A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

My Better Half and i are trying to sell our beautiful Brooklyn manse, so once in a while we vacate the house while the real estate agent shows someone around. Last Sunday morning was one such time, so we headed out to enjoy us some Brooklyn.

Our first stop was Flatbush Farm, for brunch. The Farm has good coffee, which of course is an essential when discussing brunch; tea-drinkers can have breakfast, but a real brunch requires good coffee. I had a beef-and-hominy hash with poached eggs that was 100% delicious; i even enjoyed the Hollandaise sauce, which i usually find heavy and dull. MBH went with her Flatbush Farm go-to, Toad in a Hole, which is consistently yummy.

Next was a short stroll to Pintchik, Brooklyn's premiere hardware store, to pick up some miscellany for the house. On the way we ran into John Turturro walking down Flatbush with a little boy. He saw us notice him, and gave us a "please don't talk to me, thanks" look (different from the "please don't talk to me, i might die!" look we got from Sufjan Stevens last year).

From Pintchik we strolled over to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Takashi Murakami show. (Admission was ten bucks, which seems like a bargain in New York these days.) The Murakami show was a lot of fun, and not even obnoxiously crowded. MBH and i couldn't resist grabbing a couple Murakami plushies in the gift store.

The museum also was featuring a smaller exhibit of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, which we always enjoy. Those guys did some amazing woodcuts and a lot of the colors they used, especially the deep blues, always enthrall me.

After relaxing in front of the Brooklyn Museum's awesome fountain for a few minutes, we headed back home. On every leg of our little tour there were lots of spring flowers, especially all sorts of daffodils; eventually MBH started rolling her eyes at my enthusiasm for daffodil varieties that i hadn't noticed before. I didn't have the good sense to take my camera, so here's someone else's picture of some daffodils:

Snow, Finally

2 December 2007

Brooklyn, NY

Danielson Famblie

To be simultaneously awful and boring sounds like no mean feat, but it's accomplished by the overwhelming majority of the "Christian" pop music i've ever encountered. Aside from the insipid quality of the music and lyrics, there's often a belittling or threatening attitude toward non-Christians.

Not so Daniel Smith, whose various musical incarnations (most notably Danielson Famile) take the exhortation to create a joyful noise farther than most. The music is decidedly joyful, even ecstatic -- and to many ears it certainly qualifies as "noise". What really sets Danielson apart, though, is attitude: everyone is welcome. Daniel Smith makes invitations, and doesn't sneer at those who don't accept.

Friday evening, My Better Half and i enjoyed the documentary "Danielson: A Family Movie", which chronicles the musical life of Daniel smith and his family and friends from 1995 up to a year or two ago. One thing neither of us had known was that Sufjan Stevens was part of the band for a while, before storming the indie-folkie scene on his own.

OK, so there's a cute little blog entry; right on, 15.

But then, Saturday afternoon MBH and i are wandering around the Slope, she's power-shopping, i'm mainly bored. We stop by Bonnie's for a late-lunch burger (mmm) and on our way out, who should be walking in? Sufjan Stevens! Normally i wouldn't have recognized him, but having just seen the movie the night before, i did.

OK OK OK, i know, nobody cares. But i thought it was funny.

Who Watches The Watchmakers?

I got back from a bidness trip to Boston to find one of these crouching over our neighborhood. (Thanks to neighborhood blog across the park for the pic and some info.) This is pretty disconcerting; our little part of Flatbush Ave is by no means a festival of peace & love, but it's not exactly a war zone, either.

(These pictures are great because they make the thing look like a mech, which it doesn't so much in person.)

"Youngsters: Observation Changes Everything"

The opening for Keith's new show "Youngsters: Observation Changes Everything" is this Friday at Posey Baker, 7 to 9 pm. Everyone who is not there will be considered square.

Aliseo

Last night: dinner at Aliseo Osteria del Borgo with My Better Half, my mom, cousin Tris (my cousin Greg's wife), and her friend and colleague Charis. Tris and Charis were in town for a long-term project with New York City schools, helping them design programs to prepare inner-city school kids for college, or evaluate the effectiveness of such programs, or something. It was interesting, but we had a lot else to talk about as well. The difference between family and blood relations was discussed briefly (as far as i am concerned, the two have so little to do with each other i am sometimes surprised how many people conflate them). This was my first time ever meeting Tris, but it was quickly clear that she's family.

Aliseo is the perfect kind of place for get-togethers like this: quiet but not dull, lively but not hectic. The food is wonderful, tending toward the simple and comforting, and the wines are always well-chosen (we typically ask the waiter to pick out wine here) and very reasonably priced. The owner is a character, and often seems to be entertaining friends at one of the few tables. It's not far from our house, but i wish it was closer, just around the corner. In the Movie of my Life, it should serve as the set for several Important Dinner Conversations.

Belleville

Last night friends Brian and Lindsay introduced me and My Better Half to Belleville, a nice little French bistro over in The Slope. B&L had been for brunch, but not yet for dinner. The verdict: Yums!

Dinner was meaty, with three steaks and a lamb shank on the table. Nothing new or terribly exciting, but all very well prepared. The frites were good but not world-class (you can tell when they're fantastic because MBH raves like a lunatic).

Monday nights Belleville offers a two-for-one deal on entrees -- all the excitement of a Red Lobster promotion without any of the soul-crushing sadness! Presumably, it's to drum up business on a typically slow night, though the place was at least half-full last night. Maybe Mondays draw people in from outside the neighborhood (like us), or maybe they chill out at the start of the week, but in any event the Slopers weren't even very irritating.