These days, heritage is all the rage in fashion—it’s not just about aesthetics, but also the stories behind them. With this in mind, it’s no surprise retro-eyewear lovers are excited for the new Albert Maysles glasses by Barton Perreira, which were inspired by the legendary documentary filmmaker (Grey Gardens, Salesman) who has been sporting the same specs since the ’60s. And why not? As you can see from the photo at left, he looks pretty damn good in them.

To meet the man behind the lenses, head to Barneys (660 Madison Ave between 60th and 61st Sts; 212-826-8900, barneys.com) between 6 and 8pm for the launch of the product. Film geeks can hobnob with Mr. Maysles for free, but those in the market for new frames will have to shell out to take some home. The readers and sunglasses retail for $350 to $365, with $25 of each purchase benefiting the Maysles Institute. While you’re there, check out a full eyewear collection from L.A.-based Barton Perreira, and get snapped in a pair of the Maysles for a chance to end up on the Barneys website—instant fashion cred!

What’s that, you say? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yep. Yeah, it’s true that I’ve watched all 682 minutes of the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy countless times, and can even recite lines from the special-feature discs from memory. What? No, you’re the nerd. Dude, who was the one that wore elf ears and said things like “The Uruks are coming!” and “No one tosses a dwarf!” for two straight months? Yeah, I don’t blame her for dumping you. Look, I’m sorry she took the cat, but at least she had the good sense to change its name from Treebeard to Sprinkles. All right already. Because I feel bad for you and your miserable life, you can come with me. Yes, the Fellowship of the Ring is being screened at Radio City Music Hall tomorrow night, and the award-winning score is being simultaneously performed by the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra, the Collegiate Chorale, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Kaitlyn Lusk, as conducted by Ludwig Wicki. I know, it’s going to be awesome. Dude, stop crying. I know, I’m your best friend. You’re getting snot on my shirt. You can go Saturday night, too, if it means so much to you. There there. You know Gandalf isn’t gone forever. Shhhh.

The ever-gorgeous Mary-Louise Parker sparked up a conversation with long-time friend Ryan Adams last night at the New York Public Library. Maybe it’s because of her on-screen persona as the pot-dealing MILF in Weeds, but we couldn’t help but think that she and Adams were a little high. High on art, though, not grass. The conversation, about Adams’ new book of verse, Hello Sunshine, was as free-ranging as the poetry itself, moving seamlessly from anecdotes about Parker’s less-than-clean kitchen to a discussion of the writings of Frederick Siedel. Read more »

Drink up
Variety and Game Night
Have your eye at the ready for two rounds of bingo, plus trivia, with cash prizes and drink tickets on the line. Get there at 8pm for 30 minutes of free sangria.

Books
Tété-Michel Kpomassie
The author, who grew up in Togo, reads from his memoir An African in Greenland, an entertaining record of his adventures among Greenland’s Inuit.

Clubs
Giant Step: Miguel Migs + Lisa Shaw
West Coast deity of the deep, house-music vet Miguel Migs is joined by one of his go-to vocalists, Lisa Shaw.

See all free things to do today.

See more than 125 free things to do in NYC.

Surprisingly, the most difficult thing about talking to John Krasinski, who plays the charming, practical-joking paper salesman Jim Halpert on The Office, isn’t resisting the urge to make a “That’s what she said” joke at every opportunity. No, the largest challenge in talking to the 29-year-old actor is to not call him “Big Tuna.” Next week, he can be seen in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (which he also directed)—an adaptation of the beloved story collection by the late David Foster Wallace. We caught up with Big Tu…Krasinski, rather, in the midst of a fantasy football draft.

My mom is a big fan of The Office. She says Jim reminds her of me.
Oh my God.

I don’t really see it.
No, you do see it. You’re a charming guy. We all love you, Drew, come home!

Better than if she told me that I reminded her of Dwight, I suppose.
Yeah, that would be really scary. Don’t ever come home if that’s the case.

See the rest of this hard-hitting interview after the break.

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Last night, conspiracy theorists, scripture revisionists and rabid casual readers from all walks of life forwent sleep to line up and purchase the newest installment of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series, called The Lost Symbol. Many in the publishing industry look to Brown as some kind of book-selling savior amid generally dismal post-Potter sales, but “serious” readers tend to dismiss The Da Vinci Code and its ilk as being nothing more than pop-mysticism packaged in the trappings of a rousing adventure yarn. The impression is that Brown’s avid readership, despite their love for his “hyperventilating” prose, have no interest in reading any other books by a different author, ever. Well, people, we’re here to help, and have taken the trouble to offer some Brown-related (sort of) book suggestions for the Langdon set. See them after the break.

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Tonight, two white pillars of light, Tribute in Light, will shoot into the sky in memorial of the attacks on the World Trade Center; there’s also the 9/11 WTC Memorial Annual Floating Lanterns Ceremony and a benefit concert with Jay-Z.

Also tonight, Julianna Barwick’s layered vocals star at the Wordless Music Festival and excommunicated Mormon Neil LaBute’s Bash play gets a revival.

You can also head to Governors Island to don headphones and have a Silent Disco (Update: canceled due to weather conditions http://bit.ly/NCi86), or sign up for Craft Beer Week. Find out more options for your Friday here.

Among making awesome music, writing books (he reads at Barnes & Noble Sept 14), composing scores for movies, imagining what probably would’ve been the best sequel ever, growing impressive facial hair and raising kids, it’s not likely Nick Cave has much free time. So when we tried to set up an interview with the Aussie songsmith, it turned out that he could only do it on a day when I was home in South Jersey visiting the folks. So, compounded with the weirdness of Nick Cave calling me up on my parents’ home phone was the all-too-likely danger that my mom would come knocking on the door, asking if I wanted a pork roll sandwich or wished to go to the mall (”Can you hold a sec, Nick? Ma, I’m on the phone! Sorry, where were we?”). That crisis never came to pass, though, and I got to talk to Cave about his new book and other cool stuff. Here’s the expanded interview from the 1 bold question in the magazine.

Time Out New York: Why does Bunny Munro’s story work better as a novel than as a ballad?
Nick Cave: Well, it’s a novel. It’s a story. I’m able to get much more involved with the character than I would’ve with the song, and can take him places I wouldn’t otherwise be able to take him.

Is there a link between being a professional salesman and being a professional cocksman? Bunny seems to have used the same skill set for both.
I’m not sure about that. When we were writing this as a film script, we looked into the phenomenon of selling door-to-door. There was definitely a dark side. We met with some anonymous salesmen, and they had some stories to tell. There definitely seems to be an alcohol and womanizing culture. One of the things I like about writing that character in novel form is that he’s kind of invisible. I spent a lot of time talking about his lock of hair, but that’s about it. People have very different views on the physicality of that character, whether it’s Brad Pitt or Ray Winstone.

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Public Assembly

Smoothe Moose Laboratories takes its name from science teacher Marvin Klarpoenenburg Smoothe, who founded this artists’ collective in the early ’90s, along with fellow restless science teachers. After they set up a community performance space in an abandoned power plant in Edmonton, Alberta, thousands of kids flocked, Neverland-style, to the space for karate lessons, art galleries, dance parties and (natch) extra-curricular science classes. Years later, the legacy of Marvin K. has remained, and the current generation of Smoothe Moose (mooses?) has just released their first mixtape, a subtle fusion of beats from hip-hop artists like T-Pain and the soothing sounds of sitar and saxophone. Cellist Cosmo D adds his special touch to the mix, plucking out melodies and meshing them with clicks and beeps. Celebrate the summer ‘09 mixtape launch tonight at Public Assembly (70 North 6th St between Kent and Wythe Aves; 718-384-4586, publicassemblynyc.com). In true science-teacher fashion, audience members are invited to try out an experimental “dream machine.”

You’ve done it again: comedian, actor, icon and now author.
Fuckin’ get in line, because I’m going for my CPA thing. That’s next. I’ve done everything else. It’s CPA, astronaut and ballerina.

I was reading your wonderful book, I Drink for a Reason, the other day on the 7 train, and couldn’t help thinking that Mets fans drink for a reason too.
Oh, man. If you want to talk baseball, I’ll do that all day. I can’t believe they didn’t even make a play for [Victor] Martinez.

Because they don’t need a first baseman or a catcher…
Right. Exactly. The two positions they are most in need of. Well, they need everything, basically. I feel bad for Mets fans. Now, I don’t really give a shit about the Mets—or Mets fans, really—but when you pay that much money for tickets, and then a little over halfway through the season you just say, “Nah, we give up. Fuck it.…” I can’t imagine Minaya being there next year. Just some bad, bad moves. They go in and sign the best pitcher in the majors, and then there is no backup for him? John Maine?

Mike Pelfrey!
It’s ridiculous.

Read the rest of the interview after the break.

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Books
Toni Morrison
Get there early. The Nobel laureate makes a rare public appearance to read from her novel A Mercy, just out in paperback.

Art
“Young Curators, New ideas II”
Several young up-and-comers explore the structures of curation and presentation through their projects.

Drink Up
Elvis Night at Whiskey River
Lace up those blue suede shoes and walk ‘em down to Whiskey River, where King-like behavior (twitching lip, gyrating pelvis, appropriately coiffed hair) earns you a free pint of Bud.

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See more than 125 free things to do in NYC

Porcine lovers filed into the Morgan Avenue studios this past Sunday in search of free Colt 45s, pork, rice, beans and Mexi slaw at 3rd Ward’s Second Annual Pig Roast & Dance Party. The 195-pound pig—prepared by cult butcher Tom Mylan and chef Eric Sherman of Marlow & Sons—was in such demand, an hour-long line wrapped through the courtyard, back into the building, down a hallway and into the main lobby.

Bluesy punk rockers Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers kept everyone’s minds off their growling stomachs with their high-energy set prior to the food’s arrival, followed by Brooklyn rock band In Cadeo, who hasn’t had much luck avoiding the rain this summer. In Cadeo’s last three gigs have ended in downpours and yesterday’s show was no different: The heavens opened at the end of their first song, forcing the crowd of hungry masses to wait out the storm, drinking spiked lemonades blended by Artistic Evolution until their voracious appetites were, at long last, sated with $3 plates of pork taco. Pig power.

For a long time, authors have mostly resisted the urge to respond to negative coverage. But in the past month, at least two authors have decided to bite back. First Alice Hoffman fired off 27 tweets attacking Boston Globe critic Roberta Silman, at one point even publishing the critic’s phone number and e-mail address (Hoffman has since deleted her Twitter account). Then, Alain de Botton (pictured) posted the following comment on the website of critic Caleb Crain, who had reviewed de Botton’s The Pleasures of Work for The New York Times: “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.” Whoa! No one has written anything quite that vitriolic to Time Out, but we too have started receiving mail from authors. Alexander Waugh recently wrote to tell reviewer Jonathan Taylor: “To say that my treatment is ‘moist with contempt’…suggests to me that you haven’t actually read it.” He saved his strangest letter, however, for The New York Review of Books…

The first four issues of Michael Kupperman’s zany graphic enterprise, Tales Designed to Thrizzle, have now been compiled into one handsome, hardcover volume for more consolidated thrizzling. Kupperman himself will be signing books tomorrow at Desert Island in Williamsburg for the NYC launch. Yes, the man who brought us the crime-fighting, mustachioed duo of Twain and Einstein (”After being a famous writer, I decided to come to L.A. and become a P.I.!”) has arrived.

Last night, we were at the launch party for a book with the nifty title The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances, a memoir about the eccentric but ultimately redeeming act of buying a used car on eBay. The author, Mark Millhone (who writes for Men’s Health despite, he said, knowing nothing about either men or health), had borrowed a friend’s penthouse in the village for the shindig (celebrity sighting: Kristen Johnston of 3rd Rock from the Sun was there with her pooch, Pink). The evening was, above all, a celebration of the efficacy of writers’ groups: Millhone praised the two fellow members of his group, the cutely named Barnaby Googe Society. Millhone’s not just a journalist and memoirist; he won an Oscar back in the late ’90s for a movie he made at Columbia’s film school, and is about to start shooting his first feature film, Minuteman. He even made a miniflick about his book, and here it is.

Eat Out
Canning at Sweet Deliverance
It’s summer in a bottle (no, not Hawaiian Tropic) at this sweet seminar. Learn the art of canning to preserve the season’s best produce all year long.

Music
Cheap Trick
The power-pop masters bring the hits to Nikon at Jones Beach Theater.

Gay
Wolfson and Raab…On Marriage
Get marriage-equality updates from an outspoken pro, Evan Wolfson.

Books
Happy Ending Reading Series
Tonight’s lineup includes British satirist Nick Laird (Glover’s Mistake), novelist Binnie Kirshenbaum (The Scenic Route) and story writer Kevin Canty (Where the Money Went).

Theater
Next Fall
Love and faith are among the mysteries plumbed in Geoffrey Nauffts’s deeply moving drama.

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Currie Jr. goes all Deep Impact in his new novel.

Perhaps owing to the ever-present jingoistic saber-rattling, economic upheaval or virulent plagues in the news today, novels about global, end-of-days smitings are, it seems, more popular than ever. People just love to look into the abyss and speculate on the form in which the destructor will come. (Freebird Books even hosts a monthly postapocalyptic book club, which, I have been assured by reputable sources, takes the subject quite seriously.) Author Ron Currie Jr., previously the author of the story collection God Is Dead, is the latest to prophesize our collective doom in his new novel Everything Matters!

Junior Thibodeau is a child prodigy who is given precise knowledge of the time and manner of the Earth’s destruction while still in the womb. This insight, clearly, makes him a more somber youth than most. Throughout his numbered days, Junior waxes and wanes between reckless hope and abject despair as he grapples with how this knowledge should affect his own life and what in it, if anything, really matters. It’s a heartbreaking, laugh-out-loud blend of philosophic gallows humor that could touch even the arid heart of Mad Max.

Currie Jr. reads tonight at Barnes & Noble.

I’m sure there are lots of good things about Liar’s Club author Mary Karr’s Lit, a memoir about motherhood, sobriety and finding religion that comes out in November. But when we received our advance copy today, we headed straight for the chapter that describes her relationship with the late, great David Foster Wallace, referred to here as “David of halfway-house fame.” Alas, their affair—in Syracuse while he was still in his twenties—lasts for only three pages, but the passage vividly captures the hotheaded passion of both Karr and Wallace, who got “Mary” tattooed on his arm before they even kissed. He throws a coffee table against a wall during one of their apparently colossal fights, which sounds like pretty bad behavior, even for a genius. But it’s hard to read this now and not think about the Infinite Jest author’s chaotic emotional life, and how that must have played into his suicide last September.

Join her in her 3 BR. 1.5 BA apartment in West Harlem on August 1. Monthly rent: $900 (includes furniture, available for less if no furniture is needed.)

About Alexis: “I’m an early 20-something journalist originally from the L.A. area, and I work for a financial magazine in Midtown. I’m not a neat freak by any means, but I like to keep a tidy place as best I can. I enjoy going out once or twice a week. I’m not a crazy partier but, I’m not a dry, boring roommate either! I’ve got an awesome 28 year-old British roommate (also a writer), and we both enjoy some friendly intellectual conversation, thrown in with man-loving/hating rants every once in a while!”

About you: “I’d love a female roommate that shares the same qualities: gainfully employed, relatively clean, prompt when it comes to paying bills, not too loud (but not a mouse either), and open to roommate dinners. You should be looking to be friends with us, not just rent a room for a while.”

About the space: “It’s an awesome pre-war place just off the Hudson River. There is an awesome view of the river and New Jersey, which makes living here worth much more than you’re paying for. The apartment is close to everything you’ll ever need: a grocery store across the street, gym on top of that, major bank ATMs one block up and a RiteAid one block down. And let’s not forget the 24-hour McDonald’s! The place is already furnished, so all that’s needed is a new warm body and some suitcases to make the space complete.

Interested? View pics and get Alexis’ e-mail after the jump.

Need to fill a room? Looking for an apartment? E-mail us at home@timeoutny.com and you could be featured next Thursday!

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How much money would you reckon knowing the meaning of life is worth? We asked popular Israeli novelist Etgar Keret about $9.99—a film based on his stories and shot in stop-motion—to talk about that and other aspects of the deceptively complex animated movie that he made with director Tatia Rosenthal (we review it here). It’s the story of a group of residents in a Sydney apartment building, all looking for meaning in their everyday lives.

I used to live in a Sydney apartment building like the one in the film, but it didn’t seem a likely place to find the meaning of life.
[Laughs] No. It doesn’t seem the most likely place where you would find the budget for a screenplay written by two Israeli short-story writers. But you find things where you find them, and not necessarily where you start looking for them.

Quite so. Do you find city apartment buildings to be, in general, good spots to find stories?
You know, I think it’s not the apartment building, but people together in close proximity that always makes for good stories. In a plane or Club Med or an apartment building. I think for me the fact that it’s specifically an apartment building is less of interest. Just the fact that these people lived so close together but lived lives that were totally different.

How much would you pay, personally, to find out the meaning of life? In American dollars, please.
Well, as much as I can afford. Which isn’t much.

Read the rest of the interview after the break.

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