Hey dudes!

I’m excited to say that I’m playing with my band again next Friday, Oct 9 at The Blarney Stone!!!

That’s right – I’m plugging in my uke and rockin’ various tunes with Marco Bucelli (drums), Matt Butterman (guitar) with A Bass Player (bass) and special guest, my boy Soce, The Elemental Wizard. If you’ve ever wanted to hear the live band version of my hit, Date an Asian, this is your chance!!! I’ll be doing songs new and old, funny and “serious”!

We’re opening up for the album release party of my friend/former college flatmate/bandmate, Bracey Smith’s band, Charm Face (isn’t that an awesome name?!?!)! They are big in Japan. Seriously. They just came back from Japan, where they were big.

This is their logo:

They will, like, charm your face off.
Charm Face Album Release Party
FREE show!
Fri, Oct 9 at 8pm
21+over
Blarney Stone, 2nd Floor
410 8th Ave
(Right outside of Penn Station/MSG by the corner of 31st St and 8th Ave)

The party starts at 8pm
The Jen Kwok experience will start at 8:30
The Comfort Food music video premiere will be at 9:30
and Charm Face will start at 9:45

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Come see this awesome play I’m in, opening this weekend at Here Arts Center!!!

Big Girls Club (The Formula Play)
HERE Arts Center
www.here.org
SEPTEMBER 26, 27 & 28th @ 8:30pm
ETG premiered Big Girls Club ( Happy Dance Dance Princess Show) at the Brick Theater this summer prompting extreme reactions from audiences and critics alike. Matt Johnston of nytheatre.com [...]

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VACAY RECAP

We just got back from a great vacation in Upstate New York – Barryville, to be exact!

Tom and I had a great time, driving through the back roads and sitting in a cabin high enough to literally be amongst the trees!

We swam and paddle boated in a lake that reminded me of “The Parent Trap”:
lake superior State Park by you.
We drove across this cool bridge that used to be a mini canal that boats floated in to go OVER the river.
UpstateVacation_169_1 by you.
We stalked this great blue heron until he gave us a superfierce shot:

Bird in Lake Superior State Park by you.
The sunset was so pretty – the prettiest I’ve seen since I left the Mojave Desert:

Sunset on the delaware River – Barryville, NY by you.
It was such a great vacation, filled with reading, relaxing and movie watching (an electic mix: Gosford Park, Punch Drunk Love, A Fish Called Wanda, and 42nd Street).
Now we’re back in city, with full cell phone reception and Internet! Yes, work intrudes on life once again, but there are lots of things in September that have been/will be exciting (in no particular order)…
TOP FIVE FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT SEPTEMBER 2009 (so far)!
*Fall TV starts – and Bravo’s already got it going with Rachel Zoe and The Real Housewives of Atlanta’s fabuloco-ness!!!
*Hershey’s Birthday Cake Ice Cream is AMAZING (vanilla cake batter-flavored ice cream w/ sprinkles)!!!!!
http://www.hersheyicecream.com/Pintswithmorestuff/img/BdayBatter.gif
*Anna Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired clothing line for Target.
http://mtblog.teenvogue.com/style/blogs/fashion/anna-sui-target-thumb-500×400.jpg
*This one time, Japan’s new First Lady spirit flew to Venus.
*Mosquitoes are hopefully dying off already.

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OK New Yorkers and music lovers, please do yourselves a damn favor and get your asses out to Jalopy in Red Hook, Brooklyn! I, for one, am mad at myself for not having gone there sooner – espcially as a ukulele player. Jalopy named Best Old-Timey Venue by the Village Voice: http://www.villagevoice.com/bestof/2008/award/best-old-timey-venue-690727/

First of all, look at this damn picture:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/02/18/arts/scherrspan.jpg
Tony Scherr at Jalopy, covered by The New York Times

This place is gorgeous!!! The venue is a sweet throwback to the days of yore, with a red velvet curtain and dozens of vintage instruments lining the wall (and all for sale, as Jalopy is also a top notch instrument store/repair shop). The seating in the intimate performance space is a combination of wooden chairs and pews, so it’s got a really down home feel to it. This place makes you feel like you are at a word-of-mouth-only concert hall on the bayou – especially on a hot summer night

I highly HIGHLY recommend this place to both performers and music lovers. I found out about Jalopy through some other NY uke players, and it’s one of those places that people just rave and rave and rave about – but it’s not until you see it with your own eyes that you can truly experience how special it is. Plus, not only do they have a great roster of musicians stopping by to perform, they also offer classes for guitar, fiddle, mandolin banjo and uke.

Please visit Jalopy online: http://jalopy.biz and ESPECIALLY visit them in person. They have a little cafe/bar upfront, and serve wine in jam jars. The owners and staff are some of the most hospitable people I’ve ever met – and their dogs, Pepe and Pirate, will just steal your heart. This place has all the charm that the too-hip Manhattan and Williamsburg music venues are missing.

Anyway, I hope you do check it out – I guarantee that you’ll leave wanting to tell absolutely everyone you know about it too! Jalopy is one of those rare venues that seems to come right out of the New York that everyone dreams about

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Jen Kwok’s photo shoot styled by Tiffany Porter of Old Hollywood and photographed by Justin Hoch of JHoch Photography.

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$2 Starbucks iced drinks in Manhattan from June 30, 2009 to July 31, 2009 after 2pm if you buy any iced drink in the morning.

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In all the cacophony of facebook event invitations, e-mails, etc.etc., I wanted to let you guys know about two great TYC shows coming up:

EVENT #1
Fri, Feb 27 at 9:30pm
Switzerland Neutral Comedy
The Tank at the 45th St Theatre
45th St btwn 8th/9th Ave
$10, no drink min.

Featuring:
OPHIRA EISENBERG
Jay Hoskins
Rachel Axelrod
Devin Sanchez
Evan Morgenstern
Danny Rhoulier
David Cope
Tijuana Yacht Club

Why should you come?
SNC is an awesome comedy collective that Eric and I have performed with since last year. We’re trying to move to new, regular digs at The Tank, so please come out and support – a great crowd and a great show will super help us establish a new home for comedy!!!

Here’s the facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=817190506&ref=name#/event.php?sid=898bfa17b8488ee7758106aa763074d6&eid=49144533373

EVENT #2
Sat, April 4, 8pm
Tijuana Yacht Club Anniversary Party and DVD Taping
Stain Bar
766 Grand St
FREE – just buy some drinks, playa!!!

Why should you come?
SAVE THE DATE!!! It’s the one year anniversary of Tijuana Yacht Club and we want to celebrate with you!!! Eric and I have tons of new material and will be doing a DVD taping as well, so we need a great audience – YOU! Stain Bar is our favorite venue in Brooklyn, with tons of funky couches and stuff, so it’s a chance for us to put on a full length show in a chilled out, intimate environment for our friends and fans. The taping will only be about 45 min-1 hour, but the party rages all night long, before and waaay after!

Thanks, you guys! For a full listing of all my live shows, please check out the Shows section of my blog, as well as my MySpace. Both are updated with obsessive frequency.

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With the motto “Ideas worth spreading”, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) has been putting on conferences for over twenty years to bring together brilliant people from these three industries.

Launched in 2007, their website features over 200 TEDTalk videos, which are 18 minute “Inspired talks by the world’s leading thinkers and doers”. Wow!!! These aren’t your ordinary “how-to” videos presented by teenage girls in their bedrooms – nonono, TED is like the Lincoln Center of YouTube. Part personal storytelling/part motivational speech TED is The Moth with a point.

And now thanks to video, we can all sit at the table with the cool kids! TED rolls with people like: former VP Al Gore, THE Jane Goodall, and neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Tayler. We’ve also got the class nerds and band geeks such as: Johnny Lee (who actually was a YouTube star) hacking into Wii remote controls before our very eyes, Sir Ken Robert talking about how the school system is killing creativity (whaaaa???), David Gallo showing us phosphorescent creatures of the deep and Nellie McKay performing some songs on piano and uke (though she doesn’t actually give a speech, as I don’t think anyone could sit through 18 minutes of someone talking in a 1930s voice).

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Review of Papcitos Mexican street food in

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Jen Kwok talks about her first comedy show of 2009 at Rivers of Honey – and the crazy cab ride home.

Filed under: Comedy, Uncategorized, Wondrous Places I Love! by jenkwok
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