(4.27) The students at RISD and Brown have taken over Benefit Street (from Waterman to College) for a spring lawn party complete with live music, a 21+ beer garden up on Frazier Terrace, with good, clean fun like badminton and throw the bean bag into the thingy on the lush, green Benefit Street turf.  The lawn party lasts until 5pm.

From 7pm to 10pm the same location will give way to the Made in Taiwan Night Market which they describe this way.

Remember the shaved ice and minced pork rice from last year? We’re back again!

Made in Taiwan @RISD collaborated with Brown Taiwan Society and Johnson and Wales Taiwanese Student Association present you our biggest event of the year TAIWANESE NIGHT MARKET 2013!2013, new food, new games!

It’s for students but no one says you can’t walk by. It just looks kind of cool. Coupla food trucks too.

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Boy, the Brown students sure picked the wrong week to go home for Christmas. First the Brown victory over PC and now this. Come back everybody, these snowballs* aren’t going to throw themselves. Fun fact: the first Brown University bear mascot — a live bear, in 1905 — was named Helen.

*Primo stuff out there.

NOV 29 | Lecture: Maureen Cummins, Artist as Archivist. Free and open to the Public. John Carter Brown Library on the Brown University Main Green, MacMillan Reading Room, 6:00 p.m. Refreshments served.

Maureen Cummins will give a slide presentation of her work over the past two decades, which has involved the production of over thirty limited edition artist books. The artist will describe, with accompanying images, her working process, which has evolved from pirating the flea markets and dumpsters of New York City to working in numerous archives as an artist-in-residence. Cummins will also speak briefly about her initial delvings into the John Carter Brown Library collection.

For more information, visit the Watts Program Blog.

This event is part of the Charles H. Watts II History and Culture of the Book Program.

(9.22) There’s something about a night game. The Brown Bears will be hosting Harvard this Saturday evening. (They won their season opener with Holy Cross, 24-21.) The Brown football stadium on Elmgrove Avenue was not even designed for night games — special lighting has to be installed for these events. This game will even be televised on NBC Sports Network Homecoming so run a comb through your hair and act like you’ve been somewhere.

The stadium is larger than it looks with 17,000 having sold out the place in a night game two years ago. The capacity has been reported as high as 20,000, but that figure may date back to its opening in 1925 prior to the invention of deep-fried butter.

Tickets are $20 adults, $15 children. Parking on campus, etc.

4:30pm, Saturday, September 22, Brown Stadium, 400 Elmgrove Avenue

(4.4) Brown junior Jared Moffat sends along this notice.

Brown University’s Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) chapter and the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights will be moderating a panel discussion on medical marijuana. The event is open to the public. The speakers will comment on the three “compassion centers” — medical marijuana dispensaries that were a part of the original medical marijuana law but have not yet been allowed to begin operating — as well as the possible impacts of a federal rescheduling of marijuana as a medically acceptable drug.

Panelists include: Dr. Michael Fine, Director of the Rhode Island Health Department; Dr. Seth Bock, Founder and CEO of Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center; Ellen Smith, Representative of Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition; Brown University Students for Sensible Drug Policy; and Brown University’s Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights.

(This is the same Moffat who recently testified at the State House hearings in support of legislation decriminalizing/legalizing marijuana. Very persuasive and compelling. Read his recent piece for HuffPo “U.S. Drug Policies Are a Crime Against Humanity.”)

Public welcome, 6pm to 8pm, Wednesday, April 4, Room 106, Smith-Buonanno Hall, 95 Cushing Street

Except maybe . . . art.

ART // SHOW at the Granoff Center is organized by the students of The Art of Curating with support from the Granoff Center and Brown’s Department of Modern Culture and Media. This enormous shopping cart fabricated by RISD MFA candidate Anna Huemmer stands nine feet tall. Called “Baby Phat” the piece,

. . . explores ideas of consumerism and functionality. In fulfilling the human tendency for excess, the oversize shopping cart forfeits its usefulness. Even though it’s capable of holding mass quantities, once something is inside the cart it is out of reach. Thus it creates a paradox of moderation brought on by overindulgence.

ART // SHOW is a juried exhibition comprised of graduate and undergraduate work from Brown and RISD students. A sign on the wall tells us “The multiple discourses that ART // SHOW spotlights coexist harmoniously, communicating their respective ideologies without speaking over their peers.” So there’s that.

Cohen Gallery, first floor, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, 154 Angell Street

An ambitious new production coming up at Brown University: Starting on Thursday, March 1st, the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies (TAPS), Sock & Buskin, and Brownbrokers will be presenting We Can Rebuild Him, a new musical written by Deepali Gupta (’12) and directed by Brown/Trinity MFA candidate Talya Klein. The original score written by Gupta, is aided by the musical direction of Brown adjunct lecturer Andrew Hertz.

We Can Rebuild Him is a dark comedy about a family suffering from the loss of their eldest son and the slippery slope of denial that they traverse. A duel between the literal and the metaphorical, the play deals with how a family struggles to put themselves back together when they find they have literally fallen to pieces.

Shows: Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2pm.

$7, $12, $17, March 1 through March 11, Stuart Theatre, Brown University, 77 Waterman Street, tickets online

There’s been a lot of talk in the news lately about gay suicide, and while I have kind of mixed feelings about the media’s panicky sensationalism (and posting that poor Rutgers guy’s terribly awkward photo on the cover of every magazine in America), I think we can all agree that teen suicide is never a good thing.

A lot of people on the internet seem anxious to show their support for gay teens not killing themselves, and there have been requests all over the place for people to wear purple one day or wear black another day or wear black and yellow ribbons or I don’t even know what else.  These reactions are well-meaning, but it might be better to step back and think about the larger issues of homophobia that have people so upset.

If you’re interested, one thoughtful way to express concern might be to attend the Faculty Teach-In tonight at Brown’s Hillel.  According to the press release:

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Everyone else should avoid driving around the East Side today. The Brown Commencement activities will involve Thayer and Waterman Streets, heading down the hill to the First Baptist Church on North Main Street. What they won’t involve is Nelson Mandela who will be accepting his honorary degree in absentia. The role of Nelson Mandela will be played by Morgan Freeman (‘Nurse Betty’). It’s just as well, having these two together on the same stage might have been gravitas overload.

The Black Lavender Experience kicks off with a Brown Pride Month convocation performance by Mangos with Chili. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Galette, Mangos with Chili is a touring cabaret of queer and trans people-of-color performance artists, offering unforgettable performance in celebration of their lives, stories, survival, and the legacies they are creating for future generations of queer and trans people-of-color. Their performance on Wednesday, April 7th at 9pm in the George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space precedes a weekend of staged readings and conversations inspired by the work of Isissa Komada-John ‘10, Andre Thompson ‘05, Ione Lloyd and E. Patrick Johnson. Click HERE for the full schedule.

“For every eight public dollars spent on transportation, only one goes to public transit; the other seven dollars go to car-related needs.”

I finished her book this weekend. It was great. Close your eyes and learn at the same time on Wednesday afternoon:

Catherine Lutz, professor and chair of anthropology at Brown, will discuss her new co-authored book, Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on our Lives, beginning at 4 p.m. at the Brown Bookstore. Lutz’s book details the complex impact of the automobile on modern society and describes how to develop a healthier, cheaper, and greener relationship with cars.

If you can get behind the artfulness of food, Nina Simone, or the dispersion of collectivity and the redensification of that collectivity through technology, or, alternatively, were going to eat food at some point this evening, this one’s for you.

You’ve been graciously invited to step up your game tonight, circa 6 pm. Brown senior Amy Lehrburger is hosting Art For Dinner in a fairly metaphysical sense.

Please review instructions and then oblige the micro-management (“48. Talk about whatever you want, then don’t talk, then sing along with Dylan.”), or do whatever you were going to do anyway. If you’re reading this, well, right now, you may be able to run over to Brown’s Main Green and pick up some pro bono local brussel sprouts.

All relevant documentation, musings, or shamelessly posed photographs should be directed to amylehrburger@gmail.com.

Your kitchen, 6 pm tonight

Sister Spit, a legendary-in-certain-circles group of writers and performance artists, is in town today and tomorrow.  Led by the eternally awesome Michelle Tea, the raggle-taggle group of wordy gypsies will be hosting workshops at Brown starting, like, an hour from now, and continuing through tomorrow night.

Sister Spit was founded in 1997 as a means to tour queer, feminist, outsider, and otherwise marginalized poetry, spoken word, literature and performance.  This year’s tour (Sister Spit: The Next Generation) features Michelle Tea, Beth Lisick, Rhiannon Argo, spoken word champion Kirya Traber, photographer/curator Sara Seinberg, transgender performance artist Ben McCoy, and Ariel Schrag, whose name I still can not see without immediately singing this song.

I saw the tour last time it went to Boston and it was super, super, super.

Full schedge after the jump:

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Online-only, literary mag Wag’s Revue just launched their third issue since March, when the four editors were seniors at Brown, and errant friends and housemates of mine.

The issue includes an interview with George Saunders; a short story by Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish; a nonfiction rainbow of words, marshmallow Peeps, comics, video and audio; and a range of experimental translations in the poetry section.”

They’ve been well-received by the July/August issue of Poets and Writers, the Literary MagNet column, The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog, January Magazine, Live Nude Books, and Fiction Writers Review, among others.

Note also this chance to win some dollar bills through your skill with pen and paper:

“The arrival of Issue 3 heralds the opening of the Wag’s Revue Winter Contests in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The winners receive a $500 prize and publication in Issue 4, alongside whatever luminaries we can muster for that edition. Find submission guidelines here.”

Can I report a statue to the SPCA? It’s bad enough that this poor guy is wearing a collar like those wretched Russian circus bears, but he is clearly quite ill. The statue was donated to Brown University by Theodore Francis Green and is tucked away on Magee Street for fairly obvious reasons.