Two of my favorite cultural institutions happen to be in the same place: the Dedham Community Theater, which has also, since 1996, been home to the Museum of Bad Art, or MOBA. The museum’s paintings have adorned the walls just outside the men’s room, in the basement. It is a spot worthy of such paintings as “Sunday on the Pot with George” and “Alien Adam and Eve.”
But last month, the theater, whose films, seats, popcorn, and beer I have come to love over the years, started some renovations, and gave the museum three days to get out.
“It was done a little abruptly; we should have had a sendoff party,” concedes theater owner Paul McMurtry, who donated the space free to the paintings. “But we’re turning the basement into another screening room.”
McMurtry, who just began his fourth term as a state representative for Dedham, Westwood, and part of Walpole, says that there’s “been a surge of interest in good art” in Dedham Square, with art stores and galleries.
Yes, but can they compete with MOBA’s “Bone-juggling Dog in Hula Skirt” and “Pablo Presley?” I doubt it.
Louise Reilly Sacco, the “permanent acting interim executive director” of MOBA, has been with the museum since 1994, when her brother Jerry got his first piece of bad art and hung it in his West Roxbury home. It was “Lucy in the Field with Flowers,” which a friend had found in the trash.
“You can’t tell if Lucy is sitting or standing, and the wind is blowing in two directions,” says Sacco. The painting graces the cover of MOBA’s first book.
MOBA has two other locations: the Somerville Theater and the Brookline Access Television Studio. But Dedham has been its flagship, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine stories around the world have chronicled it. “Katie Couric, and German and Indonesian TV have been in there shooting,” says Sacco.
Not only that, but the location also honored the old tradition of theaters in the 1940s and ‘50s selling “art” that it hung on the walls, she says.
The Museum of Bad Art has high standards; it doesn’t just take any old piece. In fact, only 10 percent of what’s offered is accepted. “The first criterion is that it has to be art,” says Sacco. “It has to be sincere, it has to be original.”
The museum will not accept black velvet paintings (“That’s kitsch,” says Sacco), nor will it accept children’s art, tourist or cruise ship art, or motel paintings (“If you’re buying it to match the sofa, it’s not art, it’s decoration”).
Most of the collection comes from flea markets, garage sales, and thrift shops, and even artists themselves. “Almost without exception, artists in our collection are pleased about it,” says Sacco. “It took us a long time to understand that artists want an audience, and we’re giving them that audience, we’re celebrating their work.”
Her favorite, and mine, is an oil on canvas, “Sunday on the Pot with George,” which pictures a porcine man in his underwear sitting on what appears to be a chamber pot. It is done in the pointillism style of French painter Georges Seurat. “Whoever did that had some real skills, and it’s a particular man,” says Sacco.
There’s sentimental, if not artistic, value in “Lucy in the Field with Flowers.” As the museum’s first piece, Sacco is attached to it. Like most of the exhibits, its origins were unknown.
But after the museum’s first book was published, Sacco got a call from a woman who exclaimed, “That’s my Nana!” As it turns out, the woman’s grandmother had died and the maiden aunt living with Nana was bereft, so the family decided to have a painting made of Nana. Somehow, years later, the piece found its way to the trash bin.
“The family was so thrilled they ended up buying dozens of copies of the book,” says Sacco.
Of the nudes in the museum’s permanent collection, Sacco says they were done by “people who don’t know anatomy” or those who “have obviously never seen a naked person.”
Paul McMurtry knows that people enjoy the museum, and he’s getting e-mails asking him to please bring MOBA back. But his business is the theater business.
“We’re one of the top art house theaters in the Boston area,” he says. “We’re reevaluating every square inch of the space. Because of the limited space, we want to focus on screens first.”
The gameplay is just as interesting, and offers a lot of amusement for players on many levels. Anarchy Reigns’ storyline is divided into chapters, each having its own small free-roaming area to explore. Within this location, players are able to move about as they see fit and battle any enemies they encounter, search for collectable concept art, or take on missions – of which there are two different types: Free and Story. Free missions are time-based tasks given to the player to complete, such as killing as many enemies as possible or delivering objects, and Story missions serve to progress the plot – usually featuring a small cutscene relevant to the overall story. To unlock the next task, gamers need to accumulate points from either defeating enemies in aimless battles while free-roaming, or earning them by completing previous tasks they may have left unfinished. Although the Campaigns’ setup makes for some interesting free-roaming fun, it also breaks the story apart from itself. While the cutscenes featured before and after each chapter are very engaging and entertaining, the missions in between have little (if anything) to do with the overall story arc – breaking the otherwise terrific atmosphere. If the missions were more relevant to the plot, gameplay would feel less stretched out and would have fit within the narrative a lot better.
Of course, there are more advanced aspects to combat as well, including Killer Weapon attacks and Rampage mode. The former are special and powerful versions of your basic attacks, which can be triggered by pulling LT and attacking like normal. These moves unleash your special weapon. In Jack’s case, expect to use a dual set of chainsaws hidden in his mechanical arm, for very vicious attacks. In order to use them though, you must fill the Killer Weapon meter by either giving or receiving damage in battle – as a light attack takes one block from the meter and a heavy attack takes two. Rampage is a special mode that can be triggered, which gives temporary invulnerability, unlimited use of your Killer Weapon, and turns standard attacks into flurries of rapid and powerful blows. In order to trigger it, however, the Rampage meter must be full, and it is also filled by taking or dishing out damage. Items also play into combat a bit, as gamers can pick up weapons such as rocket launchers or mines, and defensive items like shields, which can be used at any time by selecting the tool via the D-Pad.
Anarchy Reigns also features an in depth online multiplayer mode, with a plethora of gametypes for players to battle across. Some matches include 16-player free-for-all Battle Royales, simple one-on-one duels, Team Deathmatch, and even a co-operative mode where you and two friends take on wave after wave of enemies. Gamers can search for or create either a private lobby for some competition among friends, or a ranked lobby if they want their stats recorded on the leaderboards. As well, gamers are able to choose between 16 playable characters, six of which were featured in MadWorld, While the basic Deathmatch modes start to lose their fun after a few rounds, the more unique ones like Battle Royale, Death Ball (a twisted take on soccer where gamers fight to get a virtual ball into the other team’s goal), and aforementioned co-op Survival are sure to keep players interested and invested for a longer term. Add in the frantic real time action events that can occur, such as a random carpet bombing, run away truck, or temporary healing stations, and you get wild online matches that are never the same twice. Just watch your connection speeds, as every other round seems to be fairly laggy – sometimes to a near unplayable degree.
2013年1月6日星期日
My search for Creflo Dollar
I left Ghana, returned to New York, and got married. Victor and I had a joyous ceremony of twenty close family members at an Episcopal church in Washington Heights across the street from a bus station overrun by drug addicts. Together we bought a run-down one-bedroom apartment, joining our possessions, our hang-ups, our dreams. After moving in I forgot about my travels for a while. Maybe I hadn’t found the Promised Land, but what I did have seemed pretty damned good. We settled into a comfortable life. It was because of this comfort, precisely because I’d stopped actively seeking, that I encountered the man who would lead me on my last pilgrimage. That man’s name was Creflo Dollar.
It was Victor who introduced me to his program. I myself didn’t usually stay up so late. Slouched on our thrift store loveseat in the middle of the night we’d sleepily flip through the channels during commercial breaks of Victor’s favorite, “Headbangers Ball,” or long after the curtain call of “Saturday Night Live,” and happen upon the stocky black televangelist prowling the pulpit. As Victor put it, the man knew how to fill a custom-made suit, and he wasn’t above telling you how much the suit cost. In fact, Pastor Dollar considered his material wealth — the private jet, the Rolls Royces, the mansion in Atlanta — points of pride as reflections of God’s blessings upon his life. He was fond of mentioning that many of these possessions were gifted by members of his flock in gratitude for his deliverance of the prosperity gospel, a belief that God’s devout followers will be successful in all endeavors, including financial matters, as an expression of His favor. How this success was meant to be achieved wasn’t entirely clear, but it seemed to involve being born again into the faith and tithing considerable sums of money to Creflo Dollar Ministries.
His sermons often invoked the story of Exodus. “The Lord kept the children of Israel alive in the wilderness for forty years. He nourished them with the blessing of sweet manna from heaven. He wanted them to have plenty so they could be a blessing, just as He wants you to have plenty.” This was the crux of the prosperity gospel — God did not intend for His chosen people to suffer, but rather to have plenty, to be full, to be spiritually and materially rich. The way Dollar used the myth of Exodus, which has sustained and unified black people through times of suffering since the days of slavery, was so far beyond crass that it had to be a farce. God’s plan for us is to drive a Bentley? And we will attain it by giving 10 percent of our salaries to this huckster? Really?
Members are encouraged to tithe with automatic bank account withdrawals managed by World Changers Church. Fellow Atlanta ministers, who preach in the humble tradition of Reverend Martin Luther King, rib Dollar for commercializing Christ. “Pass-a-Dollar,” they call him. “Cash-flow Dollar.” But Victor encouraged me to consider the preacher’s appeal.
I sputtered something about the integrity of the black church. I’d no doubt read it in one of my father’s books about suffering and salvation. This was a topic I understood, not from having grown up in the black church myself, but through my Catholic upbringing and my father’s intellectual lens. Christianity, as I knew it, was a religion of suffering. At the heart of the Christian tradition was the agony of Christ and the martyrs. Personal suffering bound the Christian to the suffering of the world. Faith and affliction were two sides of a coin whose worth nobody knew better than the slaves of old. According to my father, “the primary example of suffering Christianity in this country was the experience of African-American slaves.”
By shilling money as the thing that mattered most, men like Creflo Dollar, I complained to Victor, were cheapening our rich history of liberation theology, messing with the prophetic kind of faith that drove the Civil Rights Movement, our nation’s proudest moment. My father taught a seminar on the religious history of that movement and these were themes he’d discussed with me for as long as I could remember. He’d grown up during that ennobling period. He was nearly the same age as Emmett Till would be if he hadn’t been bludgeoned to death and dumped in a Mississippi river at age fourteen for talking to a white woman. This was the backdrop against which my parents met at a Catholic university in Milwaukee in the 1960s. There my father helped organize a student movement that pushed for more minority faculty hires and student enrollment. Along with two roommates, he led a protest that shut down the university for two weeks.
Perhaps, like many children, I had a romance with the time of my parents’ youth. Their heroes were Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day, whose Catholic Worker offered a moral critique of the country’s drive for wealth and comfort. Wealth was a spiritual hazard that flew in the face of social justice. And didn’t my hero, Bob Marley, say more or less the same thing? A belly could be full yet hungry. A full stomach didn’t ensure a full heart or a full life.
Victor was the son of an African immigrant and had an immigrant’s sense of optimism about this land and its possibilities. His mother made us play the Mega Millions lottery because she believed we might actually win. I was the daughter of a black man who’d literally and figuratively lost his home. I’d inherited this sense of loss along with his sense of destiny. But in spite of our differences, it wasn’t lost on me that Victor made his point around the time we’d just signed our mortgage. We were not sufferers ourselves, not by a long shot. We were emissaries from the place the Rastas called Babylon Kingdom and we were free to travel anywhere in the world we desired. We were so liberated that we were practically dilettantes. Maybe it was time to let go of the old romance with suffering, to begin another narrative.
I began watching Creflo Dollar “Tell-a-Vision,” at first as a skeptic and out of morbid curiosity. What had changed so drastically since the civil rights era that a major arm of the black church now saw Zion as a financial realm? What was liberation for? Was it simply to fit into the comfort and ease of consumer culture? I tried to put these questions to Dollar directly, but my attempts to reach him were as much in vain as the Rastas trying to communicate with the queen. I got as close as his public relations person, who brushed me off by saying he was a very busy man. Dollar was probably savvy to be guarded about granting interviews. His ministry was under investigation by a Senate committee for fraud.
Creflo Dollar’s church attracts some forty thousand members, most of them poor and working-class blacks trying to pull themselves out of poverty and into the middle class. They’re drawn by Dollar’s lavish lifestyle, his optimism, and his instruction of the Bible as a manual for prosperity. We are in control of our destiny, he teaches. We are already in the Promised Land. This is our home. We built it. It is ours.
Soon enough, I, too, was mesmerized. More than that — I was hooked. Beneath the mustache, thick as a Band-Aid, the smile had a blinding wattage. The big teeth didn’t look natural, and neither did his perfectly even hairline. His linebacker’s shoulders were a holdover from his college days as a star football player. You don’t build a ministry that takes in seventy million untaxed dollars a year from tens of thousands of members worldwide without charisma. Even after Victor fell asleep on the loveseat, I kept watching deep into the night, held by the flickering blue light of the ridiculously oversized flat-screen TV before us, trying to unravel Dollar’s message.
As a preacher, his trick was the power of positive thinking. As a motivational speaker, his trick was the Bible. As CEO, his trick was a wily concoction of both: self-help and Jesus Christ. It was a winning combination. Dollar’s product almost couldn’t lose, and his delivery was pitch-perfect. He was plainspoken, corporate, encouraging. He could sound like a Holy Roller and Oprah Winfrey in the same breath: “Get lack and insufficiency off your mind,” he urged. “Get satisfied. The Lord shall increase you more and more. I believe that when you get increase on your mind, you’re gonna receive increase in your life, and when you sow and give into the kingdom of God, it will trigger increase. Pray about sowing into this ministry and experience increase. It’s time to reap your crop.”
I was remarkably drawn to this snake oil salesman who used increase more often as a noun than a verb. A lot of what he said made sense. Just as he could sound like the Bible-thumping Pentecostal preacher Oral Roberts, whom he counted as a close friend, he could also sound like the black nationalist Malcolm X, who criticized the docility of the black church. Against my better judgment, I got sucked into a Black Entertainment Television wormhole — I followed Dollar’s show religiously and then began watching other black televangelists too. These men were slick. There was Bishop Eddie Long, whose Georgia mega-church pulled around twenty-five thousand members, and T.D. Jakes, with about thirty thousand in Texas. One night Jakes recounted a visit to a Johannesburg museum where he encountered a proverb on the wall: “When the Dutch came, we owned the land and they had the Bible. When they left, they owned the land and we had the Bible.” He asked his congregation one vital question: Why couldn’t they have both?
“We should be able to hand our children more than our religious tradition,” Jakes argued. “Our faith has been a blessing and a curse. It stabilized us in times of adversity. Where would we be without our faith when we had nothing else, when we were being beaten and raped and killed and murdered? What disturbs me about our faith as we were taught by our slave masters was to make us hope for heaven while we lived in hell on earth. There ought to be a way we can hand to our children more than our religious tradition. We can hand them a home, hope, a degree, and then use the faith to fuel our dreams rather than to anesthetize our disappointments.”
I thought his words important enough to copy in my notebook. Creflo Dollar and Bishop Long preached the same hopeful message, in slightly different ways, but Dollar remained my favorite sermonizer. He was the best showman, which is probably why his World Changers Church had the longest reach, with offices in South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, and the UK. I visited its New York branch in order to see Creflo Dollar deliver the good word in person on Fat Tuesday, the night before the start of the Lenten season.
Down in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where my father was from, it was Mardi Gras. I didn’t know if or how his people, who’d been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, were celebrating tonight, but I can tell you that the congregation assembled at World Changers Church, New York, was reveling. Not because tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, marked the start of forty days of deprivation and they wanted to let loose but because they hoped tomorrow might be the dawn of their abundance and they wanted to give thanks. In fact, it was the second night of a financial empowerment seminar. Creflo Dollar had flown into New York from Atlanta on his Gulfstream III private jet to lead the service, as he does every Saturday, at a rented theater inside the Manhattan Center on Thirty-fourth Street. Across the street, at Madison Square Garden, Marcus Garvey had preached redemption to a crowd of twenty five thousand, ninety years before. In terms of egotism, star quality and the lure of black capital, Dollar seemed to have taken a page from Garvey’s book.
It was Victor who introduced me to his program. I myself didn’t usually stay up so late. Slouched on our thrift store loveseat in the middle of the night we’d sleepily flip through the channels during commercial breaks of Victor’s favorite, “Headbangers Ball,” or long after the curtain call of “Saturday Night Live,” and happen upon the stocky black televangelist prowling the pulpit. As Victor put it, the man knew how to fill a custom-made suit, and he wasn’t above telling you how much the suit cost. In fact, Pastor Dollar considered his material wealth — the private jet, the Rolls Royces, the mansion in Atlanta — points of pride as reflections of God’s blessings upon his life. He was fond of mentioning that many of these possessions were gifted by members of his flock in gratitude for his deliverance of the prosperity gospel, a belief that God’s devout followers will be successful in all endeavors, including financial matters, as an expression of His favor. How this success was meant to be achieved wasn’t entirely clear, but it seemed to involve being born again into the faith and tithing considerable sums of money to Creflo Dollar Ministries.
His sermons often invoked the story of Exodus. “The Lord kept the children of Israel alive in the wilderness for forty years. He nourished them with the blessing of sweet manna from heaven. He wanted them to have plenty so they could be a blessing, just as He wants you to have plenty.” This was the crux of the prosperity gospel — God did not intend for His chosen people to suffer, but rather to have plenty, to be full, to be spiritually and materially rich. The way Dollar used the myth of Exodus, which has sustained and unified black people through times of suffering since the days of slavery, was so far beyond crass that it had to be a farce. God’s plan for us is to drive a Bentley? And we will attain it by giving 10 percent of our salaries to this huckster? Really?
Members are encouraged to tithe with automatic bank account withdrawals managed by World Changers Church. Fellow Atlanta ministers, who preach in the humble tradition of Reverend Martin Luther King, rib Dollar for commercializing Christ. “Pass-a-Dollar,” they call him. “Cash-flow Dollar.” But Victor encouraged me to consider the preacher’s appeal.
I sputtered something about the integrity of the black church. I’d no doubt read it in one of my father’s books about suffering and salvation. This was a topic I understood, not from having grown up in the black church myself, but through my Catholic upbringing and my father’s intellectual lens. Christianity, as I knew it, was a religion of suffering. At the heart of the Christian tradition was the agony of Christ and the martyrs. Personal suffering bound the Christian to the suffering of the world. Faith and affliction were two sides of a coin whose worth nobody knew better than the slaves of old. According to my father, “the primary example of suffering Christianity in this country was the experience of African-American slaves.”
By shilling money as the thing that mattered most, men like Creflo Dollar, I complained to Victor, were cheapening our rich history of liberation theology, messing with the prophetic kind of faith that drove the Civil Rights Movement, our nation’s proudest moment. My father taught a seminar on the religious history of that movement and these were themes he’d discussed with me for as long as I could remember. He’d grown up during that ennobling period. He was nearly the same age as Emmett Till would be if he hadn’t been bludgeoned to death and dumped in a Mississippi river at age fourteen for talking to a white woman. This was the backdrop against which my parents met at a Catholic university in Milwaukee in the 1960s. There my father helped organize a student movement that pushed for more minority faculty hires and student enrollment. Along with two roommates, he led a protest that shut down the university for two weeks.
Perhaps, like many children, I had a romance with the time of my parents’ youth. Their heroes were Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day, whose Catholic Worker offered a moral critique of the country’s drive for wealth and comfort. Wealth was a spiritual hazard that flew in the face of social justice. And didn’t my hero, Bob Marley, say more or less the same thing? A belly could be full yet hungry. A full stomach didn’t ensure a full heart or a full life.
Victor was the son of an African immigrant and had an immigrant’s sense of optimism about this land and its possibilities. His mother made us play the Mega Millions lottery because she believed we might actually win. I was the daughter of a black man who’d literally and figuratively lost his home. I’d inherited this sense of loss along with his sense of destiny. But in spite of our differences, it wasn’t lost on me that Victor made his point around the time we’d just signed our mortgage. We were not sufferers ourselves, not by a long shot. We were emissaries from the place the Rastas called Babylon Kingdom and we were free to travel anywhere in the world we desired. We were so liberated that we were practically dilettantes. Maybe it was time to let go of the old romance with suffering, to begin another narrative.
I began watching Creflo Dollar “Tell-a-Vision,” at first as a skeptic and out of morbid curiosity. What had changed so drastically since the civil rights era that a major arm of the black church now saw Zion as a financial realm? What was liberation for? Was it simply to fit into the comfort and ease of consumer culture? I tried to put these questions to Dollar directly, but my attempts to reach him were as much in vain as the Rastas trying to communicate with the queen. I got as close as his public relations person, who brushed me off by saying he was a very busy man. Dollar was probably savvy to be guarded about granting interviews. His ministry was under investigation by a Senate committee for fraud.
Creflo Dollar’s church attracts some forty thousand members, most of them poor and working-class blacks trying to pull themselves out of poverty and into the middle class. They’re drawn by Dollar’s lavish lifestyle, his optimism, and his instruction of the Bible as a manual for prosperity. We are in control of our destiny, he teaches. We are already in the Promised Land. This is our home. We built it. It is ours.
Soon enough, I, too, was mesmerized. More than that — I was hooked. Beneath the mustache, thick as a Band-Aid, the smile had a blinding wattage. The big teeth didn’t look natural, and neither did his perfectly even hairline. His linebacker’s shoulders were a holdover from his college days as a star football player. You don’t build a ministry that takes in seventy million untaxed dollars a year from tens of thousands of members worldwide without charisma. Even after Victor fell asleep on the loveseat, I kept watching deep into the night, held by the flickering blue light of the ridiculously oversized flat-screen TV before us, trying to unravel Dollar’s message.
As a preacher, his trick was the power of positive thinking. As a motivational speaker, his trick was the Bible. As CEO, his trick was a wily concoction of both: self-help and Jesus Christ. It was a winning combination. Dollar’s product almost couldn’t lose, and his delivery was pitch-perfect. He was plainspoken, corporate, encouraging. He could sound like a Holy Roller and Oprah Winfrey in the same breath: “Get lack and insufficiency off your mind,” he urged. “Get satisfied. The Lord shall increase you more and more. I believe that when you get increase on your mind, you’re gonna receive increase in your life, and when you sow and give into the kingdom of God, it will trigger increase. Pray about sowing into this ministry and experience increase. It’s time to reap your crop.”
I was remarkably drawn to this snake oil salesman who used increase more often as a noun than a verb. A lot of what he said made sense. Just as he could sound like the Bible-thumping Pentecostal preacher Oral Roberts, whom he counted as a close friend, he could also sound like the black nationalist Malcolm X, who criticized the docility of the black church. Against my better judgment, I got sucked into a Black Entertainment Television wormhole — I followed Dollar’s show religiously and then began watching other black televangelists too. These men were slick. There was Bishop Eddie Long, whose Georgia mega-church pulled around twenty-five thousand members, and T.D. Jakes, with about thirty thousand in Texas. One night Jakes recounted a visit to a Johannesburg museum where he encountered a proverb on the wall: “When the Dutch came, we owned the land and they had the Bible. When they left, they owned the land and we had the Bible.” He asked his congregation one vital question: Why couldn’t they have both?
“We should be able to hand our children more than our religious tradition,” Jakes argued. “Our faith has been a blessing and a curse. It stabilized us in times of adversity. Where would we be without our faith when we had nothing else, when we were being beaten and raped and killed and murdered? What disturbs me about our faith as we were taught by our slave masters was to make us hope for heaven while we lived in hell on earth. There ought to be a way we can hand to our children more than our religious tradition. We can hand them a home, hope, a degree, and then use the faith to fuel our dreams rather than to anesthetize our disappointments.”
I thought his words important enough to copy in my notebook. Creflo Dollar and Bishop Long preached the same hopeful message, in slightly different ways, but Dollar remained my favorite sermonizer. He was the best showman, which is probably why his World Changers Church had the longest reach, with offices in South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, and the UK. I visited its New York branch in order to see Creflo Dollar deliver the good word in person on Fat Tuesday, the night before the start of the Lenten season.
Down in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where my father was from, it was Mardi Gras. I didn’t know if or how his people, who’d been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, were celebrating tonight, but I can tell you that the congregation assembled at World Changers Church, New York, was reveling. Not because tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, marked the start of forty days of deprivation and they wanted to let loose but because they hoped tomorrow might be the dawn of their abundance and they wanted to give thanks. In fact, it was the second night of a financial empowerment seminar. Creflo Dollar had flown into New York from Atlanta on his Gulfstream III private jet to lead the service, as he does every Saturday, at a rented theater inside the Manhattan Center on Thirty-fourth Street. Across the street, at Madison Square Garden, Marcus Garvey had preached redemption to a crowd of twenty five thousand, ninety years before. In terms of egotism, star quality and the lure of black capital, Dollar seemed to have taken a page from Garvey’s book.
2012年1月30日星期一
Moneyball, Heartburn, E-Books
There are events and activities scheduled nearly every day at Bayport-Blue Point and Sayville libraries; kids, teens, adults and families can participate in a variety of fun workshops for a small fee. Registration required for some events. For more information, click here or here . See what's happening this week at our local libraries.
The Cubby Corner is a place for children to come and enjoy stories. This event is virtual but parents can check out some of the book selections from Bayport-Blue Point Public Library.
Moneyball is B-BP Library's feature for the Jan. 30 Monday Film Series. Brad Pitt, Robin Wright and Jonah Hill star in this 133-minute movie showing at 1 p.m.
Parent's Advisory meeting at B-BP Library Jan. 30, 4 p.m. Science, puppet shows, magic shows, music, crafts, cooking, animals, outdoor programs and more. This is your chance to stop in, discuss and make suggestions about the types of children’s programs you would like to have at the library.
Head to B-BP Library at 7 p.m. for the new monthly book club. Join other readers us for a lively discussion.
Jan. 30 at 7 p.m., Sayville Library hosts Stony Brook University Medical Center gastroenterologists Gina Sam, MD, Director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Center and Satish Nagula, MD, Director of Endoscopy for The “Burning” Question: Is it Heartburn or Something More? The doctors will help shed light on the differences between heartburn, gastro esophageal reflux disease , Barrett’s esophagus and esophageal cancer. The advanced technology that is able to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients will be explained. A question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.
Kids grades 6-12, join your peers at B-BP Library for an evening of painting with acrylics as you paint an acrylic textured winter beach scene Jan. 30 at 6:30 p.m. Remember you will be painting, wear appropriate clothing. The library will supply all the materials.
Advanced Battle of the Books for grades 9 and up is held weekly on Wednesdays at Sayville Library. Participate in a reading competition against other Suffolk County Libraries: Read a group of books and show off your knowledge as part of the Sayville Library team. Books will be announced and handed out at the first meeting.
Learn a very old stitch called Herringbone to create a very current wide cuff bracelet at Sayville Library, Feb. 1, 6:30 p.m. Using high-quality TOHO cube beads you will create a wide cuff bracelet that is beautiful to wear and feels like fabric on your wrist. In this class you need bring nothing--all will be supplied by instructor. Beads, thread, needles, and clasp.
Learn how to make a faux pearl necklace at B-BP Library Feb. 2 at 7 p.m. Jewelry making diva Jackie Dunn returns to show you how to make this elegant necklace. You’ll get a range of bead and color options to ensure your piece is unique. Fee: $5 payable by check only.
The workshop, Creating A Positive Future for Your Child With Special Needs, is scheduled for Feb. 2 at 7 p.m., Sayville Library. The workshop will introduce the different aspects that need to be considered in developing a life care plan for achieving the best quality of life in every area for your child with special needs. The program will touch on topics including planning school transitions, preventing the loss of government benefits, supplemental needs trusts, financial planning, guardianships and more.
The Cubby Corner is a place for children to come and enjoy stories. This event is virtual but parents can check out some of the book selections from Bayport-Blue Point Public Library.
Moneyball is B-BP Library's feature for the Jan. 30 Monday Film Series. Brad Pitt, Robin Wright and Jonah Hill star in this 133-minute movie showing at 1 p.m.
Parent's Advisory meeting at B-BP Library Jan. 30, 4 p.m. Science, puppet shows, magic shows, music, crafts, cooking, animals, outdoor programs and more. This is your chance to stop in, discuss and make suggestions about the types of children’s programs you would like to have at the library.
Head to B-BP Library at 7 p.m. for the new monthly book club. Join other readers us for a lively discussion.
Jan. 30 at 7 p.m., Sayville Library hosts Stony Brook University Medical Center gastroenterologists Gina Sam, MD, Director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Center and Satish Nagula, MD, Director of Endoscopy for The “Burning” Question: Is it Heartburn or Something More? The doctors will help shed light on the differences between heartburn, gastro esophageal reflux disease , Barrett’s esophagus and esophageal cancer. The advanced technology that is able to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients will be explained. A question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.
Kids grades 6-12, join your peers at B-BP Library for an evening of painting with acrylics as you paint an acrylic textured winter beach scene Jan. 30 at 6:30 p.m. Remember you will be painting, wear appropriate clothing. The library will supply all the materials.
Advanced Battle of the Books for grades 9 and up is held weekly on Wednesdays at Sayville Library. Participate in a reading competition against other Suffolk County Libraries: Read a group of books and show off your knowledge as part of the Sayville Library team. Books will be announced and handed out at the first meeting.
Learn a very old stitch called Herringbone to create a very current wide cuff bracelet at Sayville Library, Feb. 1, 6:30 p.m. Using high-quality TOHO cube beads you will create a wide cuff bracelet that is beautiful to wear and feels like fabric on your wrist. In this class you need bring nothing--all will be supplied by instructor. Beads, thread, needles, and clasp.
Learn how to make a faux pearl necklace at B-BP Library Feb. 2 at 7 p.m. Jewelry making diva Jackie Dunn returns to show you how to make this elegant necklace. You’ll get a range of bead and color options to ensure your piece is unique. Fee: $5 payable by check only.
The workshop, Creating A Positive Future for Your Child With Special Needs, is scheduled for Feb. 2 at 7 p.m., Sayville Library. The workshop will introduce the different aspects that need to be considered in developing a life care plan for achieving the best quality of life in every area for your child with special needs. The program will touch on topics including planning school transitions, preventing the loss of government benefits, supplemental needs trusts, financial planning, guardianships and more.
2011年10月11日星期二
Scary Amount of Candy Hits Manhattan Stores for Halloween
As trick-or-treat time nears, New Yorkers on the hunt for specialty candies can find an array of options uptown or downtown that will delight the sweet teeth of little devils and witches.
"There is something deliciously fun for everyone in our Halloween collection," said Dylan Lauren, CEO of Dylan’s Candy Bar, at 1100 Third Ave. near 61st Street, whose offerings include a "Halloween Tackle Box" ($24) filled with Halloween standby candy corn and"bloody" dextrose bones, fudge-filled fangs and gummy brains.
Dylan's Candy Bar made some changes to its sweet roster for this year's holiday.
"Halloween last year was about vampires, but this year, beware — the new theme is zombies," Lauren said in a statement. "The spookiness and the nostalgia behind zombies appeals to both the young and old."
The store, for instance, has a "Zombie Blood Energy Potion" ($6) in a biohazard-like package that promises to be a tasty lime energy drink.
In the West Village, the Christopher Street shop Sockertbit is hosting a Swedish-style Halloween.
Owner Florence Ernberg said she's hoping to import a Swedish custom to the neighborhood for the month.
"Swedes have a tradition that on Saturdays they can eat as much candy as they want," she said, describing lördags godis, which means "candy Saturday" in Swedish.
Sockerbit, whose name is the Swedish term for "sugar cube," is tempting trick-or-treaters with "candy-bob" shish kabobs of gummy candy ($3.95) and gummy candy bouquets in small ($45) and large ($65) sizes.
The 89 Christopher St. shop also has imported dark gray glass pumpkins ($28) that can be filled with candy.
At Martine's Chocolates, at 400 E. 82nd St. and inside Bloomingdale's on the sixth floor, owner Martine Leventer has added "cute" owls ($10.25) to her popular lollipops of ghosts, pumpkins, cats and bats.
"The lollipops, in general, are very popular," Leventer said. "And the eyeballs are a good seller. You open the box and it's looking at you."
Martine's also makes special order items, like a chocolate haunted house ($36.50), but said with the economic downturn, shoppers are looking for smaller items.
Her natural chocolates made with Belgian Callebaut couverture chocolate, French butter, fresh American cream and other fine ingredients, have been gaining popularity for Halloween.
"There seems to be more and more interest," she said. "When you have a party you want your guests to have good chocolate, and we have a good number of parents who want to give their kids good chocolate and make them used to it so they won't end up eating junk with chemicals."
Chocolate Bar, on Eighth Avenue between Jane and West 12th streets, will have milk chocolate and dark chocolate candy corn bark ($6.50), chocolate-covered ghost and pumpkin marshmallow "Peeps" ($4) and chocolate candy corn ghost lollypops ($2.50).
The shop's Pumpkin Spice Signature Bar, which is available in milk chocolate and 65 percent cacao varieties, is spiced with cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg.
"There is something deliciously fun for everyone in our Halloween collection," said Dylan Lauren, CEO of Dylan’s Candy Bar, at 1100 Third Ave. near 61st Street, whose offerings include a "Halloween Tackle Box" ($24) filled with Halloween standby candy corn and"bloody" dextrose bones, fudge-filled fangs and gummy brains.
Dylan's Candy Bar made some changes to its sweet roster for this year's holiday.
"Halloween last year was about vampires, but this year, beware — the new theme is zombies," Lauren said in a statement. "The spookiness and the nostalgia behind zombies appeals to both the young and old."
The store, for instance, has a "Zombie Blood Energy Potion" ($6) in a biohazard-like package that promises to be a tasty lime energy drink.
In the West Village, the Christopher Street shop Sockertbit is hosting a Swedish-style Halloween.
Owner Florence Ernberg said she's hoping to import a Swedish custom to the neighborhood for the month.
"Swedes have a tradition that on Saturdays they can eat as much candy as they want," she said, describing lördags godis, which means "candy Saturday" in Swedish.
Sockerbit, whose name is the Swedish term for "sugar cube," is tempting trick-or-treaters with "candy-bob" shish kabobs of gummy candy ($3.95) and gummy candy bouquets in small ($45) and large ($65) sizes.
The 89 Christopher St. shop also has imported dark gray glass pumpkins ($28) that can be filled with candy.
At Martine's Chocolates, at 400 E. 82nd St. and inside Bloomingdale's on the sixth floor, owner Martine Leventer has added "cute" owls ($10.25) to her popular lollipops of ghosts, pumpkins, cats and bats.
"The lollipops, in general, are very popular," Leventer said. "And the eyeballs are a good seller. You open the box and it's looking at you."
Martine's also makes special order items, like a chocolate haunted house ($36.50), but said with the economic downturn, shoppers are looking for smaller items.
Her natural chocolates made with Belgian Callebaut couverture chocolate, French butter, fresh American cream and other fine ingredients, have been gaining popularity for Halloween.
"There seems to be more and more interest," she said. "When you have a party you want your guests to have good chocolate, and we have a good number of parents who want to give their kids good chocolate and make them used to it so they won't end up eating junk with chemicals."
Chocolate Bar, on Eighth Avenue between Jane and West 12th streets, will have milk chocolate and dark chocolate candy corn bark ($6.50), chocolate-covered ghost and pumpkin marshmallow "Peeps" ($4) and chocolate candy corn ghost lollypops ($2.50).
The shop's Pumpkin Spice Signature Bar, which is available in milk chocolate and 65 percent cacao varieties, is spiced with cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg.
2011年9月21日星期三
College Theme Party Ideas
1. Decades
Do you have a particular affinity for a time period in history? If so, throw a themed party celebrating the retro styles of decades past.
Break out the leggings and terrycloth hair bands to rock an ‘80s look. Take a hint from the stars of the decade and emulate their iconic fashion statements, such as Madonna's sexy "Material Girl" look or Cyndi Lauper's bold, colorful ensembles and voluminous hair. Boys can take on an edgier style by dressing like famous hair metal rockers of the decade. The ‘60s hippie style is always easy to adopt. Simply throw on a fringed vest, some bell-bottom jeans and colorful, round sunglasses. The ‘50s is a fun stylistic decade. Watch "Grease" for some ideas, such as motorcycle jackets or poodle skirts. Love disco? Pull on some pieces influenced by the ‘70s, such as sequined long sleeve shirts, go-go boots or patterned jumpsuits.
Decorate the room with retro vibes that commemorate these significant eras. Mix up a playlist of music spanning each of the decades. It'll be like partying in a time machine!
2. Magic and Myths
If you love Harry Potter, you'll want to break out the robes, wands and wizards' hats for a magical themed party. You could come to the party dressed as witches or wizards or be a little creative and dress as a mythical creature, such as a vampire, werewolf or mermaid.
Add some entertainment to the party by getting guests to participate in magic tricks or games. Serve mysterious dishes and drinks. Decorate the room in black, white and red-- traditional colors relating to magicians. Make sure to have some spare decks of cards, wands and rabbits around; you never know what magical qualities your guests may possess.
3. Hollywood
Throw a Hollywood themed party and ask guests to dress as their favorite celebrity or iconic star, like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis or Michael Jackson. You'll have a fun time trying to guess who's trying to impersonate whom.
Make sure to roll out a red carpet and take plenty of paparazzi pictures. Decorate the room with film rolls, stars, the Hollywood sign and cameras. Post movie posters around the room. Have guests sign his or her "autograph" on a giant board and save it as a memento. Play entertainment trivia and find out what interesting facts people know about the famous celebrities.
4. Sports Night
Sports are extremely popular among students on campus. If you throw a sports themed party, you'll be sure to have guests lining up outside to join in on the festivities. Ask partygoers to represent their favorite sports teams and players by wearing jerseys. Girls can take it up a notch by dressing in cheerleader uniforms. Add a little face paint to any ensemble to really capture that team spirit. Be sure to serve finger foods, like pizza, wings and popcorn, while you screen sports games for guests to enjoy.
5. Rubik's Cube
Here's a good idea for anyone who loves an interactive party. For this theme, everyone must show up to the party wearing one article of clothing that is a color featured on a Rubik's cube: red, white, blue, orange, green and yellow. Once guests arrive at the party, have people swap pieces of clothes, so that each person can eventually have an entire outfit that is one color. This twist to the theme can liven up any common college party.
Do you have a particular affinity for a time period in history? If so, throw a themed party celebrating the retro styles of decades past.
Break out the leggings and terrycloth hair bands to rock an ‘80s look. Take a hint from the stars of the decade and emulate their iconic fashion statements, such as Madonna's sexy "Material Girl" look or Cyndi Lauper's bold, colorful ensembles and voluminous hair. Boys can take on an edgier style by dressing like famous hair metal rockers of the decade. The ‘60s hippie style is always easy to adopt. Simply throw on a fringed vest, some bell-bottom jeans and colorful, round sunglasses. The ‘50s is a fun stylistic decade. Watch "Grease" for some ideas, such as motorcycle jackets or poodle skirts. Love disco? Pull on some pieces influenced by the ‘70s, such as sequined long sleeve shirts, go-go boots or patterned jumpsuits.
Decorate the room with retro vibes that commemorate these significant eras. Mix up a playlist of music spanning each of the decades. It'll be like partying in a time machine!
2. Magic and Myths
If you love Harry Potter, you'll want to break out the robes, wands and wizards' hats for a magical themed party. You could come to the party dressed as witches or wizards or be a little creative and dress as a mythical creature, such as a vampire, werewolf or mermaid.
Add some entertainment to the party by getting guests to participate in magic tricks or games. Serve mysterious dishes and drinks. Decorate the room in black, white and red-- traditional colors relating to magicians. Make sure to have some spare decks of cards, wands and rabbits around; you never know what magical qualities your guests may possess.
3. Hollywood
Throw a Hollywood themed party and ask guests to dress as their favorite celebrity or iconic star, like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis or Michael Jackson. You'll have a fun time trying to guess who's trying to impersonate whom.
Make sure to roll out a red carpet and take plenty of paparazzi pictures. Decorate the room with film rolls, stars, the Hollywood sign and cameras. Post movie posters around the room. Have guests sign his or her "autograph" on a giant board and save it as a memento. Play entertainment trivia and find out what interesting facts people know about the famous celebrities.
4. Sports Night
Sports are extremely popular among students on campus. If you throw a sports themed party, you'll be sure to have guests lining up outside to join in on the festivities. Ask partygoers to represent their favorite sports teams and players by wearing jerseys. Girls can take it up a notch by dressing in cheerleader uniforms. Add a little face paint to any ensemble to really capture that team spirit. Be sure to serve finger foods, like pizza, wings and popcorn, while you screen sports games for guests to enjoy.
5. Rubik's Cube
Here's a good idea for anyone who loves an interactive party. For this theme, everyone must show up to the party wearing one article of clothing that is a color featured on a Rubik's cube: red, white, blue, orange, green and yellow. Once guests arrive at the party, have people swap pieces of clothes, so that each person can eventually have an entire outfit that is one color. This twist to the theme can liven up any common college party.
2011年6月6日星期一
Juvenile, Mystikal to perform at Gathering of the Juggalos
In what may be Psychopathic Records' biggest budget infomercial yet, here's the latest 30-minute video for the annual Gathering of the Juggalos — a weekend-long music festival in August helmed by earnest magic fans and self-described "most hated band in the world," the Insane Clown Posse, in nowhere Illinois.
Joining the dozens of acts performing — from Juggalo favorites Psychopathic Rydas and Blaze Ya Dead Homie, as well as Vanilla Ice and M.C. Hammer — are New Orleans rappers Juvenile ("Don't miss his monstrous debut," says Vanilla Ice in the video, as his sci-fi alter-ego Vanilla Zerg — and I must warn I am absolutely not making any of this up) and Mystikal, a "real-ass Juggalo homie."
Nathan Rabin at the Onion's AV Club suffered through last year's Gathering, when reality TV's anthropomorphic lipgloss Tila Tequila endured bottles of urine and feces thrown at her. The essence of the Juggalo:
I had come to think, incorrectly as it turns out, of the Juggalos as an essentially harmless tribe, a group of misunderstood, heavily tattooed young people from what my girlfriend calls under-resourced neighborhoods who get together every year to smoke weed, drink cheap beer and cocktails of Faygo and grain alcohol, and live for four days and nights in an upside-down universe where Insane Clown Posse is the most popular band in the world.
So, sleeveless T- and gold chain-wearing sweaty white dudes and their "ninjas," camping out and experiencing "family luv" over a long weekend. (If you've seen the Saturday Night Live parodies, you get the idea.)
There's also actual music listened to by real human beings, like George Clinton, Tech N9ne, E40, Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube and Xzibit. And for some reason, "Juggalo favorite" Jimmie "J.J." Walker will be there.
Other highlights: "wrestler night", forgotten The Box regulars like Dope, Kottonmouth Kings and Saliva, karaoke parties, "endless flava" and a "candle-lit seminar" on ghost hunting, as well as "games run by real low-life carni scrubs who just want your cash" and "dangerous and terrifying helicopter rides with a presumably drunk pilot."
So, if that sounds like fun, head over here. Tickets are $175 — parking starts at $100, so.
Joining the dozens of acts performing — from Juggalo favorites Psychopathic Rydas and Blaze Ya Dead Homie, as well as Vanilla Ice and M.C. Hammer — are New Orleans rappers Juvenile ("Don't miss his monstrous debut," says Vanilla Ice in the video, as his sci-fi alter-ego Vanilla Zerg — and I must warn I am absolutely not making any of this up) and Mystikal, a "real-ass Juggalo homie."
Nathan Rabin at the Onion's AV Club suffered through last year's Gathering, when reality TV's anthropomorphic lipgloss Tila Tequila endured bottles of urine and feces thrown at her. The essence of the Juggalo:
I had come to think, incorrectly as it turns out, of the Juggalos as an essentially harmless tribe, a group of misunderstood, heavily tattooed young people from what my girlfriend calls under-resourced neighborhoods who get together every year to smoke weed, drink cheap beer and cocktails of Faygo and grain alcohol, and live for four days and nights in an upside-down universe where Insane Clown Posse is the most popular band in the world.
So, sleeveless T- and gold chain-wearing sweaty white dudes and their "ninjas," camping out and experiencing "family luv" over a long weekend. (If you've seen the Saturday Night Live parodies, you get the idea.)
There's also actual music listened to by real human beings, like George Clinton, Tech N9ne, E40, Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube and Xzibit. And for some reason, "Juggalo favorite" Jimmie "J.J." Walker will be there.
Other highlights: "wrestler night", forgotten The Box regulars like Dope, Kottonmouth Kings and Saliva, karaoke parties, "endless flava" and a "candle-lit seminar" on ghost hunting, as well as "games run by real low-life carni scrubs who just want your cash" and "dangerous and terrifying helicopter rides with a presumably drunk pilot."
So, if that sounds like fun, head over here. Tickets are $175 — parking starts at $100, so.
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