Whether or not you’ve given up anything for Lent, whether or not you’re not Catholic, whether or not you worship anywhere get your adoration for great music on down to Acoustic Cafe this Sunday March 7 and join us at 5 PM for Musical Mass at Acoustic Cafe.
The price is right folks, a recession beating value deal of F-R-E-E! Yep no charge though don’t forget to tip your bartenders and buy some CDs of your favorite musicians.
Joining us on the bill is the great Joe Roberto and Poverty Hash, Israel Nash Gripka
The Fieros and a super special secret guest that you won’t want to miss. No it’s not Michele Obama but almost as cool.
Just a couple warnings:
1) This isn’t approved by the Archdiocese of Bridgeport
2) This is going to be far more fun than what you normally do on Sunday night
3) We’re heading on a 3 week tour leading us to Austin, Texas for two showcases at the South By Southwest Festival so you come see us now so you can tell you friends you knew Saint Bernadette before we get big and famous.
4) Way more fun than the Oscars even without the statuettes.
5) We love you all so get ready to feel it.
Grab your favorite rosary beads or not. Sunday March 7 5 pm at Acoustic Cafe for FREE. Don’t miss it.
Being an artist who works for little money and sporadic attention news of the suicide of celebrated bad boy fashion designer Alexander McQueen left me humbled at the randomness of life, the unfairness of celebrity, happiness and what it takes to create a self-made life as an artist or just an everyday Jane.
It would seem like someone who had such acclaim should be happy. Especially when that someone did it his own way, without the agreement of the establishment and who rose to great prominence in spite of them. After all don’t money and success especially when doing something you love always lead to happiness?
Of course, as proven time and time again the answer is an obvious NO.
Yet we are lucky to be surrounded by so many inspired creators who need to do their work, be it music, writing, dance, photography whatever the hell it is that turns them on, without so much attention. The need to create is what drives them.
So like our friend Bridgeport comedian Jackson noted, in of all places his Facebook page, we are both the slave and our master.
Poor people are often happy. Rich folks often miserable. Same for the famous and the unknown, too.
September 13, 2009 at 12:14 pm by Meredith DiMenna
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Tony Bennett in concert. That’s Mr. Anthony Dominick Benedetto to you.
As an introduction to one of his songs, Mr. Bennett told the crowd how Bob Hope came up with the Americanized version of his name in a conversation after Tony’s appearance in Pearl Bailey’s show. Tony (the only white kid in the show) tried to introduce himself as “Joe Barri” but Bob caught on right away that this was a made up name and demanded to be told the real thing. Of course, once he heard it, he knew why Tony was using a fake one and quickly suggested the alternative. BUT, I digress.
The purpose of this post is to crudely generalize my ethnic heritage and point out, that regardless of how many Italian-Americans have had to pose as merely “Americans” by dropping the “etto” and the “icci”, the fact remains, that Italians (hyphenated or otherwise) are the best entertainers in the world. And the reason is: we are sentimental, romantic, nostalgic, simplistic, genuine saps, simultaneously ruled by by emotion and able to conjure emotion, just as comfortable ending a show stopper with arms spread under the spot light as winding down a ballad perched on a stool next to a grand piano letting one tear spill down a quivering cheek.
To see a pro like Tony Bennett at age 83 inspire probably 10 or 11 standing ovations in the span of one ninety minute performance, is to understand performance itself. At least the Italian interpretation of performance, which right now, is all that matters to me. It is to feel, publicly, what everyone else feels privately, and let it trickle out of you in an effortless vibrato where appropriate, to whisper it in a husky sotto voce when applicable, to sustain it in a clear bell of a tone where fitting, and most importantly to belt it out at the top of one’s lungs when necessary.
Though the Italian-American style is not in vogue in the music world at present – what’s left of rock music favors sort of a Scandinavian goulache, a Norwegian, Swedish, British deadpan, I don’t care or I am just very precious by nature, look and sound – it always manages to dominate in some sphere of public consciousness, i.e. Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, and I believe will regain its rightful place in pop music soon.
At the very least, Saint Bernadette, will be working on it . . .
Saint Bernadette is no saint. And just this morning, I suffered the consequences of one of my less saintly actions by spending the morning in an appallingly long line at Superior Court.
I went there in a naive attempt to decrease my fine for the ticket I received a month or so ago for running the red light at the intersection of Fairfield and State St. (you know the one, near the McDonald’s). In my estimation, one can make a “right” on red, even though, according to the cop, it’s technically not a “right”.
In any case, regardless of the time it took, I am now thankful that I decided to dispute this ticket if only for the opportunity it provided to observe our criminal justice system.
The long wait on the line outside the courtroom was the criminal justice version of the legendary TV series “Playboy After Dark” – a smattering of overheard conversation and impromptu performances in an open space lorded over by provocative personalities. In this case, instead of Hugh Hefner in a smoking jacket, it’s lawyers in bad suits.
Most of the overheard conversations went something like this:
Lawyer: Ok, do you understand what you need to do? I don’t want you to get in trouble again.
Citizen: Yeah, hey you’re the lawyer. I don’t want to get in trouble again.
Lawyer: Ok, do you understand what a protective order means?
Citizen: Yeah, it means I can’t see my wife and my daughter.
Lawyer: Ok, so you don’t want to violate that protective order.
Citizen: But why can’t I see my wife and daughter?
The citizen in question was a 50 + man of limited intellectual capacity and uncertain sanity. Following this conversation, he launched into the performance component of the day’s entertainment which consisted of what I believe to be an excerpt of Jerome Robbin’s legendary choreography from the garage scene in West Side Story and what the Haitian girls next to me believed to be worthy of a punch in the face, which for a moment there seemed extremely likely to be delivered courtesy of a confused citizen waiting in the line for Courtroom B.
When I finally reached the courtroom, I gave my name and saw its corresponding yellow file pulled from the box and put into a pile. I was instructed to take a seat. As I waited in the bitter cold (probably 10 degrees colder than the hall), I witnessed a litany of tongue lashings doled out by the prosecutors to the perpetrators of such charges as driving with a suspended license, illegally parking, and my personal favorite: loitering.
In one such tongue lashing, I felt a surge of empathy for the prosecutor (a good looking guy in a pretty decent suit). He seemed to genuinely care for the citizens coming before him, trying to give them a break and extra credit for being well spoken, looking him in the eye, being enrolled in school or working. However, as I sat there, a little Bill O’Reilly -shaped troll deep within my brain started to rise up from under the bridge, rubbing the crust off his eyes and demanding to be heard.
“Why is he cutting deals for these people?”
The deals would be presented like this “Okay, so, take this as a life lesson. The police are watching that corner and they are watching you. They don’t want people hanging out on that corner and they use this loitering charge as a way to permit them to search you and if they find something on you, you’re going to jail. Okay? Do you understand? Don’t hang out on that corner. I don’t want to see you here again.”
The young man on the receiving end of this speech nodded obediently throughout and seemed genuinely thankful for the leniency. Until he turned around to face those of us waiting in our seats at which time, a bounce came back into his step, a smile broke out across his face, and he rubbed his hands together like a hip hop supervillain, so clearly pleased he pulled yet another one over on the system.
Of course, I know the answer to this. They have to cut deals because there’s no possible way to process all of these people, committing all of these petty crimes. And there’s no possible way to collect money from people who have no money. In the end, the cutting of deals and collecting at least half of the owed money in conjunction with the doling out of tongue lashings is really the best these prosecutors can do.
But the real question is this – when we discuss the “people” who need help or education or healthcare or outreach or whatever it is that underprivileged or disadvantaged or wrongly imprisoned or improperly served people need, we always come up against a wall of how to reach these people. And it’s very simple – they are all in Superior Court with plenty of time on their hands.
Perhaps we could hand out pamphlets about public programming there? Info on the assistance program at the organic market? Info on the resources available at the Small and Minority Owned Business Office? Info on community college courses and incentives in green business? If there was ever a motivation for reading – it’s standing in a line with nothing to do for several hours.
I, on the other hand, did not receive a tongue lashing. The prosecutor I encountered seemed to know the intersection I described and thought to herself that it was kind of up for grabs whether or not I actually violated any traffic laws, so she offered me a deal.
Pay $35 and if I already have some tickets on my record, maybe I would get some points, OR donate $50 to a charity having something to do with criminal injuries and she would throw it out.
It’s been a long week. I can always tell it’s been a long week when I continually forget what day it is. Something about our new “weather” makes it ever more difficult to distinguish one day from another – was it Tuesday when it rained? It rained every day, but was it in the morning or the afternoon? The rain seems to separate mornings from evenings as though they were separate entities and I feel myself believing three days have passed in the span of just one.
I bring this up not only as a pseudo-poetic introduction to some shameless self-promotion, but also as an introduction to an examination of the necessity of rock in roll in our lives. It’s something that we in Saint Bernadette think about often and something that has been in the news over the past few weeks as public radio and VH1 (things we tune into now that we are officially irrelevant people) feature profiles of Woodstock on its 40th anniversary. Is rock n roll important? Is it necessary?
In the interest of community building as well as shameless self-promotion, I would offer that it is both. As critics and pundits and commentators struggle with reconciling their admiration for the music that made up Woodstock and the fact that it was really just an overcrowded disaster full of drug and alcohol users, one thing they often forget to mention is that the music works without the drug and alcohol. 11 year olds in the 70s put on The Who in their bedroom to great effect just like I danced around to The Police when I was 8 and totally convinced that “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” was about me.
Rock is the expression of that little voice inside that’s always demanding this: “Tell me again why we created this bizarre system of life whereby I need to go somewhere for 8 hours a day that I do not like and do something that I do not care about, all for the privilege of coming home to someone I probably can’t stand and affording to spend the weekend buying things I do not want or really need or that perhaps I pretend to really want or need so that I don’t have to face the fact that I spend most of my life doing what I don’t want to do?”
it could be then, that rock is just a part of the man’s game, a false panacea, that keeps us trapped in our cycles of false achievements and phony happiness. Or it could be that, if used correctly, it’s the motivation necessary to respond to that demand with “You don’t need to spend most of your life doing what you don’t want to do. Just some of it. Now, figure out what you really want to do. And do it. Really hard.”
I can’t promise life changing epiphanies at our show this Friday, but I can promise that we will try – really hard.
took place exactly one week ago. This was a historic event that you probably missed, but you will nonetheless feel its after-effects, as the seismic shift it caused in my consciousness alone had to be powerful enough to bring about change throughout our fair city.
As I stood in the window of my loft in downtown Bridgeport, looking out over Baldwin Plaza, the time came for me to come to terms with the true existence of my pot belly. What do I mean by “true existence”? What I mean is it’s “actual size”, not the size that I pretend it is when I am sucking it in and standing sideways in the mirror.
What I’ve discovered in recent months is that I am nearly always sucking in that stomach – when I’m driving, sitting at my desk, writing this blog. The cumulative effect of constantly sucking in my stomach is that my body and my mind have started to live as though the pot belly is not really there. Over time, different parts of my body, like my shoulders and upper back, knees and hips, have been taxed unfairly to maintain this illusion. The illusion, in turn, compounds the effect by allowing me that little bit of leeway in any changes to my diet or exercise habits that would eventually eradicate the pot belly.
This cycle of denial seems as inherent to modern human nature as the search for food was in primitive man. But, what is truly sad is its exponential and compound properties – the way the denial of the problem prevents the problem from being addressed, and the systems developed to cover up the fact that the problem is not being addressed simultaneously worsen the problem.
Does this remind you of anything?
My problem is that I consume more calories than I burn, thereby resulting in the pot belly. Until I lower my calorie intake sufficiently and consistently enough, that pot belly will remain. And the longer I keep sucking it in, the longer I will fail to make the necessary changes to my calorie intake and the more collateral damage the rest of my body will suffer.
Bridgeport’s problem is that nearly all efforts focused on the improvement and redevelopment of the city are based on reclaiming an image of the city from the past or from other cities in Connecticut with which we do not have the resources to compete. The longer we keep trying to fashion an urban environment that caters to the smallest slice of our diverse population, the longer the isolation and stagnation will continue and the more collateral damage the city as a whole will suffer.
I could go into detail about what I mean here, but I think everyone knows what I’m talking about, don’t they?
I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to this crippling pattern of denial, but I made the choice to open my eyes and address my pot belly, utilizing the most powerful force of socialization known to modern civilization, the oft-abused, but nevertheless imperative: public shame.
I opened my window at Read’s Artspace as the moon rose over Baldwin Plaza and let the belly hang over the window sill. My husband stood on a chair holding a flash light and called out “look up here!”
Now, as we Bridgeport residents know, there is no one on Baldwin Plaza at night on a Tuesday, it’s only Thursdays when we can count on the downtown artists that the city so wisely and uncharacteristically imported in four years ago to do something crazy and enjoy this beautiful city resource. But despite the lack of people to witness the public shaming of my belly, I can assure you that my belly did, in fact, feel ashamed and in the past week, I have stayed true to those changes in diet and exercise that are the only proven path to the elimination of the pot belly. In addition, my shoulders, back, knees and hips have stood up in strong support of this action. We stand, unified, and together we will succeed.
Bridgeport is an international city and at the same time, a uniquely American city. Its history is a reflection of every major American drama of the 20th Century. But if you want to know what the kids in Bridgeport think about Bridgeport’s history, you might come up with something like this recent news item.
Many of the efforts over my 4-year residence in Bridgeport are the equivalent of this monstrosity on my pot belly. But because I am just a humble local artist and community blogger, and one with a firm commitment to bringing only the good news about Bridgeport, I will refrain from using this platform to publicly shame anyone who may be responsible for the layers of misguided and futile efforts that swirl around Bridgeport’s redevelopment efforts. Instead, I offer you my own public shame as the catalyst to the end of my own cycle of denial.
If you see me riding my bike to Seaside Park, just give me a wave of encouragement!
Remember this term from the 80s? This was something Ronald Reagan promoted and George H.W. Bush called “voo doo” economics, and though it was fiercely debated in its time, I think we’ve realized thirty years later that we all believe in magic.
Many of us DO believe that if our government and economy encourage the current rich people to stay rich, we might one day be one of them or at the very least get invited to one of their parties. And I’ve got no trouble with that – a great party is a great thing. I still venture out in search of them all the time and try to host them whenever possible. But the challenge of a great party is making it great. One place where “trickle down” is absolutely true is in nightlife. Any good party stems directly from the inherent party power of its most gifted guests. Why are people still talking about Studio 54 and Woodstock? Because the anchor talent at those parties – no matter how diverse – could be depended on to bring the party when necessary.
So, what is truly the most tragic effect of reality tv and the now never-ending supply of vapid, average people who are considered celebrities? Their parties don’t “trickle down”.
What do Liza Minnelli, Mick Jagger and Mikhail Baryshnikov have in common? If they are called upon to rock the party, they actually can rock the party. A great party, like a great performance, is supposed to be life affirming. As you experience it, you are meant to feel part of something, meant to feel you understand what it means to be human, what it means to be yourself.
A bad party, like a bad performance, can bring on an existential crisis of epic proportions. When you are trapped in the grip of a party resting only the talents of a B list reality TV star, you find yourself instantly gripped by an onslaught of philosophical dilemmas conjured up into a toxic cocktail of Sociology 101, a few sick days in front of Dr. Phil, and that copy of “Power of Now” that someone loaned you three years ago.
Saint Bernadette and Father Touch ventured out beyond Bridgeport last night for a truly B-list experience – a record label party in a downtown loft, a “lingerie” themed-event with an open vodka bar, sponsored by Ed Hardy and complete with “appearances” by some people from Gossip Girl, the Real World, and some other shows on TV that I have never heard of. The experience of trying to rock at a party where a 20 year old girl in underwear is DJing imperceptible, melody-less music, while unrelated people jump around in underwear swilling free vodka, as a self-important short guy in an Ed Hardy bathrobe talks on the phone and smokes an “electric cigaratte” provoked a crisis that not even “existential” can describe. Only the promise of returning our beacon of hope and weirdness in the Park City kept us from stuffing the free Ed Hardy t-shirts down our throats and ending it all.
Listen! This is a matter of dire importance. Don’t let any more average people get control of entertainment and media. The difference between directing your attention at someone who deserves it is so profound, but yet so subtle that you can forget it exists at all. It’s much easier to forget the farther away you get from it. Do yourself a favor – don’t watch anything that is a parade of average people fighting each other about the minute details of their regular lives. You have your own life. Go rent a DVD of your favorite performer -whoever it is – Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, Justin Timberlake, – even the Jonas Brothers (I mean, I hate the Jonas Brothers, but at least they work really hard and practice every day and have a great light show!). Remind yourself that only people who can really rock the party, can trickle down the party into your everyday life.
