8 PM, Sat. & Sun. Jan 2 & 3
THE FINAL PROBLEM
By Arthur Conan Doyle
Theatrical Adaptation by Alex Dawson
With Carlyle Owens, Jeff Maschi, and Laurence Mintz
Like your Sherlock Holmes bucking and brawling (a la Guy Ritchie's flagrant makeover)? Or perhaps you prefer your detective more faithfully portrayed. Either way, this loyal adaptation of Holmes' most famous dustup is for you! With several attempts on his life having already taken place, Holmes asks Watson to accompany him on a roundabout Continental "holiday" designed to thwart the relentless pursuit of the Napoleon of crime himself, Professor Moriarty. The story, which was to be, as the title implies, Doyle's last, culminates with a fateful square off at "a dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam" known as Reichenbach Falls. Although Moriarty appeared in only of one of the sixty Doyle adventures featuring the consulting detective, Holmes' attitude towards the criminal genius gained him the popular impression of being Holmes' arch-nemesis. Indeed, as "The Final Problem" clearly states, Holmes spent months in a private battle against Moriarty's criminal operations. "Never have I risen to such a height, and never have I been so hard pressed by an opponent...if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit." Period Costumes! Theatrical Lighting! Live Sound Effects! FREE!
Please Note: Our staged radio plays are among our most popular events i.e. in order to guarantee yourself a seat, RSVP w/the number in your party and the night (Sat. or Sun.) you'd like to attend. Ages 9 & up welcome!
8 PM, Fri. Jan 22
Sheila Kohler
Reading/Signing
BECOMING JANE EYRE
As many of may know, I'm getting my MFA in Creative Writing and Literature at Bennington College. Ms. Kohler, who I hosted at the shop in August, is one of my professors and I had the pleasure of hearing her read again at my January residency. Being South African, she pronounces her English phonemes with a strong Dutch inflection, which makes her an absolutely exquisite reader. It's been said that actor Christopher Plummer could captivate an audience by reading the phone book and, indeed, so could Sheila. But instead she'll be reading from her brilliant new novel BECOMING JANE EYRE. The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent. So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, BECOMING JANE EYRE will appeal to fans of literary fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre. BECOMING JANE EYRE is Kohler's 10th book. Her novel Cracks, a feverish mash-up of Lord of Flies and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was recently turned into a film starring Eva Green. FREE! Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event. To read the recent NY Times review of Becoming Jane Eyre, click HERE. To watch Sheila's August reading at The Rac, click HERE.
8 PM, Fri. Jan 29
BLIND LEMON CELLO
Featuring Carol Selick and guitarist Felix Buccellato. With cellist Eric Jorgenson.
With a keen instinct for finding suitable material, Selicks's wonderfully lush, blues-rimmed voice, Buccellato's sinuous slide guitar, and Jorgenson's aching cello wrap themselves around a a dozen or so potent covers culled from a shrewd mix of writers ranging from Memphis Minnie to Bonnie Raitt. Blusion--it all grows out of the blues, just doesn't always end there.FREE! Comp wine.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
HOLIDAY PARTY TONIGHT !! SNOW OR SHINE
Like gold medal boudin noir? How about prunes soaked overnight in cognac? Or a terrine of apples and pig tongue set in a warm bath and cooked in a gentle oven? No? Well, how about cookies? Lots and lots of cookies...
7:30 PM, Sun. Dec 20
THE RACONTEUR HOLIDAY PARTY
Featuring Robert Kaplow.
NPR alum Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, a beautifully rendered and hilarious valentine to the burly thespian, was recently turned into a movie by indie filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused). Set in 1937 New York, Kaplow's novel tells of a teenager hired to star in Welles' production of Julius Caesar. Opening wide in a week, the film stars Zac Efron, Claire Danes, and Christian Mckay as Welles. The New York Times described McKay's performance as one of "seductive power and full bore charm," Roger Ebert called the picture, "one of the best movies about theater I've ever seen," and the New Yorker's David Denby just included it in his "Top Ten Films of the Year." The most recent review, from The San Francisco Chronicle, said: "Christian McKay, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles, gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of a historical figure, EVER." (the buzz is that McKay will snag an Oscar nom). Naturally, Kaplow will read and sign, but he'll also narrate a slide show of unseen production/opening night photographs and field questions about the book and film. Find out how a cantankerous bouncer at a local New Brunswick band bar discovered the unagented actor playing Welles (seriously) and what exactly the "O" stands for in Robert O. Kaplow. The film's period music has also received a lot of praise and Kaplow promises to burn a CD of swing hits from the film to soundtrack our party. Books on sale at event. Signed books make great holiday gifts! To read the Times review of the film, click HERE.
Expect a variety of spiked nogs, puissant punches, and a withering concoction called Yukon Cornelius, along with a range of baked, roasted and boiled dishes (capon anyone?), marinated tench, and an edible lifelike scene sculpted in colored marzipan. Plus Cream Wafers, Date Drops, Honey-Filled Biscuits, Cinnamon Stars, Zucker Hutchen, Fattigmands Bakkels, Drumkake, and Buttery Nut Rounds. FREE!
7:30 PM, Sun. Dec 20
THE RACONTEUR HOLIDAY PARTY
Featuring Robert Kaplow.
NPR alum Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, a beautifully rendered and hilarious valentine to the burly thespian, was recently turned into a movie by indie filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused). Set in 1937 New York, Kaplow's novel tells of a teenager hired to star in Welles' production of Julius Caesar. Opening wide in a week, the film stars Zac Efron, Claire Danes, and Christian Mckay as Welles. The New York Times described McKay's performance as one of "seductive power and full bore charm," Roger Ebert called the picture, "one of the best movies about theater I've ever seen," and the New Yorker's David Denby just included it in his "Top Ten Films of the Year." The most recent review, from The San Francisco Chronicle, said: "Christian McKay, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles, gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of a historical figure, EVER." (the buzz is that McKay will snag an Oscar nom). Naturally, Kaplow will read and sign, but he'll also narrate a slide show of unseen production/opening night photographs and field questions about the book and film. Find out how a cantankerous bouncer at a local New Brunswick band bar discovered the unagented actor playing Welles (seriously) and what exactly the "O" stands for in Robert O. Kaplow. The film's period music has also received a lot of praise and Kaplow promises to burn a CD of swing hits from the film to soundtrack our party. Books on sale at event. Signed books make great holiday gifts! To read the Times review of the film, click HERE.
Expect a variety of spiked nogs, puissant punches, and a withering concoction called Yukon Cornelius, along with a range of baked, roasted and boiled dishes (capon anyone?), marinated tench, and an edible lifelike scene sculpted in colored marzipan. Plus Cream Wafers, Date Drops, Honey-Filled Biscuits, Cinnamon Stars, Zucker Hutchen, Fattigmands Bakkels, Drumkake, and Buttery Nut Rounds. FREE!
Saturday, November 21, 2009
NOV/DEC 2009: The Earrings of Madame De; Bluegrass; MUTTS; Ivy Pochoda; Swan Dive; Memoir of Mozambique; Me & Orson Welle
8 PM, Fri. Nov 27
THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE...
Film Screening
Introduced by Ophuls scholar Laurence Mintz
To celebrate our recent influx of Criterions, we're screening this sumptuously restored print of French master Max Ophul's most cherished work. The Earrings of Madame De...is an emotionally profound, cinematographically adventurous tale of false opulence and tragic romance. When the aristocratic woman know only as Madame de (the extraordinary Danielle Darrieux) sells her earrings, unbeknownst to her husband (Charles Boyer), in order to pay personal debts, she sets of a chain reaction, the financial and carnal consequences of which can only end in despair. Ophuls adapts Louise de Vilmorin's incisive fin de siecle novel with virtuosic camera work so elegant and precise it's been called the equal of that of Orson Welles. Followed by a discussion. FREE!
8 PM, Sat. Nov 28
ACROSS THE STREET
Live Music
In addition to original blues, gospel, and bluegrass tunes, you'll hear fingerstyle covers of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Jimmy Reed, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams. Expect some outstanding slide work and a handful of banjo jokes that may only be funny to pickers (what's the difference between a banjo player and a little boy? One knows his pick, the other picks his...well, you get the idea).
2 PM, Sun. Dec 6
MUTTS creator PATRICK MCDONNELL
Reading/Signing/Chalk Talk
In 1994, McDonnell created the award-winning comic strip Mutts, which now appears in more than 700 newspapers in 20 countries and has been anthologized in books all over the world. It was described by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz as "one of the best comic strips of all time." A coffee table book of his life and work, Mutts: The Comic Art of Patrick McDonnell, was published in 2003. In 2005, McDonnell wrote his first children's book, The Gift of Nothing, which was a New York Times best seller. The Best of Mutts, a ten year celebration of the strip introduced by acclaimed novelist Alice Sebold. In 2007. McDonnell again returned to the New York Times bestseller list with Hug Time, featuring a kitten named Jules who goes around the world hugging endangered species. His sixth children's book, WAG, a tale of wiggling and waggling, fwipping and fwapping, and GUARDIANS of BEING, a collaboration with Oprah endorsed spiritual teacher Eckart Tolle, were just released this fall. All of his books are printed on recycled paper. He is involved with many animal and environmental charities, and is a member of the Board of Directors for both The Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals. Books on sale at the event. Books on sale at event. FREE!
8 PM, Fri. Dec 11
IVY POCHODA
Reading/Signing
THE ART OF DISAPPEARING
In keeping with my previous efforts to bring accomplished Bennies to Metuchen (Pultizer Prize finalist David Gates, South African author Sheila Kohler, travel writer Rolf Potts), I've invited Ivy Pochoda to read at The Rac. Bennington is a place where the students are almost as accomplished as the faculty, and Ivy, like Rolf, is a fellow MFA candidate. She was in my workshop during the June residency and we were teammates during a softball game played on the Commons Lawn (Prose vs. Poetry). Here's the intro paragraph from her recent Vanity Fair interview: "Ivy Pochoda is the best squash player in history to ever to pen a novel. Pochoda, a sharpshooting southpaw, grew up at the Heights Casino in Brooklyn, played No. 1 at Harvard for three years (where she majored in classical Greek and English), and won the national intercollegiate title her senior year. After college, she was based in Amsterdam and played on the international pro tour, reaching a world ranking of 38. For many years she was one of the top U.S. players, coming in third at the nationals in 2007. Last month, St. Martin’s Press published her debut novel, THE ART OF DISAPPEARING. Following a magician and his muse in Las Vegas and Amsterdam, it brillantly blurs the line between reality and the imagination." ART, which has been compared to The Time Traveler's Wife, has been called "wonderful and wonder-filled," by The New York Daily News, "Terrific!," by Elle Magazine, and "Wistful," by The New York Post. Author Peter Hedges (What's Eating Gilbert Grape) said, "It's a magical story, full of passion, heartbreak, and wonder." FREE! Books on sale at event. To read Ivy's VF interview, click HERE.
8 PM, Sat. Dec 12
MICHAEL BURKE
Reading/Signing
SWAN DIVE
This is the first novel by Michael Burke, a sculptor famous for silvery, spare pieces filled with singular geometries. Burke, a son of the prolific literary critic, philosopher, and writer Kenneth Burke, grew up in a radically creative, intellectual household. The elder Burke called himself an “agrobohemian” and moved his family to northwestern New Jersey when Michael was young. Musicians, writers, and artists visited frequently, including poet William Carlos Williams, novelist Ralph Ellison (who read excerpts from what would become Invisible Man on the back lawn), and literary critic Malcolm Cowley, a longtime family friend who entertained with bawdy songs after dinner. There was no electricity, running water, or telephone, but they did have an Alexander Calder in the outhouse. “He made us a holder for the toilet paper,” Michael Burke says. “It was one of his bent-wire hands, with the middle finger raised." In SWAN DIVE, Burke has shown a remarkable ability to connect contemporary hardboiled crime tropes with ancient mythology (the nude-nuzzling swan on the cover telegraphs the Greek conceit of his debut).The result is sexy, thought-provoking, insightful, and a damned good read. FREE! Books on sale at event. Signed books make great holiday gifts!
8 PM, Thurs. Dec 17
DOUGLAS RODGERS
Reading/Signing
THE LAST RESORT: A MEMOIR of ZIMBABWE
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, travel writer Douglas Rogers escaped a dull future clerking at his parent's game farm/backpacker lodge for far-flung adventures abroad. But when Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe launched his violent program to reclaim white-owned land and Rogers' parents were caught in the cross fire, everything changed. Lyn and Ros, the owners of Drifters–one of the most popular budget resorts in the country–found their home and resort under siege, their friends and neighbors expelled, and their lives in danger. But instead of leaving, as their son pleads with them to do, they haul out a shotgun and decide to stay. On returning to the country of his birth, Rogers finds his home transformed: pot has replaced acres of pruned white roses; hookers, not backpackers, occupy the beds; and soldiers, spies, and teenage diamond dealers guzzle beer at the bar. Rogers' decision to write about his parents' lodge and the people who find refuge there as violence erupts and the economy turns catastrophic brings him close to all kinds of people, black and white, from war veterans and politicians to farmers and squatters. Travelogue, adventure yarn, political intrigue, tragedy, and high-wire journalism, Heart of Darkness by way of Groucho Marx, THE LAST RESORT is a corrosively funny love story about the author and his homeland, Zimbabwe. She is by turns ineffably beautiful, unspeakably hideous, insanely rich, desperately poor, democratic, brutally autocratic, violent, corrupt, dysfunctional, and absurd, even though, in person, her people seem to be, one and all, hardscrabble heroes and survivors. FREE! Books on sale at the event.
7:30 PM, Sun. Dec 20
THE RACONTEUR CHRISTMAS PARTY
Featuring Robert Kaplow.
NPR alum Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, a beautifully rendered and hilarious valentine to the burly thespian, was recently turned into a movie by indie filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused). Set in 1937 New York, Kaplow's novel tells of a teenager hired to star in Welles' production of Julius Caesar. Opening wide in a week, the film stars Zac Efron, Claire Danes, and Christian Mckay as Welles. The New York Times described McKay's performance as one of "seductive power and full bore charm," Roger Ebert called the picture, "one of the best movies about theater I've ever seen," and the New Yorker's David Denby included it in his "Top Ten Films of the Year." The most recent review, from The San Francisco Chronicle, said: "Christian McKay, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles, gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of a historical figure, EVER." Meet Kaplow and find out how a cantankerous bouncer at a local New Brunswick bar cast the man playing Welles. Naturally, Kaplow will read and sign, but he'll also narrate a slide show of unseen production/opening night photographs. Books on sale at event. To read the Times review of the film, click HERE. Plus: food, wine, and egg nog marbled with gold swirls of Barbancourt. (The film's period music has also received a lot of praise and Kaplow has promised to burn a CD of swing songs from the film to soundtrack our party). FREE!Signed books make great holiday gifts!
Sheila Kohler (Fri. Jan 22)
THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE...
Film Screening
Introduced by Ophuls scholar Laurence Mintz
To celebrate our recent influx of Criterions, we're screening this sumptuously restored print of French master Max Ophul's most cherished work. The Earrings of Madame De...is an emotionally profound, cinematographically adventurous tale of false opulence and tragic romance. When the aristocratic woman know only as Madame de (the extraordinary Danielle Darrieux) sells her earrings, unbeknownst to her husband (Charles Boyer), in order to pay personal debts, she sets of a chain reaction, the financial and carnal consequences of which can only end in despair. Ophuls adapts Louise de Vilmorin's incisive fin de siecle novel with virtuosic camera work so elegant and precise it's been called the equal of that of Orson Welles. Followed by a discussion. FREE!
8 PM, Sat. Nov 28
ACROSS THE STREET
Live Music
In addition to original blues, gospel, and bluegrass tunes, you'll hear fingerstyle covers of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Jimmy Reed, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams. Expect some outstanding slide work and a handful of banjo jokes that may only be funny to pickers (what's the difference between a banjo player and a little boy? One knows his pick, the other picks his...well, you get the idea).
2 PM, Sun. Dec 6
MUTTS creator PATRICK MCDONNELL
Reading/Signing/Chalk Talk
In 1994, McDonnell created the award-winning comic strip Mutts, which now appears in more than 700 newspapers in 20 countries and has been anthologized in books all over the world. It was described by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz as "one of the best comic strips of all time." A coffee table book of his life and work, Mutts: The Comic Art of Patrick McDonnell, was published in 2003. In 2005, McDonnell wrote his first children's book, The Gift of Nothing, which was a New York Times best seller. The Best of Mutts, a ten year celebration of the strip introduced by acclaimed novelist Alice Sebold. In 2007. McDonnell again returned to the New York Times bestseller list with Hug Time, featuring a kitten named Jules who goes around the world hugging endangered species. His sixth children's book, WAG, a tale of wiggling and waggling, fwipping and fwapping, and GUARDIANS of BEING, a collaboration with Oprah endorsed spiritual teacher Eckart Tolle, were just released this fall. All of his books are printed on recycled paper. He is involved with many animal and environmental charities, and is a member of the Board of Directors for both The Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals. Books on sale at the event. Books on sale at event. FREE!
8 PM, Fri. Dec 11
IVY POCHODA
Reading/Signing
THE ART OF DISAPPEARING
In keeping with my previous efforts to bring accomplished Bennies to Metuchen (Pultizer Prize finalist David Gates, South African author Sheila Kohler, travel writer Rolf Potts), I've invited Ivy Pochoda to read at The Rac. Bennington is a place where the students are almost as accomplished as the faculty, and Ivy, like Rolf, is a fellow MFA candidate. She was in my workshop during the June residency and we were teammates during a softball game played on the Commons Lawn (Prose vs. Poetry). Here's the intro paragraph from her recent Vanity Fair interview: "Ivy Pochoda is the best squash player in history to ever to pen a novel. Pochoda, a sharpshooting southpaw, grew up at the Heights Casino in Brooklyn, played No. 1 at Harvard for three years (where she majored in classical Greek and English), and won the national intercollegiate title her senior year. After college, she was based in Amsterdam and played on the international pro tour, reaching a world ranking of 38. For many years she was one of the top U.S. players, coming in third at the nationals in 2007. Last month, St. Martin’s Press published her debut novel, THE ART OF DISAPPEARING. Following a magician and his muse in Las Vegas and Amsterdam, it brillantly blurs the line between reality and the imagination." ART, which has been compared to The Time Traveler's Wife, has been called "wonderful and wonder-filled," by The New York Daily News, "Terrific!," by Elle Magazine, and "Wistful," by The New York Post. Author Peter Hedges (What's Eating Gilbert Grape) said, "It's a magical story, full of passion, heartbreak, and wonder." FREE! Books on sale at event. To read Ivy's VF interview, click HERE.
8 PM, Sat. Dec 12
MICHAEL BURKE
Reading/Signing
SWAN DIVE
This is the first novel by Michael Burke, a sculptor famous for silvery, spare pieces filled with singular geometries. Burke, a son of the prolific literary critic, philosopher, and writer Kenneth Burke, grew up in a radically creative, intellectual household. The elder Burke called himself an “agrobohemian” and moved his family to northwestern New Jersey when Michael was young. Musicians, writers, and artists visited frequently, including poet William Carlos Williams, novelist Ralph Ellison (who read excerpts from what would become Invisible Man on the back lawn), and literary critic Malcolm Cowley, a longtime family friend who entertained with bawdy songs after dinner. There was no electricity, running water, or telephone, but they did have an Alexander Calder in the outhouse. “He made us a holder for the toilet paper,” Michael Burke says. “It was one of his bent-wire hands, with the middle finger raised." In SWAN DIVE, Burke has shown a remarkable ability to connect contemporary hardboiled crime tropes with ancient mythology (the nude-nuzzling swan on the cover telegraphs the Greek conceit of his debut).The result is sexy, thought-provoking, insightful, and a damned good read. FREE! Books on sale at event. Signed books make great holiday gifts!
8 PM, Thurs. Dec 17
DOUGLAS RODGERS
Reading/Signing
THE LAST RESORT: A MEMOIR of ZIMBABWE
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, travel writer Douglas Rogers escaped a dull future clerking at his parent's game farm/backpacker lodge for far-flung adventures abroad. But when Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe launched his violent program to reclaim white-owned land and Rogers' parents were caught in the cross fire, everything changed. Lyn and Ros, the owners of Drifters–one of the most popular budget resorts in the country–found their home and resort under siege, their friends and neighbors expelled, and their lives in danger. But instead of leaving, as their son pleads with them to do, they haul out a shotgun and decide to stay. On returning to the country of his birth, Rogers finds his home transformed: pot has replaced acres of pruned white roses; hookers, not backpackers, occupy the beds; and soldiers, spies, and teenage diamond dealers guzzle beer at the bar. Rogers' decision to write about his parents' lodge and the people who find refuge there as violence erupts and the economy turns catastrophic brings him close to all kinds of people, black and white, from war veterans and politicians to farmers and squatters. Travelogue, adventure yarn, political intrigue, tragedy, and high-wire journalism, Heart of Darkness by way of Groucho Marx, THE LAST RESORT is a corrosively funny love story about the author and his homeland, Zimbabwe. She is by turns ineffably beautiful, unspeakably hideous, insanely rich, desperately poor, democratic, brutally autocratic, violent, corrupt, dysfunctional, and absurd, even though, in person, her people seem to be, one and all, hardscrabble heroes and survivors. FREE! Books on sale at the event.
7:30 PM, Sun. Dec 20
THE RACONTEUR CHRISTMAS PARTY
Featuring Robert Kaplow.
NPR alum Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, a beautifully rendered and hilarious valentine to the burly thespian, was recently turned into a movie by indie filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused). Set in 1937 New York, Kaplow's novel tells of a teenager hired to star in Welles' production of Julius Caesar. Opening wide in a week, the film stars Zac Efron, Claire Danes, and Christian Mckay as Welles. The New York Times described McKay's performance as one of "seductive power and full bore charm," Roger Ebert called the picture, "one of the best movies about theater I've ever seen," and the New Yorker's David Denby included it in his "Top Ten Films of the Year." The most recent review, from The San Francisco Chronicle, said: "Christian McKay, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles, gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of a historical figure, EVER." Meet Kaplow and find out how a cantankerous bouncer at a local New Brunswick bar cast the man playing Welles. Naturally, Kaplow will read and sign, but he'll also narrate a slide show of unseen production/opening night photographs. Books on sale at event. To read the Times review of the film, click HERE. Plus: food, wine, and egg nog marbled with gold swirls of Barbancourt. (The film's period music has also received a lot of praise and Kaplow has promised to burn a CD of swing songs from the film to soundtrack our party). FREE!Signed books make great holiday gifts!
Sheila Kohler (Fri. Jan 22)
Monday, November 2, 2009
NOV 2009: McCarter's Emily Man; Arts/Crafts Fair; Still Tickin' (Clockwork doc); Postively Main Street; Travel Writer Rolf Potts; O' Lucky Men;
8 PM, Fri. Nov 6
EMILY MANN
Playwright/Artistic Director of the McCarter Theater
Reading/Signing
MRS. PACKARD & TESTIMONIES
Recently selected as one of the 101 most influential people in the Garden State by New Jersey Monthly, Emily Mann, now in her nineteenth season as the artistic director and playwright in residence at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre, has brought fame and notoriety (and even a Tony Award) to the university theater program. Mann, 56, has overseen 90 productions at McCarter—including shows from playwrights such as Edward Albee, Joyce Carol Oates, and Nilo Cruz. She has directed Jimmy Smitts in Anna of the Tropics, Amanda Plumber in Uncle Vanya (which she also adapted), Avery Brooks in The Cherry Orchard (also adapted), Frances McDormand and Linda Hunt in Three Sisters, Dylan McDermott in The Glass Menagerie, and Rosemary Harris in All Over (for which she received an Obie). In addition to several other acclaimed Broadway plays, Ms. Mann wrote/directed Having our Say, from the book by Sarah and Elizabeth Delaney, which had its premiere at McCarter prior to a successful Tony-nominated run on Broadway and a national tour. Her new play, Mrs. Packard, premiered at McCarter in May 2008. A recipient of the prestigious Hull-Warriner Award, the Edward Albee Last Frontier Directing Award, and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Princeton University, Ms. Mann is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on its Council. Both Ms. Packard and Testimonies, a collection of four plays, will be on sale at the event. Click HERE for more info regarding the McCarter Theater. FREE! Complimentary wine
8 PM, Sat. Nov. 7
STILL TICKIN’: The Return of Clockwork Orange
Documentary Film Screening
A Clockwork Orange drew record audiences for nearly a year before Warner Brothers and Stanley Kubrick (who was troubled by the extreme, nation-wide reaction to the movie) abruptly withdrew it from British distribution. Popular belief was that several vicious copycat attacks led Kubrick to rescind the film, but, in this rarely seen BBC documentary on the ban-and-return (27 years later) of the cult classic, his widow, Christine, confirmed rumors that Kubrick withdrew A Clockwork Orange on police advice, after violent threats were made against him and his family. FREE! (Natch)
Got Clocked? Orange you glad you did? We'd love to hear your feedback. Send us your review of The Raconteur/MCC co-production of A Clockwork Orange!
8 PM, Sat. Nov 14 (that's this Sat.)
POSITIVELY MAIN STREET
Hosted by JIM TESTA
Live Music w/John Raido and Jonathan Andrew. Plus picking prodigy, 15 year old Kaitlyn Raido (the best uke picker since George Harrison)! Musicians from all over New Jersey jam locally. Hosted by celebrated music zinester/Jersey Beat editor Jim Testa. Testa published the first issue of his Jersey Beat in 1982. It covers a wide cross section of the Garden State music scene, but most particularly Punk and its many off-shoots, including Hardcore, Old-Skool, Pop Punk, Synth Punk, Anti-Folk, etc. Several well-known zine writers have contributed to Jersey Beat over the years, including Donny The Punk, Jim DeRogatis, Ben Weasel, and Tris McCall. FREE! Click HERE for JERSEY BEAT.
8 PM, Tues. Nov 17
Peripatetic raconteur ROLF POTTS
Reading/Signing
VAGABONDING and MARCO POLO DIDN'T GO THERE
As some of you know, I'm getting my MFA in creative writing and literature at Bennington College in Vermont. A local byproduct of this is my inviting professors to Metuchen to read and perform at the shop. Many of you turned out to hear Pulitzer Prize finalist David Gates sing Shel Silverstein, and South African author Sheila Kohler read from her feverish novel-cum-film Cracks. Rolf Potts, despite his acclaim, is actually a fellow student. Rolf and I, both first termers, became good friends during the June residency, sharing a love for travel lit (Paul Theroux) and getting lit (Woodford Reserve). When Rolf is stateside (which is rare), he bunks at his 30 acre farm in Kansas, but a recent trip to Italy, where he scooped up the prestigious Bruce Chatwin award (becoming the first American author to receive this honor), has him returning by way of New York and he suggested a stop at The Rac.
A veteran travel columnist, Rolf Potts has reported from more than fifty countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, the New York Times Magazine, Slate.com, Conde Nast Traveler, Outside, The Believer, The Guardian (U.K.), National Public Radio, Salon.com, World Hum, and the Travel Channel, . His adventures have taken him across six continents, and include piloting a fishing boat 900 miles down the Laotian Mekong, hitching across Eastern Europe, hiking Israel on foot, bicycling across Burma, and driving a Land Rover from Sunnyvale, California to Ushuaia, Argentina. Rolf's essays have appeared in over twenty literary anthologies, and sixteen of his stories have been short-listed for The Best American Travel Writing, including "Storming The Beach,'" which Bill Bryson chose as a main selection in 2000, and "Tantric Sex for Dilettantes," which Tim Cahill selected in 2006. Each July Rolf can be found in France, where he is the summer writer-in-residence at the Paris American Academy. Click HERE to read yourself some ROLF. FREE! Comp Wine. Books on sale at the event."Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age" —USA Today; "Potts is the kind of guy you wish the pubs had more of: well traveled, generous with funny stories, eager to listen to yours." —Washington Post
8 PM, Fri. Nov 20
O LUCKY MEN & IT ENDS IN G
Live Music
Like the sound of drunken pirates setting fire to their ship? Or a bottle of flaming poteen being hurled through a dead man's window? Then this night is for you. FREE!
8 PM, Fri. Nov 27
THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE...
Film Screening
Introduced by Ophuls scholar Laurence Mintz
To celebrate our recent influx of Criterions, we're screening this sumptuously restored print of French master Max Ophul's most cherished work. The Earrings of Madame De...is an emotionally profound, cinematographically adventurous tale of false opulence and tragic romance. When the aristocratic woman know only as Madame de (the extraordinary Danielle Darrieux) sells her earrings, unbeknownst to her husband (Charles Boyer), in order to pay personal debts, she sets of a chain reaction, the financial and carnal consequences of which can only end in despair. Ophuls adapts Louise de Vilmorin's incisive fin de siecle novel with virtuosic camera work so elegant and precise it's been called the equal of that of Orson Welles. Followed by a discussion. FREE!
8 PM, Sat. Nov 28
ACROSS THE STREET
Live Music
Blue Grass
Monday, October 19, 2009
GET CLOCKED TONIGHT @ MIDNIGHT!!!
What better way to spend Mischief Night than with Alex and his wayward droogies. And because the show starts at midnight, you still have plenty of time for your own misconduct. So confetti lawns, egg windshields, toss spooling rolls of tp into trees, then head over to MCC for a night of mischief you'll never forget.
FINAL SHOW! MIDNIGHT! MISCHIEF NIGHT!
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS! (Note: get to the theater by 11:30 PM for best seats.)
Already seen the show? See it again! We promise a few special surprises for our Mischief Night audience.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
A Play by Anthony Burgess
Directed by Alex Dawson
Belching smokestacks, colossal clock cogs, the ribbed wreckage of a crashed zeppelin, all under-lit by the blazing Fires of Industry, Dawson’s steam-punk version of Anthony Burgess’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE features a soundtrack of Beethoven symphonies screened through the fractious filters of punk, thrash, and techno, then scribble scratched by a goggle-eyed DJ sitting atop a scaffolded clock tower that rises fifteen feet above the boards. Using an aesthetic he describes as “Quadrophenia meets Brave New World,” Dawson collaborates with mod fashion designer Anu Susi, abandoning the sleazy seventies vibe of Kubrick’s film for a sort of industrial elegance: tailored suits, swine snouted gas masks, huge buckled boots and, of course, the iconic bowler. All tickets ONLY $10! The Studio Theatre @ Middlesex County College. For more info, click ClockworkOrangeThePlay.
Emily Mann (8 PM, Fri. Nov 6) In-store Arts/Crafts Fair (2 - 6 PM, Sat. Nov 7), Still Tickin': The Return of Clockwork Orange (8 PM, Sat. Nov 7), Positively Main Street (8 PM, Sat. Nov 14), Travel writer Rolf Potts (8 PM, Tues. Nov 17), O Lucky Men (Live Music, 8 PM, Fri. Nov 20); Bennington MFA group reading (8 PM, Sat. Dec 5); Ivy Pochada/The Art of Dissappearing (8 PM, Fri. Dec 11)
FINAL SHOW! MIDNIGHT! MISCHIEF NIGHT!
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS! (Note: get to the theater by 11:30 PM for best seats.)
Already seen the show? See it again! We promise a few special surprises for our Mischief Night audience.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
A Play by Anthony Burgess
Directed by Alex Dawson
Belching smokestacks, colossal clock cogs, the ribbed wreckage of a crashed zeppelin, all under-lit by the blazing Fires of Industry, Dawson’s steam-punk version of Anthony Burgess’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE features a soundtrack of Beethoven symphonies screened through the fractious filters of punk, thrash, and techno, then scribble scratched by a goggle-eyed DJ sitting atop a scaffolded clock tower that rises fifteen feet above the boards. Using an aesthetic he describes as “Quadrophenia meets Brave New World,” Dawson collaborates with mod fashion designer Anu Susi, abandoning the sleazy seventies vibe of Kubrick’s film for a sort of industrial elegance: tailored suits, swine snouted gas masks, huge buckled boots and, of course, the iconic bowler. All tickets ONLY $10! The Studio Theatre @ Middlesex County College. For more info, click ClockworkOrangeThePlay.
Emily Mann (8 PM, Fri. Nov 6) In-store Arts/Crafts Fair (2 - 6 PM, Sat. Nov 7), Still Tickin': The Return of Clockwork Orange (8 PM, Sat. Nov 7), Positively Main Street (8 PM, Sat. Nov 14), Travel writer Rolf Potts (8 PM, Tues. Nov 17), O Lucky Men (Live Music, 8 PM, Fri. Nov 20); Bennington MFA group reading (8 PM, Sat. Dec 5); Ivy Pochada/The Art of Dissappearing (8 PM, Fri. Dec 11)
Monday, October 12, 2009
OCT 2009: Banned Books; Like Trains & Taxis; The Roadside Graves; A Clockwork Orange;
8 PM, Sat. Oct 3
Former HIGH TIMES editor/blues keyboardist MIKE EDISON
Reading/Soundtracking
His Favorite BANNED Books
w/special help from BOSS HOG's Hollis Queens on drums
October 3 is the last day of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week (BBW). BBW is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. It highlights the benefits of free and open access to information (even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular), while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted book bannings across the United States. BBW was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982, with targets ranging from Harry Potter to Huckleberry Finn. Click here to see a map of book bans and challenges in the US from 2007 to 2009.
My first experience with a banned book was in tenth grade. I grew up on a horse ranch in Alabama and went to a private school forty minutes away called Macon Academy. My father, a writer who, divorced from my mother, lived in New Jersey, had sent me the Cabernet colored paperback of Catcher in The Rye for Christmas (along with a Swatch that had a checkered band and a skeleton face of exposed gears). I was discovered reading it one day by my English teacher, a bullied looking man named Mr. Edwards. He declared, with a sort of wooden vivacity, that if I persisted in doing a report on "the offensive book," I would get a an F. I consulted my Mom--a woman who, it should be noted, had recently backed my lobe with a wine cork, piercing it with a boiled sewing needle (to a rumpus of Academy demerits and suspension, natch). "Take the F," she said, "Once you read it, you'll understand." I did. And did.
Between 1985 and 1988, Mike Edison wrote 28 pornographic novels, reported on German whorehouses and Spanish coke dealers for Hustler, and published a series of erotic “confessions” for the legendary Penthouse Letters. In 1998 Edison became publisher/editor of marijuana counterculture magazine High Times. Following HT, he was named the editorial director for Jewish culture magazine HEEB, for whom he went undercover and exposed Jews for Jesus as a Baptist organization. He is the long-time drummer for New York cult-garage band the Raunch Hands, as well as being a collaborator of infamous punk rocker GG Allin with whom he wrote a number of songs and recorded two albums. FREE! Refreshments served.
8 PM, Sat. Oct 10
LIKE TRAINS & TAXIS
Live Music
One part pop, one part soul, one part jazz, Like Trains and Taxis is one of the most appealing bands I've seen in a long time. As many of you know, I once tended bar and booked music at a sweaty little jughouse in NB. Every Weds through Sat. we slid over the slate pool table to make room for bands like 3 Piece & Biscuit, a lusty quartet that played some of the best original soul I'd ever heard. Until now. Upon the recommendation of Raconteur volunteer Mallory (you know her, she's the one with the Gilda Gray haircut and the tattoo owl that looks like a pineapple), I went to see LT&T play a gig at George Street Playhouse early last month (Mal was playing accordion in a different band on the same bill). Backed by bassist Owen Susmen and drummer Mike Del Priore, Chris Harris (who styles himself as a modern-day urban love prophet in the tradition of Marvin Gaye) sat at his keys, porkpie askance, dancing in his seat like Little Stevie and crooning jazz pop grooves reminiscent of Maze's brightest days. Good stuff. Don't miss it. FREE!
8 PM, Sun. Oct 11
THE ROADSIDE GRAVES
Live Music
Their sweet-tempered country-rock is far more slippery than it might first appear and often conjures images of a roadhouse Bad Seeds. “I've drank enough to know that I've drank enough," announces front man Gleason on the world-weary “Live Slow,” the one song that comes closest to encapsulating the enduring spirit of The Graves. Performed with an uncommonly deft touch and subtle grace, their songs concern themselves primarily with the pause for breath that comes after reaching original destinations, and the long, careful glance at the atlas that comes before deciding where to go next.
0ct 15 - 30
Special midnight show on Mischief Night!
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
A Play by Anthony Burgess
Directed by Alex Dawson
Belching smokestacks, colossal clock cogs, the ribbed wreckage of a crashed zeppelin, all under-lit by the blazing Fires of Industry, Dawson’s steam-punk version of Anthony Burgess’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE features a soundtrack of Beethoven symphonies screened through the fractious filters of punk, thrash, and techno, then scribble scratched by a goggle-eyed DJ sitting atop a scaffolded clock tower that rises fifteen feet above the boards. Using an aesthetic he describes as “Quadrophenia meets Brave New World,” Dawson collaborates with mod Finnish fashion designer Anu Susi, abandoning the sleazy seventies vibe of Kubrick’s film for a sort of industrial elegance: tailored suits, swine snouted gas masks, huge buckled boots and, of course, the iconic bowler. All tickets ONLY $10! The Studio Theatre @ Middlesex County College. For show times/gen info/photos/advance tickets/etc., click HERE.
Former HIGH TIMES editor/blues keyboardist MIKE EDISON
Reading/Soundtracking
His Favorite BANNED Books
w/special help from BOSS HOG's Hollis Queens on drums
October 3 is the last day of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week (BBW). BBW is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. It highlights the benefits of free and open access to information (even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular), while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted book bannings across the United States. BBW was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982, with targets ranging from Harry Potter to Huckleberry Finn. Click here to see a map of book bans and challenges in the US from 2007 to 2009.
My first experience with a banned book was in tenth grade. I grew up on a horse ranch in Alabama and went to a private school forty minutes away called Macon Academy. My father, a writer who, divorced from my mother, lived in New Jersey, had sent me the Cabernet colored paperback of Catcher in The Rye for Christmas (along with a Swatch that had a checkered band and a skeleton face of exposed gears). I was discovered reading it one day by my English teacher, a bullied looking man named Mr. Edwards. He declared, with a sort of wooden vivacity, that if I persisted in doing a report on "the offensive book," I would get a an F. I consulted my Mom--a woman who, it should be noted, had recently backed my lobe with a wine cork, piercing it with a boiled sewing needle (to a rumpus of Academy demerits and suspension, natch). "Take the F," she said, "Once you read it, you'll understand." I did. And did.
Between 1985 and 1988, Mike Edison wrote 28 pornographic novels, reported on German whorehouses and Spanish coke dealers for Hustler, and published a series of erotic “confessions” for the legendary Penthouse Letters. In 1998 Edison became publisher/editor of marijuana counterculture magazine High Times. Following HT, he was named the editorial director for Jewish culture magazine HEEB, for whom he went undercover and exposed Jews for Jesus as a Baptist organization. He is the long-time drummer for New York cult-garage band the Raunch Hands, as well as being a collaborator of infamous punk rocker GG Allin with whom he wrote a number of songs and recorded two albums. FREE! Refreshments served.
8 PM, Sat. Oct 10
LIKE TRAINS & TAXIS
Live Music
One part pop, one part soul, one part jazz, Like Trains and Taxis is one of the most appealing bands I've seen in a long time. As many of you know, I once tended bar and booked music at a sweaty little jughouse in NB. Every Weds through Sat. we slid over the slate pool table to make room for bands like 3 Piece & Biscuit, a lusty quartet that played some of the best original soul I'd ever heard. Until now. Upon the recommendation of Raconteur volunteer Mallory (you know her, she's the one with the Gilda Gray haircut and the tattoo owl that looks like a pineapple), I went to see LT&T play a gig at George Street Playhouse early last month (Mal was playing accordion in a different band on the same bill). Backed by bassist Owen Susmen and drummer Mike Del Priore, Chris Harris (who styles himself as a modern-day urban love prophet in the tradition of Marvin Gaye) sat at his keys, porkpie askance, dancing in his seat like Little Stevie and crooning jazz pop grooves reminiscent of Maze's brightest days. Good stuff. Don't miss it. FREE!
8 PM, Sun. Oct 11
THE ROADSIDE GRAVES
Live Music
Their sweet-tempered country-rock is far more slippery than it might first appear and often conjures images of a roadhouse Bad Seeds. “I've drank enough to know that I've drank enough," announces front man Gleason on the world-weary “Live Slow,” the one song that comes closest to encapsulating the enduring spirit of The Graves. Performed with an uncommonly deft touch and subtle grace, their songs concern themselves primarily with the pause for breath that comes after reaching original destinations, and the long, careful glance at the atlas that comes before deciding where to go next.
0ct 15 - 30
Special midnight show on Mischief Night!
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
A Play by Anthony Burgess
Directed by Alex Dawson
Belching smokestacks, colossal clock cogs, the ribbed wreckage of a crashed zeppelin, all under-lit by the blazing Fires of Industry, Dawson’s steam-punk version of Anthony Burgess’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE features a soundtrack of Beethoven symphonies screened through the fractious filters of punk, thrash, and techno, then scribble scratched by a goggle-eyed DJ sitting atop a scaffolded clock tower that rises fifteen feet above the boards. Using an aesthetic he describes as “Quadrophenia meets Brave New World,” Dawson collaborates with mod Finnish fashion designer Anu Susi, abandoning the sleazy seventies vibe of Kubrick’s film for a sort of industrial elegance: tailored suits, swine snouted gas masks, huge buckled boots and, of course, the iconic bowler. All tickets ONLY $10! The Studio Theatre @ Middlesex County College. For show times/gen info/photos/advance tickets/etc., click HERE.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
SEPT 2009: Transatlantic Web Cam Jam; Clockwork Orange Auditions; Walking w/the Caveman; Night of the Cryptids; Padma Viswanathan
11 AM, Sun. Sept 7
Musicians Wanted!
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside Darlin’ Old Stick. Seriously! FREE! COMP CORNBREAD (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Fri. Sept 11
WALKING WITH THE CAVEMAN
Live Music
More info soon...
5 - 8 PM, Mon & Tues, Sept 14 & 15
OPEN AUDITIONS
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: The Play
Males(18 - 25)
Males(35 - 65)
Female (18 - 30)
The Studio Theatre @ Middlesex County College
2600 Woodbridge Ave, Edison, NJ 08818
Prepared monologue and cold reading of sides
Belching smokestacks, colossal clock cogs, the ribbed wreckage of a crashed zeppelin, all under-lit by the blazing Fires of Industry, Dawson’s steam-punk version of Anthony Burgess’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE features a soundtrack of Beethoven symphonies screened through the fractious filters of punk, thrash, and techno, then scribble scratched by a goggle-eyed DJ sitting atop a scaffolded clock tower that rises fifteen feet above the boards. Using an aesthetic he describes as “Quadrophenia meets Brave New World,” Dawson collaborates with mod Finnish fashion designer Anu Susi, abandoning the sleazy seventies vibe of Kubrick’s film for a sort of industrial elegance: tailored suits, swine snouted gas masks, huge buckled boots and, of course, the iconic bowler. Coming this October! For more info, click Clockwork Orange: The Play.
8 PM, Fri. Sept 18
NIGHT OF THE CRYPTIDS
Staged Reading/Film Screening
THE BEAST OF BOURBON FLIP/FACES IN THE ROCKS
Cryptid is a term which refers to a creature whose existence has been suggested but lacks scientific support. This includes purported organisms such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, as well as extinct species claimed by cryptozoologists to be living today, such as dinosaurs.
THE BEAST OF BOURBON FLIP
By Alex Dawson
Performed by Dawson & Laurence Mintz
w/Live Sound Effects
Jules Verne meets John Steinbeck in this whale of a tale about a small town elbow bender named William Drinker Grant, who falls, one foul night, into the water adjacent to a divey hideaway known as Lakeside Lounge. After drunkenly choosing to swim the length of the lake and spend the night on its opposing bank, he returns the next day with a story no one can believe. With surprising commitment and fortitude, Drinker Grant trades out fixations, sobering up and dedicating his life to proving that something with "the head of a horse and the body of a snake" lives in the black, tarry water behind the bar.
FACES IN THE ROCKS.
A Documentary Directed by Randy M. Salo
World War II veteran Jim Green’s lifelong visions have led him to what he believes is evidence ("high-tech" fossils and tailed cadavers) of an advanced civilization of reptilian humanoids that predate man. Fulfilling a childhood promise to publicize his grandfather's unorthodox theories, filmmaker Salo brings the case to a skeptical, and frequently enraged, scientific community that insists Green's speculations are a danger to society.FREE! Comp wine & flips (a flip is a mixed drink containing a beaten egg).
8 PM, Sat. Sept 26
PADMA VISWANATHAN
Reading/Singing
THE TOSS OF A LEMON
Journalist, playwright and short-story writer Viswanathan's absorbing first novel, based on her grandmother's life, goes deep into the world of southern India village life. A novel set in the Indian subcontinent and published in the West bears the burdens of our preconceptions. It is easy to assume that a book about a high-caste child bride who becomes a widow will fix its sights only on the girl's woes and the deep injustices of caste. But while Padma Viswanathan's first novel, The Toss of a Lemon, has at its heart a 10-year-old Brahmin girl who marries an ill-fated man, its ambitions transcend culture and country to reach for the nature of fate itself. Viswanathan prefaces The Toss of a Lemon with an epigraph from the great Indian novel Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie. Viswanathan's book, like Rushdie's work, aims for epic status. But it actually achieves something that is in many ways more nuanced than the broad brushstrokes of an epic: a meditation on fate's workings in a family dominated by the quiet rule of one woman -- and the struggle of her son against the strictures of her belief. FREE! Comp wine. Books on sale at event.
Mike Edison/Banned Books (Sat. Oct 3); Like Trains & Taxis (Fri. Oct 10); The Roadside Graves (Sat. Oct 11); A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: The Play (Oct 15 - 30).
Musicians Wanted!
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside Darlin’ Old Stick. Seriously! FREE! COMP CORNBREAD (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Fri. Sept 11
WALKING WITH THE CAVEMAN
Live Music
More info soon...
5 - 8 PM, Mon & Tues, Sept 14 & 15
OPEN AUDITIONS
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: The Play
Males(18 - 25)
Males(35 - 65)
Female (18 - 30)
The Studio Theatre @ Middlesex County College
2600 Woodbridge Ave, Edison, NJ 08818
Prepared monologue and cold reading of sides
Belching smokestacks, colossal clock cogs, the ribbed wreckage of a crashed zeppelin, all under-lit by the blazing Fires of Industry, Dawson’s steam-punk version of Anthony Burgess’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE features a soundtrack of Beethoven symphonies screened through the fractious filters of punk, thrash, and techno, then scribble scratched by a goggle-eyed DJ sitting atop a scaffolded clock tower that rises fifteen feet above the boards. Using an aesthetic he describes as “Quadrophenia meets Brave New World,” Dawson collaborates with mod Finnish fashion designer Anu Susi, abandoning the sleazy seventies vibe of Kubrick’s film for a sort of industrial elegance: tailored suits, swine snouted gas masks, huge buckled boots and, of course, the iconic bowler. Coming this October! For more info, click Clockwork Orange: The Play.
8 PM, Fri. Sept 18
NIGHT OF THE CRYPTIDS
Staged Reading/Film Screening
THE BEAST OF BOURBON FLIP/FACES IN THE ROCKS
Cryptid is a term which refers to a creature whose existence has been suggested but lacks scientific support. This includes purported organisms such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, as well as extinct species claimed by cryptozoologists to be living today, such as dinosaurs.
THE BEAST OF BOURBON FLIP
By Alex Dawson
Performed by Dawson & Laurence Mintz
w/Live Sound Effects
Jules Verne meets John Steinbeck in this whale of a tale about a small town elbow bender named William Drinker Grant, who falls, one foul night, into the water adjacent to a divey hideaway known as Lakeside Lounge. After drunkenly choosing to swim the length of the lake and spend the night on its opposing bank, he returns the next day with a story no one can believe. With surprising commitment and fortitude, Drinker Grant trades out fixations, sobering up and dedicating his life to proving that something with "the head of a horse and the body of a snake" lives in the black, tarry water behind the bar.
FACES IN THE ROCKS.
A Documentary Directed by Randy M. Salo
World War II veteran Jim Green’s lifelong visions have led him to what he believes is evidence ("high-tech" fossils and tailed cadavers) of an advanced civilization of reptilian humanoids that predate man. Fulfilling a childhood promise to publicize his grandfather's unorthodox theories, filmmaker Salo brings the case to a skeptical, and frequently enraged, scientific community that insists Green's speculations are a danger to society.FREE! Comp wine & flips (a flip is a mixed drink containing a beaten egg).
8 PM, Sat. Sept 26
PADMA VISWANATHAN
Reading/Singing
THE TOSS OF A LEMON
Journalist, playwright and short-story writer Viswanathan's absorbing first novel, based on her grandmother's life, goes deep into the world of southern India village life. A novel set in the Indian subcontinent and published in the West bears the burdens of our preconceptions. It is easy to assume that a book about a high-caste child bride who becomes a widow will fix its sights only on the girl's woes and the deep injustices of caste. But while Padma Viswanathan's first novel, The Toss of a Lemon, has at its heart a 10-year-old Brahmin girl who marries an ill-fated man, its ambitions transcend culture and country to reach for the nature of fate itself. Viswanathan prefaces The Toss of a Lemon with an epigraph from the great Indian novel Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie. Viswanathan's book, like Rushdie's work, aims for epic status. But it actually achieves something that is in many ways more nuanced than the broad brushstrokes of an epic: a meditation on fate's workings in a family dominated by the quiet rule of one woman -- and the struggle of her son against the strictures of her belief. FREE! Comp wine. Books on sale at event.
Mike Edison/Banned Books (Sat. Oct 3); Like Trains & Taxis (Fri. Oct 10); The Roadside Graves (Sat. Oct 11); A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: The Play (Oct 15 - 30).
Monday, August 3, 2009
Everybody's Talkin'; Web Cam Jam; Everything Asian; Back Pockets; Like Trains & Taxis; Exit 10; Live Bassa Nova; Kohler's Cracks
7 PM, Sat. Aug 1
Barry Monush
Discussing/Signing
EVERYBODY'S TALKIN': The Top Films of 1965 - 1969
Discussion accompanied by corresponding film clips.
From the PG conquests of Michael Caine's Alfie to the first and only X rated film to win an Oscar, Screen World editor Barry Monush discusses why certain films stood out in the latter half of the greatest decade in movie history. The text of Everybody's Talkin' (a reference to Midnight Cowboy's excellent score) is idiosyncratically accompanied by illustrations of movie ads, tie-in book covers, soundtrack albums, sheet music, and other oddities. Monush is also a researcher at the Paley Center for Media in New York City and the author of the acclaimed Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the Silent Era to 1965. FREE! Refreshments Served. Books on sale at event.
11 AM, Sun. Aug 2
Musicians Wanted!
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside Darlin’ Old Stick. Seriously! FREE! COMP CORNBREAD (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Fri. Aug 7
Sung Woo
Reading/Signing
EVERYTHING ASIAN
You're twelve years old. You can't speak English. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable and your mother isn't exactly happy, either. You're seeing your father for the first time in five years. He owns a gift shop in a strip mall called Peddlers Town. He's nice enough, but he might just be, well--how can you put this delicately?--a loser. Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim. After flying in from Seoul, Dae Joon (“David” in America) and his older sister do their best to adapt to the strange new world of Oakbridge, New Jersey. They work after school in their Dad's store, East Meets West, and attend ESL classes at night. Along the way they meet a motley crew of Peddlers Town shop owners, including Mr. Hong, the only other Korean, who owns In the Bag, a luggage outlet, and Dmitri, who sells second-hand stereos at HiFi FoFum. Alternating between humor and melancholy, Woo eschews immigrant clichés to focus on complicated familial relationships and a rogues gallery of surprising and sympathetic characters. SUNG J. WOO's short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and KoreAm Journal. His short film, Fork and a Chopstick, was an audience choice screening at the NYC Downtown Short Film Festival 2008. Everything American is his first novel. Visit his Web site at www.sungjwoo.com. FREE! Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Thurs. Aug 13
THE BACK POCKETS
Live Music
The Back Pockets is three girls, two boys, and one old geezer who looks like a cross between Dusty Hill and the guy with ripped flannel elbows drinking brekkie shots of Ten High who just stole your smokes. They play banjos and bongos, fiddles and flutes. Sometimes they lay electric guitars across their laps and saw on them with a violin bows. The girls dress like flappers, acrobats, or, on occasion, the Daryl Hannah android from Bladerunner. The boys wear Mexican wrestling masks and fencing helmets. They like sidewalks at night, homemade things, and carnies. They frequently rig and engage tightropes and trapezes during their shows, and have played whole songs hanging from their knees. The sound is folk, but the experience is Stomp. They're painters as well as musicians. They hail from Atlanta, GA. They sometimes describe themselves as Jefferson Airplane meets Blue Man Group. FREE!
8 PM, Fri. Aug 14
LIKE TRAINS & TAXIS
Live Music
One part pop, one part soul, one part jazz, Like Trains and Taxis is one of the most appealing bands I've seen in a long time. As many of you know, I once tended bar and booked music at a sweaty little jughouse in NB. Every Weds through Sat. we slid over the slate pool table to make room for bands like 3 Piece & Biscuit, a lusty quartet that played some of the best original soul I'd ever heard. Until now. Upon the recommendation of Raconteur volunteer Mallory (you know her, she's the one with the Gilda Gray haircut and the tattoo owl that looks like a pineapple), I went to see LT&T play a gig at George Street Playhouse early last month (Mal was playing accordion in a different band on the same bill). Backed by bassist Owen Susmen and drummer Mike Del Priore, Chris Harris (who styles himself as a modern-day urban love prophet in the tradition of Marvin Gaye) sat at his keys, porkpie askance, dancing in his seat like Little Stevie and crooning jazz pop grooves reminiscent of Maze's brightest days. Good stuff. Don't miss it. FREE!
8 PM, Sat. Aug 15
Tom Cheche
Reading/Signing
EXIT 10
Tom Cheche's broadcasting and newspaper career took him from the locker rooms of the NBA Champion New York Knicks and the NHL New York Rangers to pit roads at Daytona and Indianapolis, from the broadcast booth to the team bus. This is what came first. "Exit 10" is the story of a lousy athlete who knew he'd never get off the bench. Instead, he became the next best thing: a sports reporter who spent three decades interviewing his heroes.
8 PM, Fri. Aug 21
DANIEL EGGERS & CO. play a final show at The Rac before returning to South America
Traditional Brazilian Music
Daniel Eggers is a young man from Peru. I met him two years ago. He'd heard I did events and had popped by the shop to perform an audition of sorts. After retrieving a battered rosewood from the cluttered bed of a dusty El Camino he proceeded to play ten minutes of what is likely the most beautiful guitar music I've ever heard. Naturally, I booked him immediately, and, accompanied by his friend Pocho on the djembe, he captivated one of the biggest crowds (Lennon-ex May Pang aside) we've ever had at an in-store event. We've had him back several times since and each time he's played a different instrument from a different region in a different style: the quenna, the charango, the tarka, etc. This time, the last time as I understand it, he's playing bossa nova. Bossa nova is performed on classical guitar and is played with the fingers rather than with a pick. It emerged primarily from the upscale beachside neighborhoods of Rio De Janeiro and was made popular by the release of the1959 film Black Orpheus. It spread to North America via visiting American jazz musicians and the resulting recordings by Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz cemented its popularity, ultimately leading to a worldwide boom with the Getz/Gilberto "The Girl From Ipanema." FREE! Complimentary wine.
8 PM, Thurs. Aug 27
Sheila Kohler
Reading/Signing
CRACKS
As many of may know, I'm getting my MFA in Creative Writing and Literature at Bennington College. Ms. Kohler is one of my professors and I had the pleasure of hearing her read at my most recent residency this past June. Being South African, she pronounces her English phonemes with a strong Dutch inflection, which makes her an absolutely exquisite reader. It's been said that actor Christopher Plummer could captivate an audience by reading the phone book and, indeed, so could Sheila. But instead she'll be reading from her brilliant novel Cracks, a feverish mash up of Lord of the Flies and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie set at a South African boarding school for girls. The film version of Cracks, due out later this year, stars Eva Green (Casino Royale) as the provocative and charismatic Miss G, a teacher who encourages a sapphic “crack” (or crush) held by one of her pupils. Hormones rage when a beautiful and mysterious new student arrives, inspiring jealousy and umbrage, which lead—perhaps—to her inexplicable disappearance. Sheila Kohler is also the author of six other novels: Crossways, The Perfect Place, Children of Pithiviers, Bluebird: The Invention of Happiness, and Becoming Jane Eyre (due of this Dec). FREE! Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.
Eva Green as Ms. G in Cracks
Barry Monush
Discussing/Signing
EVERYBODY'S TALKIN': The Top Films of 1965 - 1969
Discussion accompanied by corresponding film clips.
From the PG conquests of Michael Caine's Alfie to the first and only X rated film to win an Oscar, Screen World editor Barry Monush discusses why certain films stood out in the latter half of the greatest decade in movie history. The text of Everybody's Talkin' (a reference to Midnight Cowboy's excellent score) is idiosyncratically accompanied by illustrations of movie ads, tie-in book covers, soundtrack albums, sheet music, and other oddities. Monush is also a researcher at the Paley Center for Media in New York City and the author of the acclaimed Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the Silent Era to 1965. FREE! Refreshments Served. Books on sale at event.
11 AM, Sun. Aug 2
Musicians Wanted!
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside Darlin’ Old Stick. Seriously! FREE! COMP CORNBREAD (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Fri. Aug 7
Sung Woo
Reading/Signing
EVERYTHING ASIAN
You're twelve years old. You can't speak English. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable and your mother isn't exactly happy, either. You're seeing your father for the first time in five years. He owns a gift shop in a strip mall called Peddlers Town. He's nice enough, but he might just be, well--how can you put this delicately?--a loser. Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim. After flying in from Seoul, Dae Joon (“David” in America) and his older sister do their best to adapt to the strange new world of Oakbridge, New Jersey. They work after school in their Dad's store, East Meets West, and attend ESL classes at night. Along the way they meet a motley crew of Peddlers Town shop owners, including Mr. Hong, the only other Korean, who owns In the Bag, a luggage outlet, and Dmitri, who sells second-hand stereos at HiFi FoFum. Alternating between humor and melancholy, Woo eschews immigrant clichés to focus on complicated familial relationships and a rogues gallery of surprising and sympathetic characters. SUNG J. WOO's short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and KoreAm Journal. His short film, Fork and a Chopstick, was an audience choice screening at the NYC Downtown Short Film Festival 2008. Everything American is his first novel. Visit his Web site at www.sungjwoo.com. FREE! Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Thurs. Aug 13
THE BACK POCKETS
Live Music
The Back Pockets is three girls, two boys, and one old geezer who looks like a cross between Dusty Hill and the guy with ripped flannel elbows drinking brekkie shots of Ten High who just stole your smokes. They play banjos and bongos, fiddles and flutes. Sometimes they lay electric guitars across their laps and saw on them with a violin bows. The girls dress like flappers, acrobats, or, on occasion, the Daryl Hannah android from Bladerunner. The boys wear Mexican wrestling masks and fencing helmets. They like sidewalks at night, homemade things, and carnies. They frequently rig and engage tightropes and trapezes during their shows, and have played whole songs hanging from their knees. The sound is folk, but the experience is Stomp. They're painters as well as musicians. They hail from Atlanta, GA. They sometimes describe themselves as Jefferson Airplane meets Blue Man Group. FREE!8 PM, Fri. Aug 14
LIKE TRAINS & TAXIS
Live Music
One part pop, one part soul, one part jazz, Like Trains and Taxis is one of the most appealing bands I've seen in a long time. As many of you know, I once tended bar and booked music at a sweaty little jughouse in NB. Every Weds through Sat. we slid over the slate pool table to make room for bands like 3 Piece & Biscuit, a lusty quartet that played some of the best original soul I'd ever heard. Until now. Upon the recommendation of Raconteur volunteer Mallory (you know her, she's the one with the Gilda Gray haircut and the tattoo owl that looks like a pineapple), I went to see LT&T play a gig at George Street Playhouse early last month (Mal was playing accordion in a different band on the same bill). Backed by bassist Owen Susmen and drummer Mike Del Priore, Chris Harris (who styles himself as a modern-day urban love prophet in the tradition of Marvin Gaye) sat at his keys, porkpie askance, dancing in his seat like Little Stevie and crooning jazz pop grooves reminiscent of Maze's brightest days. Good stuff. Don't miss it. FREE!8 PM, Sat. Aug 15
Tom Cheche
Reading/Signing
EXIT 10
Tom Cheche's broadcasting and newspaper career took him from the locker rooms of the NBA Champion New York Knicks and the NHL New York Rangers to pit roads at Daytona and Indianapolis, from the broadcast booth to the team bus. This is what came first. "Exit 10" is the story of a lousy athlete who knew he'd never get off the bench. Instead, he became the next best thing: a sports reporter who spent three decades interviewing his heroes.
8 PM, Fri. Aug 21
DANIEL EGGERS & CO. play a final show at The Rac before returning to South America
Traditional Brazilian Music
Daniel Eggers is a young man from Peru. I met him two years ago. He'd heard I did events and had popped by the shop to perform an audition of sorts. After retrieving a battered rosewood from the cluttered bed of a dusty El Camino he proceeded to play ten minutes of what is likely the most beautiful guitar music I've ever heard. Naturally, I booked him immediately, and, accompanied by his friend Pocho on the djembe, he captivated one of the biggest crowds (Lennon-ex May Pang aside) we've ever had at an in-store event. We've had him back several times since and each time he's played a different instrument from a different region in a different style: the quenna, the charango, the tarka, etc. This time, the last time as I understand it, he's playing bossa nova. Bossa nova is performed on classical guitar and is played with the fingers rather than with a pick. It emerged primarily from the upscale beachside neighborhoods of Rio De Janeiro and was made popular by the release of the1959 film Black Orpheus. It spread to North America via visiting American jazz musicians and the resulting recordings by Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz cemented its popularity, ultimately leading to a worldwide boom with the Getz/Gilberto "The Girl From Ipanema." FREE! Complimentary wine.
8 PM, Thurs. Aug 27
Sheila Kohler
Reading/Signing
CRACKS
As many of may know, I'm getting my MFA in Creative Writing and Literature at Bennington College. Ms. Kohler is one of my professors and I had the pleasure of hearing her read at my most recent residency this past June. Being South African, she pronounces her English phonemes with a strong Dutch inflection, which makes her an absolutely exquisite reader. It's been said that actor Christopher Plummer could captivate an audience by reading the phone book and, indeed, so could Sheila. But instead she'll be reading from her brilliant novel Cracks, a feverish mash up of Lord of the Flies and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie set at a South African boarding school for girls. The film version of Cracks, due out later this year, stars Eva Green (Casino Royale) as the provocative and charismatic Miss G, a teacher who encourages a sapphic “crack” (or crush) held by one of her pupils. Hormones rage when a beautiful and mysterious new student arrives, inspiring jealousy and umbrage, which lead—perhaps—to her inexplicable disappearance. Sheila Kohler is also the author of six other novels: Crossways, The Perfect Place, Children of Pithiviers, Bluebird: The Invention of Happiness, and Becoming Jane Eyre (due of this Dec). FREE! Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.
Eva Green as Ms. G in Cracks
Thursday, July 9, 2009
JULY 2009: Summer Party; Andalusians/Risk Relay; The Seems
8 PM, Fri. July 10
SUMMER'S HERE.
TIME TO SHOW OFF YOUR RAC!
Bring one friend who's never been to the coolest bookstore in the country. Internationally acclaimed scribble scratcher DJ Disko Troop (Neil Mohammed)spins everything from Soixante Neuf to Little Red Corvette. Free food. Free drink. Ice cold AC. Plus pig-faced bascinets, werewolf masks, pith helmets, and moose horns.
8 PM, Fri. July 17
ANDALUSIANS & RISK RELAY
Live Music
The vehicle for songwriter Basla Andolsun (Beauty Pill, Del Cielo, and, currently, Edie Sedgwick), The Andalusians' debut, a 7 inch called "Do the Work," is out this month on Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records. With influences as far ranging as Fela Kuti and Black Flag, the band is more akin to the Pixies, Throwing Muses, and the freewheeling alternative rock of late night MTV circa 1989 than any of their harder Dischord peers. The Andalusians wield a sense of chemistry that's casual, and vocalist/guitarist Andolsun, supported by an all star cast of DC luminaries from bands like Hoover and Faraquet, pushes the art of pop song writing to a place that is distinctively her own.
Though guilty of the occasional atonal freak out, Risk Relay care as much about the quasi-symphonic art-guitar music of composers like Rhys Chatham as they do about the punk pop form. Their songs hover gorgeously for extended lengths, letting guitarists Ed and Mark intertwine spindly tonalities as carefully as it's possible to do at wall-shaking volume, while Ed's untutored voice seditiously intones words that flirt with pop stupidity, high-art eloquence, and urban cool. When they bear down and rock, they do it with a blurry intensity that finds gorgeousness at the heart of discord. Tonight is a must-go for any post punk Garden Stater with a "Washing Machine" T-shirt, who considers themselves the least bit cool. FREE! CDs on sale at the event.
8 PM, Thurs. July 23
Rene & Raul Villereal
HEMINGWAY'S CUBAN SON
Reading/Signing/Slide Show
Celebrate Hemingway's 110th b-day w/his Cuban son!
Together with his own son Raul, Rene Villereal tells the account of how he came to be Ernest Hemingway's majordomo, confidant, and friend - his Cuban son. Hemingway, called El Americano by the Cubans, moved into the Finca Vigia, an estate outside of Havana, in 1939. He allowed the village children to play on his property, and they soon became fixtures, caring for his pets, performing odd jobs, and running errands. Hemingway recognized Rene as especially responsible and attentive and made him household manager, or majordomo, in 1946 when Rene was only seventeen. For the next fifteen years, Rene ran the Finca, tending to Hemingway and his wife, Mary, and their visiting family and distinguished guests. Villarreal's clear recollections offer up humorous stories of escapades and adventures with Hemingway as well as insightful comments on the writer's work habits, moods, passions, and friendships. He also writes of Cuba before and after the revolution, beautifully capturing place and time. Plus a slide show of candid, largely unseen photos of Hemingway in Cuba! FREE! Complimentary wine and rum. Books on sale at the event.
7 PM, Fri. July 24
THE SEEMS (Ages 9 & up)
Michael Wexler & John Hulme
Reading/Q&A/Signing
Written by childhood friends, John Hulme and Michael Wexler (from Highland Park, NJ, The Seems is the Matrix by way of Willy Wonka for middle school boys and girls. The World that you live in is not, in fact, the world that you think it is. Weather, Time, Sleep, and even the Color of autumn leaves are controlled by those in the Know, who regulate The World from The Seems. The sunset is painted daily, rain is regulated by a water tank, and a Good Night's Sleep is packaged, processed, and distributed nightly, with a special dream, included like a Crackerjack prize, just for you.It is into this new place, The Seems, that Becker Drane, a seventh grader from HIGHLAND PARK, NJ, arrives after applying for The Best Job in the World and becoming the youngest Fixer ever. Fixers are, just that, Fixers. They step in and take on the dangerous task of Fixing things when they go wrong and Becker's first job is to Fix a Glitch in Sleep. Putatively a sci-fi series for kids, The Seems also speaks to greater philosophical issues: concrete existence, angst, freedom, facticity, existence preceding essence, the other, the look, and the absurd. A film version of The Seems, directed by Night at the Museum's Shawn Levy is due out sometime next year. FREE! Book 1 & 2 on sale at event.
Barry Monush (Everybody's Talkin') Sat. Aug 1; Sung Woo (Everything Asian) Fri. Aug. 7; Like Trains & Taxis Fri. Aug 15; Exit 10 Sat. Aug. 16; Sheila Kohler (Cracks; Bluebird of Happiness)Thurs Aug 27; Night of the Cryptids: Faces in the Rocks doc & The Beast of Bourbon Flip Fri. Aug 28; Michael Agovino (The Bookmaker)Sat. Sept 12; Padma Viswanathan (The Toss of a Lemon) Sat. Sept 26; A Clockwork Orange: A Staged Adaptation, Oct. TBA
SUMMER'S HERE.
TIME TO SHOW OFF YOUR RAC!
Bring one friend who's never been to the coolest bookstore in the country. Internationally acclaimed scribble scratcher DJ Disko Troop (Neil Mohammed)spins everything from Soixante Neuf to Little Red Corvette. Free food. Free drink. Ice cold AC. Plus pig-faced bascinets, werewolf masks, pith helmets, and moose horns.
8 PM, Fri. July 17
ANDALUSIANS & RISK RELAY
Live Music
The vehicle for songwriter Basla Andolsun (Beauty Pill, Del Cielo, and, currently, Edie Sedgwick), The Andalusians' debut, a 7 inch called "Do the Work," is out this month on Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records. With influences as far ranging as Fela Kuti and Black Flag, the band is more akin to the Pixies, Throwing Muses, and the freewheeling alternative rock of late night MTV circa 1989 than any of their harder Dischord peers. The Andalusians wield a sense of chemistry that's casual, and vocalist/guitarist Andolsun, supported by an all star cast of DC luminaries from bands like Hoover and Faraquet, pushes the art of pop song writing to a place that is distinctively her own.
Though guilty of the occasional atonal freak out, Risk Relay care as much about the quasi-symphonic art-guitar music of composers like Rhys Chatham as they do about the punk pop form. Their songs hover gorgeously for extended lengths, letting guitarists Ed and Mark intertwine spindly tonalities as carefully as it's possible to do at wall-shaking volume, while Ed's untutored voice seditiously intones words that flirt with pop stupidity, high-art eloquence, and urban cool. When they bear down and rock, they do it with a blurry intensity that finds gorgeousness at the heart of discord. Tonight is a must-go for any post punk Garden Stater with a "Washing Machine" T-shirt, who considers themselves the least bit cool. FREE! CDs on sale at the event.
8 PM, Thurs. July 23
Rene & Raul Villereal
HEMINGWAY'S CUBAN SON
Reading/Signing/Slide Show
Celebrate Hemingway's 110th b-day w/his Cuban son!
Together with his own son Raul, Rene Villereal tells the account of how he came to be Ernest Hemingway's majordomo, confidant, and friend - his Cuban son. Hemingway, called El Americano by the Cubans, moved into the Finca Vigia, an estate outside of Havana, in 1939. He allowed the village children to play on his property, and they soon became fixtures, caring for his pets, performing odd jobs, and running errands. Hemingway recognized Rene as especially responsible and attentive and made him household manager, or majordomo, in 1946 when Rene was only seventeen. For the next fifteen years, Rene ran the Finca, tending to Hemingway and his wife, Mary, and their visiting family and distinguished guests. Villarreal's clear recollections offer up humorous stories of escapades and adventures with Hemingway as well as insightful comments on the writer's work habits, moods, passions, and friendships. He also writes of Cuba before and after the revolution, beautifully capturing place and time. Plus a slide show of candid, largely unseen photos of Hemingway in Cuba! FREE! Complimentary wine and rum. Books on sale at the event.
7 PM, Fri. July 24
THE SEEMS (Ages 9 & up)
Michael Wexler & John Hulme
Reading/Q&A/Signing
Written by childhood friends, John Hulme and Michael Wexler (from Highland Park, NJ, The Seems is the Matrix by way of Willy Wonka for middle school boys and girls. The World that you live in is not, in fact, the world that you think it is. Weather, Time, Sleep, and even the Color of autumn leaves are controlled by those in the Know, who regulate The World from The Seems. The sunset is painted daily, rain is regulated by a water tank, and a Good Night's Sleep is packaged, processed, and distributed nightly, with a special dream, included like a Crackerjack prize, just for you.It is into this new place, The Seems, that Becker Drane, a seventh grader from HIGHLAND PARK, NJ, arrives after applying for The Best Job in the World and becoming the youngest Fixer ever. Fixers are, just that, Fixers. They step in and take on the dangerous task of Fixing things when they go wrong and Becker's first job is to Fix a Glitch in Sleep. Putatively a sci-fi series for kids, The Seems also speaks to greater philosophical issues: concrete existence, angst, freedom, facticity, existence preceding essence, the other, the look, and the absurd. A film version of The Seems, directed by Night at the Museum's Shawn Levy is due out sometime next year. FREE! Book 1 & 2 on sale at event.
Barry Monush (Everybody's Talkin') Sat. Aug 1; Sung Woo (Everything Asian) Fri. Aug. 7; Like Trains & Taxis Fri. Aug 15; Exit 10 Sat. Aug. 16; Sheila Kohler (Cracks; Bluebird of Happiness)Thurs Aug 27; Night of the Cryptids: Faces in the Rocks doc & The Beast of Bourbon Flip Fri. Aug 28; Michael Agovino (The Bookmaker)Sat. Sept 12; Padma Viswanathan (The Toss of a Lemon) Sat. Sept 26; A Clockwork Orange: A Staged Adaptation, Oct. TBA
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
JUNE 2009: Treasure Hunt, Web Cam Jam, Hobo Art/Railyard Poetry, Postively Main Street w/The Cucumbers
9:30 AM, Sat. June 6
1st ANNUAL METUCHEN TREASURE HUNT (FULLY BOOKED, SORRY!)
The Raconteur, in conjunction with the Metuchen Masonic Lodge, is sponsoring a Metuchen based treasure hunt! In keeping with the rollicking spirit of The Man who Would be King, Freemason Rudyard Kipling's fantastic tale of two masonic scoundrels who set off from 19th century British India in search of gold and adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan, and The National Treasure, in which hoard hunter Benjamin Gates follows a series of cryptic clues to find an ancient cache intertwined with the arcane history of Freemasonry, young adventurers (boys and girls 1st through 5th grade) work in teams, following clues and unraveling a variety of knotty riddles as they move from one mysterious location to another within the town limits of Metuchen proper. Each cracked conundrum will lead players ever closer to the final treasure! Expect anagrams, number puzzles, and a brass plated, cylindrical device known as a Cryptex. FREE! Raconteur gift certificates awarded to all participants. Again, this weekend's hunt is, unfortunately, FULLY BOOKED (40 Kids!). But due to the overwhelming response, we will be organizing a second one late this summer. Watch the sea and skies for an upcoming announcement!
11 AM, Sun. June 7
Musicians Wanted!
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside Darlin’ Old Stick. Seriously! FREE! COMP CORNBREAD (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Friday June 19
OFF THE RAILS: Hoboetry and Gallery Night
Six NJ Poets (Joe Weil, Deborah LaVeglia, Sarah Maloney, Tony Gruenewald, Rebecca Nison, Andrew Erkkila) and seven NJ artists (Seth Goodwin, Daniel Brophy, Diana Marsh, Robert Rubin, Bryant Jefopoulos, Jessica Kizmann, Charles Laskowski) present railroad infused readings, paintings, photographs, screen printings, drawings and sculpture. Followed by an open mic. Complimentary wine, cheese, and desserts. Free!
8 PM, Sat. June 27
POSITIVELY MAIN STREET
Featuring John Raido & The Cucumbers
Live Music
Musicians from all over New Jersey jam locally. Hosted by celebrated music zinester/Jersey Beat editor Jim Testa. Testa published the first issue of his zine Jersey Beat in 1982. It covers the music scene in New Jersey and beyond. Jersey Beat covers a wide cross section of music but most particularly Punk and its many off-shoots, including Hardcore, Old-Skool, Pop Punk, Synth Punk, Anti-Folk, etc. Several well-known zine writers have contributed to Jersey Beat over the years, including Donny The Punk, Jim DeRogatis, Ben Weasel, and Tris McCall.
The Cucumbers' very first song, “My Boyfriend” became a hit on the college radio charts, leading to national tours, a couple of videos on MTV, reviews in Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The New York Times, etc. Their 6th album, All Things to You, was mixed by producer/engineer Roger Moutenot (Sleater-Kinney, Yo La Tengo, Lou Reed)."What makes the band major (besides Deena Shoshkes’ incredible voice) is the songwriting” The Village Voice. “Cool as you-know-what; sexy and bittersweet” People Magazine. “…budding with talent” Rolling Stone.
FREE! CDs on sale at event. Complimentary wine.
Morris Men 3:30 PM, Mon. July 6; Summer Bash (it's summer! show off your rac!) Fri. July 10; Risk Relay & Co. Fri. July 17; Michael Wexler & John Hulme (The Seems)Fri. July 24; Barry Monush (Everybody's Talkin') Sat. Aug 1; Sung Woo (Everything Asian) Fri. Aug. 7; Faces in the Rocks doc & The Beast of Bourbon Flip Fri. Aug 28; Michael Agovino (The Bookmaker)Sat. Sept 12; Padma Viswanathan (The Toss of a Lemon) Sat. Sept 26; A Clockwork Orange: A Staged Adaptation, Oct. TBA
1st ANNUAL METUCHEN TREASURE HUNT (FULLY BOOKED, SORRY!)
The Raconteur, in conjunction with the Metuchen Masonic Lodge, is sponsoring a Metuchen based treasure hunt! In keeping with the rollicking spirit of The Man who Would be King, Freemason Rudyard Kipling's fantastic tale of two masonic scoundrels who set off from 19th century British India in search of gold and adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan, and The National Treasure, in which hoard hunter Benjamin Gates follows a series of cryptic clues to find an ancient cache intertwined with the arcane history of Freemasonry, young adventurers (boys and girls 1st through 5th grade) work in teams, following clues and unraveling a variety of knotty riddles as they move from one mysterious location to another within the town limits of Metuchen proper. Each cracked conundrum will lead players ever closer to the final treasure! Expect anagrams, number puzzles, and a brass plated, cylindrical device known as a Cryptex. FREE! Raconteur gift certificates awarded to all participants. Again, this weekend's hunt is, unfortunately, FULLY BOOKED (40 Kids!). But due to the overwhelming response, we will be organizing a second one late this summer. Watch the sea and skies for an upcoming announcement!
11 AM, Sun. June 7
Musicians Wanted!
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside Darlin’ Old Stick. Seriously! FREE! COMP CORNBREAD (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Friday June 19
OFF THE RAILS: Hoboetry and Gallery Night
Six NJ Poets (Joe Weil, Deborah LaVeglia, Sarah Maloney, Tony Gruenewald, Rebecca Nison, Andrew Erkkila) and seven NJ artists (Seth Goodwin, Daniel Brophy, Diana Marsh, Robert Rubin, Bryant Jefopoulos, Jessica Kizmann, Charles Laskowski) present railroad infused readings, paintings, photographs, screen printings, drawings and sculpture. Followed by an open mic. Complimentary wine, cheese, and desserts. Free!
8 PM, Sat. June 27
POSITIVELY MAIN STREET
Featuring John Raido & The Cucumbers
Live Music
Musicians from all over New Jersey jam locally. Hosted by celebrated music zinester/Jersey Beat editor Jim Testa. Testa published the first issue of his zine Jersey Beat in 1982. It covers the music scene in New Jersey and beyond. Jersey Beat covers a wide cross section of music but most particularly Punk and its many off-shoots, including Hardcore, Old-Skool, Pop Punk, Synth Punk, Anti-Folk, etc. Several well-known zine writers have contributed to Jersey Beat over the years, including Donny The Punk, Jim DeRogatis, Ben Weasel, and Tris McCall. The Cucumbers' very first song, “My Boyfriend” became a hit on the college radio charts, leading to national tours, a couple of videos on MTV, reviews in Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The New York Times, etc. Their 6th album, All Things to You, was mixed by producer/engineer Roger Moutenot (Sleater-Kinney, Yo La Tengo, Lou Reed)."What makes the band major (besides Deena Shoshkes’ incredible voice) is the songwriting” The Village Voice. “Cool as you-know-what; sexy and bittersweet” People Magazine. “…budding with talent” Rolling Stone.
FREE! CDs on sale at event. Complimentary wine.
Morris Men 3:30 PM, Mon. July 6; Summer Bash (it's summer! show off your rac!) Fri. July 10; Risk Relay & Co. Fri. July 17; Michael Wexler & John Hulme (The Seems)Fri. July 24; Barry Monush (Everybody's Talkin') Sat. Aug 1; Sung Woo (Everything Asian) Fri. Aug. 7; Faces in the Rocks doc & The Beast of Bourbon Flip Fri. Aug 28; Michael Agovino (The Bookmaker)Sat. Sept 12; Padma Viswanathan (The Toss of a Lemon) Sat. Sept 26; A Clockwork Orange: A Staged Adaptation, Oct. TBA
Friday, April 10, 2009
MAY 2009: Web Cam Jam; Joe Romeo; Arthur Phillips; Mary Ann McGuigan; Kurt Wenzel; Daniel Eggers; Jake Cherry; Armsport; Mark Doty; Mike Edison
11 AM, Sun. May 3
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside “Darlin’ Old Stick.” MUSICIANS WANTED! FREE! Comp cornbread (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Thurs. May 7
JOE ROMEO & THE ORANGE COUNTY VOLUNTEERS
Live Music
Influenced in equal parts by Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Robinson Crusoe, and Dalton, Patrick Swayze’s dive bar doorman in the 1989 film Roadhouse, low fi, quasi-country, folk singer Joe Romeo fills his album with a rustic eclectism that’s funnier than he is generally given credit for. But his lyrical preoccupations remain tragic--God, loss of love, drinking, death. After the whacked out preacherman blues stomp of track one, the album slides into a series of sprawling ballads that highlight Romeo’s baritone croon. Romeo is not merely in a different league from most of his peers; he's scarcely even playing the same game. FREE! CDs on sale at event.
8 PM, Fri. May 8
ARTHUR PHILLIPS
Reading/Signing
THE SONG IS YOU
Arthur Phillips’ first novel, Prague, followed a group of young expats living in Budapest and yearning for the more glamorous city of the title. His second, The Egyptologist, set mostly in Egypt in the 1920s, had two unreliable narrators and was plotted with one devilishly clever reversal and switchback after another. Angelica, his third, began as a Victorian ghost story and gradually darkened into a complex psychological tale. Now comes The Song is You another radical departure in a career of radical departures. A middle aged man, a troubled relationship, an IPOD. At first glance The Song is You sounds like pure Nick Hornby territory, but it turns out to be a lot closer to the grim fable of The Red Shoes, a story in which characters are tragically torn between the twin forces of love and art. Julian Donahue is a skilled director of commercials who has come to know his limits. Cait O'Dwyer is a singer, and a bit of a comet that Julian somehow catches the tail of. Their courtship--as Julian evades a marriage split by an unbearable loss and Cait shoots single-mindedly toward stardom--is an intricately constructed pas de deux that is both surprising and convincing. Recently praised on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, The Song Is You takes on loneliness, alienation, middle age, and what it means to be saddled by your past. Yet despite these sober concerns, Phillips' sparkling prose makes for a seriously fun read. Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think, and for those of us who try to think and feel, The Song Is You captures the flip sides pretty much perfectly. Labeled “one of the best writers in America” by The Washington Post, Arthur Phillips is that rare thing among authors, a wisenheimer who's also wise. FREE! Books on sale at event.
3 PM, Sat. May 9
National Book Award Winner
YA author MARY ANN MCGUIGAN
Reading/Signing
MORNING IN A DIFFERENT PLACE
An act of teenage rebellion in November 1963 sets off a chain of events that irrevocably changes 14-year-old Fiona O'Doherty's life and the world she inhabits. National Book Award winner Mary Ann McGuigan is as adept at evoking the class consciousness and racial politics of '60s New York as she is the timeless horrors of adolescence and with the twin evils of domestic violence and President Kennedy's assassination looming in the background, the author's portrait of the chameleonic nature of teenage girls builds aggressively to a powerful finale. FREE! Books on sale at event. Ages 12 & up.
8 PM, Thurs. May 14
KURT WENZEL
Reading/Signing
LIT LIFE & EXPOSURE
I was a theater district bartender/East Village playwright when Wenzel’s debut novel Lit Life came out in 2001. A boozy, sardonic take on artistic self-absorption and the grind and glamour of literary life, it quickly became one of my favorite books of that year. ‘Nuff said. He’ll be here Thursday with his latest novel, Exposure, a blistering mash up of Phillip K. Dick, Nathaniel West, and Chuck Palahniuk. FREE! Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Sat. May 16
DANIEL EGGERS & CO.
Live Traditional Peruvian Music
Daniel Eggers is a young man from Peru. Last spring I met him for the first time. He'd heard I did events and had popped by the shop to perform an audition of sorts. After retrieving his guitar from his car he proceeded to play ten minutes of what is likely the most beautiful music I've ever heard. Naturally, I booked him immediately, and, accompanied by his friend Pocho on the djembe, he captivated one of the biggest crowds (May Pang aside) we've ever had at an in-store event. Well, he's back. This time on the quena. The quena is a traditional bamboo flute from the Andes once banned by the Spanish government. They said it inspired indecent emotions among the natives. There is a legend of an Incan princess named Ollantay. She fell in love with a commoner and, forbidden to marry him, she died of unhappiness. Her lover, visiting her grave, hears a haunting whistling sound coming from the wind. This gives him the idea of creating the quena, whose sound will remind him of his lost love. Now, you can hear it too! FOR FREE! As you sip complimentary red wine from the province of Ica (despite its hot and dry climate, Ica is actually a perfect place to grow wine grapes as the fields are thoroughly irrigated with water from the Andes). Songs will be accompanied by classic Spanish guitar.
7 PM, Thurs. May 21
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
w/special guest child star JAKE CHERRY
Film Screening
Jake Cherry, the young star of N@M and N@M2: Battle of the Smithsonian (which opens the following day), introduces the film, delivering a fascinating show-and-tell of production stills, movie props, and shooting scripts, while sharing his experiences working with Ben Stiller, who plays his divorced dad, and the various rampaging fossils that populate both movies. Inspired by a 1993 children's book by Milan Trenc, the film stars Stiller as a well-meaning ne'er-do-well father who takes a steady job as night watchman at New York City's Museum of Natural History to give his son (Jake Cherry) some much needed stability. He soon discovers that the exhibits (Roman centurions, Attila the Hun, T. Rex, etc.), animated by a magical Egyptian artifact, come to riotous life at night. But with the help of President Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), Larry may just figure out a way to control the chaos and become a hero in his son's eyes. Wildly imaginative effects, costumes and makeup, help make the film appeal to the 8-year-old in everyone. With Owen Wilson, Ricky Gervais, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs and Steve Coogan. FREE! With comp popcorn.
8 PM, Sat. May 23
SANTIAGO ARMSPORT TOURNEY
Inspired by the 24 hour arm wrestling competition between the dogged Santiago, the titular character in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and “the great Negro from Ceinfuegos,” The Santiago Armsport Tourney is sponsored by The Raconteur and occurs in the rear of the shop on a regulation table. Shop proprietor Alex Dawson takes on all comers. Victors (should they emerge) win $25 gift certificates and get their names engraved onto a trophy which remains in the shop. To reserve your slot, contact raconteurbooks@gmail.com. The tournament will be preceded by a short theatrical reading from the Pulitzer Prize winning OMS and followed by a free screening of the Spencer Tracy movie. $5 to enter contest; FREE to watch!
8 PM, Weds. May 27
2008 National Book Award Winner
Poet MARK DOTY Reading/Signing FIRE to FIRE
Mark Doty's Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008 and features a hefty selection from his seven collections, plus a generous sheaf of new poems, should solidify Doty's position as a star of contemporary American poetry, a career which took off in 1993 with My Alexandria, his third book, for which he won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Fire to Fire contains only two poems from his first two books—“Adonis Theatre,” about an old movie palace turned gay porno theater, and “The Death of Antinous,” about the Roman emperor Hadrian's lover's afterlife in statuary, both of which are meditations on representation, absence and desire. Readers are guided through a world of female impersonators, street musicians and homeless poets. There is an all-pervasive sense of doom in some of the poems, from the dying man who gives away all his animals to the dog shot in the head that refuses to take its final breath. But Doty's death-haunted poems from earlier books give way here to recent poems about a more hopeful life with new friends, new vistas, new narratives, all rendered in a way that feels at once confessional and universal. Not that death’s irrelevant—ghosts and apparitions, such as spotting John Berryman having lunch in a diner in Chelsea, still make regular appearances—but the poet has made his peace with it. FREE. Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Sat. May 30
MIKE EDISON Reading/Signing I HAVE FUN EVERYWHERE IT GO
Plus Live Music by THE EDISON ROCKET TRAIN
Edison’s memoir I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World recounts twenty years of druggy adventurism and his parallel careers as a magazine editor, writer, and musician. Between 1985 and 1988 he was the author of 28 pornographic novels, wrote about German whorehouses and Spanish coke dealers for Hustler, and published a series of erotic “confessions” for the legendary Penthouse Letters. In 1998 Edison became publisher/editor of marijuana counterculture magazine High Times. Following HT, he was named the editorial director for Jewish culture magazine HEEB, for whom he went undercover and exposed Jews for Jesus as a Baptist organization. Edison has also recorded a “beatnik bop and punk rock boogaloo, outerspace soundtrack and spoken word” companion CD, collaboration with rock musician and producer Jon Spencer. He is the long-time drummer for New York cult-garage band the Raunch Hands, as well as being a collaborator of infamous punk rocker GG Allin with whom he wrote a number of songs and recorded two albums. He currently leads his own band, the Edison Rocket Train. FREE! Books/CDs on sale at event.
Graffiti Art Show/Transit Poetry 8 PM, Fri. June 19; Sung Woo (Everything Asian) July
TRANSATLANTIC WEB CAM JAM SESSION
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. NOTE: If you watched the Oscars this year, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers and in April’s Mr. Winslet sang the old broadside “Darlin’ Old Stick.” MUSICIANS WANTED! FREE! Comp cornbread (fresh from the oven)!
8 PM, Thurs. May 7
JOE ROMEO & THE ORANGE COUNTY VOLUNTEERS
Live Music
Influenced in equal parts by Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Robinson Crusoe, and Dalton, Patrick Swayze’s dive bar doorman in the 1989 film Roadhouse, low fi, quasi-country, folk singer Joe Romeo fills his album with a rustic eclectism that’s funnier than he is generally given credit for. But his lyrical preoccupations remain tragic--God, loss of love, drinking, death. After the whacked out preacherman blues stomp of track one, the album slides into a series of sprawling ballads that highlight Romeo’s baritone croon. Romeo is not merely in a different league from most of his peers; he's scarcely even playing the same game. FREE! CDs on sale at event.
8 PM, Fri. May 8
ARTHUR PHILLIPS
Reading/Signing
THE SONG IS YOU
Arthur Phillips’ first novel, Prague, followed a group of young expats living in Budapest and yearning for the more glamorous city of the title. His second, The Egyptologist, set mostly in Egypt in the 1920s, had two unreliable narrators and was plotted with one devilishly clever reversal and switchback after another. Angelica, his third, began as a Victorian ghost story and gradually darkened into a complex psychological tale. Now comes The Song is You another radical departure in a career of radical departures. A middle aged man, a troubled relationship, an IPOD. At first glance The Song is You sounds like pure Nick Hornby territory, but it turns out to be a lot closer to the grim fable of The Red Shoes, a story in which characters are tragically torn between the twin forces of love and art. Julian Donahue is a skilled director of commercials who has come to know his limits. Cait O'Dwyer is a singer, and a bit of a comet that Julian somehow catches the tail of. Their courtship--as Julian evades a marriage split by an unbearable loss and Cait shoots single-mindedly toward stardom--is an intricately constructed pas de deux that is both surprising and convincing. Recently praised on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, The Song Is You takes on loneliness, alienation, middle age, and what it means to be saddled by your past. Yet despite these sober concerns, Phillips' sparkling prose makes for a seriously fun read. Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think, and for those of us who try to think and feel, The Song Is You captures the flip sides pretty much perfectly. Labeled “one of the best writers in America” by The Washington Post, Arthur Phillips is that rare thing among authors, a wisenheimer who's also wise. FREE! Books on sale at event.
3 PM, Sat. May 9
National Book Award Winner
YA author MARY ANN MCGUIGAN
Reading/Signing
MORNING IN A DIFFERENT PLACE
An act of teenage rebellion in November 1963 sets off a chain of events that irrevocably changes 14-year-old Fiona O'Doherty's life and the world she inhabits. National Book Award winner Mary Ann McGuigan is as adept at evoking the class consciousness and racial politics of '60s New York as she is the timeless horrors of adolescence and with the twin evils of domestic violence and President Kennedy's assassination looming in the background, the author's portrait of the chameleonic nature of teenage girls builds aggressively to a powerful finale. FREE! Books on sale at event. Ages 12 & up.
8 PM, Thurs. May 14
KURT WENZEL
Reading/Signing
LIT LIFE & EXPOSURE
I was a theater district bartender/East Village playwright when Wenzel’s debut novel Lit Life came out in 2001. A boozy, sardonic take on artistic self-absorption and the grind and glamour of literary life, it quickly became one of my favorite books of that year. ‘Nuff said. He’ll be here Thursday with his latest novel, Exposure, a blistering mash up of Phillip K. Dick, Nathaniel West, and Chuck Palahniuk. FREE! Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Sat. May 16
DANIEL EGGERS & CO.
Live Traditional Peruvian Music
Daniel Eggers is a young man from Peru. Last spring I met him for the first time. He'd heard I did events and had popped by the shop to perform an audition of sorts. After retrieving his guitar from his car he proceeded to play ten minutes of what is likely the most beautiful music I've ever heard. Naturally, I booked him immediately, and, accompanied by his friend Pocho on the djembe, he captivated one of the biggest crowds (May Pang aside) we've ever had at an in-store event. Well, he's back. This time on the quena. The quena is a traditional bamboo flute from the Andes once banned by the Spanish government. They said it inspired indecent emotions among the natives. There is a legend of an Incan princess named Ollantay. She fell in love with a commoner and, forbidden to marry him, she died of unhappiness. Her lover, visiting her grave, hears a haunting whistling sound coming from the wind. This gives him the idea of creating the quena, whose sound will remind him of his lost love. Now, you can hear it too! FOR FREE! As you sip complimentary red wine from the province of Ica (despite its hot and dry climate, Ica is actually a perfect place to grow wine grapes as the fields are thoroughly irrigated with water from the Andes). Songs will be accompanied by classic Spanish guitar.
7 PM, Thurs. May 21
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
w/special guest child star JAKE CHERRY
Film Screening
Jake Cherry, the young star of N@M and N@M2: Battle of the Smithsonian (which opens the following day), introduces the film, delivering a fascinating show-and-tell of production stills, movie props, and shooting scripts, while sharing his experiences working with Ben Stiller, who plays his divorced dad, and the various rampaging fossils that populate both movies. Inspired by a 1993 children's book by Milan Trenc, the film stars Stiller as a well-meaning ne'er-do-well father who takes a steady job as night watchman at New York City's Museum of Natural History to give his son (Jake Cherry) some much needed stability. He soon discovers that the exhibits (Roman centurions, Attila the Hun, T. Rex, etc.), animated by a magical Egyptian artifact, come to riotous life at night. But with the help of President Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), Larry may just figure out a way to control the chaos and become a hero in his son's eyes. Wildly imaginative effects, costumes and makeup, help make the film appeal to the 8-year-old in everyone. With Owen Wilson, Ricky Gervais, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs and Steve Coogan. FREE! With comp popcorn.
8 PM, Sat. May 23
SANTIAGO ARMSPORT TOURNEY
Inspired by the 24 hour arm wrestling competition between the dogged Santiago, the titular character in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and “the great Negro from Ceinfuegos,” The Santiago Armsport Tourney is sponsored by The Raconteur and occurs in the rear of the shop on a regulation table. Shop proprietor Alex Dawson takes on all comers. Victors (should they emerge) win $25 gift certificates and get their names engraved onto a trophy which remains in the shop. To reserve your slot, contact raconteurbooks@gmail.com. The tournament will be preceded by a short theatrical reading from the Pulitzer Prize winning OMS and followed by a free screening of the Spencer Tracy movie. $5 to enter contest; FREE to watch!
8 PM, Weds. May 27
2008 National Book Award Winner
Poet MARK DOTY Reading/Signing FIRE to FIREMark Doty's Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008 and features a hefty selection from his seven collections, plus a generous sheaf of new poems, should solidify Doty's position as a star of contemporary American poetry, a career which took off in 1993 with My Alexandria, his third book, for which he won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Fire to Fire contains only two poems from his first two books—“Adonis Theatre,” about an old movie palace turned gay porno theater, and “The Death of Antinous,” about the Roman emperor Hadrian's lover's afterlife in statuary, both of which are meditations on representation, absence and desire. Readers are guided through a world of female impersonators, street musicians and homeless poets. There is an all-pervasive sense of doom in some of the poems, from the dying man who gives away all his animals to the dog shot in the head that refuses to take its final breath. But Doty's death-haunted poems from earlier books give way here to recent poems about a more hopeful life with new friends, new vistas, new narratives, all rendered in a way that feels at once confessional and universal. Not that death’s irrelevant—ghosts and apparitions, such as spotting John Berryman having lunch in a diner in Chelsea, still make regular appearances—but the poet has made his peace with it. FREE. Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Sat. May 30
MIKE EDISON Reading/Signing I HAVE FUN EVERYWHERE IT GO
Plus Live Music by THE EDISON ROCKET TRAIN
Edison’s memoir I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World recounts twenty years of druggy adventurism and his parallel careers as a magazine editor, writer, and musician. Between 1985 and 1988 he was the author of 28 pornographic novels, wrote about German whorehouses and Spanish coke dealers for Hustler, and published a series of erotic “confessions” for the legendary Penthouse Letters. In 1998 Edison became publisher/editor of marijuana counterculture magazine High Times. Following HT, he was named the editorial director for Jewish culture magazine HEEB, for whom he went undercover and exposed Jews for Jesus as a Baptist organization. Edison has also recorded a “beatnik bop and punk rock boogaloo, outerspace soundtrack and spoken word” companion CD, collaboration with rock musician and producer Jon Spencer. He is the long-time drummer for New York cult-garage band the Raunch Hands, as well as being a collaborator of infamous punk rocker GG Allin with whom he wrote a number of songs and recorded two albums. He currently leads his own band, the Edison Rocket Train. FREE! Books/CDs on sale at event.Graffiti Art Show/Transit Poetry 8 PM, Fri. June 19; Sung Woo (Everything Asian) July
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
APRIL 2009: Jellyfish Artist Bill Ward; Transatlantic Web Cam Jam; John Wray; Postively Main Street; David Gates & John Wesley Harding
8 PM, Thurs. April 2
LOCAL COLOR w/Bill Ward
Biochemist/jellyfish artist/bamboozled Nobel Prize candidate
How well do you know your neighbor? Why is their basement light on? Why is their chimney belching rags of purple smoke? And why exactly is their dog gnawing on a narwhal tusk? Find out! Local Color is a new Raconteur series exploring the eccentricities of the people that live next door.
I first met Bill Ward when I decided to purchase one of his psychedelic jellyfish prints. A biochemist at Rutgers, he'd found a way, through the use of various dyes, to transpose the image of a bioluminescent jellyfish known as a Sea Walnut to paper. The result was stunning and a perfect gift for my father.
My father, long retired, counts and tracks migrating horseshoe crabs in Cape May. I'd recently joined him for a tally, which involved stalking a desolate piece of shoreline at midnight with cap lights, thongy things that look like miner's helmets made from jockstrap bands. Dad fished out several plastic pipes from the bed of his station wagon, a wood-sided Buick Roadmaster, and we assembled them like tent poles to form a square. Clipboard in hand, we walked a precise number of paces, laid the pipes down, and ticked off how many crabs the square circumscribed. We did this for about a mile, alternating the paces between 5 steps and fifteen. We had trudged this wet spit of sand for about fifteen minutes, when we noticed something that my Dad, who'd done this exact stretch every spring and fall for the last decade, had never before seen. Thousands of green-glowing objects the size of silver dollars and the color of firefly tails floated along the beach, riding in on the lapping water. They looked like fallen stars, like alien eyes, like nuggets of debris from a crashed mother ship. Upon further research, we learned they were Comb Jellies (or Sea Walnuts), and this is what Mr. Ward so beautifully turns into art. But I'll let him tell you about it. As well as how exactly he was cheated out of the 2008 Nobel Prize. Seriously.
Upcoming Local Color events include a man who rafted the Raritan in a pontoon made from plastic storage tubs from Target, and a girl who has found corn flakes shaped like all fifty states. FREE! Comp wine. Art for sale at event.
11 AM, Sun. April 5
Musicians Wanted!
Transatlantic Web Cam Jam Session
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. HOMEMADE CORNBREAD!
If you watched the Oscars last month, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers.
8 PM, Fri. April 17
John Wray
Reading/Signing
LOWBOY
Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-year old paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Like most people he knows, Will believes the world is being destroyed by climate change; unlike most people, he’s convinced he can do something about it. Unknown to his doctors, unknown to the police—unknown even to Violet Heller, his devoted mother—Will alone holds the key to the planet’s salvation. To cool down the world, he has to cool down his own overheating body: to cool down his body, he has to find one willing girl. And he already has someone in mind.
Lowboy, JOHN WRAY’s third novel, tells the story of Will’s fantastic and terrifying odyssey through the city’s tunnels, back alleys, and streets in search of Emily Wallace, his one great hope. Suspenseful and comic, devastating and hopeful by turns, Lowboy is a fearless exploration of youth, sex, and violence in contemporary America, seen through one boy’s haunting and extraordinary vision. The opening pages recall Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, but the denouement and haunting aftertaste may make the stunned reader whisper “Dostoevsky.” Yes, it really is that good.FREE!Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Sat. April 18
POSITIVELY MAIN STREET
Live Music
Musicians from all over New Jersey jam locally. Hosted by celebrated music zinester/Jersey Beat editor Jim Testa. Testa published the first issue of his zine Jersey Beat in 1982. It covers the music scene in New Jersey and beyond. Jersey Beat covers a wide cross section of music but most particularly Punk and its many off-shoots, including Hardcore, Old-Skool, Pop Punk, Synth Punk, Anti-Folk, etc. Several well-known zine writers have contributed to Jersey Beat over the years, including Donny The Punk, Jim DeRogatis, Ben Weasel, and Tris McCall. FREE! Complimentary wine.
RENTAL
8 PM, Thurs. April 23
SUNBURST CARRIER
Live Music
Featuring Lisa Kowalew & Jeff Weiner
A liquified circus, nothing more, nothing less. FREE! Click HERE to sample their music. Please note: we occasionally rent the rear of our shop to budding poets, filmmakers, and musicians; The Raconteur does not screen "tenants" and, accordingly, makes no claims regarding the quality of the entertainment they offer. If you are interested in renting our venue, reply to this e-mail or call Alex at 732-906-0009.
8 PM, Sun. April 26
Pulitzer Prize Finalist David Gates & Folk Noir Gangster John Wesley Harding
Reading/Signing/Live Music
The author of the highly acclaimed novels Jernigan (a Pulitzer Prize Finalist) and Preston Falls (a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist), and a collection of short stories, The Wonders of the Invisible World (also a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist), DAVID GATES was anointed a "true heir to Raymond Carver and John Cheever," by New York Magazine. His work, stylish and ferociously humorous, nimbly explores the dark side of suburban masculinity and has been called "brilliant" by both NPR and the Boston Globe, and "beautiful" by the New York Times.
Chosen by Springsteen as his first opening act in 20 years, rocker/poet/punk/folkie/popster JOHN WESLEY HARDING has been called the British Bob Dylan and is often compared to Elvis Costello (probably fueled, in part, by the fact that two members of his band had been members of The Attractions). Rolling Stone Magazine hailed him as, "a literate and ironic neo-folkie with enough bile to win over a younger, hipper audience not attuned to folk music." His best known work includes "I'm Wrong About Everything", which was featured on the High Fidelity soundtrack and an accoustic cover of the Madonna song, "Like a Prayer." He has been joined onstage by Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen (with whom he recorded a duet on his album Awake), Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Peter Buck, Evan Dando, David Baddiel, Rick Moody, Scott MacCaughey and Robyn Hitchcock and has opened for Michelle Shocked, Los Lobos, and The Band.
After placing his music career on hold while working as an author (under his real name, Wesley Stace, he wrote the international best seller Misfortune and 2007's By George), JWH released Who was Changed and Who was Dead this March, his first rock album in five years.FREE! Complimentary wine. Book and CDs on sale at event.
LOCAL COLOR w/Bill Ward
Biochemist/jellyfish artist/bamboozled Nobel Prize candidate
How well do you know your neighbor? Why is their basement light on? Why is their chimney belching rags of purple smoke? And why exactly is their dog gnawing on a narwhal tusk? Find out! Local Color is a new Raconteur series exploring the eccentricities of the people that live next door.I first met Bill Ward when I decided to purchase one of his psychedelic jellyfish prints. A biochemist at Rutgers, he'd found a way, through the use of various dyes, to transpose the image of a bioluminescent jellyfish known as a Sea Walnut to paper. The result was stunning and a perfect gift for my father.
My father, long retired, counts and tracks migrating horseshoe crabs in Cape May. I'd recently joined him for a tally, which involved stalking a desolate piece of shoreline at midnight with cap lights, thongy things that look like miner's helmets made from jockstrap bands. Dad fished out several plastic pipes from the bed of his station wagon, a wood-sided Buick Roadmaster, and we assembled them like tent poles to form a square. Clipboard in hand, we walked a precise number of paces, laid the pipes down, and ticked off how many crabs the square circumscribed. We did this for about a mile, alternating the paces between 5 steps and fifteen. We had trudged this wet spit of sand for about fifteen minutes, when we noticed something that my Dad, who'd done this exact stretch every spring and fall for the last decade, had never before seen. Thousands of green-glowing objects the size of silver dollars and the color of firefly tails floated along the beach, riding in on the lapping water. They looked like fallen stars, like alien eyes, like nuggets of debris from a crashed mother ship. Upon further research, we learned they were Comb Jellies (or Sea Walnuts), and this is what Mr. Ward so beautifully turns into art. But I'll let him tell you about it. As well as how exactly he was cheated out of the 2008 Nobel Prize. Seriously.
Upcoming Local Color events include a man who rafted the Raritan in a pontoon made from plastic storage tubs from Target, and a girl who has found corn flakes shaped like all fifty states. FREE! Comp wine. Art for sale at event.
11 AM, Sun. April 5
Musicians Wanted!
Transatlantic Web Cam Jam Session
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. HOMEMADE CORNBREAD!
If you watched the Oscars last month, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, February's Web Cam Jam, Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers.8 PM, Fri. April 17
John Wray
Reading/Signing
LOWBOY
Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-year old paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Like most people he knows, Will believes the world is being destroyed by climate change; unlike most people, he’s convinced he can do something about it. Unknown to his doctors, unknown to the police—unknown even to Violet Heller, his devoted mother—Will alone holds the key to the planet’s salvation. To cool down the world, he has to cool down his own overheating body: to cool down his body, he has to find one willing girl. And he already has someone in mind. 
Lowboy, JOHN WRAY’s third novel, tells the story of Will’s fantastic and terrifying odyssey through the city’s tunnels, back alleys, and streets in search of Emily Wallace, his one great hope. Suspenseful and comic, devastating and hopeful by turns, Lowboy is a fearless exploration of youth, sex, and violence in contemporary America, seen through one boy’s haunting and extraordinary vision. The opening pages recall Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, but the denouement and haunting aftertaste may make the stunned reader whisper “Dostoevsky.” Yes, it really is that good.FREE!Complimentary wine. Books on sale at event. 8 PM, Sat. April 18
POSITIVELY MAIN STREET
Live Music
Musicians from all over New Jersey jam locally. Hosted by celebrated music zinester/Jersey Beat editor Jim Testa. Testa published the first issue of his zine Jersey Beat in 1982. It covers the music scene in New Jersey and beyond. Jersey Beat covers a wide cross section of music but most particularly Punk and its many off-shoots, including Hardcore, Old-Skool, Pop Punk, Synth Punk, Anti-Folk, etc. Several well-known zine writers have contributed to Jersey Beat over the years, including Donny The Punk, Jim DeRogatis, Ben Weasel, and Tris McCall. FREE! Complimentary wine.RENTAL
8 PM, Thurs. April 23
SUNBURST CARRIER
Live Music
Featuring Lisa Kowalew & Jeff Weiner
A liquified circus, nothing more, nothing less. FREE! Click HERE to sample their music. Please note: we occasionally rent the rear of our shop to budding poets, filmmakers, and musicians; The Raconteur does not screen "tenants" and, accordingly, makes no claims regarding the quality of the entertainment they offer. If you are interested in renting our venue, reply to this e-mail or call Alex at 732-906-0009.
8 PM, Sun. April 26
Pulitzer Prize Finalist David Gates & Folk Noir Gangster John Wesley Harding
Reading/Signing/Live Music
The author of the highly acclaimed novels Jernigan (a Pulitzer Prize Finalist) and Preston Falls (a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist), and a collection of short stories, The Wonders of the Invisible World (also a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist), DAVID GATES was anointed a "true heir to Raymond Carver and John Cheever," by New York Magazine. His work, stylish and ferociously humorous, nimbly explores the dark side of suburban masculinity and has been called "brilliant" by both NPR and the Boston Globe, and "beautiful" by the New York Times. Chosen by Springsteen as his first opening act in 20 years, rocker/poet/punk/folkie/popster JOHN WESLEY HARDING has been called the British Bob Dylan and is often compared to Elvis Costello (probably fueled, in part, by the fact that two members of his band had been members of The Attractions). Rolling Stone Magazine hailed him as, "a literate and ironic neo-folkie with enough bile to win over a younger, hipper audience not attuned to folk music." His best known work includes "I'm Wrong About Everything", which was featured on the High Fidelity soundtrack and an accoustic cover of the Madonna song, "Like a Prayer." He has been joined onstage by Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen (with whom he recorded a duet on his album Awake), Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Peter Buck, Evan Dando, David Baddiel, Rick Moody, Scott MacCaughey and Robyn Hitchcock and has opened for Michelle Shocked, Los Lobos, and The Band.
After placing his music career on hold while working as an author (under his real name, Wesley Stace, he wrote the international best seller Misfortune and 2007's By George), JWH released Who was Changed and Who was Dead this March, his first rock album in five years.FREE! Complimentary wine. Book and CDs on sale at event.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
MARCH 2009: Web Cam Jam; Rapscallion Book Club; Kyo Morishima/Joan Arbeiter; Dante's Inferno; Glad Hearts; Achy Obejas; Watchmen Radio Play
11 AM, Sun. March 1
Transatlantic Web Cam Jam Session
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. MUSICIANS WANTED! FREE!
If you watched the Oscars this past Sun, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, in last month's Raconteur jam session Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers.
4 PM, Sun. March 8
THE RAPSCALLION CLUB
Book Discussion
w/Lit prof Liz Mazzola and author Alex Dawson
Ages 7 - 12
Okay. So now you know what banana dogs, mustache mugs, and french fry contests are. But you still have questions. What, for instance, does poppycock mean? Has Nigel ever shot a gun? Will Uncle Jonathan's third floor Piper Cubs every see the sky? How did Uncle Edmund lose his fingers? How much money can you really make from poop? Find out!PLUS: Hear about Dawson's month long trip to visit his brother (a bonafide adventurer) at The South American Explorer's Club in Peru, and learn top secret tid bits from Book 2 (due out next Christmas)!
The Raconteur Children's Book Club meets once a month and is open to children ages 7 - 12. Children choose books and direct the discussion, although Ms. Mazzola is on hand to keep things running smoothly. Upcoming titles include Gary Paulsen's My Life in Dog Years (April 19) and Lauren Myrade's Eleven (May 31). Contact Liz Mazzola (emazzola@yahoo.com) with any questions. Elizabeth Mazzola lives in Metuchen and is a Professor of English at the City College of New York, where she teaches courses on poetry and Renaissance literature. She shares her love of children's literature with her two daughters.
8 PM, Fri. March 13
Joan Arbeiter & Kyo Morishima
Art Exhibtion
You couldn't find an artist better suited to a Raconteur exhibition than Joan Arbeiter. The life size figures in Arbeiter's colossal pencil portraits of neighborhood locals and NYC street people are surrounded with a sprawl of dense text relating their colorful biographies. At first she recorded their experiences herself, but soon she turned the pencil over to her subjects, asking each one to write their personal narrative directly onto their portrait. Stand back to take in the full image, get close to read the quirky stories. Kyo Morishima is a street photographer with a proclivity for bluesmen, bikers, and subway buskers. But when you look at his wonderfully theatrical photos (like the rank of red umbrellas pressing through a Manhattan blizzard or the glam vampire descending a steep subway escalator) you'll find it hard to believe not one was staged. Kyo's success as a photographer comes from being in the right place at the right moment and, of course, recognizing what that moment is. FREE! Comp wine.
8 PM, Sat. March 14
Jean Hollander
Reading/Signing
THE INFERNO/ORGANS & BLOOD
The epic grandeur of Dante’s masterpiece has inspired readers for 700 years. Indeed, translating the intricate, rhyme-rich tercets of Comedia has been the ambition (and despair) of many a distinguished English language poet, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Metuchen's own John Ciardi. Now comes a new hard-boiled translation that will for many be the definitive edition for the foreseeable future. Robert Hollander, who has taught Dante for nearly four decades at Princeton, supplies the scholarly sinew, while his wife, acclaimed poet Jean Hollander (Organs & Blood), attends to the verbal music. The result is a terse, lean Dante with its own kind of beauty. Hear Ms. Hollander read about a three faced Satan waist deep in ice, weeping from six eyes, and find out exactly what she thinks of the upcoming video game from Electronic Arts, in which the poet-philosopher is transformed into a hulking veteran of the Crusades battling monsters designed by Hellboy's Wayne Barlowe. FREE! Comp wine. Books on sale at event.
7:30 PM, Thurs. March 19
Robert Kaplow
Discusses/Signs
ME AND ORSON WELLES
Book Club
NPR alum Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, a beautifully rendered and hilarious valentine to the burly thespian, was recently turned into a movie by indie filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused). Set in 1937 New York, Kaplow's novel tells of a teenager hired to star in Welles' production of Julius Caesar. In theaters this fall, the film stars America's sweetheart Troy Bolton (I mean, Zac Efron!), Claire Danes, and Christian Mackay as Welles. Critic Roger Ebert called it, "one of the best movies about theater I've ever seen." Meet Kaplow and find out how a cantankerous bouncer at a local New Brunswick bar cast the man playing Welles.
8 PM, Weds. March 25
Ryan Bing & Glad Hearts
Live Music
Promises are made, bottles are drained, fists are raised, seasons change and a pair of would-be revolutionaries bike across town. Theatrical, folk-influenced chamber pop that slots in somewhere between Belle and Sebastian's delicacy and the robust classicism of the Chills, the Glad Hearts debut album, The Oak and the Acorn, drips with enough romanticism to rival Jeff Buckley's Grace. Bing’s kitchen sink arrangements include the use of guitar, accordion, banjo, crumbling paper, a glass jar full of coins, a jingle bell wreath, a slide and e-bow, saw, drums, falling snow, tape loops, bass, lap steel, and keys (black, white, and car). Come for the singing and shouting, stay for the all abouting. FREE!
8 PM, Thurs. March 26
Achy Obejas & Robert Arellano
Reading/Signing
The Ruins & Havana Lunar
Junot Diaz said of Cuban writer Achy Obejas, who recently translated Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, into Spanish, “Obejas writes like an angel: flush with power, vision and hope ... one of the Cuba's most important writers." In addition to Havana Lunar, Cuban-American Robert Arellano is the author of Fast Eddie, King of Bees, and the graphic novel Dead in Desemboque, a collaboration with three comic-book artists that was inspired by the illustrated pulp fiction of Mexico. When he's not writing or teaching fiction workshops at Brown University, he plays guitar for Nick Cave, The Palace Brothers, and low-fi, quasi-country legend Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Bill), who said of Arellano's provacative fiction, "I hope he's not killed for writing this book." FREE! Comp wine. Books on sale at event.
POSTPONED!!!!!!!!
THE WATCHMEN
Staged Radio Play
Live Sound Effects!
W/Jeff Maschi, Larry Mintz, Laurence Paone, David Liss, Carlyle Owen, and Kristy Lauricella.
A graphic novel, a movie, and now a radio play! Both comic scribe Alan Moore and Terry Gilliam the original director assigned to the movie deemed it unfilmable, but nobody ever said you couldn't stage it. Six actors play everything from Mr. Rorschach to The Comedian. Featuring live foley effects and panels from the strip projected onto a screen behind the performers. With The Watchmen Moore reflected contemporary anxieties and deconstructed the superhero concept. It is regarded as the seminal text of the comic book medium and is one of Time Magazines Top 100 Novels. FREE!
Bill Ward, a biochemistry professor/jellyfish artist cheated out of the Nobel Prize, Thurs. April 2; Transatlantic Web Cam Jam Session Sun. April 5; John Wray (Lowboy), Fri. April 17; Positively Main Street, musicians from all over NJ jam locally, Sat. April 18; Charles Bock (Beautiful Children),Thurs. April 23 tentative; Pulitzer Prize finalist David Gates (Preston Falls) w/ Wesley Stace (By George), the given name of musician John Wesley Harding, Sun. April 26; Arthur Phillips (The Song is You) Fri. May 8; Mike Edison (I Have Fun Everywhere I Go) Sat. May 30
Transatlantic Web Cam Jam Session
Live Music
The first Sun of each month The Raconteur hosts a transatlantic jam session. The shop's session is concurrent with a very similar session occurring in Reading, England at a pub called The Retreat. Participants alternate, collaborate, and symphonize via a Google web cam. Web Cam Jam is more about the performers than the performance, but that doesn't you can't come in watch. Raconteur musicians drink coffee and play in the rear of the shop. Retreat musicians quaff pints (morning here, Happy Hour there) and are projected onto a movie screen behind local performers. All instruments welcome. Expect a triple necked guitar, electronic bagpipes, a jaw harp, two kazoos, a beer bottle organ, and something called a fluba, which appears to be a tuba-sized fluegel horn. MUSICIANS WANTED! FREE!If you watched the Oscars this past Sun, you heard Best Actress winner Kate Winslet mention this very same pub and the pickling contest her mother recently won there. Indeed, in last month's Raconteur jam session Kate's mom, Sally Winslet (now known as the Queen of Shallots), was in the foreground eating bangers.
4 PM, Sun. March 8
THE RAPSCALLION CLUB
Book Discussion
w/Lit prof Liz Mazzola and author Alex Dawson
Ages 7 - 12
Okay. So now you know what banana dogs, mustache mugs, and french fry contests are. But you still have questions. What, for instance, does poppycock mean? Has Nigel ever shot a gun? Will Uncle Jonathan's third floor Piper Cubs every see the sky? How did Uncle Edmund lose his fingers? How much money can you really make from poop? Find out!PLUS: Hear about Dawson's month long trip to visit his brother (a bonafide adventurer) at The South American Explorer's Club in Peru, and learn top secret tid bits from Book 2 (due out next Christmas)! The Raconteur Children's Book Club meets once a month and is open to children ages 7 - 12. Children choose books and direct the discussion, although Ms. Mazzola is on hand to keep things running smoothly. Upcoming titles include Gary Paulsen's My Life in Dog Years (April 19) and Lauren Myrade's Eleven (May 31). Contact Liz Mazzola (emazzola@yahoo.com) with any questions. Elizabeth Mazzola lives in Metuchen and is a Professor of English at the City College of New York, where she teaches courses on poetry and Renaissance literature. She shares her love of children's literature with her two daughters.
8 PM, Fri. March 13
Joan Arbeiter & Kyo Morishima
Art Exhibtion
You couldn't find an artist better suited to a Raconteur exhibition than Joan Arbeiter. The life size figures in Arbeiter's colossal pencil portraits of neighborhood locals and NYC street people are surrounded with a sprawl of dense text relating their colorful biographies. At first she recorded their experiences herself, but soon she turned the pencil over to her subjects, asking each one to write their personal narrative directly onto their portrait. Stand back to take in the full image, get close to read the quirky stories. Kyo Morishima is a street photographer with a proclivity for bluesmen, bikers, and subway buskers. But when you look at his wonderfully theatrical photos (like the rank of red umbrellas pressing through a Manhattan blizzard or the glam vampire descending a steep subway escalator) you'll find it hard to believe not one was staged. Kyo's success as a photographer comes from being in the right place at the right moment and, of course, recognizing what that moment is. FREE! Comp wine.
8 PM, Sat. March 14
Jean Hollander
Reading/Signing
THE INFERNO/ORGANS & BLOOD
The epic grandeur of Dante’s masterpiece has inspired readers for 700 years. Indeed, translating the intricate, rhyme-rich tercets of Comedia has been the ambition (and despair) of many a distinguished English language poet, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Metuchen's own John Ciardi. Now comes a new hard-boiled translation that will for many be the definitive edition for the foreseeable future. Robert Hollander, who has taught Dante for nearly four decades at Princeton, supplies the scholarly sinew, while his wife, acclaimed poet Jean Hollander (Organs & Blood), attends to the verbal music. The result is a terse, lean Dante with its own kind of beauty. Hear Ms. Hollander read about a three faced Satan waist deep in ice, weeping from six eyes, and find out exactly what she thinks of the upcoming video game from Electronic Arts, in which the poet-philosopher is transformed into a hulking veteran of the Crusades battling monsters designed by Hellboy's Wayne Barlowe. FREE! Comp wine. Books on sale at event.
7:30 PM, Thurs. March 19
Robert Kaplow
Discusses/Signs
ME AND ORSON WELLES
Book Club
NPR alum Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, a beautifully rendered and hilarious valentine to the burly thespian, was recently turned into a movie by indie filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused). Set in 1937 New York, Kaplow's novel tells of a teenager hired to star in Welles' production of Julius Caesar. In theaters this fall, the film stars America's sweetheart Troy Bolton (I mean, Zac Efron!), Claire Danes, and Christian Mackay as Welles. Critic Roger Ebert called it, "one of the best movies about theater I've ever seen." Meet Kaplow and find out how a cantankerous bouncer at a local New Brunswick bar cast the man playing Welles.
8 PM, Weds. March 25
Ryan Bing & Glad Hearts
Live Music
Promises are made, bottles are drained, fists are raised, seasons change and a pair of would-be revolutionaries bike across town. Theatrical, folk-influenced chamber pop that slots in somewhere between Belle and Sebastian's delicacy and the robust classicism of the Chills, the Glad Hearts debut album, The Oak and the Acorn, drips with enough romanticism to rival Jeff Buckley's Grace. Bing’s kitchen sink arrangements include the use of guitar, accordion, banjo, crumbling paper, a glass jar full of coins, a jingle bell wreath, a slide and e-bow, saw, drums, falling snow, tape loops, bass, lap steel, and keys (black, white, and car). Come for the singing and shouting, stay for the all abouting. FREE!
8 PM, Thurs. March 26
Achy Obejas & Robert Arellano
Reading/Signing
The Ruins & Havana Lunar
Junot Diaz said of Cuban writer Achy Obejas, who recently translated Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, into Spanish, “Obejas writes like an angel: flush with power, vision and hope ... one of the Cuba's most important writers." In addition to Havana Lunar, Cuban-American Robert Arellano is the author of Fast Eddie, King of Bees, and the graphic novel Dead in Desemboque, a collaboration with three comic-book artists that was inspired by the illustrated pulp fiction of Mexico. When he's not writing or teaching fiction workshops at Brown University, he plays guitar for Nick Cave, The Palace Brothers, and low-fi, quasi-country legend Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Bill), who said of Arellano's provacative fiction, "I hope he's not killed for writing this book." FREE! Comp wine. Books on sale at event.POSTPONED!!!!!!!!
THE WATCHMEN
Staged Radio Play
Live Sound Effects!
W/Jeff Maschi, Larry Mintz, Laurence Paone, David Liss, Carlyle Owen, and Kristy Lauricella.
A graphic novel, a movie, and now a radio play! Both comic scribe Alan Moore and Terry Gilliam the original director assigned to the movie deemed it unfilmable, but nobody ever said you couldn't stage it. Six actors play everything from Mr. Rorschach to The Comedian. Featuring live foley effects and panels from the strip projected onto a screen behind the performers. With The Watchmen Moore reflected contemporary anxieties and deconstructed the superhero concept. It is regarded as the seminal text of the comic book medium and is one of Time Magazines Top 100 Novels. FREE!Bill Ward, a biochemistry professor/jellyfish artist cheated out of the Nobel Prize, Thurs. April 2; Transatlantic Web Cam Jam Session Sun. April 5; John Wray (Lowboy), Fri. April 17; Positively Main Street, musicians from all over NJ jam locally, Sat. April 18; Charles Bock (Beautiful Children),Thurs. April 23 tentative; Pulitzer Prize finalist David Gates (Preston Falls) w/ Wesley Stace (By George), the given name of musician John Wesley Harding, Sun. April 26; Arthur Phillips (The Song is You) Fri. May 8; Mike Edison (I Have Fun Everywhere I Go) Sat. May 30
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