Former Stroke Albert Hammond Jr. and his ladyfriend, model Agyness Deyn, have been all over the news lately. We want nothing but the best for those crazy kids, so we're asking you, our readers, to use one of those photo-morphing sites to create a picture of what the couple's children might one day look like. The person who sends the best photo to editorial@nypress.com by Monday morning will receive a signed, vinyl copy of Hammond's new album, ¿Cómo Te Llama?.

Let the games begin!

This week's cover story addresses the skyrocketing price of cigarettes in New York and some of the ways people are coping. The hideous and disturbing anti-smoking commercials and billboards, together with the indoor smoking ban has sent smokers running for a variety of smoking alternatives, both to side-step legislation and make somewhat healthier choices.

Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention, and once again technology now offers options that were unthinkable as recently as a decade ago. Mechatronics, the combination of mechanical, electronic and software engineering has produced an advanced hybrid system: the electronic cigarette, aka the e-cig. An international subculture has emerged around e-cigs, though patents are still pending worldwide for the products, are produced and distributed primarily from China. Sidestepping cigarettes by pursuing international loopholes through the Internet, most e-cigs are bought online, breeding wealth of online forums where users compare products and share tips on cleaning, tricks and troubleshooting...

Continue reading "e-cigs" here.

I gave The Walkmen's new record You & Me a good 30 spins before writing my recent story for NY Press in which I boldly called it the "Year's Best Album." The record has been in such heavy rotation on my iTunes that I've been listening to it more than once a day on average. It's very rare that an album can be devoted such attention, especially with so much great music coming from publicists every day, but it's really just that good. (If you don't believe me, just ask Pitchfork.)

Last night's show at Bowery Ballroom (the band's 2nd of 2 sold out nights) was my first chance to hear the new songs live, aside from watching their Good Day New York performance on Monday morning...

Continue reading "The Walkmen at Bowery Ballroom: Night 2"

Photos by Jonny Leather

We've had a lot of fun together. Friends since day one, I've given you nearly every one of my summer Sundays since that first one in 2006, and you've given me some really great times. As good as they all have been, nothing quite compares to our first day together.

With the sun beating down on the hot concrete,Tim Harrington ran wild, getting beaned by dodgeballs, flopping around in puddles, and soaking himself on the slip'n'slide—all while rocking out. It was fun, fresh and free, without all the hype that now brings in the masses of scenesters...

Continue reading "A Fond Farewell To JellyNYC McCarren Park Pool Parties"

Photos by Jonny-Leather

At times it seems like the media enjoys reporting on allegations of racism or sexism simply so they can say/quote all the things that they'd like to be able to write/do without getting lambasted for being racist/sexist themselves. The idea of being objective shields them from culpability. Cable news enjoys a racist slur against Obama so they can then repeat it infinitely. Someone says something stupid about Jews or women and now the papers can write about it, conjecture without fear of reprisal. The way the mainstream media has handled the Spanish ad where they pulled their eyes into "slits" is a perfect example. The stupid act allowed the media to then "report" on how Chinese look different than white folk because they have "slitty eyes." It allows them to openly reinforce juvenile ideas under the guise of news—because they've been holding in the bigoted ideas and need some way to release them on viewers/readers.

Brendan O'Neill over at spiked goes a step further and calls media folk on their hypocritical coverage of the "slitty-eyed" problem.

"...Why is it wrong for athletes to make the slitty-eyed gesture but it is apparently okay for well-to-do campaign groups concerned about Tibet to peddle the slitty-eyed prejudice about the Chinese? As spiked revealed earlier this year, the London-based Free Tibet campaign has disseminated propaganda showing the Chinese as slitty-eyed, yellow-skinned, buck-toothed invaders, and nobody batted an eyelid (no pun intended)."

It raises an important issue: The media only enjoy running with racist stories as long as they can manipulate the story into some "race row." Not when it actually has the potential to raise serious doubts about the validity of an organization that has been deemed positive or above blame.

Read the complete story here.

We've pretty much stayed on the sidelines in this Apollo Braun thing after initially talking to him about his Obama T-shirt. But NYC the Blog finally decided to film him, so people can believe he is a real, live person. He actually seems a lot less outspoken when captured digitally, or maybe that's after he was beat down for selling those shirts. He does have a devilish grin, however, when he expresses his love for Gawker writer Hamilton Nolan and how he'd have sex with him...

Elisabeth Shue has a bit part in Hamlet 2 and recently spoke up about how she wanted to leave the movie business and get a degree in creative writing from Columbia (but didn't).

Well, just so happens we bumped into her bro Andrew Shue yesterday at the Starbucks at Park Ave. and E. 29th St. He did leave the acting world (we think) and ended up founding the social networking site CafeMom. While we didn't ask him about his current plans, and if he'd be returning to TV-land soon, we did notice how he stood in the middle of the place, looking for a little attention, and fail to attract any gawkers.

It got us thinking about how the 1990s are making a comeback in more ways than one. There's already plenty of 90s alterna-bands touring and now 90210 is about to show up again in primetime. Maybe it's just a matter of time for a Melrose Place resurrection?

The Year Punk Broke, the seminal rock movie featuring live and behind-the-scenes footage of the most important bands of the day—Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Babes in Toyland and Dinosaur, Jr., among others. Since its 1991 release, though, the movie has only been available on VHS and Laserdisc. Earlier today, I came across a MySpace page dedicated to the idea of bringing the film to DVD. In fact, director Dave Markey has completed word on the disc, but a release date still hasn't been set.  Hell, in a world where things that should never see the light of day, like Gwenyth Paltrow and My Little Pony movies, are allowed widespread DVD release, The Year Punk Broke should be afforded the same luxury. So, c'mon Universal, throw us a bone.

Going wrong with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is hard to do, though putting the story to dance might be the best way to make the audience wish they hadn’t fallen down the rabbit hole.  “Curiouser and curiouser,” played through my mind as @lice in www.onderland began in a confusing manner, with most of the action occurring on a large screen behind a bewildered Alice who consulted her lap top.  Actually, the concept of the performance is neat: Alice falls down into a cyber world where she has a Facebook-like profile and is confronted by sex-site flowers, an instant messaging Cheshire Cat and the digital chase for the roller skating White Rabbit.  All the while the handful of dancers interpret different scenes.  One of the best parts was the caterpillar duo that showed the grace and laziness of the multi-legged insect. Also, the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse trio turned out to be fun, especially the Dormouse who kept falling asleep as they danced.  Perhaps the show would have been more successful if the performers were choreographed better or if they had practiced more.  But then again, did we really need to redo Alice’s adventures in modern dance? We may all be mad here, but this is too much.

Additional show times are Aug. 19 at 5:15 and Aug. 22 at 9:45. Theatre 80, 80 St. Marks Place (btwn. 1st and 2nd Aves.) $15.

Back in 2001, I was lucky enough to catch The Faint on consecutive nights at Bowery Ballroom and North Six. Each night, they took forever to set up, but it was well worth the wait. Both shows started the same way—keyboardist Jacob Thiele stood front center on a dark stage singing the slow-moving "Sealed Human." Fog, strobes, and the thunderous metal guitar playing of Dapose all ignited with perfect timing to make for the perfect start to two of the finest live performances I've ever seen. This was The Faint at their peak. Danse Macabre had just been released, and with the addition of Dapose on guitar, their live sound had been given an extra boost.

Following the release of Wet From Birth, I saw them at Webster Hall. Though the band had implemented the element of video into their performances, the concert wasn't quite as moving as back in 2001.

Then, until releasing new single "The Geeks Were Right" in June, they seemed to have disappeared. Spending nearly four years between Wet From Birth and 2008's Fasciinatiion, The Faint took the risk of being forgotten...

Continue reading "Fasciinatiing: The Faint at Terminal 5"

Photos by Jonny-Leather

Radar's next issue features a story by Jessica Pilot that looks into the girls that hang out at the Beatrice Inn and get paid to fuck guys who shouldn't have any problem getting girls anyway. But hey, it's easier (and cheaper) to pay a girl to have sex with you than have to date her. These privileged ladies, including Heather who has a job in fashoin media, are so post-feminist that they studied women's studies and decided to "freelance" in the sex trade instead of pursue loftier pursuits.

"Heather's other partner, a blonde with freckled ivory skin with whom she had some common friends, works under the name Kelly. After graduating from an Ivy League college in 2006, Kelly says she was thinking about going to grad school to become an English professor. She's decided to put that aspiration on hold, though, while she rakes in the equivalent of an investment banker's salary selling sex."

Read more about the hipster hookers here.

The moody, self-involved and sickly artist Egon Schiele literally comes to life in Mark Lindberg’s Self Portrait as Schiele, premiering in this year’s Fringe Festival.  Set in modern times, the plot revolves around art and an incurable influenza—possibly the same one that killed Schiele in 1918. Mädchen is the heroin, a painter who somehow calls up the ghost of Schiele in a fever-driven sickness and embarks on a strange, dreamlike journey through her own psyche by way of creativity.  At least, it appears to be all in her head. But as more characters get sick, they too see the dead artist and find themselves moving in classic poses from Schiele’s art. Dr. Sonnenschein, played by a vibrant Elizabeth Hess, is a sex therapist that doubles as a mother figure.  In the beginning she is in control of the characters and situations, but like the doctor, as clothes come off and delirium sets in, she ends up more of a child then the delicate Mädchen.  Through most of the play it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s a dream, but it works like well planned sequence in a Chuck Palahniuk novel.   By the end of the performance I felt almost as sick as the characters and not really sure what just happened.

Additional show times are Aug. 19 at 4:45, Aug. 21 at 8, and Aug. 23 at 2:45. The Connelly Theater, 220 East 4th St. (btwn. Avenues A and B), $15.

Battles, Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance
Central Park Summerstage, 8/16/08

Three of New York's finest and most original bands shared the stage on Saturday for a free concert at Central Park SummerStage. Presented in the pleasant outdoor setting of Central Park on a beautiful day, hundreds of people who would normally never come to experience the experimental tribal sounds of Gang Gang Dance got to see them in a perfect setting. The swaying trees played perfect compliment to their mystical songs.

Brooklyn's noise pioneers followed with an ear-shredding set that was not for everyone, but helped showcase the extent of their influence over the entire NYC music scene.

Headlining was maybe the most accessible and brightest of the three bands, Battles...

Continue reading "Adventurous Listening: Battles, Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance at SummerStage"

Photos by Jonny-Leather

With its mediocre $11 million opening weekend box office take, the unequivocal failure of Mirrors, Alexandre Aja's critical (20 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 36 on Metacritic) and financial bomb, may be cause for celebration. It spells the beginning of the end of what the New York magazine's David Edelstein dubbed the "torture porn" craze, where "explicit scenes of torture and mutilation...now...have terrific production values and a place of honor in your local multiplex." Its paradoxically gory and glitzy-haunting of a dilapidated department store never looked more difficult to pull off. But big-budget Mirrors' high production values can't mask its tediously unimaginative dialogue, ludicrous plot and heretical lack of imaginative death scenes (the real reason people go to Aja's films)...

Continue reading "Mirrors" here.

Lindsay Anderson was first a film critic and always a film critic. Even when he directed the fiction films This Sporting Life, If, O Lucky Man and The Whales of August, he displayed an awareness of film as both art and social statement. That’s the significance of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s current Anderson retrospective through Aug. 21. It features the theatrical premiere of Never Apologize, a bio-doc in which actor Malcolm McDowell reads the British director’s journals and reminiscences...

Continue reading "Never Back Down" here.

As rain fell upon thousands of wet heads in Brooklyn’s McCarren Pool last Friday evening, Regina Spektor’s classically trained hands danced on the keys of her Steinway grand piano. Although Spektor brings together the worlds of pop, rock and classical, there is no mistaking her sound—poppy, theatrical, humorous and, at times, touching—for that of another artist.

Spektor’s tongue danced around, too. Sometimes it sounded like she had two tongues—one for singing and one for doing anything but. As in her recorded material, she often took quick, sharp turns from singing making sounds that are almost indescribable. She punctuated her singing with bits of what can be called post-modernist scatting—playfully mangling a word the crowd expected her to sing beautifully, theatrically stuttering a consonant or suddenly dropping a conversational aside.

Continue reading "Another Side of Regina Spektor" here.

Controversial "designer" Doron Braunshtein, aka Apollo Braun, finally got slapped for putting out a T-shirt that read, “Obama is my Slave.”  OK, maybe he didn’t get slapped, but he did file a police report for harassment on Wednesday, which we confirmed with DCPI. According to a statement in a press release he sent out yesterday, two black men grabbed him and kicked him in the balls after shouting, “Who do you call a slave, you fucking Jew?!”
 
This isn’t Braunshtein’s first time in the limelight after the Obama shirt.  We first wrote about his "Who Killed Obama" shirt in March. When that didn't work, he decided to go further. In July he made his way to the cover of the free daily paper Metro after he issued a press release about a girl getting attacked for wearing the shirt.  It was never confirmed if the incident really happened or was just part of a publicity stunt.  The Metro article cited Braunshtein as their only source and claimed attempts to reach the victim were futile (and the editor was later fired).
 
Braun is clearly race baiting and attempting to be a provocateur in the name of free speech and artist entitlement...

Continue reading "Apollo Braun Slapped" here.

For all those who never though Edgar Allan Poe’s gloomy prose would make a good musical, boy were you wrong.  Based on Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, the new play composed entirely by students at Yale University, Usher delivers more then your basic high school read of the story.  The two most impressive aspects of this show were the singing and the execution of the tale.  Claudia Rosenthal as Madeline Usher took the stage with her crystal clear melodic voice and was followed closely by the talents of Casey Breves and Ben Wexler, as James Cleary and Roderick Usher respectively.  The simple set and movable “portraits” helped the audience concentrate on the exceptional songs like “Take my Hand” and “Water and Gruel.”  The choices Molly Fox took when writing the book and lyrics played out the best parts of the story and even though we knew the ending, it still felt surprising when it happened.  Unlike the inhabitants of the House of Usher, I found myself happy to be cursed with seeing the musical.
 
Additional show times are Aug. 17 at 4:15, Aug. 19 at 4:30, Aug. 20 at 7 pm, and Aug. 22 at 10. Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University (at Spruce and Nasssau Streets) $15.

Featuring a welter of different accents, acting styles, and direction by playwright Le Wilhelm that makes a hash out of the script, The Seduction of Edgar Degas feels frustratingly incomplete, despite some fine performances and a fascinating look at the artistic process.

The trouble begins early (at least with Cast A; there is also an alternate cast), when the decidedly twentieth-century Colleen Summa and Gabrielle Rosen scamper on stage as Marie-Auguste and Copine, respectively. Trading gossipy stories and giggles, they both seem more suited to dialogue as NYC gossip girls than 19th-century ballerina, despite their slippers...

continue reading "edgar degas" here.