Monday Night on the Lower East Side: SummerStage presents The Faux-Real Theatre Company's "Jason and the Argonauts" at East River Park

Tonight at East River Park we saw another great SummerStage presentation by the Faux-Real Theatre Company, Jason and the Argonauts, a wildly innovative and dramatically compelling adaptation of Apollonius Rhodius's epic The Argonautica as translated by Aaron Poochigian.

Directed by Mark Greenfield, the narrative of the digressive and oddly postmodern poem, with a seemingly endless number of characters and adventures, works spectacularly well in making this semi-obscure work of the third century B.C.E. comprehensible and truly exciting for a contemporary audience.

As the retelling of the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece, a kid's story it's not. (But it also is.)

Sunday Afternoon in Fort Greene/Brooklyn Navy Yard: The 2012 Afropunk Festival at Commodore Barry Park

We were able to get to at least a few hours of the second day of the wonderful Afropunk Festival at Commodore Barry Park.

Joining the exuberant audiences for some terrific bands who were not headliners, we got to see exciting performances by Phony Ppl,

Flatbush Zombies

and the adorable Gordon Voidwell.

We had another great time at the Afropunk Festival,

which has included a lot of fun and even some transcendent moments sharing the music as well as all the other things to do and see.

It was also really nice in these times to see so many people just totally enjoying themselves.

That means a lot.

Really.

Last year so many people were disappointed when Hurricane Irene forced the cancellation of the 2011 Afropunk Festival. (This year's tropical storm is disrupting only the less important but much more evil Republican National Convention.) We are very grateful indeed that the weather was great for this year's Afropunk fest, and even more grateful we got to spend time there.

Saturday in Fort Greene/Brooklyn Navy Yard: The 2012 Afropunk Festival at Commodore Barry Park

We were lucky enough to spend most of the afternoon and evening at the 2012 Afropunk Festival at Commodore Barry Park and we saw so many amazing shows

- from the Skins and the Joe Jordan Experiment (his mom is a great drummer) and Ninjasonik early this afteroon to the Memorials and Das Racist and Erykah Badu with the Cannabinoids and surprise, Yaslin Bey (Mos Def), tonight - and other stuff,

watched the creation of street art and the daredevils at the skate park, hung out with incredibly cool people, had some really good snacks at the food trucks,

and generally such a terrific time on our last real summer weekend before going back to work that we don't know whether to scream or to eat a banana.