Beer of August: Sixpoint in a Tall Boy

The beer of the month is any Sixpoint Craft Ale that has found its way into a tall boy. This is a proud development for beer and for Brooklyn. I got to sample quite a bit of it this summer and it facilitated many bad ideas. Though, in most cases, "idea" might be flattering myself. Just uploading this photo of the cans made me wistful for the passing of this warm season. The last one I tried was the very fine Crisp, tasted on the brisk evening when I saw Clueless in McCarran Park. I've been wringing every drop of fresh air and sunlight out of summer and 16 ounce cans of Sixpoint have been an important part of that. Goodby fair season.

Barack Obama is My Homie. No really.

So I haven't posted on here since August. It's because I got an actual job blogging about music. But now that I've got a pretty good handle on that, I'm starting the bad ideas up again because people still ask about them and those people need to know where they can get their own Barack Obama Homies toys.

I noticed this yesterday in the toy machines around my corner of Williamsburg. Homies have come a long way since they first caused a mild stir when I was a kid. Today, one of them is the president.

I have to get an Obama Homie of my own so that one day I can show the little kids who will come into the record store I'll be sweeping up in.

Have you seen these?

 So, that's series #12. And dig the rock en Español Homie. I'm going to blow a lot of quarters on this machine. Then I can show you better pictures of these. Sorry about the glare.

AND THEN HE KISSED ME!!

Just so you all know, the beginning of the movie Adventures in Babysitting is basically how I start each and every day of my life. FYI, ETC ... The Crystals, a bitching tartan poufy skirt, leaping through my eau de toilette ... everything except the douchey bro. (I am currently douchey bro-less, but feel free to fill out an application and start the line to my left, fellas)



Hey Williamsburg-ites  ... Williamsburgians? Williamsburgonians? Whatever you call yourself, check it:

Off of Metropolitan and Grand, there is a street named Betty "Moe" Trezza Way. The other night, on my way with some friends to a rooftop BBQ, we walked by this street and I was all "Lolz, What girl gets the nickname Moe???!! Bahahaha." My friend Sara suggested I look up this unfortunate lady, and as it turns out I am psyched we accidentally walked past at all.

Betty "Moe" Trezza played for the Racine Belles All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She was born and raised, then later died in Williamsburg, on the very street now named for her. Betty Spaghetti!!!! The woman, the myth, REALIZED on the streets of the east 'Burg.



I hope everyone has a good weekend. If you need something fun to do on Friday that involves musical treats and dancing until wee hours with Master Jonathan Toubin and his pal from SF Primo, please hit this party up proper:

The Sad Tale of Penny Farthing: Part The Second

Police Search for Leads in Grisly Hipster Murder 

Monday, August 10, 2009

Joanne McLeod 

Police in Williamsburg continue to search for motives to Friday night’s heinous murder. The victim was identified yesterday morning as Victoria Reynolds, 22, of Short Hills, NJ. Her body was discovered by sanitation workers, who came across her remains in the early hours of Saturday morning. Ms. Reynolds was a junior at New York University where she was majoring in Film Studies. She was found with her throat slashed. Police are still questioning area residents regarding their whereabouts on the night of the incident. Anyone with information is asked to call the Crimestoppers Hotline.

(Image via Virtual Dime Museum)

A Curious Manuscript

A most unusual and puzzling work of fiction arrived recently addressed to Messrs. Bad Idea Potluck. Having read it, we haven't got any idea of what to make of it, except that it appears to be a cozy mystery set in Williamsburg and which begins with a hep cat meeting an untimely end. This is astounding to us because it is the second we have encountered in the space of a year, the first one being the delightful Tight-Pantsy Drew series.

We can discern nothing about this work's provenance, but we always say, "when in doubt, publish it in serialized form." And so, for your pleasure, here begins  The Sad Tale of Penny Farthing, broken into five parts. Look for part the second this time next week.

(The opening note to this part made an inscrutable reference to some person named Tristram Shandy. Remind us to Google him later.)
          ***          ***          ***          ***          ***          ***       

Penny Farthing is not my given name. That is, at no point did my parents hear the words “congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Farthing, it’s a girl!” and then immediately set about trying to make my life miserable. I will concede that “Penelope” does appear somewhere on my birth certificate, but must confess that I went through primary school being called something else entirely. When I embarked on this profession, I felt that having a nom de guerre might prove to be profitable, and until my present misfortunes, I’ve had no cause to regret my choice of appellation. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
 

      The first time I heard a slur against my name of choice - I should here remark that, throughout this account, when I refer to my name, I mean my name of choice. My given name won’t ever come up in this chronicle. You’re never going to hear it, so don’t waste these pages in anticipation; it’s not going to happen. There, now I’ve spoiled the ending. Suffice to say, my given name is so appallingly bland and inoffensive that I was never once teased over it. No, no. My childhood trauma instead came in the form of harangues pertaining to my appearance; I was short, slight, knock-kneed, buck-toothed, spectacled, and bespeckled. Obvious improvements have been made since that time. I’d prefer not to dwell on past tragedies, as we have present ones in abundance to contend with. At any rate, the first time I hear a slur against my name, I was sitting at the bar in Eli Whitney’s, sipping a Cotton Gin.

      The Cotton Gin is served in a highball glass, tastes curiously of fresh laundry, and fluoresces under black lights, which has given rise to the persistent but inaccurate rumor that it contains “essence of Eli,” if you catch my drift. Whenever you ask Eli what goes into one, the only thing he’ll tell you is: “gin, mostly.” This is entirely true. You can taste the juniper distinctly. The trouble is, few of Eli’s patrons have developed the kind of refined palate that allows one to appreciate the differences in the bouquet of a fine gin and the generic sharpness of any neutral grain spirit. Perhaps it is this lack of refinement in Eli’s patrons - and my too-vocal protests against them - that landed me in such trouble to begin with.

Watch Her Dance to the End of Love

I finally realized my lifelong dream of going to Coney Island, although this is probably not the last you'll hear about it because I didn't even end up going to the Coney Island Museum. I just walked around with Sara and looked at stuff, ate some fries, and took these pictures.

Who painted all these mystical midway signs? I find them fairly haunting. If Ashley Macomber didn't paint that wolf/whale illusion beastie, then someone owes her money. (I'm sure it's her.) I'm so inspired by all of the paintings though. A mermaid sitting on a hamburger would be a great tattoo for one thing.

But mostly I'm inspired to get this and watch it again: The Warriors (The Ultimate Director's Cut). I found out recently that the book was based on a novel by a guy named Sol Yurick, which in turn was based on a Greek military classic called the Anabasis. Not sure yet if I like the movie enough to track down the book, but I am curious.

BIPL Review of Magas

L Hath No Fury (A Tight-Pantsy Drew Mystery) by Leslie Ann Henkel is a "cozy murder mystery" set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I thought it was a zine when I ordered it from Etsy, but the slender volume informs me that it is a maga. Zines are old fashioned. Self-published DIY periodicals are now called magas. I have no way of knowing if this is meant as a joke, but it is certainly funny.

Joking aside, L Hath No Fury lampoons young and fashionable Brooklynites in the intimate sort of way that only someone of that tribe could achieve. If there is a flaw in it for me, it's that it is full of distractingly incomprehensible illustrations and slang ... um, much like Williamsburg itself. (Couldn't resist.) Maybe that's not a flaw at all. A lot of exposition takes the form of fictive Wikipedia posts and the like, which is pretty fun. Also, the actual mystery is compelling enough for me to want to get the second installment D.I.Y. or Die! in order to find out what happens.

It all has something to do with something called Dear Drunk Girl, a dead graffiti artist, and a mysterious North Face parka. Go here if this sort of thing amuses you: www.deardrunkgirl.etsy.com

Bonus Snowman

I met this charming fellow somewhere along Metropolitan, near Bedford.

Dateline: Williamsburg

Hats like little dogs; dogs like little hats. Chance of snow.

My New Home

 

We live right next to Pass Out Record Shop and a fake Banksy. At least, quite a few commentators believe it is a fake. The folks at Pass Out are the nicest people in any record store ever and my building has Catholic figures painted on each landing in the stairwell. We couldn't have picked a better spot in Brooklyn if we had actually seen it before moving in. Sort of.

Santa's Secret

Until we get a few questions about whether or not we are living in a legitimate apartment straightened out, my contact with the Internet is limited to brief, furtive trysts here at the cafe. (Welcome to Brooklyn.) But I fear to let more time go by without officially declaring the beer of the month. Behold Santa's Private Reserve from Rogue Ales. Because, as Sean would say, "The elves are drunks." They say they make it with "free range coastal water," and the sound of that would skeev me the fuck out except that the beer is so hearty and spry (like Saint Nick, y'know) that it has just got to be some good water.

Beyond Bonobos

I went to New York to visit a friend who recently moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn from Manhattan. (The same friend who invited me to the beard party in Nashville.)I'm glad he lives in Red Hook because the area is positioned in between a freeway and the water so he will be relatively safe when the zombies come.

Also, it afforded my boyfriend and I the opportunity to take the IKEA ferry from Brooklyn into South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan. Doesn't that just sound magical? It's free.

Brooklyn is becoming a place unrecognizable to me that also looks like pretty much everywhere else I've ever lived. Except that, of the places I've lived, only Atlanta has IKEA.

We went to Manhattan to visit the Museum of Sex. It's a trip I recommend. For one thing, it's a museum you can see all of comfortably. Plus, there's a killer gift shop.

We knew we were spending the day wisely when we got there and saw the window display of the three-deer orgy. It was a teaser for the main exhibit on the sex lives of animals. The exhibit itself was not only informative and bold, but also blended traditional display tools, such as wall text and video, with life size paper mache sculptures of animals doing it - pandas doing it, deer doing it, Amazonian river dolphins totally doing it. The sculptures, which would have warranted a show on their own, genuinely served to illustrate key points of the exhibit, reminding me that, once, there was no clear distinction between science and art.

The exhibit enumerated every single filthy thing that animals do with their genitals and every species that does it. While I had known that some species of animals practiced group sex, had sex for fun, engaged in homosexual activities and even changed sex, I was dazzled by the sheer number of species that do things many humans classify as unnatural. It goes way beyond the bonobos. Amazonian river dolphins fuck each other's blow holes. Then there was the one strange case of "homosexual necrophilia in the mallard."

There is nothing the wild things don't do. Therefore there is no such thing as an unnatural sex act. But some animals also eat their own young so "natural" doesn't automatically mean "totally-cool-thing-for-a-person-to-do." But that's kind of the point here. Nature, the exhibit made perfectly clear, is not on speaking terms with human morality. It isn't going to back any of us up in a debate about right and wrong. We're on our own in the universe again. Thanks, science!

Also at the fascinating intersection of human sexuality and the natural world: The next day we were crossing a bridge over the Gowanus Canal when our host informed us that the water has Gonorrhea. The city hasn't changed that much I guess.