The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide, The L Magazine

Interview: Greenpoint Comics Artist Lisa Hanawalt and the View From My Dirty Dumb Eyes

Jeff Klingman — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:42:00 -0400

In the comics of Greenpoint artist Lisa Hanawalt, familiar things get very odd, very fast. The award-winning artist, who's been published in The New York Times, The Believer, VICE, and Vanity Fair (to name a few) draws straight from her own dark Id, yet manages to turn subjects that could be icky into whimsical nonsense that can't help but confuse and delight.…

Tackling the Iraq War... in Song!

Henry Stewart — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:38:00 -0400

Quagmires and the Known Knowns, a song cycle about the Iraq War by composer Marie Incontrera, has its world premiere tomorrow at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO. The Brooklyn Art Song Society's first commission draws its text from political speeches.…

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PHOTOS: Artists Invade Fifth Avenue With Storefront Installations

Henry Stewart — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:10:00 -0400

The fourth annual Bay Ridge Storefront Art Walk, presented by the Fifth Avenue BID, kicked off on Saturday. The project connects artists with local business owners, "offering Bay Ridge residents and visitors a unique opportunity to engage with the visual arts and explore the dialogue between commerce, art and community," according to its website.…
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Sex, Love, and Brooklyn: Putting On My Big Girl Pants

Lacy Warner — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:45:00 -0400

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a beautiful, smart, and funny young woman went on a blind date with an attractive, intelligent gent who also happened to be semi-humorless.…
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Game of Thrones: Tyrion and Sansa Get Married, More Bad Things Happen to a Penis

Kristin Iversen — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

What did I learn from this episode? So much, really.…
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Great GoogaMooga Canceled

Henry Stewart — Sun, 19 May 2013 12:56:00 -0400

The parks department, the Prospect Park Alliance, and the organizers of the Great GoogaMooga, the music and local food festival that's been going on in Prospect Park all weekend, decided earlier to cancel the festivities today, the last day of the festival, citing the poor weather and potential for damage to the park because of how soggy it was out there. People who paid for VIP passes will have the cost refunded; the rest of us just won't have a thing to go to today, I guess.…
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Should You See the Star Trek Sequel?

Jesse Hassenger — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:01:00 -0400

Star Trek Into Darkness: Much of the thrill of the J.J. Abrams refresh of Star Trek in 2009 came from his non-fan willingness to mix in outside influences: the multicolored creatures and hurtling pace of Star Wars, the lens-flared post-Bay visual sheen, and the snappiness of funny/serious TV ensembles like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn't quite as cerebral as the Trek of the past, but you could forgive the filmmakers their excitement at getting to play with factory-fresh models of Kirk, Spock, Bones, and all the rest—and doing so with a bit more bounce and swagger than the previous, older cast configurations would allow.…
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The "Smallest Penis In Brooklyn" Pageant Is Now A Thing

Virginia K. Smith — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:04:00 -0400

Sure, why not. Well, "why" is also a pretty valid question, but regardless, this is happening.…
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RIP to the Best Used Bookstore in Brooklyn

Henry Stewart — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:49:00 -0400

A few years ago, a girlfriend and I moved into a Park Slope apartment together and were so serious we combined our books, which led to quite a few redundancies. What to do with these duplicate copies of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Hitchock/Truffaut, and others?…
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RSVP to the Third Literary Upstart Reading!

admin — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:50:00 -0400

You are cordially invited to the third semi-final reading of Literary Upstart: The Search for Pocket Fiction, The L Magazine's annual competitive reading series in which the city's finest unknown writers read and compete for an enormous novelty check worth $250 and publication in our Summer Fiction Issue.

We've changed locations!…
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Titus Andronicus Desecrated Confederate Flags on Stage in Georgia

Henry Stewart — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:50:00 -0400

Apparently confusing The Monitor's Civil War references with a sympathy for the rebel states, a fan brought Confederate flags to a Titus Andronicus show in Athens, Georgia, on Wednesday and proceeded to hand them out to the crowd during the band's performance of "A More Perfect Union." It made frontman Patrick Stickles "made enuff 2 kill," he posted to Twitter, adding, "These flags ended up in my mouth, on fire, and on my sweaty asshole."…
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RSVP to the Third Literary Upstart Reading!

admin — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:16:00 -0400

You are cordially invited to the third semi-final reading of Literary Upstart: The Search for Pocket Fiction, The L Magazine's annual competitive reading series in which the city's finest unknown writers read and compete for an enormous novelty check worth $250 and publication in our Summer Fiction Issue.

We've changed locations!…
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The 10 Worst Pick-Up Moves of All Time: Political Edition

Kristin Iversen — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:37:00 -0400

So, there I was today, minding my own business, getting coffee while on my way to work, when I was basically assaulted by the cover of today's Daily News, which featured a picture of disgraced politician Vito Lopez and the headline "Feel My Tumor." Which, what?…
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6 Annoying Things You Should Never Do at a Theater

Henry Stewart — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:39:00 -0400

When I saw Golden Boy on Broadway last year as press I was so moved that I went and bought myself a ticket to see it again before it closed. I especially wanted to see a particularly affecting moment near the end, in which the main character is in tears, slumped on the floor, his lover draped around him weeping, and he assesses how his entire life has been a failure.…
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The Northside Festival Needs Volunteers!

admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:56:00 -0400

The Northside Festival is quickly approaching (mark your calendars for June 13-20) and early bird badges are totally sold out. Bummer!…
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It's Weird That the Coolest Songs on the New Daft Punk are the Ones With Indie Rock Singers

Jeff Klingman — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:35:41 -0400

If you were any where near Twitter on Monday, you know that the insanely hyped new Daft Punk record, Random Access Memories, leaked to the Internet. With all the money and production effort went into making all those millions of advance teaser videos, you know the label had to be pretty bummed that they couldn't quite get over the finish line by posting their own legal stream first, though they obviously had one ready (if you also didn't know that somehow, it's on iTunes and available to stream directly to the cave you are living in).…
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Vito Lopez Still Has A Seat In Government, Won't Be Facing Any Charges

Virginia K. Smith — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:59:30 -0400

So, this is what happens if you spend years upon years (allegedly) groping your young, female employees, demanding that they come to work braless, and paying for their silence with taxpayer money: essentially nothing. According to the New York Post, State Assemblyman (and former Brooklyn Democratic Party leader) Vito Lopez won't be facing any criminal charges, after a drawn-out investigation into myriad sexual harassment claims failed to turn up enough hard evidence.…
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GoogaMooga Welcomes Vegetarians After All

Henry Stewart — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:51:00 -0400

In March, when the Great GoogaMooga, the food and music festival in Prospect Park happening this weekend, first announced their lineup of restaurants, they were ones known mostly for their meat dishes and little else. What about us vegetarians?, I asked.…
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The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week

Aaron Cutler — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

Family Plot (1976)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock was a great comic filmmaker who understood that humor lay in peoples’ failed efforts to keep a chaotic world in order. His best comic actors understood this, too: Carole Lombard fighting for her husband’s attentions in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), Shirley MacLaine wriggling in and out of love’s grasp in The Trouble with Harry (1955), and Karen Black walking with trepidation through Hitchcock’s last film, this screwball thriller.…
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Salt is Good for You! Doctors Are Lying to You!

Henry Stewart — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:18:00 -0400

When I eat with other people, they often express concern for my health—not because of the needle full of insulin plunging into my arm, but because of the excess of crystals I joggle out of the salt shaker. I like salt, and I like to put a lot of it on my food, more than is deemed acceptable or appropriate in polite society.…
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Angelina Jolie, Christine Quinn, and the Art of the New York Times Overshare

Kristin Iversen — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:16:00 -0400

Late last night, or rather, early this morning, I was doing what I typically do when I am procrastinating. I reorganized the bookshelf by my bed, I considered folding laundry, I put my Elizabeth Taylor mask on my dog and myself, I obsessively refreshed twitter.…
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Win a Spot for You and a Friend at MAKESHIFT's DIY Chair Workshop this Sunday!

admin — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:31:00 -0400

We're giving away two spots to this weekend's Chair DIY Workshop, hosted by Build It Green!NYC and Krrb. Get crafty at MAKESHIFT 2013 on Sunday, May 19th from 2-5pm alongside fashion designer Alabama Chanin and design experts, Amy Devers (AE's "Fix This Yard" and DIY Network’s "Freeform Furniture") and Tanya Aguiniga (Los Angeles based furniture designer/maker).…
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John Catsimatidis "Feels Sorry" For People Who Live In Brooklyn

Virginia K. Smith — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:52:00 -0400

Good, good. We've officially gotten to the point in the mayoral race where years-old comments are being dredged up and used against people, sometimes wildly out of context, sometimes not.…
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It Sucks to Own a Food Truck

Henry Stewart — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:35:00 -0400

Last year, there was a big fight in Bay Ridge between restaurant owners and food-truck vendors. The people at Lonestar on Fifth Avenue were incensed by the presence of a halal cart down the block, on the corner of 86th Street; it got so bad that "someone" tore out public benches from across the street and bolted them in front of the food truck's regular spot; that the brick-and-mortar side formed human chains to stop the truck from parking.…
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A Defense of the Gatsby Movie By Someone Who Loves the Book

Jesse Hassenger — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:13:00 -0400

The last time Baz Luhrmann volunteered for the task of adapting classic literature, he dressed up Shakespearean language in 90s-fantasia fashion and gunplay, not to mention music-video electricity, in a distinctive take on Romeo and Juliet—perhaps the most memorable of that decade's many Bard rejiggerings (but please don't tell Kenneth Branagh; it seems impolite). The movies that followed—the musical Moulin Rouge and the epic Australia—were not based on anything more than the thinnest slivers of history, but they both feel inspired by archetypal if unnamed classics, particularly Moulin Rouge, the best movie musical of the past, well, at least two or three decades, maybe more depending on your reverence.…
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