Land 11

July 13, 2011
Since before I knew her and before her parents knew, Alaina has been hosting parties in Warwick, NY. Six years ago, we were married on that property and The Land Party is one of my biggest annual highlights. It is a chance to relax and party with friends and family in a beautiful setting with woods and a pond. We camp, cook out and play music deep into the night. It provides a sense of freedom that I rarely have in my life and I take full advantage. This year's party was a three-day extravaganza over July 4 weekend and…

Shakespeare In The Park

June 28, 2011
The man could write. His works are still the standard by which all theatre is judged. Every play is epic; a dense thicket involving love, betrayal, violence and wisdom. The characters are the grandest ideals or darkest corners of our own psyche and play out macrocosms of the subtle moral conflicts we engage daily. Every word he writes carries ten more words' worth of meaning and twist the plot dizzyingly. It is great literature and scintillating theatre. Alaina is hooked up at Central Park's Delacourt Theatre, which means we don't have to queue up beforehand for the always free tickets.…

Boston Bruins: Stanley Cup Champions!

June 18, 2011
Up until 9th grade, hockey was a huge part of my life. I played on various school teams and attended camps dedicated to improving my ice skills. The Bruins of my middle school years were a solid bunch, led by Ray Borque, Cam Neely and Adam Oates and were tantalizingly good but never achieved the dream of winning a Cup and faded into an afterthought through mismanagement and the end of my playing days. For the past 20 years, I have watched the team collapse year after year, losing painfully to the arch-rival Canadiens several times in the playoffs and…

Casey Allyn Young

June 8, 2011
I love my job. I am truly blessed to have the opportunity to make music with children. They have the most amazing ability to live passionately and exclusively in the moment. Past and future have no real value to them and so every moment is absolutely vital. True, it means they sometimes cry when you take their drum away, but they are just expressing their love for that instrument without any possible way to rationalize it temporally. They are the best improvisers and demonstrate unbridled joy in all aspects of music. I am always inspired. Casey was in my classes…

Sleep No More

May 25, 2011
I am still baffled by what I witnessed last night and have been thinking about it constantly since I left the performance; it takes place inside the abandoned McKittrick hotel in Chelsea and audience members are free to explore four floors of exquisitely decorated rooms, each one an art installation of bizarre bric-a-brac that conjures an eerie mystique. Performers move through the spaces and interact with one another and audience members, all of whom are instructed to wear uniform white masks concealing identities and reactions. The piece is based on Macbeth and while the scenes allude to the events of…

What’s New?

May 24, 2011
In a tree in the Green-Wood Cemetery across from my balcony is a Robin's nest I have been binocularing in on and today I saw three little beaks open above the lip of the nest to be fed from mom. It was beautiful. It is hard to believe its been a month since I last wrote here, but it has been a month full of good entertainment. We saw some great Theatre (Blackwatch, Under Construction, Warhorse, Sister Act and seeing Sleep No More tonight), have experienced some great outdoor Brooklyn events (Fifth Ave Street Fair and Food Truck Rally), started…

Vimeo App

April 19, 2011
I am extremely excited to be a part of the Vimeo app for iPhone! It is an editing and posting station ON YOUR PHONE! It has many features that integrate it into the already great Vimeo community for more possibilities and uses. In addition to video-editing capabilities, it features a small library of music to enhance your creations and includes a Supergood track. I am honored to be involved with this wonderful technological evolution and hope to push it forward in the future. The most important aspect of the personal computer revolution is that better and more efficient tools for…

When Outside Becomes Lovely

April 19, 2011
Shelter in Winter is essential, but around this time I yearn to shed it! Windows and doors fly open and I soak in the natural warmth. Preparing to spend time outdoors in the cold is taxing, requiring layers of mental and physical reinforcements, but as the temperature rises our need to be bundled falls and our focus shifts from maintaining maximum core heat with efficient insulation to bathing in solar omnipotence. I have made recent excursions to The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and The Green-Wood Cemetery to enjoy the beautiful displays of plant regeneration that occurs after their own period of…

SoCal

March 31, 2011
When the schedule opens up, I feel compelled to take advantage and did so with five days in Southern California. I chose that area for friends and saw many amazing people with whom I have long-distance relationships. Some friends I see weekly, others monthly and ones with large swaths of land between us tend to be multi-yearly. Even with email and telephones, a good face-to-face needs to happen occasionally. And it did last week; thank you to everyone there who took care of me! I originally planned this trip and thought about the beach, but when a monster storm dumped…

Peter and The Starcatcher

March 23, 2011
This is amazingly fun theater. It is creative and celebrates imagination in so many ways, appealing to all ages and is a play in the best, most playful, sense of the word. The story is a prequel to Peter Pan with an absurdly hilarious cast of misfits sailing the high seas using spartan props to create elaborate scenes with Gondry-style guerrilla effects. The wordplay is fast and clever, slipping in something for everyone, young or old or high or low. Nobody is excluded in this world. I love working with kids because they are so creative and always flowing with…