When I was younger, I would feel an electric charge of excitement in anticipation of a concert. Now that I see an average of 3 or 4 concerts a week, there's little time for that excitement to build up. Some concerts actually just feel like a fix to feed my crazy, crazy addiction.

By the time I got to Mercury Lounge last night, I was starting to feel that rare energetic surge of excitement. My friend and I had just witnessed a less than spectacular performance by Fiery Furnaces at the East River Amphitheater, and were looking to finish our Thursday night with something a bit more memorable.

After a short wait outside, with a group of overly-excited/obnoxious guys, we worked our way into the venue, through the narrow hallway alongside the bar, and into the performance space. Gentleman Reg was on stage, and our initial reaction was negative, but by the time we settled into a spot right up front, his performance became much more satisfying. But we were there for one reason, Broken Social Scene.

Continue reading "Broken Social Scene Finds The Magic At Mercury Lounge"

Photos by Jonny-Leather

If you live in Brooklyn and haven’t adopted some sugar-free (or vegan) diet, then you should have heard of Cake Man Raven and his famous red velvet cake.  Well, he wants you loyal sweet fiends to know he appreciates your business and this Sunday the Fort Greene shop will host Eighth Annual Family & Friends Appreciation Day. Get ready for a cupcake parade at 3 p.m. and live music on the festival stage at 4 p.m. (located at South Oxford and Hanson Place).  The Cake Man has promised stilt walkers, marching bands, giant slides and the possible celebrity cameo (maybe one of the famous people who love his cake like Patti LaBelle or Spike Lee will appear).

Originally from Harlem, Raven Patrick De'Sean Dennis III, got his nickname when a reporter referred to him as “Harlem Cake Man Raven” in 1991.  The title stuck and followed him all the way to Brooklyn where I have heard people ask in an excited tone as they point to the red cake with white creamy icing, “Is that from Cake Man Raven?”  And a lot of the time, it is.

Sun. July 20, 3 p.m., 708 Fulton Street (at Greene Ave.) 718-694-2253

Don’t hate on Jason Jeffries. He wants to close down Bedford Avenue—but it’s only for your own good. Jeffries is the architect behind Williamsburg Walks, an event that will close a stretch of Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn for four Saturdays this summer, beginning this weekend. And, according to Jeffries, this is the best way to build community in the nabe.

Yes, you read that right, no taxis, no cars aiming for folks on crosswalks: Starting July 19 and continuing for four consecutive Saturdays, Bedford Avenue from Metropolitan to North 9th Street will be closed to cars and buses will be re-routed. Other businesses in the same area, from Roebling Street to the waterfront, will be allowed to set up tables outside their shops...

Continue reading "Car-Free Bedford" here.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!” will ring out in Red Hook this Saturday, July 19, when Jess Winfield performs 31 condensed plays by Shakespeare. If he manages to complete his task, he will set the record for the most Shakespeare plays performed solo in Brooklyn in a day. This isn’t Winfield’s first time dabbling in condensed Shakespeare. He is the founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company in California, a theater company that abridged all of Shakespeare’s plays into a two-hour performance. Though he, as he put it, “hung up his tights” in 1992, Winfield’s obsession with the playwright hasn’t died down.

The performance Saturday will help promote Winfield’s new book, My Name is Will, a story about a young Shakespeare scholar (named Willie Shakespeare Greenberg) tripping on mushrooms. The plays will take place in various spots, mostly in Red Hook, and each has a theme. The only non-Brooklyn location starts the show at 2 p.m. during the 20-minute Water Taxi ride from Pier 11 in Manhattan where he will tackle 16 comedies. B61 Bar features Hamlet and you can get more of Julius Caesar at the Brooklyn Ice House. More locations can be found on the Freebird bookstore, where the performance ends and you can party down like it’s 1599.

Though diminutive actor Leslie Jordan may be best known for his Emmy-winning recurring role as Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace, he's probably better loved by the obsessed fans of Del Shores' 2001 cult classic flick, Sordid Lives. Happily for anyone who's ever been charmed by Jordan's portrayal of Brother Boy, institutionalized by his family in Texas for being a gay man with a proclivity for dressing in drag and lip syncing to Tammy Faye songs, he's very much present in the new Logo television series based on the film...

Continue readinig "Sordid Lives" here.

Last night I checked out Taylor Mac's performance at HERE, The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, which he is performing in rep with his other one-man show, The Young Ladies of... As I work on what I want to write about the performance, I thought this video of Taylor performing "The Palace of the End," an epic love song about Lynne Cheney and Saddam Hussein which is included in Be(a)st, would be a good way of cheering us all up while we sit in offices while our lucky pals are out at the beach.

The Nation magazine has just sent out a press release touting a "new sex column" to appear in the magazine beginning next month.  The magazine is calling the column "Carnal Knowledge," an extremely witty spin on the title of the 1971 movie, "Carnal Knowledge." The column will be written by JoAnn Wypijewski (pictured left), whose sex column credentials include years of freelancing for Mother Jones, Legal Affairs and New Labor Forum...

Continue reading "The Nation's Sex Column" here.

Perhaps the editors of Entertainment Weekly have been too busy working on their not-well-received re-design. How else to explain the "Writers Gone Wild!" antics going on in last week's issue: the ever inane "The Shaw Report" declaring that "H" is in, "W" is five minutes ago, and "V" is out (your guess is as good as mine); the increasingly useless Diablo Cody inexplicably schilling for Universal's Land Of The Lost, without mentioning or even better communicating why we should care about what Diablo Cody has to say about a movie that's still a year away from release, on which she didn't work; but it is Margeaux Watson who has gone wildest, railing against Hollywood for casting Charlize Theron as Will Smith's love interest in Hancock, floating absurd notions such as "imagine how refreshing Hancock would have been if Theron's heroine had been played by a black actress." Having imagined it, it doesn't seem at all refreshing – seeing Will Smith act opposite his first Caucasian love interest, on the other hand, is quite refreshing...

Continue reading "Hating Margeaux Watson" here.

In the battle between beauty and the geek, chalk one up for the geek. They proved themselves to be the most dedicated at Tuesday’s Times Talk with Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan. The audience for the long ago sold-out discussion on The Dark Knight was comprised roughly equally of ComiCon-worthy nerds and well-dressed professional women and gays. However, with the exception of one comic-loving and intensely nervous girl, it was all male Batman diehards who lined up when the audience was invited to ask questions.

Continue reading "Geek Squad" here.

Armond White always sparks some controversy with his take on films. This week's review of the hyper-hyped The Dark Knight may exceed his usual ability to evoke vitriol. As of now there are 297 comments on the posting at Rottentomatoes (we at New York Press are still free from the tyranny of the anonymous hate-filled screeds of commenters—but not for long). And this is by people who haven't even SEEN THE MOVIE! Just wait until they skip work on Friday to sit in a dark theater on a bright and shiny summer day to wallow in Gotham's superhero muck.

I did see the film on Tuesday night at an IMAX screening and left with a terrible headache...

Continue reading "Don't Hate on Superheroes" here.