Feb. 3, Union Hall, 702 Union St. (at Fifth Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-638-4400; 8, $5 To rework Rumsfeld, there is well-informed information, bullshit information, well-informed bullshit and just plain bullshit. It’s hard to tell under which category to file this evening of amateur lectures on humorous minutiae.Tonight includes Paul Lukas on “How to Catch a Mouse,” Eliot Glazer on “How to Interpret a Long Island High School Yearbook,” and Carrie McLaren, editor of Monkeywire, an e-news service focused on monkeys and apes. Bottom Line: Whether the lectures given prove useful is beside the point. Knowledge is power regardless of its utility. To Seek Home: The Bene Israel of India
Jan. 29, Walter Reade Theater, 70 W. 63rd St. (betw. Central Park West & Columbus Ave.), 212-875-5601; 3:30, $11 Who knew there are Jews in India? Filmmaker and photographer Sadia Shepard makes one. Shepard spent 2002 documenting the small Bene Israel community of Mumbai, where her bubbe grew up.The Jews of Mumbai believe they were shipwrecked on Indian shores 2,000 years ago. Stranger things have happened.
Shepard’s documentary, however, doesn’t dwell on the novelty of brown faces with yarmulkes. Rather it captures the tricky dual-identity of this lost and rare tribe. Bottom Line: For Jews—who always seem to think we’re alone in the world—it’s nice to see that there are others of us even more alone in the world than we are.
Idiotarod
Jan. 31, Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Blvd. (at Broadway), Queens; time TBA, $30 What one man sees as merely a rolling steel carrier for groceries, a group of slightly more creative youngsters see as a vehicle for glory. We’re talking shopping carts here people—those carriers of commodity and produce! And in this case, we’re talking about shopping carts moonlighting as bobsleds in a crazy race involving booze, costumes and drag race modifications.Think Iditarod but replace dogs with men, sleds with carts, Alaska with New York City and water with beer.With a concept so simple, it’s hard to go wrong. Bottom Line: Though it is too late to register, it is never too late to observe. Glory is hard to come by in the city but this competition is truly heroic. The City
Feb. 1, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway (at W. 95th St.), 212-864- 1414; 4:30, $11 Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke’s weird social propaganda documentary is full of dreamy shots of yards juxtaposed with the urban chaos of the city. It’s the anti-Revolutionary Road; the counterpoint to Jules Dassin’s The Naked City.Wide-open space, lawns, New England–style homes, what could be better? Bottom Line: This is the source of our nation’s obsession with suburban living.
Poems & Pints, featuring Dana Goodyear and Matthew Zapruder
Feb. 3, Fraunces Tavern, 54 Pearl St. (at Broad St.), 212-968-1776; 7, FREE You might know Dana Goodyear as the author of what was, until November, the most ridiculous blog in the planet: Postcard From Los Angeles on The New Yorker website. How someone gets paid to write that is beyond me, and why somebody at The New Yorker decided to publish it shall be an enduring mystery forever more. But she’s a better poet than blogger. And tonight she wears her poet hat (felt with tassels) in a reading with San Fran wordsmith Matthew Zapruder. As one might gather from the title, verse shall be imbibed with beer to make it go down better.
Bottom Line: I usually can’t stomach poetry readings, but Zapruder is a treat to hear and the chance to see in flesh the woman whose blog I’ve sniggered at in secret for a year is too good to forego.
