Tracy Morgan

“All the way from Kennedy Fried Chicken to Carnegie Hall,” Tracy Morgan took the stage last night for his showcase at the New York Comedy Festival. Here are some things I learned:

1. Tracy Morgan is not Tracy Jordan. Morgan goes to great lengths to separate himself from his television alter ego, and he thinks “TV is a wasteland” (”except 30 Rock,” he added as an afterthought, as if he’d just caught glimpse of Tina Fey leering at him from the front row.) He silenced a heckler early in the set by shooting back, “This ain’t TV. I can hear you!” Later, he took a more direct line of attack: “May you get chlamydia tonight, mufucker!”

2. Tracy Morgan loves porno (”I beat my dick like it owes me money,” he proclaimed proudly). In fact, Morgan loves porno so much that he devoted a good 20 minutes of his hour and a half set to the topic. And then another 15 minutes to a discussion of how it ruined his first marriage. A story about playing “rape” with his ex-wife looked destined for cringeworthiness, but it took a hilarious turn toward the absurd when Morgan described donning a ski mask, breaking into his house, and getting distracted stealing his own stuff. (Oh, and catching his eldest son masturbating to his porno collection. Of course.)

3. Tracy Morgan’s “dickhead looks like Darth Vader’s helmet.” As a whole, his penis “looks like R2-D2.” Morgan is full of contradictions, and apparently so is his penis.

4. Tracy Morgan has a foolproof plan for making sure his sons don’t stick around too long: “When your dick get bigger than mine, you’re out. You’re no longer my son, you’re a threat.” (”Want to play some basketball, daddy?” he imagined his son asking. “Not with that big ass dick I don’t!”)

5. The Incredible Hulk is not a superhero—he’s just a drunk white guy. (”White dudes are crazy,” Morgan explained. “They like to get drunk and fuck up the pinball machine.”) In one of the most inspired moments of the evening, Morgan imagined an overly sensitive Black Hulk trying—with no luck—to stay calm. “That not Hulk baby! Hulk take paternity test on Maury!” he roared while lumbering around the stage like Frankenstein’s monster. “Too many seeds in drugs! Hulk fuck up weed spot!”

No Longer Empty, a non-profit artist collective who temporarily takes over abandoned NYC buildings, is founded on the concept of art in strange places. But when you show up at their current exhibition tonight (51 Bergen St between Court and Smith Sts, Brooklyn; nolongerempty.com), don’t be surprised if there’s more action going on in the elevator than the rest of the building. Starting at around 3pm, Giuseppe Stampone, who has scribbled verses from Dante’s Divine Comedy over the elevator shaft walls, will film an hour-long video of Julia Kent playing her cello while in the elevator. Though audience members cannot cram inside during filming (for obvious reasons), Julia will then give a more traditional performance at 7pm on the main floor.

After that, from 8pm to 8:30pm, visitors are invited to take a ride in the elevator, which has been re-imagined by Stampone as the boat used to carry souls across the River Styx. Inside “Charon’s Bark,” visitors will be able to listen to recordings of Kent’s music and read the Dante excerpts on the shaft walls as they rise “from hell, through purgatory, to heaven.” Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, Director of Development, explains, “The windows at the top, where heaven is, have been improved and re-installed. So especially during the day, you can really sense the escalation into heaven.” If you happen to miss tonight’s piece (though we can’t think of anything more alluring than an elevator ride to heaven on a Saturday night), you can visit “Charon’s Bark” Thursday to Sunday, from 12-8pm. How long does it take to get to heaven? You’ll just have to find out for yourselves.

Video by Karina Granda and Liz Kreutz

What happens when you give a Yankees fan a cracker jack? We went down to the World Series ticker-tape parade to find out.

Your perfect Saturday has the ring of truthiness to it, as does the statistic that 24 percent of Americans believe news spoofs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are replacing actual news programs as places to learn about current affairs. Colbert writers address this very point at “The Truthiness Behind the Lines.”

We hope you can handle the truth, sometimes it can be shocking, like the fact that Superman co-creator Joe Shuster illustrated a series of erotic artworks and you can draw these superhero fetish poses at Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School.

If that blows your mind, just lose it at rock-and-roll events like Target First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum or Bruce Springsteen at MSG.

Sounds like your perfect Saturday alright, ain’t that the truth.

Drinking events
Cask Ale Festival
The second day of the “living brews” fest that includes tipples like “Fuggelicious Wet Hopped Harvest Ale” and “Norm’s Raggedy Ass Ale.”

Clubs
One Step Ahead: Dante Ross
A funk-fueled evening of dusty-groove antics with Dante Ross, a major player in NYC’s hip-hop scene since the mid-’80s

Fitness
Workout with a Crunch trainer
Personal trainers Taj Harris and Karina Arrue conduct a one-mile group run/walk and a free 30-minute abs-and-stretch class at a nearby Crunch gym. You’ll also receive a complimentary three-day pass to a Crunch gym.

See all free things to do today

See more than 125 free things to do in NYC

Photo: Andrew Marantz

1. Moderator Virginia Heffernan (online media critic at the Times) wanted to push the notion that the internet is fundamentally changing TV comedy, but the comedy writers were not having it. That impasse was reached  within the first two minutes of the panel and then explored for the next two hours. “So, you guys really don’t think the internet is changing the way you work?” said Heffernan. “No, not really,” said the writers. Over. And over.

2. “I don’t even have a computer,” said Jim Downey, and he was not joking. Having worked at Saturday Night Live since 1976, Downey is clearly qualified to talk about television writing. But as the last person in America to hold out on the computer fad, he had absolutely nothing to say about the “internet” part.

3. The other three writers had some predictably cranky things to say about the internet. Peter Tolan (Rescue Me) thinks it’s too democratic. Al Jean (The Simpsons) thinks it’s too negative. “Most of it is negative,” Rory Albanese (The Daily Show) agreed. “Except for the porn.”

4. The Simpsons producers were the ones who leaked the video of Homer trying to vote for Obama. I knew it!

5. Extrapolating from tonight’s four-person sample, we can deduce that 100% of comedy writers are white men; 75% of comedy writers dress in black sport coats; 75% of comedy writers wear black-rimmed glasses (the other 25% keep their glasses in the pocket of their sport coats); and 0% of comedy writers will read this post, because they don’t really care about the internet.

Too much craziness and now, finally, the sweet relief of a weekend involving movies smart and dumb. As you may have noticed, I have a post-Marty glow. (Thanks.) It happens when you become the target of Scorsese’s gigantic cinematic insight. Our chat—which is very inspirational—is here. Go check out The Red Shoes at Film Forum. While I can’t fully recommend Richard Kelly’s The Box (”It’s better than Southland Tales” ain’t going on any movie posters), I do love our fun list of Team Film’s creepiest cinematic boxes. Oh, we remembered all of them. Finally, see that eerie image above? It’s from the Swedish silent film Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, which plays at MoMA this Sunday at 2:30pm with live musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble. They have a restored print as part of their “To Save and Project” series. It’s scary, ridiculous and totally worth your time.

Do trivia contests leave you cold? Do you lack the will to memorize seemingly meaningless minutiae? Well, perhaps we have the question-based drinking activity for you. As a TONY reader you will have thoroughly explored the city, and that’s all the experience you need to triumph at the NYC Trivia Rumble, run by the Lower East Side History Project at the Bowery Poetry Club.

If you’re able to answer questions like “On which lower-Manhattan bridge does the bike trail run through the center?,” you could win discounts to local museums, books and, most importantly, bragging rights.

You can compete with a group or own your own, but you must be there at 6pm sharp with the minimum suggested donation of $6. If you can’t get out of work on time, you can always challenge yourself by following the quiz online. Make us proud.

Jake Johannsen

1. Jim Gaffigan looks like a bull when charging from the stage to grapple with a heckler. Even while Gaffigan and the drunken asshole are wrestling up the ramp near the emergency exit, some part of you still wants to believe it’s a joke. Then the asshole gets Gaffigan on the ground and gets a couple of good shots—at the Hot Pockets guy! Gaffigan talks about food and eating and he’s funny and chubby and lovable and certainly doesn’t deserve that. The management steps in just as sane audience members and the loudmouth’s beefy pals move past their shock to get involved. According to one of the Gotham workers afterward, the guy said something to Gaffigan’s wife. So one more piece of learning: Don’t talk shit to Jim Gaffigan’s wife.

2. A crowd doesn’t really recover from a comedy club fistfight very easily. A guy who’s hosting a raffle to benefit MS takes advantage of an empty stage to talk about nothing at all. It’s a bit chaotic.

3. Before the melee, the crowd got Jon Dore, who is funny and has really interesting ideas and unusual joke structures. “My grandfather survived the Holocaust with his hiding skills,” he says, “And by not being Jewish. And by living in Canada his entire life.” Postbrawl, L.A. comic Mo Mandel takes an authoritative tone and scores several laughs off the remaining, frightened audience members. He even works in some material about the relativity of bestiality: “A guy fucking a dog, that’s bestiality. A guy fucking a lion? Might be bestiality or it might be the X Games.”

4. When Jake Johannsen comes out, it takes a while for people to respond to anything other than jokes involving fists, fighting, or fistfighting. But the guy is a pro; he wins them over addressing old oedipal impulses (“Don’t wait too long to fight your dad. You won’t feel good about yourself if all you have to do is unplug him.”), married life and how 2-year-old boys are a pretty good representation of a grown man’s inner monologue (“They’re like little Vikings!”). By the end of the evening, the laughs are strong and rolling through the crowd like you might expect.

5. Everyone seems to agree that Johannsen is more fun than combat.

The Russian composer Rachmaninoff was also an accomplished pianist; but you probably wouldn’t know, as he died in 1943, and recording technology at the time struggled to capture his virtuosity clearly. Before you become despondent at that news, listen to this alternative. The computer software group Zenph Studios has developed a method of analyzing Rachmaninoff’s recordings and replicating the nuances of his playing on a modified Steinway D piano. It’s a little bit like an android Rachmaninoff, although they have neglected to build a robot body for him.

Zenph presents a “reperformance” tonight at 7pm in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, and their marketing bods are offering 100 free tickets (normally $35–$50). R.S.V.P. to tsheehy@breakawaycom.com with RSVP CARNEGIE as a subject header. Winning applicants will be notified by e-mail, and tickets will be collected with a valid ID at will call.

The ABC Carpet & Home building. Photograph: Dick Uhne

When the Interdependence Project, a nonprofit Buddhist meditation and eco-activism group, started planning their fall 2009 fund-raiser, conventional methods like bake sales and kissing booths were quickly rejected. After all, what’s the one thing a meditation group can do really well? Sit! So that’s what they’re doing with “Sit Down, Rise Up,” a 24-hour meditation marathon staged in the windows of ABC Carpet & Home.

IDP members will be sitting in four-hour shifts, while Ethan Nichtern, who founded the group four years ago in the East Village, aims to hold it down for the entirety of the event, which runs from 6pm tonight until 7pm tomorrow. You can go here to make a donation. Otherwise, stop by for the opening ceremony at 6pm, or anytime tonight or tomorrow.

Image via flickr

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The monthlong celebrations by the Bowery Mission for the 100th anniversary of its chapel culminate this weekend. A celebration of the Bowery Mission’s work will be held on Friday at 1pm with visiting dignitaries and music from Broadway performer Nina Negri (Les Miserables) and Lower East Side jazz musician Steve Elson.

The Mission’s exhibit “Now & Then: Photography of the Bowery,” a selection of vintage photographs and 17 artists’ photographs and works, has also been extended through the weekend (The Bowery Mission Chapel, 227 Bowery between Prince and Rivington Sts; bowery.org. Fri 2–5pm; Sat 9am–1pm, 3:30–5:30pm; Sun 10am–1pm, 3:30–5:30pm. Free). As you can see from the pictures above, it includes some fascinating and beautiful imagery. There are also free tours of the Bowery Mission’s buildings. Here’s to another 100 years.

China’s calling
1. Beijing’s experimental rock scene lands in New York
Sure, Miley Cyrus is playing the Prudential Center, Springsteen’s at MSG, and Warren G will be running through “Regulate” at the Music Hall of Brooklyn, but you want to party, right? On Saturday night Beijing will be in the building at Santos Party House, and the headlining bands—Carsick Cars and P.K.14—are ready to show New York City what they’re all about. Keep in theme with a preshow feast at Peking Duck House (28 Mott St between Mosco and Pell Sts; 212-227-181, pekingduckhousenyc.com)—$26.50 per person gets you and four friends a full duck to tuck into, as well as soup, two entrées, two apps and a fried banana with walnuts. Party on.

Read more: Top live shows

It’s a laugh riot
2. New York Comedy Festival
With Ricky Gervais and Stephen Colbert already out of the way, this fest keeps the laughs rolling with more big-name jokesmiths over the weekend. To see a seasoned comedian who has really hit his stride of late, look no further than Patton Oswalt, who plays The Town Hall (123 W 43rd St between Sixth Ave and Broadway, 212-840-2824) on Saturday at 8pm. After the show, hit the third-floor bar at Angus McIndoe (258 W 44th St between Seventh and Eighth Aves, 212-221-9222), a classy watering hole that hosts plenty of Broadway types. You never know what celeb you might see in there. And if no big names are kicking about, at least you’ll get a good cocktail.

Read more: NYCF ‘09 preview

Providence brings all the boys to the yard
3. Club 57
If the kickoff edition of this three-level bash was anything to go by, Brandon Voss and Tony Fornabaio have provided plenty of incentive for gay guys to beeline to Providence (311 W 57th St between Eighth and Ninth Aves, 212-307-0062) on Saturday night. Before heading to the party, enjoy cocktails like the Freudian SIP—Ketel One Citron, fresh ginger and lemonade—and Coitus Interruptus at the laid-back but chic Therapy (348 W 52nd St between Eighth and Ninth Aves, 212-397-170).

Read more: Club 57 rules on Saturdays

Can you point to the day where we bone?
4. 2010 NYC Sex Blogger Calendar release party
Sleeping with a sex blogger always leaves you open to being exposed on the Net, but if the juice is worth the squeeze, who cares? Whether you head to Fontana’s to ogle or flirt (or just play it cool and act like penis-shaped lollipops are no biggie), this Friday-night fete for 2010’s bloggers-cum-pinups should be a lot of fun. No matter how things turn out, head across the street to Vanessa’s Dumpling House (118 Eldridge St between Broome and Grand Sts, 212-625-8008) when hunger strikes. A delicious meal for under $4 will either make a great cheap date or ease the pain of another lonely night.

Read more: Fall sex and dating events

Like Comic-Con for poor people
5. KingCon: A Brooklyn Comic and Animation Convention
Kicking off its first year at the Brooklyn Lyceum (227 Fourth Ave between President and Union Sts, Park Slope, Brooklyn; brooklynlyceum.com), this festival already trumps Comic-Con on two fronts: It’s much cheaper ($7, weekend pass $10) and it has a classic 8-bit gaming tournament. Gear up for fanboy overload with a brunch at Stone Park Cafe (324 Fifth Ave at 3rd St, Park Slope, Brooklyn; 718-369-0082, stoneparkcafe.com)—short-rib hash and eggs ($14) and a Southampton IPA should keep you fortified.

Read more: Best of the fests

Sashaying in with inimitable style, it’s your perfect Friday. Of course, it’s stolen its look from the Museum at FIT’s exhibit “American Beauty: Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion” and artist E.V. Day’s “exploding couture” at the New York City Opera.

Sharpen up your blades and head to The Pond at Bryant Park which opens for ice-skating today, or polish up your tankard for the start of the three-day Cask Ale Festival.

Night owls should check out TONY Approved comedy, Sasha at Blkmarket Membership or the experimental rock showcase The Chinese Underground Invasion.

Strike a pose! Your perfect Friday is watching.

Sex
2010 NYC Sex Blogger Calendar Release Party
Meet your favorite wordsmiths turned pin-ups and snag goody bags filled with condoms, penis-shaped lollipops and vibrators.

Books
Lynne Tillman + Hannah Tinti
Two top-shelf and entertaining New York writers read their fiction.

Art
Shana Lutker
This live event, part of Performa 09, incorporates accordion and invites audience participation by soliciting script suggestions for the actors.

Dance
Will Rawls
As part of a 100-hour creative residency at DTW, Will Rawls presents a work-in-progress showing of The Planet-Eaters.

See all free things to do today

See more than 125 free things to do in NYC

1. A surprise set from melodic and heartfelt indie-rock power duo Mates of State is the perfect lead-in to a night of comedy from stand-up’s most endearing talent, Mike Birbiglia; both are the performance equivalent of friendly hugs.

2. He wasn’t drunk. He promises. In spite of what a blogger claimed to have been disappointed by in an earlier performance, Birbiglia is never intoxicated onstage. “Apparently I’m just a mess. Me at neutral is a mess.”

3. The spinning-circles-within-spinning-circles movement of the “ubiquitous” carnival ride known as the Scrambler can actually be physically represented by one person on a stage. And it will make you as nauseous as the memory being recalled.

4. Birbiglia always sticks his landings. His act is not only a collection of funny jokes, but also a series of ideas and anecdotes that, you realize at the end, relate to one another thematically and humorously for an even bigger payoff.

5. When he sprinkled classic jokes into his set, audience members delivered the punch lines in tandem—”Season tickets to the Yankees!”—and when the Mates of State backed him on “The Oatmeal Song” as an encore, the crowd stood, clapped and sang along. Mike Birbiglia will be a household name…but I guess we actually learned that a while ago.

Thing I learned from Donald Glover, host of the show: Curse words aren’t so bad: “Know who didn’t curse? Hitler, that’s who.” Therefore, Comedy Central should let Glover tell jokes about the word niglet.

Thing I learned from sketch group Pangea 3000: Every fart sound has a proper spelling. If you spell a fart Fhfhfhoohinstead of Fhfhfhfhooh, you’re out of the spelling bee.

Thing I learned from sketch group Curtis and John: Ahab and Moby Dick were best friends until they argued over how to split the bill at a seafood restaurant.

Thing I learned from sketch group Murderfist: Watching a fat guy get progressively more and more naked is funny, yes, but mostly uncomfortable.

Thing I learned from the show: If this show is any indication, intellectual, jokey sketch is out and absurdism is in.

Photo: Andrew Yakira

Tuesday’s vote in Maine to repeal its law allowing gay couples to wed was a disheartening, disgusting blow. And now we must steel ourselves for New York’s say in the matter, as the State Legislature will vote on Tuesday, November 10, in a special session, on whether to pass the same-sex marriage bill. What can you do about it? For one, you can make calls to state legislators, imploring them to vote for the bill. And come Monday, November 9, you can join LGBT New Yorkers and their supporters—that means you, straight folks!—at the Marriage Equality New York Pre-Session Vigil in Union Square, a grassroots gathering at 6pm. Bring pro-marriage signs, a candle or flashlight, and a message: love. Vote in favor of love.

Bill Gates is what, a bajillionaire now? (Actually, according to a recent Forbes article, he’s merely a billionaire. Well, then.) But he’s also a nice super-rich dude: Each year, he gives away tons of money through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which supports funding for health care, education and poverty (among other things). He’ll chat about his philanthropic endeavors and more at the 92nd Street Y on November 11 with The Economist’s Matthew Bishop, himself no stranger to charity (his newest book is called Philanthrocapitalism—apparently, the two concepts can mesh successfully).

Tickets to the event are on sale now (go to 92y.org to grab ’em), but will likely sell out. If you can’t shell out $50, no worries: We’ve got you covered. Simply e-mail ownthiscity@timeoutny.com by Tuesday evening, and tell us why you want to see the richest man in America speak; you could win two tickets to the event. (Just don’t try to ask him for money once you’re there. That would be totally uncool.)

If you’ve found yourself missing being immersed in inviting weather, stop by the innovative space Audio Visual Arts in the East Village for a synesthetic experience inspired by our closest star. Brooklyn artist John Andrew has installed a piece—The Now with Before and After—in the storefront gallery that combines intense chromatic immersion with a sound work synthesized from an interpretation of the sun’s surface activity. Simply standing on the sidewalk before the gallery’s window is enough to lift your mood. The show is up through Sunday, November 8.—T.J. Carlin