Are you gregnant? (Pregnant by sexual a partner named Greg.) Please visit www.gregnant.mom. My gregnant new friend Alana is trying to find you.
Oh but re: the subject of this email: this past weekend from Thursday to Sunday was the long-awaited residency of the modern low-volume funk band Vulfpeck at Avant Gardener. Two shows every night, Thursday through Sunday. I was at the last one. A breath of fresh air: started on time, no opening act, no one-more-song ❝encore❞ fakeout. Just fans who love a band all hanging out listening to a rock-tight set. If you saw a bunch of weird Turkish red bath hats on the L train, that's why.
¶. Tonight 8pm: bird jazz
free, Bushwick Public House, Bushwick, NYC
Elijah makes jazz for birds, but you can listen too. His first album of it dropped last week, but tonight you can hear the ensemble live. Also so happens he has a band called The Robber Crabs who do an excellent cover of Strongbad.
¶. Friday 1pm: 1-800-3592-113592
free, Baryshnikov Arts Center, midtown, NYC, I’m told you should show up at noon
This is the play based on a dream Lisa Fagan had about tanning her anus in a New Jersey shopping mall before opening, and stayed too long. She is with CHILD, and CHILD is performing it again tomorrow, finally.
My pal Nate is in it, who you should hire. I got put on 24-hour fully automated Instagram commenting timeout for spoonerisming too hard on his job search. Hire him.
¶. Saturday 3pm: www.valerie.memorial
free, Zion Mennonite Church, Souderton, or livestream
I have an offer of a ride from and back to Philly if anyone needs. Not too late to reply if you need or can offer a ride from elsewhere, and I’ll match you up if possible.
I've now confirmed there will be a livestream. Afterward, it'll archived on Zion's YouTube channel, URL TK.
Realized I never shared here that I managed to help get my mother a full obituary in one of the few non-Tronc newspaper left: The Philly Inquirer. Factchecking it with Gary was beautiful—he found things I did not know she did.
There's also a new one in my alma mater's school paper, where she taught until she couldn't.
¶. By November 30: we don’t need your money anymore
flaminghydra.com
But it’d still help us out. We are building a new web site for writing and art. Like Twitter but if it was $3/month like it should have been from the start, and no brands allowed. And I am working on building a super special FOUNDING MEMBER badge that only O.G. Kickstarter backers will ever get next to comments you (and only paying members like you) will write on flaminghydra.com in the year of our Lord 2024 A.D. So that’s why you should back for $24.
Also watch the Kickstarter video, I and Colson make an appearance, and it was edited by friend-of-the-List Puriya Mirza.
¶. Before November 18: Watch Night
$52ish, Perelman Arts Center, FiDi, NYC
Somehow I ended up on some list of “artists” who got free tickets to the premiere last week of Watch Night at PAC (the new theater at the World Trade Center: a cube of the thinnest-yet-cut marble, which is so thin it’s translucent).
A man shoots eleven people at an African Methodist Evangelical church during Sunday service, after attending quietly for months. Angels sing for the dead, with blood on their robes. The shooter is sitting with you, but you don’t know it. The pastor has a secret smoke with the rabbi at the synagogue across the alley. The rabbi’s son is a black journalist who comes to town to break the story as a bestselling book & HBO series. Twitter is the chorus screaming so loud and running so fast across the stage you can barely understand them, then back to the actual people who are there. Everything happens, and everyone is themselves.
¶. January 12–15: MIT Mystery Hunt 2024
Want to join my team (Palindrome) at the world’s most difficult scavenger hunt this MLK Jr. weekend? Reply in the next few weeks.
We won in 2021 and so got to/had to run 2022. So we’re not trying to win 2024. We play for fun.™ Winning is fun.¹ ¹ But not this year.
∞. that artist with the blackest black did his thing
Anish Kapoor’s VantaBlack sculptures are out, you can see them in NYC this month. I have a hot take but not right now. I thought I saw him at the opening but turns out it was just a guy, my partner now informs me. She is explaining the differences between square and oval faces in men.
Just so happened I was at a different opening next door with my pal Gabriel and he noticed very black sculptures on the way out. Thanks Gabriel! I’m an Anish fan and somehow didn’t get the memo.