Did anyone go to the “Apprentice 3” auditions at Trump Tower yesterday? Sad to say, if I’d known about them I might have gone over to see the hubbub.

Yo! What Happened to Peace is an exhibition featuring over 100 handcrafted peace & anti-war posters. The show includes artists well known for their political works such as Robbie Conal, Eric Drooker, Winston Smith, Seth Tobocman, and Edward Colver, and others from a graffiti/street-art background such as Shepard Fairey, Futura, Mear One, B-Stormers, Man One, Freddi C and Buff Monster. The show will also feature works by well-known silkscreen printer/designers Chuck Sperry & Ron Donovan/ Firehouse, Serigraphie Populaire, Lucky Bunny, Malleus, Jared Connor/Mexican Chocolate Design, EMEK and Gary Houston/Voodoo Catbox plus many more.
August 6 – September 5, 2004
Opening Friday August 6, 7-10 PM
Stay Gold

A judge punts Rocco from his own restaurant. Awesome. I didn’t watch “The Restaurant” last year, but I caught up on the second season on Bravo after reading New York Magazine’s customary fanning of the flames last spring. Now I’m addicted to the drama. Join me! Start with Gothamist’s collection of Rocco links from ’03 and let the eye-rolling begin!
Also? Shut up, Emily the maitre d’!

Last night at Joe’s Pub, I had the pleasure of seeing writer/singer/piano genius Heather Greene, who my friend booked at the place to the delight of the huge-ass crowd. His pitch was everything that made me want to go to the show. He was like, “It’s a little Norah Jones and a little Fiona Apple!” No Norah Jones fan myself, he tried again: “It’s Fiona Apple crossed with a blow job!” That worked. She does a moody cover of The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” which will make you love her. Also, beer with a friend discount rules.
The other performer on the bill was an Amy Kohn, whose music veered more toward the genre of “vocal jazz, but, y’know, bad.” She was accompanied by a brilliantly talented band of random instruments. A trumpet here, an upright bass there, a back-up singer singing a minor third above Amy Kohn everywhere. She gestured wildly instead of playing the piano a lot and sang a song about her “response to September 11” that seemed like it was out of a Lower East Side poetry slam on September 12. But by far my favorite rhyming couplet of the night came in a song entitled something like “Ice Lady,” in which she plinkity-plinked the keys and crooned, “Sits on the buffet, slowly melts away” over and over and over again. A song about an ice sculpture. It sounded better with a sousaphone. Actually, no it didn’t.

Today’s slalom included the following moguls: 1. Two westbound lanes out of four closed; 2. a fender-bender in the left lane between Hamilton and Atlantic; 3. a giant chunk missing from the right-lane pavement on the Brooklyn Bridge; 4. a limo with a flat tire half-in and half-out of the right lane on the FDR northbound.
I get onto Second Avenue just in time to see a bus flatten a mailbox. It’s not a full moon; what gives?

Another article about how many New Yorkers plan to flee the convention. My favorite part? The woman who would rather spend the week in Detroit. I mean…really.
I don’t spend a lot of time feeling psyched that I live so far from Manhattan, but…damn. Party at my house, yo.

When someone — like the news, the sign on the George Washington Bridge, and your sister in New Jersey — tells you to avoid Route 4 because of Sunday construction in Hackensack…you guys, avoid Route 4. I was coming from Long Island because I’m always convinced it’s going to be shorter to take the train all the way out to my parents, grab the car, and then drive. And it’s not. It’s not shorter at all. The only thing better about it is that I get to be in a private space, listening to music. Or, if I should so choose, to traffic reports trumpeting the fact that I’m not going anywhere because I’m trapped in construction traffic on Route 4.
You think once you’re off the Cross Bronx and over the GWB you’re home free. You’re not.
But at least I missed Mets traffic. And bridge traffic. And…this.

Hungover, chilling on the couch, watching this nutty-with-extra-nuts Yanks/Bosox game (and on a side note…Jason Varitek? Way to sucker-punch A-Rod with your mask still on, bitch. What’s with those guys? Anyway…), who to my wondering eye should appear but Juan “Goggles McGee” Padilla. Where’d he come from? Why wasn’t I informed? Because he is keee-yute! And I kind of love the goggles!
Not the greatest pitching I’ve ever seen, though.

Excellent news—the director’s cut of Donnie Darko opens today at two theaters in Manhattan. Following its lackluster November 2001 release (understandably, people weren’t in the mood to see films where planes crashed into people’s houses) this twisted tale lated gained a huge cult following and some pretty healthy DVD sales, so now they are rewarding their devoted fans with even more teen angst, giant talking rabbits and a few additional 80’s pop gems.
Word has it that one of the extended scenes involves their English teacher (played by Drew Barrymore) lectures on the novel “Watership Down”—you know, that f*cked up book with the rabbits? I am so there…

Def Jam founder Russell Simmons finally got into his apartment building located across from the World Trade Center (he hasn’t been allowed in since 9/11). To celebrate this occassion he let photographer Glen E. Friedman flyer his windows with peace signs and the words “no more war” and “no more lies”. I remember seeing the MTV Cribs where they documented Simmons house for the show. They broadcast it soon after 9/11 explaining that the building had been severly damaged from the attack. For some reason the whole event really hit me then. First seeing a room-by-room tour of this posh house, and then finding out this home you had just been in was directly–and I mean directly–across the street and at close to eye level with the attack. a surreal experience.
more images from the visual protest.
wouldn’t it be amazing if you looked at the skyline of the 5 boroughs and every window had one or more of these flyers proudly posted on it? should the revolution begin continue on paper?