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5/28: Did We Miss Anything?
May 28, 2012
Douglas Ferrari, curator of the Shore Institute of Contemporary Arts, welcomes one and all to the 2012 edition of SculpToure in Asbury Park and Long Branch — and whether you’re driving an obscenely expensive Italian sports car or taking the shuttle, you’ll not want to miss this annual installation of three-dimensional visions, on view now through September 16.
We are BACK on the blog — and look out, we’re armed with CARTOONS, which we decided we’ll be messing around with on a trial basis as a way of paying tribute to some of our fave people on the local arts scene.
That said, we were never really “away” from our beat; just busying ourself with other work and sitting out both the (which unspooled just about a block and a half from our front door in Asbury town) in particular and Memorial Day weekend in general. Without bothering to get a press pass to the FlimFlamFest — and definitely without any desire to pay hundreds of bucks to see a bunch of 80s/ 90s oldie acts supported by bands who regularly play Starland Ballroom for cheap — we spent the weekend strolling about town; trolling for stories and listening to the featured acts loud ‘n clear through our living room window.
Stories of course were actually few (and then again, too few to mention) during what turned out to be one ruthlessly efficient exercise in crowd containment, corporate branding and controlled “chaos.” Having lived in Red Bank through many of those tense, claustrophobic Fireworks extravaganzas and music fests, we’d never seen such a well orchestrated movement of people and resources — to the point where, as reported elsewhere, the city’s streets remained eerily quiet. with parking spots staying vacant during what should have been one of the busiest weekends of the year, and many downtown merchants throwing in the towel early all three nights of the fest.
We weren’t immune to irrational Bamboozle Paranoia ourselves — in fact, in our gig as theater critic we passed on attending a May 19 opening night at Two River Theater in Red Bank (reckoning we’d have a better shot at battling the traffic Sunday afternoon), only to discover afterward that we’d missed an opportunity to meet ‘n greet one of our heroes and personal saviors — Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies!
Ah well, live and learn — or just be doomed to repeat, as Hornswoggle Fest recurs in AP next May. Molly Mulshine of the new online news site Asbury Park Sun (who did an ace job monitoring the real-time outlook around town that weekend) summed it up best in a feature article that appears in the current issue of TriCity News; for us it’s Excelsior and onward, into a newly summerized week of amusement and diversion — a few highly anticipated items from which we share with the flip of a paperless page…
3/16: Decisions, Decisions…
March 16, 2012
Polly, Unsaturated: Poet, painter, priestess of (re)purpose Kathy “Polly” Polenberg — taking a brief breather from creating the scenery and the awesome “Audrey II” for the Forrestdale School production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS — is among the artists represented in AWAKENINGS, the new installation at Gallery U in Red Bank.
“Freedom of Choice is what you got/ Freedom FROM Choice is what you want” sang the sage men in the flowerpot hats back around 1980-’bouts. It’s a bluesy lament we can simp-athize with, if for no other reason than the fact that our nights generally present such a senses-shattering range of options, invites and tentative commitments. The situation practically guarantees that somebody, somewhere who was kind enough to invite us to their event will be stood up in favor of some equally nice person (or, as happened all too many times this winter, a “Dirty Stay-at-Home” night of cartoon reruns).
Beggars, they say, can’t be choosers — but for experienced freeloaders, the world’s an erster. See if you can help us choose between competing options over the next seven days, March 16 through March 22..
FRIDAY 3/16: AWAKENINGS in Red Bank… Since they hit the Red Bank ground running with the opening of their second gallery space (a hiptown homestead of the original Montclair location), the folks at GALLERY U have brought a “freath o’ bresh air” back to the borough’s largely dormant artscape — and beginning this evening, the busy Broad Street hive hosts a new “mixed medium group show;” an assembly of more than 20 “established and emerging artists” spearheaded by Laura Brunetti (of Caring Canvas Project fame). There’s live music by The Aster Pheonyx Project — and among the many other creative folk represented will be one of our fave locals, Kathy Polenberg, a seemingly tireless creator of indoor/outdoor art, poetry, prose, theatrical scenery (including an awesome made-from-scratch killer plant for a school staging of Little Shop) and home accents that’ll make YOUR expensive decorator take a long walk off a very short Pier One. Gallery U and Boutique, 80 Broad St., Red Bank • 6-9pm/ FREE
…or Colin & Brad at the Basie? In an interview we did several years back with rubberfaced improv action figure Colin Mochrie, the star of TV’s long-(re)running Whose Line Is It Anyway? opined that “We have more of a communal, collaborative relationship with the audience than an adversarial one…you’re laughing from a different part of your brain.” For the better part of the past decade, Mochrie and his fellow Whose Line veteran Brad Sherwood have made an entirely planned and non-spontaneous point of performing an annual show at the Count Basie Theatre — and on March 16, The Two Man Group returns to Red Bank for another evening of impishly improv’d interactions including, but not limited to, “Standing, Sitting, Bending,” “Helping Hands” and the dreaded Blindfold Mousetrap Alphabet Game. Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank • 8pm/ $19.50 – $49.50
…but that ain’t the 1/7 of it; flip the pixelated page for enough pulse-pounding choices to knock you clear into next Thursday…
Notes from the Crane, 11/11
October 31, 2011
In an interview we did with her a few years back, Marjorie Conn told us, “When I first moved here, and I didn’t know anyone, I picked up all the local papers to get a sense of what was going on — and the minute I walked into the Stephen Crane House I knew immediately that it was where I wanted to do my thing.”
Her “thing,” as it turns out, was a brand of theater that was personal and political, confrontational and conversational, intimately cosmic and engagingly guerrilla — like, FRINGE, as in Provincetown Fringe Festival, the quirky quasi-underground brand she cultivated for years in the place that Norman Mailer called “a spit of shrub and dune.”
Ousted from her P’town stomping grounds in the name of upscale rents, exiled like an emperor to the Elba that is Asbury Park, the self-described “Conn Artist” set about doing that aforementioned “thing” in such hermit-crab haunts as restaurants, art galleries and retail establishments — finding her most comfortable berth at the historic Crane House, the circa 1878 cottage whose old dining room and kitchen regularly play host to poetry readings, film screenings, intimate concerts and writers’ workshops (and from which this very blog issues forth into the world).
It was at the Crane that the playwright and thespian introduced local audiences to her dynamite one-woman show Miss Lizzie A. Borden, a character portrait that we observed “took an axe to everything you’ve ever assumed about the infamously accused (but indisputably acquitted) figure of Yankee legend — illuminating a person who lived a life far beyond the morbid quatrain of the familiar rhyme.” Her many other projects at Crane’s crib have even included an original musical about the relationship between President Franklin Roosevelt, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and her longtime friend Lorena Hickok.
This Saturday, November the Fifth, Marj Conn and the Provincetown Fringe Festival in Asbury Park commandeer the Crane for their third annual Short Play Festival, an evening of original playlets collected under the beach-umbrella title By the Beautiful Sea.
Dorothy’s Back (w/ the Whole Damn Circle)
September 23, 2011 — 1 Comment
Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as famed American writer Dorothy Parker in MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE, screening for free at the Long Branch Library on Dorothy Parker Day, October 2.
To call her a “humorist” and a “wit” doesn’t even begin to capture the essence of Dorothy Parker — and to think of her as the quintessential New Yorker only reminds us that she was a daughter of Long Branch; born 118 years ago in a West End summer cottage.
One of the most famous, most quoted, often controversial American writers of the 20th century, this prolific fiction writer, poet, essayist, and commentator was a media celebrity, decades before they invented the phrase. A hard-partying rehab veteran, back when such things were kept strictly confidential. A crusader for civil rights, in an age when that was considered career suicide. An Oscar nominated screenwriter, back when a serious author simply didn’t socialize with THOSE people.
On top of all that, Dorothy Parker never fit the image of the writer as solitary artist — having established her reputation as a charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, the “vicious circle” of high profile playwrights, novelists, journalists, critics and theater folk that convened regularly (and became a circus-like attraction in itself) at New York’s Algonquin Hotel throughout the roaring decade of the 1920s.
When the celebration of Dorothy Parker Day returns to the city of her birth on Sunday, October 2, generations of fans of this most remarkable woman will not only “Surrender to Dorothy” — they’ll also be paying tribute to the lasting legacy of the Algonquin group; an assembly that at various times comprised anyone from Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber and New Yorker editor Harold Ross, to iconic entertainers Tallulah Bankhead and Harpo Marx.
A Comedy Special (Hold the Ham ‘n Cheez)
August 25, 2011
Covert operations: Elsie’s Subs co-proprietor Chris Covert (pictured in his night job as stand-up comic) brings the latest in his ongoing series Comedy Night Live series to The Dublin House on Friday, August 26.
Maybe you like your humor DRY, and your subs WET — maybe vice versa. Either way, he’s got you covered.
Most days of the week, Chris Covert presides over one of the most beloved institutions within the Red Bank state of mind — Elsie’s Subs, the 52 year old Monmouth Street landmark that’s been owned by his wife Tish for over 20 of those years.
As the steward of a brand about which native Red Bankers tend to get territorial (it’s not uncommon for returnees at holiday time to grab an Elsie’s special immediately after coming in from the airport — and to order a no oil/vinegar “dry” sub for the flight back home), Covert loves nothing more than to keep serving a loyal clientele that consists of “99 percent repeat customers; the best kind there is.”
That said, the honorable earl of sandwich has been known to have his other pursuits and fancies — not the least of which is an artistic bent that’s manifested itself in a series of quirky mosaic portraits, as well as a cutting-edge flair for custom carved Halloween pumpkins.
As if he weren’t in danger of slicing himself too thin already, this Caravaggio of the capicola has an altogether separate, nocturnal calling — as a practitioner of the art of stand-up comedy, and ringmaster of a regular series of Comedy Open Mic events at the equally iconic Dublin House. It’s to the second floor of The Dub that Covert returns this Friday, August 26, for the latest in a monthly menu of Comedy Night Live events.
A Dark Knight, a Day-Long BAT-Bash in AP
August 15, 2011
The Paper’d Persuader himself — mega-movie producer, author, editor and comic book authority Michael E. Uslan — returns to his formative stomping grounds of Asbury Park and Deal this weekend, in a slate of events keyed to the publication of his new book, THE BOY WHO LOVED BATMAN: A MEMOIR.
This happened in Newark, way back when we were a little kid: the Batman movie, starring Adam West and the gang from the 1960s TV show, was playing in some downtown theater when the familiar George Barris Batmobile made a promotional appearance on the streets of Brick City. Interest was high as a couple of guys in Bat-regalia hopped in, hit the atomic turbo power (somewhere alongside the Detect-O-Scope), and…nothing. No flames shooting out the back, no raptor-like scream of turbines, no Neal Hefti theme music. Just some movie house employees and helpful onlookers pressed into service for a manual push down the block, around the corner, and presumably off to the same local garage that your dad’s Rambler American would have landed in. Scarred us for life, it did.
Things worked out differently for Michael E. Uslan, a kid from the mean streets of Deal, an Ocean Township HS grad and a comic book aficionado of a level that one simply doesn’t outgrow. Possessor of a legendary collection; present at the creation of the very earliest comic book conventions, the graduate of Ocean Township HS became the professor of the first-ever accredited college course in comics — a much-publicized laurel that eventually landed him his first writing gigs in the field, on the short-lived DC series Beowulf and The Shadow.
Being a media-savvy comics expert (and the smartest guy in the room) also got him into the motion picture business, in a Local-Boy-Made-Hollywood-Good way that usually only happens in the movies. In cahoots with longtime producing partner Benjamin Melniker, Uslan’s production credits on the Swamp Thing films led to his pitch for a new, big-budget, big-screen treatment of the Caped Crusader — a tough sell that would trace a torturous path to the multiplexes with the first two films in the latter-day Batman franchise (directed by Tim Burton and highlighted by the controversial casting of Carrey-esque comic actor Michael Keaton).
With the Bat-flix an instant sensation, Uslan would turn to “sequential storytelling” repeatedly for lesser-loved projects like Catwoman, Constantine and The Spirit — in addition to producing the hit National Treasure movies and winning an Emmy for his work on the kid-ucational TV show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? But it’s to the Bat-cave that Uslan has returned time and again for his greatest successes; following through on the franchise with two relatively goofier films directed by Joel Schumacher (with future fatman Val Kilmer and smilin’ celeb George Clooney donning the cape ‘n cowl) — and an edgier re-boot that teamed one of the most unpredictable stars of our age (Christian Bale) with the filmmaker who brought us such convoluted mass hallucinations as Memento and Inception (Christopher Nolan). It’s a dynamic duo-ism that’s resulted in one of the top two or three box office boffos of all time (The Dark Knight) — and a collaboration that comes to a close with the upcoming trilogy-capper The Dark Knight Rises.
Having shepherded so many classic characters to celluloid fruition, Uslan is presently juggling platefuls of projects featuring such golden-age goodguys as Captain Marvel, Doc Savage and (again) The Shadow. But with the buzz-o-sphere practically shutting down all global communications over the 2012 release of the next Chris-and-Chris caper, it’s all about the Batman — and when Uslan hits the herringboned hardwoods of the Asbury Park boardwalk this Saturday, August 20, he’ll be celebrating another Bat-tacular release — his new book The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir.
The mega-fan turned movie mogul will be spending the day at locations around the AP oceanfront between 12 noon and 11pm — with two book signing sessions, a cocktail reception featuring Q&A, an informal meet ‘n greet and a special outdoor showing of the 1989 Bat-movie by the sandy seating of Asbury’s award winning beach (also promised is a display of Batmobiles through the ages, inside the Grand Arcade at Convention Hall). Then on Sunday, August 21, the son of Deal visits the Axelrod Performing Arts Center (at the JCC of Monmouth) for a 7pm presentation/ wine reception/ Q&A/ book signing event that’s co-sponsored by Congregation Torat El. Upper WET Side caught up with this down-to-earth maker of fantastic fiction for a conversation that included a whole lot of discussion about comics (particularly the recent passing of our favorite Silver Age artist, genial Gene Colan) — and even some other stuff, which we reproduce for you with a flip of the pulse-poundingly pixelated page.
Helen On Wheels, in a Summer of Music
July 27, 2011 — 1 Comment
Do Teens Change Music? For that matter, Why Do Fools Fall in Love? WHERE MUSIC LIVES author Helen Pike seeks the answers, and she’ll be invoking the spirit of juvie chart-topper (turned junkie rock-bottomer) Frankie Lymon to find out.
It is well nigh impossible to keep up with Helen-Chantal Pike.
We mean that in the sense that it’s always difficult to stay current with the collected works of the prolific local historian, author, raconteuse and rocky-ological digger of diverse sounds. We also mean that if you have a notion of, say, joining her in a drink and a bit of catch-up conversation, well, you have to keep up to catch up. Like, literally chase after her as she fireballs forward to your appointed destination, with or without you.
The editor of the recently published anthology of essays known as Asbury Park: Where Music Lives has had a busy bunch of months, even by Helenic standards — with much of that activity centered around the city’s hosting of the Smithsonian’s touring New Harmonies exhibit and its attendant year-long slate of interrelated music-themed events.
That aforementioned anthology — a whirlwind carousel ride past some little-known corners of Asbury musical history; written in many instances by the very people who gave those scenes their soundtracks — was the “guest of honor” at a July 10 “Book Jam” event on the stage of Asbury Blues; an evening that featured such pieces of the Asbury musical mosaic as Sonny Kenn, Xol Azul Band frontman “Gee” Guillen, folk singer/ folklorist George Wirth, saxman Dorian Parreott (performing a piece written in Asbury for Fats Waller), gospel singer Tyron McAllister, opera/ cabaret vocalist Brett Colby, and Patsy Siciliano (performing an original song about the city penned by doo wop specialist Ray Dahrouge).
If you’ve reckoned that Pike’s peaked as regards the promotion of that book (her tenth in toto and her third on the city in particular), then reckon again: she’ll be on the scene for Sand Blast Weekend; signing copies of her Asbury-centric titles on Friday, July 22 between the hours of 4 to 7pm at the Asbury Galleria inside Convention Hall’s Grand Arcade. Then on Tuesday, July 26 she’ll be taking over the historic Stephen Crane House — yeah, the same hallowed haunt where the author of this blog makes his home these days — for the first of three “Music Memoir” events that culminate with an “Unplugged” words ‘n music birthday party on August 9.
Of course, absolutely none of this even begins to address the question “Do Teens Change Music?” — or precisely what any of it has to do with Frankie Lymon. That’s another story entirely, natch — about which more after the break.
Notes from the Crane: July 2011
June 18, 2011
We’re back — with a new and improved work ethic, an intriguing new address (as detailed earlier, the literarily legendary Stephen Crane House in Asbury Park), and a new commitment to growing this little cultural cranny we like to call Upper WET Side.
The move from the dark, largely lifeless hills off Bayshore artery Route 36 — a place of breathalyzer-started big-ass trucks and SUVs; McMansion developments and nursing homes and vacant commercial space; homeless encampments and unsettling shrieks from deep inside the woods — didn’t exactly come off without a hitch. In fact, we’ve still got a driveway full of furniture — dumped there by some ham-and-eggers who would only bring it upstairs for another thousand dollars in surprise “walking” and “stairs” fees — to deal with a piece at a time.
But we’ve also got a re-energized outlook, and a sense of wonder over the turn of events that’s seen us actually set up home and office within a rather famous old house that represents a whole lot more than a run-of-the-mill historical site — and to be able to step off the creaky, cat-colony porch of that house into the amazing spectacle that is Independence Weekend in Asbury Park. Believe what you’ve heard — there’s no nexus of time and place like 4th of July Asbury Park.
Something New Under the Crane’s Roof
June 6, 2011 — 1 Comment
Asbury Park’s historic Crane House — where the great 19th century author and journalist Stephen Crane wrote some of his earliest work — is about to get its second-ever “writer in residence.”
On a residential block of Asbury Park’s Fourth Avenue, a strike’s throw from Asbury Lanes and convenient to pinball, pizza, public transportation and places of worship, sits one of the Upper Wet Side’s best-kept secrets — a place with more cultural history in its walls than the fabled Upstage; a place with more rambling nook-and-cranny “character” than the quirkiest of rescued boardwalk landmarks, and very nearly as many “lives” as its ever-resilient, fallen-but-elegant host city.
Built in 1878 — only about seven years after Asbury Park itself was founded — the former Arbutus Cottage has been a boarding house called The Florence; a summer home, a year-round residence and, by the final years of the 20th century, an uninhabitable (and allegedly haunted) wreck slated for demolition. For about ten of those 19th century summers and a handful of seasons between, the 19-room “cottage” was home to a young reporter and aspiring writer of fiction by the name of Stephen Crane.
A dynamic (and usually dirt poor) new voice in a battle-scarred nation without a defined literary tradition, the “American naturalist” author and war correspondent best known for The Red Badge of Courage was a son of a prominent Methodist clergyman — as well as a man with a passion to see the world, a taste for the bohemian (and the Bowery), a history of bad health (and even worse luck), and an affinity for sex workers that would bedevil him more than once. During those years in Asbury, he would pen a fistful of short stories, possibly lay some groundwork on his first novel (Maggie: A Girl of the Streets), and file scores of stories (including “Ghosts on the Jersey Shore”) for his older brother Townley’s news service — one of which, a wry account of an earnest little civic event. nearly got him run out of town on a rail.
While Crane would go on to survive a shipwreck, personal scandals and the frontlines of several foreign conflicts (ultimately succumbing in Europe to tuberculosis at the age of 28), the house he lived in with his mother Mary and sister Agnes has, since the turn of the current century, found a new life as the Crane House — and this summer, the old place will be getting its second, more or less official, “writer in residence” — an authentically struggling scribe whose work you’re reading right this very moment.
iPoet: It’s Losers Take All
June 6, 2011
Homer field advantage: National poetry slam finalist and LOSER SLAM co-curator NICOLE HOMER hosts a special workshop and performance poetry program during the final iPoet event of 2011 on June 11.
Every Thursday night, tucked away in a corner of the oldest, most venerated, crazy beautiful coffeehouse on the entire New Jersey Shore, a revolution comes equipped with rules of etiquette. In the city that gave the world Mailer, Parker and Poet Laureate Pinsky, the future sometimes speaks with a floorboard creak or an attic draft — and in this arena of competition, it’s the “Loser” that walks away victorious.
To put it another way, “we heart irony.”
A year-round institution that’s likely done more than anything to keep the Long Branch Lit-light lit in a fast-changing tech/ media/ communication landscape, the thing called LoserSlam has embedded itself into the quirky crannies of The Inkwell like a restless poltergeist — a poetrygeist, if you will. On the afternoon of Saturday, June 11, LoserSlam co-founder Nicole Homer invades the Long Branch Free Public Library with the full faith and fury of her performance poetry cooperative, as guest artist and host of the fourth and final iPoet event in 2011.
