The first ever food book fair is coming to Williamsburg on May 4th-6th, taking place at the Wythe Hotel which officially opens May 1st. The weekend-long conversation and celebration of food reading and writing will consist of daily panel discussions with keynote speakers Dr. Marion Nestle, Harold McGee and Carolyn Steel, over 20 book signings, and a Pop-Up Bookshop run by mobile bookseller Mobile Libris fittingly located in the Library of the Wythe Hotel, with titles hand-selected by the Food Book Fair.

The event will highlight cookbooks, memoirs, magazines, and books about science, food systems, agriculture, urban design and food art and culture, and serve as a meeting place for food enthusiasts from all food disciplines.

At night, the Food Book Fair will curate unique, intimate events that reflect the fair’s spirit of moving forward the conversation and culture of food. Below is a rundown complete with details:

Saturday Night: Foodieodicals, a “Festival within the Fair”, will be a marketplace and gathering celebrating over 10 small, independently published zines, quarterlies and periodical such as: Lucky Peach, Diner Journal, Edible Brooklyn, Gastronomica, Laphams Quarterly: The Food Issue, Meatpaper, Put A Egg on It, Remedy Quarterly, Swallow Magazine, The Art of Eating, The Runcible Spoon, White Zinfandel, Wilder Quarterly.

Directly following Foodieodicals will be Pecha Kucha Night, an event originating in Japan. Seven presenters show 20 slides for 20 seconds each, which will highlight creative food projects.

Sunday Night: George Weld and Evan Hanczor of Egg will host a literary-themed dinner inspired by Earnest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises at their newest venture, Parish Hall.

Entrance to book signings are open to the public, individual panels are $15, and a 3-day pass is $215. To reserve tickets and for additional information on panels and book signings, visit nycfoodbookfair.eventbrite.com

Refused

I’m dreading the day where I’ll have to announce a holographic show.  By now you’re well aware of the meme that is holographic 2Pac.  If you’re not, check the blog post below.  And while I hate to contribute to the memeification of the internet… this one is pretty relevant here.

Because… it’s probably coming.

Detox?  Fuck, Dr. Dre wasn’t hauled up for the past decade working on rap’s version of Chinese Democracy.  He was potentially ushering in the next era in the live music.  Or… I hope not.  It’s a multi-pronged problem.  Is the era of holographic concerts upon us?  Will artists need to tour anymore?  Will we see a series of bastardized “revivals” or “resurrections” as musicians and record labels attempt to cash in on this hyper-futuristic, post-modern craze?

Cost is a big factor; the holographic 2Pac reportedly cost Dre and Snoop a cool four-hundred grand, so us indie-minded individuals are probably safe.  I don’t think Matador has the cash (or desire/questionable ethics) to book a Jay Reatard hologram tour, but how far away are we from Kurt Cobain fronting a Nirvana show with Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic?  Will Peter Hook try to go on tour with a holographic Ian Curtis in a big “fuck you” to the rest of New Order?  I’m unquestionably bordering on paranoia here – especially with Cobain (Hook is more likely, see the Unknown Pleasures and Closer tours), but hey, anything can happen.  I just hope Courtney Love doesn’t get any wild ideas.

I think I’ll jump off this slippery slope for now and dive into the MOST BLOGGED shows this week.  Refused’s own RESURECTION at Terminal 5 is our most blogged show, and not surprisingly, is sold out.  Ceremony open for the Swedish hardcore-punk legends on Monday, and if you’re sans-ticket, you can stay downtown and catch Ceremony over at Mercury Lounge later in the night.

(more…)

Aux.tv

Tupac Shakur’s surprise hologram performance at Coachella last weekend made headlines (although it wasn’t really a hologram). But what if the entire lineup consisted of holograms, bringing back performers and reuniting groups long since gone? That’s the thinking behind this imaginary hologram-only Coachella line up from Aux.tv, which includes Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, and Mozart.

Twitter

Ben Stiller snapped this photo outside of the G train in Greenpoint and posted it to his verified Twitter account yesterday.

Stiller was in the neighborhood shooting The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which according to IMDB is about “a timid magazine photo manager who lives life vicariously through daydreams [and] embarks on a true-life adventure when a negative goes missing.” It’s a loose remake of a 1947 film. A daydreaming magazine photo manger? Sounds about right for Greenpoint (although maybe not for Stiller.) The film stars Stiller, Kristin Wiig, and Adam Scott.

In other Greenpoint on-location news, if you’re wondering what that pile of Christmas trees near Berry Park is, that was from a shoot for an upcoming Paul Rudd movie.

A complete video recording of Portishead‘s Hammerstein Ballroom show from back in 1997 just surfaced. You can stream the full show below. If that still isn’t enough Beth Gibbons for you, then you might want to check out Cooler than Jesus for more rare live captures.

Kool Keith will be there! Also:

The rapper GZA, one of the founders of the Wu-Tang Clan, will perform all the songs from his landmark 1995 album “Liquid Swords” as part of this year’s Northside Festival in Brooklyn, organizers announced Monday. He will be backed up by Grupo Fantasma, a Latin funk outfit from Texas.

All told, there will be more than 350 bands playing at 25 bars and music halls around Williamsburg and Greenpoint during the four-day music festival, which starts on June 14, the organizers said. Some of the concerts will also be held this year in Williamburg Park, a new indoor performance space on Kent Avenue that can hold 7,000 people.

The list of headliners released Monday during a press conference at Brooklyn Borough Hall was eclectic, to put it mildly, covering multiple genres and styles. They include Of Montreal, the oddball indie rock band from Athens, Georgia; Ceremony, a hardcore punk band from California; Tinariwen, the Tuareg desert-blues group from Mali; the Felice Brothers, a folk-rock trio from upstate New York, Dam-Funk, a California musician who specializes in funk music; and Screaming Females, the hard rock trio from New Brunswick, NJ.

More information at www.northsidefestival.com.

At the announcement for this year’s Northside Festival, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz decided it was important to rap the first lines from GZA’s “Liquid Swords.” Pretty cool, Marty.

The Northside festival is June 14-21 and will feature GZA as well as Of Montreal, Starfucker, and a million other bands.

I’ve spent years living in North Brooklyn but I really didn’t know anything about it until I was able to see how it was portrayed by 2 Broke Girls, a hackneyed, LA-filmed sitcom created by the “brain” behind Sex and the City and the “brain” behind Whitney. This column will keep track of all the knowledge dropped and questions answered, like: Why do hipsters wear knit hats? Because of Coldplay…of course (seriously, this was one of the first jokes of the series).

This week I learned…

None of Us Has Ever Filed Their Taxes

Duck season!  Rabbit season! Duck season!  Rabbit season! Duck season!  Rabbit season! Duck season!  Rabbit season! Duck season!  Rabbit season! Duck season!  Rabbit season! TAX SEASON!!!!! Oh, so it’s tax time in 2 Broke Girl’s Williamsburg, like it is in the real Williamsburg. The only difference is people say things like this:

“There were onions in my street meat. Listen to me, ‘Onions in my street meat.’ Last year I was taking meetings on Wall Street – this year I’m eat meat, from the street, by a wall.”

Nope. Look I’m all for plays on words but nope.
So after the blond one says that joke, which is and was the worst joke, she goes on shopping spree but with no shopping and a lot more doing the other characters’ taxes. See she got a degree in finance so she says that makes her an expert with people’s finances, which is not what that means – she is a liar.

Despite her lying, she still looks down upon the Kat Dennings broke girl for having never done her tax, ever. So she agrees to do KD’s taxes but it doesn’t go well because it’s a sitcom. They get into a fight and then they go to a hipster tax place call the Tax of Life, which is a funny name for a tax place. I joke about the accuracy of the show all the time but this they really nailed. All my friends have a “tax bro” that helps write off their weed costs. No one uses TurboTax or their family’s accountants – psh – family accountants are so OVER.

Then they jump in a dumpster. It might seem like a drastic turn of events but seriously, I can’t believe they haven’t done it before. Looking for something in a dumpster is Sitcom 101 – a class 2 Broke Girls is seemingly still taking. Then there’s more fighting about being a poor broke girl and a formerly rich broke girl – basically the same argument they’ve had for the other twenty episodes.

Yada yada blah blah – there is a happy ending at the post office. Everyone did their taxes and hugged and yay. In all seriousness, it was a pretty solid episode. Taxes are exactly the type of issue the show should be focusing on. Also, the episode featured my favorite joke of the season. When comparing the blond one’s neat purse with Kat Dennings messy one, Katty Denns goes, “Also known as, OCD versus Oh, here’s a CD I forgot I had.” As I said, I’m all for plays on words and that one gets two broke thumbs up.

[What I learned from last week's episode]