New Museum Block Party

This weekend The New Museum, the Bowery Poetry Club, the LES Tenement Museum, Chinatown's YMCA, Bowery Whole Foods and others are throwing a free block party.  It's Saturday from noon til 7p.  I hope they serve watermelon!

Whoosh

Whoa, looking forward to seeing this (more pics here). Mayor Mike says, "One of the great things about the best public art is that it encourages us to rediscover — even just briefly — some of the parts of our city that we often take for granted." Yeah!

Brooklyn Flea

I'm excited to check this out this weekend. 

Triple Canopy

Not long ago a friend asked me if I knew of any online literary magazines with innovative web design. This is a toughie -- in my experience, literary geekiness and web-programming geekiness seem to be the domains of ... well, different kinds of geeks, I suppose. However, once in a while a site like Triple Canopy pops up to testify that when geeks of different species do join forces, the result is formidable ...

Fresh, Delicious, and Kosher

From New York magazine: Help find this falafel joint (formerly Chickpea) a new name! The prize is $3,000 -- which would get you 504 kosher hummus and falafel plates! Or, like 1,538 pieces of kosher baklawa! Or an hour ... nevermind.

Oh The Things You Will See!

This past weekend marked the birthday of Dr. Seuss, who was writing ad copy ("Standard Oil Company hired him to create monsters that live in the car, and he created the Moto-raspus, the Moto-munchus, and the Karbo-nockus") until 1937, when he published the book that would launch his career: And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street. Though Theodor Geisel's Mulberry Street is in Massachusetts, the strange sights of New York's own Mulberry Street have likewise provided considerable creative inspiration to many -- as evidenced by Mulberry Street, the movie, in which virulent rats turn people into zombies with their bites (Variety definitively named it "a cut above most zero-budget horrors"). I saw it at the Tribeca Film Festival last May, and I can assure you it delivers all the horror it promises. Out on DVD mid-March!

Things Fall Apart

Tonight! Town Hall, 8PM. A Tribute to Chinua Achebe:

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of his seminal novel Things Fall Apart, PEN American Center presents a tribute to Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. On February 26, Chinua Achebe will be joined by Chris Abani, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Cunningham, Edwidge Danticat, Suheir Hammad, Ha Jin, Colum McCann, and Toni Morrison. The evening will also feature a special performance by the Francesca Harper Dance Project with dancers from the Alvin Ailey School.

Moondance

This chart is from NASA's site (which also notes that "Although total eclipses of the Moon are of limited scientific value, they are remarkably beautiful events which do not require expensive equipment.") The next total lunar eclipse won't happen til 2010! Let's hope for clear skies.

"Because You're Going to Drink Anyway"

For all you boozy philanthropists, Cause for Drinks will be at Happy Ending tonight. And on Friday it's a champagne fundraiser for Ladakh schools in Jammu and Kashmir (as hosted by Abhinav and Gowri). Bottoms up!

Yaperture

Do you miss it? The feel of a photograph? Yeah, we kind of do too, so here's what we did: We drew up some code, made a website, posted it to the internets (crashed a computer or two but that's neither here nor there), and Yaperture was born—literally born, like a baby in swaddling clothes and something we are very proud of.

That's the Yaperture team (aka Andrew and Chris) talking, and that baby in swaddling clothes is a cool new site where digital photography enthusiasts are invited to share, discuss, and vote on the shots they'd like to see turned into prints -- and maybe even own those matted prints and make some money on their sale too. As in, "The photograph is back."

"Widows" at 59E59

Very much on my calendar: Reverie Productions' New York premiere of "Widows" by the outspoken Ariel Dorfman, brought to my attention by Sam, co-proprietor of the zany Audience of Two site. He writes, "I have a small part as a soldier and a torture victim (whee!)" Apparently the show previously played at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and was workshopped extensively with Tony Kushner ("Angels in America," Munich). Running through February 3 at 59E59. Serious stuff!

Look Mom, No Pants

This weekend is the 7th Annual No Pants! Subway Ride.  If you're not familiar with the occasion, it's a breezy prank (brought to you by the folks who orchestrated the ingenious Strand cellphone symphony) in which the willing board a train, wait for the doors to close ... and drop trou. Usually a few arrests are made and a few articles are written.  Harmless pantsless fun. Potential pantsdroppers (anyone can do it! so long as they're capable of riding sans pants and sans smirks) can check out the details here.  But take note, the undignified or un-self-possessed need not apply:

You are responsible for your own pants and they should be with you at all times.  If anyone asks why you've removed your pants, tell them that they were "getting uncomfortable" (or something along those lines) ... You can wear fun underwear if you like, but nothing that screams out "I wore this because I'm doing a silly stunt."

Do the Locomotion

What makes the perfect workout playlist? This article describes the research of a Dr. Costas Karageorghis, who has spent two decades on the subject. I like the idea of tracking the songs' BPM (beats-per-minute) -- Platinum Blue and Pandora are good examples of that kind of data's possibilities -- but I was disappointed that Dr. Karageorghis relies on survey results (participants "listen to 90 seconds of a song and rate its motivational qualities for various physical activities") rather than actually testing how the duration or intensity of a workout varies with the BPM of the playlist.

Personally, I'm a die-hard fan of the New York Sports Club's bopping in-house music video channel, aka ClubCom's Sports Clubs Network. A typical half-hour set (I paid close attention last night): Hilary Duff, Stevie Wonder, Kylie Minogue, Kenny Loggins, Gwen Stefani, Queen, Janet Jackson, 50 Cent, Maroon 5, Peter Gabriel. Not bad, right? Whatever keeps my resolve from crumbling.