Commuting to the office again? Then it’s been a week. Photo: Hensley Carrasco
Thank goodness you are here, sweet Friday, in what is evidently the absolute longest week in the history of mankind. Seriously, week of October 4, how is it possible that you still aren’t over?? Between the demands of my day job, traveling to Manhattan a whopping three days in a row (unheard of since March 2020) to seeing family visiting from out of town, entertaining wild speculations about the Facebook debacle, and the Bad Art Friend debacle, and continuing my extensive research into products that will allow me to sit in front of a laptop for 12 hours a day without developing a full-on dowager’s hump, the past several days have been what now passes for jam-packed in my book. In short, I’m beat. And, finally, ready to engage in some serious downtime this weekend.
It seems like I am being drawn into the inevitable magnet pull of this Squid Game show that’s hijacked the discourse, but I know that once I start, I’ll be making terrible decisions (like staying up until 4am in order to keep watching it), so I’m doing my best to fight the urge. In the meantime, I’m really enjoying Suspect, a new podcast that has somehow gotten me back into the true crime stuff I was obsessed with until a few years ago, when I suddenly wasn’t anymore. I am also really excited to get my hands on Amor Towles’ new novel out this week, The Lincoln Highway, as I absolutely loved both Rules of Civility and A Gentleman In Moscow.
At some point, though, I’m sure I’ll be desperate to get out and actually do something, and there’s a few happenings going on that will more than fit the bill. This weekend marks the final pair of concerts in 2021’s R&B Festival series in Fort Greene Park, and I’d personally love to catch Stew & The Negro Problem performing music from Passing Strange for free on Saturday afternoon. Then again, there are still tickets available for most of the remaining New Yorker Festival events, including Saturday night’s Aimee Mann show at Skyline Drive-In, and a virtual conversation between Jon Stewart and David Remnick on Sunday.
If I’m feeling up for a trip to Queens, Greater New York, MoMA PS1’s signature survey of artists living and working in New York City, opens today and there are still timed ticket slots open every day this week. And, while I’m already banging around Long Island City, the Noguchi Museum has a special, collaborative exhibit up called Objects of Interest: Hard, Soft, and All Lit Up with Nowhere to Go that looks pretty cool. Back in Brooklyn, Come Together, an outdoor display of dazzling quilts by the Brooklyn Quilters Guild, is on display in Windsor Terrace on Saturday afternoon; and if I have a sudden burst of juice, the Brooklyn Wine Fest is back at the Expo Center on Saturday.
Finally, if I want to see any live comedy I’ve got loads of options, starting tonight, when, Patton Oswalt is doing standup at Kings Theatre, and the Whiplash comedy show is at Union Hall with a killer lineup that includes Laurie Kilmartin and David Cross. Mortified, the “comic excavation of teen angst artifacts” like diaries, poems, and letters shared by their original authors, is always great entertainment and it’s back in person at Littlefield on Thursday evening for the first time since the pandemic.
Honestly, though, this looks like it’s shaping up to be a weekend of padding around my apartment in pajamas for yours truly, which serves as a reminder of a strange constant these days. Do any of you all think about how much you used to cram into an average pre-pandemic day with total astonishment? Now, I do practically nothing by comparison, and I’m always exhausted. Here’s hoping that bizarre byproduct of this new life levels out for everyone a bit in coming weeks, but for now I must say that the thing I’m looking most forward to this weekend is a good old-fashioned midday nap. Happy weekend all and here’s hoping the 2 (or maybe 3) days off give you whatever it is you’re craving.
