HOW TO DRESS LIKE A HOBO: TEN HELPFUL HINTS TO PREPARE FOR THE BRICK'S SHANTYTOWN BALL

Everyone knows how to dress fancy: put on a tie or a dress or something else you buy at the store. But dressing like a hobo – as opposed to a disgusting, friendless slob – requires energy, discipline, and a number of other things we pretend to console ourselves with when we no longer have money.

If you carefully follow our advice, you can arrive at The Brick’s Shantytown Ball on Saturday looking and smelling like you just stepped out of a boxcar.

STEP #1: Hats
We cannot stress this enough: Hobos Wear Hats. If you do not have a hat, you are not a hobo, you are a bum, and will be given the eponymous rush. Hats need not be literal hats: tin cans, burlap sacks and pie plates attached to the head with fraying strands of rope will do nicely.

STEP # 2: Proper Sizing
The hobo’s clothes cannot be “just right” – they must be either painfully small or comically large. A random combination of the two is preferable.

STEP # 3: Personalized Accessories
Inexplicable totems – such as carefully whittled figurines of long-dead statesmen (William Jennings Bryan, Daniel Webster, et al) or bent forks worn on a string around the neck – are excellent conversation pieces and can provide a wonderful excuse for a knife fight when touched without permission.

STEP # 4: The Hobo Rag
Every time a hobo needs to wipe something off his mouth, brow or elsewhere, a hobo rag must be pulled from deep within a pocket. This rag must have gone unwashed for at least two election cycles, and be so well-used that it actually leaves excess residue on one’s person whenever it is applied.

STEP # 5: Patches
At least three per garment – and if any of them use floral fabric be prepared to be called a pansy.

STEP # 6: Shoes
Footwear should either A) not match, B) be full of gaping holes (particularly in the big toe area) or C) cause the wearer to repeatedly groan “Oh, my corns” or “Oh, my bunions” or “Oh, my goddamn corns and bunions.”

STEP # 7: Hair
The more there is, the more dogged and futile should be the effort to contain it. If pomade is unavailable, it’s easy to make your own: just find something sticky (this shouldn’t be difficult) and rub. If a hobo is trying to make a big and ultimately futile show of respectability, a grueling cold-water shave can be attempted on whatever party of the body is relevant.

STEP # 8: Stains
Yes. Each one should have its origin in a different substance and come with a long, complicated backstory that can while away the entire trip from Duluth to Cincinnati.

STEP # 9: Sentimental Letters
They can be from potential employers, former lovers, innocent little sisters who may or may not still be alive, mothers who believed in you back when you still had a shot at being something big, or the Archduke of France – but every self-respecting hobo needs an oft-folded missive of some sort that is pulled out and stared at wistfully during moments of relative calm.

STEP # 10: Confidence
You know what? Everyone else can go to hell – cuz you’re a hobo, son.

Hopefully these easy-to-follow will help you prepare an ineffable costume that will make you the belle of the Shantytown. Remember, pre-purchased tickets are $20 - TWENTY MEASLY DOLLARS - so use the discount code "earlybird" and come on by Saturday dressed as a hobo (or as a flapper or dandy, fine, but that’s a copout). Galapagos, Dumbo, 8pm to midnight. Buy your tix at http://bricktheater.com/shantytown

And if you’re not currently in NYC - aka The Big Dirty, Palookasburg, the City of Brotherly Punching and Stabbing - do please consider sending us a donation, which will allow us to provide sartorial guidance (and do theater and stuff) for another year. Be a home-baked pie cooling on an unguarded windowsill - support The Brick.

Bash

Last night the literal walls of The Brick were metaphorically torn down with an awesome display of artistic revelry from the participants of THE FILM FESTIVAL. Yes, it was our Opening Night Cabaret and Like Party or Whatever, and if we were charging money we would have sold out like three times over. As it was we just crammed dozens of people into the space to watch 18 sweet preview performances and trailers by festival participants.

Of course, I personally spent most of my time in the lobby, at the bar, explaining to people that our fridge was being annoying and the beer wasn't as cold as it should be - but they still bought beer! Let that stand as an incisive parable for our times. The fact is, however, that though I heard much, I didn't actually get to physically, visually SEE most of the acts, meaning that I would like to call upon you, the Reader (preferably if you were actually, you know, present at the event) to fill in my perceptions with observations and precious memories of your own.

The rundown went approximately as follows:

1. Introduction: Robert Honeywell regaled the crowd with a bigoted defense of theatre in the face of encroaching technology, at the end of which he bled from the mouth.

2. Paranoid's Guide to History: A delightfully acerbic live lecture (with film) of the Seven Habits of Highly Paranoid People. (Watch the trailer.)

3. It's Gonna Be A Cold Night: More bleeding, this time in the name of zombie-like promotion of said show.

4. Unloosened and Root: Short film trailers by David Dixon, which since I could only hear I can only say so much about, but there was a dirty joke in there somewhere... (Watch the trailer.)

5. What I Took In My Hand: Remember Charles Lindbergh - the revered one who flew the Atlantic, as opposed to the Nazi tool who became President in The Plot Against America? Well here he was!

6. Kill Me Like You Mean It: An audio recording of Stolen Chair's absurdist noir, to be performed as a live radio drama...

7. Horrible Child: The trailer. Fine, I'll admit it, I was outside getting some air because it was hot. But you can see it on YouTube!

8. Code Alpha: Yes, I missed this one too. I'm a regrettable human being. But it's awesome! (Watch the trailer.)

9. Q&A: The Perception of Dawn: An improv scene in which the cast's attempts to answer audience questions about a fake film (part of which was shown) degenerated into a horrible brawl. No blood this time, though.

10. Birthtaint: In this film trailer a man with a freakishly oversized head seeks redemption in the company of a girl with horribly scars. Inspirational!

11. You Bet Your Life LIVE!: Lisa Levy demonstrated a round of the film trivia edition of her live game show, in which it was learned that you can't judge a movie by the type of person who buys tickets to it (or something like that).

12. Tod and I: A live puppet performance followed by a trailer. That little puppet boy breaks my heart, seriously.

13. Death at Film Forum: A film trailer featuring one of the contestants of a Project Runway-style film contest, in which a peeled orange got thrown at a concrete wall to scintillating effect. (Watch a different trailer with some of the same stuff in it.)

14. The Stubborn Illusion of Time: A freaky film/theatre hybrid in which what happens on the screen is reflected by what happens onstage, both of which featured the same ghostly actors doing ghostly things in a ghostly way. (Watch the trailer.)

15. Bring Me the Head of John Ford: A dizzying montage of classic western film clips played over a live actor's monologue, which reminded everyone why westerns are so awesome. (Watch the trailer.)

16. I, Object: Film trailer highly inspired by silent physical comedy, which featured a variation on the whole pulling-a-quarter-out-of-a-kid's-ear trick, which somehow manages never to get old for me.

17. Suspicious Package: Film trailer for an interactive iPod noir in which YOU can play the Detective, the Producer, the Heiress or the Showgirl. (Ooh, I wanna be the Showgirl!)

18. Glissando bin Laden and His Musichideen, with video by ( ): A live performance of room-shaking avant-garde music accompanied by live video, which brought the evening to its kick-ass conclusion.

And then we drank more beer. It was still warm. I'm so sorry.

So yeah, let me reiterate that a large amount of the filmed content on display can be seen on our YouTube channel, along with a whole of other Brick-centric flapdoodle.

Tonight will mark the premiere of The Brick-s 72-Hour Films, in which teams of filmmakers had 72 hours to, uh, make films. Which will now be screened! It's impossible to predict what we'll be seeing, which is what makes it a don't-miss event. Along with everything else in the Festival, of course.