Evan Hammer's Blog » brooklyn

Alice in Wonderland (1951) gonzoreview

Evan — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:14:36 +0000

last thursday’s last last thursday i Toasted the afternoon and watched the original Alice in Wonderland in a buddy’s apartment. the previous saturday i had been driving home with a friend of mine, having just watched the new one at a Local Theater, we were listening to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, it was four in the morning (the Clocks had just changed) and i was Screaming at him that the new one was a Bummer and we had to watch the original right then and there. lucky for me, he had more sense, and an alice in wonderland Hiatus pushed the watching on to thursday.

quick interlude – i promised myself that if i were to write about alice, i wouldn’t Blather on about the new movie, wasting my breathe and your vision, so to make it brief: it wasn’t just a bummer, it was the dreaded ‘Total Bummer’.

from “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would,” to the crazy colors of Shrinking Alice and the ever Weirding voice of the Chesire Cat (yes yes yes he’s Winnie the Pooh!), we ravaged on two Growlers from Bierkraft and some silly Subwayversations, on and on, of course the Mad Tea Party and “Dont Step on the MOME RATHS!!!”

Don't Step On the Mome Raths

and then we were out on the street, soho in the early evening, investigating passing conversations and Howling at the sidewalk, hotdogs and those crazy Outfits, we finally found our outdoor pizzeria but i needed to go, back Underground to brooklyn for musical endeavors.

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Make Music New York 2010 explorations

Evan — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:32:11 +0000

Het Folks! i spent thursday Walking around Park Slope, in search of sidewalk space. i’m helping to set up Make Music New York – a yearly festival of outdoor concerts on June twentyfirst. right now restaurants and shop owners, and Musicians and bands can sign up to either have music in front of their store or to play outside on June twentyfirst. i like being the surveyor of a Realm, if only for a few hours.

Bury Me A Lion @ Make Music New York 2009

these people aren’t happy when you first walk in with a clip board and a running mouth, but automatic Resistance gives way to skeptical Discernment as they realize that the festival is actually free and i’m not asking for money. then there is excitement and wrappingtheirheadsaroundit conversation.

point is, i’m out there putting Tupelo Honey into our Communal Coffee (and i dont even like coffee). do you like to play outside? then Sign up for june 21st: http://timeoutny.com/makemusic

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saturdaynight songluck

Evan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:50:24 +0000

on saturday i went into the night with a jacket full of song lyrics and a growler full of beer, and headed over to a friend of a friend’s songwriters’ potluck. more of a songluck than anything else. the music was great – ranging from a folksy sci fi song cycle taking place 300 years in the future, to a tune whose words i couldn’t make out but everybody seemed to be singing along to, and one about a bear and an otter in different decades of their married life together. peculier indeed.

Lyrics from The Lion For Real:
There’s a lion lying by herself
Beside our open bedroom door.
She gazed up at me with
Those rheumy yellowed eyes,
I screamed out Lion For Real!
And I rushed out onto the fire escape,
Looking in I noticed it withering away,
And when she coughed and wheezed,
I cried Eat Me Or Die!
But she stood up, roared, and limped away.
If you walk in and find me wasting away,
Will you still hold me in your arms?

i sung two of my new songs – “The Lion For Real” (whose semitheme comes from the eponymous Ginsberg poem) and “We’re All Disappointed”. though i’m not usually one for singing my own songs, i enjoyed the evening thoroughly. i also played an old tune from 1947, “Cigareetes, Whusky, and Wild, Wild Women,” which I had first heard from the Low Anthem.

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