Composer Louis Rosen wrote in to say:

Dear Neighbors, The wonderful poet (and my current collaborator), Nikki Giovanni, will join Capathia and me at Park Slope’s Community Bookstore (Seventh Avenue between Garfield and Carroll) this coming Tuesday evening, July 8, at 7 pm, to celebrate the release of our new CD, ONE OUNCE OF TRUTH: The Nikki Giovanni Songs on the PS Classics label.

Nikki will read a some poems; Capathia and I will sing some songs from the new record; the three of us will sign CDs and/or books; refreshments will be on hand and a good time should be had by all. Hope you can come Warm Regards, LR

Park Slope’s Blognigger has done it again. A great post about how annoying our children can be—and a list of rules for life with kids in the city. This one is for the record books. Oh, and Gawker picked it up, too. I take exception to BN referring to the bar at Two Boots as “the
little shitty one.” I love that bar, oh well. Here’s the gawkage:

The hilarious, unhinged, and angry man (and Park Slope parent!) we know only as Blognigger has gone ahead and drafted a long, detailed list of rules of how to live with your kids in an urban environment: “We the parents of Park Slope and the surrounding vicinity hereby declare our realization that we and our children can, at times, be annoying as FUCK.” The Declaration of Co-dependence covers all the basics—sidewalk behavior, restaurant behavior, bookstore/movie theater/supermarket behavior, and subway behavior. It also unilaterally bans children from all bars—well, except for “the little shitty one in the front of Two Boots.”

And here’s the beginning of the declaration:

WE THE PARENTS of Park Slope and the surrounding vicinity hereby declare our realization that we and our children can, at times, be annoying as FUCK. We are naturally compelled to value our children’s feelings and well-being above all else, frequently to the exclusion of our consideration for others, our capacity for courtesy, and our common sense.

Notwithstanding this concession, it is our observation that our Childless Neighbors are prone to aggressive and rude responses to our faux pas, which often far outweigh the damages caused by our initial slights of manners in the first place.

It is from this dichotomy, and for the inalienable truth that our two species must co-exist and co-depend on one another in this neighborhood, that WE THE PARENTS propose these official tenets of behavior, in order that we may ease relations through the removal of situational interpretation via the creation of the following standard operating procedures…