The Michelle and Norman Lattman Lecture: Michael B. Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi have an expansive conversation about the world’s obsession with Israel and the tempestuous politics of the Middle East.
Sweet, Sweet Candy: Discover the sweet history of candy and the origins of jelly beans, Charleston Chews, Chuckles, Tootsie Rolls, Red Hots, wax lips, gum and more.
Greenwich Village Ghosts Tour : Including the Old Merchant’s House, the Astor Library, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a former potter’s field, an execution ground and more.
92Y Podcast: William Kanengiser of The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
On Wednesday, November 11, The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet will present a dramatic retelling of Don Quixote, with comic actor Phil Proctor narrating and playing more than a dozen parts. The LAGQ will accompany him, performing Spanish Renaissance guitar music heard by Cervantes from Renaissance Spain. The program uses a recent translation by Edith Grossman, a 92Y faculty member, and the concert is part of the Art of the Guitar series. In this podcast, LAGQ member William Kanengiser, who arranged the program, talks about its creation.
You can also download the MP3. [6 MB]
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An exclusive private dinner party of fine food, engaging wit, and sparkling conversation at New York City’s legendary, literary Algonquin Hotel. You and a guest will be part of an extraordinary gathering drawn from this impressive array of literati.
The group includes such luminaries as Christopher Buckley, Malcolm Gladwell and Anna Deavere Smith.
There are a total of twelve individuals listed. Most have been guests here at 92Y, and are due to appear again. Let’s review the full list.
This Wed at 92Y, Glamour’s Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive moderated a talk between Robin Givhan, a writer for the Washington Post, designer Isaac Mizrahi and designer Ashley Olsen for The Future of Women’s Fashion. In the clip above, Ashley Olsen speaks about making the transition from acting to designing. On being in the entertainment industry, Ashley candidly admitted: “That wasn’t my choice, of ‘that’s what I want to do when I grow up, I wanna be an actress.’ That’s never what I thought I wanted to be. So when I turned 18 I stopped everything...and fashion is what I went after.”
The panel went on to discuss body image and the trend of ever smaller sizes in fashion even though women have become larger. Givhan noted “...all of the complaining and the blogging about how thin models are, no one is not buying the clothes from designers who use thin models.”
As you might imagine, a who’s who of the fashionista press was in the audience, and they all filed reports. For more coverage, visit The Cut blog, Glamour Fashion, (who also gave a great Twitter accounting!) and Fashionista. For an exclusive bit of news not yet reported in the main stream press, we have heard that after the event, Ashley Olsen and her sister Mary Kate, who attended the event to show support to her sister, stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street.
Upcoming events at 92Y:
The New York Restaurant Redux: Frank Bruni with Mike Colameco: Nov 1
Karim Rashid and Gaetano Pesce: Dialogues with Design Legends: Nov 3
Gail Collins with Nora Ephron: Women Come of Age: Jan 12
We took to the streets this past Sunday for the 92Y Street Fest, and thanks to all who braved the morning rain to come out! Continuing the Share Your Story video series, we set up our video booth to capture your stories. Featured in the video above is Melissa, who attended class at 92Y as a child. She still has the trophy she was awarded for winning a relay race while a student here. Melissa, if you’re watching, we want to see that trophy!
As part of the 92Y Street Fest, we offered a coupon good for a 10% discount on classes and events. We would like to extend that offer to our blog readers through Oct 30, 2009. Use discount code FALL when ordering event tickets online or by phone. Please note: When purchasing classes, you must order by phone: 212.415.5500, to utilize the discount code. We can not accept the discount code for classes online.
Regular prices vary. Discount cannot be combined with any other offers and does not apply to prior sales. Not Applicable toward Health & Fitness memberships. Restrictions apply. Offer valid through 10.30.09. Discount is valid for first time enrollment only for the following 92nd Street Y programs: Noar Afterschool, Connect Jewish Afterschool, Private Music Instruction, 60+ membership or Parent Center Membership.
Offer is not valid for subscription tickets nor is it valid for Summer Camp, Flying Dolphins Swim Team or Gymnastics Team registrations.
10% discount not valid for online class registrations.
Kurt Vonnegut: “Short Sentences and Placebo Profundities”
Upon the release of Kurt Vonnegut’s Look at the Birdie, a collection of previously unpublished stories, the Poetry Center is pleased to share an archival recording of Mr. Vonnegut from May 16, 1983.
“If you are a New Yorker, if you are a writer, it’s part of your civic duty to appear at the Y—at least once,” Mr. Vonnegut says in his opening remarks. As it happens, this was Mr. Vonnegut’s second appearance at the Poetry Center. His first, with poet Muriel Rukeyser, took place some 13 years before, on the evening of May 4, 1970—the day the National Guard opened fire on student protesters at Kent State. That night, he recalls in the recording from 1983, “there were people out in the audience standing up saying, ‘What do we do, what are we supposed to do?’ and nobody had a very bright answer, certainly Muriel and I didn’t.” Mr. Vonnegut ended up reading from a forthcoming novel, Breakfast of Champions, and that recording can be found here.
In the recording from 1983, however, he addresses Kent State much more directly, by reading a speech he delivered at Haverford College shortly after the shootings. He then reads two more speeches—one on our addiction to war preparation and another on nuclear holocaust, which was originally delivered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings by some of the best writers of our time. Next week, in anticipation of her upcoming appearance, on Thursday, October 29th, we will share a recording of A.S. Byatt reading an excerpt from Possession. To purchase tickets to Ms. Byatt’s reading, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
You can also download the MP3. [19 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
Subscribe with iTunes or add our podcast feed to your RSS news reader and have future 92nd Street Y podcasts delivered automatically.
With regard to the men, we’d like to point out that we’ve had five of them on stage at 92YTribeca. From left to right in the above photo, we’ve had Aziz Ansari, Aasif Mandvi, Zach Galifianakis, John Oliver and Wyatt Cenac. (Edit: We’ve only dreamed of having Aziz Ansari here.)
To keep abreast of future appearances by the sexiest people in comedy, bookmark this handy 92YTribeca Comedy page, and peep the 92YTribeca Comedy Facebook page.
New York City Opera‘s new General Manager and Artistic Director George Steel is opening his first season there with Hugo Weisgall’s final opera, Esther. Esther was a Jewish prophet and queen of the Persian Empire in the Hebrew Bible, and heroine of the Biblical Book of Esther which is named after her. In a podcast here, Charles Kondek, librettist of Esther, talks with New York City Opera about the origins and roots of the operatic piece.
For further deconstruction, on Sunday, Oct 25, New York City Opera and 92YTribeca will join together for an afternoon with spiritual leaders, scholars and creative and performing artists for an afternoon discussion, multimedia, and exploration of Hugo Weisgall’s Esther. Tickets can be purchased online here.
On Oct 22 at 92YTribeca, Kritzler will be on hand to reveal the Jewish pirates, conquistadors and merchant adventurers who battled the Inquisition and initiated international trade.
...Vidal gathered steam as the evening progressed, and Parini showed slides of photos from his book—which Vidal, with some difficulty, turned around to glimpse. In one, a skinny, dysentery-suffering Vidal was sitting against a wall in Guatemala, where he lived for a time—in sin, it is said—with the erotic writer Anais Nin.
“What was she like?” Parini asked.
“Come on,” Vidal parried, “gentlemen don’t answer those questions.”
Another photo showed him standing with Charlton Heston on the set of Ben Hur, on which Vidal worked as a script doctor.
Parini asked about Heston’s acting skills. “He was rather wooden, wasn’t he?”
“Well,” Vidal replied, “if you count balsa as one of the woods.”
In another Hollywood anecdote, Vidal recounted how one of his film projects fell apart when the prospective director, Hal Ashby, “decided to snort all the cocaine in Malibu.”
By this time the audience was fully on Vidal’s side, rooting for him, even prompting him when he had trouble remembering the names of Kevin Spacey, Dalton Trumbo, and President James K. Polk. “Polk, yes!” Vidal said. “His great granddaughter is married to George Stevens Jr. What does this mean? Nothing!”
By the time of the audience Q&A, he was positively on fire. When an audience member wondered why Christopher Hitchens, the formerly left-leaning columnist for The Nation, had become a neoconservative, Vidal gleefully took aim. “Ask him—leave me out of it,” Vidal said, to laughter. The crowd was in stitches for the rest of his answer. “You know, he identified himself for many years as the heir to me. And unfortunately for him, I didn’t die. I just kept going on and on and on. ‘There he is, Mr. Good Guy Liberal, and he just wouldn’t croak.’ So if you don’t like that, he thought, ‘I’ll be Mr. Bad Guy.’ And boy, he is. He’s made a real place for himself.”
Talk: Toxic Friends: Gender expert Susan Shapiro Barash explores the intricacies of women’s friendships and shares insights on how women can extricate themselves from damaging friendships to create more fulfilling ones.
Film: Streetwise FREE. with a 16mm film print from the archive of the New York Public Library, and director Martin Bell and photographer Mary Ellen Mark in person for Q&A. Read more on the 92Y Blog.
Moon Saloon: An open-mic session led by luminaries of the NYC poetry and music circles. FREE. Part of the Live at 92YTribeca Cafe series.
Film: Short Slam #1: Bring your under-twelve-minute film (on DVD only), get it shown and pad the house with your friends–audience vote determines the winner.
One of the world’s great cultural impresarios and the founder of the Ballet Russes from which many famous dancers and choreographers would later arise, Sergei Diaghalev had an enormous impact on the developments in Russian and Western Europe’s visual and performing arts. What made Diaghilev the right man for the right time?
Join Russian-born musicologist, lecturer, journalist and art critic Maya Pritsker on Oct 25 at 92Y as she discusses the life and times of Sergei Diaghilev, this year being the centenary of the first performances by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Hear about his circle of friends, his personal tastes and his relationship with artists, the press and patrons in the context of the major artistic trends and political movements in Russia and Europe between 1890 and 1929.
“I remember when I was about 4 or 5 my grandparents and mom and dad discussing what went on in this room,” says [Dan] Aykroyd, 57. “It was all in hushed tones, as if I wasn’t supposed to hear. It was about the séances that were held here.”
Dan, no surprise, is happy that ghosts once again are getting their due.
“I’ve had to sell some really bad movies in my time, so it’s great when you can get behind a good product,” he says, unashamedly hawking his “Pop’s” book.
The elder Aykroyd, 87, is dead serious in his analysis of spirits, and not just those who, according to the Aykroyds, float around the family compound here north of Kingston.
The elder Aykroyd is even an original source. He stood in the parlor’s cellar doorway some 80 years ago, spying on a séance hosted by his grandfather, Dr. Samuel A. Aykroyd. The book is based on 83 handwritten journals left by Samuel.
“I knew something important was going on. I just didn’t know what,” the elder Aykroyd says.
Floating trumpets. Tipping tables. Words mysteriously written on tablets.
In 1985, the New York Times reviewed Streetwise, a documentary on the life and lives of teenagers (Rat, Tiny, Shellie, and DeWayne) living on the streets of Seattle:
‘’Streetwise,’’ a study of young teen-age vagrants living in Seattle, began as an article (by Cheryl McCall) and photo-essay (by Mary Ellen Mark) in Life magazine. As a feature film, produced by Miss McCall and directed by Martin Bell, it still has the quality of a photo-essay observing a number of homeless teen- agers without structuring a narrative or otherwise commenting on what is seen. This shapelessness, and the unacknowledged presence of the camera in what seem to be small, intimate moments, would hurt the film if its interview footage were not so unmistakably authentic and, at times, so wrenching. ‘’Streetwise’’ has its touches of sensationalism, but much of it is all too real.
On Wed. Oct. 21, 92YTribeca will have a free screening with a 16mm film print from the archive of the New York Public Library. Director Martin Bell and photographer Mary Ellen Mark will be in person for Q&A.
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Lloyd Grove attended Gore Vidal’s talk here last night, and 
