Recommended!

This is the weekly feature in which I recommend the best things I did last weekend. Like most weekends these days in the twilight of my youth, I stayed close to home and didn't leave Brooklyn once. Good job, Edith. Soon I'll probably spontaneously give birth to an expensive stroller filled with plastic clogs. Anyway: Recommended!

Art: The Takashi Murakami exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum! Mostly I'm just patting myself on the back for finally going to the show I've wanted to see for weeks, that's at the museum that's literally 600 feet from my house. But I went, and it was cool. A little dizzying at times, and it trends toward the repetitive, but some really neat and hypnotic stuff. Most memorable (but not the best, just most memorable) were the two human-sized statues of sparkle-eyed anime figures: one was a girl with giant blue pigtails and gargantuan cow breasts, clad uselessly in a dime-sized string bikini that was pushed aside to make room for the bursts of milk coming from her nipples and encircling her body in a crazy hoop. Opposite her was a Peter Pan-like blonde anime boy with a giant boner ejaculating a lassoo of ... ejaculate, which he was holding onto with his hand. They were nuts, click here to see them. But mostly the exhibition, which spans two floors, features huge and stunningly vivid paintings (like the awesome Tan Tan Bo Puking, pictured, except 20 times bigger)--as well as a 4 real Louis Vuitton shop embedded in the middle of the show, complete with silk-voiced, white-suited LV employees. Tickets for the Murakami show must be purchased separately: $10 regular, $8 students. Closes July 13. Recommended!

Clothes: There's a new, good clothing store on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens that opened last Friday--Epaulet. For their first week, they're featuring exclusively clothes from a single designer (Walter, who makes cute little old-fashioned-style summer tops, skirts, light dresses, simple prints, $298 for the best dress there), and then for the second week they'll feature only men's clothes from another designer. That's not the plan forever, just for now. The people who worked there were very sweet and helpful and I definitely can't afford to go back, but I will probably go back tomorrow to see if I can fit my body into the $298 red-and-white print 50s-style summer dress and then buy it. Recommended!

Food: As I have maintained on this blog, Flatbush Farm is great. A friend of mine had a birthday party there on Saturday, when it was just warm enough to be outside in a sweatshirt and have a good time. So great there. Such good food, such a beautiful space, such a perfect outdoor garden. Nice staff, too. Pretty bathrooms. Not cheap, but you get more than you pay for. Good for all things. Garden only open until 11 or 11:30pm, then they gently shuttle you inside, but it's fine. The location is a little out of the way, but for Park Slope and Prospect Heights people, it's a nice destination, and sort of a quiet gem in their crown. Strongly recommended!

Food: If you ever go to Robin des Bois on Smith Street in Cobble Hill, which you should because it's delicious and fun and good for groups of four or more, especially now that the garden is open, get the Sherwood Platter (cured meats, cheeses, fruits, salad, nuts, cornichons, olives, $21). Two people could eat a light but complete meal from it, while sharing a bottle of the Cotes du Rhone. Recommended!

Game: Mario Kart for the Wii. You put the little Wii controllers into these cute little white wheels (wiils, ha ha haa) that come with the game, and you race/battle in various adorable and gorgeously lush fanciful Technicolor Nintendo racetracks. It's a perfect game, good job, Wii!