrian poet’s instruction that “Love says,’It is what it is.’” Published Trans stories shared space with emerging confessions of complex nature, or becoming. We had a free write about waterfalls and Spain, while powerhouse confessions of death and the end to mourning neatly fit beside Einstein Stories, a card trick and a report back about Central Park, in broken English and jagged winter. Miles Davis played Sketches of Spain, voices were found, unfamiliarities lost, as Subway Strangers became friends and LA transplants hooked in to Brooklyn. We remembered where we have slept, plus the dreams we had there. Then we decided on the places where we might sleep next, and with whom.

Sheila Rowbotham on Edward Carpenter

I went to CUNY this evening to see Sheila Rowbotham talk about her new book and the man that inspired it, Edward Carpenter. This is how the CUNY website pre-described the event:

“Feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham discusses her latest book ‘Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love’. Edward Carpenter (1844 to 1929) challenged both capitalism and the values of Western civilization. He pioneered homosexual, lesbian and women’s liberation along with nudism, recycling, anti-pollution, diet reform and animal rights. He was friendly with such cultural icons as Walt Whitman, E.M.Forster, Isadora Duncan and Emma Goldman. He lived his politics, advocating a minimalist simplification to cluttered middle class Victorians and initiating a craze for country cottages, beeswaxed floors and sandals which helped to prod the modern age into being.”

Carpenter seems like an interesting man, who expressed his gay-ness fairly openly at the end of the 19th cetury. During this time, sodomy was considered criminal and Oscar Wilde was on trial for that very act. Sheila herself is a pretty fascinating lady. Earlier this year I read her 1973 book, Women’s Consciousness: Men’s World. It is a highly readable analysis of British socialist feminism. She tells the story of women who chose to trade eye liner for revolutionary politics, back in the day when it had to be one or the other. I especially like her likening of marriage to feudalism. While I categorically believe that queer people deserve equal rights and protection under the law, in all areas, including marriage. Like Sheila, I personally don’t think that marriage is a goal that any of us need aspire towards. Let’s focus on legalizing free thought instead shall we? It was cool to see Rowbotham, British accent and all, in a small room at CUNY. She is a thinker that holds a vital place in the history of second wave feminism.

The Last Cigarette-Stranger than Fiction

Last night I went to my favorite documentary series in NYC, Stranger Than Fiction, and I saw a film called The Last Cigarette. It was directed by Kevin Rafferty, who’s most recent film Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 is currently screening at the Film Forum. The Last Cigarette was made in the mid 90s purely out of news and archival footage. It fits into the documentary genre, yet there are no interviews or original voice-overs and it seems in fact that the filmmaker never once picked up a camera while working on this project. All in the editing room, like a modern day mash-up, it meshes scenes from Vertigo and Psycho with footage from the Congressional hearings, in which the cigarette companies were held to task for selling cancer sticks. The middle aged men, who represent Philip Morris et al. bumble and attempt to euphemize their way out of taking responsibility for smoking deaths. They all actually say that they don’t believe smoking is addictive, that it does not cause cancer, and they swear that their companies have never marketed to children. Interesting. The film serves as  a comical, yet frightening glimpse back into the mid-nineties. It is hard to believe how much attitudes  towards smoking have changed in the past 15 years. Plus, quite bizarre that people have gone from thinking that cigarettes weren’t that harmful, to knowing they are, and smoking anyway.

Thanksgiving, Thanks for Taking

Although there is something really fun about shooting out random “Happy Thanksgiving” emails, it is still important to take pause and call this holiday what it is: Genocide day, Invasion Day, take your pick. Just please don’t tell me that played out old folktale about the peaceful dinner, “pilgrims and Indians sharing corn (or maize, that is.)” Maybe it’s the historical mis-telling that plants the seed of discontent in me, your resident former history scholar. Or, perhaps it’s that always bizarre feeling of being expected to feel on cue. ‘It’s New Years, make resolutions and feel happy!’ ‘It’s Halloween, dress up and feel ghoulish!’ ‘It’s Christmas, give gifts and appreciate others!’ ‘It’s Thanksgiving, count your blessing and list everything that you have to be thankful for.’

I’d rather gorge myself on Pumpkin Pie and wine, and from my curmudgeounly corner, raise a fist in support of the Native People who truly own this land. Happy Thankstaking and never feel afraid to express your honest emotions on any day of the year!

Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera

Last night I went to see the opening of Daniel Barenboim’s production of Richard Wagner‘s Tristan und Isolde (itself an interpretation of Shakespeare) at the Metropolitan Opera. The opera was five hours, and well, what can i say…It’s a love story, which is more about loss than anything else. Wagner said before writing it, that he had never truly experienced love. Interesting. Maybe that’s why the love depicted is so tragic. Tragic love and tragic death. When the third and final act ends, Isolde is surrounded by Tristan and his two best friends, dead. Perhaps the type of love that Wagner most understood was homeogenic love, as Carpenter called it, better known as homosexuality. Shoot me for saying this, but why didn’t Isolde follow Tristan to death as she promised she would. It ends with her dying, apparently from grief, but not a sword to the chest like Tristan’s two best mates took. I digress…the point is, even if we assume the premise and believe that the man and woman were the only true lovers on set, why should love destroy us? I believe that desperation is not synonymous with passion and strive to see love instead as a sustainable site of healing. love many, love one, love for living, not as a form of torture!

First iphone post

So I just discovered the wordpress application for the iPhone. I am your budding technological baby, with open eyes and outstretched arms I am slowly learning what this whole Internet/computer thing is all about. Forgive me for my lack of total computer nerdyness and trust that I am rapidly catching up! Wow, what a dream boat you are wordpress iPhone app. + a shout out goes to my two thanksgivings, I got some tech tutorials over turkey and what a revolution it has been! Ok, officially a nerd, going to go check the big screen to see if this worked!

Transgender History- Susan Stryker

I finished reading Transgender History by Susan Stryker during my long post-Thanksgiving public transport journey. It was overall a very informative and straightforward book. It was easy to read and understand, which is a feat for non-fiction, and a contrast to Striker’s recent CUNY lecture, which was considerably more cryptic. I really enjoyed the book, it felt immediate and relevant, engaging the reader with the past 100 years of struggle for transgender rights.

The movement towards visibility has been pretty fascinating. It seems that the first people to challenge the assumption that transpeople are not only mentally ill, but also extremely perverse, were people within the medical establishment, German and Austrian psychologists and doctors. Then it was wealthier white male bodied individuals, who campaigned for the rights to cross-dress, and separately, to be granted sex-change operations. The book moves from that telling, to the history of early FTM agitators for change, who also seem to have started within the upper class, or rather gained initial success there.

Direct action, and quasi-revolutionary groups later emerged in the second half of the 20th century, with Stonewall, and it’s predecessors, such as for example, the staged sit-in that occurred at Compton’s restaurant, inspired and enacted by civil rights activists, who were also queer, many of whom were trans,-rights activists. That intersection between transpeople and LGB folks was a theme that Stryker consistently explored in relation to recent trans history.

It seems that although there was a lot of overlap between struggles during the 60s, that unity was often fractured by both, feminist lesbians, who rejected trans people as impostors of a sort, and gay men who labelled trans individuals somehow not radical enough because they were willing to seek help from the medical establishment. As transgenderism remained a disease in the medical books, certain gay activists, judged the transpeople who sought sex change operations, while some lesbian feminists claimed that by enacting femininity in a stereotypical way, transwomen mocked their struggle towards an androgynously expressed equality, and that anyone not born a woman could never fully understand and experience Women’s Oppression.

With so much fragmentation prior to the late nineteen-nineties when queer emerged as a blanket, inclusive term for a whole wide variety of folks, it is kind of nice to see how much of the old divisiveness has died down. However, recently when transgender people were left out of the new anti-discrimination law, many of those old flames were rekindled. In explanation of this political division the distinctions between homosexuality and transgenderism are offered. As well as the wide ranging differences within the transgender umbrella. People often presume that transgender people are by definition homosexual, when historically and continuously that is often not the case. While for some the distinction between gender and sexuality is obvious, many members of the general public don’t quite get what the difference is. Stryker clarifies this within her large definitions section. For anyone who is still confused please refer to the text!

Shannon on Brooklyn Luv Girls

I’ve been to a number of girl bars and parties and Lowpost’s monthly Brooklyn Luv Girls party is a welcome addition to this city’s mix of nightlife options for the ladies.  The first night of this event was on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which caused me to doubt that it would be a lively gathering. Happily, my fears were unfounded, the place was pretty packed.

Lowpost is Habana Outposts’s winter installation. The vibe of Brooklyn Luv Girl was local, young and ethnically, and culturally diverse.  While many of the girls were under 25, brown, and from Ft Greeene, Clinton Hill, and Bed Stuy, there were also a good number of tatooed, mohawked and pierced hipsters and Manhattanites. The space is intimate, with a 6 foot bar at the foot of the stairs, low ceilings,exposed brick walls, and a long, narrow lounge area with benches and tables that give way to a sunken dance floor and stage for performers and DJ’s.

The scale of the club is perfect for a party that attracts a mostly local crowd, and makes it easy to go in alone and make friends or to bump into people you might already know from around the way. I chatted with a few ladies from last month’s Spin Sugar party and ran into some friends of friends. The drinks were affordable, the crowd laid back, and the location perfect for a brownstone dweller like me;  close to work, next to the subway and a quick walk to other bars.

By Shannon Mustipher

Olea, Afternoon In Ft Greene

So I’ve spent the whole day at Olea, ostensibly working, while also having brunch and lattes and now a drink with different friends who have wandered in and out during my all day residency here. I figured that now might be a good time to report faithfully on the place. First of all, It’s great, because not only are they cool with writers like me camping out all day… Their mediteranean food is also adecuately posh, approved of by nytimes, New York Mag and etc. Very decent coffee as well! For dinner they are slightly pricier, but the French infused breakfast is reasonable. Try the homemade pain chocolat and enjoy free wireless!

Trouble the Water Tonight at BAM

I can’t rave about Trouble the Water enough. I have been on the journey with this film for several months. From the time that I first saw it until now, interviewing the filmmakers somewhere in between, writing an article about them and the film…let’s just say I am on the boat for the long haul with this one.

If you are in the New York City area, come to one of my favorite gem spots, The Brooklyn Academy of Music for either the 4:30, 6:50 or 9:30 screening.

This is what NY Mag and BAM have to say about the film:

“Trouble the Water is ineradicably moving.” —New York Magazine

“Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, this astonishingly powerful documentary takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. Brooklyn-based filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal tell the story of an aspiring rap artist and her husband, trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning” BAM website

This is the beginning of what I said about it:

The human spirit, all toughness aside could not withstand this movie without tears of empathy, regret, boiling anger, growing conviction and then the commitment to respond. This feeling of good will, fueled by a desire to help, is something that filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal consistently refer to as what motivated them to bring their cameras to the gold coast and begin what would become, Trouble the Water. Long time collaborators with Michael Moore,  they experienced a similar impetus towards action after 9/11. Turning their cameras outwards towards their own Brooklyn neighborhood, they made a compelling short about the backlash of racism and unjust deportations which affected many Muslims at the time.  More

See it for the first time, see it again. Then talk about it with your friends, send me comments, see Spike Lee’s Katrina doco, remember that New Orleans is still in crisis.

x

Slate Honey reviews Recitement, Music/Poetry

Recitement Review- by Slate Honey

A week ago, I immersed myself in Stephen Emmer’s poetry compilation album Recitement.  Pairing recited poems by a wide variety of writers (from Lou Reed to Jorge Luis Borges) with musical composition, Emmer curates a work that is more akin to a series of short films than an album with a solid identity.  Emmer does a comprehensive job of creating genre-specific music that works hard to set a tone for each spoken piece.  Recitement’s sounds bounce back and forth between dark, spacy down-tempo, bouncy classic rock, cinematic European pop and whispery retro French electro.  The musical style is laid a little too thick and is at times sentimental.  And melody sometimes becomes competitive with poetry.  The weight of the poetry often gets lost in the layered soundtracks.  Emmer does best when he presents pieces that really lend themselves to music.

Two tracks are particularly good. “Invergence of the Twain” is reminiscent of spoken word set to cool-sounding acoustic guitar and light percussion.  The beautiful rhyming and careful pacing of the poetry make for a sexy, relaxed sound that is easy to get into.  “Absolutely Grey” has the kind of melancholy space-age sound of Tricky and matches well to a sparse monologue on absolutes.  Especially good for those days when one is feeling super emo and particularly philosophical.

I’d recommend Recitement if you are tired of albums packaged with a singular look and feel.  It’s worth a listen if you want something really different.  Expect to be taken along several twists and turns and leave yourself open to the multi-media feel.  Recitement is not background music.

Slate Gets Milk- Gus Van Sant’s new Film

Great review and thoughtful Analysis of Milk by Mr Slate Honey. Van Sant is giving a Q&A tonight at MOMA- hopefully I’ll get tickets and be able to report back tomorrow.-R

It seems everybody and their gay dads saw Gus Van Sant’s Milk as part of the Thanksgiving routine this year.  I was warned to go equipped with tissues and to be ready for problematic portrayals of the few characters of color in the film.  (Thanks lover, for the forewarning by the way.) I went prepared with a dewey heart and my critical lenses on.

I have been a committed Sean Penn fan ever since I saw Dead Man Walking when I was a little mister.  And I got on the Gus Van Sant train a bit late but his recent films Elephant, Last Days, Paranoid Park have served my grungy emo-homo skater-boy obsession very well.

Cinematographer Harris Savides and Van Sant make a great visionary team.  They previously worked together on Elephant, a film with a very precise, clean cinema verité style that transforms violence into real-time horror and renders its viewers innocent witnesses.  In Milk, Savides and Van Sant play with perspective, creating layers of consciousness for Penn’s character.  Switching perspective and cinematic style, and weaving archival footage into the film, Savides and Van Sant reveal a determined, emotional man at the center of a violent socio-political setting.  A particularly lush scene that is classic Van Sant perspective comes early on in the film.  Harvey and Scott (played by James Franco) fall in love in a soft-focus dreamscape of close movement, shot all in extreme close-ups set to the soundtrack of their tender conversation.  Gorgeousness.

Overall, Milk is very historically accurate.  Activist Cleve Jones and friend of Milk’s was on-set during production and connected Van Sant with screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who had long been preparing a manuscript. Milk serves as a good personal portrait counterpart to the 1985 documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Rob Epstein.  I had the feeling watching MILK that I could trust the filmmaker team’s attention to detail and the solid sense of collaboration gave the narrative a documentary quality.

So the accuracy and detail of the film bring up a pretty big concern on the race-politics front.  I was charmed by Sean Penn’s old-school New York accent and faggy gestures, seduced by James Franco’s flirty eyes and mini handlebar moustache and increasingly worried as Josh Brolin’s character’s passive aggressive repression began to seep out.  And the constant influx of characters served well as a distraction from the tragic and narrow development of the few characters of color.

A member of Milk’s activist dream team includes an Asian man who is only referred to as Lotus Blossom despite his many appearances.  Random folks of color magically appear in the crowd every time Milk gets a further push forward in the political machine.  During an acceptance speech near the climax of the film, a black woman with a classic 70s look complete with afro smiles enthusiastically behind Harvey.  She promptly disappears behind a shower of balloons as soon as Harvey wraps up his speech.

Leaving the theatre, my mom suggested that the race politics of the film merely mirrored the San Francisco scene in the 1970s.  There just weren’t that many people of color, she argued.  And there were barely any women in the film, she added.  Historical accuracy?  (And, I might add, how much has the San Francisco gay scene departed from a mostly white gay male playground thirty years later?)

The seldom appearance of people of color is one thing.  I suppose you can reason this with some argument about accuracy.  What is more troubling is the passiveness of the characters of color.  Black and Asian extras dot the activist scenes, always with their thumbs in the air and big smiles.  Lotus Blossom doesn’t seem to wince at his nickname.  And finally, Jack, the one Latino character that makes it on-screen for more than thirty seconds is portrayed as an irrational, mentally unstable, co-dependent, infantile wifey.  Jack’s tragedy becomes expected and you can almost hear the characters whispering under their breath “She brought it on herself.” This is fodder for post-colonial theory.

So my warnings were well-heeded.  In the end, I cried like a baby, just as hard as I cried when I watched ‘The Life and Times of Harvey Milk’.  I left the theatre thinking about the fearless work of an older generation of queer activists that laid some ground for young folks to make demands relevant to what it means to be queer and fight for rights today.  I also left thinking about how race politics have systematically been swept under the rug by a white gay and lesbian rights movement in the 70s.  I thought about what work that has left contemporary queer activists of color.  And how truly far-thinking activists never get comfortable and only keep pushing and questioning.  Finally, making my way out of the city back to Brooklyn, I meditated on queer love as freedom, queer survival as civil rights, and a beautiful fearlessness that comes naturally to us.

Milk, Gus Van Sant Q&A

It’s hard to see it, but that, my friends, is a picture of Gus Van Sant. The Q&A was almost as teary as the film itself with testimonials: from a queer youth who thanked Van Sant for his film-making as activism and from the director of the Hetrick Martin Institute on behalf of his students at the Harvey Milk School. Lessin and Deal the directors of Trouble the Water were also in the house as well as a good crew of Bedstuy qpocs. Unpacking the film with them afterwards was one of the highlights of the night. We all agreed that it was a great Hollywood biopic. Although we loved experimental Van Sant in many of his earlier art house films, we thought that this format and budget were appropriate as a showcase for Milk’s life story. Slate Honey’s previous observation on the problematic portrayal of people of color, was indeed confirmed. However, Van Sant mentioned that many of the people depicted in the film were on set consulting during most of the filming, including the Asian man, who is referred to in the film as Lotus Blossom ( Find out where they are now). Still, I was kind of floored by Jack’s portrayal, it did feel somewhat superficial and unsympathetic. Overall though, I remain highly impressed by Van Sant’s cinematic mastery. If you squint you might be able to detect in my iPhone photo that Van Sant is suitably chill in his down to earth jeans, red sneakers and green socks. He was equally approachable and laid back after the Q & A as he happily talked one on one to folks from the audience. Thanks for putting me on the press list after all MOMA! Bloggers are tops!

The writers from Tongues Afire are about to set Brooklyn a-glow

By Mr Slate Honey

This year’s members of the creative writing workshop for queer women, trans and gender-non conforming people of color will be presenting new works in two readings.  Common Grounds, the cozy Bed-Stuy cafe at 376 Tompkins Ave, will be hosting the first on Saturday December 6th at 7pm.  Later in the week, The Audre Lorde Project, sponsor to the group, will be hosting the second reading on Thursday December 11th at 85 South Oxford Street at 6:30 pm.  Both events are free and open to the public.

Be sure not to miss these.  Excellent artists pass through this workshop and judging from friends who have been in it or who will be reading, I can assure you that it will not disappoint even the most fine-tuned ear. For more information about Tongues Afire and applying to the workshop, contact tonguesafire@gmail.com

Just Seeds, Spin Sugar…

Yesterday was one of those anachronistic days when everything and nothing happens. I worked for a friend at a conference at the Tompkins Hotel. Then I spent most of the day there working in a coffee charged stupor. After which I went to see the Just Seeds collective’s wonderful poster show. I bought a beautiful black panther quote lino print, which much to my chagrin I lost later in the night. It went missing during my 3 hour fly on the wall experience as press at the Farm Sanctuary’s benefit. I interviewed Ally Sheedy, Corey Feldman, Jenefer Coolidge and Daniella Sea, in between bouts of nerve steadying alcohol consumption. Celebrities usually don’t intimidate me this much, but hot people do I guess. I tried not to impulsively grab Sea’s hand in mid convo. Somehow, I managed to exercise control and stick to normal interview protocol. Transcript to follow+ a full description of the sanctuary’s great work.

After I left the art directors club, I took the subway, in true b s style down to spin sugar at sin sin, where I intercepted my friends on the way in and ran into the entire staff of go. Dancing ensued, plus more drink, under the beat propriety of Sophia H, Noa D and Amber Valentine. We closed the warm little dive around 3 and all went home.

L-Word’s Daniela Sea- Interview, Sanctuary

This  is a picture of the back of Daniela Sea‘s head and of Jenifer Coolidge, trying to reel in a crowd of thirsty vegans at the Farm Sanctuary benefit. I know, it’s not a great photo, but Iphone pictures are generally quite lame. I’ll get press photos on Monday, but couldn’t wait to get this up. Sea was pretty calm and friendly in person, but somehow more guarded than I’d expected her to be. I don’t know why I expected otherwise, but when I first went up and said hi to her she was nice, pretty open seeming, then when I said I wanted to interview her, her energy seemed to immediately narrow. I guess that people kind of fear or disdain the press and our potentially distorted ways. So in an extra effort to stick to the facts, I will proceed.

First an exterior description: She was shorter in person, maybe about my height, but had the same transfixing fiery green/blue eyes. As I previously expressed, I got a little distracted there, with the eyes etc. She was kinda flopping around the room, talking to people, carrying a Tupperware container, and wearing gypsy style tuxedo pants and a simple men’s stripy button down shirt, over a wife beater. She was with a friend, who also seemed really nice. When we found our time to talk, off in a quiet corner, sitting on top of a counter of sorts, she explained to me that she needed to pack food, because she was catching a taxi-to a flight-to a train- to the North of England, in the next 20 minutes. I realized, I’d better talk fast.

TheBrooklynSocialite: When did you get involved with the Farm Sanctuary?

[Farm Sanctuary for those who don't know, is a farm animal rescue organization. They have 2 farms, one outside of NYC and the other near LA. Their mission is: "To work to end cruelty to farm animals and promote compassionate living through rescue, education and advocacy. "]

Daniela Sea: I  got involved about a year ago. My dad and his boyfriend connected me, they said there were some people there that I should really meet. I’ve always had an interest in compassionate activism, so it was great to get involved and now I have some really good friends there.

TBS: Have you always been connected to animal rights?

DS: Yeah, I’m Vegan, I was just brought up that way, to care about animals and think about the food we eat.I have a lot of friends who aren’t vegan or vegetarian, but I’ve always found some really good connections  among people who are.

TBS[ I couldn't contain my interest in her involvement in the L-Word for much longer, so I proceed to ask her about the show...]

DS: We just finished shooting the final season, and it was really great to be involved with it and be up there working on it. Now that it’s over I have more time to spend on my other projects. I’m working on a screenplay about the relationship between a father and a daughter, which is semi-autobiographical, and I play in 2 bands. I’m going to be going on tour with one of them, Thorns of Life , after i get back from visiting my brother in the North of England.

TBS: What’s he doing up there?

DS: He’s a cobbler, he chips away at stones, shaping them to fit into crevices that need to be restored in ancient cathedrals.

It sounded so romantic, and I half wished that I was going to take a flight that night. I wanted to tell her about my travels and how important I think it is that she portrayed one of the first semi-positive depictions of a trans-person on television. But, the chat got kind of cut short by a person with a camera, and a couple of transmen who are running for office in NYC. That seemed like a pretty great, and important conversation, so I willingly forfeited the floor,  and continued to try not to stare at her as I walked away.

Somehow it was easier to talk to Coolidge and Ally Sheedy, they both expressed their commitment to and support of the work that Farm Sanctuary does. Sheedy a long time vegan, and Coolidge a devoted animal lover, both seemed super-intelligent and quite warm. Visit the Sanctuary, hang out with their down to earth staff, many of whom I met that night, and of course chill with the animals!

This committed lady, bought that painting in the auction to benefit Farm S.

Agent Angie gets Techy at El Guincho

I headed to (Le) Poisson Rouge the other night to see El Guincho, aka Pablo Díaz-Reixa an electro-pop artist based in Barcelona. I arrived very early. I must admit a few things that threaten to undermine my status as a “socialite” dear readers. The first thing is that I don’t know if I am capable of attending these late night shows anymore. I really enjoy going to (Le) Poisson Rouge, but most of their shows start barely before midnight. When you work full time during the day, is going to a show that starts at 11:30 feasible? Not really.

Finally, Lemonade, the opener started, whose weird electronic mix of pops, blips, pings, and buzzes accompanied by occasional vocals provided the best electro-dance music I’ve heard in a long while. Everyone was gyrating to the music and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Later, when I listened to it again on myspace I felt more ambivalent. This type of music is better in person.

El Guincho drew an impressive crowd, (Le) Poisson Rouge was packed, but I wasn’t so impressed by him. A part of me wondered what all the fuss was about. His enthusiasm and personality were wonderful to watch, but the music didn’t win me over.

Therefore, I will go back to discussing my experience as a bad socialite that night at (Le) Poisson Rouge. I arrived early because I didn’t want to bother going back uptown after work. I thought it started at ten (I have a terrible habit of confusing the “doors” time and the actual time the show is set to begin). Arriving early did afford me the opportunity of observing the people around me. There was a dj, a pretty decent dj at that, but everyone was standing around looking bored (including myself). I kept thinking, ‘aren’t we supposed to be dancing? Someone dance with me.’ I was alone for most of the show and kept trying to push myself to strike up conversations with strangers who were also alone, but never did. I looked around at everyone clicking away on their BlackBerrys and iPhones and regretted that technology has driven a wedge between us. Who knows if I would have worked up the courage to do it even if the BlackBerrys weren’t present, but it’s a little harder to do when someone is preoccupied texting or twittering or what have you.

I feel I have a love/hate relationship with technology. In this instance, before I made a point to put away my iPhone in order to stop discouraging others from being friendly, I caught up on some reading. I read a wonderful article by Roger Ebert about the struggles in the journalism world of late. I was grateful that my iPhone allowed me to be productive and escape the boredom of being alone. However, it also made me feel very cowardly for using it (partly) to avoid being social. It made me wonder if depending on technology since my first year of college, when I first started to develop my social skills in an adult world and develop relationships independent of family, crippled me socially in the long run. And, what does this tell us about individuals growing up in front of screens? Imagine having a facebook profile in middle school. Any thoughts dear readers?

-by Angie Venezia

The Weekend in Pictures

There have been several things that I wanted to post about but didn’t immediately find time for…so here they are in photographs. Match the  numbered  blurry iPhone pictures with the following letters: A- IL Passatore, an authentic Greenpoint Italian restaurant, which some claim is among the best in the city. They have prominent exit signs, excellent lasagna and a few other decent pasta options. B- The Beatrice Inn, Bjork is rumored to do coke here, looks shabby from the outside but the muffled bouncers will practically frisk you, before they decide you are “Someone” and casually let you in. C-The Belcourt, LES brunch spot, pretty disappointing other than the fancy decor. The food is mediocre at best and they are adamantly against substitutions. D- Roebling Tea Room- good drink options, chill staff, filling- comfort food style menu. E- Misnomer Dance Company opening at the Joyce.  This is Chris Elam’s company, he choreographed Bjork’s (speaking of) last video,” Wanderlust.” Queen of Dance Critics Gia Kourlas sat in front of me wearing an imposing fur hat, and scribbling enthusiastically in her notebook. The dancers told me afterwards that they nearly tripped over themselves in fear. The photo is of a particularly friendly yet camera-shy stylist, who’s self tailored coat won the recessionista award of the day. F- Tongues of Fire reading at Common Grounds. Excellent community event, good poets, bad run-ins with exes(!) And now for the pictures!

1.

2

3

4

5

6

I guess the answers are kind of obvious, but thank you for playing. x

Good Photos, VU

Here are the press pics from Farm sanctuary and Misnomer dance

Above Photos by Greg Straight Edge

In light of all the photos beautifully taken, or of beautiful people. I thought it might be a good time to discuss VU. Although it sounds like some obscure venereal disease, it’s real meaning is Voluntary Ugliness. Come on people, don’t do it. Fashions come and go, and there are a lot of people who do take them way to seriously. However, there is nothing more serious than VU. Don’t want to fashionable? Don’t bother! But please don’t give way to VU. All you have to do is find a look that works for you and rock it out. No more glasses that make your eyes pop out, please don’t abuse corduroy or turtlenecks, don’t blame it on money, because you know that you could look cute even in torn shards of fabric if you wore them right. As a person who sometimes takes themselves pretty seriously, I have to give it up for superficiality this one time. Let’s make a pact to try to look our best for just one week, then a month a year, forever. This city really needs some brightening up and so does everywhere. Don’t fall victim to VU, let your beauty sparkle, razzle, dazzle and …ok I’m stopping I promise, but on that note, for the next week I will be posting photos of the bravest VU resisters that I encounter on the streets, cafes and clubs of New York….

Yes Man, Dance Class Contessa

On the list of things that I want to blog about, but sometimes get distracted from, or avoid out of fear of never sleeping, drinking too much coffee and missing my train tomorrow to upstate New York are:

Yes Man- the new Jim Carey Film and

Dance Class, Contessa’s 25th birthday party at Webster Hall.

Let’s begin, quick before fear gets the better of me…The trailer:

Yes Man was pretty f-ing funny. That means either a lot coming from me, or very little. As it is, that I rarely expose myself to abject humor, preferring the darker, documentary style film, I may not be the best person to judge funny mainstream movies. That said, I did enjoy it. It was kind of a cross between Magnolia,  The Montel Williams Show and every other Jim Carrey film ever made. He definitely pulled a lot of faces that I recal from The Mask. Kiwi actor, Rhys Darby, from the Flight Of the Concords was hysterical and Zooey Deschanel was super cute. Plus the songs that her band inside the film play are classic, probably the best part of the movie. They are about things like people respecting the limit on times they are allowed to call, and the guy that she hates becuase he called after 11pm. I guess I wasn’t expecting much from the director of Bring it On, but as a vapid-comedy starved individual, when faced with slapstick and overly simplistic jokes, I will laugh, and I did.

Moving on. Mama Contessa, impresario, dancer, Bed Stuy fashion plate and so much more is celebrating her 25th Birthday at Webster hall tomorrow night after 10pm. DJ prince Terrence is spinning, new pop will be snapping away, go-gos doing their thing, Theophilus London will perform and I’ll be there!x

Check the poster:

Slate Honey, Novice Theorey

By Slate Honey

My favorite musical experiences are ones that feel like lucid dreaming.  The one-person band Novice Theory has quickly found a choice spot on my list of vision-inspiring.  I sink into self-reflective hallucinations somewhere in the curves of songwriter Geo’s grandiose melodic piano-playing, pulled deeper in by his heartbreakingly sharp, lyrical narratives.  I saw Novice Theory live for the first time at Joe’s Pub last night.

This morning, I woke up to flashes of dreams still fresh on my mind.  In one, I braided my miraculously-grown long curls.  In another, my mother and I had a love-affair breakdown in a restaurant in Chinatown.  Lying in bed, two lines from a Kate Bush cover performed the night before looped in my head.  I hummed it over and over again on my walk to work.  I couldn’t kick the tune all day… but I didn’t really want to.

I often lose touch with my own tenderness in dealing with complicated questions of identity.  It’s easier for me to turn to political and overly-intellectual language to make sense of the daily experiences of gender-queer and racially-othered bodies in this wide world.  Novice Theory takes on these questions on an emotionally bare level.  Sometimes pounding and other times caressing the keys of a grand piano, Geo works out so much in his music.  He labors through intensity and honesty with a crafted precision.  Novice Theory mixes together classical and folk tones, a tender darkness, cutting humor and an entrancing theatrical sound.  Experiences most difficult to process somehow become easy to listen to in the candid and lavish storytelling–or maybe just graspable, simply distilled to rich and vivid imagery.

The Joys of Public Transport

I wanted to share this little moment with you. I am on a bus in Bed Stuy, wobbling my way to Greenpoint on blue plastic seats. There are several copies of AM New York strewn about the floor, with headlines blaring “Depression”. This is the life! South by South dialogue amounts to taking the bus up and down brook-town x

Soda Bar

Soda bar is straight out of A Different Strokes, your every local, Brooklyn, Ace for Diversity- bar. It attracts a mixed, mostly straight crowd, and they have DJs and events on certain nights. The snug couch set-up is perfect for de-briefs with friends and impromptu dancing.

Quantum of Solace

Wow, first of all what is up with filmic references to Tosca, after the scene in Milk, where Harvey Milk attends a performance of Tosca and then dies flashing back to it, while starring at the Tosca banner advertisement on the San Fransisco Opera House, visible outside of his window. A man who played in the real performance that Harvey attended 30 years ago, and 2 days before he died, had this to say about it. Strange coincidence, now I really want to see Tosca, being as it is that I have become quite the budding young opera fan as of late! Really. I swear the funny thing about high art vs low art is that there are so many striking similarities, in terms of plot and design. Although the music at the Opera tends to be far better than the suspenseful elevator tunes, which are used to score soap operas, as I remember from watching after school at a friend’s house, the drama in Passions was not that different from the conflict in Tristan und Isolde (the last Opera that I attended.)

Strange coincidence aside,  the Tosca scene was definitely one of the highlight of the latest James Bond incarnation. Don’t ask me to explain the tittle, because it really makes no sense to me, but this is what happens in the film: Bond, meets a Bolivian agent, who has been trying to infiltrate her way to the man who killed her father, raped her mother and sister, and left a burn scar on her back. He is a Bolivian military leader, who overthrew the previous dictatorship, which her father was a leading member of. Bond crosses paths with her on his mission to track down a secret crime organization, which is working against the British secret service and with a man named Greene, who is essentially a water pirate, posing as an environmentalist. Greene, buys up the natural water supply in countries like Bolivia, and then sells it back to the people at astronomical prices. He is willing to install any government that will allow him to do so, and he gets the American government on side, by promising them imaginary oil stores. The best thing about this plot is that it is so now, so reality! I mean, yes, several details have been changed to ensure dramatic sex and fight scenes, but the Bolivian water crisis is pretty real, and American oil greed, I don’t know how they thought of that one!

I also really appreciated the reference to Alice in Wonderland, “This one will make you taller, this one will make you…” However, I am a little confused by the fact that the Bolivian vixen is played by a Ukranian actress, would it hurt to cast a real live person of color? Jeffery Wright is in the film though, one point in their favor. He’s a great actor and I’m glad to see him in more than one currently released Hollywood film. He’s getting almost as much airtime as Tosca!

Treadmill

When I started this blog, almost 3 months ago, it was after having a vision of myself on a treadmill. Now it has actually happened! 3 month later. Twice in the same week, I have found my self at the warm shiny place, affectionately known as “The Gym.” There were several things that kept me away from the gym thus far…1.You can’t wear your pajamas there without being mildly embarrassed, especially if your pajamas, like mine, are flannel and in the style of an old man. 2 Going there, may make you feel healthy and encourage you to give up your new-found writerly ways, (ie. late nights, pash sessions, large quantities of alcohol and etc) [I am always torn between fashioning myself after the archetypal French writer (don't ask why) and the yoga, smoothie, vegan chic aesthetic that I have dabbled in, during previous years.] ok 3. People who you don’t want scoping you out (naked) like middle aged janitorettes and overly friendly sauna-mates, will inevitably scope you out, leaving you with no choice but to politely “pretend not to notice”. and 4. the danger always exists, that one day, running on the treadmill enthusiastically to Chaka Kahn, you may confuse yourself with Bridget Jones, or worse, one of the lame normal people you secretly mock(!)… The bottom line is that the treadmill just doesn’t seem cool.

Oh but it is. Feeling healthy and fit is all the rage right now and I have to admit, I already feel better. I miss yoga and smoothies and I’m going to have to find some middle ground. Being a workaholic/something else aholic is going to have to back down and make some space for a happy holistic lifestyle goddamit!

The Garden, Esperanza Friends

Tonight was one of those nights were I didn’t really feel like like going out, it meant ditching the pjs, leaving Brooklyn and facing the snow. Still, I had the feeling that Stranger than Fiction was the right place for me to be, so I bucked up and faced the elements. It turned out to be another beautiful STF night, and I’m so glad that I made it. I was greeted by the wonderful Raphaela Neihausen, Executve Director of STF, then I purchased IFC’s yum organic popcorn, with butter, and found my way to my seat.

The film, The Garden, was about the intense struggle by nearly 400 families to save the huge community garden/farm, located in South Central LA that had been given to them by the city in the wake of the LA riots. In order to quell tensions that flared up after Rodney King’s police assailants were acquitted, the city gave the land to the community for use as a community garden. Ten years later, the city decided to take it back, or rather claim that they did not indeed own it, and that it instead belonged to the previous owner, a greedy developer, that had had his property seized by the city under imminent domain. Back in the early 90′s he was paid 5 million for the land, then for some unexplainable reason, in the early 2000′s the city sold it back to him for the same price. Now you don’t have to be an economics major or even a graduate of the 7th grade for that matter to understand that after ten years of inflation, there is no way that the value of the property had not risen at all in over ten years. Quite to the contrary property in South Central has become increasingly desirable to developers and new residents.

The film tracks the development of the Latino community gardener’s struggle to advocate for themselves and win the right to keep their garden, in fact the largest community garden in the United States. I won’t tell you whether or not they succeeded, you will have to see the film to find out (or google it, but do the former first)!  I highly recommend it as a valuable record of people’s history and as compelling cinema. Interview with the director to come!

But wait, the night gets better. After STF the whole audience was invited to 99 Below on MacDougal street for a free drink with ticket stub and a chance to mingle with the director, Scott Hamilton Kennedy. Scott was very friendly and approachable. He was joined by representatives from Silver Docs, a great documentary film festival, which takes place in DC each year, the  director of Trembling Before G-d, Sandi DuBowski, and unrelatedly, the chocolatiers behind Living Love organic raw chocolate. The chocolate chefs were kind enough to offer me several samples of their awesome chocolates, which perhaps explains why I am still so chipper, typing away at 4am.

I should really sleep, but before I do, I have to conclude that what really put the icing on the cake of this being a great night was that I ran into some really good old friends from my days of garden activism in NYC some 7-8 years ago. Aresh of More Gardens continues his stand-up work, while Ben has extended his commitment to South Bronx gardens, to also include a Victory Gardens style farm upstate, where he grows vegetables and herbs which he can then distribute to communities in poor NYC neighborhoods and also sell at farmers markets to benefit political prisoners. This model has been successful for VG and is showing a lot of promise for Ben’s farm as well.

Yay! and goodnight.

Day Off

Hello faithful Brooklyn Socialites,

Things that I want to talk about include

1. The final Happy Endings Reading Series that I attended last night

2. a production of The Colonial Nutcracker , which I caught on Sunday

3.More on Chocolate, the Gym, La Esquina, 8th St Wine Bar, and how I hate holidays

But for now, I just wanted to post-announce my day off. Yes I have been MIA for the past 24 hours planning my next yellow-color combo outfit, hedging my bets on whether it will snow or be 65 degrees, spending time with people in (I know this is crazy) but actual real-time physical space, and daring to feel a little peaceful. This week I have been threatening all my friends with my potentially serious plans to become a Vegan. Last week I was threatening to become a go-go dancer, so apply whatever amount of doubt to this claim that you feel is appropriate.  The week before I had deputized myself to police VU. Next week i will threaten to be a movie actor, so if you have a role for me, please let me know! Perhaps its best to harness these whims as quickly as possible.

So goodnight, and dream well. Tell me what your threatening to be on this eve of the new year!

Christmas Photos

I want to start share some photos.

What’s this?

oh, it’s a cop car covered in snow. But wait, look closer, what does it say?

That’s right kids, it says, Fuck You! Finally someone is appropriately getting into the holiday cheer. Now I know I’m not alone.

VU Photos

Hello World,

Since I’m so much enjoying silence these days and loving pictures too…here are some shots of Voluntary Ugliness as promised. They are vintage if you will, culled from my  mis-guided summer jaunt over to the Oregon County Fair!

This kid was really cute though…

I promise to start talking again soon!

Soltace, Hanuka, Christmas…

As fun as pictures are, for those of you who may be missing my voice, I’m back. Just want to offer up some holiday well-wishes in the season of giving and forgiving and receiving and new leafs and resolutions, dark days and ETC. Yesterday, I celebrated soltace with a couple of good friends, and the darkest day of the year, although at first quite tragic, ended up feeling pretty revelatory. On the advice of our Soltace expert friend, we conducted a little ceremony to cleanse the old and bring in the new. Like ashes scattered to sea, we grabbed the tray from the toaster oven, ripped some scraps out of my sketch pad and made a very mini-bonfire out of bad memories past, and the things that were holding us down and back, from last year. Duly cleansed, we were able to then imagine the growth and the joy that we are definitely going to let in during this new year. I hope your simple ceremonies are as blessed. If your celebrating the holidays with family, please don’t break down, have fun, laugh it off, and if you are chilling with city orphans/chosen family, eat another latke for me, enjoy your vegan turkey, and watch that Christmas pudding catch on fire, with a little soltace glow left  in your eye!

VU Photos Continued

Hey loves, more VU pictures. I promise you words tomorrow, had a bit of a busy day today. It seems that when every one else is sleeping I’m awake, and when everyone else is on vaycay, I’m working! Ah, such is life, rent day comes as often as the full moon. Speak soon!

“Family” Planning- Irene Tung on Queer life in China

This Article was written by Irene about her very interesting recent trip to China.

Dou Dou and Feng, a Chinese lesbian couple from the city of Shenyang in Northeast China, plan to have a baby together.  However, they have no intention of ever coming out to their parents.

I met them this October at a lesbian, bi and trans organizing training in Anshan in the Liaoning province of China where I was helping to conduct workshops on global LGBT history and organizational development.  Feng and Dou Dou (pronounced DOUGH-dough), both 23, created and maintain a popular web-based bulletin board that provides information and on-line counseling to Chinese lesbians. They were among activists from throughout Northeast China who attended the training.

Over breakfast one day, I asked Dou Dou and Feng, who requested to be identified only by their nicknames, about their plans for the future. They have been together for several years and have decided not to come out to their families. Instead, Feng plans to arrange a fake marriage with a gay male friend.  They will hold an elaborate wedding with friends and extended family, buy property together and live together. Dou Dou will stay “single”.  Feng and her gay friend will stay in their queer relationships, but maintain the facade of a heterosexual married lifestyle to their families. Dou Dou and Feng are both only children, as per China’s one child policy. They are part of a generation of children, born after the policy was enacted in 1979, who are facing severe pressure from their families to marry as they enter their mid-to-late twenties. Many are considering fake marriages, a practice which has created tremendous controversy in the Chinese queer community. Some see it as selling out, while others counter that the pressure from their family is too strong for them to bear.

When I asked Feng and Dou Dou about having children, they said that they definitely plan to have a child within the fake marriage arrangement.  The child would bear the gay man’s surname. It would call Feng, “mom”, the gay friend, “dad”, and Dou Dou, “godmother”.  But Dou Dou says she would still consider it her child. They say they wouldn’t tell the child the truth about the fake marriage until he or she becomes a teenager. Both of them see it as the only viable way for them to raise a child together.

One evening during dinner with other conference participants, someone asked if my partner and I plan to have kids.  I had traveled to China with my partner, who is Irish-Italian from South Jersey.  We answered that we were unsure, but that it was a possibility.  At that point, the three young gay men at the table literally jumped out of their chairs in their enthusiasm to volunteer themselves as sperm donors. We were a little taken aback, not quite sure what to make of it. It became clear very quickly however that they were only interested in providing sperm to inseminate my white partner, and not me. In response to their offers, we poured another round of drinks and told them we would think about it.

It turns out that Chinese people are obsessed with biracial, hapa babies. I spoke with several people in China who believe that hapa children are not only more beautiful, but also more intelligent. In Beijing, I met one couple that is actively seeking a white sperm donor.

Some lesbian couples in China who–unlike Feng and Dou Dou–are out to their families, hope to raise children together as openly queer parents.  Couples seeking to do so face significant legal and cultural obstacles. The Chinese government has actively opposed LGBT couples raising children. In 2006, it banned adoption of Chinese children by foreign gay couples, citing a stipulation that adoptive couples must be “healthy”. Also, unmarried women are not officially allowed to buy sperm from authorized sperm banks in China.

While the act of homosexuality is decriminalized in China, activists have recently reported an increase in surveillance, raids and arrests of people involved in queer organizing activities, especially in the period leading up to the Olympic Games this past summer.  Despite these challenges, the movement is growing in strength.  This November, following the training in Anshan and similar events in other cities, the first national alliance of lesbian, bi and trans organizations, representing thousands of members, was formalized in Shanghai. (Support their efforts!)

An amazing break dancing performance by two teenage trans boys at the closing ceremony of the conference in Anshan.

photo from one of the panel discussions. The banner reads, “2008 Lesbian Camp, Lesbian Networking, Anshan”

Ming Ming, from Beijing, wearing a t-shirt that says, “We demand to watch homosexual movies.” The t-shirts were created as part of an anti-censorship campaign to respond to the Chinese government’s ban of all films that refer to LGBT themes.

Survived Christmas-just barely

Forever the Grinch, this particular season of holidays naturally gets me down in a massive way, yet this time I managed to survive my negativity and bad past associations, (barring a few teary outbreaks) with a modicum of composure and some good old fashioned cheer. I spent the eve with French ex-pats, just my style, failing miserably at veganism, I had an excellent foie gras, oyster, salmon, cheese etc meal avec plenty of wine.  As I spent the Christmas eve in an airport in Paris last year on zero sleep and loads of impatience after my flight was delayed for 24 hours, this year served as an entirely more comfortable trip down memory lane. Speaking French in a “cheer” infused manner, is much more fun than violently arguing with apathetic airport employees in that language.

I spent Christmas rather contentedly in bed. Then I went to another orphan dinner at a gorgeous duplex inside an unsuspecting apt building on Jane st. Cinderella for a few hours, soon the clock struck midnight and it was time to return to the hood. Next day, I regrettably scheduled some family time in and saw Benjamin Button and ate at 10 Downing st with my mother. The highlight of the evening was clearly 10 Downing st…will talk more about this later. The new Brad Pitt movie on the other hand just goes to show that after a while talented actors, who are paid too much money, just morph into big fat losers.

The next day, i woke up sick. Just when I thought I had survived cheer week with a sufficient amount of “Spirit” I remembered that the fates were not done mocking me. Now it seems that in addition to being sick, I have put my back out again! All I want for Christmas is a free massage and a private jacuzzi. I hope your holidays were better than mine!

“Silent Light”- Review by Slate Honey

Carlos Reygadas’ ‘Silent Light’ (Stellet Licht) is a film that takes it time, carefully and with extreme poise.  Set in a Mennonite community in Northern Mexico that established its roots after WWI, ‘Silent Light’ employs the extraordinary beauty of wide rural landscapes and the rigid and quiet gestures of the Mennonites to tell a story about yearning, love and hurt.

Johan (played by Cornelio Wall Fehr) is a soft-hearted man who grapples with betraying his wife Esther (Miriam Toews) and family in his love affair with Marianne (Maria Pankratz), the woman he knows to be his heart’s true match.  The films opens with a stunning time-lapse shot that magically feels merely like an ever so gradual tilt from a black star-filled sky to a flattened horizon filling with orange light and the wild sounds of morning.  We are drawn slowly to a house where an old clock ticks loudly on the wall.  In total silence and stillness, a thin, pale and blonde family prays before their morning meal.  Johan opens his eyes to look at his wife Esther.  A moment passes.  Esther opens her eyes to look at Johan who has now closed his eyes.

The finesse of ‘Silent Light’ lies in the balance between muted emotions and erratic bursts of deep, piercing expressions handled gracefully by the largely non-actor cast.  There is a tension that lies sharp under an thick layer of peaceful-looking stoicism among the three main characters.  When each of the three bursts open, however, their pain is all too real.

Alexis Zabé’s cinematography is decadent.  Shallow focus often puts the viewer uncomfortably close to the characters, their low whispery voices resonating loudly, their odd and awkward features magnified. Characters walk out of frame or only take up only part of the frame and Zabé leaves us lingering in this negative space, among gorgeous detail whose silence speaks loudly.  The perfectly timed camera movement is extraordinarily graceful and is a pleasure to watch.  There are dozens of unbearably beautiful moments in this film thanks to Zabé’s daring style.  Zabé and Reygadas together pull the viewer into a totally self-contained world where supernatural rural beauty mirrors complex emotional landscapes; where pain lies in honesty, honesty cannot divorce itself from love, and love necessarily trembles from fear of loss.

In the end, a magical realist finale subverts tragedy as a gesture of pure love on Marianne’s part brings Johan and Esther back to one another.  The camera turns back to the sky in a last time-lapse shot almost rendering this stark Mennonite microcosm a dream-like vision from a planet far away.

It is no wonder ‘Silent Light’ won the Jury Prize at Cannes among two dozen other awards.  It takes some patience–or at least a deep breath and commitment to getting comfortable–to absorb ‘Silent Light’.  And that commitment is the beauty of great cinéma.  ‘Silent Light’ is well worth it.  See it at the Film Forum from January 7th to the 20th.

Slate greets us from Canada

By Mr Slate Honey:

Brooklyn, I miss you.  I have spent the past ten days making the rounds in Canada’s cultural capitols, Toronto and Montréal.  Oversleeping, eating meals I could never afford and immersing myself in familial catch-up and madness have been my main activities of late.  What work!  Inevitably with any short-term stay outside New York, after more than a week, I start to feel homesick for city chaos and the comforts of my wide bed.  But before quitting this country, I decided to go on a little adventure downtown.  It turned out to be more like a voyeuristic mini-voyage.  After a decadent New Year’s Eve meal of steak and lobster paired with three too many Whiskey sours, I put on my best tie and shiny new jeans and headed out to size up Toronto’s queer scene.  A friend’s recommendation led me to Cherry Bomb’s New Year’s Eve bash at the Raq, billiards hall turned lounge, on Queen Street West.
Let’s begin with a mention of the free public transport in Toronto from midnight to 4 am.  Ah, the well-organized pro-public culture here is always worth a little sigh of envy.  The 501 street car took me down Queen to my destination, a rather big club that had a sign on the door that read in big letters: This is a Gay event! Gay-friendly folks are welcome.  Inside, the dance-floor was crowded and some games were going on a couple of the dozen pool tables.  On a wide screen above the dance floor, projections of lesbian black and white porn from the 1950s intermingled with experimental video montages of Mariah dancing on a pole and Beyoncé biting down on a cigar in a three-piece suit.  The party was a good mix of folks in terms of ages, genders and ethnicities.  In general, I’ve noticed a lot of mixed-race families in Toronto and it’s little surprise since the city is ranked by the UNDP as one of the world’s most multicultural cities and annually becomes home to half of all immigrants coming to Canada.  I always get a little soft-hearted every time I spot Hapa kids and their parents—fueled by my cheeseball Hapa pride—and Toronto’s p.o.c. population being 70% Asian, there are a lot of mixed race Asian families around.
Anyway, back to the queers.  I bought a drink and headed to the DJ area to check out Torontonian cruising.  There were plenty of cuties but I felt a little pang of disappointment about peoples’ game.  I should admit that I am for the most part a shy dork save for some golden moments of flirtation with strangers.  Maybe I got my hopes up too high expecting to stumble into a super-friendly Eden of flirty queers (which my aunt and mom later insisted I would definitely have found if I had went out in Montréal).  I felt like the cruising was a little too lukewarm for my taste and the music a little too 90s club beat for my dancing feet.  So as not to be too visible a voyeur, I found a comfy spot and watched the dancing.  At one point, I could not take my eyes off a gorgeously tall, leggy person in a glittering mini-dress working it out proper with each of her dance partners.  It made me want to devote an essay to the skills of high-femme glamour.
Honestly, it was just a nice relief to be in a queer space crowded with folks grinding, friends being silly and lovers magnetically glued to one another.  As the club emptied out a little, I got up for a little booty-shaking before heading home.  Reality hit me a little too hard in the face on the free tram back to my aunt’s.  I squeezed into a car and got wedged between some obnoxious, loud, righteous drunk white boys and put a sour face on for the ride.  Well you can’t have it all, I suppose.
So, I think come summertime, I am going to have to do another round here and better scope out the Toronto gay life.  Maybe I’ll do a city-comparison and see if my aunt and mom are indeed correct about the abundant fruit in Montréal.  Until then, it’s back to Brooklyn.  I am so ready for it.
Happy New Year!

Staycation from Brooklyn

So I am away, couldn’t take anymore NYC, had to get away! No, it’s not really that, I love Brooklyn, but I am doing some dog sitting in upstate New York. I am alone with 2 sweet dogs, in the country, resting, reading, eating well. My gosh I don’t even feel like an undernourished city hipster/starving artist- almost. That’s where I’m at right now! I will be back soon and in the meantime I have a few books to report back on, plus the catalogue of things I’ve been meaning to talk about. Stand by. feel the love-the storm is passing and thank God.

TOKYO! Review-by Slate Honey

TOKYO! Is a triptych film portrait of the dense, ever-growing Japanese metropolis.  Directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho each direct a short within TOKYO! and present vastly different views of the city.

TOKYO! begins with Michel Gondry’s short INTERIOR DESIGN.  The film follows much in suit with Gondry’s past hits ETERNAL SUNSHINE and THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP as a portrait of not-perfect coupledom and the trials of partership and breaking up.  A young couple, Hiroko and Akira, move to Tokyo to discover a cramped city full of characters and a series of urban life obstacles.  INTERIOR DESIGN charts the shift in this couple’s life as Akira gains recognition as an emerging filmmaker and Hiroko becomes increasingly jealous, feeling lost and useless.  Gondry pokes fun at his own art and serves up a hilarious scene when Akira screens his experimental film at a porn theatre.  Filling the theatre with smoke from a smoke-machine as the uber-absurdist black and white film rolls, Akira is the perfect typecast of underground experimental film nerds.  As the audience leaves the theatre coughing and rolling their eyes, Akira is oblivious, emphatically engaged in conversation with a viewer, explaining “I like to have the viewers interact with my cinema.” INTERIOR DESIGN focuses on Hiroko’s struggle and Gondry brings in his trademark cartoonish magical realism in the end, transforming her physically as her sense of security and spirit gradually break down.  INTERIOR DESIGN proposes a view of partnership as a question of utility.  As Hiroko feels increasingly useless in her relationship with Akira, she becomes quite literally physically useful to a relationship with a musician—I won’t spoil the ending.  It’s always a pleasure to delve into Gondry’s magical surrealist mind and try and figure out how he manages those illusionist cinema tricks.

The second short in TOKYO!, Leos Carax’s MERDE is by far the most hilarious but also the most inaccessible of the three films.  It begins with absurdist, dark humor: a grimy demented leprechaun-like creature (played by well-known French actor Denis Lavant) emerges from a man hole and proceeds to powerwalk through Tokyo, grabbing whatever he can from pedestrians: a child’s toy, a half smoked cigarette from a businessman’s hand, chrysanthemum flowers from a bouquet that he stuffs into his mouth.  The repulsive subterranean man-monster starts worse trouble after discovering an arsenal of grenades underground and becomes a media star as Tokyo’s newest terrorist-bomber.  MERDE quickly transitions to a dramatic, philosophical foray into mass-media demonization tactics, nihilism and the ethics of convicting ‘sub-humans’.  Carax’s film successfully weaves humor and satire into an allegorical portrait of post-911morality, but the film begins to drag and becomes convoluted when a new character enters.  A French lawyer who bears resemblance to the terrorist claims to be the sole person in the world who speaks the creature’s gibberish-like language and arrives in Tokyo to represent him in a trial that could put him on death row.  Despite some split screen pizzazz, the courtroom scenes slow down the film considerably, sacrificing some interesting ethical questions of the value of life—that of the creature’s victims and of the creature himself.  MERDE ends with a little magic, proving that not all earth-bound things can be tamed by the law.

Bong Joon-Ho’s SHAKING TOKYO is the final short in this series.  It is the most streamlined of the three.  It’s simplicity makes it poetic and very effective as a short film (every filmmaker’s challenge with working in short format).  It takes as subject a hikikimori, a shut-in, who has not left his apartment in a decade.  The lush cinematography renders the man’s dark, musty apartment an enviable paradise.  Perfectly arranged stacks of pizza boxes make a wall, dust dances in a slender ray of sunlight and a beautiful clock ticks ever so patiently as the hikikimori softly describes a life utterly lonely but safe.  Japanese Academy Award nominated actor Teruyuki Kagawa plays the lead role.  His fragility reads tenderly and beautifully on-screen.  Nearly trembling at the prospect of encountering others at the door to his apartment, the man’s subtle movements foreshadow an earthquake that will shake the city and an explosion of emotion for another hikikimori he meets, an unlikely teenage love object.  Bong Joon-Ho’s ends his story with a wise moral: stray from safety (no matter how gorgeous it looks) and invite some risky passion into your life.

TOKYO! arrives in theatres in March 2009.

Bad Habits-Christy C. Road

Wow, my staycation is almost over, can you believe it? I have been so busy, listening to the sounds of dogs playing with their toys and icicles slowly dripping, hell I’ve even been reading and catching up on Bad Reality TV. Expect posts to come depicting the utter cuteness of dog gloves and the trashy hellishness of The Real Housewives of (insert geographical location, Atlanta, Orange County, NYC). This is post-post feminism.

Speaking of post-feminism, I will now launch into my review of Cristy C. Road’s Bad Habits. But first, I must establish my own lack of total impartiality. 1. I have a few casual friends, who are friends with her, this certainly doesn’t make her my friend by any stretch of the Will Smith/Kevin Beacon association laws. Nevertheless, I still feel some kind of allegiance for any friend of my friends. Except for the unfortunate situation of number 2. We once met on a couch, waiting for a reading to begin at Bluestockings. I had arrived early to read and she had as well, perhaps because she was on the bill that night. I didn’t recognize her in any way (this was over a year ago, pre-mutual friends), I had just arrived back into the city and was in the Friendly Zone, so as I recall, I tried to strike up a conversation, she gave me a pretty horrified look and proceeded to ignore me.  Do I have visible lice? Or was she on an especially bad trip that day? Who knows. So the point of this very long disclaimer is, I have one reason to look kindly upon her and one to look unkindly, so let’s just say they balance each other out and I am hereby rendered impartial again!

Whew, that’s a weight off my shoulders, on to the book. Bad Habits: A Love Story is very post-post indeed. Should we be proud of  the Cristy-resembling-let’s-assume-it-is-her protagonist for being drug crazed and on a manic search for love?  Should we apply a modicum of shame?  Or should we just look-on refusing to judge her in any way whatsoever? I’m not so sure.

The book is undeniably readable, contagious, absorbing, but is it a diary, or literature? When did books stop needing to have a point or to bestow a significant degree of wisdom? Cristy’s “I” character is sex positive, great, bi-sexual, awesome really and truly, and a person of color, who likes punk music and isn’t some trite stereotype, fabulous. Still I feel like I’m peeking at her through some window of outsider vs insider fascination. Is it enough to just be a voyeur after the cool kid at school/ uncool kid at school who decided to grow up and be an asshole to everybody as a means of healing?

Road is a great illustrator and every page that  interrupts the text with image really helps to move the story along. I like reading about this particular slice of life in New York, that wades between the queer/punk/and drug scenes, especially since much of it is based in Brooklyn. As a diary it’s juicy and at times piercingly lost, in a way that many people are and can relate to. However, I wish that it would offer some insights, on her quest for love, forgetting and self-absorbed self-annihilation, does she find anything? Should we follow her, or run in the opposite direction. Perhaps the thing to do is walk by and pretend not to see her.

I love that one constant throughout the book’s journey is Christy’s love for her friends and connection to her familial/cultural roots. The narrative is lacking in direction and there are few moments of deeper truth, but in today’s trash consumption culture, where exuding a generalized sense of disconnection and apathy is the ultimate cool, Bad Habits will allow you to join in by vicariously snorting coke through your nose ring.

Expressions Dance-Reality TV-by Natascia Boeri

Expressions Dance Company at Brooklyn Center- review by Natascia Boeri

I am proud to welcome Natascia one of our lovely new writers!

“Don’t take this personally but you were very corny,” was a comment to one of the dancers during the Q&A following the performance from a red-haired lady. The dancer didn’t seem offended and in fact agreed with her. Other adjectives that the company might have enjoyed hearing as well could have been superficial, loud, slutty, and so on, but that is to be expected when you choreograph a dance with a reality TV show as its backdrop.

Expressions Dance Company arrived from Australia, fresh and un-rested, due to libation consumption the night before, as I later found out – yet you would have never guessed from the energy the dancers kept throughout the show. And in case you started to tire of seeing sweaty, lean bodies intertwining themselves gracefully through different poses, there were photos, films, and words projected on the set pieces, accompanying the dancer’s story.

For this piece, Maggi Sietsma, the artistic director and choreographer, drew inspiration from the Russian ballet Petrushka, where a puppet-master craftily manipulates his three puppets through the stages of a tragic love triangle. This plot transforms easily into a reality TV show where contestants, despite being real people like you and me, are controlled in order to attain the highest ratings. It was this and actual reality TV shows that Ms. Sietsma wanted to confront in her production, having already tackled climate change in her previous piece,”On Thin Ice”. Turns out that they have their own version of “American Idol” in Australia – “Australian Idol.” Having strong, often-negative feelings surrounding the culture of reality TV, (maybe in part because I find it just so darn hard not to get snared into the shows when they’re on!) I was interested in seeing what issues would be brought up.

As expected, the superficiality, power, dishonesty, and sexism of today’s programs were performed and criticized during the show, with the chance to participate in a dialogue of these matters when the company sat down with the audience members afterwards. I especially enjoyed Ms. Sietsma comment that she wanted to illustrate how today’s media (she actually said “producers” but I’m taking the liberty to expand the guilt further) are manipulating puppeteers not only of the contestants but of the viewers as well. As the contest – and dance – progresses, the viewer sees the ugly truth of reality TV. Most of us are probably aware that these shows are just cheap imitations of life in the name of entertainment. However, the real problem here is how reality TV, with all its glaring sexism and ruthless stereotyping, is not only a replication of our society but also a tool of manipulation for that society – which is especially startling when one considers the young age of some of the viewers.

Other than leaving the theater with a grim outlook on our present and possible future society, I was glad to have trudged out to Brooklyn College on a cold, snowy night to experience a dance show on the reality of reality TV.

Kate Winslet-1-Slate Honey

By Mr Slate Honey

I’ve been squandering money on watching big budget films recently. My stint of Hollywood-mania included going to the movies five nights in a row over the holidays. Last night, I capped the marathon off with a last, belated stint and went to see REVOLUTIONARY ROAD—the last flick on my Holiday list.

I went to the early bird evening show with a pack of Kleenex, hoping for a dose of dysfunction that would provide catharsis. I didn’t have too many expectations but having seen THE READER (also starring Kate Winslet and which I will get to in my Part 2), I was ready for some more blonde-haired drama.

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD should be re-titled YOUR HUSBAND IS A JERK BUT YOU CAN’T DIVORCE HIM. The film is a montage of cliché scenarios that take a pre-womyn’s lib setting—the suburbs outside New York in the 1950s—as fodder for a formulaic tragic-comedy. The film begins by intercutting flashbacks of April and Frank falling in love at a party and flashes forward to a roadside fight between the now married couple after April’s embarrassing performance in a small-town play. Hence, our first piece of bait in this 2nd wave feminism feature-length promo: April gave up her acting career to be a housewife to a man with a mindless office job. So the drama unravels— unfotumately not providing catharsis so much as earaches. There is a lot of yelling in this film, Leo and Kate often bearing their teeth and getting red in the face, but it’s not always clear whether it’s worth the exhaustion.

Like a TV drama, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD relies too much on an assumption that the audience is going to be automatically sympathetic to this couple. As a result, the film does not offer enough “getting to know you” time with Frank and April. We know things were different before, (supposedly happier, exciting) but we don’t know the details. We are told that this couple was “different”—a word that gets used a lot in the film to set the duo apart from less attractive looking neighbor couples—but the film left me wondering, how different could they have been? After a slight glimmer of hope, a possible relocation of the distressed family to Europe, we watch April and Frank break down again and further unravel. Frank is a philanderer, pushy and too talkative… and pro-life. April looks gorgeous without lipstick and alternates between nervous breakdown and well-composed housewife before her tragic end.

Sam Mendes’ direction is very palpable, maybe too much so, in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. To create the 1950s “appearance is everything” vibe, Mendes directs everyone to be so stiff the actors seem as starched as their impeccably perfect costumes. The expected musical score cues make everything too obvious and dialogue is cookie-cutter, delivered with perfectly polite intonation. Winslet and DiCaprio carry too much of the perfect language skills into the breakdown scenes, taking away some potential for real-like dysfunction. With a too literal (and frankly weak) script, Mendes’ retro-AMERICAN BEAUTY prologue ends up feeling all around empty. It lacks irony and subtlety. At least in AMERICAN BEAUTY, we had a quirky aesthetic rife in the portrait of a modern day nuclear family gone dysfunctional. There was humour (ah, Kevin Spacey and your monotone delivery) and some heavy quiet moments for seriousness.

Unfortunately, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD draws too ambiguous a line between the characters’ social posturing and their real selves. There is a bit of humour in a minor character, a man fresh out of the looney bin, who becomes a regular dinner guest. He vocalizes inner dialogue at proper sit-down dinners, sparking tense scenes with provocations intended to catch fire. His provocations are funny to watch but he is too obvious a device. His presence seems surreal, and for this film that stays well within block-buster formulas, he is out of place. Well, needless to say, I walked out of the theatre disappointed. (And $12.50 short!) I didn’t even get to use my Kleenex because frankly, I couldn’t connect to this particular sob story.

Inauguration 2009-Andrea Chalupa

I want to extend a warm Brooklyn Socialite welcome to the illustrious Andrea Chalupa.

Letter to Myself, 2004- by Andrea Chalupa

My first job out of college was community organizer. Now that’s a hot term. Back then, for me, in the 2004 presidential election it was a duty. For my country, for the world. Every morning I was getting up to keep George W. Bush from getting re-elected. If he won another term, he would be getting away with it–away with starting the wars, putting our country into some dark shell of its former self. Paul Krugman’s right, we cannot ignore the crimes of the Bush administration even if crisis forces us to move forward.

I fought for my country in 2004. I didn’t fight for it like my former college roommate is fighting now in Iraq, but I lived and breathed something I believed was a matter of life and death. Bush smelled of Armageddon since the first election. We couldn’t give him a second term. Ironically, before graduating college and joining the 2004 campaign, I read a book that nearly shocked me out of my young idealism. It’s called Addicted to War, a comic book about the U.S. military industrial complex and its widespread impact and control on the world. This book is devastating, each footnoted fact lifts back the veil of ignorant bliss. Reading it made me realize that Bush can’t be defeated. I even called my dad in a near panic. He did his best Yogi Berra speech, using one of his favorite sayings: have the courage of your convictions. So I went heart first into the 2004 election.

The campaign was amazing. The long, long hours. Being in at 7am, staying sometimes until 1am, later. Working closely and intensely with dynamic, hilarious people, doing the craziest things like office dodgeball, because there’s no loonier high than lack of sleep. The drinking, the sex, the Melrose Place gossip, the alliances and betrayals. I can’t tell you how strange a site it was to see young people in their pajamas on a Sunday going to brunch, leading normal lives, when I had already been turbo-productive since 8am. You learn to make five minutes go a long way working on a campaign. Every vote counts so you spend your time trying to reach the most people possible. I feel bad for the men and women who lost or nearly lost their boyfriends and girlfriends to campaigns. Working on one is a special experience, the stuff of novels. The only time I woke up with a hangover was the day after the election–Bush had won. Never been so hungover.

I wouldn’t say I lost my ideals after that, I just needed to do something other than think about governance. I had been working in politics since I was sixteen. Okay, I felt dead inside. I chose the private sector route, over a job on Capital Hill or at a non-profit. I didn’t hitch my star to that name that was being buzzed about even back then, Barack Obama. I thought: Bush won again, it’s obviously meant to be. The apathy set in. There’s this condition called learned helplessness where the sufferer feels resistance is futile. Why vote? That’s what I heard so many times while campaigning. Why vote, when corporations, the C.I.A., Dick Cheney decides elections for us? Why vote? I was struggling to shove my idealism down the throats of apathetic voters. Incensed by their cynicism, their laziness, I soon became one after we lost. I suffered learned helplessness along with the rest of the country.

And then came Barack Obama. I admit I didn’t fall in love right away, it took me until the general election to dive into that kool-aid and get it. I guess I was annoyed at the wave of support he got because he was some rock star, a Messiah, when that shouldn’t matter. John Kerry should have gotten the same amount of support in 2004 because of what was at stake if Bush got four more years, and he did, all because John Kerry couldn’t give a speech that wasn’t the color of oatmeal or make a decision without a focus group. I resented the Obamamaniacs for not being there sooner, for needing a rock star before they got that active, that instrumental. I sat this election out, knowing full well what I was missing, and I was jealous that the fight was so much more electrifying this time around because of the leader. Though I am thrilled Obama has turned so many people on to public service–he isn’t the only one we need right now.

Today I go to Washington to experience the inauguration, to be with my fellow Americans. And today I write a letter to my former self, the one who lost a four-year relationship working long hours on that campaign, who felt so sure of victory on that campaign, who learned to stop worrying and love John Kerry, on that campaign. I write that letter to you because since then, the impossible has happened. And it’s going to have to keep on happening to turn this world around. What I’m saying is, don’t go in fear, don’t go in isolation, open your heart to the impossible.

Las Vidas Possibles- Review by Slate

By Slate Honey

Las Vidas Posibles (Possible Lives) is a beautiful, slow-moving film by Argentian director Sandra Gugliotta.  It follows Carla in her journey of loss and denial, as she searches for her disappeared husband, Luciano, in the breathtaking and desolate landscapes of Patagonia.  The morning after his birthday party, Luciano takes off from their apartment quietly and with an air of regret.  Carla wakes up suddenly just as the door of the elevator slams shut, shocked by an intuitive sense of knowing something is wrong.  Days pass and Carla becomes increasingly frantic over Luciano’s absence and her unanswered calls to his cell phone.  She decides to take matters into her own hands after being met with skepticism from the police about beginning a search for him.  Carla drives to the south where Luciano regularly travels for work as a geologist.  In a sleepy coastal town, Carla discovers a man named Luis who bears an eerie resemblance to Luciano.  Carla begins to follow Luis, slowly seducing him under false pretenses just as other evidence emerges about the truth of Luciano’s disappearance.

Director Sandra Gugliotta leaves all matters of interpretation in the viewers’ hands.  Things are unspoken, mood is everywhere thick in the film and and we have only the characters’ emotive expressions to piece together this mystery.  Perhaps Luciano has long lived a double life, sometimes as Carla’s husband in Buenos Aires and sometimes as Luis, husband to another woman in Patagonia.  Perhaps Luciano suffered some accident and lost his mind and memory, becoming Luis and forgetting Carla and his former life.  Perhaps the strange resemblance between the men is merely a coincidence that is convenient to Carla’s holding onto a delusion that will save her from facing Luciano’s death.  Whatever the interpretation, Las Vidas Posibles centers on the experience of loss, the silences and heart aches of disconnected intimacy, and those who wander through their own lives, quietly dreaming of other possibilities.

The extremely subtle messages of Gugliotta’s beautiful and mysterious film take a while to sink in.  Gugliotta favors complex emotional realities and psychological subjectivity to clear conclusions.  Las Vidas Posibles closes with an understated full circle.  At the beginning of the film, we see a man (Luis/Luciano) sanding the side of a large boat in the early morning fog.  He sits down for a moment bearing a look of deep sorrow, his eyes moist with tears.  We do not know this man, or the possibilities of what may be hurting him.  At the end of the film, we see the man again, raising the sail of his boat and drifting off to sea, pensive and stoic.  Even now, we still cannot clearly locate what inner turmoil burdens this man.  Gugliotta leaves us with an emotional question that is more important than possible answers:  Where is it that we go when we leave others in our silence?

Las Vidas Posibles is playing at the MoMA as part of Global Lens 2009 until January 30.

Fader/One Step Beyond Party-SM

By Shannon Mustipher

I like to get out every now and again to shake it and to pretend that I am still one of the ‘cool kids’.  The winter chill has been putting a serious cramp on my dance moves  however, as I have sadly been out only a handful of times since the holidays. I didn’t have to think too hard when I got an invite from DJ Bianca to hear her spin at  Fader’s Museum of  Natural History, One Step Beyond party. I decided that I HAD to be there! The fact that the venue was uptown, far away from my downtown haunts of choice didn’t dissuade me.  In fact, I was curious to see who else would show up to the event.

I was not disappointed:  there were yuppies, upper west siders in loubotins and designer garb, a smattering of arty hipsters in tight jeans and funky eyewear, a fierce – looking group of  lesbians, and adorably spindly gay boys who made sure to look cute, while busting out hot moves.  While the bulk of the crowd was very down to earth and non-pretentious, there was enough fabulousity to keep things interesting, without being obnoxious.   It wasn’t too crowded ( maybe the weather was a factor ?) There were just enough people to make it feel full and happening without inducing claustrophobia, a common hazard in Manahattan party spaces.    The Museum’s planets exhibition was an excellent setting for the event, lending the proceedings an aura of futuristic, space age coolness.  As I’d hoped, Bianca’s set was a nice mix of electronica, hip hop and danceable indie rock; there was a little something for everyone.  She did a good job of transitioning from one phase of her set to the next, giving party goers ample space to switch gears between dancing, people watching, and drink grabbing .  Bianca was followed by Todd Sweeney, who benefited from a loose and warmed up crowd, which broke out into pockets of wild and energetic dancing not long after he took to the tables.

One Step Beyond is a fun place to go with 10 of your closest friends.  The venue and the music offer something of interest for everyone, and plenty of room for you and your gang to set up camp in your own private corner of the cosmos and party like you’re the only ones in a  tricked out space age fantasy of your own making.  One Step Beyond will no doubt become a regular stop on many a party – goer’s circuit.

Salmon Rushdie,Irshad Manji, Morality

At the 92 St Y, on Sunday night, I heard Irshad Manji, aka “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare”, interview Salmon Rushdie, aka Padma Lakshmi’s womanizing ex-husband, aaka one of the greatest living writers. The subject of their chat was Moral Courage. In fact, it was the first conversation in a series started by Manji, which aims to tackle the subject of ethical fortitude from several different angles. Manji, a reformist Muslim, questioned Rushdie, an Indian born devout Atheist, about the effects of the Fatwa, which Ayatollah Khomeini passed against him after the publication of his book, The Satanic Verses.

At the time of the book’s release, Islamic fundamentalists took offense at his descriptions of the prophet Mohamed, and the circumstances of his life. The fatwa called for the death of Rushdie, and when it was issued there were serious attempts to assassinate him, initiated by the government of Iran. As a result of this it was dangerous for Rushdie to travel to the Middle East, imposing a form of exile upon the man, although he was already living in the west. The attacks and threats even spilled over into England and were also used to intimidate his publisher and other colleagues. Rushdie was educated in India, then England and has since lived in Pakistan and here in the United States

A lot of my friends don’t like the man. Rushdie although well-versed in upper-class charm, has often been called sexist and elitist for good reason. However, like that old Woody Allen, it’s too hard to hate him, no matter how much I try. He is a great writer. His brilliant way with words is matched by his lucid mind. It is a rare gift to possess the ability to craft such unique characters and give them appropriate language styles, distinguishing one from the next so effectively that the reader can really get lost in the dreamscape of the novel, without remembering to be cynical. Agreeing to judge the artist, above the man (no matter how much he reminds me of Bridshead Revisited), let us move on to what the Muslim-Canadian-Feminist-Lesbian said to the Indian/British/American- Sexist-Atheist-Booker Prize winning Writer…

Although you could sense a note of resistance between the two, there also seemed to be a significant amount of respect flowing both ways. They both oppose censorship and bemoaned the way that our society has slinked into an Orwellian dystopia. They spoke against the type of moral relativism and political-correctness, which dissuades people from speaking out against things like honor killings, stonings and female genital mutilation. Rushdie said that in the past 20 years people have become more afraid to speak out about things. However, he also called our contemporary culture, “a culture of offense.” He claimed that because of the explosion of identity politics, people now define themselves by what they’re angry about. “Who are you if you’re not pissed off by anything?” Rushdie said.

He seems to want it both ways, and maybe we all do. One should be able to shout at someone else for offending their cultural, religious or gender identity, expecting a degree of “tolerance” or political-correctness. Yet, people should not just accept and respect each other, because their practices fit under the veil of some sort of culture. Now this is tricky terrain. I think the main point is that we can disagree, and even vocalize this, but the danger comes when we back our views with violence, whichever side we’re on. But again, the danger, If the US violently intervenes, for instance, when the Taliban oppress and kill women, this is an example of not tolerating or succumbing to moral relativism. When they attack us as infidels, is it the same example reversed? It is as though they are saying, we are Right, so we can use might, they are wrong, and so they can’t. Maintaining a sense of moral superiority is nice, but somehow not an effective argument against others who believe they are also superior. For all his pretty words, I’m curious as to how Rushdie would respond to this, and for all of her moral courage, how would Manji? I welcome their responses.

Art Fagery with Slate Honey

I attempted some art fag-ery last Friday, as it seems I do best at activity-driven procrastination when I am under the pressure of Grad school deadlines.  My first stop was the Whitney, and apparently my first task was to haggle the pretty boy art students at reception for my tickets.  Skinny mini attitude is best rocked at the club, I think, where bitchy can look cuter with your new haircut and horn-rimmed glasses combo.  But hey, what do I know, I like to remain only a visitor to the art fag universe.

My friend and I were first drawn to the multicolored kid’s room on the ground floor which houses Alex Bag’s brilliant installation video.  Planted ourselves on a bright yellow rectangle and nestling our feet in the faux polar bear shag carpet, we slipped into a trippy world of hyper consciousness.  In the style of 70s era children’s show “The Patchwork Family,” Bag places her super imposed selves on screen in conversation with a witty red dragon puppet whose wake-up call commentary provides hilarious punch to the self-deprecating humor.  Dressed in various costumes, Bag and the dragon discuss dysfunction, depression and denial as their background melts together images of Renaissance art and trippy graphics.  Every so often,  Bag’s ghost appears as a semi-transparent double that hovers creepily around and upon her as she talks about how the ghost is able to surpass the limits of her body in a way she herself cannot.  Cutaways from this existential dialogue include David Bowie covers performed by a tired-looking man in a wheelchair surrounded by children who stand and sit awkwardly around him and clips from “The Patchwork Family” in which Bag’s mother was a host.

The video has a slow pace and parts of it drag on–in particular, the Bowie covers.  While other segments are straightforward in their symbolism, the most complex and layered segment is Bag’s exchange with the dragon and her ghost.  Bag’s different characters and the dragon play counterpart to each other as if they are each separate parts of her mind–conscious, sub-conscious and ego.  The dialogue is deep and witty, coming from a place of pain.  However, Bag does not use her multi-media space as an emotional dumping ground.  She is careful to critique her own self-indulgence and adds a broader critique on artistic navel gazing.  At moments, the video offers advice to children that feels deeply reflective and tinged with regret.  Bag’s warped children’s show is an adult arena for processing but it brings to mind an adolescent emotional absorption that feels really universal and eerily familiar.

After watching Alex Bag’s piece, my friend and I strolled through the rest of the museum.  Lynda Benglis’ sprawling latex formation in the “Synthetic” show struck me as beautifully conceived.  I was also intrigued with one of Elad Lassry’s 16 mm films in which actors sit on a two-dimensional painted surface and appear inside a three-dimensional space.  When we got to Alexander Calder’s moving sculptures, I realized I was already exhausted.  Amidst the tinkling of small weights wandering freely through the air to hit bottles and metal, I took a rest to gather some energy for the next leg of the art day.

We headed to Rush Arts Gallery for the opening of “Latitude”.  The work in “Latitude” explores mixed cultural identity, homeland as an unstable concept, and deconstructing fixed identities and definitions of authenticity.  The pieces range in medium with photography, sculpture, and mixed-media installations.  The artists in the show include Sung Jin Choi, Brendan Fernandes, Mona Kamal, Sungmi Lee, Vered Sivan and Jessica Vaughn.  Packed tight with gorgeous folks buzzing in conversation, there wasn’t much space to walk around and get deep into the work.  Already art-fagged out, I was perfectly content to sip on some wine, chat with the few kids I knew, gawk at the beauties and absorb “Latitude” more conceptually than anything else.  I am particularly interested in visual art and writing that explores notions of identity along cultural and political faultlines, so I’ll have to return for another closer look.

Culture Clash: Our City Dreams, Beirut, the Third Mind

I have been overwhelmingly silent lately on the blog front. It’s not that I haven’t been going out, I have. It is just that I have been overwhelmed by stimuli, potential topics, definite un-topics and when I’ve tried to sit down and review I found that the reasons were wrong.

So how about a fresh start in this fresh weather. Digest style: I want to give some shout outs to the culture I’ve been sampling lately.  I saw a great film, truly beautiful, at the Film Forum, called Our City Dreams. It tracks 5 female artists, through a year or so in their lives , recording each artists relationship with the city. The director, Chiara Clemente, profiles Kiki Smith, Swoon, Ghada Amer, Nancy Spero and Marina Abramovic. A jazz soundtrack supports the film and the cinematography is infectious, it reminded me of super 8, rainy, home video.  Although each artist is in a different stage of their life and career, all seem to be at a stage where they are receiving lots of props.  Swoon goes from street art to a show at Deitch to having work at MOMA, while Marina Abramovic has a major retrospective at the Guggenheim. Ghada Amer is probably the most interesting character to watch. As she hand stitches and weaves large canvases, she tells us that she was very depressed before she became an artist. It saved her life. Kiki Smith, the daughter of a successful artist also recalls that she started to work only in her late 20s after her father died. She couldn’t take herself seriously as an artist until then. Abramovic  details her fascinating performance art-making practices. They involve starvation, cold and self-injury.

A few days after the film,  I found myself at the Guggenheim myself for the opening of The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia. Go see it and tell me what you think! I am not so sure myself. I enjoyed seeing an annotated manuscript page from The Waste Land and some of Ginsberg’s old photos, not to mention a few beautiful Asia inspired paintings by American Artists. My friend however, thought that discussion around cultural appropriation was dangerously absent from the exhibition.

Well, speaking of un-apologetic cultural appropriation, it’s on to Beirut. I have to say that the concert at BAM on Friday night was not only beautiful, but it was also lovely, harmonic, poetic, inspiring. If I could have removed most of the shouting hipster audience from the scene it would have been even better, but hey the band themselves are hipster-esqe so not all Williamsburg-dwellers are bad. The crew of young guys, headed by a 22 year old Angel in plaid, are a band that sounds consistently like gypsy music to me, yet def. delves into brit-pop, french chanteuse  and Indigenous sounds that span multiple continents. I’m not a hater, and I won’t bag them for sounding like pretty Americans, who’ve spent some time camping in Bulgaria.  I love their music and have to take the culture clashing for what it is.

-Robyn. Brooklyn Socialite in residence again.

Serbis review-Slate Honey

Review by the venerable Slate Honey

Brillante Mendoza takes a porno theater ironically named the Family in the Filipino city of Angeles as the bleak setting for a drama about family dysfunction and sexual dystopia in his film “Serbis.” The Pinedas have a pile of problems to deal with: Mama (grandmother Pineda) has taken her husband to court for abandoning the Pinedas for a new wife and family, a boy taken in by the Pinedas has impregnated his distraught girlfriend, the theatre is physically falling apart and no longer is making a good living, the father is generally despondent and useless, another boy taken in by the family to work as the projectionist is adolescent bait for the mom, and a teenage sister (the first to appear in the film, naked and flirting with her own image in a mirror) seems a nuisance to her mother just for being around.

The frenetic camera work and terribly recorded, barely audible soundtrack are major distractions from the overload of dramatic set-ups in this gritty film. Following the characters who run around frantically from fairly mundane situation to situation, the camera movement often feels nauseating and the suspenseful pace feels forced. Add to that cuts that seem to linger without good reason and a hodgepodge structure. The film’s possible saving grace lies in the performances which are rendered with seriousness and the believability of the dreary setting. The choice of using the truly dilapidated porno theatre offers the possibility of interesting socio-cultural commentary.

Unfortunately, “Serbis” does not take the bait in my opinion, instead relying on thickly-lain shock value, forced suspense and aesthetic realism to carry the film. After the film abruptly ended with a post-production trick (the film disintegrates on screen as if burning before our eyes), I was left with huge questions about Mendoza’s intentions an skepticism about his strong messages about sexuality, queerness and dysfunction.

Mendoza juxtaposes and relates the Pineda family and the queer theatre attendees in different webs of desire. Grandmother Mama and her daughter play-flirt with regulars to keep them coming back. The teenage daughter happily trails a sex worker on the grand staircase, learning hip-swinging moves and ultimately getting slapped on the face by her mother for it. The projectionist unemotionally accepts blowjobs from a sex worker. Mendoza makes a collage of the characters sidling queers and sex workers (the supposed degenerates of society) with the family members seemingly trapped in their poverty and unhappiness. The intimacy between these parallel worlds and the intermingling of the worlds becomes a place of tension.

I wonder what Mendoza’s intentions are in his portrait of the queers, queens and trannies of the Phillipines. Who are they beyond symbolism for hetero dysfunction? Sexuality and queer expression is distinctly different in many parts of Southeast Asia where the transgender sex worker community is in some ways more visible (though undoubtedly equally as oppressed and unsupported in society as in the West). To portray this community, to follow the girls (and also the queens) in their comfort zone, demands, in my opinion, a complex rendering of characters. “Serbis” is so focused on the hetero family losing its mind and means in this broken down theatre, it only offers glimpses of a free-spirited world of queers who come to the theatre to hang out and make their own living. Part of me wonders if I am too skeptical and if Mendoza intends a portrait of hetero dysfunction so caught up in itself and resigned to a dark fate that it dismisses and loses sight of the light-heartedness and contentment of the queer world around it.

The last scene of the film gave me reason to land on a more skeptical view. In it, a boy and a john sit on the verandah of the Family theatre chatting. Suddenly, a hole appears at the center of the image and the film burns and melts away as the soundtrack becomes warped. Mendoza’s last trick seems to imply that queerness is the root of the Pinedas’ sinful disintegration. “Serbis” is playing at the Angelika until February 12th.

August Osage County

I finally saw August Osage County and I have to say it was pretty damn brilliant. It makes my dysfunctional family look OK after all. Grandma’s a pill-popping drug addict, mom and dad are getting divorced, but pretending to be still happily coupled, and mom’s 2 sisters are perfectly wacky. One is married to a sleazy republican type who’s trying to sleep with mom and dad’s 14 year old daughter. The other is sleeping with her cousin, or wait is he her brother?

All the madness takes place around a well-lit and seamlessly designed 3-story house set. The drama begins when grandpa goes off missing and soon turns up drowned in his favorite fishing lake. Suicide? A very Desperate call for help?  Whatever it is this event gets the whole family up in arms, including an excessively grand, great-aunt,  her son(the one who’s sleeping with his cousin) and her obese, still very warm and reasonable husband. Oh, and they also have a Native American housekeeper. who peaceably witnesses it all.

I won’t spoil the ending but suffice it to say, the drama is convincing and the tenuous lines between self-determination and family responsibility are clearly illuminated. Plus a lot of (fake?) whiskey is consumed on stage!

Now playing on Broadway.

STF-William Greaves Tribute

If you don’t already know who William Greaves is, here is the background, plagiarized from myself via Flavorpill:

“Tonight, Thom Power’s weekly documentary series, Stranger than Fiction, pays tribute to the “Dean of Black Documentary,” William Greaves. Famous for producing the PBS series Black Journal and for his feature film, Ali the Prize Fighter, Greaves has consistently expanded the perimeters of African-American filmmaking. Longtime Spike Lee editor Sam Pollard joins a panel with Eyes on the Prize director Orlando Bagwell and Elvis Mitchel, co-creator of The Black List to discuss Greaves’ contributions. This night of tribute is presented in collaboration with the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.”

Now for a round up of the evening:

Let me start in the middle, or er um, the end. When the screenings finished and the panel was winding down, Thom introduced William Greaves, who had all the while been sitting quietly in the back of the cinema. Greaves said, “Thank you all for coming, I had no idea there were so many people interested in and still following my work.” He also said that he is and has always been concerned about the state of our country.

This concern is evident in his work. We had the privilege of watching black and white clips from his early films, including Emergency Ward from 1959, Still a Brother and The First International Festival of African Arts. The Dean of Black cinema has definitely covered many subjects of great social importance.  In these early films alone,  he tackles mis-treatment of the ill, the mentality of the Black middle class, police brutality and a history of the arts, which focuses on African, and African American roots.

Next, Thom screened a segment from Ali the fighter, in which Muhammad Ali gears up for a fight with Joe Fraser. Ali comments that people have never seen anything like him before, He is a witty, fast-talking, fighter. He also notes that people hate him because he’s black, because of his religion and for the fact that he avoided the draft.

The clip, which I would say sparked the most curiosity from the audience was a scene from Symbiopschotaxiplasm: Take One. According to a comment made by one of Greaves collaborators, which appears in the film itself, ” The film has no determinable plot whatsoever.” This may sound like a bad thing but the little slice of it that I saw looked brilliant. He collaborated with Steve Buscemi on part 2 1/2, who was also in the audience tonight.

The panel of Black male filmmakers, editors, and producers was extremely appreciative of Greaves, as they showered their thanks on him for the role he played in mentoring  and inspiring them. I exchanged a friendly nod with Buscemi (in my mind a terrific actor) in the hallway and a brief hello with Sam Pollard (ditto on editor)  and the women from Full Frame, who traveled to New York to be at this special tribute. Another great night at Stranger than Fiction.

L’isola Disabitata: A Night at the Opera-Ray Wofsy

This article was written by the wonderful Ray Wofsy

2/18/09- Joseph Haydn’s L’isola disabitata (Desert Island) opens with two sisters, Costanza and Silvia, marooned on a deserted island.  They immediately draw you into their  isolated existence with their gorgeous voices, dramatic lyrics, and the accompaniment of the orchestra.  From the way that they describe their hatred of men, the audience knows it is only a matter of time before men will arrive on their island paradise/prison…

This Gotham Chamber Opera collaboration with Mark Morris broke my operatic expectations in more ways than one.  I had come expecting a traditional tale of love, heartbreak, and reconciliation, but found that this piece pushed those boundaries in exciting ways.  As with all art, the audience can take from it whatever they want, and I’m sure that people left with a wide range of interpretations.  Some might have departed thinking that this was a beautiful story of love, others that it was two-dimensional and cliché , but I left thinking that it showed the beauty of love, while simultaneously poking fun at romance.  Comic moments punctuated the tragic and romantic scenes, keeping the audience laughing and seeming to point to the following notion: love is true, but it is also funny and perhaps formulaic.  I was impressed that this opera was so arresting, but at the same time did not seem to take itself too seriously.

There were other surprises in the production.  Considering Mark Morris’s fame and success as a choreographer (he formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980, has worked extensively in opera and ballet and won many awards), there was not a lot of dance in this piece.  The singers did use their movements to create drama and beauty within the sparse set, but the focus seemed to be much more on their lyrics and facial expressions than on their body language.  A more positive surprise was that two of the four actors cast in this 1779 traditional Italian opera were African American.  Admittedly, I have not been to the opera since I was seven years old and living in Boston, but this was a refreshing change from the all-white casts I have seen in my limited operatic experiences.  I was also pleased that the Italian lyrics were translated and projected in English above the stage.  This helped me follow what was happening but was also easily ignored when I wanted to just be absorbed in the drama unfolding on the stage.

In the end, I can think of no way I would have rather spent a cold, rainy February night than at L’isola disabitata.  This piece’s exploration of love, friendship, heartbreak, and different ways of viewing the world continues to be inspiring and thought provoking more than two hundred years after it was written.  Was the island a paradise?  A prison?  Was love the savior?  The comic relief?   The singers, artists, orchestra, and directors deserve credit for making this play so striking.  I only hope that I, like this play, can continue to laugh through the seriousness of life and love.

Matha Stewart-Living

Martha Stewart has an amazing ability to ignore any question that she doesn’t want to answer. She is a walking talking-point, anecdote heavy, she will spin almost any question into either a product plug or a self-aggrandizing comment. I can’t really hate on her for doing this though, after all she is a brand. Here is a summary of my favorite Live-Martha Stewart-Living quotes from last night at the 92 Street Y:

When asked what her approach to time-management is, the guru of healthy living said,
“I get up really early and I go to bed really late. Sleep is just not that important to me. It’s not that important, it’s secondary for me, no it’s tertiary.”

When asked if she is tough to work for,

“I have people who have worked for me in my home for 25 years. I have cats who have worked for me for 17 years. That is a job you know, they do work. My dogs have there own blog now, did you know that?”

When asked to respond to comments made about her on Gawker,

“Oh Gawker, do you know how many page views they get? Only about 20, 000 page views a day!” To the interviewer she said, “Only people like you read Gawker. Do you do that on company time? I don’t read Gawker, it’s a waste of my time.”

About TV news,

“I prefer to read newspapers, TV news needs to get better, I get bored when I watch it.”

About the value of being a locavore, she referred to Lamb from New Zealand as, “Soaked in oil,” agreeing with her vegetarian daughter that it is better to buy local.

Concerning  how he market will be a few months from now, she said something to the effect of,  ‘If things turn out the way we think they will, there will be a lot of money to be made.’

After jail, and the plummeting value of stock in her company, she remains optimistic. The more inspiring gems of wisdom that she shared with us were her conviction to reform the prison system, details about the Martha Stewart Living center that she funded/founded in Mount Sinai Hospital  and one final tidbit: not only will Martha, “sweep the floor if there is no one else there to do it,” but she also has a habit of  stopping of at 86th and 3rd for her treat of coconut milk and a hot dog. If you see her there, say hi.

Moody from Drinking?-Rant

Hey Guys,

I’ve missed you, its time for an irreverent ranting session, hold on to your hats. After recently beginning a residency as a Blog editor in training at an institution of repute, which will remain nameless,  I have to admit that my head is sorta spinning. It’s not only that, my personal life, which will also remain a somewhat secret is also spinning a bit as well. What was constant and weekly has now become irregular, while what was freelance has become institutionalized. While I remain cryptic, I have to reflect on some of the comments that were hurled at me last night in a series of conversations with drunk friends. Note to all: Avoid being sober, while surrounded by drunk friends, especially if you’re given to fits of introspection at such times.

In fact, I’ve noticed this to be something of a problem more than once lately. As if I’ve been unwittingly placed inside a scene in the B film What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas, even though 1. I have never seen this film actually and 2. My Brooklyn life is not aesthetically similar to Vegas in any way…ok, but the point is, that ( and I hope this is ranty enough for you!) I keep finding myself, who has the alcohol tolerance of an old sailor, in bars and cabs at parties etc with friends, lovers, strangers who are in a significantly altered state, while I’m straight sober- almost-but not sober enough to know when to not engage- this is the tragic flaw. So, I find myself taking these people seriously, when it  would probably be best to expect less. But, if I can’t have genuine interactions with people while drinking then why drink at all?

This perhaps is a watershed moment.

Wow, I feel a detox coming on. So to calm my raging moods, feelings of disappointment, excitement etc, this time I will drink an orange juice or something, cause clearly the booze are not working.

Joseph O’Neill and James Wood at the Yale Club by Ella Fitzsimmons

Here is a warm welcome to another wonderful Citizen of the World, Ella Fitzsimmons…

Held at the comically WASPy Yale Club, Cambridge University in New York’s “A conversation with James Wood and Joseph O’Neill” narrowly escaped being a love-fest between the critic and the PEN/Faulkner award winner.

No stranger to controversy, famed critic Wood spoke appreciatively of O’Neill’s novel, while pleasantly but firmly defending his views on literature, notably under fire from the likes of Zadie Smith and literary magazine (n +1).

Wood’s approach to literary criticism has been described as ‘aesthetic’ and ‘unideological’ , a classification appreciatively re-iterated by O’Neill. (Though surely not having an ideology is an ideology??).  Agreeing, Wood seemed bewildered by the fact that he’s seen as the standard bearer for Realism in contemporary fiction.
Netherland has been caught in the crossfire between Wood and Smith. O’Neill was surprised by the appearance of Smith’s piece about Netherland in The New York Review of Books in November, as the magazine had already reviewed the book. “Then someone told me ‘You know she’s only getting at James Wood, right?” O’Neill smiled.

Nevertheless, O’Neill, a former lawyer, claimed to be pleased by the ‘multiple entrances to the book’. (A small part of my cynical heart suspected that he was pleased by the controversy. But he seems like a nice guy, so I’m trying to be good about it.)

Emphasizing that he did not try to re-write The Great Gatsby, O’Neill admitted that halfway through the seven year slog that went in to Netherland, he recognized parallels between it and Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.  A tacit agreement with Wood’s reading of the book as a work of post-colonial fiction, rather than a “post- 9/11” novel, perhaps?

Toward the end of the evening, O’Neill touched on how the internet-created, direct relationships with readers could become potentially problematic for writers, resulting in crippling self-consciousness.  This would have been an interesting point to discuss with Wood – as one of the underlying issues in the conflict between Wood and Smith et al is where the authority to criticize and appreciate literature stems from . Is the “Academy” still in charge, or literary criticism being democratized by the internet?  Sadly, the assorted guests were more interested in asking O’Neill about his inclusion of graphic sex scenes, and whether or not he liked the Costner film “Field of Dreams” – and when I discovered that I was much nerdier than a bunch of septuagenarians, I grabbed my last free drink and ran off.

Girls Like Us-STF-Examined Life-Twitter-Zoe Leonard

The pace of my life is accelerating all too quickly and its hard for me to keep up with myself, aghhh, that sentence doesn’t make sense, edit, delete comma, insert quote marks, no parenthesis stop, no, just talk! So yes, rather than get the editor’s blues I’m going to speak freely, in an at times sloppy state of mild dishevelment. Let’s go:

So I was in the sauna at the gym on Sunday when I overheard some girls talking about kicking winter’s ass, and facing the last snow storm and just hitting march right out of the ballpark, whoa! I was inspired, I realized I must apply this go-get-em attitude to all things in life. I’ll let you know how that goes, so far not perfectly.

Next topic: Today I joined Twitter and people are starting to follow me, you can too, my user name is BSrobyn. That stands for Brooklyn Socialite Robyn, not that card game Robyn, or ok, out with it, Bull Shit Robyn. Def. not that.

Topic 3: Girls Like Us. This is a great film from the late 90′s that I saw at Stranger than Fiction last night. Oh, how I love STF, I finally found a club that would have me as its member (this is a Marx Brothers reference, if you don’t get it, you can’t join the club!). The documentary made by a lovely lady couple, tracks 4 teenagers from the time they are 13-14 until they are 17-18. The girls, who all live in South Philly, speak candidly about sex, childbirth, their relationships with their family and friends and their goals in life. This film won Sundance back in the day and it’s easy to understand why. Like Trouble the Water it sort of magically captures those tragedies and joys of life, which are often rendered mundane, as people avert their eyes to experiences of “othered” social groups.  The 4 girls, 2 white, 1 black and one South Asian all seemed to struggle to define themselves independently of their relationships with men. While, their parents and guardians strove to keep them on a track towards college and career. 3 of the women, now pushing 30, joined us at the IFC center after for a Q & A. They all seem to have turned out quite well and consider their experience being in the film to have been enriching and not exploitative.

On the way out of the theatre I saw Astra Taylor the director of Examined Life, which is an excellent film that I saw last week in preview. I feel somewhat ill-equipped to review it properly as I missed the first 20 minutes, but I will just say that Cornel West, who was one of the philosophers that Taylor interviewed, was completely amazing. He spoke fully and freely about every subject from Jazz to Nihilism. See it now at the IFC center! West and Taylor will be there in person for a Q&A after tomorrow’s show.

Finally, Zoe Leonard. I somehow faced the dreaded subway for a really long haul as I hot tailed it up to 155th to check out Zoe Leonard’s show at the Hispanic Society. Yesterday I met a cartographer. Cartographer, if you’re reading this, hello. I met a cartographer and I saw this collection of old maps, which Leonard curated at the Dia at the Hispanic Society. There is something Mystical about maps, quietly stunning, reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth, which by the way is one of my favorite books (if you have read this and love it, you can be in the club). Leonard also had an exhibition of her photographs, which captured the East Village as it was changing, through the mapping of storefronts and charting of the journey that the products in those stores might take on as they enter a third world market. Reverse globalization, recycling consumerism. Interesting ideas. Yesterday I met a cartographer. The filmmaker Gregg Bordowitz spoke about Leonard’s exhibition on Saturday, his films sound like something that I would be fascinated by, but I haven’t seen them yet, so hold on. Hold on.

Word of the Day-Twoosh

Spending time in the office, I learned a new word yesterday, which I thought I’d share with those not yet in the know:

Twoosh:

A twoosh, reminiscent of the Nike Swoosh, is a slam dunk tweet, in other words a tweet that uses exactly 140 characters, which is the official limit on twitter.

If you’ve learned any exciting words today, hit me back!

Brianwave @ RMA with Miranda July & George Bonanno

After the Fountain art Fair, which this is one of my fav photos from:

I started wondering along the piers down to 17th street for Miranda July at the Rubin, when I saw this lovely couple. There is nothing quite like artstar hipsters in Love, except of course, me in love.

With this in mind I continued on and found my press seat, in front of a couple of my other press/real-life buds. They left early and when I asked them why after, they said the talk was pretty terrible. I couldn’t have agreed less, so I just said, “oh.”

This is what I thought about it:

As part of the Brainwave festival , which according to the Rubin, “explores how art, music and meditation affect the human mind,” Miranda July was paired up with a neuropsychologist called George Bonanno. He started by giving a quick powerpoint presentation about how people cope with trauma. Using 9/11 at the main analogy, he graphed the way in which most people actually cope really well with extreme stress.

July was impressed, she said, “I hardly ever see graphs that aren’t ‘Art’. It was kind of exciting that you would put that much effort in.”

He laughed, and we the audience (or some of us) joined into this perfect moment of disconnect. The brainy doctor kind of wanted the artstar to like him and vice-versa. She told him about how she sometimes cries everyday, uncontrollably, and asked if he had any cures in mind for this. He said that no, unfortunately crying was one of things that had hardly been studied. He did know a lot about smiling though. His slides revealed the difference between a fake smile and a real Duchenne smile, the kind that makes your eyes wrinkle. Miranda knew about this, and shared that her shrink had once told her to put a pencil in her mouth and force a huge smile, this would trigger something and make her actually feel happy. Apparently it works sometimes.

George asked Miranda how she was able to create such crazy characters, she reported that in fact she actually knew people like the ones she depicts and that sometimes, they are facets of her. She showed a video called the Hallway of an art work that she did in a museum in Japan. I thought it was quite fabulous and it made me feel slightly better about my own morose works of art! I wish I could show you the Hallway, but YouTube is being unyielding so here is a clip of her at the Kitchen instead:

Brooklyn Socialite, Comfort, Emily Gould

Failing at the tittle of Socialite, this is one of those terms that people clearly don’t want to understand when paired with the word Brooklyn, so sadly instead of them getting it, I hear a lot of:  “but your not a socialite.” “You don’t have a millionaire dad or live uptown.” “You don’t even wear nice dresses that often.”

All true. Astute observations, but the point is that I’m reclaiming the term! And subverting its meaning, so until you really think about it, please clear your palate of ‘the hate.’ I will no longer feel obliged to regale you with news of my social goings on about town, except when I feel compelled, but rest assured, I’m still going out, culture lives on, but I’m getting a bit tired of the report backs. My picks for the week though, ( preview style and all) are centered around comfort food. Why is this? Well I’m in need of some comfort. Go to Char #4 for homemade biscuits and bacon or make your own. Trust me this is a really good recipe, I’ve made them twice now! For dessert, go old school and combine original toll house cookie dough with Green and Black’s Organic chocolate ice cream. Or if your in Brooklyn like I am, go to Blue Marble. They make possibly the best vanilla I have ever had. In a rare candid moment (that’s now) I am sharing with you a picture of the actual me, eating the real deal ice cream….

Amazing right? I especially love how the cupcakes on my shirt match my activity. Alright one more comfort food tip, dumplings at Wild Ginger, not bootleg dumplings at the sweet yet overpriced vegan place next to Bluestockings, where you bought a zine and then left it there ’cause you were so distracted rushing off to a Battlestar Gallactica panel with Woopi Goldberg at the UN (who’s the socialite now.)

Any way, that sort of run on sentencing although generally unacceptable is just fine in Socialite world, I know this because I have been catching up on socialite scandals via The City, New York Mag, Socialite Rank, Gawker and yes this long line of Internet  “research” led me back to Emily Gould. I first heard about Emily nearly a year ago at a Gawker drinks night, the new-mediarati had gathered in spades and the gossip was circulating. I felt a little bit like I had to pretend I knew about the people being discussed just to join the convo, the result of my bout of humoring was a long tirade from a smoking man, which could of been summed up in a short, simple “leave Britney alone” type whine, except insert Emily where Brittney is. I was intrigued, the Times article. about her fall from Blog queendom to bad Pr target, had just come out, so I read it without realizing that she had been part of Gawker and that a CNN newscaster had accused her of aiding real life stalkers by working as  an editor of Gawker Stalker.

Now my google journey led me back to her, and here are some of my thoughts  about what happened… 1 why was she blamed  for the job she did on behalf of a male-dominated company that was founded on the principle of cutting gossip. That’s what Gawker is, it wasn’t her unique and evil conspiracy. 2 Reading her blog today, gave me the feeling that  perhaps she is one of us, the Brooklyn Socialites, a culture lover on a street covered in discarded chicken wings, a risk taker, a ghetto superstar? Ok I’m kidding a little bit here, but I do think that opinionated, outspoken women deserve a place in our media. I’m not saying that bad-mouthing people is alright, but its not ok to bully her either.

x

Battlestar Gallactica at the UN with Woopi Goldberg

A Battlestar Galactica discussion, held at the United Nations Economic and Social Council Chamber, moderated by Whoopi Goldberg? It sounds like the premise of a fevered dream or a bad trip. It may well be the first time that the UN’s diligent sign makers had to dedicate their skills to crafting signs with the names of extra-terrestrial places like “Virgon” and “Sagittarion” for the assembled delegates.  It was definitely the first time The Brooklyn Socialite made a dent in the United Nation’s amazing seafood buffet, looking out over the Hudson while chugging industrial-sized whiskeys and thinking about the strangeness of being in a building which, as the wise Whoopi G put it, “is as much an idea as a place”. Which we agree with – especially as it’s an idea that incorporates waiters in tuxes and brings together diplomats, high school students and geeks in a building decorated with tapestry portraits of Secretary Generals past and present.

A team-effort between the UN Department of Public Information and the Sci Fi Channel, the evening was less trippy and more substantial than it sounds. Tying in themes from the science fiction series with the UN’s work, actors Mary McDonnell (who plays President Laura Roslin), Edward James Olmos (the battle-scarred Admiral Adama), producers Ronald Moore and David Eick were joined on the podium by a variety of UN representatives, touching on subjects such as human rights, children in armed conflict, terrorism and religious reconciliation.

Helping the non-Sci Fi geeks in the audience, each segment was introduced by a clip from the series. It quickly became clear that Whoopi hadn’t only done her homework by watching the show, but that she’s a genuine Sci Fi fan (she admitted to using the Battlestar Galactica curse word “fraq” on The View – she works with Elizabeth Hasselbeck, so innovative, non-censored swear words are clearly called for). Deputy director of the NY office of the high commissioner for human rights Craig Mokhiber’s gave an impassioned and witty description of the continued importance of the UN declaration of Human Rights, saying that it is not a quaint idea only held by the liberal softies at the UN, but  what stands between humanity and the slippery slope of moral relativism , which de-humanizes the “other”. Ron Moore seemed to agree, though throughout the evening he hesitated to take a clear stance on any of the moral issues in the show.  Instead, he’d emphasize the complexity of the characters – answers which may have disappointed the avid fan who, delighted to have avoided paying the entrance fee for a Comic Con, wanted the definitive definition of the difference between Cylons and Humans in the show.

No fan’s passion for Battlestar Galactica could match that of Olmos, who seemed to be slipping in to his Adama character throughout the evening. His voice is pretty mesmerizing (he seemed to think so too), so he might be forgiven for some of his more extraordinary statements – at one stage he seemed to be supporting Cheney’s policies on national security, which we all know is more ridiculous than thinking you’re a commander at a floating space colony.  Though to be fair to Adama (Olmos?) he did have some interesting ideas about how fans blogging about the show had caused it to take on a life of its own, to become a cultural phenomenon intelligently addressing current affairs.

The only downer of the evening, actually, was the disinterested girl who, during Radhika Coomaraswamy’s touching presentation about children and armed conflict, sat next to The Brooklyn Socialite playing Brick Breaker on her BlackBerry. Not cool.

By Ella Fitzsimmons

The South…..Brooklyn Socialite takes Full Frame-Wounded Knee

Wow guys,
Its been a busy couple of weeks. Aside from working like crazy(as always), I’ve been traveling and socialiting, rest assured. Now I’ve finally gotten the chance to breathe and blog, of equal priority right? Yes. So gosh, where to begin. I’ll start by talking like a southerner, saying this like, “oh gosh” and ma’am. Except, no way am I saying that to anyone and I wish that I could stop them from saying it to me. I’m not your mama, your mom, your missus or any combination of those terms. I am from New York, and no that’s not why I’m being rude. I’m being rude because you are looking at me like I’m an Alien. I’m not an Alien, am from Brooklyn and don’t like your fashion sense either thank you very much. Whew, now that I got that out of the way, lets talk film.

This afternoon, I saw Wounded Knee , which is a great new film, directed by Stanley Nelson about the second Battle of Wounded Knee. The first took place in 1890 and is considered to be the end of the Great Indian Wars. Over 300 Native Americans were massacred. This event would usher in the period of forcibly removing children from their homes to send them to de-Indianization boarding schools. The second battle at Wounded Knee began when the Oglala Lakota who lived on Pine Ridge reservation teamed up with the American Indian Movement(AIM) to occupy the village of Wounded Knee as a bargaining tool. The demands that they placed on the table, were that Dick Wilson, the so called Tribal council leader (this was an appointment made by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, not by way of local election) and his goon squad be removed from power. They also requested that the government money and food supplies that were being funneled into the reservation, actually be distributed among the people (rather then kept by Wilson and his cronies).

After trying all legal means to redress their grievances, the Oglala Lakota called in the, at time militant, AIM leadership and membership to take up arms and escalate the fight for their people. The seizure lasted for 72 days and was met with an occupation by federal marshals and other agencies under the aegis of the U.S. government. The media extensively covered the event, reporting favorably on the movement, and Indians from all over the U.S. came to join the struggle at Wounded Knee. The film deftly captures the conflict and provides useful background into the childhood experiences and historical understandings of many of the people who were involved in the standoff. Take note: These events, which took place in 1973, set the stage for a continued reign of terror by the goon squad, and the eventual arrest of AIM leader Leonard Peltier, who was  accused of killing 2 FBI agents and remains in jail to this day.

Ok, lets stop there, got to go see another film…but I promise I will be keeping a daily Full Frame diary. Back soon! Robyn

Gen Art Film Fest- Lymelife Review

While I’ve been in North Carolina running from doc to doc at Full Frame, Ella has been keeping track of the premiers at Gen Art. Here’s her review of Lymelife:

Looming  freakishly tall people lifted their  cameras as I walked the “red carpet” (which was NOT RED. Or carpeted. Much to my disappointment) of  the 14th Gen Art Film Festival, only to drop them in disappointment when they realized that this particular short, anemic-looking girl wasn’t an aspiring indie-actress, but just a confused blogger looking for the press entrance.

The first discovery at the official premiere of  coming-of-age in the 70’s indie–flick Lymelife was that being a paparazzi-photographer is a bit like being a basketball player – if you’re short, you better be fast as heck so you can get in there first. At 5’3 (on a good day), I really didn’t stand a chance of seeing any of the celebrities starring in the evening’s feature. So I headed for the free beer, cunningly avoided the chirpy Neutrogena girls (somehow giving away lipstick reminds me of my mother’s admonition to not accept candy from strangers. I have no idea why), noted a couple of those faces that “I’m sure I’ve seen them somewhere, so they must be famous”, smirked at the inevitable surfacing of fugly men wearing their best “I’m tortured because I’m talented”-faces accessorized by at least one, preferably two, willowy young things and headed in to get my seat.

The volunteer ushers in the cinema did an amazing job of avoiding chaos as people were pretty much fighting to get seats. While probably not fun for the volunteers, watching uptight artsy folk barely managing to not completely lose their shit when their (clearly exaggerated) sense of entitlement wasn’t catered for,  was a misanthrope’s dream come true.

The introductory short film, Trece Anos, directed by Topaz Adisez, addressed the issues confronting a young man returning to his native Havana after 13 years in the US. In the Q&A which followed, Adisez explained that the short had originally been part of his feature project (www.theamericanaproject.com), but that he had decided to show it separately.  The pressures of filming illegally in Cuba may be to blame for some of the weaker parts of the short (especially during the massive family argument, where some of the acting was a little forced). Mostly though, the documentary-style storytelling worked well, with the reunion between the son and his mother a genuine highlight.

Lymelife was a pleasant surprise. From the website’s description as a coming-of-age tale set in Long Island during a 1970’s Lyme disease scare, I feared the worst: 90 minutes of awkward teenagers in bad clothes discovering their sexuality and complaining about their parents. Luckily, it’s genuinely funny. Derrick Martini, the director, mentioned that he thought the love story between Rory Culkin (the Home Alone kid’s little brother) and Emma Roberts (niece-of-Pretty-Woman) was the most important and interesting part of the film — I don’t agree, but maybe that’s because I failed to find teenagers interesting when I was one. Admittedly, Roberts adds the long-legged, brown-eyed Bambi-on-ice charm that was her aunt’s trademark before she decided to accost us with the truly dreadful Ocean’s Twelve, but her character strikes me as a more a fantasy of a hot but intelligent high school girl, rather than a convincing character. Still, it’s a minor gripe, because the rest of the characters are really sensitively drawn. Sure, Kieran Culkin has a natural advantage in playing the younger Culkin’s brother, but his interactions with the other characters are equally nuanced. Alec Baldwin is suitably self-centered but charming as the nouveau riche philandering father of the Culkins, who is sleeping with his Roberts’s mother (suburbia gets messy). Cynthia Nixon, playing Roberts’s mother, comes across as appropriately neurotic and trapped in a life she hadn’t bargained for.

Timothy Hutton, playing her husband, has been driven mad by Lyme disease and is unemployed, but is shown to be more perceptive than the other characters think. The scene in the local bar where Hutton’s character lets Baldwin believe he has been driven insane by syphilis, meaning Baldwin may have caught it from Hutton’s wife, is an awesome exercise in darkly funny revenge. Headed out, I ran in to a woman in a tiger-print dress who actually had Lyme disease, who was excited that the film would raise awareness about the illness. She insisted it had driven her crazy at one stage, and that Hutton’s portrayal “really showed what it’s like”. Assuming Hutton doesn’t actually have Lyme, that’s high praise.

The acting award, though, goes to Jill Hennessy, whom I’ve only seen in police series like Law and Order and Crossing Jordan. She’s truly impressive as the Culkin’s mother and Baldwin’s wife. Transplanted from her native Queens, Hennessy’s character struggles to repress her frustration at the family’s new found wealth, her husband’s infidelities and juggling the emotions of the children she’s desperately trying to protect; from the army, from Lyme disease and, ultimately, from her relationship with their father.  Alternatively weak, strong, submissive and angry, Hennessy isn’t afraid to let things get ugly – while managing to remain the most compelling character in a very strong cast.

The main test, of course, is whether you would pay to see the film – and for Lymelife, the answer’s a “yes”.

Brooklyn locavore at Full Frame

We’ve discussed my vegan-envy in the past, but this sentiment has now reached new heights. After seeing Food Inc. I’ve been pretty much unable to eat meat, and quite uncomfortable with eating corn products.

True, it’s only been 2 days, but I feel pretty serious about this new conviction. The film details the social impact of the meat industry, as well as its environmental impact and effect on animal welfare. Meatpacking and processing is now one of the most dangerous jobs in the country and the very small number of employers actively recruit illegal Mexican immigrants to work in the plants. Under constant threat of deportation, the workers will then submit to the most dangerous conditions and minimal salaries.

Farmers who raise soybeans, corn and chickens fare no better within the American food industry. Monsanto, famous for having created Agent Orange and for championing genetically engineered food has  patented the soybean. That corporation now owns a piece of natural life. This means that all over the country farmers are being sued and harassed for growing non- Monsanto seeds. Since the dawn of agriculture farmers have saved their own seeds, but now the law says that only corporate owned and sold seeds are permissible, seeds that require toxic Monsanto fertilizers in order to grow.

It gets worse, remember Mad Cow disease, aka  E. coli. This is not a mutant strand that appeared out of nowhere, it is a disease created by the meat industry’s practice of feeding cows corn, in place of their natural grass diet and confining them in inhumane conditions, where they are left standing in their own feces. When one cow contracts this virus, it easily spread to the others, and it then finds itself mixed into meat at processing plants.

These are just a few examples, the list of abuses is long. Yet, because of the powerful legislative bargaining power of corporate food interests, there is no law in place to require labelling of GE or cloned foods and Kevins Law,  the legislation that would  hold the meat industry accountable for e coli deaths, and protect against further infections has still not passed 7 years after its proposal.

I have long been an organic food eater, have tended to favor local over corporate and am even a member of my local csa( community supported agriculture), but I wasn’t exactly a purist before. I’d eat microwave popcorn and dubious diner hamburgers, but I’m just about ready to make a locavore pledge… To Know Where my Food has Come From and to understand its true social, environmental, and animal welfare costs.

The Food Inc trailer- Directed by Robert Keener

Some Southerners are Awesome- my Top 5 Meets

Woah guys, let’s not take me too literally, I actually had a great time in the South and met a lot of really cool people. These are my top 5 in order of most to least Southern.

1.Laura Edwards, the founder of Lillian’s List and her partner Elaine Andrews. They are both from NC and were super hospitable, they invited me to sit at there presenters table while I was nervously reliving a cafeteria scene in some 90s coming of age film. They called over to me, ” There’s a free seat here!” Finally, I was the popular kid.

Ok, beyond my tendency to see life as theater, what is so awesome about these ladies is 1. Their personalities and 2. What they do. Lillian’s list, inspired by Emily’s list was founded in 1998 with the mission of getting Democratic pro-Choice women elected to the North Carolina legislature. So far they have succeeded at getting 18 such women elected.

2. One of these NC legislators, Laura’s sister, is number 2 on my list. Pricey Harrison of the NC House of Representatives, told me about the excessively offensive emails she gets from people. Apparently some idiots out there in Internet land think that it’s acceptable to issue death threats against those who support gay and women’s rights, food safety and the environment. Well I say keep up the good work Pricey, and those lurkers out there reading this, please speak up to support her work!

3. Alright, confession: the remaining 3 people on my list are not actually from the South, but I did meet them there, so it counts. Number 3 is slightly further South, in my old school digs, yes that’s right, New Jersey. Hailing from Jersey City, Justin Strawhand came to Full Frame to promote his film War Against the Weak. I haven’t seen it yet, so I won’t say much, but I can report that I had a very engaging conversation with him about the film’s topic: Eugenics. What I learned is that the US had a active program up until World War II, the legacy of which remains with us today in the form of the SAT’s, people who experience forced sterilizations, and in several other surprising manifestations. More to come on this subject.

4. The next person on the list is from Manhattan, but I’m still counting that as South of Brooklyn. Cameron Yates  writes for Indiewire and is working on a new documentary called The Canal Street Madam, watch the trailer here. It is about a New Orleans madam, who ran a brothel with her mother as bookkeeper, and her daughter as one of the call girls. He was given the Garret Scott Award by Full Frame, in honor of a young documentary filmmaker who died a few years ago. The grant helps, emerging filmmakers, who are in the process of making their first feature film, to gain fiscal support and mentorship. This year the award was co-presented by our friend Thom Powers from Stranger than Fiction.

5. Number 5, who does a poor job of being from the South (unless you count South Brooklyn) is Rachael Rakes, from the Feminist Press. She is the former partner of Garrett Scott and also a co-presenter of that award, and she told me that she is actively seeking trans writers and transrights advocates for publication in the Feminist press. This def. gets her on the awesome south list, not to even mention the fact that she is also a writer at Brooklyn Based and has starting a doc film series in Brooklyn at the Bell House! What what, is all I can say.

Did you meet someone interesting this week? Who?! Comment comment, wherever you are.

Ella Dreams of Finding Bliss-Gen Art Closing

By Ella Fitsimmons

The final evening of the Gen Art Film festival confirmed something I’d always suspected, but never been certain of: despite my unashamed affection for celebrity gossip, I fail to spot these rare creatures when they are straight in front of me. During the awards ceremony, I realized that the short, bald dude with black-rimmed glasses I’d been chatting to before the screening of breast-fetischizing short Boob was none other than electro-pop phenom Moby, who was presenting the award for best film music. Had I known, I would have asked all sorts of clever questions about his views on the use of music in film. Instead, I hit him up for some free beer (they’d run out at the reception – a tragedy worthy of Aeschylus), and then suggested that if his need to take a wee become desperate during the pseudo-porn feature Finding Bliss, he could relieve himself in the seat empty seat in front of us. He said he’d have to hide from photographers. Not getting the “I’m famous, young lady” hint, I replied that it’d be dark, as we were in a cinema.

Sigh. Sometimes, I’m clearly less perceptive than I give myself credit for.

Luckily, the films put on a stronger showing than I did, so the evening wasn’t a complete write off. Pretty much laughing off questions about the classic film references contained in Boob, director team “Honest” showed a charmingly geeky appreciation for trashy splatter films. Call me juvenile, but I hardly even had to see the film to giggle – just the premise of a murderous breast implant running amok, killing people and pseudo-lesbianly (is a silicone-breast male or female? If there are any gender studies types out there, please feel free to let me know) slithering up to a hot young nurse before ending up being chopped to bits, is my idea of funny. Even though bits of it made me gag. And no, Moby left to respond to the call of nature, so he wasn’t to blame.

The feature, Finding Bliss, also pretty much had my vote from the get go. A romantic comedy set in the porn industries (which the characters insist should be called “adult entertainment”), where a young uptight film school graduate, played by LeeLee Sobieski discovers her sexuality and falls for a porn director (Matt Davis, who it turns out looked familiar because he played the self-obsessed rich boy in Legally Blonde. Yes, I recognized him. And not Moby. I will never be cool), writer-director Julie Davis based the film on her early experiences as an editor at the Playboy Channel. Eaves-dropping shamelessly on people heading to the after party, I heard a Frenchman saying “yes, it vas good, but zey vill nevah show zis film in America – zere iz too much zex”. I hope he’s wrong. FOR ONCE, there’s an Anglophone film about sex being fun, and which mocks the cultural trope that “true love waits”, while allowing for well-formed female characters. I salute Julie Davis for the ironic casting of Sobieski, who became famous when her parents, in my mother’s phraseology, “took leave of their senses” and allowed her to be fondled by an old man in Kubrick’s Lolita, as a frigid, judgmental good girl. Matt Davis, as the love interest, is attractive in the “you know he’s probably not good news, but you’d probably go there anyway”- way, and wins the evening’s “non-asshole award” for failing to cut the line at the after party, despite his friend egging him on to do so. Jamie Kennedy does a good job of seeming like a well-meaning moron porn star and Denise Richards is her ridiculous self – but with better lines than she spouts in her reality TV show.

The after-party and award’s show at BLVD was a landslide victory for My Suicide and star Gabriel Sunday. We are choosing to be charitable and are therefore attributing his behavior to elation in the face of victory, rather than the less legal nasal powder inhalations first suspected. At least he was having fun.

Walking home from the subway, I was happily pondering how Finding Bliss made me hope for a new dawn of sexual equality in the Anglo-Saxon world. A world in which men and women can enjoy sex in a non-guilt-ridden way. A world where Julie Davis’ could movie could go public, if only her film could find a distributor who wasn’t put off by there being “too much sex” in her film. At which point a large man on the street grabbed his crotch and yelled “Suck my D*ck, B*tch” after me. Welcome to the real world, Ella!

Brooklyn Socialite on Huffington Post-Bedstuy Meadow

I hope you all have had the chance to check out my Huffpo post on the Bedstuy Meadow project. Here’s a little excerpt below and a link to rest of the post. Tonight I’m going to check out a doco on Al Franken at Stranger than Fiction. Report back to come, and I hope to see you all there!
R

Last week I interviewed a Brit, Andy Lang, about his new film based in Cuba. I was thinking Global then, but this week’s interview is all about acting local. Saturday morning I woke up early and suited up in full-body rain-gear, then trudged through the downpour to my rendezvous point in Zone 4, which happened to be about 3 blocks from my apartment. I was feeling quite stealth and shrouded in mystery as I arrived at lab 24/7, a basement apartment, which doubles as an event space. There I met, for the first time, about 30 of my neighbors and was given a seed bag, a map and a small team to work with. Me and my new planting crew then spread out over Bedstuy to begin scattering wildflower seeds. There were 5 meet-up zones and 100 volunteers in total. We all found each other and signed on to the project after a new website sprung up, promoting the Bedstuy Meadow Project, created by one woman who envisioned it all, Deborah Fisher.

Read More

Busy–Al Franken: God Spoke

The past couple of weeks have been really busy. As soon as I got back from Full Frame I was back into the thick of New York. I went to hear the COO of facebook, Sheryl Sanberg talk about selective sharing and the way that social networking is monetized. Then the Gen Art closing with Ella, Chin Chih Yang’s opening at the Chelsea museum and then it was already time for Passover and Bedstuy wildflower planting. Chin Chih’s show was great. Awesome to see my writing in action as the wall text and in the catalog. Then Passover offered the traditional family version and our liberation in times of war version. I enjoyed revamping the Haggadah and leading my first Seder.

This week, the festivities continued as we brought our second installment of Sal P’s punkfunk supper club to Brooklyn. Our curated version in the Chocolate Factory apartments, featured Sal’s incredible dosas and mango chutney + beet and eggplant salads and pure vegan soup. + Wine + in depth late night conversations covering all manner of topic from radical pedagogy to Queens bath castles.

Last night also ended in fascinating chats as Ella and I found ourselves perched on stools next to filmmakers, authors and legends! D.A. Pennebaker (the legend in question) was in the house. He produced Al Franken: God Spoke, which his wife, Chris Hegedus, co-directed with Nick Doob. The screening was, of course, another STF great and the film focused on Al Franken’s journey from actor to Senatorial hopeful. It ends before he is elected as the Minnesota Senator, but details his comedy speaking tours, turned political rallies for his friend, then Senator, Paul Wellstone. Franken ultimately decides to pick up the campaign mantle after Wellstone’s mysterious death in a plane crash.

Franken, who you may remember from his Saturday Night Live alteregos, Jack Handy, Stuart Smalley and Pat, comes off as a pretty nice guy. What you may not know about him is that he is a Harvard grad, a published writer and rumored to by quite prickly in person…so I hear. After the film I met another non-fiction writer, Russ Baker, who’s book Family of Secrets, sheds a lot of doubt on the already highly adored Bush family. After talking to him for quite sometime, Ella and I taxi-ed it back to Brooklyn considerably more paranoid then we were when we started the evening.

On a brighter note, I spent a great day upstate at the Dia-Beacon today. If you haven’t gone there, just go. $27 on metro-north gets you a return ticket, entrance to the museum and a chance to walk around the lovely town of Beacon, where you will meet friendly glass-blowers, eat local ice cream, and if you’re anything like me, get shockingly hit on by a 12 year-old boy, who thinks your 16!

Frankies Fail

To me, a birthday is like the Sabbath, no matter how much you may hate the observance, you respect it, recognize there is something sacred about it, and put aside some time for Peace! Though I’ve never been orthodox and now certainly don’t consider myself to be religious, I respect that silence. I’m down with the not working, driving, stressing etc on the holy days, and whether you feel blue about aging or not,  whatever you do respect the process!

Don’t be like Frankies Spuntino 457 and pay me lip service! That means don’t say, “I’d really like to accommodate you but there’s nothing I can do. Our system makes everyone happy, really everyone  loves how we do things here. When you’re a community restaurant, you can’t piss off the community, so this is our policy.” — all quotes. I wanted to scream, But I am your community and you’re pissing me off followed by, Everyone is not happy. I, for one, am not happy.

This logic was lost on them though and they insisted that they do not take reservations (yes even if it is the day of your birthday and you have already invited your friends, who have already confirmed their attendance) unless there is a party of exactly 8-10 people, in which case everyone has to have a prix fixe meal, not of their choosing, for the price of either $35 or $45 dollars.”But,” I explained, “my friends don’t have that much money, I can’t just spring it on them, the day of the party that they are going to have to spend $35 (not including drinks) for the privilege of dining with me on my birthday. This is not fair, I can’t do this to them.” “Yes.” the general manager echoed, “I understand and I’d like to accommodate you so I can offer you a reservation for 10 people max at 9:30 for $35 minimum.” He clearly wasn’t listening and I was starting to seethe up inside. But its my birthday! I mused, wondering where his sense of justice was. “Would you like to make that reservation now, or call back later?” He peculiarly insisted. Was I talking to a looping answering machine? Should I, as he implied, feel guilty for expecting them to break with routine and their policy of 5 years?

Sure, I don’t know how to run a restaurant. But I do know how to respect the sanctity of someone’s birthday. The rules:

1. Don’t fire them

2. Don’t break up with them

3. Don’t get into a fight with them and

4. Try to make sure their birthday celebration goes well. ie. don’t be snooty, talk down at them, or refuse to let them appreciate your goshdarn restaurant by refusing them reservations at your normal menu rates!

Frankies Fail- Well it looks like you may have lost about 8-10 loyal customers.

Buttermilk Channel-Super Pass

Woah, so I survived my Birthday Fail and my general FOB, Fear of Birthday, much in part to a dear friend’s handiwork in 1. Taking me on a brilliant day trip to Beacon, New York, where we checked out the Dia, and hung around on its beautiful grounds, which almost made me feel like I was back in Europe, met the Queen of Glass Blowing and ate local food at Homespun (delicious). and 2. By encouraging me to persevere after the Frankies Fail and actually attempt to make a reservation elsewhere.

That elsewhere turned out to be Buttermilk Channel and it was the perfect choice. They were accommodating to a T. They gave us a long table, lined with a church pew, happily agreed to store our ice cream cake in their fridge, let us sit before the whole party arrived and Thanked us for coming, in a very genuine manner. I was impressed, not only by the service, but also by the fare. My Spanish friend could not get over the maple syrup sauce that came with my Buttermilk Chicken on Waffles, neither could I, nor Slate Honey, who sat on the other side of me, we all ate some, and shared the whipped potatoes Substitution that they gracefully allowed me to make. The local cheese plate, with honey and fried grapes was also amazing, as well as the New York state Chardonnay and Cabernet blend. I had to be a committed locavore and try both!

Thank you friends and thank you Buttermilk Channel for an awesome, laid-back, local Birthday.

Tribeca Film Festival-Indiewire Party at the Apple Store

Last nights Indiewire Filmmakers party was a bit of a whirlwind. I had to explain my moniker to a few people when they asked, “So are you a socialite?” “No,” I clarified, “I’m the Brooklyn Socialite.” Big difference, indeed!

I ran into filmmaker Joe Brewster who I know from many Stranger than Fiction’s ago, and from seeing his film, Slaying Goliath at the African Diaspora Film Festival. He was excited to see me and took me on a fast-paced, arm pulling tour of the entire party. Determined to introduce me to all the filmmakers of color who are involved in the Tribeca all Access program and everyone else he knew along the way, including his wife, Michelle Stephenson.

Some of the highlights of these rapid fire meetings, included a guy named James? who is opening a 3-plex art cinema in Williamsburg in December (more info on this when I figure out his last name and actually get a contact for him!), Molly Charnoff of the Lava Dance company, who’s performance, We Become I saw at the Lyceum back in December, Lisa Lucas, who I haven’t seen since we went to High School together and who turns out to now work for the Tribeca Institute, small world! She looked great. I also met numerous filmmakers who seem to have great projects in the works like The Kivalina Project , Wam!Bam!Islam! and Binawee by Australian Aboriginal filmmaker, Sam Saunders.

Plus I ran into filmmaker, Ian Olds, who I had met at Full Frame and who’s feature documentary, Fixer:The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi,  I am excited to see next week. The film is about a  Afghan fixer hired by a Italian journalist to help navigate Afghanistan, who is then kidnapped by the Taliban and ultimately executed. More on this after I see it.

All in all the party was fun for meeting and self-watering, there was a lively dj but not much dancing, they did have great sugar covered chicken triangle things going around in trays and in true Freegan style I ate as many as possible!

Andy L’s Proletariat Yelp page just saved my life.

Just when I thought that I would drown in the post-bullshit of NYC, after a weekend of overpriced and over SALTED dinner at Blue Hill restaurant (which by the way claims to be awesome, and local and multiple-star, but actually is just a salt paddy with really snobby people inside of it), artstar self-importance, tonight at a DEITCH opening, which required a trek to LIC and seemed to be more about the scene than the medium, errant roommates that don’t pay their bills and even fake-farmers-market-hippies who sell milk at the farmers market and are obviously fake hippies, because they’re not even nice! After all of this, I discovered Andy L, on a trackback mission from here, my blog spot, to Bed-Stuy Banana, then finally to Andy L. Every so often, I make a virtual friend, who doesn’t know me yet, and Andy is one such friend.

Not only is he subverting the culture sufficiently by using yelp as his blog, like that poet who Amazon reviews like it’s her job, but he, like me, has a crush on that Hasidic Bartender who works at Sputnik. Yes Andy, I agree:

“Dear Hasidic Waiter at Sputnik,

You’re a darling of a man. You’ve changed the way I think about Sputnik. I used to hate Sputnik…..I’m not sure where to go from here. I don’t want to come on too strong and seem like a creep, although I pretty much am a creep. For now, I guess I’ll do what I always do with a crush; stare at them awkwardly, possibly mumble something incoherent, and run away. Maybe it’s for the best.

As for Sputnik Bar itself, I don’t really like it there. Like I mentioned earlier, I hate Pratt and the Taaffe Lofts.” read more

But don’t stop there that is just the tip of the iceberg, he reviews every single place in the neighborhood from Tip Top Bar, which he loves to Home Depot, which he hates, not forgeting to discuss schools, fried chicken joints, dry cleaners and all manner of place in between. That’s art Dietch.

CIFF Dance Party at Santos Tonight-Come!

Hello Friends, just a quick heads up. The Camden International Film Festival, has an exciting film, The Way We Get By screening tonight at Stranger than Fiction, it is sold out, but the after party at Santos is definitely not. And, its Free! So come and meet the documentary film intelligentsia…

For more about the film and the screening My Flavorpill preview:

“Stranger Than Fiction, Thom Powers’ quality weekly documentary series, teams up tonight with the Camden International Film Festival and POV to present the New York premier of The Way We Get By. The film centers around a dedicated trio of senior citizens who keep permanent vigil at a rural Maine airport, determined to welcome home every soldier returning from Iraq. They hug the men and women in uniform, offering them cell phones to make their first calls with, shoulders to cry on, and, most strikingly, a moment to exhale before they re-enter civilian life.”

See you tonight!

The Way We Get By Review, Mashable, Central Park

Wow guys! I just discovered that there is wireless in central park. I have been sitting here for the better part of the afternoon, offline, when all along I could have been blogging…well wonders never cease! Any way,  here is the run down from last night:

I was a very dedicated Brooklyn Socialite, after editing all day I tore off into the glorious heat and made my way over to the 92 Street Y Tribeca, Mashable was doing one of their networking/educating/mashing events. It reminded me of Mediameshing, except I didn’t run into the gawkerteam, maybe they were all tweeting away at Tribeca. Anyway I did dutifully mingle, with a lot of friendly PR people(!) and then the event finally started about 20 minutes before I had to leave for Stranger than Fiction. I did catch a few presentations done by start-ups, including Sluth.com, which is a wine aggregator (if you know what that is) and Savvy Auntie, which actually seemed pretty interesting, a social networking site for aunts, which are apparently about 40% of women.

I was sorry that I had to miss their advice about how to become wildly succesful, because I’m sure that would have come in handy, but it was time to catch the screening of The Way We Get By. I have plans to interview the directors, so hold off for that, but in the meantime, my initial review:

The Way We Get By is a film that cleverly navigates the subject of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, without clearly choosing sides. It avoids the left right dichotomy and instead focuses on the human experience of loss, bravery and kinship. It is about the Troop Greeters of Maine, who gather day and night at Bangor Airport to welcome and see off all of the soldiers who fight in Iraq. Although it is such a remote airport, 90% of the flights in and out of the war zone, pass through there. The greeters have already seen almost 1 million members of the military return through Bangor.

The majority of the greeters are senior citizens and the film follows 3 of the most committed and older members of the group, including the mother of one of the directors. What is so interesting about the subjects is how they seem to live just for the opportunity to brighten someone else’s day. This reveals the isolated state that many older folks live in, believing that their utility has passed. People who have worked their whole lives, raised families and some who have personally served in the military reach their 60s and 70s and begin to feel that society no longer values them. If they are not providers, what is their purpose? Although, they may be of great value to their families and respected by their communities; living alone, and sitting idle, the subjects in The Way We Get By seem to be at a loss when they are not giving their time and support to the troops.

The dignity and integrity of these people will stir even the coldest heart. I cried repeatedly! see it

The Girlfriend Experience, Fixer, Print vs Blog

It’s been another busy week friends. Since last I wrote I saw The Girlfriend Experience and  Fixer:The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi at the Tribeca Film Festival, went to a Print vs Blog talk at the Tribeca Y, had a poetry reading and danced the blues off at two Brooklyn house parties. Plus, I had another successful meal at Buttermilk Channel, this time brunch. Their biscuits are pretty good, but not as good as mine! I also had a chance to live it up a little bit on Saturday while actually reading peacefully in the sun in Choice Greene’s backyard patio. On the way there I passed an awesome kids clown show on Grand, in front of the Still Hip clothing store. Apparently they are having them every Saturday, if you love costumes and clowns, and environmentally themed, musical children’s performances as much as I do, then definitely check it out!

First a note about Brooklyn house parties and then onto my film reviews. Note: They rule! Ha, ha, no really they do. OMG Michelle played at the one on Friday night, which was at this house called Mansion (not to be confused with the snooty Manhattan club, Mansion.) DJ Designer Impostor played and on Sat, DJ Shomi Noise was awesome. Aside from being my friend, she is also a generally great DJ!

Ok film. So, the two films were extremely different than each other, the first Steven Soderberg’s new opus on high class prostitutes, who give their customers the illusion that they are somehow in a loving relationship with each other, was less than spectacular. Although the directer himself, with huge successes like Erin Brochevich, Sex Lies and Videotape, and Traffic under his belt, was wildly confident during the Q & A after, several elements of the film caused me to take pause.

He typecast, if you will, non-actors to play the roles of the prostitute and her personal trainer boyfriend. He didn’t give them a script and instead set them up with a situation and encouraged them to ad lib. Although this technique was quite successful in Ballast it fell very short in The Girlfriend Experience. Soderberg claimed, during his talk back, that if people didn’t know that was his method, we never would have noticed. I beg to differ.

The holes in the dialogue were obvious. The language was incidental and often seemed forced. Many of the relationships were unconvincing and the main character, played by porn actress, Sasha Grey, was stiff and boring to watch. If you made a film about me walking around NY having somewhat random conversations with strangers, I’m sure I would also be stiff and boring to watch. Why? Because I’m not an actor and films which follow non-actors are usually called documentaries. Why not just call the whole thing off, and make a documentary about a real prostitute who offers the girlfriend experience? Just asking.

Speaking of documentaries, let’s talk a bit about the really good film that I saw at Tribeca. But first, a note about opinions. Yes everyone has one, and some people start blogs and share them, people like me. But Tony Ortega, editor, and Michael Cohen,  publisher, of the Village Voice have a bit of a bone to pick with people like us. However, the founder of Gothamist and a writer from Mashable, who sat on a panel with them on Thursday, they kinda think us bloggers are great. If you’re interested in finding out more about this secret society who is bringing down the media oligarchy, come to the Brooklyn Blogfest on Thursday, that’s where most of our upcoming schemes for world domination will be hatched.

No, to be fair, Ortega claimed to support bloggers, to want to maintain the integrity of the Voice, and most shockingly, he insisted that the Voice is still making good money.  Strange, those claims seem to run counter to the Voice‘s recent massive layoffs and to their stubborn attempt to remain the source of NYC event advice. Unless they become a little more cutting edge with their suggestions, I don’t see people continuing to look to them to find out what’s happening.

But that’s just my opinion, and it’s here in my blog, not pretending to be impartial in some newspaper. Anyway enough angst right? Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi without necessarily seeking to do so, makes a very different and much more compelling argument in favor of the old media establishment. There is absolutely a place for researched, well-sourced journalism, especially in terms of foreign correspondence.

Fixer is a documentary that follows Christian Parenti, a Nation journalist, on a fact gathering trip through Afghanistan. As he travels around the country, meeting with Taliban leaders, villagers and any other potential sources of information, Ian Olds, the filmmaker is in the back seat of the car, a fly on the wall, observing Parenti’s transactions.  In order to navigate this active war zone, Parenti requires help from what is known in the journo trade as a fixer.

A fixer is a local person who makes contact with potential sources, estimates the level of risk in traveling to various areas and then facilitates the actual journey by driving the foreign journalist to the rendezvous points and serving as translator while there. More than a middle man, Parenti’s fixer, Ajmal Naqshbandi was a journalist in his own right and as portrayed in the film, was a very savvy and intelligent individual. He died not long after the journey that Parenti and Olds took with him.

On another fixer job, working for an Italian journalist, Naqshbandi and the Italian were both kidnapped by a notorious Taliban leader. This man is known to have kidnapped and brutally executed several people. We are told at the start of the film that Naqshbandi died in this cruel way, but that his Italian employer was released relatively unharmed. The rest of the film navigates how the fixer got to that point and questions why he was not saved.

I was glad to see that Fixer won best documentary at Tribeca. It is truly an interrogative film. It forces us to question A. what is really going on in Afghanistan, B. how much that self-government and democracy actually protects Afghan citizens and C. How we would  even begin to answer these questions without the field researched findings of foreign corespondents funded by media institutions.

1 point scored for blogs and 1 for old media. Looks like a tie Tony.

As Robyn Has Retired to the Coutryside +Binibon Review

I’m Upstate, stay tuned for posts about the caterpillars and hummingbirds I’ve been meeting, in the meantime, here’s Ella!

As Robyn has callously abandoned her friends for a few weeks and retired to the countryside, Brooklyn Socialiting has been left to me for a bit. Braving the Hudson River, or rather, the evil machinations of the subway system, I left my lovely King’s county nest on Friday for an evening of Big City cultural activities. Not just hanging out in bars.

Admittedly, as I was early for the Bermuda art opening in China town, a little bit of Ella-in-Bar was necessary, so I sat myself down in Les Enfants Terrible. Lychee martini is the glass, Pink Martini playing on the stereo and meretricious French barmen multi-taskingly flirting with everyone around the bar. A good way to warm up for a friend’s art opening, which is generally not something that should be attended without some sort of support, alcoholic or otherwise.  Because there’s always that underlying terror that your friends are going to be profoundly untalented, and you still have to be nice BUT SPECIFIC about their creative output.

Having reached the age where a disturbing number of my friends are spawning, I’ve found that a parallel case exists with people’s babies. Otherwise funny and open-minded people have a complete sense of humor failure when it comes to their own children, which is why I have had to hold back about how many children I could name that look like Dick Cheney. Even though it’s intrinsically funny. Similarly, otherwise intelligent and interesting people often like and make bad art.

Luckily, this wasn’t the case with the Bermuda exhibit. Put together by students and fellows from the School of Visual Arts, the theme was secondary to showcasing works in progress. While a lot of the work was interesting, the looseness of the theme meant that the exhibition as a whole didn’t necessarily work, despite several really interesting pieces.

Running late, I had to jump into a cab to get to experimental art space, The Kitchen, for the eight o’clock showing of “Binibon”, a new piece of musical theater, based around the early 80’s stabbing  of aspiring actor and waiter Richard Adan by John Henry Adam,  a former convict whose writing talents had made him the toast of New York’s literati.  Back in the bull economy, cabs used to be a part of my daily life, pretty much always charged to my work account. No longer. I’m hoping that relative poverty and strife will successfully translate into me eventually writing something that’s not nauseatingly terrible, and it seems as if the team behind Binibon come at creativity from a similar angle.

At the same time, let’s face it – New York? Not what it used to be. I’ve heard people discuss the matter over organic, cruelty-free yuppie food: “Is New York’s current stability  and safety a fair trade for the loss of vibrancy?” Where once the city was genuinely throat cuttingly cutting edge, or was at least violent enough for the frenzy to rub off on the art scene, now it’s a place where people feel OK about raising their kids. Dear lord, even Madonna, a woman my MOTHER listens to, recently criticized the city for losing its edge.

After which, she moved back to raise her children.

Binibon, the experimental musical play put on at contemporary art centre The Kitchen in the west village is part of this debate.  Part of, but also symptomatic of. Because while the writer, Jack Womack, brings attention to the Disney-fication of the city that has taken place in the last few decades, the piece can’t escape the fact that it’s a play about a New York that mainly exists in the memories of the things were much realer in the past-brigade. Which brings questions about where the responsibility for the city’s loss of edge lies: I may be wrong, but it struck me as hard to believe that writers and musicians in the early eighties would have put together a piece about a murder in the mid-50s.

Elliott Sharp’s live music works most of the time (though there’s an unfortunate electric guitar solo which reminds me of a Dave Chapelle sketch where he wonders about white people’s love of the instrument), and gives an urgency to the storytelling which is occasionally lacking in the writing. One of the problems, for me, is that the role of several of New York’s literary heroes in the release of John Henry Adams from prison was touched on, but not really examined – despite the fact that their moral responsibility for the death of Adan is at the core of the play’s preoccupation with the city, creativity, authenticity and violence.

Country Living

Hunh, I just wrote this whole post and then when I published it it was blank. What’s up with that? WordPress gods swoop down into the country and save me. That’s a command. Not being heeded it seems.

Nevermind, I will just have to start over. My last post was about how strange it is to be in the country. It’s like the polar opposite of my actual everyday life. Rather than dance parties, there is a local brasserie with live harp music tonight. Instead of constant speed, chatter, noise, vibrancy, there is just silence, interrupted by the occasional lawnmower or bird song.

This location is bringing out the chef in me though, soon this is going to morph into a recipe blog, but not yet. I’m holding out, remembering the days of social activity and not letting that woman at the garage sale call me a mom, and get away with it. She really did, it must be the mini-van that I’m driving. Not mine of course, part of the house sitting bundle, I even feel weird using it though, it’s funny, I feel like Where would I go? and Isn’t it a waste of energy to drive? Definitely not a middle of American, surely guilty as charged, I’m a City Folk.

I tried buying baubles at a antique shop and watching hummingbirds and little caterpillars. Actually, these acts were all fun, but I had a visceral feeling of being out of place. Am I allowed to sit around and do nothing but enjoy being alive? That is so faux pas in NYC, let’s face it. Running around, being creative, or trying to make money, or be smart or whatever, that’s kinda the flow in the shitty isn’t it. It’s ok to say yes.

I say this not disparagingly. I miss the place like really a lot. Seriously though, I am even beginning to long for the invasions of space and the irritating little noises and disturbances. They come with vitality, expression — Life. I miss Brooklyn.

Photo Post- Best of the Country

Ok, so I was a bit freaked out in my last post, but now I’m really starting to enjoy the Simple Life. Here are some of my favorite experiences so far, in pictures…

My first creek trip

the creek

The unattended apple store where they trust you to leave your money in a tin

My new Apples

The natural pool at the top of Katerskill Falls, had to take a dip in that one

The falls from below

The country can be pretty wicked, I must admit.

R

The Socialiting Continues- Ella at Sonar

Sonar Sound at the Baryshnikov Arts Center showed that I’ve probably been in New York too long, because Europeans are starting to look inherently cool to me. I grew up there. I should know better. But where once I’d accurately identify their appearance as nothing but a synthesis of washed-out black clothing from H&M, a lack of vitamins showing on sallow complexions, decades of smoking and greasy-ish hair, I now saw urban sophistication. I even caught myself thinking it was cool to hear people switching between French and Spanish as they waited for over-priced beer.

This is troubling. Some might even call it a disgrace. Obviously, I need to return to the semi-socialist old world soon, in order for me to regain proper disdain for other Euros.

That being said, Sonar was pretty… well…cool. The 16th edition of Barcelona’s International festival of advanced music (which kind of sounds like an exam, but isn’t) and multimedia art was in New York for the Catalan days. I’m usually predisposed to automatically mocking any art happening held in a gritty space (courtesy of a long running joke targeting the London art scene’s predilection for showing sub-standard up-and-coming work in a “charming little dumpster in Hoxton”), but the slightly post-industrial feel of the Baryshnikov Arts center served Sonar well.

(Though, as my friendly co-reviewer pointed out, “There were a lot of stairs”. While it made sense, sound isolation-wise, to separate the shows by a couple of floors, this clearly confused a lot of people, including me. When I envision suffering for art, I mean my art. Or at least watching someone super-creative self-destructing in artistically portrayed ways. Being sweaty and lost and running in stairwells…not convinced.)

The first floor of activities started out on a firm footing, with Spanish musicians Fibla and Arbol’s live, ambient electronica accompaniment of pleasantly weird Taiwanese film Goodbye Dragon Inn. With dialogue kept to a minimum, Goodbye Dragon Inn is a near ideal film to reset a soundtrack to – Fibla and Arbol’s accompaniment chimes well with the recurring motif of a limping office girl making her way around Taipei , adding a balletic dimension to the character’s disability and social isolation.

Unfortunately, the next show that was on in Theatre C, Balago, managed to undo some of my newfound respect for multimedia performances. Projecting a giant screen-saver-like image and playing new agey-whale birthing music – admittedly without the sound of actual birthing whales. Or of the rainforest at dawn. But it’s terrible when your subconscious is triggered to add these sounds and you’re not even being given a massage or some over-priced “healing.” – Does not qualify as art. Ever.

The second floor was dedicated to dancing. I wasn’t entirely convinced by Prefuse 73’s set – though I could have been unfairly biased against him by unfortunate displays of unrepentant hipsterness in the audience. I spotted some fool wearing a t-shirt saying, “I’d rather have one truth than 15 minutes of fame” and realizing that this was definitely a case of freedom of expression working against me, I had to leave before telling the little weasel how his cheaply tinkered together philosophical tenets pained me.

The top floor, showing two interactive installations, quickly became filled up. Luckily, we managed to check out Marcelli Antunez’s piece Metamembrana before the floor was closed. Clearly influenced by Guernica-era Picasso and Surrealism’s affection for combining unlikely images, Metamembrana was a fun piece, which benefited from the second run through, where the audience was coached by Antunez on how to make the screen respond. Antunez’s explanations of the background to the project were helpful in appreciating how the work was rooted in Catalan culture (citing folktales, local produce, fertility myths and history as inspiration. My co-reviewer and I looked at each other, shook our heads and said, “Nah, he just likes boobs and naked art students.” Fair play either way). Plus, his geeky enthusiasm for his gadgets was quite endearing, and did manage to get people involved in the installation. For me, though, the most successful interactive art pieces don’t require instruction – they work because something about them( be it use of material, choice of images, use of sound or smell) compel the audience to breach the boundaries of more traditional gallery spaces, where you participate in art work by looking, rather than touching.

We rounded off the evening with some comedy dancing to d.a.r.y.l’s set. While his use of punctuation might be self-conscious, his music was anything but – a really lively electronic set, incorporating a lot of funk and disco. My companion for the evening, who is unpleasantly tall and good-looking but who dances like Elaine in Seinfeld, wishes for it to be known that she got the party started with some of her signature moves. Good times.

Ella at Howard Zinn

I will just preface this by saying that as someone with a degree in History, yes not your typical socialite trade, nonetheless true…Howard Zinn is my idol. Take that American Idol, last week, while I was paying my dues in the country, Ella went to hear him speak along with a few other visionaries at the 92 street Y. Here’s her report back. R

Entering the 92nd Street Y last Wednesday, I may have been guilty of bringing more than a healthy dose of cynicism. Don’t get me wrong – I cried as much as the next liberal during Obama’s acceptance speech. But, well… I struggle with a lot of the liberal left’s self-righteousness and lack of self-criticism. Especially when confronted with it in its Park Slope post-hippie incarnation. And let’s be honest – if I struggle to stay polite to Park Slope liberals, Upper East Side liberals should entice me to set off fire alarms by smoking Marlboro Reds,  and to loudly proclaim my affection for clubbing baby seals.

Also, taking the subway from Crown Heights to 86th street is such a bizarre exercise in people watching.  Not a situation geared to inspiring faith in the existence of a post-racial America. Even in oh-so-liberal New York.

The high schoolers carrying AP-study guides and the people handing out fliers for every cause and demonstration under the sun did nothing to raise my spirits. I haven’t been grumpier since my mother forced me to take part in a Swedish outdoor Hannukah celebration.

Imagine my surprise when A Young People’s History of the United States
turned out to be the most inspiring and intellectually challenging event I’ve been to in a long time.

Howard Zinn, I shouldn’t have doubted you. Surprisingly tall and gangly, Zinn’s introduction to the evening showed not only that he’s still sharp and funny but also that he can command an audience without bogarting the stage. Despite the fact that the evening tied in with the publication of A Young People’s History of the United States, the self-evidently titled young reader’s version of Zinn’s non-fiction bestseller, it didn’t feel like an excuse to hawk books.

Instead, the evening introduced me to several historical speeches I’m going to have to revisit, and several performers I’m keen to check out again. Tim Robbins has been a long-term favorite of mine, but Avery Brooks is definitely someone I’d love to see act again. And I want to hear Shontina Vernon sing again and Staceyann Chin perform poetry.

For me, one of the very genuine effects of the evening was a return to the feeling that dissent and questioning of the ruling order can be intellectually satisfying. And that this doesn’t have to be done mockingly. The Martin Luther King Jr speech, Where Do We Go from Here?, performed by Brian Jones, was a picture of sincerity, while at the same time addressing the troubling link between race and class which was true in the 60s and has not yet been overcome.

Emphasizing the role of young people in shaping the world, Evann Orleck-Jetter, the twelve year old girl whose testimony helped sway the Vermont state legislature to allow equal marriage rights, read the piece she’d delivered early this year, as well as a document against child labor from 1913. I was worried for a while that this would be gimmicky and embarrassing. Instead, her calm performance was a restrained tear-jerker –- impressive in anyone and incredibly dignified for someone that young –- which highlighted Zinn’s argument that the study of history should inspire people to participate in the struggles of their own age.

The evening inspired me to email one of the poems performed to an old teacher of mine, from back when I was a super idealistic teenager. She wrote back, thanking me, saying she’d needed it that day. I guess the evening brought back those feelings of I matter-ness that otherwise tend to get trapped beneath my everyday life. Maybe, sometimes, the enthusiastic young person in me needs to be given space to push the post-ironic jaded city dweller aside.

By Ella Fitzsimmons

Word of the Day- ManCode

As I am in TV land, I have just now been taking in the wonderment that is The Bachelorette. Out of the 20 guys that are after her hand in marriage, and a million dollars or so, only one of them is not white. His name is Juan. He looks pretty similar to the white guys, tall, buff model/actor type, but beyond the crime of not being white, what’s even worse is that he is the sensitive type, a poet/artist/architect, who talks about his feelings and, apparently, “Does not respect man code.” David one of his competitors, dropped this line of brilliance, after saying that if he had met him outside of the show, he would have “Tied him to a tree and beat him up.”

Yes he really did say that.

So what is this ManCode? According to David, Juan broke it by not taking his shot with the boys at the bar, he dared to pour it out and then allegedly pretended to have drunk it. Ouch, pretty evil! But David says that “Juan was breaking man code left and right.” What else did he do? What is this elusive ManCode? If you know what else it entails please share. This could be the key to understanding, not only realityTV, racism, and violence, but perhaps the entire hetero-normative capitalist society…

R

Back in Brooktown

Ahh yes! After a too long absence I’m back in Brooktown, broke town-broke down, built up, rockstar, artstar, blogger…whatever you want to call it. My upstate days have come to a close, that means I’m back on the streets rolling from event to event.

I touched down on Friday, off the Amtrak train and onto the rainy streets of New York. Since then I’ve been busy, between the Celebrate Brooklyn opening gala, the Amadou and Miriam concert, Molly Davies dance at BAC, Asclepius at La Mama, restaurant soft openings at Palace Gate and BDGB, not to mention the events I didn’t successfully show up at, including Internet week’s Webutante Ball and the opening of the Brooklyn International Film Festival.

Among the most fun weekend outings was the sailing trip I went on with the Gotham Yacht club. There is nothing quite like turning the back to the city and sailing off up the Hudson. Even Jersey looks stunning from the right vantage point and sunning with charming international types, Gossip Girls in training and a few day traders, who are kind enough to share their boat wealth with the plebs isn’t a bad way to spend a Sunday.

After that Asclepius at La MaMa was wonderfully funny without necessarily setting out to be. Ellen Stewart, the Genius Award winning director and founder of La MaMa was truly an inspiring sight as she addressed the crowd from her wheelchair to thank us all for attending. She said she hadn’t been outside for 3 months. If you’re looking for a hero, I nominate her. For 45 years she’s been keeping the theater scene real.

In contrast Saturday’s Molly Davies dance was considerably more abstract and inaccessible.  I loved the toe-monster sequence pictured below, but the opening ladder meets Victorian era gesture was a bit out of my reach. The last piece which involved a long story telling session by an Indonesian choreographer was equally far out there, but that’s just my novice opinion. The blog doesn’t hold back, alas, there is no tight ass editor on my back here, shame that.

As for last night, the Celebrate Brooklyn Green Gala opening was quite lovely in fact. I found myself after an hour or so happily marooned at a table with the young singles! It was me, the daughter of Two Boots, the young workers from somewhere and the owner of Teany. I also met a nice woman from the South African consulate and the director of BRIC arts. The dinner was served eco-fabulously on bamboo plates and quinoa was among the selection. Kimora’s green guru would have been pleased.

Amadou and Miriam was definitely the height of my night though, that blind Malian couple are strictly brilliant. At one point a rapper, who’s identity is yet to be confirmed, joined them on stage and the music went off into this crazy trip hop, David Bowie, Bjork direction, I almost shit myself, it was that fucking good. Thanks to some good PR karma we were in the VIP section and dancing along side of us were the band members families, very cute kids, and fun music enthusiasts. It was a great place to be and it capped off an excellent night.

Jennifer Muller/The Works Dance Joyce Gala

Last night I spent the evening with the board of directors of Jennifer Muller’s dance company. Was this coincidental or the result of mischief on the part of the PR person? We’ll never know, but irrespective of how i found myself keeping such company at the Joyce and then Tavern on the Green, I will say that I enjoyed them. Especially a certain Ernie Miller III, who in good spirits became my platonic date as both his wife and my friend had piked.

Among the most charming of my companions, Ernie aside, was Jennifer Muller herself, we shared a breather outside at the end of the night and bonded around our love for Joni Mitchel. One of the new pieces in series B of her Joyce shows, entitled Tangle is danced to Joni and takes its inspiration from the mixed-up love line, “I love you when I forget about me.”

This reminds me of sordid car trips with a distant ex and more recent beautiful drives to Woodstock. Jennifer was strikingly down to earth, very open and accessible. She has been choreographing since before I was born and she described to me the way that her piece Tub was originally considered to be completely radical. This was a shocking idea that a tub filled with real water could be placed on stage aiding dancers to perform wet! The power of it still remains today even if the novelty factor has expired.

Opening with Tub and moving into Bench and Walk it Out, program A, which was performed last night, was fresh, interrogative and engaging accross the spectrum of audience age and dance literacy. Unlike Molly Davies, this performance was fun, accesible and clearly symbolic. When Bench references environmental degradation, specifically the various present and approaching ravishes of global warming, there is no confusion about what is being said. Theory is most powerful when it is deftly expressed and this is certainly acheived  by Jennifer Muller.

The Reckoning-Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Last night I saw the New York premier of The Reckoning. The crowd was quite astonishing. There were two prosecutors from the International Criminal Court, Christine Chung and Fatou Bensouda, both are also featured in the film. The top brass from Human Rights Watch were also present along with one of the prosecutors from the Nuremberg trials. When Pamela Yates, the director, introduced him he got a standing ovation.

The film was stark and penetrating. It discussed the worst war crimes and crimes against humanity of our time, but did so in a rational, rights based justice context. The main character in The Reckoning is the International Criminal Court itself. Founded in 2002, its mandate is to try the perpetrators of crimes that have been committed since the court’s inception. A stipulation exists that the court may only make cases against member states, unless the UN Security Council has referred them to mount an investigation.

In other words, the ICC is based on a treaty, when a country signs on to the treaty, it then formalizes its stand against impunity, and it makes its citizens eligible for possible investigation. However, the process requires the court to be a last resort only applied if a country proves unable or unwilling to try its own perpetrators. Over 100 countries have signed on to the treaty, but the United States, China, Russia, and Iraq have all refused to do so.

Since its founding the ICC has made cases against the leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, war lords in the Congo and the people with the most responsibility for the Darfur genocide, including Al-Bashir, the president of Sudan. They have also built a preliminary case in Columbia against paramilitary leaders and the corrupt members of government who support them.

Like any other court the way the ICC operates is by gathering evidence and using to to try criminals. By insisting upon rule of law in the international arena they are able to combat atrocities in areas of the world where there has been no justice and powerful leaders remain punished for their crimes.

This is an extremely important aim. The film shows the victims of abduction, child soldiers who were forced to be killers or sex slaves, women who were raped and babies that were beaten to the point of brain damage. Distressingly the restriction that the court faces is its lack of an enforcement arm. As the ICC has not been granted a military or police force it must rely on the national forces of each member state or wait for the UN Security Council to agree to send UN forces.

Right now an ICC arrest warrant for President Al-Bashir stands, but his forces will not turn him in, and as Sudan is a sovereign state no other country’s military can enter and arrest him, without it being seen as an act of war. The Security Council could go in and enforce the warrant, but they have yet to do so. As China and the US hold sway on the council its unlikely that this result will occur.

A beacon of hope in the world, the ICC stands as a glass giant in the Hague, but the question the film poses is will its halls be filled with prosecuted criminals, or will it be rendered ineffective as little more than a symbol.

Whatever Works-Northside-PIFF

Since last we spoke, I spent a busy few days in Brooklyn, taking in the Northside festival in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (saw a fun band called The Dodos, which confirmed that I am not too old to be pushed around by crowds of hipsters) , spent time with my friends (going to rainy Brooklyn Pride) and feeling guilty that I had no time left to make it to The Brooklyn International Film Festival. Ahhh, my alma-mater suffers, but to make up for it I have traveled all the way to the lost (and found) beautiful end of the known (gay) world. That’s right, Provincetown. The pilgrims landed here, the artists came and planted flags, soon those flags turned rainbow colored and now I’m here for a film festival.

The Provincetown International Film Festival opened last night with Woody Allen’s new film Whatever Works. It was typical Allen with a lot of wildly unrealistic Oedipal scenarios. The basic premise is attractive yes, but why must it always be couched in the notion that anyone, let alone a young, beautiful, perfect-bodied, long haired woman would want to sleep with Woody Allen or one of his stand ins,  in this case Larry David.

Allen is very funny, David is funny, Seinfeld his award-winning show was hysterical, but all three rest upon some very misogynistic assumptions, which in my experience just aren’t true. Usually when the young girl goes for the old guy, he is modelesque not a limping hostile geriatric. Whatever Hugh Heifner would  have us believe this is not a sane norm.

Okay, if you have not seen the film and would prefer not to read the Sony Pictures Synopsis I’ll tell you what happens: Larry David is an unhappy old guy, he has a hot rich wife, teaches string theory and considers himself to be a genius, but he doesn’t appreciate any of it and tries to commit suicide. He fails even at this, and then one day meets a runaway played by Evan Rachel Wood, who begs him to let her stay in his apt and eventually develops a huge crush on him.  She is a southern beauty pageant princess and is ignorant in many ways.  Wood and David serve as an odd couple until both of her parents in turn journey to NYC and try to get her to return to the south. Instead of her leaving they both stay and go through significant transformations.

Polyamory plays a role, along with the concept of New York as re-education camp and the lesson that David’s monologues issue directly to the audience is Whatever Works. This means, maybe your perfect sophisticated wife and great job wont make you happy, maybe a simpleton who worships you will, and maybe not. In his final speech David’s character, Boris Yellnikoff, says basically ‘If your not hurting anyone else do whatever makes you happy, take whatever bit of love you can find in this world.’

Hmmm, almost convincing, except when that translates to sleeping with minors and people who are, I don’t know, your adoptive children.

Tony Blair in Person

Yesterday was exciting, not only did I get to while away the late night dancing to some determinedly old school djs at the Nightlife Preservation Community party, but I also was among the security cleared crowd at Tony Blair’s talk at the 92 Street Y.

Having been a History student and residing in the British empire during much of the reign of Blair, and most memorably during his decision to go to war in Iraq based on imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction, I was very interested to see what he had to say for himself.

Charming to a tee, it was clear how he had managed (at least in part) to ascend to the highest level of office. Within the span of little over an hour he quoted Rabbi Hillel and Winston Churchill, did impressions of Americans who have mistaken him for the actor in The Queen and of his cockney friend who always gives him good advice.

Where was that helpful mate in 2003 when it came time to issue the command for war? Although Blair channelled him and his other cast of colorful cultural references to please the crowd, he was undeniably uncomfortable when Mathew Bishop the interviewer leading Blair’s Q&A asked him point blank if he regretted the decision.

Blair gripped his chair with both hands and stuttered through a long explanation of how he admits that the intelligence was faulty, but they believed it at the time and any way the world is still “better off without Sadam and his two sons ruling the country.”

When asked whether he thinks that the war in Iraq has actually increased Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and ill feeling towards the west, he said absolutely not. “The responsibility for terrorism lies in the hands of the terrorists.” he said.

At the moment the former PM’s main activities are his work with the recently formed Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the Africa Governance Initiative, the Climate Group and his position as a negotiater of sorts for peace in Israel/Palestine.

On climate, he seemed to grasp that it is a very real and pressing issue, yet one of the main solutions that he proposed is Nuclear power- in my mind a terrible idea.

On Africa, he said that aid alone is not enough, governments have to be taught (by him) how to operate. He proudly asserted that he is working on bottom up state building in Sierra Leone and Rwanda.

On the Middle East. “For Israel the only Palestinian state they will be able to accept is a secure and well-governed state.” Blair said. He is working on state building there as well. Well clearly Britain and its former leader know best. Perhaps those good old imperialist days are not yet over after all.

He said many additional things about religion, democracy and justice, but I am more concerned with what he didn’t say. Bishop actually selected my audience question, “What was the most significant mistake you made as Prime Minister?”  Blair’s response, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” A chilling thought.

Sick in Bed

Whoah, I have the flu. It is no fun at all. From throwing up to stomach pains, fever, dizziness, cough, head cold, I feel like I’m in 2 no Trump. For all the non-bridge players that means, I’ve got high cards in all the suits, a little of everything, enough to win with out naming a suit. Or in this case enough to loose, with every symptom rolled up together, it’s got to be the flu. I know this because I’ve had it before. I hate doctors and don’t have a reassuring level of health-care coverage so I’m going to have to stick with the self diagnosis for now. My dear friend trekked over into my sick room yesterday, bringing me much food and love and good company. When she joked that it may be swine flu, I nearly started to cry. Do you think it could be? That would be a reason to go to the doctor, if I’m not substantially better by tomorrow I will try to make myself go.

For now its ice-packs on the head and tylenol and thinking about all the great things I’m missing. No that’s sad, how about reading Eilleen Myles and watching Barbara Kopple docs and writing stories in bed. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 4 days, man I haven’t been sick like this for a long time.

Carnival – Slate Honey

Hey all,

Slate asked me to post this about the Audre Lorde Project benefit tonight. ALP is a great org and it looks like this will be fun….

Come out to the monthly dance party CARNIVALE this Saturday night, March 13th, at Littlefield to get your dance on, see performances and photography and support an important cause.  This Saturday, CARNIVALE celebrates the unique efforts of the Audre Lorde Project with a benefit to support ALP’s anti-violence work and community organizing for and by gender variant people of color.  Come out at 11pm to see ///SPECIMEN/// perform and grind through the night with GoGo dancers COSMIC & the sexy boys of TransLiscious Entertainment.  The fine line up of DJs include the Legendary Ladies of Ubiquita, DJs Reborn, Selly & Moni and Carnival’s resident DJ A.K Right aka Bran Fenner.  If you’ve got an eye for art, check out “Looking at a Woman,” a digital retrospective of the work by acclaimed photojournalist Angela Jimenez, which will be on view.  There is certainly something for everyone at CARNIVALE! Sliding sale suggested donation is $5-$25.  RSVP on facebook at CARNIVALE@ LITTLEFIELD.

Ms Dahlia’s Cafe and N-Diya Spa- Bedstuy Represent

Lately, there have been two noteworthy openings in the hood. Bed-stuy, Nostrand ave, right next door to each other in fact. One boasts food for the soul and the other can provide physical healing, among other things. The first is Ms. Dahlia’s cafe on Nostrand between Hancock and Halsey, right by the A. They have great coffee, including decaf espresso, yes hood, you finally answered my prayers, and there’s more, they have a self-serve, massive cinnamon shaker! I have a not so secret cinnamon addiction so this suits me just fine. They also have a fairly priced collection of food items that are not a. Chinese chicken b. Jamaican patties or c.pizza, so this is exactly what the neighborhood needs.

A few sample menu items include:

Bagels and Balthazar breads with spreads

Belgian Waffles

Homemade Biscuits

Omelets

Sandwiches/ Soups

Sweets: including Cupcakes and excellent pie!

They also have some pretty amazing Cucumber Lemonade. I recommend it!

Here is a pic of the two lovely owners:

And one of my friends, Decaf Latte and Cinnamon.

As for their stupendous neighbor, I can only continue to rave. Safiya at N-Diya, gives great massages and for the best prices around for miles. $95 gets you a 60 minute Aromatherapy massage and you can get a facial for even less. She makes all of her own products using super natural ingredients. Shampoo without sodium laurel sulfate and leave-in conditioner made out of rosemary, lemongrass, and coconut oil. Trust me it smells great and it works. I know this sounds like an info-mercial, but it’s all true! Check them both out and let me know what you think xR

Dear Fucked in Park Slope

Dear Fucked in Park Slope,

It’s as bad as you said. No, it’s worse. When you spoke of the Food Coop and Tea Lounge, I commiserated and hated in solidarity. But, the real life version is, oh so much, worse. As I sit here in Tea Lounge attempting to have a freelancers daytime public internet moment, I am surrounded by approximately 50 toddlers, 2s and 3s, during a performance by a kiddy band. I feel I’ve crossed into a very dark realm. They just played a song called “I can do it all by myself” to the exact same tune as that “Don’t turn your back on me brother” song. Oh, but it’s too late for that, my brothers and sisters have turned their backs and stayed on the safe side of the tracks. I will now think twice before complaining about the ghetto-ness of Bed-Stuy. At least there it’s safe to venture out by day, without a trendy baby sling.

In solidarity,

The Brooklyn Socialite