Easy Star All-Stars

This Wednesday at the Stuyvesant Town Oval, go see the Easy Star All-Stars, a reggae dub band whose covers of such greats as Radiohead, Pink Floyd and the Beatles are sure to make you shake your groove thang. Nothing like free outdoor music in a muggy Manhattan summer.

Towards a better future

An anonymous post from Iran:

"I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I'm listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It's worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I'm two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow's children."

We're praying for you.

Popsicles for the people

Hopefully this rain will soon give way to the sweltering heat that defines New York City summers, and give business to the pop-up popsicle shop in Battery Park City starting this Monday. People's Pops will only be open for a month, each weekday 'til 12:30 p.m. Stop by during your lunch break for some frozen refreshment in one of the following incarnations: fresh strawberry with rhubarb, fresh strawberry and organic cream, and sweet upstate rhubarb (flavors change weekly depending on what's available at markets). Or D.I.Y. the grown-up version: margarita popsicles. Requisite rooftop not included.

Crossing my fingers for dry land

Tomorrow is the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, an annual tradition since 1983. The parade features wacky costumes, wild floats, and all the glories of Coney Island's famous boardwalk (the Cyclone, Nathan's hot dogs, and Astroland, to name a few). It's on rain or shine at 2pm, but since this is the mermaid's chance to sun themselves out of the water, lets hope the day shines.

Speaking of the parade - an excerpt from a story I wrote a few years ago:

Of course, I couldn’t find anyone to go to the parade with, but I saw it as a sign that I should give Jerry a call. His phone voice sounded less calm than usual, and where he usually just grunted, he said, “Bye, see you soon,” and I was like “Are you going through puberty or something, doofus? Your voice just totally cracked,” but he had already hung up.

Up until that moment, I had always prided myself on being able to diffuse an awkward situation. It’s like a talent of mine, I just chatter about frogs or David Letterman’s teeth or something until the silence is all filled up like a helium balloon. But for some reason, maybe everyone else on the F train was extra talky and I couldn’t help listening, or maybe it was the pretty intense heat making us feel faint, for some reason we barely said anything to each other the whole way down to Stillwell Avenue. “This is it,” Jerry said, and I did one of those straight-line smiles that means you’re acknowledging someone. He might have tried to hold my hand, because I felt something sweaty and gross brush up against my own clammy palm, but I clenched and unclenched both my fists and then it was gone. Maybe I was imagining it, anyway.

Any way you slice it, the day was doomed. Jerry doesn’t like rollercoasters, so I had to ride the Cyclone by myself, which was pretty scary, more because of the creaky wooden noises than the actual adrenaline rush. He kept saying how Astroland was freaking him out, and I said maybe he shouldn’t have gotten stoned before such an already awesome adventure, which pissed him off a little I think, but is it my fault if he was having a bad high? I don’t think so.

So the whole day just turned out weird. The mermaids all looked really beautiful though, and there was even one dressed entirely in cheetah print, her tail and everything. I poked Jerry and said if I could wear anyone’s costume, that would be it, but he just looked confused. I kept wishing I had brought some glitter or iridescent fabric to wrap myself in, because walking in the parade looked like almost as much fun as the drag queens on the float seemed to be having. I tried to get Jerry to sneak behind the cheetah mermaid with me, but he didn’t want to walk in the parade. He thought we would stick out because of our jeans and sneakers. I tried tying my shoelaces together and hopping around like I had one leg, like a tail or something, but Jerry told me to cut it out, that he didn’t want me to fall on my face.

“Face it, Jerry,” I said. “You’re not having any fun here. You better lighten up or I’m not inviting you back next year. So there.”

“There is no next year,” he said. “They’re shutting down Astroland, remember?” I must have looked like I was going to cry or something, even though I already knew it was the last Mermaid Parade ever, because then he said, “All good things come to an end, I guess. There’s no rhyme or reason to the way things pan out, it’s just one big mess. That’s life.”

Dave Eggers + Wild Things = Love

Dave Eggers' new book, The Wild Things, comes out in October (set to coincide with the release date of Spike Jonze's film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are). It is furry and published by McSweeney's. What's not to love?

Here's Amazon's product description:

The Wild Things — based loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay cowritten with Spike Jonze — is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can’t control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, his sister is becoming a teenager and no longer has interest in him. At the same time, Max finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: he wears a wolf suit, bites his mom, and can’t always control his outbursts. During a fight at home, Max flees and runs away into the woods. He finds a boat there, jumps in, and ends up on the open sea, destination unknown. He lands on the island of the Wild Things, and soon he becomes their king. But things get complicated when Max realizes that the Wild Things want as much from him as he wants from them. Funny, dark, and alive, The Wild Things is a timeless and time-tested tale for all ages.

Can't wait!

Free beats

Video shot two days after Obama's win - oh, New York, you're so freakin' cute sometimes.

Speaking of Barack, and in light of yesterday's post, the man is giving benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. Movin' on up to the right (left?) side!

The pair who punked New York

On May 26th, the New York City Clerk's Office was fooled into certifying its first gay marriage. 21-year-old Jason Stenson and 18-year-old Hakim "Kimah" Nelson (who hopes to one day have the surgery required to identify himself as fully female), received a marriage license and an official ceremony with almost no trouble. When they walked out of the building, Jason said to Kimah, "I think we just made history." Damn straight, kids. Let's hope New York follows suit.

Good news for the book

Started my first day at the Columbia Publishing Course, which is shaping up to look uber-intense but equally exciting. The first three hours were taken by Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch, whose enthusiasm for the future of paper publishing in the face of such advances as Kindle and other e-readers was inspiring. His belief in "the essential writerliness of this generation," thanks to internet advances which have made every young person a reader and writer, instilled a sense of pride throughout the 100-student lecture hall. Not that I wasn't already on board, but it's certainly nice to hear your life's dream is maybe, possibly not so doomed after all.

Lego my movie

My stone-age internet is still basically out of commission, so posts might be a bit less regular the next week or so. However, I've got signal enough to share this: brickfilms.com, a Lego-animation site that features hundreds of block-based original short films, as well as adaptations of popular classics like Harry Potter and a Beatles video. Do like the Danish do and learn to make your own colorful stop-motion flicks!

Bolting back to Bmore

Apologies for the lack of bloggage yesterday - my internet has been totally shot. Luckily, there's an almost-free remedy: the Bolt Bus, a transport service that is currently taking me from New York to Baltimore's Penn Station, offers free wireless internet and absurdly cheap fares. Move over, Amtrak. It's Bolt's time to shine.