The Next Big Thing

Cake Man Raven Confectionery

Hot, Hot, Hot

Show #351

Friday, August 15, 2003

Some ways to beat the heat – with verse recommended by Poet Laureate Billy Collins, romantic fiction from sound artist Miranda July, and the steel pan rhythms of Trinidad émigré Rudy King. Also, a conversation in the hot kitchen of “Cakeman” Raven Patrick DeSean Dennis III. And André Aciman on writing in exile.

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Beach Poetry

For poetry devotees who also happen to be dedicated to sunbathing and body surfing, Poet Laureate Billy Collins offers these summer reading recommendations.

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The Cakeman

Imagine baking a cake for 1500 people in your own modest kitchen – and the kitchens of all your neighbors…. That’s how Raven Patrick DeSean Dennis III, a.k.a. the Cakeman, used to do it, back when he ran his baking business out of a Harlem apartment. Today, he’s more comfortably situated in his cake shop in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. With tall orders coming from devotees such as Mary J. Blige and Lena Horne, he’s still got his hands full.

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Walkman Busting

So a guy walks up to you on the street, and asks you what’s playing on your Walkman. You tell him. But he’s not through with you. Now he says he wants to listen too and before you know it, he’s plugged in a mini-disc and started recording. Gideon D’Archangelo invented what he calls “Walkman busting,” and today we plug into HIS player, to find out what he’s heard on the street.

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Out of Egypt

Writer-in-exile André Aciman finds Alexandria on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

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Celebrity Stash

These days, there seems to be a museum for everything – Barbie, sex, even mustard! The Next Big Thing’s “unreliable narrator,” Alice Furlaud, introduces us to the latest: the Museum of Celebrity Artifacts, whose attractions include discarded items from the likes of Jackie O. and Chairman Mao. Produced by Curtis Fox.

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School of Romance

A big auditorium. Rows of stackable chairs. A collection of lonely people, sitting in the dark with napkins over their faces. Welcome to the School of Romance, as imagined by performer and audio artist Miranda July. With music and sound design by Tim Renner.

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Steel Pan Guardian

Rudy King immigrated to New York from Trinidad in the 1940s, and brought with him a storehouse of knowledge about making and playing steel pan drums. Today, he continues to make drums, and plays congas with his band the Radoes.