For the month of November a local bar has been having Connect Four night every Tuesday. You can place in any of the first three nights, and then on November 24 all the semi-finalists will compete for a few grand prizes.

They have a bunch of standard game sets to play on scattered around the bar and then a giant, big-ass connect four board, and after I played some qualifying rounds (and won!) Rob and I teamed up as a duo against a couple of guys we met there. Nicole snapped this photo of us contemplating our next move, whispering strategy behind checker pieces as big as saucers. I’m a pretty intense player, but when you’re plunking huge plastic disks into on a board that’s three feet high and four feet long, it gets taken to a whole new level of serious.

Three things:

1 – Don’t forget to enter my awesome contest, sponsored by Overdue cards.  I’ll pick the winner on Monday.

2 – Check out my new Amazon Affiliate store. I’m stocking it with stuff I love, and it will fill up in the weeks to come.  If you shop through it, I get a few bucks. Awesome.

3 – Have a wonderful, happy weekend.  Should you find yourself in cake baking mode, I hope it turns out better than mine.  (It was so good, though.)

Sean Kershaw of Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers

Go here to listen, or download the show on iTunes by typing in “Hey Brooklyn”.

It was a fun sight to see a man on a bike in a cowboy hat riding to the studio! In this episode, Sean told me that every Wednesday this month, he and his band are going to be playing at Hill Country in Manhattan. Hill Country is authentic Texas BBQ, and that’s pretty much all you need to say to get me to show up with my bib on. Especially if there’s beer, too.

The music at the end of this podcast is hilarious; it includes what is probably “the only country song written about Brooklyn”.

Thanks, Sean, for a great interview!

(Rob pointed out to me that I should be cross-posting my weekly episodes of Hey Brooklyn here on the blog, so I’ll be doing that every Monday from here on out.  I might as well, there are all these “tidbits” and little funny things that happen when I’m recording these that just don’t make it into the interview because of time restraints, and now I can share them all here.)

If you email me and say, “This might be a weird email, but i hope not! I don’t know how many people contact you and ask to see you irl.. But, i am going to be in Brooklyn…i wanted to see if you’d be up for a drink or something!” I will not think it is a weird email. I will be happy. Really, really happy. And I will meet you, and we will go to the park, and have brunch, and walk around DUMBO, and take pictures, and I will talk you out of bothering with Grimaldies, and you can take photos of me doing something strange with my hand under some scaffolding. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY HAND?!

Thanks for emailing, Lindsay!

1. Roll a crust.  Press it in.  Every time I do this, I think of Mary Poppins comparing pie crusts to flimsy promises: “Easily made and easily broken.”

2. Wash the blueberries, then toss them with sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and love.

3. Berries in the crust.  This is the point I have to summon all my strength to not eat them all.

4. Put on the top and cut holes.  You see that little white blob peeking out through the hole on the left there?  That’s a pat of butter.  Butter makes it better.

5. Bake until golden.

6. Blueberry pie has the distinction of being one of the few baked goods better served cold.  Like revenge.

This is the recipe I used.  It’s from my friend Ellen, who apparently doesn’t believe in writing recipes in order, and also likes to sprinkle commentary throughout.  It made me happy, even if it was a little bit of up and down reading to get through it.  It’s from her grandmother.

Filling:
Combine 4 cups fresh blueberries with 3/4 -1 cup of sugar, 3 Tbs all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, a dash of salt, and 1/2 tsp grated lemon peel (although I NEVER use the lemon peel).

Line 9 inch pie plate with pastry (see below). Add filling. Sprinkle with 1 tsp lemon juice (this is why I never put in the lemon peel AND I never measure the juice – I just shake until I feel like stopping!). Dot with 1 Tbs butter. Lay top crust over the top, adjust and cut slits for escape of steam. Seal edges. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

Double Crust Pastry:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup shortening
8-10 Tbs cold water

Stir together flour and salt. With a pastry cutter, cut in the shortening until the pieces are pea-sized. Sprinkle 1 Tbs of water over the flour mixture and gently toss with a fork. Repeat using 1 Tbs of water until the whole flour mixture is moistened. Divide in half and form each into a ball. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each half until they are about 12 inches in diameter.

matty’s modeling debut

I’m doing my very first Hey Brooklyn giveaway!  Friday’s episode features Porter Block and we’re giving away their latest CD The Gowanus Yacht Club. It’s a collaborative work featuring a lot of different singer-songwriters, and makes fantastic summer listening. Go to the episode page for details.

Please note: Only the CD is being given away. That cuddly dude with the soft brown eyes is mine-all-mine!

Hugs are free, and ads are cheap!  Just $10!

If you would like to advertise on my blog and have your banner seen by hundreds of the most fabulous, discriminating eyeballs on the internet, now is the the time to set it up for July 1st!  See here for more information, and email me (theambershow at gmail dot com) for details.  All sponsors get a write up, too!

I’m back to selling photography! See my new store here!

I had a go at selling on Etsy a while back, but didn’t like it. On Etsy you pay a tiny fee per listing. That’s fine – it’s an amount I could cover with the coins dug out of my couch cushions – but it was annoying to pay given the lack of volume of business my store did every month.

I closed up shop and let it sit dormant. My best sellers were my copyright violating P*ep photos, anyway, and I couldn’t continue selling them.*

***

One of the beauties of SxSW is the people you meeting hanging out in the hallways, at the parties, in the bars, and at the dinners. I serendipitously wound up one night at a table full of people who were launching a start-up called “Store Envy” storenvy.com

It’s a similar concept to Etsy; the biggest difference for me is that they don’t have a fee per listing. Like Etsy, it’s free to launch a store, although it’s in private beta now. (They currently have Pro stores available that offer warehousing and shipping for a 15% fee) I requested a free beta store and got one, because they like me.

You can visit it by going to theambershow.storenvy.com Right now I’ve listed nine different 8×10 and 8×12 prints.

One thing I’m going to do in the near future is offer custom-cut mats. The problem with the way I (and a lot of people) shoot is that we compose our images in 2×3.  That’s normally a 4×6″ photo, and if you blow it up again, 8×12″.   Most frames, of course, come in 8×10″. There would be a HUGE market for anyone who starts making reasonably-priced frames for 8×12″ prints, as many of us are loathe to cut off those two inches for many of our favorite pictures when we blow them up.

Since no one has thought to make millions doing this yet, custom matting is the solution, but Hello! Expensive! So I’m going to start offering custom mats (bought in bulk), sized to fit both 11×14″ frames (a standard size frame you can find anywhere) and 11.75×15.75″ frames, the size of the most common RIBBA frame from IKEA, and frame of choice for cheap people everywhere.

Go check out my shop and pass it along to your friends, if you would. I’d appreciate it so much. If you have a suggestion for me, please share. Currently, 100% of the profits from the sale of every $10 print will be going directly to getting these little guys off the beach and into a good home.  They are puppies born recently to a dog called Patches that some of my Puerto Rican dog rescue friends have noticed on the beach.  We really don’t want them to languish in the filth they’re in, but there is currently zero dinero to help them with.  Since I’ve gotten a handful of emails asking whether some of my prints were for sale over the past few months, this seemed like a good move all around.

*For you newer readers: I got a cease-and-desist letter from the maker of P*eps, telling me I couldn’t use their image for commercial purposes. If you’d like one, I still have a few of both “Godzilla vs. P*ep” and “4 P*eps” available, yours free with a $10+ donation to Manos Por Patas. Just forward your receipt to me with your address and I’ll send it along.

“I think a raving sea monster could have attacked your wedding and you wouldn’t have noticed from all the GOOGLY EYE STARING you were doing!” – Jen

This week SO needs a fork in it.

I got a hurt hand, went to the doctor, got majorly sick, had a disaster with Hey Brooklyn that Rob is looking into, took the first of hopefully many photos of shelter dogs, went to a Yankees game (with Chris Cavs!), tasted guacamole at the Bell House, had a lovely interview, celebrated my second anniversary, and began working on an exciting new project which I’m going to share here on Monday.

Thank you for all for the input on my last name. It was one of those things where I said to Rob, “I don’t really know if I should hit publish on this thing.” I’m glad I did.

Happy weekend!