Hasidic Writers Read in Crown Heights

This Monday night, I'm reading with some jaw-droppingly vital Hasidic writers in Crown Heights. Please be there. You really aren't going to want to miss this one.

(Just click on the pic, or the related text, to find out details. I think that should work?)

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  A Spotlight On Hasidic Writers

  
  

  Public · By The Creative Soul

Almost Anxiety Attack

I came the closest I have in months to an anxiety attack last night. In a station in Crown Heights, pumping gas, with my wife in the car on the way to this (ugh, meat) cooking demonstration fundraiser for our kids' Hasidic Montessori school, my breath got short and there was too much stuff on my mind and I was about to shut down.

And then I was like, "why is G-d doing this to me?" and then I was like, there are a zillion things I'm supposed to do, and not all one zillion of them matter. So what do I absolutely need to do? I need to finish pumping this freaking gas. Then I need to get back in the car. then, later, everything else will fall together. But right now, it is not my problem.

See 1/20 at The Hester

Just a little note that the movie I wrote, 1/20, is screening this Saturday night in New York City! Go here to buy tickets -- it's at The Hester, this little underground kosher speakeasy that my wife happens to run, and that happens to have been recently featured in the New Yorker and GrubStreet and a whole bunch of other places.

It'll be interesting, and fun, and different. And I'll be onhand, probably to incoherently answer any questions that you may have, and stare at my shoes. And eat kohlrabi pickles with spicy hummus. Which, you probably didn't know, but is one of my biggest talents.

G-dcast: 40 Years in 4 Minutes

Just back from LA, and expecting that I will get a full night of sleep one of these days. The G-dcast fiesta was totally awesome. I spoke about G-dcast and the process and the amazing people we work with, and everyone kept clapping when I showed videos, which was weird, since I wasn't sure whether to bow or thank them, or just to tell them that I'll pass it on the next time I see Marcus Freed or Malki Rose or Stereo Sinai.

But the participants were great, and we had some amazing talks -- about my being Orthodox, about what we all thought of the Torah, and about why we were here in the first place. And this is what I didn't show anyone -- Shawn Landres's great G-dcast that takes us right into the Book of Devarim, the last of our 5 rounds of Torah this year.

On the Transformation from 2D Cranky Character to 3D Cranky Actual Girl

How much does this entry from writer/artist Bryan Lee O'Malley make me look forward to the Scott Pilgrim movie?

And you also have Scott Pilgrim vs. the World coming up, with Michael Cera. Your character, Julie Powers, could be described as "difficult"...
Julie Powers is a crazy bitch! She has a big chip on her shoulder. She's a supporting character who pops up a couple times in the film and is confrontational toward Michael Cera's character. Every time I'm on-screen, I yell at him.

Am I getting giddy for the way-too-built-up meeting about my own movie tomorrow? I am getting just a little bit giddy.

(And it's a massive distraction from the idea that i now am actually legally allowed behind the wheel of a car. Praise the One Above.)

Word Jam. Music Jam. Gooseberry Jam.

Tonight at the 92Y Tribeca, I'm hosting the (hopefully first) open mic! Jeremiah Lockwood of The Sway Machinery is playing a set, and Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia, will be reading. A few months ago, it was one of those Shabboses where I'd ODed on writing, and now that I couldn't write anymore, I just wanted to read manically. So I took Elisa's new book, which I'd been wanting to read for a while (her first collection made me actually like Philip Roth, a feat which I'd deemed impossible), and started reading.

And I didn't stop.

The sun was coming up, which seemed particularly noteworthy considering the novel's content. It's a funny, wry, more-wise-than-it-seems look at a girl who finds out she's dying. It's not at all what you'd expect, which is odd to say, considering we basically have every expectation in the world loaded up in our heads when it comes to dying. But the agony of going out to eat with your parents after a brain scan, and the sort of perverse joy in ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, is one of those tiny details that is meaningful and beautiful and terrible all at once -- and that's exactly what you'll find from her.

Sign up for the open mic at 7:30, and have a quick drink with me. Show begins at 8:00 promptly.

Also, the director's-cut commentary to Chapter Four of Losers is up! Read about stealing lines from hip-hop songs, gay teenage bartenders, best friends dying on you, censorship in Candy in Action, and featuring a special music video courtesy of Ludacris.

Another Cure chapter. The song "A Night Like This" is a beautiful song in its own right, track 8 on "The Head on the Door," which some poet-friends in Melbourne performed a track-by-track jam of poems influenced by the songs. But there's another Cure song that my best friend Mike put on a mixtape for me that was just Robert Smith's voice and a brilliant string section and tympani drums that's called something like "Other Nights Like This" -- the handwriting was scratchy. I never remembered to ask him, and now it's too late. Now the tape's broken, and I keep googling the first words, but I can't find anything.

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