Martin Schneider writes:
Longtime readers will know that this blog looks kindly on the noble rock dove, otherwise known as the pigeon.
On Monday, August 18, at 7 pm, McNally Jackson Books hosts a reading by Courtney Humphries, author of Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan and the World.
The book has an amusing cover (click to enlarge):

McNally Jackson Books is located at 52 Prince Street.

Martin Schneider writes:
Who was it who said that comic books have recently become Hollywood’s R&D department? (It may have been “Everyone.”) The remarkable Françoise Mouly has decided—rightly—that the medium can also serve a similar function for children’s books, so (as Emily reported in PRINT) she has started an imprint called TOON Books, which puts out comix-inspired books for our youngest readers. (Her true aim may well be to propagate an entire generation of Los Bros Hernandez addicts.) She has enlisted the talents of Dean Haspiel, Jay Lynch, Eleanor Davis, and her husband, Art Spiegelman, to create the books, all of whom will be appearing twelve noon, Saturday, September 6, for a “Special Saturday Storytime” at McNally Jackson Books (note the new name) at 52 Prince Street. (Collectors: leave your Sharpies at home! Nobody present will be signing souvenirs. It’s for the kids, you know.)
And if we’ve now whetted your appetite for events without immediate opportunity for gratification, you can always check out the round table with New Yorker drama critic Hilton Als and Richard Foreman, guiding spirit of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, at Solas (232 E. 9th St.) this Thursday night at 7:30pm. The event is free, as such affairs in summer ought to be.

It’s easy to narrow down the movie options in New York this weekend: Kabluey. It’s at Cinema Village. Buy tickets here. See a hilariously melancholy, cautiously life-affirming movie about the unexpected magic a round-blue-headed corporate mascot creates for a scattered military household in chaos, a Thermos-loving man, a big-eyed beauty in a supermarket, a lady-killing boss, and indeed, an entire town–and help a talented first-time feature-filmmaker at the same time. How can you lose? You can’t! Every Emdashes reader who goes to see it this weekend will get a treat. Email me on Monday. It’s a good one.

Kabluey is a spanking new movie, starring Lisa Kudrow, Chris Parnell, Teri Garr, and a powerful man in blue, and written and directed by my funniest friend, Scott Prendergast. It’s opening at New York’s Cinema Village (22 E. 12th, between 5th and University) on the 4th of July, and it’ll run at least a week. I predict longer. Then it opens in a bunch of other places all over the country.

Don’t you want to be the first to say you saw the movie of which Rex Reed wrote, “Kabluey” is as wacky and different as its title…A fresh, unique, touching and often hilarious film that is a real summer treat…all hail Scott Prendergast as a new director who is going places!”? That’s at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes? Yes! You do! And if you go on Monday, the 7th, I’ll be there too. Buy advance tickets here.
Then you’ll know. And those people in the other parts of the country will cry because they couldn’t be here to share it with you. You, on the other hand, will still be laughing.

Martin Schneider writes:
That line comes from “Inventory,” a fantastic poem quoted in the latest newsletter from the Dorothy Parker Society, headed up by our friend Kevin Fitzpatrick. It’s going to be a busy, fun summer for Dottie enthusiasts! Here’s a quick preview.
The New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, New Jersey, presents The Little Hours by David Bucknam, based on several short stories by Dorothy Parker. It runs from July 10 to August 17.
The prestigious 2008 New York City Midtown International Theatre Festival has accepted a new show called Those Whistling Lads! the Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker, written by Maureen Van Trease, a member of the Dorothy Parker Society. It runs from July 20 to August 1 at the Workshop Theatre Mainstage, 312 West 36th Street, 4th floor.
The Society also has a special Dorothy Parker birthday party planned for August 20, with live music, singing, and a lot of fun. The event will be held at Broadway Baby Bistro, 318 West 53rd Street, at 10 p.m.
If you like Dorothy Parker, you sure oughta sign up to the Society’s newsletter.

Last night, I kissed Restaurant Florent goodbye–really kissed it, with my mouth, and salted my veggie burger and champagne with a Liechtenstein-sized tear. It’s inconceivable that the restaurant, which houses many memories for those who spent time in the West Village before All This, won’t exist after this Sunday, but it’s so. Get there while you can; the atmosphere, as well as the legendary menu board, is festive-tragic. Go. Didn’t Malcolm Gladwell say that when something you’d come to count on in New York suddenly disappears, whether you’ve been here a month or a year, you become a true New Yorker? That happened a long time ago for many, but maybe this weekend will produce many a mussel-colored hash mark for loyal service rendered, especially, of course, by Florent Morellet himself.
Who will report Florent’s last day for The New Yorker, I wonder? I’d be glad to read a Talk of the Town by Ben McGrath, Lauren Collins, Rebecca Mead, or Michael Schulman on the ultimate order, but if there’s a longtime contributor who loves the place (say, Lillian Ross, although I can’t quite picture it), or a chronicler of New York who wants to make a special visit (Pete Hamill comes to mind), I would love to read his or her account. Gladwell is a neighbor of the place, and Leo Carey could also do a lyrical restaurant-review-final-day mashup.
I asked Martin to see if there were any references to Florent in the Complete New Yorker, and here’s what he found. From a January 19, 2004 Talk by Lauren MacIntyre, about housing in the West Village:

One person’s avant-garde, though, is another’s antique. One of the meatpacking district’s better-known businessmen, Florent Morellet, the owner of Florent, the sleek Gansevoort Street diner that is popular with both cross-dressers and corporate financiers, began to speak out in support of the house. Alarmed by the brushfire development around the Gansevoort Market, Morellet helped push to have the area designated a historic district (a proposal that just passed), yet he also praised the plans for 829 Greenwich Street, calling the use of steel building materials “authentic” to the history of the neighborhood. Last spring, when Baird and his team presented their design to the Landmarks Commission, the board voted unanimously in favor of it, and last February the old place was finally demolished.

To celebrate the groundbreaking, Baird threw a party at Florent just before the new year. Baird and the woman who owns the house (her husband was out of town) strolled amiably among the guests. Hanging in the restaurant’s entryway was a large computerized rendering of the house. People commented on the huge steel façade, which, if it is trucked into the city, will necessitate a temporary shutdown of the George Washington Bridge.

“It weighs seventeen tons,” a man said.

And from a Tables for Two restaurant review of “Pre:Post” in the July 3, 2006 issue, by Nick Paumgarten:

“Even before the meatpacking district became hell, there was a respite from it, at Florent, the regenerative twenty-four-hour bistro. Not so in West Chelsea, the night-club vortex up the avenue, where the right kind of late-night chow has long been scarce as silence. Such, anyway, is the theory, or one of the theories, behind Pre:Post, a new dusk-to-dawn restaurant where the slick kids are encouraged to gather and dine before and after their submersion into the clubs down the block.”

Finally, something I happened on recently, also in the Complete New Yorker jewel box, brought Florent to mind. It’s a Talk from June 6, 1925, and as with a number of those early number, the author is unknown:

Note on a Passing

Joel’s has closed; perhaps the last of the older order of restaurants, whose hosts were individuals, not corporations. It was never a gaudy, nor a gilt-edged establishment; that one on Forty-first street, with its green-tinted door; and its heydays were ten, or even fifteen years behind when it surrendered to the inevitable.

But it did know heydays, such as would lead a profitable procession of American tourists to visit it still if Joel’s were in Paris, or London, instead of a few doors west of the second-hand clothing marts of Seventh avenue; and how picturesque, by the way, these would be in, for instance, Vienna.

There was in Joel’s on the night it clossed, the table at which Sidney Porter used to sit, back to the window, looking on life. And another that knew the young Booth Tarkington many a long night years ago. The older Mark Twain looked in occasionally. Alfred Vanderbilt was a patron in those times when it was the thing to stay up all night on the eve of a Vanderbilt Cup race and drive through the greying dawn to the Jericho turnpike to look on the daring of Barney Oldfield and the like.

George Luks was seen there often, and Alan Dale when his caustic comments were feared far more than the ponderous pronouncements of the venerable William Winter, another patron of Joel’s. It was, too, a favorite resort for earnest Mexican revolutionists before that nation substituted the ballot for the bullet in presidential elections. This last, probably, because Joel Rinaldo served admirable chili con carne when that dish was almost unknown elsewhere in New York.

Fare thee well, all things Florent.

From today’s Manhattan User’s Guide (links are mine):

One of the most memorable books we’ve ever read is Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, a heartbreaking account of the unspeakable genocide there. In Mr. Gourevitch’s new book, Standard Operating Procedure, written with documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, we get the full horrors of Abu Ghraib. The authors will be at Barnes & Noble on W. 82nd this Monday night, 7pm.

…as I often do, here are some “Secrets of Feral Pigeons,” thanks to a winsome comic called Wild Toronto that puts Mark Trail to shame.
But if you prefer fish to fowl, perhaps you’d like to witness this year’s Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, at which I will be shaking my tailfeathers (or gilding the gills) in a Dixieland-tastic swing routine that will lead off the parade tomorrow afternoon.
It’s always a great occasion; come say hello (or just make appreciative dolphin sounds and wave) if you’re there!

Two more readings Emdashes readers will be interested in, both from my BookTour.com newsletter:
Pete Hamill (author of North River: A Novel):
Barnes & Noble – Tribeca
Friday, June 20, 7:00 PM
97 Warren St., NY, NY 10007
More info: http://booktour.com/author/pete_hamill
Kevin Fitzpatrick (author of A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York (ArtPlace series):
Algonquin Hotel
Sunday, June 22, 12:00 PM
59 West 44th Street, New York, NY
More info: http://booktour.com/author/kevin_fitzpatrick