THE re(CYCLE) PLAYS at Socrates Sculpture Park, Saturday 9/15

Come to Socrates Sculpture Park on Saturday, September 15 for an afternoon-long theater experience that sounds really unique: THE re(CYCLE) PLAYS. Here's what I've been told:

THE re(CYCLE) PLAYS is a free festival of shows related to sustainable development at Socrates Sculpture Park. The format of the festival hearkens back to the tradition of the Medieval Cycle Play, and gathers a number of talented young theater artists and companies for a common cause. Every set piece and prop is recycled, and the lights and sound equipment are powered by bio-diesel.

Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Blvd.
Long Island City, NY 11106
(718)956-1819


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Kaufman-Astoria is Super Bad

Saturday morning Wesley and I wake up bright and early, as is our wont these days. We're not sure at what point we morphed into senior citizens but our circadian rhythms seem permanently set on "wake up early and have a fun day." I blame it on the pregnancy hormones, which really doesn't seem fair because I have pregnancy insomnia to boot. I will never sleep again.

So anyway, on Saturday, after drinking coffee, reading the paper, doing the NYT crossword puzzle (that's right, suckers, I can do Saturday), enjoying the infonot, eating breakfast, doing a little light housecleaning, going to Nita's for pregnant lady's second breakfast, reading a few chapters in my book, and clearing out my email inbox, Wesley had a suggestion.

"Wanna see Superbad?"

Fuck yeah, I want to see Superbad. (You do, too, by the way).

We chose the 11:05 at Kaufman Astoria so we could get back in time to do some more Time Warner Digital Cable surfing before the Mets game at 3:30.

We get to KA at 10:50, because we believe that you should be early for a movie. (We also believe that you should shut the fuck up and turn off your cell phone, but it's much more rewarding to believe in things you can control.)

There was a crowd outside, and the gates were down. There appeared to be no signs of life inside. We really didn't know what to do. Later shows would cut into our Mets game. Wesley said, "maybe we should go get waffles?" We've never gone for waffles before, so I guess he was joking, but it was coming up on time for my third breakfast so I was having a hard time concentrating on willing the movie theater to open because of the steady hum in my head, going "waffleswaffleswaffleswaffleswaffles."

At 11:02 the gates open and all 50 of us bumrushed the entrance. I headed for the ticket line, wishing I had body armor to protect my belly from the people who were diving over and under the line to get as close to the front as possible. I don't blame them because there was only 1 woman selling tickets.

Wesley joined the mob at the machines, even though that is a true fool's errand because only 2 of them ever work at any given time and it's never the same 2. I was easily 8 people back and still got my tickets from the 1 slow lady (who even disappeared for a few minutes) before the people in front of Wesley had scored a successful swipe.

At least they started the movies on time, because that's what's important. Screw the audience, right? We made it just in time for the 100 minutes of awesome vulgarity that was Superbad. I'd say it was worth it but I'm too hungry to keep writing.

Museum of the Moving Image--New Podcasts

The ex-video store clerk in me is kind of freaking out at the Museum of the Moving Image's online offerings. They've got panels and Q&A sessions with all sorts of amazing people, from David Cronenberg to Terry Gilliam to Todd Haynes (twice!) to Martin Scorcese and a gazillion other people. They're audio-only, or you can get a PDF of the transcript.

Newest offerings are Michael Moore (Sicko), Sarah Polley (Away from Her) and a tantalizing panel called Considering Horror.

Seriously, did you guys know about this and not tell me? I'm so pissed at you for leaving me out...

Katrina Comes to Socrates Park

Check out The Blog of Joy for some cool photos from her trip to Socrates Sculpture Park to see by sculptor Takashi Horisaki's replica of a New Orleans house destroyed by hurricane Katrina.

Thanks for the heads up, Joy!

Live Music in LIC

Check out The Wallace Brothers next Friday night in the 'hood:

FRIDAY, August 24
9 pm
The Creek and the Cave
10-93 Jackson Ave (Long Island City)
1 stop from Grand Central on the 7

The Creek and the Cave is everything you could ask for in a nitespot: Mexican grill, bar, theater, lounge, pool room and patio all under one very large roof.

much love,
Mark + Carey

Hidden Queens--Huzzah!

Lots of our favorites on here--and some egregious oversights.

The Hidden Queens roundup from the New York Post is a great celebration of our borough. I'll be adding this link to our "In the Neighborhood" sidebar for easy reference.

CSA Killed My Contact Lenses--and I Liked It

The box from the Sunnyside CSA this week contained the usual goodies from the Golden Earthworm farm, including three lovely green peppers and two wondrously fragrant onions.

I decided to make steak sandwiches for me & Wesley. I carmelized the onions and sauteed the peppers, browned some flank steak in the cast iron then cut it across the grain and served it on a toasted baguette with some olive oil and goat cheese. With potato chip and a nice salad made from the CSA red leaf lettuce & tomato (and Foodtown cucumber), it was a delicious meal. I'm getting hungry just remembering it (though being almost 7 months pregnant it doesn't take much).

As we sat down to eat, I noticed that the skin between my fingers was burning, but I didn't remember touching any of the pans I used. As we were eating our sandwiches, we discovered that one of the three green peppers was a hot one. I am very sensitive to capsaicin (what makes the hot pepper hot) but I wasn't having much trouble with this one, possibly because it was cooked down & I had removed all the seeds. The fire was a quick flash that faded just as quickly.

However, as the night progressed, the burning on my hands spread and I realized that I was going to be in trouble.

See, I wear contact lenses. I learned once the hard way what careless jalapeno handling will mean for my ability to remove my contacts at night. So I'm always careful when handling hot peppers not to touch any part of them but the skin. This sneaky pepper, however, I'd been handling without care--that is, pulling out the ribs, brushing off the seeds, and cutting it up with my usual culinary abandon. I basicaly wiped it all over my hands.

That night, I braced myself for contact lens removal. There is nothing like having that on fire feeling directly on your eyeball. The last (only) time this happened I ended up discarding the lenses but I'd just switched to this pair on Friday and I hate to see a good pair go. Plus I had only just gotten used to my schedule--I am very flaky and can never remember when it's time to switch to a new pair. So I put them in the case.

In the morning, I pulled out contact lens number one and rinsed it beyond thoroughly, then stuck it in my eye. My poor assaulted eye immediately flooded with tears and began to swell up. I ripped out the lens and through both of them out. There was enough capsaicin left on my hands that even putting in the new pair caused some pretty intense burning, and for most of the morning I looked like I'd been crying.

My hands were burning for most of the day, even though I kept washing them and washing them and washing them. I finally put some burn ointment on and that helped. A friend suggested I dip them in milk, but that didn't really help.

Last night, over 24 hours since I'd handled that pepper, I took my contacts out and experienced a brief flash of burning.

Fortunately, this morning, when I put my contacts in, there was no burning at all, and my hands are back to normal.

But man, I tell you, that sandwich was awesome.

Manda Bala at MMI--Video Interview with Director Jason Kohn

I was at Sundance this year, and I kept hearing tremendous buzz about a little documentary called Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), which is screening this Saturday at 6:30 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Here is a video interview with the director:



The interviewer, Reid Rosefelt, is a veteran publicist who helped launch the careers of such filmmakers as Pedro Almodovar and Jim Jarmusch. He wrote a lot more about the movie here, saying:

There are two basic strands to the story. One involves the super-violent world of kidnapping in Sao Paolo. We meet a woman who had both her ears cut off by kidnappers. It seems ear amputation is the preferred method of terrifying families into paying huge ransoms. There is a plastic surgeon that has developed a practice of reconstructing ears. A businessman relates that nearly every person of wealth has been a victim of crime or kidnapped. Some have been kidnapped more than once. Kidnapping is a booming business in Sao Paolo: it has the most bullet-proof cars, and the most private helicopters. Technologies.

The second part of MANDA BALA is about Jader Barbalho, Brazil's most powerful politician. It's really hard to think of too many people in the the world who are more outright evil than this man. Kim Jong-il? In a nutshell, he stole over two billion dollars from a public works project, thereby plunging the entire northeast of the country into starvation and death. I kept thinking, "what is he going to do with two billion dollars?" If he had considered stealing only one billion instead of two billion, it would have had a titanic impact on the ability of tens of thousands of people to survive.