Listings

WEDNESDAY

AUGUST 13

Books

SOCK MONKEYS

Consider the sock: a covering for the foot, stretched tight against the flesh, providing comfort and absorption. Consider

the monkey: our genetic neighbor, a banana

fancier whose behavior often seems uncannily

like our own. Consider the sock monkey: a mock primate crafted from a castaway stocking—to what end? Arne Svenson and Ron Warren’s weirdly transfixing Sock Monkeys, which bears the Borgesian subtitle “200 out of 1,863,” will have somo fanciers going ape. Simon Doonan, Dale Peck, and others will be on hand to read from their prose contributions. PARK

At 7, Barnes & Noble, 675 Sixth Avenue, 212.727.1227

Music

BARRY HARRIS

Eternal keeper of the bebop flame, Harris has a unique touch—an unsentimental caress that allows him to mine the music for romance and wit while exploring all the

harmonic byways and swinging with pointed

finesse. As good as his trio is, his quintet with

saxophonist Charles Davis and guitarist Roni Ben-Hur is a special delight. GIDDINS

Through Saturday at 9 and 11, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, 212.581.3080

AHMAD JAMAL

No one ever choreographed the movements of a piano trio more minutely than Jamal, a musician who produced hit records and influenced Miles Davis and others more than 40 years ago, but his recent work suggests a loosening up and renewed energy worth catching while you can. GIDDINS

Through Sunday at 8:30 and 10:30, Friday and Saturday also at midnight, Iridium, 1650 Broadway, 212.582.2121

Photo

THE “ING” SHOW

This roundup of summer activities doesn’t include gallerygoing, but 50 terrific images provide the ideal incentive. They range from Don James’s and Tom Blake’s sublime ’30s surfing shots, Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s elegant ’20s Riviera snaps, and Mark Shaw’s pictures of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port—three very different takes on the good life—to juicy contemporary color work by Joel Meyerowitz, Reuben Cox, and Angela West, the last of whom closes the show with a split-open watermelon I wanted to dive into. ALETTI

Through August 15, Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery, 120 Eleventh Avenue, 212.414.2770

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THURSDAY

AUGUST 14

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Art

LOUISE BOURGEOIS

Now ninetysomething, she still can do no wrong. “The Insomnia Drawings,” a group of 220 works on paper doodled with red and blue pen or pencil during sleepless nights, come straight from the unconscious. The mazes, whorls, waves, petals, linear repetitions, and stray figures are enigmatic, banal, fabulous, exploratory, and sort of sequential. LEVIN

Through September 21, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, 212.570.3676

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FRIDAY

AUGUST 15

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Dance

LES BALLETS TROCKADERO

DE MONTE CARLO

Entertaining ballet fans with masterful parodies of dance chestnuts since 1974, the Trocks have become skilled and moving performers. For the best look at their remarkable transformations (they’re all guys, and most of them perform as women, on point and in tutus), arrive early to claim your free seat, right up close. ZIMMER

At 8, Damrosch Park Bandshell, Lincoln Center, 63rd Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, 212.875.5766

Film

JOHNNY GUITAR

Before there was Jerry Lewis, there was Nick Ray’s delirious 1954 western, revived in a new 35mm print. Ray’s operatic mix of Freudian sexual pathology and anti-McCarthy politics features Joan Crawford’s grimly glam gunslinger and a mise-en-scène worthy of Jean Cocteau. Dismissed by American reviewers, it was fetishized by the young cineastes of Cahiers du Cinéma as an auteurist cause célèbre. HOBERMAN

Through Thursday, Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, 212.727.8110

Music

KID 606+DJ /RUPTURE+DWAYNE SODAHBERK+DONNA SUMMER

Kid 606 may not be as clever as he thinks, but he can certainly spot talent. Exhibit A: DJ /rupture, whose spine- and mind-bending mixes Gold Teeth Thief and Minesweeper Suite connect and disrupt the African diaspora, rock the party, and bring the avant-noise all at once. Donna Summer, a/k/a WFMU’s Jason Forrest, pisstakes laptoptronica as cheekily as and often more effectively than the headliner. Also: End. MATOS

At 10, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, 212.219.3006

LIBERTINES+BRITISH SEA POWER+LIVING THINGS

Though their on-again, off-again relationship to verticality is one of their strengths, the Libertines’ CBGB show last spring fell down more than was altogether fun. This time they bring backup: the hilariously named British Sea Power, who pound out a somewhat grander variation of the same aesthetic, and St. Louis’s Living Things, whose punky debut EP is the sardonically named Turn In Your Friends and Neighbors. CHRISTGAU

At 8, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, 212.777.6800

 

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SATURDAY

AUGUST 16

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Film

NEW YORK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 18 movies (15 local premieres) include romance, action, sci-fi, and slapstick. The rubric “Secret Wonderland” might refer to the hottest of East Asian cinemas. The best title belongs to an international cult film, Nam Gee-Woong’s hour-long whatsit Teenage Hooker Becomes Killing Machine in Daehakno. HOBERMAN

Through August 21, Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, 212.255.8800; August 22 through 24, BAM Rose Cinema, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718.636.4100

Music

KTU BEATSTOCK

Each year New York’s dance music station puts together a massive bill featuring artists mostly unknown beyond its core listeners (Reina, Roc Project, Galleon), a few lucky performers with hits outside the dance music ghetto (Rob Base, Angelo Venuto, Lasgo, the fabulous Fannypack), and then a bunch of old-school freestyle gods who undoubtedly now have day jobs and kids (TKA, Judy Torres, Cover Girls). Gotta love that. WALTERS

At 6, PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, New Jersey, 732.307.7171; Sunday at 7, Jones Beach Theater, 1000 Ocean Parkway, Wantagh, New York, 516.221.1000

 

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SUNDAY

AUGUST 17

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Film

AMERICAN SPLENDOR

This jazzy synthesis of Harvey Pekar’s autobiographical comix is clever, engaging, and cannily faux populist—complete with a tidily upbeat closer. (Dennis Kucinich should drop Seabiscuit and hitch his campaign bandwagon to a more grittily inspirational tale of a local boy made good.) The movie pivots on the confrontational appearances Pekar made on Letterman in the late ’80s—just one of the ways his Underground Man doubles as his own press agent. HOBERMAN

Now playing, Landmark Sunshine Cinemas, 143 East Houston, 212.330.8182

 

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MONDAY

AUGUST 18

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Dance

CLEO PARKER ROBINSON DANCE ENSEMBLE

To its Joyce debut, this Denver-based ensemble brings new work by Carlos Dos Santos Jr.; the troupe’s signature piece, Raindance, by Milton Myers; David Rousseve’s One Nation Under a Groove Part 2: 24

Hours in Birmingham, derived from the 1963

bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, and performed to Motown music; and dances by Nejla Yatkin, Katherine Dunham, and Cleo Parker Robinson herself. ZIMMER

Monday and Tuesday at 8, through August 23, Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, 212.242.0800

Music

<50 CENT+SNOOP DOGG+BUSTA RHYMES

He’s got the magic stick, but 50 Cent’s singles are beginning to slide off the chart at an accelerating pace. That aside, he plays his live set as if every song—from “In Da Club” to the mix-tape jams—were a No. 1 hit. Such is the essence of star power. Last go-round, he had to compete with Jigga for shine. Matched up with Snoop and Busta, though, he’ll earn his casual arrogance. Also featuring Sean Paul, Fabolous, and Bone Crusher. CARAMANICA

At 6:30, PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, New Jersey, 732.307.7171; Saturday at 6:30, Jones Beach Theater, 1000 Ocean Parkway, Wantagh, New York, 516.221.1000

 

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TUESDAY

AUGUST 19

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Books

TOM TOMORROW

The Great Big Book of Tomorrow is an acerbic and hilarious collection of cartoons, chronicling Tomorrow’s career from his early days as an Iowa copy-shop boy piecing together collages of 1950s propaganda and children’s books to his current success as a nationally syndicated cartoonist (seen in these very pages). With a penchant for pinpointing exactly what makes a situation discomforting, The Great Big Book is a sharp-witted reminder of all the political fuckups and bureaucratic bullshit we’ve somehow forgiven or forgotten over the years. RUSSELL

At 7, Barnes & Noble, 675 Sixth Avenue, 212.727.1227

Music

BELLE & SEBASTIAN

The rare American shows by the thundering horde of twee are always an event—site-specific covers, record-geek ransackings of their catalog, and this time, no kidding, a treasure hunt. The grander their ambitions, the sweeter the nectar, and Trevor Horn’s producing their forthcoming album, so grandness is inevitable. A benefit for Celebrate Brooklyn! With Ben Kweller. WOLK

At 7, Prospect Park Bandshell, 9th Street and Prospect Park West, 718.855.7882, ext. 45

LES NUBIANS+ZAP MAMA

Zap Mama have moved a long way from their initial five, mostly European women tweaking Central African Pygmy songs into a cappella sounds the rest of us could understand. By the group’s third album, the membership was shifting and founder-leader Marie Daulne was insinuating into that trademark choral yin the yang of male voices and layers of instrumentation. French-based sister act Les Nubians’ own Franco-reggae-r&b mélange may be currently higher up on world-music and dance charts, but Mama continue to dive deeper and deeper into uncharted musical explorations. OUMANO

At 8, Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, 212.353.1600