So Much To Do Outside Our Cafe

Pink Safety Pin Coil Bracelet Ball by Meridith Pingree

MCQ!


With our rigorous holiday entertaining schedule Cafe Drake needs to get out of the house now and then, to seek inspiration to bring home and transmogrify into the Next Great dinner/cocktail/ Christmas/house party. Charging our batteries right now and requiring your immediate attention are:


Macaque (a/k/a MCQ) and their heavily anticipated EP, released just in time for holiday shopping. You've heard us singing the praises of MCQ for many a moon (as well as band composer Christine Hart's genius food blog 312 Sq Ft) and now it's time to visit their shiny new website and purchase your own copy of Winter 2008's must-have CD.


One of the perks of having a new friend working as a publicist for Knopf is the largess of America's greatest publishing house . . . um, the HQ closet of free books tossed like candy from a small town parade float. Absolutely essential for cold nights spent reading under the covers is hot-off-the-presses The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger. Even if you're not as obsessed with Old Hollywood as Cafe Drake, Basinger's 550+ page dissection of the studio system of the 1930s-50s will enthrall via its witty, urbane prose style alone. Chocked with delicious gossipy tidbits, the volume never loses sight of the thesis: movie stars were once crafted and molded from humble origins hinting at possible future divinity.


Cafe Drake pal Meridith Pingree has not one but two openings this weekend, both of course featuring her provocative, edgy sculptures. If you missed "Yellow Star" - an eerily compelling "interactive" piece - this summer at Supreme Trading Gallery, you have another chance to walk into/under its spell! Or take in the holiday themed annual Ornament show at Bravin Lee. Grab the details for an upcoming visit either here or here.


R Werner Fassbinder has been a hero to Cafe Drake since we first saw his films as a child via HBO and PBS. Forget the legendary party monster we so love, the celluloid legacy left behind could convince a prohibitionist of his unique genius. Melodrama abounds at Queen's PS1 in the manner of a gargantuan exhibit devoted to the rare 14-hour TV melodrama Berlin Alexanderplatz. You can watch a few "episodes" in various screening rooms, wander through galleries of production stills and storyboards or bravely tackle the upcoming marathon (all 14 hours in one shot)!