Monthly Archives

April 2011

Celebrity Residents, Music

Real Housewives of NYC Castmember Simon van Kempen’s Club Banger Unleashed on Unsuspecting World

April 26, 2011

It seems pretty logical that a guy who is best known for starring on a reality show about housewives, loves clothes shopping and wears leather pants would release a club banger.

Yup, Simon van Kempen former hotelier now social media maven and husband of Real Housewives of New York City’s Alex McCord makes his musical debut this week with a ditty called (naturally) “I Am Real”.   While it’s not “Tardy for the Party” or “Money Can’t Buy You Class”, van Kempen’s track could very easily have been a hit in the mid-80s alongside Haysi Fantayzee or Dead or Alive.   The track could be said to be the 21st century equivalent of “The Ballad of John and Yoko” with its cheeky jabs at the spoils of celebrity.

As for van Kempen, he thinks he more like  Jarvis Cocker than John Lennon.   In that case, might he offer a cover of Pulp’s “Common People” as his sophomore single?

From the Web

Food

Will Brooklyn Meatball Company Be America’s Next Great Restaurant?

April 25, 2011

NBC photo

The field was narrowed down to three on tonight’s edition of NBC’s America’s Next Great Restaurant. One of the finalists, who will get their own mini-chain of eateries, is Joe Galluzzi’s Brooklyn Meatball Company.

The restaurant, formerly known as Saucy Balls, will compete against Sudhir Kandula’s Indian themed Spice Coast and Jamawn Woods’ southern flavored Soul Daddy in next week’s finale. Food celebrities/judges/investors Bobby Flay, Curtis Stone, Steve Ells and Lorena Garcia will decide the winner. One of the three locations planned for the winning chain is at the South Street Seaport.

As for prognostication out of 3 experts interviewed by Nation’s Restaurant News, none picked Galluzzi’s concept as the winner.

Are you watching the show? Who do you think has the best shot at success?

From the Web

Sports

Hey Brooklyn – It’s Time to Take the Dodgers BACK!

April 21, 2011

For many it stil hurts to say it – “Los Angeles Dodgers”.

Today, that franchise is in such a mess that Major League Baseball announced that it is taking over the operation of the team. WTF? The last time this happened, MLB took over the Montreal Expos. Friends, the storied Dodger franchise is no Montreal Expos — or Washington Nationals for that matter.

The move was prompted after team owner Frank McCourt needed a $30 million dollar personal loan just to make payroll. This all hot on the heels of the very ugly beat down of a San Francisco Giants fan by Dodger “fans”.

The owner can’t run the team and the fans don’t deserve ’em.

We say BRING THE DODGERS BACK TO BROOKLYN.

Seriously.

As far fetched as this sounds, what do you think?

IT CAN BE DONE!!!

From the Web

Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: Brooklyn Heights Resident Ron Chernow Wins Pulitzer for Washington Biography

April 21, 2011

Ron Chernow, Heights resident and biographer of several important historical figures, including Alexander Hamilton, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, has been awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for biography for his Washington: A Life.

New York Times: No American is so revered as George Washington, yet Mr. Chernow, 62, was troubled that “in recent years people had an image of Washington as wooden, bland and boring,” far from the “passionate, complex and sensitive man — dynamic and commanding and charismatic,” whose contemporaries viewed him as an authentic hero, the author said Monday.

Have you read Washington: A Life? Discuss it here!

[via Brooklyn Heights Blog]

From the Web

Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: A Visit From the Goon Squad

April 19, 2011

Fort Greene resident/author Jennifer Egan won the Pulitzer Prize today for her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad. She describes it a “Proust meets the Sopranos.” Some say it’s mixed up timeline feels like Back to the Future.

NY Daily News: “I thought, ‘How could a book work in the same decentralized yet powerful way as an excellent television show like ‘The Sopranos,'” said Egan, 48.

The Pulitzer committee praised Egan’s page-turner, calling it a “big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed.”

“It’s a crazy feeling,” Egan said of the honor. “It’s such a cliché, but it really does feel dreamlike.”

She said she received word of the prize when her publicist called her as she was eating lunch at the Fort Greene restaurant Olea.

“I was weeping and then I jumped up and told the waitress that we had to leave because I’ve just learned some news,” said Egan.

Have you read it? Discuss it here!


Photo by Pieter M. Van Hattem/Vistalux via jenniferegan.com

From the Web

Music

Brooklyn Bugle Sessions: Elisapie

April 15, 2011

We welcome Canadian singer/songwriter Elisapie as the third performer in our Brooklyn Bugle Sessions.

She’s recently released her first solo album in Canada (out in the U.S. on June 7), There Will Be Stars and is currently on tour. Born to an Inuk mother and a father from Newfoundland, she was adopted by an Inuit family and grew up in the Great North of Canada.

Find out how her background influenced her music and more in our interview:

From the Web