Marisa LaScala: Writer, Editor, and Good Addition to Your Bar Trivia Team

Classic Caramoor

"You’re conducting the 'Pops, Patriots, and Fireworks' performance on July 3. Why did you choose to lead that one?
I don’t consider myself a Pops guy, but what I like is to make what looks like a Pops program, but actually has much more meat on its bones. Like last year, we did the 1812 Overture, which is done all the time on the Fourth of July. To mix it up, I added a Theremin. At these things, you can expect to hear Sousa and maybe Gershwin—but you don’t expect to hear a Theremin. This year, Charles Yang is going to play the "Yankee Doodle" variations on the electric violin. It doesn’t even look like a violin, it looks like a stick with strings on it. He is amazing. So I like Pops concerts when I can add something unexpected."

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Photo by Gabe Palacio

Rock On

"You know Dave Bickler’s voice. The Chappaqua resident (since 2004) is best known for being the lead singer for the rock-band Survivor—yes, that’s him singing 'Eye of the Tiger' on the Rocky III soundtrack. (He’s also the one doing the vocal heavy lifting on those Bud Light 'Real Men of Genius' ads.) This summer, he’ll be passing on his rock mojo to the next generation of artists by teaching voice and performance at Chappaqua Rocks day camp."

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Who Is the Leatherman?

"Things are not so good for the Leatherman, the mysterious wanderer who wore a homemade all-leather suit and walked a near constant, 365-mile looping trail from Westchester to Connecticut. His grave is close to a busy street. It’s shabby and gets desiccated. And—worst of all—it is marked with the wrong man’s name. To fix these wrongs, the State Supreme Court of New York recently ruled that the body of the Leatherman could be exhumed, moved, and reburied.

But moving the remains isn’t the only goal. With a few simple scientific tests, we can learn more about the famed Leatherman, separating man from myth. The Ossining Historical Society approached Nicholas F. Bellantoni, the Connecticut State Archaeologist, to lead the team of scientists conducting the tests and eventually re-interring the body.

'Of course, this is all predicated on there being preserved organic material to test,' Bellantoni says. 'I’ve seen graves like this where there’s nothing left but soil.' Here, he leads us through some of the tests and what we can learn from them.

Gross Morphology Examination—His skeleton alone can tell us his age, whether he had any severe traumas, or whether he had certain diseases. (If he had TB, for example, lesions would be visible on his ribs.) 'We expect to see a robust musculature,' Bellantoni says. 'After all, he walked for forty years of his life.'”

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Reopen for Business

"Stiff seats and dreary fabric were ripped out of the floors and walls to make room for newer, more comfortable seating (with cupholders!) and acoustical panels. The lobby now includes a concession area befitting a regal movie palace—and better snacks, too, from Provisions, which is practically next door.

And, perhaps the best part: the Picture House hasn’t lost an ounce of its historic charm. In fact, renovating uncovered a couple of surprises: behind the current screen was an older one that dated back to the silent-film era, and workers also uncovered six double-hung windows. The windows were preserved, as was a gorgeous Palladian window above the lobby."

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Wildcliff Thing

"Taking place on the grounds of Wildcliff Manor—along the banks of the Sound Shore and in the shadow of the Gothic Revival residence—local and regional artists have set up booths to showcase their ceramics, paintings, jewelry, photography, woodwork, glass crafts, and mixed-media artwork. It’s the opposite of the mall: many items are one-of-a-kind, and you actually get to talk to the artists who made them.

'It’s very similar to Brooklyn’s artsy markets in Fort Greene, Williamsburg, and DUMBO,' says Eric Woodlin of Incoming Tide Entertainment, which also put on a music series and a comedy series at the site. (Performing artists will also provide a soundtrack to your shopping.) The Wildcliff Art Market will run through September 10."

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June Highlights
Ani DiFranco, Brian Wilson, Peter Frampton, surrealist art, and more.

Home Theater
True Grit, The Adjustment Bureau, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Edition Blu-Ray

"The work of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick has been adapted into some of the greatest science fiction movies of all time, including Blade Runner and Minority Report. (Okay, there are some not-so-great ones in there, too, like Next and Paycheck.) His short story, “Adjustment Team,” became The Adjustment Bureau, in which a politician, played by Matt Damon, rails against a fedora-wearing cabal that secretly controls the paths of everyone on Earth. Fans of Mad Men’s Roger Sterling can spot John Slattery under one of those fedoras."

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'An Invisible Sign': Math Problems

"An Invisible Sign begins as 10-year-old Mona Gray (Bailee Madison) watches her father (John Shea) experience a mental breakdown. From that moment on, he suffers from a pervasive by undiagnosed mental illness. Unable to understand it, she relies on two divergent coping mechanisms. Even as she retreats into the logical, highly controlled world of numbers and mathematics, she also gives herself over to extreme magical thinking. The combination makes the film into something of a math problem itself, as it shows how the father’s illness exponentially affects his daughter."

Read the rest of the review at PopMatters.  

Day Trips: Amusement Parks Worth the Admission

"Hersheypark; Hershey, PA
Travel time: Three hours from NYC by car
Disneyland meets Candy Land at this kitschy theme park, a celebration of all things Hershey’s chocolate. But it’s not all sweetness: A trio of roller coasters—Fahrenheit, Great Bear and Storm Runner—provide adult thrills by dropping you 97 degrees, dangling you below the track or launching you from 0 to 72mph in two seconds (and straight up 18 stories), respectively. When you need to relax, head to the Boardwalk to lazily float along the Intercoastal Waterway or hit several other water rides. The 1933 Hotel Hershey (thehotelhershey.com) offers choc-inspired treatments in its on-site spa. hersheypark.com"

Read the rest of the article at Time Out.

How to Find a Deal

An article with tips on finding cheap apartments in New York City

"Make direct contact
The easiest way to save money is to avoid paying a broker’s fee. 'Look for a building with a rental office directly on site,' suggests architect Hayes Slade, whose Slade Architecture firm knows something about affordable housing (it won an award for its design of a Brooklyn housing project in 2010). 'That way you can negotiate directly with the landlord and skip a real-estate agent fee.' In order to ditch online searches, Slade recommends walking the streets of your desired neighborhood and looking for offices and for rent signs. That’s how investment banker Jessica Gutierrez found a studio she loves in Battery Park City. 'Ask doorman,' she says.'“I would first ask if this a condo or is there a leasing office. If it was a condo, I would ask if they had a list of owners renting out their apartments. At the ones that did, I would leave my business card, and I got a lot of callbacks from owners renting their apartments themselves.' Victoria Hagman, president of the Brooklyn-focused agency Realty Collective, hit the pavement too. 'When I was looking for an apartment,' she says, 'I would go to moving sales every weekend and ask, "Has your landlord found someone to take your apartment yet? Can I see it?”' For more tips, look for Realty Collective’s new apartment-hunting classes at the Brooklyn Brainery (brooklynbrainery.com; next class May 16, $10)."

Read the rest of the article--including a final thought from The Rent Is Too Damn High's Jimmy McMillan--at newyork.timeout.com.

Summer Cinema

A preview of summer movies.

"July Superhero of the Month:
Captain America: The First Avenger (July 22)

Captain America is a superhero in that he has super strength and speed, but he still can only do things that humans can do. (No flying, no regeneration, no invisibility, no godlike powers, and no talking to fish.) All around, he’s a more accessible comic-book character, and this film shows his origins as a wannabe WWII soldier. Perhaps what’s most relatable about him is his youthful ideals.

Cowboys & Aliens (July 29)
The title says it all. There are cowboys. They cross paths with aliens. It’s sci-fi mixed with the Wild West, and Han Solo himself—excuse us, we mean Harrison Ford—is in charge of saving Earth from invasion. It sounds just like our kind of hootenanny.

Also Consider: The only thing that trumps cowboys and aliens on the summer-movie spectrum is a brigade of awesome robots, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (7/1) can get you your fix. If you’ve been too cooped up inside your office to see any movies, live vicariously through the stars of Horrible Bosses (7/8), who hatch a plan to murder their, well, horrible bosses. Speaking of offices, if you can’t fathom what Steve Carell will do outside of The Office, try his new movie Crazy, Stupid, Love (7/29), directed by the team that did I Love You, Phillip Morris last year. Clutch your tissues: the Harry Potter saga will finally come to close forever with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two (7/15). If you need something kinder and gentler to get you over the loss of Harry Potter, Disney is releasing a new feature-length installment in the life of Winnie the Pooh (7/15)."

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Thor photo by Zade Rosenthal/Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel; Bridesmaids photo by Suzanne Hanover. © 2011 Universal Studios; Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides photo by Peter Mountain ©Disney Enterprises, Inc.; Tree of Life Photo by Merie Wallace; Green Lantern photo by Francois Duhamel. TM & © DC Comics