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.

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