10 Picks for the Week

MLB Baseball 2010
April 4 was the official opening day. We wonder how A-Rod will perform this year without his lucky charm, Kate Hudson. Go Yankees! Not a fan? Well, get out there and support your favorite team. Better yet, get nine players and grab a bat and ball and get your own game going. 

Coachella Music Festival
There’s still time to get tickets to this amazing three-day music festival in Indio, California. The line-up is too long to list here, but includes acts like: De La Soul, Gorillaz, Jay-Z, Phoenix, Thom Yorke, Sly Stone, Perry Ferrell, and Vampire Weekend. Though Coachella is no longer the exclusive event it was seven or eight years ago, the crowds are somewhat less distinguished, the festival is still bearable if you are well organized. Bring a hat, and comfortable shoes. Stay at the Ace Hotel designed by Commune Design’s Roman Alonso. You”€™ll be happy to retreat to this Palm Springs hotspot after hours traipsing about the Empire Polo Field under the hot desert sun.

Cherry Blossom Festival
Whether you prefer Washington D.C. or Japan, tis the season to watch the blossoms bloom. The festival in D.C. runs between March 27 and April 11, and includes a variety of events as well as a parade. The festival commemorates the gift of 3000 trees given to us by the Japanese Mayor of Tokyo in 1912. But better yet, go the distance and visit different sites all over Japan where magnificent cherry blossoms bloom throughout the Spring season.

Lucian Freud
The exhibition to get to this season in Paris at the Centre Pompidou. The collection of over 50 large scale paintings and other drawings and photographs hasn”€™t been exhibited in France since his last retrospective in 1987. Freud, now 88, is widely seen as one of the world’s most important living artists. His portraits capture the human “€œflesh”€ meticulously, and his almost obsessional treatment of nudes bears the theme of painting, artist and model.

Polyvore.com
“Polyvore, a fashion website for the masses,” takes fashion away from Anna Wintour and puts it in the hands of designers, and fashionable young people. Polyvore’s easy-to-use virtual styling tool lets people mix and match products from any online store to create their own fashion collections called “sets”. The Polyvore community consists of trendsetters, shoppers and aspiring stylists, who create more than 30,000 sets daily and spend an average of 10 minutes on the site per visit. With over 6 million unique visitors and 140 million page-views per month, Polyvore is the largest fashion community site in the world.

Seven Sin Songs
In her second book, and first work of fiction, Takimag’s own Andrea von Stumm explores coupledom weaving together the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice with the realities of modern life. Von Stumm’s clever prose and sophisticated tone take off at high speed on the French Riviera, leading us on a tantalizing, entertaining, and fearless journey worthy of its title.

Greta Gerwig in Greenberg
Gerwig is a young actress who went from making her own weirdo independent films about young love to catching the eye of director, Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding).  In her breakout role, in what might otherwise be a stale movie, Gerwig’s realistic portrayal of a personal assistant who falls in love with Greenberg, played by Ben Stiller, has been met with outstanding reviews.  

Promises, Promises
The Broadway revival with Tony and Emmy Award winning Kristin Chenoweth is back on through Christmas. The awesome combination of Burt Bacharach’s music, and Neil Simon’s original story is a must-see for Chenoweth fans missing her on Glee and Pushing Daisies, as well as for fans of Sean Hayes from Will & Grace.

Earth Day
April 22, 2010 is the 40th annual day to celebrate our earth. Use this day to acknowledge your impact on the planet and learn about what you can do to preserve natural resources and reduce any unnecessary damage to the environment. Whether or not you accept that climate change is manmade need not exclude your participation. Pick up a piece of trash, walk to work, or turn off the lights. Why? Because we all have to live here, lets try and make it as pleasant as possible for everyone!

Anish Kapoor Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents a major solo exhibition devoted to the art of Anish Kapoor. The exhibition, which opened to enormous acclaim at the Royal Academy of Arts this Fall in London is the first large-scale survey of Kapoor’s work to be seen in Spain. If you are unfamiliar with Kapoor’s Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millenium Park or his other work, it is definitely worth seeing in person, so too the museum itself. Kapoor rose to prominence in the early 1980s with his explorations of abstract sculptural forms and the use of volume, scale, color, and materiality. Best known for his explorations into the concept of the void, his sculptures, monumental installations, and outdoor public-art projects have expanded the language of Post-Minimalist art. This show features several series that the artist has developed since 1979 using tactile or highly reflective materials: bright, pure pigment, blood-red wax; painted fiberglass; stone; polished stainless steel; and most recently, cement.