Henry Miller Memorial Library

Still recovering from Brooklyn…so this will have to suffice for now…. (THANK you everyone!!!)

TONIGHT IN WILLIAMSBURG!! PHILIP GLASS AND FRIENDS!

* Philip Glass
* Bryce Dessner (from The National!)
* Real Estate
* Tim Fain
* Sondre Lerche!
* Nico Mulhy
* Nadia Sirota

All sharing the same stage! Click the link for tickets – we anticipated they’ll sell out!

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/00004A980033A038

After another late night (Magnus did “Ziggy Stardust” at “live” rock karaoke at Arlene’s Grocery), we are finally putting the pieces back together.

Part of this plan involves two distinct activities.

One, drinking some Brooklyn Lager with our old and new friends here at the City Reliquary from 6 – 7:45 pm.  Tell your NYC friends to come on down.  Admission is free!

Two, walking across the street to the Upright Citizens Brigade performance.  They’re doing a performance just for us, called the “Tropic of Laughter.”  It should be riotous.  Tickets here!

Really great article in the New Yorker – on the heels of our Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge – reexamining Miller’s tortured relationship with Brooklyn.

We all, to a degree, have some beef with where we came from.  But Miller was off the charts, calling it late in life “that old shithole, New York, where I was born.”

We think that’s a bit much.  I mean, we had phenomenal Thai just the other night.

But hey, that’s Miller for you.  And when taken within the context of last night’s talk at Spoonbill Books, in which James Decker tied in Miller’s Brooklyn hatred with the trauma of his youth, it starts to make a bit more sense.

Anyway, this article is fantastic.  Read the whole thing!!

While Van Dyke Parks had to unfortunately cancel, we are nonetheless beyond excited for Sunday’s performance at the Williamsburg Music Hall (May 19th)  Here is the updated line-up!

* Philip Glass
* Bryce Dessner (from The National!)
* Real Estate
* Tim Fain
* Sondre Lerche!
* Nico Mulhy
* Nadia Sirota

All sharing the same stage! Click the link for tickets – we anticipated they’ll sell out!
http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/00004A980033A038

Enjoy!

(We’re at the half-way point, btw.  Check out upcoming events here in Brooklyn at bigsurbrooklynbridge.com !)

Hey so opening night was amazing!! Thanks to The City Reliquary, Bill Scanga, Joe, and the whole Ping Pong crew!!

It was magical – and eerily reminiscent of home!!!  See below!

Tonight the party rolls on – the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge staff party with Al Rose, storytellers from Cowbird, and more!  Reserve your spot HERE.

The The Henry Miller Memorial Library’s BIG SUR BROOKLYN BRIDGE festival (May 12-19) kicks off TOMORROW at noon at the City Reliquary (370 Metropolitan Ave  Brooklyn, NY 11211)!

Full schedule HERE.

See you soon!  Check out the video!

That’s right: pencil in a “Big Sur Comes to the City*” brunch on Saturday May 18th and Sunday May 19th.

Because from 10 am till noon, the world famous Big Sur Bakery will be providing pastries and coffee for sale at our homebase at the City Reliquary!

So, if we may elegantly tie it all together, here’s a great quote from a 2008 New York Times piece on – you guessed it – the Big Sur Bakery:

When I visited Big Sur Bakery in March, I had no idea it would be so much in the news by July. I’d heard about the bakery and restaurant through my friend Liz, who had returned from a month in the coastal California hamlet and e-mailed me about their chocolate-chip cookies in capital letters.

The visit confirmed that the cookies were uppercase material, with multiple exclamation points for the breakfast pizza, a life-changing pie of bacon, eggs and cheese that will make scallion skeptics rethink that ’70s garnish.…

Read the whole thing here!

* Transient hitch-hikers not included

When plotting the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge, we here at the Henry Miller Memorial Library went through great efforts to ensure aesthetic continuity.

By that we mean the following.  Look at the following events as part of the May 12-19 festival week.  Some are real.  Some aren’t.   You’ll intuitively know which are real because of – you guessed it – aesthetic continuity.

OK so guess what’s real and what isn’t.

1.  Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Presents: Opening Night Party and Poetry Night!

2.  Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Presents: Henry Miller: Libertine, Communard – an evening of talks discussing Miller’s literary legacy.

3.  Big Sur Brooklyn Bride Presents: “Tropic of 36 Chambers” – Henry Miller’s influence on the Wu Tang Clang

4.  Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Presents: Henry Miller and Rick Santorum – The Pathos of Sexual Liberation (post-Marxian analysis)

5.  Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Presents: Philip Glass, Van Dyke Parks, and special guests in a benefit for the HML

6.  Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Presents: Is Your Hedge Fund Working for You?

OK.

The correct answers – the REAL events – are 1, 2, and 5.

The incorrect answers are 3, 4, and 6.  (Although 3 is possible; both artists are from Brooklyn.  HOLLAAAA)

Our point: we’re very selective and precise on how we construct the Bridge, all Tetris-like.  Which bring us to Saturday night’s (May 18th) masterpiece: “Tropic of Laughter,” an evening of comedy from the world renown Upright Citizens Bridge.

TICKETS HERE.

Already we see you nodding – the aesthetic continuity is throbbing, pulsating off the screen.

But let’s take a deeper dive, nonetheless, yes?

Here are six reasons why Miller / the HMML and the UCB are a perfect aesthetic continuity match (PACM):

1.  Both are iconoclastic in their respective field.  (For non-English majors, “iconoclastic” means “heavily susceptible to spontaneous combustion after consuming excessive quantities of dairy.”)

2.  The UCB was a springboard for famous funny lady Amy Poehlr; the Henry Miller Memorial Library, meanwhile, gave us Hippie Sven.

Also another “funny lady,” Jessica Williams, will be there!

3.  The May 18th performance will also include Comedy Central’s Jessica Williams, who is famous for reporting on funny, oftentimes fake news.  Miller, meanwhile, was an acerbic commentator on events during his time.  He could occasionally be funny too, depending on how starchy his diet was.

4.  The Upright Citizens Brigade began performing improv and sketch comedy at Kill the Poet in Chicago.  Meanwhile, Henry Miller called Chicago his “kind of town.”  Spooky!!!!  (Fun fact: I also ate two dinners in Chicago once.  The first was pot roast at a diner; the second, a huge steak about two hours later which was paid for by the company I was working for at the time.  Soooo full!)

5.  In Season 1 of UCB’s TV series, in a sketch called “Poo Stick,” Big Red Cat gets harassed by a poo stick while performing mini-movies.  The Henry Miller Memorial Library, meanwhile, gave us Hippie Sven.

6.  The UBC is really cool and funny and they’re doing this JUST FOR US [tickets here] so you should see it.  And I’d be amazed if anyone’s still reading (Lorenc – nod if you can hear me)