Manhattan Transfer

It's hard to believe that I've only been with my baby for one year now. We're so close it feels like we've been together forever.

Tonight marks the anniversary of the Cellar opening one year ago. Turn off your internet, set your Tivo so you don't miss anything, dust off your drinking jacket, and prepare to get down.

The fine lads and lasses who run the joint have asked people to come in costume. I'm going to dress like it was 2004.

The best part is that there is a full, complete, total, including everything open bar from 10 pm till midnight. I stopped by last night and was told that they've even stocked up on extra Jameson's.

Make sure you have an ID because they're real strict about the ridiculous twenty-one and over thing.

Cellar
325 E. 14th. St. btwn 1st/2nd aves
212 477 7747

Last night I was supposed to meet a couple of friends at Whiskey Ward, a dark little bar on Essex Street. Someone was celebrating something, I think. I didn't know who or what but I'm always relieved to have an occasion to drink on a Tuesday night.

While on my way from the west to the east Village, I got a call from the bar.

"This is really strange. There's no-one here. A bartender and a couple of old drunks. But otherwise it's empty. No guest of honor. No party. No one," my friend said.

It took me a while to get down there. I passed a bar on the way, and stopped in to refuel. By the time I reached the Ward, it really was empty. Not even the friends I was meeting were there.

Naturally, I assumed that everyone was dead. Slowly being killed by the zombies posing as barflies. Okay, I didn't really think this was happening but it would make a great film. People could get a dodgeball message, stop in to say hello, and find their dodgeball buddy is gone. They'd send out a dodgeball ping of their own, and then vanish.

Dodgeball: The Horror. Someone get to work on this.

(P.S.: the Cellar is showing horror movies every Monday night. Show up, drink, be afraid, be very afraid.)

Update: I just re-read this and realized I the post can be summarized as: "I went to a bar all alone, didn't talk to anyone, had a drink and went home." Pretty proud I can craft a credible blog entry based on a night like that.

Pawns in the game of life? Not exactly. Public art in Greenwich Village? That's more like it.

“I said, ‘What can I do that will get people staying in the park, having fun, smiling, and making it their living room, basically?’” says artist Marjorie Kouns.

What she did is an exhibit called "Well Lit Chess Pieces,” installed over the weekend. Five years in the making, the display features a total of 11 giant sized chess pieces; rooks, bishops, knights, and of course a king and a queen.

Think of it like last year's PacMan in the Park with a bit of class.

Two-hundred and fifty films will be shown during the TriBeCa Film Festival, which opened on Tuesday. Here is a guide to some of the films, so that you can plan your weekend.

“The Interpreter”

A beautiful woman works for the United Nations. A hard-boiled cop is initially suspicious of her intentions but eventually comes around to seeing that no-one that pretty can be all bad, in this sensitive, convincing portrait of someone in the throes of change who has yet to settle comfortably into a new self.

This is the most glamorous film of the festival and you will not be able to see it this weekend, so scratch it off your list.

"The Beat My Heart Skipped"

A young Parisian thug aspires to be a pianist, in this
sensitive, convincing portrait of someone in the throes of change who has yet to settle comfortably into a new self.

This is directed by Jacques Audiard, who is French and who has remade a cult classic from the 1970s, proving that it is not only American cinema that has lost all originality and is is in the throws of a pathetic necrophilia.

"Favela Rising"

A Brazilian thug aspires to be a part of the blossoming Afro-reggae dance and music movement, in this sensitive, convincing portrait of someone in the throes of change who has yet to settle comfortably into a new self.

This film is directed by Jeff Zimbalist's, who is a person and not an unusual musical instrument.

"Transamerica"

A woman who stars in the new show that keeps women in the house and barefoot on Sunday nights plays a transsexual who pretends to be an evangelical Christian, in this sensitive, convincing portrait of someone in the throes of change who has yet to settle comfortably into a new self.

Duncan Tucker directed this movie and is probably not the same person as GOP Congressman Duncan Hunter.

Texting Under the Influence.

I kinda get the feeling that someone sent all the grown-up editors home early yesterday and the kids went wild with stories about getting drunk and hanging out in Williamsburg.

There's so much goodness in this story it's hard to know where to begin. So we'll begin with the picture.

I'm pretty sure this proves that life as we know on planet earth will end very soon. If there was a future, freedom fighters would travel back in time to put an end to Williamsburg right away.

The link below for tickets to tonight's Rejection Show doesn't seem to be working. Try here instead.

To: ManhattanTransfer
From: ManhattanTransfer
Re: Pathetic Blogging

It's pretty sad that you've turned this blog into a series of notices about comedy shows. You don't even like comedy all that much.

Today you were going to live blog the conclave. Just like everyone else did. Now you're too lazy to even put in the hyperlinks in the prior sentence to prove your point. Oh well.

It's three hours after the whole thing went down you're just now posting. Pathetic.

9:42. Is that Pat Keirnan? I love "In the Papers." Never have to read anything. Don't even need blogs to tell me what's in the papers today. Just listen to Pat make his witty remarks. Oh, hey, it's the Sleepy's ad. Beds. Back to sleep.

11:52. What are they saying? I just woke up. Crap. I was going to go to work today. Hmmm. Looks like white smoke. Headline on Fox says it's black. Hmmm. Who to believe? My own lying eyes or these folks who somehow became papal selection experts overnight. Crowd is cheering. I'm going with them.

12:04. Okay everyone now agrees the white smoke is white smoke. Bells ringing. Crowd cheering more. Going to turn the volume up and nap for a bit to the sound of cheers. See what that does to my dreams.

12:30. Oh man. That was a bad idea. Dreamt about auto-racing. I have no idea what that could mean. I've never even been to an auto-race. Maybe that's just what white people cheering makes me think of. Turn volume down. Resume nap.

1:20. That looks like Cardindal Ratz! He's the new pope. Shoot. Says "earlier." This all happened sometime earlier, I guess. Oh, that's sweet. The other cardindal just reached over and straightened Ratz's red smock thing.

You have have an idea. To make this even sadder, you will steal the Shift Memo thing that Lockhart, Elizabeth and Alex stole from Sploid. Yeah. That's right. Blogging hungover. Fake liveblogging. Writing in the second person. If only you would use the royal "we" in here somehow, it would be the end of blogging altogether.

We're out of here.

I saw them at the Living Room Sunday night. They were very funny. Lindsayism explains how you can see them for free.

Next week I'm going to see the Rejection Show, and you should too. It's a terrifically funny show in which comedians, comedy writers cartoonists and other funny people get a chance to perform or display their rejected work. From what I've seen, these are often better than the accepted bits in places like the New Yorkers, SNL, etc.

Next week's show features the fabulous Jane Borden, the comedy editor for Time Out New York, a freelance joke writer for SNL's Weekend Update and a lover of tequila. Remember the last time you laughed at something on Weekend Update? Well, Jane probably wrote that. She is the brain of Tina Fey, only hotter.

Wednesday, April 20th, 8 P.M. PS 122.

This past weekend was perfect for one of my favorite activities--midday outdoor drinking.

Lindsayism is helpfully compiling lists of bars with outdoor spaces. Here's the first. And the second.

I've been to almost all of the ones on her list. None are really satisfactory, I'm afraid. DBA's garden comes closest to what I think a good drinking garden should be--plenty of space, sunlight, good drinks and good service. Anyone got more suggestions?

Spent Sunday night in Chelsea. The night before had gone late enough that brunch was forsaken for dinner at Suenos. Everything I'd heard about it was wrong. They don't do brunch anymore. The service is fantastic. We did the chille tasting menu. Each of the five courses was based around a different chille. Everything was wonderful and plentiful but we still had room for a pastry in a sweet chille sauce for dessert.

Afterwards was David Mamet's new play, Romance. I haven't seen any live Mamet since Oleana, more than ten years ago, and I had avoided the reviews of Romance so that I would go in without knowing what to expect. Would it be the double-crosses of Glengarry Glen Ross? The perceptive sexual comedy of About Last Night?

It turns out that Romance is pure farce, a hilarious, in-your-face politically incorrect farce. Most reviews I've subsequently read through spoil a good number of the jokes. This is a shame, because the play is funny in large part because it contrasts so sharply with the ultra-serious tone of most courtroom dramas. The more surprising the exact contours of that contrast, the funnier it seems.

I imagine the totality of my surprise is one reason I was laughing harder than anyone else in the audience. Or maybe it was the tequila from Suenos.

The Chelsea theater is a wonderful place to see a performance. It's small and simple and I don't think there is one bad seat in the house. Although I did notice Phillip Seymour Hoffman outside during the intermission, and was pleased that I had better seats than he did. Small wars, simple pleasures. We take them where we can get them.

I got my haircut last week. I went to the same great salon I always go to. Had a new stylist, but I've been on this new kick where I just do what they tell me. It's worked so far. They wanted to give me bangs. They gave me great bangs. I walked out of the salon all business. Happy camper. Went out that night. It rained. Stumbled to the mirror in the morning and there was a party in the back of my head. In fact all over the top as well. Did I have a mullet?

I washed my hair and seemed to alleviate the situation. But if I don't pay attention for awhile and sneak a peek: there's often a mullety version of myself looking back. The question is, am I so stylish that I've gone beyond mullet? No. I kinda knew that wasn't possible. Do I really have a mullet? What do I do about this?

--Miss Anna

A couple of years ago I met a girl who worked atop the bar at the Village Idiot. Okay, I guess her official job was behind the bar, serving drinks, but she enjoyed herself much more on top of the bar, dancing and encouraging bad behavior in others, so that's where she spent her time.

I think her name was Lucy because all the other bartenders called her "Loose." She was pretty and smelled the way a girl should smell when she's covered in bourbon and sweat and money. She was a terrific bartender but she wanted to be a poet. There were rumors I knew a couple of writers and artist types, and so she asked me about where she could meet New York City poets. I threw out a couple of suggestions, including the KGB Bar in the East Village.

"Oh, that sounds perfect," she said. "Can you take me there?"

I knew that if I said yes she smile and give me whiskey, so that's what I did.

A few nights later we stumbled up the stairs of the KGB Bar during a reading by Neal Pollack. It wasn't poetry but it wasn't your ordinary literary reading. There was a guitarist and a drummer. Neal looked drunk. His shirt said, "Don't Mess with Texas." He sang a song with the chorus, "I wipe my ass with your novel."

Lucy bought a second round of bourbons and put her hand on my knee. "This is perfect," she said. Yes. Yes it was.

The climax of Neal's show involved a mock reading of Jonathan Safran Foer's critically acclaimed novel Everything is Illuminated.

"Wrong, Jon. Nothing is illuminated. Everything is fucking dark!" Neal shouted. "I'm going to destroy your book!" He began to tear pages out of the book. Then he invited the audience to participate, passing the book around for us to destroy. The binding was wrecked, the cover shattered, the pages scattered across the bar.

"We should burn it," Lucy suggested. I told her that I agreed. I hadn't read the book (still haven't) but I was caught up in the hate-fest. If you're going to go in for neo-fascist book destruction, might as well go all the way and make this party into a real book burning. But somewhere between getting out my lighter and putting flame to paper, I realized that this would probably get us thrown out of the bar. And between neo-fascism and a good place to drink whiskey, well, I chose the whiskey.

This disappointed Lucy. Nothing turns a girl on like a decent disrespect for the norms of civilization. I tried to explain that it was the booze rather than good manners that stopped me from burning Illuminated, but I think this did more harm than good.

Nice to see the New York Post continuing the Pollack tradition by offering more than a dozen reasons to hate Jonathan Safran Foer.

Additionally, if you are a female friend of mine and you are dating someone, the only reason I still bother talking to you is the hope that the two of you will break up and I will get in your pants.

Sigh. There was a time when this sort of thing was our speciality. Torches, generations, etc. Who's buying the drinks?

Dear Inner Workings of My Brain:

I know we've always had a live and let live relationship, but it's time I laid down some ground rules. You need to just take a break from the dreams for awhile.

Don't get me wrong. Even I can find amusement in the crazy stuff you come up with. Dreaming about being in an eighties rock band that¹s on the run from Godzilla can be fun. Those dreams where I open a door and learn that my apartment is actually cavernous are kind of neat. And I do appreciate that I haven¹t had one of those naked in public dreams for awhile.

But it's bad enough that you place my coworkers in comprising positions in the night. This morning you went too far. Sleeping through my alarm because you were making me have dirty dreams about my exboyfriend was irritating.

It took me most of the day to realize that you were just fucking with me.

I guess it was my fault for watching Sex and the City on TBS last night. But seriously, couldn¹t you just have let me dream about Jason
Lewis without making the Ex look like him? I mean, let's be clear. He had his moments. But that was just vicious.

I'm glad I amuse you, but we need to put a stop to this. There's not much distance between thinking your dreams are real and the looney bin. You've gotten me in trouble with other dreams I thought were real before - and don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.

Now I mean it. If you don¹t get right soon, I'm going to enforce a strict Clockwork Orange regime to get you into shape. I may have been threatening to listen to that natural sounds crap on my alarm clock for years now, but I'm gonna do it this time. Irritating bird noises and electronic beach sounds all night long. Shape up.

Cheers,
Miss Anna